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Two corrections. The reality is both worse and better than you state.

First, just because you see a password field on a form submitted to an unencrypted page does not mean your password is submitted in the clear. I do not know how common the technique is, but if you log into LiveJournal with Javascript enabled and HTTPS disabled, then your password will be transmitted MD5 hashed with a challenge. (Of course, an active attacker could just remove that Javascript from the unencrypted page.)

But there is a far, far worse issue. I use HTTPS Everywhere so all of my Facebook requests are encrypted. I am not protected from this attack because Facebook does not mark their cookies as secure only, so as long as I view any unencrypted website, an active attacker could insert in a reference to any unencrypted Facebook page and then sniff my Facebook login cookies from that request. Basically, the only way to be secure is to either (1) make sure all login cookies are marked for secure connections only (your bank almost certainly does this) or (2) don't use login cookies because they are horribly insecure. HTTP supports secure logins by way of digest access authentication (basically signs every request with your hashed password). Websites should use it. Browser vendors should make its interface not suck (I believe all browsers use a modal pop-up for it... and have no way of telling if it is basic auth (sending your password in the clear) or digest auth (only sending hashes of your password)).

Perhaps the smallest group is the one that believes in the rule of law and that the Constitution is a contract which should be followed based on the meaning of the agreements when ratified, including amendments. Of course this would mean that all first amendment cases would be out of jurisdiction of the federal courts, something those power-grabbing, legislative and executive branch appeasers will never go for.

Congress shall make no law...

And for those who are going to argue that the 14th changed all that, you're simply wrong. If we look at what the amendment meant to the people who passed it, we find no evidence anywhere that the amendment was ever considered to do anything more than give freedmen the right to enter contracts, to sue, and to own property. If you really care about this, read Government by Judiciary by (liberal) Raoul Berger.

random VIN numbers

I was with you up until this part. See here.

Compare it with print circulation figures. Only three have more than a million readers. This means that they have about 20% of their paper readers also using the web site, and another 20% exclusively online readers, on top of their print readership. Sounds like a pretty large number to me.

Oh, Chrome, who are you fooling with your inflated version numbers?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_of_web_browsers.svg

there have always been needs for fast input. Consider shorthand:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Shorthand

An account of this was written by the famous author Henri de Balsack.

Between his name and the topic (pat-downs), I thought you were kidding...
Turns out you just got the name a little wrong. Honoré de Balzac

Despite the history of Korea being kicked around by the rest of Asia, there are many unofficial ties between DPRKorea and Japan. Whole communities of rich Juche supporters live in Japan. Even the official news outlet (Korea Central News Agency) runs under a jp domain...

There is a really great japanese movie called "Go" about a teenage zainichi growing up in the north korean ex-pat community in Japan. Really a top-notch coming of age story and I thought it was pretty accessible to western sensibilities too, although there was a sense of being "dropped" into the middle of the culture with little explanation of many of the basics that any japanese person would probably just automatically be familiar with.

Now if someone would just rear-mount that in a cute little chassis, maybe one that looked kind of like a bug or something...

What do you mean? Like those cute little minesweepers or cute little locomotives that have been powered by opposing piston engines?

Now if someone would just rear-mount that in a cute little chassis, maybe one that looked kind of like a bug or something...

What do you mean? Like those cute little minesweepers or cute little locomotives that have been powered by opposing piston engines?

Now if someone would just rear-mount that in a cute little chassis, maybe one that looked kind of like a bug or something...

What do you mean? Like those cute little minesweepers or cute little locomotives that have been powered by opposing piston engines?

but fuck no.
I eagerly await comments saying how anglo-centric, racist, bigoted, culturally-imperialist the insistence of using ASCII is.
The nuanced indignation is salve for my frantic masturbation.
(If my post is the only one that mentions this, all the better)

ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange

Would it be anglo-centric, we should be using anglo-saxon runes

(now, go on wanking).

I, but it is inevitably a waste of time. I get the feeling this guy is clueless about the reality of unicode. ASCII was invented out of necessity based on the lessons that unicode would have taught us in the long run, basically solving the problems before they were actual problems. This is simply amazing. Now stop wasting my time and get off my lawn.

That's an interesting point.

However, it's not a new one. This "loop-hole" in the GPL licenses has often been called "software-as-a-service" (SaaS) loop-hole.

That is why there were created a license that fixes this: the Affero General Public License (AGPL).

However, I haven't ever though of applying the SaaS clause in relation to applications running on "iProduct" devices. But I doubt it will hold, unless the application either run on Apples own web servers, or if Apple still (for some reason) still was the legal owner of your piece of hardware, minimum.

If the SaaS "loop-hole" also will be usable for applications running in locked virtual machines/locked-down devices this is a major reason to consider to use AGPL in stead of GPL for your next FOSS project.

Clearly they formed this alliance to compete with the mighty Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance.

When I hear electron tunneling I can't help but see oxide or whatever the hell these things are made of slowly being eaten away.

You need to look elsewhere.

Close: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Frozen_zoo

No, a Newton not a weight, it is a cookie.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fig_Newton

And too many Newtons leads to weight gain.

--
BMO

Hell, the artifacts probably do not even have the same mass as each other.

They don't. There's variances between all the official copies which have changed over time: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Prototype_mass_drifts.jpg Though technically there is only one official kilogram so even if all the others trend one direction the official answer will be that they are all wrong.

i suspect this will show up in it place soon enough:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/PDMI

> I have an elegant explanation for the events of 2008, but it is too long to fit in a /. comment...

I have a copy of Arithmetica that I can spare, if you'd care to use the margins...

First and foremost, it must be said that the kilogram is a unit of MASS, not weight. It refers to the amount of space that an object takes up, not its gravitational force. See here.

You probably should have read this before posting. The amount of "space" an object takes up is called volume.

First and foremost, it must be said that the kilogram is a unit of MASS, not weight. It refers to the amount of space that an object takes up, not its gravitational force. See here.

You probably should have read this before posting. The amount of "space" an object takes up is called volume.

Well, you *do* need to create a real lump of silicon in order to ensure that your newly-defined kilogram has the same mass as the old standard kilogram.

But the advantage of the new definition is, in the future anyone who wants to create a kilogram can read your recipe in a book and make their own -- they don't need to use your lump of matter to do it.

However, a cyclical model to explain the expansion (and eventual contraction) of the universe would be much more consistent.

Personally I like the idea of the big-bang being a white-hole endpoint to a black hole in a different universe ... think of a large bubble splitting and being pinched off (the pinching being a 2-dimensional view of a black hole) into another bubble.

This would also explain what happens to black hole absorbed matter.. it creates another universe.

Ultimately, I feel more comfortable in cosmology over religion in that cosmology can be refined with factual observation. Those comfortable with the possibility of unattainable infinite knowledge (and the uncertainty it brings) are more predisposed to preferring scientific study as opposed to relying on faith.

Yeah, nobody would ever do such an insane and risky thing like that.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae

Yeah, this supercomputer is totally 'meh', at reading the title I was hoping they used https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Loongson#Loongson_3 not nvidious crap.

gasoline packs an awful lot of energy into a small space

Yes, it does. Look at that chart and compare gasoline (or even coal) to Li-Ion batteries. Even sugar or fat (as in horses) are better.

Now if only Firefox would support playing the most common modern video format, h.264 - nah, there's no demand for that.

Of course there's a demand for that. The question is, where's the money for that?

MPEG LA holds onto h.264 licensing and I doubt they will let it go cheaply. I guess Mozilla could try to make a donation drive for the five million it'll cost annually to get every Firefox copy cleared with licensing.

At first I thought you were arguing that since the proliferation of nukes, there have been a lot less *actual* tigers. Which weirdly, is not only true, but largely caused by the countries you mention!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Tiger_distribution3.PNG

I use Netscape Navigator 9.
What? It's only two years old. (cough)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f5/Netscape9.png

That might be the oldest lolcat, but there are definitely older pictures of cats.

I know that The Emirates Telecommunications Corporation is one. The same guys who tried to send an eavesdropping trojan horse(labeled as a system update) to 100,000 or so blackberry users...

https://www.eff.org/observatory has more details on the ~650 different entities who will be silently trusted by your standard IE or FF install.

Here's a picture of what it looks like:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Uluru_Panorama.jpg/800px-Uluru_Panorama.jpg

Funny though both the summary and the article says South Australia. ... They both also say newly discovered. ... Weird, this is a bigarse rock anyway.

So Broken Arrow means missing nuke.

Apparently Dull Sword is the term for a non-functioning nuclear warhead.

Although, approval voting may be a good idea, if the election laws say the election is by plurality voting, then the election better be run by plurality voting. Please work to fix the voting laws (to use some system better than plurality voting). Don't try to get the officials to intentionally misinterpret the bad ones on the books.

I'm surprised I don't see more on /.; baseball depends heavily on a very controlled environment (batter vs pitcher) and is accessible to extensive statistical analysis. For those interested, I recommend Baseball Prospectus, Baseball Think Factory, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), and the writings of Bill James, the great modern popularizer of the statistical analysis of baseball (I think of him as the Bruce Schneier of baseball -- very insightful, clear analysis).

/. has enough problems, it doesn't need to become Professor Frink's crew hanging out in the back of Moe's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoneyBART

^ ...everyone cared so much about the Banksy couch gag that no one watched the episode :P

Basically, you want ReactOS? And you want it to work.

You don't solve a NP-Hard or NP-Complete mathematical problem by using a heuristic. Good heuristics for the TSP have existed for quite some time, and I'm sure they're faster than bees. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem#Heuristic_and_approximation_algorithms I feel it's really deceptive that they claim this problem takes a supercomputer to solve the problem in days, when they certainly haven't proven the bees always get the best solution (I think at best, we could disprove this - not prove it). Anyhow, it is interesting that so little neural circuitry is needed to solve this kind of problem.

That isn't bad. The first image on that page reminds me of the Commodore Amiga's color scheme (lots of orange):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b3/Amiga_Workbench_1_0.png

"...based on the publisher's discretion."

Why do I need the publisher's permission to lend an electronic book? If I buy an actual book I can do whatever I want with it. Why are electronic books different?

This clearly violates my rights under the first-sale doctrine:

"The doctrine allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e., sell or give away) a particular lawfully made copy of the copyrighted work without permission once it has been obtained. This means that the copyright holder's rights to control the change of ownership of a particular copy ends once that copy is sold, as long as no additional copies are made."

No additional copies? This requirement is satisfied by the following digital restriction:

"...and the lender cannot read the book while it is loaned out."

Under this doctrine, I have a legal right to control the change of ownership of any electronic books I have purchased. In other words, my legally purchased copy may lawfully be sold, lent, traded, or given away at my discretion, not the publishers.

Publishers who prohibit the lending of electronic books should be named, shamed and avoided. Why give financial support to publishers trying to abrogate our first-sale doctrine rights?

This is pretty funny. If we were talking about Halo, we wouldn't see so many naive claims and theories, and so many of them moderated up! Instead of replying to each one, let me clarify a few points:

A major league batter knows the base he'll likely reach as soon as he knows where the ball will land. Having seen many thousands of hits, he can make a pretty good judgement pretty quickly. I've merely watched the games, and I can tell you well before the ball lands. It's all done without any math or calculations, if you can believe it, just rules of thumb based on experience:
  * Over the center-fielder's head is a triple
  * Reaching the wall elsewhere: a double
  * Doesn't get by the outfielders: a single.

There are variables from that 'baseline': The defense could make a play on another baserunner, giving the batter the chance to get another base. Fielding mistakes, and sometimes a hard hit, a very fast/slow runner, or a very good/bad arm can make a difference of a base, but it's rare.

For the other question, I really don't know for sure. Baserunners are regularly outside the baselines, but I've rarely seen a baserunner go that far out unless he was avoiding a tag, taking out a fielder in a double-play, or over-running first base. But they sometimes round bases pretty widely without being called out. The rules are more complicated than they appear and the umps have discretion. I don't know for sure, but I doubt they'd be called out unless they were avoiding a tag or interfering with a fielder. I wouldn't depend on an answer that didn't come from an umpire.

I'm just a long-time avid baseball fan. I'm surprised I don't see more on /.; baseball depends heavily on a very controlled environment (batter vs pitcher) and is accessible to extensive statistical analysis. For those interested, I recommend Baseball Prospectus, Baseball Think Factory, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), and the writings of Bill James, the great modern popularizer of the statistical analysis of baseball (I think of him as the Bruce Schneier of baseball -- very insightful, clear analysis). Now, back to your regularly scheduled News for Nerds ...

> Would you berate them for ... being a firefighter too?

Only if they start causing fires in order to be "the hero who saves the people in the building"...

Well, TFS did say something about the driver heading onto a "busy intersection". It wasn't just one guy's life versus his and his children's.

I know, I know, trolley problem and all that, but it wasn't as simple as you make it out to be.

"Eve Tokimatsuri" from Megazone 23 came out in March of 1985. Note this is an Anime OVA, and I suspect influenced the desires of the folks working on Hatsune Miku. My only remaining questions are when the aliens attack our Dyson Sphere-like satellite city, and where to get my Garland prototype.

"Eve Tokimatsuri" from Megazone 23 came out in March of 1985. Note this is an Anime OVA, and I suspect influenced the desires of the folks working on Hatsune Miku. My only remaining questions are when the aliens attack our Dyson Sphere-like satellite city, and where to get my Garland prototype.

They've even copyrighted the cover image, so they're now suing people for using this on their websites.

What he built is a proof of concept for a BATTERY. Not a telegraph.

He's an artist, not an engineer. Rigor is clearly not his strong point. But it's an interesting idea. And making pig iron--even a little bit--in an afternoon is a pretty good accomplishment. Copper is a lot easier, since it smelts easily and has a much lower melting point.

And it's not implausible: after all, there is evidence that better batteries were known in ancient times, and he's certainly right that a Voltaic pile can be constructed from primitive materials. He could have smelted some zinc, too.

But as others have pointed out, miles of wire is the real challenge. Could that be done under the circumstances? Sure: copper smelting was known in prehistory, and drawing copper into wires just requires hardened clay dies. But it would be a LOT of work. You'd probably have to be an inspiring leader with oodles of acolytes to carry out the grunt work. You'd need some insulated wire for the coils, but that's just an application of fabric, and not too hard.

A better idea might have been an optical telegraph, like those that were all over Europe in the early 19th century. Make lenses out of ice in clay molds and use it only in the winter, if you don't want to make glass and grind it.

Seriously, try to imagine locking down OSX in such a way that you cannot install apps without using their store. That means not writing files in key places and not allowing executables.

So, a jail then?

No doubt. The wealthiest area of the country(Northern virginia) permits its officers to commit homicide knowing their will be no charges.

The furtive gesture justification
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/27/AR2010012703907.html

The accidental discharge defense
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/23/AR2006032301117.html

Forgot to pay the bill
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/27/AR2006022701515.html

You have no right to know what the police are up to
http://reason.com/archives/2010/06/29/police-blackout