I mean, the whole rig's cost is in the hundreds of millions (Wiki says $560 mil but google link said $350 mil). The whole disaster is in the tens of billions, ain't it?
You'd think they would do anything and spare no cost to keep the fucking thing in working order and floating.
Makes the $500,000 a day lease look like pennies.
They normally do spare no cost keeping these things going.
My company sells some sensors to oil rig people, and the way it works is that they have a limited equipment budget, but an unlimited repair budget. Yeah. Unlimited.
They are smart enough to buy some spares, but when something critical breaks and they don't have a backup, they will spare no expense to get it fixed. They've had something break on them in the middle of the night, so they put it on a helicopter, flew it to the mainland, and paid our partner in texas to drive 2 hours to meet them with his repair truck, fix it and drive home, and then flew it back. At like 3am.
Which is impressive, and makes sense given how much money these things are worth and how much they cost.
Which makes me wonder why their computers weren't fixed sooner.
The problem is, when our sensors break there's no "bypass mode", so they *have* to be fixed or they can't do anything.
With the computers able to be bypassed, people can ignore it until it becomes a problem.
With whats at stake here, critical safety systems should *not* have a "bypass" mode, I would think.
These people also understand when a mechanical tool is broken, it needs to be fixed. Computers are somehow very "mysterious", so there is a lack of understanding that could be a problem too. -Taylor
Yeah, the recent advertising from Apple has been unlike Apple. In the past, they usually acted too cool to describe their products that way and would use a simple tagline to let the product speak for itself (e.g., "Introducing Mac mini" or "240 songs. A million different ways." for the iPod shuffle).
Calling it magical is really corny, and so are the video interviews of Apple employees talking about how amazing it is. I liked the faceless, too-cool-for-the-room advertising from the time before the iPad.
Yeah, it was a video interview of Ives talking about the new unibody laptops that made me first realize it. He had this twinkle in his eye when he said the word magical, like it was just the most amazing thing ever. I'm a mechanical engineer and a machinist and I think its pretty cool that they machine the laptops now - it takes a lot of skill to pull off that much machining on such a mass market product... but magical? No.
They're just taking themselves too seriously now. -Taylor
How many of them have bare metal antennas on the surface of the phone? No matter what weasel words Steve chooses, there is no excuse for this defect.
So what if other phones require a "death grip" to affect signal strength? After all, all phones are subject to the laws of physics; if you block the signal, there is nothing the phone can do about it.
But it's "Magical!"
eughh... I cringe every time Ives or Jobs uses that word... They are so full of themselves its sick. -Taylor
I'm slumming on T-Mobile, and if this is slumming then call me homeless. Hella better than Verizon with customer service, features, and choices. The price is the reason I switched, and the rest sold me.
I live in silicon valley, where *every* carrier should have cell service. There's few tall buildings, the whole valley is pretty flat, and there's lots of potential customers.
My girlfriend has tmobile, and half the places we go are dead spots for her. Downstairs in our house is dead, upstairs is spotty. The restaurant down the street is a dead spot. All the places that AT&T and Verizon have great signal. That's not even counting when we go on vacation.
I don't care how great my customer service is if my phone is a brick. -Taylor
Google has been working on speech to text for years, and they've got Google Voice to where it transcribes your messages to text. Works great with the Android client, and they have a web page. But even with google's experience and money, its not very accurate. It might be better than most of what you'll find though, and its free.
You could probably rig up Google Voice to where each thing you want to transcribe gets recorded as a "message" to you.
That said, here's a voicemail I got recently:
"Hey Jeff, Nate what you can still haven't been able talk to you in. X-rite is and see if you've been found. If off seems like just. I don't know if the E Z the phone software. This is not available 4. Slash number. I wanna malfunction or give us a call back to you now."
So its not perfect... One funny thing is that my name isn't Jeff or Nate, and neither was the caller. -Taylor
That said, it was a PITA to learn that, and it would be *way* easier if the editor either had a "save as root" option, or the user-level file browser had a right click "open as root" option.
I had this same issue and it took me all of 2 minutes to find and install the 'open as admin' addon for Nautilus.
Good for you. Are you happy to spend 2 minutes learning all these little things, when they could easily be designed to be intuitive? If the editor just said save failed, and offered to try as root, you wouldn't have to close, open, and re-edit the file, and you wouldn't have had to spend *any* time figuring it out.
Seriously, you're a slashdot user, so you're already likely a nerd. Try giving that to a regular person and it might take them 10 minutes to figure out if they even keep trying. Or when they're following a bunch of instructions to do something they don't know how to do, and every part is non-intuitive and takes "just a few minutes to figure out", suddenly they've wasted an hour trying to get audio configure properly, because no one contributing to ubuntu knows how to make a goddamn set of default options. I spend a week last year trying to get multichannel and stereo movie files all to properly downmix and upmix with my surround system because i thought it would be cool to have a linux media center. Well, i finally gave up, installed an *early* copy of Windows 7, and it worked instantly, with no configuration.
You tell me which is easier.
And christ, i'm amazed at how you guys all don't get it. So many people complain that more people don't use linux, and then say "it's easy just edit.asoundrc", or "it only took me 2 minutes to find the open as admin addon..." Yeah, regular people will hit a wall somewhere and give up. Windows is f'ing easy to use, period. -Taylor
A matter of personal preference I guess. UAC has it's own problems such as apparently not caching credentials, at least in vista. Gnome remembers privilege escalation. e.g. clicking the above icon twice will only ask for a password the first time.
My ideal security model would be for user accounts to have an attribute that specifies how experienced a user is and adjusts the user interface and system privilege management accordingly. With a full capability system like SELinux. Such security models do conflict badly with the KISS principle though.
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Monopolies = Industrial feudalism
Yeah. I don't care what they do, as long as its not *nothing*, which seems to be what they're doing at the moment.
And this whole discussion would be moot if you didn't have to do everything by editing text files, but don't even get me started on that...
No CLI needed. Right-click on desktop, select menu item "Create launcher". Enter a "Command:" of "gksu nautilus" and your preferred annotation and icon. Click "Ok". Done. You now have a desktop icon to browse the file system as root and any invoked program will be root also. Keep in mind that this is a security risk.
Ubuntu should've had this icon in the administration menu or panel years ago but they seem to have this strange idea that making system operations obtuse, as distinct from making sure naive users don't do something stupid, is a good thing. Not making icons is a quick and dirty way to block naive user mistakes but they don't seem to appreciate that the ill-will created and wasted time far outweighs any advantage.
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Monopolies = Industrial feudalism
That would work for me, but its still risky. I'd much prefer if it behaved more like windows UAC, where it waited till the last possible action to ask for root - like when I hit save and it's read only. It could say "File is read only and cannot be saved. Would you like to try as superuser?".
That way they can have their security and eat it too (well, you know what I mean!).
Or do what you say and put a nag box that says "careful what you do! you could break it all!" with a checkbox that says "don't show me this again". I consider that lazy design too, but at least it will protect the stupid users a bit, and smart users only get nagged once. Seems like an acceptable bandaid to me, if the other stuff is too complicated.
But no, I have to open the CLI, type sudo nautilus, and re-navigate to and re-edit the file.
If you have to open nautilus as root, then you're doing it wrong.
aptitude install nautilus-gksu
Installing that (log out, then back in) will add an "open as root" or something similar to the right click of menu of nautilus. Suse has this package installed by default. Ubuntu might think that's "too advanced" of a feature for the user base they are targeting.
Thanks. I was pretty sure I was "doing it wrong", i just hate that the right way isn't obvious. It should be! I also enabled root for SSH so I can edit text files with WinSCP. I'm *certain* that that's "wrong", but I'm not sure how else I can edit text files remotely without a command line.
And Ubuntu needs to consider which is more complicated: giving users another option in a context menu, or not giving them *any* graphical option for editing text files.
How did you setup a headless Ubuntu server? Do you not ssh into it? Maybe you mean something different from headless than I do. To me headless means no X client installed and access via ssh or a console server only.
Right, well like I said, I *can* use the command line. And obviously it makes sense for a headless system not to use it. It does not make sense to constantly have to use a command line on a desktop with a full GUI environment though.
And for the server, I use WinSCP for most file manipulation. I really hate typing out directories and editing text in a command line interface. I looked at the command line text editors, and honestly they just suck compared to a GUI text editor. I'm sure that once ya learn them they aren't that bad, but I don't want to re-learn how to edit text just to use linux, that's just silly. -Taylor
I really don't care if you (or the world) use Linux. I'm happy with FreeBSD running headless for most of my applications. I run Ubuntu 9.10 on my laptop because it was a quick install and everything just works.
I was just telling you what I, as an old Unix admin, would do if I forgot to sudo or su before editing a config file. I'd be in the shell anyway since I don't use graphic editors. Come to think of it, I my just ^Z out of my editor, do the chmod and then fg back into my editor.
You are comfortable with the Windows way, I'm use to the Unix way. Best you stay with Windows if you don't want to learn basic file operations. And trust me, chmod is a basic file command and you will need to learn it if you ever want to deal with a command line in Unix.
But best just to stick with what you know. I doubt that you want to do the same things with your computers that I want to do with mine. So no fight from me. I don't care if "Linux is ready for the desktop" as I've been running various flavors for *nix on the desktop for decades. YMMV and all that.
Well fine then. But the whole point of this slashdot article is people upset that Dell is still recommending windows over ubuntu. Linux people always get upset that people don't use linux more, but it's things like:
"Come to think of it, I my just ^Z out of my editor, do the chmod and then fg back into my editor."
Why the fuck should it be that complex? You haven't actually given any reason for it. Yes, you learned it, and once you learned it its not that hard, but is it a good design? I don't like bad designs, even if they are easy to use once you figure them out.
And: "chmod is a basic file command and you will need to learn it if you ever want to deal with a command line in Unix"
Well I *don't* want to ever use a command line in linux for basic things, and I don't give a *shit* about permissions beyond knowing that they keep me safe. Command lines are not as easy to use as a GUI! The whole *point* of Ubuntu is to be easy to use, and every time I have tried, it has failed on some part.
If you don't care about linux being easy for regulars to use, that's fine, but the people making Ubuntu do, and they continually miss it for a variety of reasons.
And its not just the "Windows way". Windows is the way it is because GUIs work well with people. Seriously, command lines will always be harder to use because you have to know in advance what to type. Its extremely difficult to figure out what to type into a command line without reading a LOT.
Yes, I think linux should work more like windows in some ways, because as "evil" as microsoft may be, not everything about windows is bad. Its pretty easy to use, and you don't have to constantly google to find lots of things out, because so much is graphical.
And FYI, I'm a mechanical engineer who also programs and designs PCBs. I'm also an Android fanatic and have a huge interest in efficient user interfaces. I've also messed around with setting up my own LAMP servers, and I am our IT guy at the (small) office. I set up a headless ubuntu server with scheduled backups, etc. So maybe I don't want to do exactly the same stuff as you, but I'm not a stupid user either, and I have a high tolerance for complex things.
I just cannot stand the idea that i can't just navigate to a text file, open it, edit it, and save it. -Taylor
Why not just open another terminal, sudo chmod on the file to allow you to save it and the chmod it back?
Are you joking? I'm going to rant now because I didn't see an indication of sarcasm, so:
Because that's a pain in the ass. I'm editing a goddamn text file. I don't want to use the terminal at all - I just said that you shouldn't have to use a terminal just to edit a text file, and I think thats pretty reasonable. I just want to open it, edit it, and save it. If I need elevated permissions, it should tell me and ask for a password.
And because I haven't learned how to use chmod yet, so I'd have to go look that up. And because its not obvious - how would a new user figure out how to do that? By googling for "how to edit a text file in linux"? Yeah, if they have to google for that, you're doing it wrong. The obvious thing is to find the file, open it, and edit it. And your suggestion sucks because I hate having to find the path of a file and then type/paste it into a terminal - that's why god invented GUI file browsers!
Honestly I hope you're joking. Its people that think like that who are holding back linux. No one will fix it because they don't see a problem, but you guys *HAVE* to understand - regular people don't want to "just open another terminal, sudo chmod on the file to allow you to save it and the chmod it back", they just want to edit the goddamn file. A little popup asking for permission might be annoying, but its easy to understand.
As long as linux developers refuse to understand regular people, linux will never get anywhere.
And don't feel bad, I'm just learning this myself. I spent about 5 minutes talking to some lady who asked me why I liked my android phone, and if I recommended it to her over an iPhone. I told her about how its open source, its not as draconian, etc. But it was a waste of time - she'd be happier with an iPhone, and I should have just recommended it to her. I want android to win, but telling old ladies to buy an android phone to forward my cause is selfish, not helpful. -Taylor
... the GUI is just awful because it doesn't allow for easy 'run as root'. Want to edit smb.conf, you are SOL unless you go through CLI or create a custom link to your favorite editor....>
Well, I learned that you can use the CLI and type 'sudo nautilus' to browse directories as root, and then you can still click on things to edit them.
That said, it was a PITA to learn that, and it would be *way* easier if the editor either had a "save as root" option, or the user-level file browser had a right click "open as root" option.
If that were the case, the file browser should tell you about that when you try to save a read only copy of a file.
Honestly though, they should just do it like windows. Let the user do what they want, but if they don't have the privileges, get permission on the fly.
If I try to do something in windows 7, UAC comes up and says "Hey, are you sure you want to do this?".
As much as people give UAC shit, its a lot better than simply *not being able to* do what you want.
I encountered this yesterday - has to edit some.conf file, so I navigated to it, opened it, changed it, and then found out I couldn't save. Clearly I want to save, just ask me for the root password and I'll do it!
But no, I have to open the CLI, type sudo nautilus, and re-navigate to and re-edit the file.
That is sure to frustrate users like me, who aren't total noobs but haven't gotten fully used to it all. I've been dabbling for years, but every time I dabble i find a show-stopping problem and go back to windows.
Honestly, if you can't edit a goddamn text file without opening a CLI, you're doing it wrong. Period. And if there is a way and its not *very* obvious, you're still doing it wrong.
The figure of 0.0002 pounds of pressure per photon is off by a vast degree. The Wikipedia article on Solar Sails cites a figure of 4.57x106 N/m2, or.00000457 Newtons of force ( 0.000001027 pound-feet) against a square meter of sail material given the full flux of the Sun at Earth's orbit. A single photon would provide less than a trillionth of that amount.
And your use of "pound-feet" is amusingly incorrect. That would be torque. Did you mean pounds-force? -Taylor
"about 200 kilograms (500 pounds), has walls that measure about a square meter (nearly 9 square feet) in area, about 1 centimeter (a third of an inch) in thickness, and 18 kilograms (40 pounds) in mass. About the size of an SUV's trunk "
I notice a few issues in this description, which also appears in the article. Some fact-checking might be in order.
How can a single thing be 200 kg, and also be 18 kg? You would think that a single thing would have only one mass.
Then, of course, a square meter is slightly more than 10 square feet.
How can a single square meter of material be made into all six sides of a box the size of a SUV trunk, without slicing it into thinner sheets. A square meter might make one side of such a box, but not all six. If all six sides of a cube total 1 square meter, each side would be about 40.8 cm square. Of course, the box doesn't have to be a cube, but the sum of the areas of the six sides still cannot exceed the total of the material.
Titanium has density of 4.5 g/cm^3. So a 100x100x1 cm piece of it would be 45 kg, not 18 kg.
Inconsistencies aside, its also just confusing to read with all those values, and their converted values. This is a summary after all; if we want to know the exact dimensions, we can read the article. Summaries are supposed to touch on the important parts of the story, not mundane details. One figure for the size would have been sufficient. And that style:
It's like (similar to) if everything they wrote (put as text in the article) had to be explained (clarified) with more information (unnecessary data).
Devices based on V-USB (software only USB implementation for AVR microcontrollers) are probably worth a look because designs you can copy are so numerous.
This is one of the most versatile. I doesn't support the Apple IIc yet but the BBC joysticks had a similar capability so the only difference is likely to be in the adapter lead:
Perhaps you don't want to make your own circuit board. If so, I had a quick look at the retro's schematic and reckon you should be able to get the retro firmware running on an off the shelf board such as the one adafruit sell.
I've got one of these and its a great little board. I built a temperature logger using one and I got it running (hardware and software) in about four hours. That said I did spend another three building the programmer!
Finally there a gallery of lots of HID devices made using cheap AVR controllers:
Also look up LUFA and using atmel's true USB line of microcontrollers. I just made something with the at90USB82 AVR chip, and it was super easy. This is only my fourth circuit board and it works great. You need to have a hot air gun for soldering though. Alternatively, you could buy atmels USB dev stick. -Taylor
know I'm not the first to do this, but I can't see anyone else who's provided a detailed step-by-step account of the build, complete with plans and the rest.
That's because every building, no matter how modular or factory-built, is very customized due to local building codes, site-specific issues, and the personal tastes of the owner or builder.
What you're doing sounds cool (London Tube train car into a home) but it's such a niche idea that of course you're not going to find step-by-step how-to guides. It's admirable that you want to share every step of the process online, but truly "open-source" doesn't really make a difference in this situation. Oh, and btw, there are legal issues with releasing your construction documents for others' use. Architects and contractors are licensed because they are taking on liability for the specifications and buildings they produce.
Just build a house that meets every building code in the world!
I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I hope it doesn't. I'll be extremely upset if it does. This money isn't for you. You've got broadband, I don't. Nobody around here does. No 2Mbps DSL, no 30Mbps cable, no wireless, not anything.
This money is supposed to go to underserved and unserved areas, not make your existing connection faster. If you want a faster connection, complain to your provider. I don't even have that luxury because there are no providers here.
What part of that don't people get? Why would it ever be acceptable to spend millions of dollars cranking up the speed of an existing connection "just a faster connection for day to day stuff" when there are millions of people that don't have anything at all?
To hell with that. I'm sorry your DSL isn't as fast as you want, but least you've got it.
Its almost a trillion dollars. I hope we *all* get 10Mbps service.
I've checked before for Comcast Cable and AT&T's Fiber service. Neither are available here.
Double-checking on DSL options; for residential they offer "Up to 6Mbps down, 768Kbps up" for $24.99, but for business the best they offer is:
"For bandwidth-intensive applications Downstream Speed: Up to 3.0 Mbps Upstream Speed: Up to 512 Kbps"
And it's $40 a month. That must be what we have, and it's a f'ing joke.
I've lived in 3 places in the area in the last couple years and I had fiber or cable at 10Mbps, 24Mbps, and now 30Mbps, all with a few Mbps upload minimum, and I can't even get a Meg up at our business, in a location where there are plenty other businesses? In Silicon Valley?
This is a joke.
My mom lives out in the Santa Cruz mountains, off the beaten path, where there are problems with mountain lions thats how far out she is, and her service is faster.
There needs to be more focus on penetration. 30Mbps is great for me at home an all that, but I'd be fine with 10Mbps if that meant they were expanding availability, not just cranking up the speed to people that are already doing fine. -Taylor
I work in Silicon Valley, right by two major freeways (880 and 101... so not far out there) and just a couple miles from Cisco, and the best normal service we have is crappy AT&T DSL at 2Mbps down and 0.4 Mbps up.
Meanwhile, 5 minutes away, at my home, I have a 30Mb down 10Mb up connection.
I would like to be able to VPN into work without it crawling along, or without us having to shell out something expensive for business class service. We don't need guaranteed uptime or anything fancy, just a faster connection for day to day stuff.
There have been times where I've driven home to download a 3GB file because it was faster than waiting for it to happen at work.
I will be thrilled when >10Mbit broadband becomes the standard.
Slashdot Mirror
...the ultimate programming languages of future will be known as Chinese.
There, fixed that for you.
I mean, the whole rig's cost is in the hundreds of millions (Wiki says $560 mil but google link said $350 mil). The whole disaster is in the tens of billions, ain't it?
You'd think they would do anything and spare no cost to keep the fucking thing in working order and floating.
Makes the $500,000 a day lease look like pennies.
They normally do spare no cost keeping these things going.
My company sells some sensors to oil rig people, and the way it works is that they have a limited equipment budget, but an unlimited repair budget. Yeah. Unlimited.
They are smart enough to buy some spares, but when something critical breaks and they don't have a backup, they will spare no expense to get it fixed. They've had something break on them in the middle of the night, so they put it on a helicopter, flew it to the mainland, and paid our partner in texas to drive 2 hours to meet them with his repair truck, fix it and drive home, and then flew it back. At like 3am.
Which is impressive, and makes sense given how much money these things are worth and how much they cost.
Which makes me wonder why their computers weren't fixed sooner.
The problem is, when our sensors break there's no "bypass mode", so they *have* to be fixed or they can't do anything.
With the computers able to be bypassed, people can ignore it until it becomes a problem.
With whats at stake here, critical safety systems should *not* have a "bypass" mode, I would think.
These people also understand when a mechanical tool is broken, it needs to be fixed. Computers are somehow very "mysterious", so there is a lack of understanding that could be a problem too.
-Taylor
... I bet if I shoved a smart phone up my a**, it would lose a lot of signal too...
Well, according to my testing, it... uhh... nevermind.
-Taylor
Yeah, the recent advertising from Apple has been unlike Apple. In the past, they usually acted too cool to describe their products that way and would use a simple tagline to let the product speak for itself (e.g., "Introducing Mac mini" or "240 songs. A million different ways." for the iPod shuffle).
Calling it magical is really corny, and so are the video interviews of Apple employees talking about how amazing it is. I liked the faceless, too-cool-for-the-room advertising from the time before the iPad.
Yeah, it was a video interview of Ives talking about the new unibody laptops that made me first realize it. He had this twinkle in his eye when he said the word magical, like it was just the most amazing thing ever. I'm a mechanical engineer and a machinist and I think its pretty cool that they machine the laptops now - it takes a lot of skill to pull off that much machining on such a mass market product... but magical? No.
They're just taking themselves too seriously now.
-Taylor
How many of them have bare metal antennas on the surface of the phone? No matter what weasel words Steve chooses, there is no excuse for this defect.
So what if other phones require a "death grip" to affect signal strength? After all, all phones are subject to the laws of physics; if you block the signal, there is nothing the phone can do about it.
But it's "Magical!"
eughh... I cringe every time Ives or Jobs uses that word... They are so full of themselves its sick.
-Taylor
I'm slumming on T-Mobile, and if this is slumming then call me homeless.
Hella better than Verizon with customer service, features, and choices.
The price is the reason I switched, and the rest sold me.
I live in silicon valley, where *every* carrier should have cell service. There's few tall buildings, the whole valley is pretty flat, and there's lots of potential customers.
My girlfriend has tmobile, and half the places we go are dead spots for her. Downstairs in our house is dead, upstairs is spotty. The restaurant down the street is a dead spot. All the places that AT&T and Verizon have great signal. That's not even counting when we go on vacation.
I don't care how great my customer service is if my phone is a brick.
-Taylor
Google has been working on speech to text for years, and they've got Google Voice to where it transcribes your messages to text. Works great with the Android client, and they have a web page. But even with google's experience and money, its not very accurate. It might be better than most of what you'll find though, and its free.
You could probably rig up Google Voice to where each thing you want to transcribe gets recorded as a "message" to you.
That said, here's a voicemail I got recently:
"Hey Jeff, Nate what you can still haven't been able talk to you in. X-rite is and see if you've been found. If off seems like just. I don't know if the E Z the phone software. This is not available 4. Slash number. I wanna malfunction or give us a call back to you now."
So its not perfect... One funny thing is that my name isn't Jeff or Nate, and neither was the caller.
-Taylor
That said, it was a PITA to learn that, and it would be *way* easier if the editor either had a "save as root" option, or the user-level file browser had a right click "open as root" option.
I had this same issue and it took me all of 2 minutes to find and install the 'open as admin' addon for Nautilus.
Good for you. Are you happy to spend 2 minutes learning all these little things, when they could easily be designed to be intuitive? If the editor just said save failed, and offered to try as root, you wouldn't have to close, open, and re-edit the file, and you wouldn't have had to spend *any* time figuring it out.
Seriously, you're a slashdot user, so you're already likely a nerd. Try giving that to a regular person and it might take them 10 minutes to figure out if they even keep trying. Or when they're following a bunch of instructions to do something they don't know how to do, and every part is non-intuitive and takes "just a few minutes to figure out", suddenly they've wasted an hour trying to get audio configure properly, because no one contributing to ubuntu knows how to make a goddamn set of default options. I spend a week last year trying to get multichannel and stereo movie files all to properly downmix and upmix with my surround system because i thought it would be cool to have a linux media center. Well, i finally gave up, installed an *early* copy of Windows 7, and it worked instantly, with no configuration.
You tell me which is easier.
And christ, i'm amazed at how you guys all don't get it. So many people complain that more people don't use linux, and then say "it's easy just edit .asoundrc", or "it only took me 2 minutes to find the open as admin addon..." Yeah, regular people will hit a wall somewhere and give up. Windows is f'ing easy to use, period.
-Taylor
A matter of personal preference I guess. UAC has it's own problems such as apparently not caching credentials, at least in vista. Gnome remembers privilege escalation. e.g. clicking the above icon twice will only ask for a password the first time.
My ideal security model would be for user accounts to have an attribute that specifies how experienced a user is and adjusts the user interface and system privilege management accordingly. With a full capability system like SELinux. Such security models do conflict badly with the KISS principle though.
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Monopolies = Industrial feudalism
Yeah. I don't care what they do, as long as its not *nothing*, which seems to be what they're doing at the moment.
And this whole discussion would be moot if you didn't have to do everything by editing text files, but don't even get me started on that...
And UAC is much improved in 7.
-Taylor
No CLI needed. Right-click on desktop, select menu item "Create launcher". Enter a "Command:" of "gksu nautilus" and your preferred annotation and icon. Click "Ok". Done. You now have a desktop icon to browse the file system as root and any invoked program will be root also. Keep in mind that this is a security risk.
Ubuntu should've had this icon in the administration menu or panel years ago but they seem to have this strange idea that making system operations obtuse, as distinct from making sure naive users don't do something stupid, is a good thing. Not making icons is a quick and dirty way to block naive user mistakes but they don't seem to appreciate that the ill-will created and wasted time far outweighs any advantage.
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Monopolies = Industrial feudalism
That would work for me, but its still risky. I'd much prefer if it behaved more like windows UAC, where it waited till the last possible action to ask for root - like when I hit save and it's read only. It could say "File is read only and cannot be saved. Would you like to try as superuser?".
That way they can have their security and eat it too (well, you know what I mean!).
Or do what you say and put a nag box that says "careful what you do! you could break it all!" with a checkbox that says "don't show me this again". I consider that lazy design too, but at least it will protect the stupid users a bit, and smart users only get nagged once. Seems like an acceptable bandaid to me, if the other stuff is too complicated.
-Taylor
But no, I have to open the CLI, type sudo nautilus, and re-navigate to and re-edit the file.
If you have to open nautilus as root, then you're doing it wrong.
aptitude install nautilus-gksu
Installing that (log out, then back in) will add an "open as root" or something similar to the right click of menu of nautilus. Suse has this package installed by default. Ubuntu might think that's "too advanced" of a feature for the user base they are targeting.
Thanks. I was pretty sure I was "doing it wrong", i just hate that the right way isn't obvious. It should be! I also enabled root for SSH so I can edit text files with WinSCP. I'm *certain* that that's "wrong", but I'm not sure how else I can edit text files remotely without a command line.
And Ubuntu needs to consider which is more complicated: giving users another option in a context menu, or not giving them *any* graphical option for editing text files.
Thanks for the tip tho.
-Taylor
How did you setup a headless Ubuntu server? Do you not ssh into it? Maybe you mean something different from headless than I do. To me headless means no X client installed and access via ssh or a console server only.
Right, well like I said, I *can* use the command line. And obviously it makes sense for a headless system not to use it. It does not make sense to constantly have to use a command line on a desktop with a full GUI environment though.
And for the server, I use WinSCP for most file manipulation. I really hate typing out directories and editing text in a command line interface. I looked at the command line text editors, and honestly they just suck compared to a GUI text editor. I'm sure that once ya learn them they aren't that bad, but I don't want to re-learn how to edit text just to use linux, that's just silly.
-Taylor
I really don't care if you (or the world) use Linux. I'm happy with FreeBSD running headless for most of my applications. I run Ubuntu 9.10 on my laptop because it was a quick install and everything just works.
I was just telling you what I, as an old Unix admin, would do if I forgot to sudo or su before editing a config file. I'd be in the shell anyway since I don't use graphic editors. Come to think of it, I my just ^Z out of my editor, do the chmod and then fg back into my editor.
You are comfortable with the Windows way, I'm use to the Unix way. Best you stay with Windows if you don't want to learn basic file operations. And trust me, chmod is a basic file command and you will need to learn it if you ever want to deal with a command line in Unix.
But best just to stick with what you know. I doubt that you want to do the same things with your computers that I want to do with mine. So no fight from me. I don't care if "Linux is ready for the desktop" as I've been running various flavors for *nix on the desktop for decades. YMMV and all that.
Well fine then. But the whole point of this slashdot article is people upset that Dell is still recommending windows over ubuntu. Linux people always get upset that people don't use linux more, but it's things like:
"Come to think of it, I my just ^Z out of my editor, do the chmod and then fg back into my editor."
Why the fuck should it be that complex? You haven't actually given any reason for it. Yes, you learned it, and once you learned it its not that hard, but is it a good design? I don't like bad designs, even if they are easy to use once you figure them out.
And: "chmod is a basic file command and you will need to learn it if you ever want to deal with a command line in Unix"
Well I *don't* want to ever use a command line in linux for basic things, and I don't give a *shit* about permissions beyond knowing that they keep me safe. Command lines are not as easy to use as a GUI! The whole *point* of Ubuntu is to be easy to use, and every time I have tried, it has failed on some part.
If you don't care about linux being easy for regulars to use, that's fine, but the people making Ubuntu do, and they continually miss it for a variety of reasons.
And its not just the "Windows way". Windows is the way it is because GUIs work well with people. Seriously, command lines will always be harder to use because you have to know in advance what to type. Its extremely difficult to figure out what to type into a command line without reading a LOT.
Yes, I think linux should work more like windows in some ways, because as "evil" as microsoft may be, not everything about windows is bad. Its pretty easy to use, and you don't have to constantly google to find lots of things out, because so much is graphical.
And FYI, I'm a mechanical engineer who also programs and designs PCBs. I'm also an Android fanatic and have a huge interest in efficient user interfaces. I've also messed around with setting up my own LAMP servers, and I am our IT guy at the (small) office. I set up a headless ubuntu server with scheduled backups, etc. So maybe I don't want to do exactly the same stuff as you, but I'm not a stupid user either, and I have a high tolerance for complex things.
I just cannot stand the idea that i can't just navigate to a text file, open it, edit it, and save it.
-Taylor
Why not just open another terminal, sudo chmod on the file to allow you to save it and the chmod it back?
Are you joking? I'm going to rant now because I didn't see an indication of sarcasm, so:
Because that's a pain in the ass. I'm editing a goddamn text file. I don't want to use the terminal at all - I just said that you shouldn't have to use a terminal just to edit a text file, and I think thats pretty reasonable. I just want to open it, edit it, and save it. If I need elevated permissions, it should tell me and ask for a password.
And because I haven't learned how to use chmod yet, so I'd have to go look that up. And because its not obvious - how would a new user figure out how to do that? By googling for "how to edit a text file in linux"? Yeah, if they have to google for that, you're doing it wrong. The obvious thing is to find the file, open it, and edit it. And your suggestion sucks because I hate having to find the path of a file and then type/paste it into a terminal - that's why god invented GUI file browsers!
Honestly I hope you're joking. Its people that think like that who are holding back linux. No one will fix it because they don't see a problem, but you guys *HAVE* to understand - regular people don't want to "just open another terminal, sudo chmod on the file to allow you to save it and the chmod it back", they just want to edit the goddamn file. A little popup asking for permission might be annoying, but its easy to understand.
As long as linux developers refuse to understand
regular people, linux will never get anywhere.
And don't feel bad, I'm just learning this myself. I spent about 5 minutes talking to some lady who asked me why I liked my android phone, and if I recommended it to her over an iPhone. I told her about how its open source, its not as draconian, etc. But it was a waste of time - she'd be happier with an iPhone, and I should have just recommended it to her. I want android to win, but telling old ladies to buy an android phone to forward my cause is selfish, not helpful.
-Taylor
... the GUI is just awful because it doesn't allow for easy 'run as root'. Want to edit smb.conf, you are SOL unless you go through CLI or create a custom link to your favorite editor....>
Well, I learned that you can use the CLI and type 'sudo nautilus' to browse directories as root, and then you can still click on things to edit them.
That said, it was a PITA to learn that, and it would be *way* easier if the editor either had a "save as root" option, or the user-level file browser had a right click "open as root" option.
If that were the case, the file browser should tell you about that when you try to save a read only copy of a file.
Honestly though, they should just do it like windows. Let the user do what they want, but if they don't have the privileges, get permission on the fly.
If I try to do something in windows 7, UAC comes up and says "Hey, are you sure you want to do this?".
As much as people give UAC shit, its a lot better than simply *not being able to* do what you want.
I encountered this yesterday - has to edit some .conf file, so I navigated to it, opened it, changed it, and then found out I couldn't save. Clearly I want to save, just ask me for the root password and I'll do it!
But no, I have to open the CLI, type sudo nautilus, and re-navigate to and re-edit the file.
That is sure to frustrate users like me, who aren't total noobs but haven't gotten fully used to it all. I've been dabbling for years, but every time I dabble i find a show-stopping problem and go back to windows.
Honestly, if you can't edit a goddamn text file without opening a CLI, you're doing it wrong. Period. And if there is a way and its not *very* obvious, you're still doing it wrong.
Anyone else agree?
-Taylor
Aside from the article being wrong about the forces exerted, I hate that last sentence.
"...the steady stream of solar exposure has succeeded in propelling the nearly 700-pound drone."
Well... how fast has it gotten to so far? That's what it sounds like the sentence is going to say, and then it just ends. It bothers me.
-Taylor
The figure of 0.0002 pounds of pressure per photon is off by a vast degree. The Wikipedia article on Solar Sails cites a figure of 4.57x106 N/m2, or .00000457 Newtons of force ( 0.000001027 pound-feet) against a square meter of sail material given the full flux of the Sun at Earth's orbit. A single photon would provide less than a trillionth of that amount.
And your use of "pound-feet" is amusingly incorrect. That would be torque. Did you mean pounds-force?
-Taylor
Close enough for government work.
aka
"Mars Polar Lander"
The problem with that project was not specifying *how* it would land.
"about 200 kilograms (500 pounds), has walls that measure about a square meter (nearly 9 square feet) in area, about 1 centimeter (a third of an inch) in thickness, and 18 kilograms (40 pounds) in mass. About the size of an SUV's trunk "
I notice a few issues in this description, which also appears in the article. Some fact-checking might be in order.
How can a single thing be 200 kg, and also be 18 kg? You would think that a single thing would have only one mass.
Then, of course, a square meter is slightly more than 10 square feet.
How can a single square meter of material be made into all six sides of a box the size of a SUV trunk, without slicing it into thinner sheets. A square meter might make one side of such a box, but not all six. If all six sides of a cube total 1 square meter, each side would be about 40.8 cm square. Of course, the box doesn't have to be a cube, but the sum of the areas of the six sides still cannot exceed the total of the material.
Titanium has density of 4.5 g/cm^3. So a 100x100x1 cm piece of it would be 45 kg, not 18 kg.
Inconsistencies aside, its also just confusing to read with all those values, and their converted values. This is a summary after all; if we want to know the exact dimensions, we can read the article. Summaries are supposed to touch on the important parts of the story, not mundane details. One figure for the size would have been sufficient.
And that style:
It's like (similar to) if everything they wrote (put as text in the article) had to be explained (clarified) with more information (unnecessary data).
HARD TO READ.
-Taylor
Devices based on V-USB (software only USB implementation for AVR microcontrollers) are probably worth a look because designs you can copy are so numerous.
This is one of the most versatile. I doesn't support the Apple IIc yet but the BBC joysticks had a similar capability so the only difference is likely to be in the adapter lead:
http://denki.world3.net/retro_v2.html
Perhaps you don't want to make your own circuit board. If so, I had a quick look at the retro's schematic and reckon you should be able to get the retro firmware running on an off the shelf board such as the one adafruit sell.
http://www.adafruit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=16&products_id=174
I've got one of these and its a great little board. I built a temperature logger using one and I got it running (hardware and software) in about four hours. That said I did spend another three building the programmer!
Finally there a gallery of lots of HID devices made using cheap AVR controllers:
http://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/prjhid.html
Also look up LUFA and using atmel's true USB line of microcontrollers. I just made something with the at90USB82 AVR chip, and it was super easy. This is only my fourth circuit board and it works great. You need to have a hot air gun for soldering though. Alternatively, you could buy atmels USB dev stick.
-Taylor
That's because every building, no matter how modular or factory-built, is very customized due to local building codes, site-specific issues, and the personal tastes of the owner or builder.
What you're doing sounds cool (London Tube train car into a home) but it's such a niche idea that of course you're not going to find step-by-step how-to guides. It's admirable that you want to share every step of the process online, but truly "open-source" doesn't really make a difference in this situation. Oh, and btw, there are legal issues with releasing your construction documents for others' use. Architects and contractors are licensed because they are taking on liability for the specifications and buildings they produce.
Just build a house that meets every building code in the world!
*snickers*
-Taylor
Wow, i meant billion. Silly me.
I hope that this will affect us somehow.
I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I hope it doesn't. I'll be extremely upset if it does. This money isn't for you. You've got broadband, I don't. Nobody around here does. No 2Mbps DSL, no 30Mbps cable, no wireless, not anything.
This money is supposed to go to underserved and unserved areas, not make your existing connection faster. If you want a faster connection, complain to your provider. I don't even have that luxury because there are no providers here.
What part of that don't people get? Why would it ever be acceptable to spend millions of dollars cranking up the speed of an existing connection "just a faster connection for day to day stuff" when there are millions of people that don't have anything at all?
To hell with that. I'm sorry your DSL isn't as fast as you want, but least you've got it.
Its almost a trillion dollars. I hope we *all* get 10Mbps service.
I've checked before for Comcast Cable and AT&T's Fiber service. Neither are available here.
Double-checking on DSL options; for residential they offer "Up to 6Mbps down, 768Kbps up" for $24.99, but for business the best they offer is:
"For bandwidth-intensive applications
Downstream Speed: Up to 3.0 Mbps
Upstream Speed: Up to 512 Kbps"
And it's $40 a month. That must be what we have, and it's a f'ing joke.
I've lived in 3 places in the area in the last couple years and I had fiber or cable at 10Mbps, 24Mbps, and now 30Mbps, all with a few Mbps upload minimum, and I can't even get a Meg up at our business, in a location where there are plenty other businesses? In Silicon Valley?
This is a joke.
My mom lives out in the Santa Cruz mountains, off the beaten path, where there are problems with mountain lions thats how far out she is, and her service is faster.
There needs to be more focus on penetration. 30Mbps is great for me at home an all that, but I'd be fine with 10Mbps if that meant they were expanding availability, not just cranking up the speed to people that are already doing fine.
-Taylor
I hope that this will affect us somehow.
I work in Silicon Valley, right by two major freeways (880 and 101... so not far out there) and just a couple miles from Cisco, and the best normal service we have is crappy AT&T DSL at 2Mbps down and 0.4 Mbps up.
Meanwhile, 5 minutes away, at my home, I have a 30Mb down 10Mb up connection.
I would like to be able to VPN into work without it crawling along, or without us having to shell out something expensive for business class service. We don't need guaranteed uptime or anything fancy, just a faster connection for day to day stuff.
There have been times where I've driven home to download a 3GB file because it was faster than waiting for it to happen at work.
I will be thrilled when >10Mbit broadband becomes the standard.
-Taylor