Personal computing in the future: of mice and keyboards

it's a totally different type of computer.

Well onesixski I agree with that and IMHO one should be allowed to operate what one likes, I happen to like building and operating PC's beit DT or LT. In fact I would go so far as to say I am addicted to it.

Now if someone wants to go off and play with a wobblepad then ok let them but I do object in most strongest manner to them trying to jam this inane (to me) new technology down our and more to the point MY throat/s.

I also do object to working with people that spend every spare moment of time they can find giving their thumbs a work out and then to add insult to injury then show me what they can do with the wretched thing. Now I am usually a calm and even tempered person but I do feel like sometimes either telling them what I think of it or plunging it into a bucket of hot water.


I think I may have mentioned it before too that I think it is about time that mobile phones in cars be made only to work via a blu tooth system or if the owner stops and exits the car before using the thing. If this cannot be done and I am sure I shall get a blizzard of reasons why - the the penalty for using them in cars be quadrupled to deter people from doing so

ICit2lol said:

I think I may have mentioned it before too that I think it is about time that mobile phones in cars be made only to work via a blu tooth system or if the owner stops and exits the car before using the thing. If this cannot be done and I am sure I shall get a blizzard of reasons why - the the penalty for using them in cars be quadrupled to deter people from doing so

Yeah, agreed. IMHO the only way is having more cops around (does wonders for quite a few other things as well), assuming it's already enforceable to stop texting while driving. All other tech-like solutions not relying on a god-like nanny AI that cannot be realistically circumvented by the user can be hacked or cracked or bypassed with specific hardware. Especially because the manufacturers plainly don't care about these details and do rushed jobs that just give the impression of being secure.

Agreed Bob it is becoming a bit of a nightmare in any case because I watched a doco on TV last night re spying. That was on top of another doco I saw on Anonymous a few nights ago.

So what? well it seems that the UK and US governments actively advertise for spies - yes advertise. I nearly rolled off the lounge I was just absolutely gob smacked to be honest.
In many cases these were just reasonably ordinary people off gthe street - well one had to read and write it seems and show a little aptitude. But long gone are the days of the old boy networks and the Ian Fleming story book image. This was down to earth nitty gritty stuff carried out by people who could be your next door neighbour - perhaps even a close relative!!

The scariest bit was the cyber spying stuff and it quoted that China has an army of people who do nothing else but hack into everything even encrypted material.

They actually showed footage of the latest American stealth fighter and also the almost identical aircraft built in China being flown incredibly just after the F-22 was rolled out Federation of American Scientists :: F-22 Raptor
China Flies New Stealth Fighter as Problems Plague U.S. Jets | Danger Room | Wired.com

It sort of makes our worrying about malware look a bit kindergarten really doesn't it? I reckon it may ok for the Joe Blow down the road trying to steal your hard earned cash - but at the same time who knows who is watching who. I don't know about anywhere else but law enforcement here is known to be watching paedophiles for example so if they can do that what about the rest of us?

In many cases these were just reasonably ordinary people off gthe street - well one had to read and write it seems and show a little aptitude. But long gone are the days of the old boy networks and the Ian Fleming story book image. This was down to earth nitty gritty stuff carried out by people who could be your next door neighbour - perhaps even a close relative!!

well, these are the grunts. Their main use is logistic support for actual spies (carrying messages, equipment, doing the usual grunt jobs) and low-sensitivity info gathering networks (as they lack the skills to get anything particularly secret on their own). These always existed, and any good 007 always had the help of dozens of these guys.

The scariest bit was the cyber spying stuff and it quoted that China has an army of people who do nothing else but hack into everything even encrypted material.

US have one too, and it's called NSA, and probably CIA has its own hackers as well. That's normal, they are just a geek version of 007 and have the same general role (looking at what the competitor is doing), but instead of girls they have computers.

They actually showed footage of the latest American stealth fighter and also the almost identical aircraft built in China being flown incredibly just after the F-22 was rolled out

Nothing to worry about. The only resemblance is the looks. Even if they had the blueprints they would lack the technology to build more than the frame of a F22.
The links you provided explain why it's not anywhere near a copy of the F22.
-engines are old soviet designs (AL-31 turbofans), if they cannot even design their own engines...
-avionics are very basic
-no weapons nor sensors nor anything else.
-china R&Ds Soviet-style, preferring field test to rigorous prototype test (which means they will send them sooner to their air force, but will likely have more hidden flaws)

I don't know about anywhere else but law enforcement here is known to be watching paedophiles for example so if they can do that what about the rest of us?

you have any idea of the sheer amount of data they have to move through to find pedos by going right against privacy?
The only realistic ways to get them are traps (either fake sites or agents disguised as innocent girls in chats or files with police's own virus on P2P) and people reporting odd behaviours to them.

Spying has a limit, and the limit is how many people are needed to process all the information gathered.

Yeah I agree Bob they are the grunts but that is the way they do it now - they said that in the main the grunts were just managed by "handlers" who sat it out in their nice offices back home.

The doco actually started of with the honey pot scenario and I guess that is the nearest it would get to getting their hands on sensitive material although there was footage of a fellow working in secret rocket research being paid off by one of these handled individuals. That is just one instance as the program said the whole scene was changing rapidly to that sort of spying I guess because of the use of technological methods of gathering it.

What surprised me most of all was the leniency of the sentences handed out to those caught at it.

The plane though I know could not be anywhere near what the US plane is it is just the fact that they can do it.

Yes they did mention that everywhere else has it's own hackers one of the most staffed ones being in the UK at Cheltenham I think they said full of what this one fellow said he was a Geek and proud to be one.

You are right of course about the paedophiles and just recently I saw another doco that showed how they hunted down a girl who moved from Australia to Russia and the pathetic thing about it was it took almost a decade to catch just one fellow and after all that she was quite happy to be doing this "modeling" I agree it beggars belief as to how much must be spent on such ventures and resources well thy were truly staggering.

ICit2lol said:

The doco actually started of with the honey pot scenario and I guess that is the nearest it would get to getting their hands on sensitive material although there was footage of a fellow working in secret rocket research being paid off by one of these handled individuals. That is just one instance as the program said the whole scene was changing rapidly to that sort of spying I guess because of the use of technological methods of gathering it.

Dunno, afaik these grunts always existed and probably always will. They are the "boots on the ground" of intelligence agencies. We are very distant from the time we can do without.

And yes, the entire point of a grunt is that it's cheap and expendable, the people actually in charge of the grunts stay well out of trouble.

Point is, 007-like spies are used only when really necessary as they are expensive to find, train and keep in good condition.

The plane though I know could not be anywhere near what the US plane is it is just the fact that they can do it.

The point is that even Saddam could have done a frame that kinda looks like F22 with engines from Soviet Russia. If it was more than airshow material you could worry, but that's just a flying mockup for now.

I agree it beggars belief as to how much must be spent on such ventures and resources well thy were truly staggering.

For police, it's still far more effective to have good PR, so every civilian is ready to report suspicious activities.
This mimicks the grunt networks of intelligence agencies, that worked fine since the beginning of time.

I read an article, will have to find it, that said Intel won't have CPUs that use sockets after Ivy Bridge. Their chips will be hard soldered to whatever board that uses them. They will no longer be of the interchangeable type.
Kind of kills the enthusiast and tinker market.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Has...tom,19314.html

http://www.zdnet.com/intel-preparing...us-7000008024/

Intel wins. OEMS win. People wanting cheap PCs win. But there are a lot of losers.

Bolded part is wrong. Prices will keep more or less the same, as they need that money to cover the losses of the dwindling PC market. And anyway, as a general rule, consumer never win.

I see Dell, Lenovo, HP jumping all over in joy because they can lockdown their stuff even more.

And the assumption that Intel wins and OEM win is a gamble. This is one of the main reasons to take a desktop over a laptop, doing it will decrease sales of desktops. Unless we are talking of soldering only crappy i3-like processors, and even that is a not-that-good move.

Also, they plan to integrate GPUs and cooling in the future. Damn Apple. Whenever I have a spare nuke...

The flip side is that if this exposes the sides to AMD, something like this may save AMD if they jump into it with a decent line of high end processors with a good path to more powerful designs (to the contrary of what their high end processors are now). I hope at least.
In the past was a screwup of Intel that fueled AMD to become a serious contender.