But by your logic, if I developed faster-than-light travel or instantaneous matter teleportation tomorrow, I would not be entitled to profit from it.
Nope - bad comparison. A better one would be you developing a FTL module when the tech is already readily available (and has been for a while), and then suing another company that is developing their own FTL module because theirs has a similar physical shape as yours, and its interface has similarities. It's retarted, serves no purpose, and stifles innovation.
Really ? the word is censored both times in TFS and even the image itself is blurred in TFA.
Are we really so prude and puritan as a culture that we can't even bring ourselves to write "SHIT" ?
This goes beyond political correctness - it's frankly ridiculous.
The CC info should IMHO have been encrypted with a combination of the user's password and such a key - that way, even WHMCS doesn't have access to it, except at the very moment a transaction needs to occur (when the user types in his password).
Of course, if recurring automatic payments or similar are needed, then WHMCS does indeed need to keep the CC details readable (and even then I'm not 100% sure of that, as I believe a lot of banks payment APIs offer some sort of token mechanism defining a CC details for a specific purpose - IE, not usable for other payments). But in that case, it should have been handled on a separate server or even better: through the use of one of the many cheap, dedicated, PCI-compliant services that do exactly that.
The official post on this from WHMCS is interesting: http://blog.whmcs.com/?t=47660
They're saying that the intruders managed to obtain credentials from their web hosting company, which allowed them to access the (I assume) dedicated servers rented by WHMCS.
Putting aside the fact that they're storing CC data on a third party server, what the blog post does not explain is how exactly this would amount to a total compromise of those accounts, as the server passwords should not even be known by the hosting company, and in any case this data should have been encrypted. It would also be interesting to know how they went from that to accessing the company's twitter account - my guess would be that the same password was used on twitter as on their servers.
So basically: no encryption, relying on an insecure third party to store critical data, and possibly the same password being used for a major hosting server and their twitter account. I, for one, would not rely on this company to handle billing & support for my customers.
A HD video of the launch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQNJG8MPcIc
SpaceX always releases amazing videos of their launch:-) in this one there's even a camera to watch the solar array deploying in orbit.
Although I would agree that the architecture is a bit of a mess, there has been a lot of progress compared to before since recent versions (>= 2.x) - most notably for implementing your own stuff. Making your own linear filter or feature detection algorithms integrated to the library is now relatively easy.
The slow part is certainly true, though - but OpenCV is still a great framework for playing & experimenting with computer vision (and I'm not aware of any alternative that even approach its level of features).
Same impression here - I pay 19.90 euros each month (in France) and I get unlimited calls (towards landlines and mobiles in 12+ countries), unlimited internet access (capped after a few GB, though), and unlimited SMS/MMS. The prices in the US seems completely crazy by comparison - and the same appears to be true of the Internet access prices there (especially given the apparent level of service quality which seems quite poor).
I wonder if someone tried to study the impact the availability/prices of mobile & internet connections to a modern society as a whole. Instinctively, I'd say that the more people have mobile handsets/internet access, the more productive and efficient the society is (just from the fact, for example, that people might learn usable skills and develop critical thinking by themselves thanks to the web). So in effect it might be a good idea to lower those prices through government control - but then again, this is the US so I guess AT&T, Verizon and so on are basically in charge of that and wouldn't let such a thing happen.
Once you start blacklisting/limiting the release of scientific information, science is essentially dead. Science should be all about sharing of knowledge, collaborative work, cross confirmation of results. It's not scientists that should handle the 'risks' to society (taking into account ethics) - that's a job for politics (IE, you can publish how to make an atomic bomb but dissemination of nuclear material should be controlled by law). And in any case, any information you try to blacklist will eventually get out.
Of course, I suppose there's a limit to that too - if we arrive at a point where a scientific discovery can lead to virtually anyone creating a WMD at low cost and with readily available materials, then there is a problem. But we're not there yet and anyway, at that point, there's no easy solution (though I personally believe a 'solution' should then be more along the lines of changing the root of the issue: why those people would want to create WMD to begin with).
That's true, except you could be told it's coke that's being smuggled while it's really explosives. Or a few runs actually smuggling coke to get the screeners to lay down their guards (assuming they'd even go to the bother of checking the first few runs to make sure nothing dangerous is being let through), and then you could replace it with explosives/weapons/whatever for the next run.
In any case, this just proves something that should have been obvious: no matter how tight your security procedures (and in the TSA's case they aren't what one would really define as 'tight' IMHO), humans are still fallible and the weakest link in the chain.
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But by your logic, if I developed faster-than-light travel or instantaneous matter teleportation tomorrow, I would not be entitled to profit from it.
Nope - bad comparison. A better one would be you developing a FTL module when the tech is already readily available (and has been for a while), and then suing another company that is developing their own FTL module because theirs has a similar physical shape as yours, and its interface has similarities. It's retarted, serves no purpose, and stifles innovation.
A very good book on that subject: Permutation City, by Greg Egan.
Right up until nuclear transmutation makes it as worthless as dirt. And it *is* coming fast.
Really ? the word is censored both times in TFS and even the image itself is blurred in TFA.
Are we really so prude and puritan as a culture that we can't even bring ourselves to write "SHIT" ?
This goes beyond political correctness - it's frankly ridiculous.
The CC info should IMHO have been encrypted with a combination of the user's password and such a key - that way, even WHMCS doesn't have access to it, except at the very moment a transaction needs to occur (when the user types in his password).
Of course, if recurring automatic payments or similar are needed, then WHMCS does indeed need to keep the CC details readable (and even then I'm not 100% sure of that, as I believe a lot of banks payment APIs offer some sort of token mechanism defining a CC details for a specific purpose - IE, not usable for other payments). But in that case, it should have been handled on a separate server or even better: through the use of one of the many cheap, dedicated, PCI-compliant services that do exactly that.
The official post on this from WHMCS is interesting: http://blog.whmcs.com/?t=47660
They're saying that the intruders managed to obtain credentials from their web hosting company, which allowed them to access the (I assume) dedicated servers rented by WHMCS.
Putting aside the fact that they're storing CC data on a third party server, what the blog post does not explain is how exactly this would amount to a total compromise of those accounts, as the server passwords should not even be known by the hosting company, and in any case this data should have been encrypted. It would also be interesting to know how they went from that to accessing the company's twitter account - my guess would be that the same password was used on twitter as on their servers.
So basically: no encryption, relying on an insecure third party to store critical data, and possibly the same password being used for a major hosting server and their twitter account. I, for one, would not rely on this company to handle billing & support for my customers.
A HD video of the launch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQNJG8MPcIc :-) in this one there's even a camera to watch the solar array deploying in orbit.
SpaceX always releases amazing videos of their launch
Although I would agree that the architecture is a bit of a mess, there has been a lot of progress compared to before since recent versions (>= 2.x) - most notably for implementing your own stuff. Making your own linear filter or feature detection algorithms integrated to the library is now relatively easy.
The slow part is certainly true, though - but OpenCV is still a great framework for playing & experimenting with computer vision (and I'm not aware of any alternative that even approach its level of features).
Same impression here - I pay 19.90 euros each month (in France) and I get unlimited calls (towards landlines and mobiles in 12+ countries), unlimited internet access (capped after a few GB, though), and unlimited SMS/MMS. The prices in the US seems completely crazy by comparison - and the same appears to be true of the Internet access prices there (especially given the apparent level of service quality which seems quite poor).
I wonder if someone tried to study the impact the availability/prices of mobile & internet connections to a modern society as a whole. Instinctively, I'd say that the more people have mobile handsets/internet access, the more productive and efficient the society is (just from the fact, for example, that people might learn usable skills and develop critical thinking by themselves thanks to the web). So in effect it might be a good idea to lower those prices through government control - but then again, this is the US so I guess AT&T, Verizon and so on are basically in charge of that and wouldn't let such a thing happen.
Once you start blacklisting/limiting the release of scientific information, science is essentially dead. Science should be all about sharing of knowledge, collaborative work, cross confirmation of results. It's not scientists that should handle the 'risks' to society (taking into account ethics) - that's a job for politics (IE, you can publish how to make an atomic bomb but dissemination of nuclear material should be controlled by law). And in any case, any information you try to blacklist will eventually get out. Of course, I suppose there's a limit to that too - if we arrive at a point where a scientific discovery can lead to virtually anyone creating a WMD at low cost and with readily available materials, then there is a problem. But we're not there yet and anyway, at that point, there's no easy solution (though I personally believe a 'solution' should then be more along the lines of changing the root of the issue: why those people would want to create WMD to begin with).
That's true, except you could be told it's coke that's being smuggled while it's really explosives. Or a few runs actually smuggling coke to get the screeners to lay down their guards (assuming they'd even go to the bother of checking the first few runs to make sure nothing dangerous is being let through), and then you could replace it with explosives/weapons/whatever for the next run. In any case, this just proves something that should have been obvious: no matter how tight your security procedures (and in the TSA's case they aren't what one would really define as 'tight' IMHO), humans are still fallible and the weakest link in the chain.
The Spice expands consciousness.