Re: How grumpy am I?
IOW, if you don't fix Stupid, Stupid's going to end up taking you with them.
16605 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
Two words: Chinese Cannon.
Can be used with ANY unencrypted communication, regardless of subject. It's also why Telnet was replaced with Secure Shell.
Basically, unencrypted = impossible to trust, end of.
That may be true of certain classes of appliances, but media devices are the clear exception. Reason being those devices with their crud are typically being sponsored, enabling the manufacturers to sell them at a discount to undercut the competition. Put it this way. No TV manufacturer would put something like Roku in an ad or on the box unless Roku was paying them for the privilege.
"That's difficult. Laptop energy usage can vary wildly depending on workload."
That's why you run it flat out as a worst-case scenario. My philosophy is that it's a lot better to expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised than to be given good news and then be disappointed. Same here. Tell me the bare minimum I can expect out of this thing and then I can call all the extra time gravy.
"That would be honest, but not very useful, because all kinds of optimizations that can have a large impact in realistic conditions wouldn't be tested at all."
But as you yourself said, to each his own. Everyone's demands and expectations differ, so given such a scenario, I'd like to see a floor. Besides, it might convince people to demand better batteries (or more-efficient top-end tech) if they learn they can't run a laptop flat out for more than an hour.
"The benchmarks wouldn't need to represent a 100% workload; they ought to represent a realistic workload, or even better a small variety of realistic workloads (e.g. gaming, video streaming, office, browsing)."
A spectrum, then? That could be useful, but like I said, I'd still like the see a floor as part of those benchmarks.
Different degree of pwnage. BIOS images often can't be updated through Windows and require booting to a single-user OS, plus obscurity means (1) there are a lot of different BIOS types to figure out, and (2) it's hard to figure out which one is appropriate for any given intrusion.
This Pluton looks to make it a SPOF.
There's also Tim Hunkin's The Secret Life of Machines series, which featured the Telephone in one programme. I recall the episodes were once on the web, but the last I checked was nearly 15 years ago.
I believe it covered why Strowger (who was actually an undertaker) invented an automatic switching system: he was losing business to a rival whose wife was a telephone operator.
And where do you think they get their own litter to drop? If not McDonald's, then whatever takeout place is handy. It's less a problem with the venue than with the customer. Customers demand eating on the go and whoever accommodates will get their money. What else can you do?
"In any case, my observation was merely, to quote Chesley Sullenberger, "technology is no substitute for experience, skill and judgment" (or for courtesy)."
The problem is, sometimes, that's all you've got. We have to deal with Stupid all the time, and Stupid unfortunately, tends to take others with them. My #1 rebuttal for the spike in steering wheel is to ask if he's willing to let his/her significant other drive one knowing a ghost driver (stupid or suicidal) could do a head-on at any time, regardless of the driver's skill, spike be damned.
"QOI has an interesting feature, in that it also includes a couple of "lookback" mechanisms, in which you can describe a pixel relative to the last pixel, using either one or two bytes."
Amiga graphics aficionados would recognize that technique, which they knew as HAM (Hold-And-Modify. Mmm, ham...) It was their way of getting more colors on the screen than the standard Amiga color palette would otherwise allow.
"However, it's been scientifically proven that 95% of bank notes are contaminated by cocaine, a highly addictive and health damaging substance."
And they even forgot the "scientifically-accurate" claim that cocaine can be absorbed through the skin so can get you through touch alone (while this is true, the absorption rate is much lower, meaning you'd have to basically dip your hand in the hard stuff to be affected). Now, if you start getting to stronger stuff like fentanyl (or its stronger sibling, carfentanil, meant only for use on large animals), however, then you start talking about risk factors by touch alone.
https://www.nutworks.com.au/blog/the-uses-of-the-macadamia-shell
Interesting thought. I know they've used ground nut shells as an abrasive in the past, usually for sandblasting and the like, but this article here notes it also makes for good compost, filtration, or even outdoor cooking fuel.
But that only works if everyone else also encrypts everything, including their laundry lists, too. IOW, you need a whole bunch more noise. Otherwise, your use of encryption (regardless of content) will stick out like a sore thumb, and they'll just start hound-dogging you until you make a mistake.
"however, it is practically impossible to use rust to write a realtime OS that runs at a latency low enough to maintain an audio encoded stream of the required standard to enable lossless compression and encoding. It is not impossible to do this with C"
What makes you so sure of that since Rust mostly enforces memory safety via semantics and enforced rules which tend to take place at compile time, where optimizations normally take place? Why can't you have an OS that's both fast and memory safe since memory isn't the obstacle it once was (meaning you don't have to be so tight, the third leg of the "safe/fast/tight" trade-off triangle in this case)?
So basically, physics gets in the way. But it may be handy for high-portability instances like highly-remote operations (for example, up a pole) where hands are already in use and there's no access to a toolbox. I've actually been fond of "Swiss army knife" multi-tools and actually found use for them when I only had one hand and one pocket.
"Even letters or phone calls to your legal representative can be monitored should the prison have 'reasonable cause' to believe they are being used for illegal activity."
Attorney-Client Privilege in the US also has exceptions. One of them is what you describe and what we call the "Crime/Fraud Exception". Basically, if the client tries to commit a crime or fraud through the lawyer or the lawyer provides information of a criminal nature (such as advice on destroying evidence), and the prosecution has reasonable suspicion of this happening, the privilege can be waived for the purposes of surveillance and testimony.
"Says the guy on record as trying to fix stupid ..."
At least I have a good reason for doing so. If we don't stupid will take the rest of us down with us. We're already seeing it in the political arena.
"As a side note, a combination of find and grep, perhaps with the addition of a filter or two (to dig into archives), will easily do exactly what TOA wants."
But try telling that to the average Joe. That's my point. You're talking GeekSpeak, for all they care. Plus, Murphy can still strike. There can either be (a) more than one match or (b) a match that's actually not a match.
"The need here is for them to be findable, *without* a reboot, using only generic Unix tools such as `which` or `man -k` or `apropos`, or in the desktop's app launcher -- whatever desktop, whatever launcher. It _must_ be cross-desktop or it's NFG."
Then you're chasing unicorns because there will be setups out there that will be intentionally incompatible with another's standard. Any setup you find will not work somewhere. It's like trying to find the one question that will get you the same answer from everyone.
Which is kind of my point. You want to present immutable systems to the cogs so they don't accidentally become spanners. Said nothing about you making those immutable filesystems to your specifications. There's your Four Freedoms where it matters most.
As for Rule One, that wet signature can often (a) be in vanishing ink or (b) be overruled with some good lawyers behind the scenes.
As for me, I am both. The two are not mutually exclusive, and it's a necessary evil in today's society. That little government ID tends to drive the point home.
"I would prefer to educate and encourage users to build apps from source, so that they can understand how the system works, fix bugs or add missing features themselves, and contribute to the community project that they are using."
And if they reply, "I ain't got time for this! JFDIOE!"?
No, I'm an advocate of trying to find a way to fix Stupid. Hopefully not by natural selection to avoid excessive widows and orphans, because as history has shown, Stupid can easily bring others down with them. You can try to stay out of the mire, but often the more comes to you, at which point your options are limited.