Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: Steve, 1999

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  • andin, in reply to Simon Bennett,

    the DAC in the Apple TV

    If you can afford it...They're too not expensive
    one of these ...they're highly thought of, for a "blue collar" DAC.
    Or if you know someone handy with a soldering iron I use one of these

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Peter Graham, in reply to Lucy Stewart,

    That meme has been going around for a while now. It sounds attractive, but it’s not actually true – if you think of the individual words as units (which dictionary attacks allow) then the security of a string of words is pretty low, especially considering most people’s active vocabulary (well under 40,000 words

    If you choose a five word password from a 40,000 word vocabulary you get ~10^23 total passwords. To get the same security from an ascii password you'd have to have to remember 12 random characters.

    Using random words as a password works better than random characters because people are better at remembering a sequence of random words than a sequence of random characters.

    Christchurch • Since Jul 2011 • 39 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown, in reply to andin,

    the DAC in the Apple TV

    If you can afford it…They’re too not expensive
    one of these …they’re highly thought of, for a “blue collar” DAC.
    Or if you know someone handy with a soldering iron I use one of these

    Why isn’t there an entry-level DAC that’s iPod-ready – i.e., an iPod dock with a third-party DAC? That would be good.

    Although I must say, my HDMI Apple TV seems to pass on a good signal to the home theatre receiver if I play my iTunes library throughout it.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Islander, in reply to Lucy Stewart,

    nglish has a large enough vocab that if you picked from the entire available vocabulary – which is more like 100,000 word

    Not sure what is meant by "entire available vocabulary."
    Words recorded as being part of English top 1 million (a great number being archaic, dialectual, or specialist terminology.)

    Big O, Mahitahi, Te Wahi … • Since Feb 2007 • 5643 posts Report Reply

  • Stephen Judd,

    Apropos passwords that comprise sequences of real words -- I confess I do that. But I punctuate and use numbers.

    I think something like this:

    Goodness! Swiddening 5 hilltops causes Weltschmerz?

    draws on a pretty big search space.

    I used "swiddening" because it's a word I learned yesterday. I do think that's a reason why working vocabulary limits aren't the problem Lucy thinks they might be. I see no reason why I'll ever use "swiddening" more than once a decade, but it's now a VERY memorable word for me.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 3122 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes, in reply to andin,

    If you can afford it…They’re too not expensive one of these …they’re highly thought of, for a “blue collar” DAC.Or if you know someone handy with a soldering iron I use one of these

    And I use one of These
    The Apacer AL670 a snip at less than $100, all your stuff in any room over Cat5.
    Admittedly I use in most for video but the audio is superb to my old ears but then I think any digital file sounds better than those round black plastic things that came in cardboard envelopes.

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • andin, in reply to Russell Brown,

    my HDMI Apple TV seems to pass on a good signal

    I love dem radio waves… but me, I no need it. Small space ‘n all. We’re talking radio and stuff right. HDMI differen plugs of course but I wasnt going to go there.
    And if you got a DAC you could put it after the radio receiver on the stereo?
    Or is it decoded to analogue by then already. Im sure there are ipod, other than apple, DAC’s.
    Not on my radar but I’ll have a look now.

    but the audio is superb to my old ears

    Haha ears age dont they!
    Tho’ I hope I havent blended all sounds together wherever I go. Not that I think anyone does, you understand. One day I may hear what you listen too. Or with more detail of the medium… I could quiz you relentlessly.
    Dont leave out the inner sleeve….

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes, in reply to andin,

    Dont leave out the inner sleeve….

    And always get the optional plastic cover to protect the artwork when assembling one of these.

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • Lucy Stewart, in reply to Peter Graham,

    If you choose a five word password from a 40,000 word vocabulary you get ~10^23 total passwords. To get the same security from an ascii password you’d have to have to remember 12 random characters.

    Using random words as a password works better than random characters because people are better at remembering a sequence of random words than a sequence of random characters.

    Which would work, if the average person had a 40,000 word vocabulary. They don’t. Most people use well under 10,000 words on a regular basis, and then we’re back to the whole remembering words you aren’t familiar with thing, and the ease-of-use is gone.

    And then you get the real danger, which is the thought “I have a super secret password, I’ll just use it on everything!” In a lot of ways password re-use is actually the biggest problem, arguing about levels of entropy is just rearranging the deck-chairs. Having the most secure password in the entire world is worthless if the website you use it on is selling user credentials, or your computer is compromised.

    I used “swiddening” because it’s a word I learned yesterday. I do think that’s a reason why working vocabulary limits aren’t the problem Lucy thinks they might be. I see no reason why I’ll ever use “swiddening” more than once a decade, but it’s now a VERY memorable word for me.

    But let’s be realistic – you’re hardly likely to be an average person in terms of either common vocabulary or memory. And can you remember a different sentence like that for every important website you have a password for?

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report Reply

  • andin, in reply to Steve Barnes,

    Sir are you suggesting I listen to music stoned!
    Oh Ok then.
    Exeter swede anyone……..?

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes, in reply to andin,

    Sir are you suggesting I listen to music stoned!

    This ltttle Dancette sounds brilliant Man.
    ;-)

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • andin, in reply to Steve Barnes,

    Unfortunately Im a snob. “Stereo” never got 5.1 reached a peak in consumer minds a while ago now. You want a time line…later dude. Your speakers and their placement plays more of a roll than most people give it credit. u want good sound you are a slave to it. Dancette I love the look the sound yeah you know.
    buts its about the music

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes, in reply to andin,

    Your speakers and their placement plays more of a roll than most people give it credit.

    True but there is also a lot of bollocks talked about speaker position, sound image for instance. Very few recordings benefit from accurate imaging and to try to achieve such in a home environment is almost always a compromise that can be detrimental to the overall enjoyment of a piece, the exception being orchestral music that, I personally, would not wave a baton at but each to their own.
    As to the speakers themselves, well that can be a minefield in itself.
    I built a set of these, Kef Concertos for the school studio when I were about 14, they wus sweet.(you could buy a kit that consisted of the drivers, crossovers and baffle and build the box yourself)

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • andin, in reply to Steve Barnes,

    True but there is also a lot of bollocks talked about speaker position, sound image for instance.

    But its SPL for me and I can get technical, hows yer tolerance

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes, in reply to andin,

    I can get technical, hows yer tolerance

    +/- 2.5%

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • James Butler,

    For my passwords I use serial numbers and model numbers of things I'm a bit fanboi about (I won't say what kind of things, as that would narrow the attack space) - easily memorable to me, because I'm a geek, but to anyone else they're just strings of random letters and digits. Also, while they may be more likely than random strings to turn up in the total corpus of written English, they're unlikely to be in any dictionary used in a dictionary attack. All in all, I feel they pack a good punch for their length.

    Auckland • Since Jan 2009 • 856 posts Report Reply

  • Biobbs,

    Attachment

    I'd never thought of using song lyrics for passwords... like that, I have about 20000 songs in my collection so probably won't run out soon.

    It also amazed me how fast all the dozens of different micro-computer brands people had available in the early 80s collapsed into just two market dominants in so few years. My first experience with desk-top computers was when the lab I was in as a grad student chose these (see attachment) as their computer of choice for cutting-edge science, despite every other lab in the uni having Apple IIs at the time (our Prof was British to His Bootstraps and wasn't going to tolerate any of that American rubbish in his lab, eee laddie?). They were actually great little machines - easy to use, easy to program, easy to set up A to D converters on for logging instruments - better educational machines than the Apples, in fact. OK, 64 kB of memory was a bit of a problem, but it was still a revelation having these right on the desk compared to having to book time on the uni mainframe. I might be the only person on this forum who used one them?

    Since then everywhere I've worked has been PC-oriented so there's never been any point in me trying to use anything else. When it came to doing anything grunty like running large experimental systems or modelling work, you always got so much more bang for your bucks with PC vs Apple-Mac in the 80s and 90s. Nowadays there's not much to choose between them. Of course we always had our VAX gurus, and the Unix and Linux folks as well.

    VAX bods are the strangest people in the whole wide world. I swear, they are clear evidence for space aliens secretly living amongst us. But we always loved them dearly:-)

    The River Mouth, Denmark • Since Jan 2011 • 114 posts Report Reply

  • Greville Whittle, in reply to Biobbs,

    My high school had BBC Micro's in the computer lab until 1990. They were heaps of fun, but the work was boring, mostly essays on computing and our teacher was the "read the first and last paragraph only" type. We confirmed it on more than one occasion by writing what was expected for the first and last paragraph, but filling the middle with stories about drinking etc and still got 100%.

    I still have a soft spot for the beeb and have a port of Chucky's Egg somewhere.

    I've used a number of different systems through my computing life: BBC Micro, a Dick Smith computer, a plethora or PC's and Macs. Most of the computers I've used have been second hand and a bit behind the times. In fact the first computer I bought new is my current desktop, a 2006 iMac that's showing it's age for games*, but is still trucking along for everything else.

    *While I have some Mac Games, I use BootCamp and have a XP partition for most games**.
    **And after saying goodbye to WoW, I've found I cannot run any of the new MMORPGs or games that look good to me. The newest game I'm playing is Fallout3

    Hamiltron • Since Oct 2008 • 50 posts Report Reply

  • Gareth Ward, in reply to Russell Brown,

    The hifi industry still hasn't caught up to the (IMO) massive opportunity that AirPlay and iTunes represents. Why are there not AirPlay-enabled powered speaker boxes everywhere already? Sonos killers if they got it sorted - instead Sonos saw the threat and has responded in advance. Apple HiFi or whatever it was called was probably Apple seeing this but then fell back to their famous focus and decided not to push it.

    Oh and Apple's design isn't the story behind their commercial success anymore - it's their supply chain and ruthless efficiency. Even with Ives' gorgeousness Apple were never going to be the largest company in the world. The fact that they can now get great industrial design delivered rapidly to your hands in unthinkable volume at a close-to-competitive price is behind that. And that's why Cook deserves CEO.

    Auckland, NZ • Since Mar 2007 • 1727 posts Report Reply

  • Gareth Ward,

    Meant to add - they also create a permanent supply chain to the consumer via their hardware. A series of devices that make it painfully easy to continue to buy content for them is effectively a micro supply chain to every customer.

    Auckland, NZ • Since Mar 2007 • 1727 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha, in reply to Gareth Ward,

    a micro supply chain to every customer

    So true, and iCloud completes the lock-in.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Campbell,

    partly this is because that they are larger than mostly any individual PC platform manufacturer - even though they look (or have looked) like a small player they can do economies of scale that others can't - they're also not afraid to pioneer new hardware where their competitors in the PC space are hamstrung with compatibility with Microsoft and each other - the amount of historical legacy cruft in a modern PC is mind boggling (says he who once spent 3 years cloning an x86) - have you any idea how many gates go into your intel CPU to support dos? or your video card, in just the wrong place? or all those security holes M$ has had to patch due to dos or Win3 compatability?

    Apple on the other hand have discarded their base hardware design twice and their OS once (twice if you count iOS I guess) in that time discarding their own cruft ruthlessly so they can sell a simpler (and in the end cheaper to manufacture) product

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report Reply

  • Gareth Ward, in reply to Paul Campbell,

    even though they look (or have looked) like a small player they can do economies of scale that others can't

    And they've been so strategic with it, where others use it just to cut a few cents (again, thanks to Cook). When the Nano was designed, they locked in $1.5billion (IIRC) in one particular type of flash memory for it - not only as an (accurate) forecast of demand but also as a way to lock their competitors out of the market.
    Their margin these days is amazing because they've worked it from both ends - designing products "we want ourselves" that can demand a premium (which these days is probably about right compared to the earlier premium) but also running an insanely efficient back-end.

    Although I can't see Cook calling Vic Gundotra (as head of mobile apps at Google) on a Sunday morning claiming a huge problem that needed fixing like Jobs did. The problem? The shade of yellow on the second "o" in Google on the Google app icon wasn't quite right :|

    Auckland, NZ • Since Mar 2007 • 1727 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Campbell,

    As I said elsewhere their margin is what the whole rest of the world is envious of - I think it's a difficult place to be - everyone wants to be the high margin leader in a market - but that costs in R&D, and potentially large failures and depends on you continually being one step ahead of the pack, and never making a misstep - the jump into smart phones was brilliant timing, and they pulled it off - now thanks to Android it's all becoming commodity, tablets are moving that way even faster, that high gross margin will be being sucked away even as we speak,right now there will be people at Apple casting around for that next big thing .... the patent fights you see growing up around android as just the last gasp of that high margin - as is trying to lock people into their cloud

    Google's an interesting competitor for them - they're doing what the linux crowd do, giving it away, at least the stuff that Apple competes against, because they make their money elsewhere - it's hard to compete against something that costs nothing and does most of what your product does - the cheap Chinese tablets are still perceived as 'cheap' but they'll get better fast, they can move even faster than Apple can

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report Reply

  • Jim Cathcart, in reply to Russell Brown,

    "Why isn’t there an entry-level DAC that’s iPod-ready – i.e., an iPod dock with a third-party DAC? That would be good

    Onkyo had been working on this in Japan, but they have still yet to progress from the digital media transport. http://www.superfi.co.uk/index.cfm/page/moreinfo.cfm/Product_ID/5625

    Since Nov 2006 • 228 posts Report Reply

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