By 1989, I'd already been posting on the internet for 5 years! Back then my email address was:
...{ decvax!linus | seismo!harvard }!axiom!gts
That is, decvax was a well known location so you'd have to route through all the machines from you to decvax (which you'd presumably know), then on to linus, then axiom, then my account. If you didn't know how to get to decvax, you could also start at seismo. There were about 2 dozen well-known locations, and lists were published on how to route between them.
When I tell the kids today that at one time email addresses didn't have '@' signs, they think I'm cracked. Was it the good old days? Not really, but there was no spam!
I always recommend Cyberiad for new readers of Lem. But for the geeks that are sure to lurk here let me throw out a few more. I've read pretty much everything that's been translated (including a lot of his literaturary criticism), so I know the gems.
Read Memoirs Found In A Bathtub if you liked Futurological Congress. It has the same paranoid glimpses of a distopian, yet familiar, future.
Read Mortal Engines if you liked Cyberiad. Funny stuff.
Read Fiasco for great hard Sci-fi. Greatest density of cool ideas per page.
Read Imaginary Magnitude if you're a geek and want to read about the famous Golem XIV (which has its own wikipedia article).
Read The Chain of Chance and you'll never read another mystery novel again--he pretty much unravels the entire genre with this book.
Read His Master's Voice for dense philosophy presented as a science mystery. This is his masterpiece.
This is just the tip of the iceberg--there's plenty more where that came from.
I know, I know. Don't feed the trolls. But I can't resist.
Year round warm weather means hunting/gathering will completely fulfill a human tribe's needs.
Harsh winters means technology must arise for food storage and shelter construction. Also, stored food is a barterable good allowing specialization of trades and further technological advancement.
People who live in year round warmth need protection from the harsh sun and thus develop extra melanin for this. People who live with harsh winters need better UV reception on the skin (for vitamin D) and thus lose melanin.
Pretty simple really. Now why you'd hate people who have extra melanin due to the location of their ancestors' tribes is really quite beyond me.
I know I'm trying to reason with the unreasonable, but that's just my nature. Excuse me.
I have owned criv.com since 1998. It's short, pronounceable (sort of), and on the com tld. Check it out, it's my wife's flower farm (Coos Riviera).
Over the years I've had a few people asking if I'm looking to sell. Since I am not looking to sell, I have always quoted the same price: $48,000. After reading these negotiating tactics, I understand why I still own it! As for the price, I figure my wife would be angry if I sold the domain, but she'd be mollified by the new car I'd buy with the proceeds.
Anyone else have a pronounceable, 4-letter dot com? What would it take for you to sell?
You can still construct a program with a memory leak in Java.
1. From your Main object, create an object A.
2. Have object A create an object B. Have it pass itself as an argument to the ctor.
3. Have object B keep the reference to object A.
At this point you have 2 references to object A (one from the Main object and one from object B) and 1 reference to object B (from object A).
Now just set object A to null to destroy the reference from Main to A. The reference counter to A drops from 2 to 1 (and object B still has 1). Both objects continue to exist in memory but they cannot be referenced by your program.
Java doesn't have malloc( ). That's why it needs an integrated garbage collector. It keeps track of the references to objects that have been instantiated. When the counter reaches zero, the object is automagically removed from memory without explicit programming required. No malloc( ) or free( ) necessary.
Here's a way to build a simple Jeopardy player that would kick a human's ass and doesn't require 4 years of programming:
- Type entire "answer" as given on the board directly into google without quotes.
- Search the returned page for the most common word (ignoring 2 letter ones) in the titles of the pages.
- If the most common word appears more than 3 times, print "What is X?" where X is the common word.
- If no one term appears that often, don't ring in.
Voila. Instant human-crushing Jeopardy player.
If you tweak the rule set to make it a little more complicated (looking for whole phrases, etc) and tweak the threshhold for how "certain" it must be before ringing in (the appearance count), you might be unbeatable.
Back when Polaroid was king, Kodak introduced their own version of an instant camera. It was vastly superior to Polaroid's.
Polaroids had a flat glossy surface. Touch the picture and the fingerprint permanently ruined the photo. Kodak's photos had a textured surface which rejected fingerprints.
Polaroids had a cheesy paper frame. Handling the photo often caused it to disintegrate. Kodak's photos were monolithic plastic slabs--the picture was just an area of color in the middle of the slab.
So why didn't Kodak's instant film take over the market. Well, what do you think a company, who was losing the race due to an inferior product, did? That's right, into court they went and lawyers prevented the technology from improving.
The passwords required to run the network equipment at my site are ONLY written down. I have 2 notebooks, one here, one across the street in a different building, in physically secured rooms. The passwords exist in NO OTHER PLACE.
I'd like to see your remote exploit that steals them. Even your onsite attack is going to be tricky. In fact, why don't you tell me the password for our firewall? Good luck.
Imagine the disappointment of the terrorist who goes to all the trouble to break into the water tank in a high rise only to find out no one living in a high rise has ever drunk water from the tap. If only he could've broken into every 12 oz. bottle of water from the store.
Why don't robbers break into Fort Knox? Because it's much easier to hijack the armoured car that's on the way.
Your vault is unassailable. I'll just steal your data while it is on one of the 100 machines it is on before it gets to your vault.
That perfect security shields data that started in a rural clinic on a receptionist's laptop. It went over so many channels before it made it to your vault, it probably arrived pre-stolen for your convenience.
The safest bet is to just not use your real name when blogging, and not let the company find out.
OK, mark it. Loss of human dignity occurred at 18:29 Tuesday.
I'm sorry, did they want to hire a human or a robot? If they wanted a robot, they should build one. Oh, they can't get a current robot to do everything they need done? Well, I guess they have to hire a human then. And that means they GET a human and not a robot.
I'm human, dammit. The company can replace me with a less problematic robot once one exists. Until then, they can take their dehumanizing bullshit and cram it.
If you want to access the ridge trail (which goes over the Old Man's forehead), you have to take the Aerial Tram up. You park at the base lodge and jump on the lift. It takes about 15 minutes and is as scary as anything you'll do today (maximum distance to ground is a couple hundred feet).
Not only did I grow up in Northern NH, I still live within a few minutes of Franconia Notch. I even graduated from Profile High School, the closest school to the Old Man and named after him.
What most people don't realize is that the Old Man only looked like a profile of a face from the north. From the south or from straight-on, no face was apparent. The rocks didn't form a face at all--they just happen to look like a profile when viewed from the side. That made it quite magical: if you stared at the cliff as you travelled north, it would look like nothing but random rocks until you got to the "viewing area." In that few hundred feet, suddenly a face would pop out of nowhere!
This glass monstrosity would reveal itself from 7 miles south. That's just not right.
I didn't say it wasn't done is a 'secure' way. I'm pretty sure it IS secure (3 years without an incident). I know about firewalls and VPN tunnels and vlan segregation and switch access restrictions, etc. But is it 100% secure? It's CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET fer chrissakes. So I guess I should be in jail because there is no way anything connected to the internet can be totally secure.
Let me hear you solution. I'm waiting. Oh? Just tell GE to run their business differently. Yeah, my rural 25-bed has TONS of leverage over GE. Once I snap my fingers, they'll fall right in line.
Too bad? If GE can't support your $5million 64-slice CT scanner that's TOO BAD?
I'm pretty sure it would be too bad if no patients could be seen because the equipment is down. It's too bad we can't get remote support. It's too bad we are now paying for something that is not generating revenue. It's too bad the head of radiology is yelling at the network admin. It's too bad the CEO has to decide that the head of radiology (who brings in $5 million per month) or the network admin (who COSTS money) needs replacing.
Here's how it goes:
Doc: I want the scanner to work.
Admin: This was a bad pruchasing decision, it wouldn't be safe. I refuse to connect it to the network.
Doc: I want the scanner to work.
Admin#2: But that wouldn't be safe. I refuse.
Doc: I want the scanner to work.
Admin#3: Right away, sir!
--------
Admin#1: Spare change?
Admin#2: You want fries with that?
Should it be this way? Probably not. Is it this way? Oh, yeah.
I'm doing it wrong? Not according to GE who makes some of our CT equipment. They specify the exact networking parameters that better be working. If they can't ping the equipment from the support center in (?)India(?), they claim you're doing it wrong.
Not according to MedQuest. Not according to AGM. Not according to Cardinal Health. They all require internet connections to the equipment.
Yeah, but you keep believing that I'm doing it wrong.
the network that the medical equipment is on should be a closed system with no computers that were ever connected to the internet
You haven't bought any medical equipment in the last 10 years have you? Because if you think medical equipment works without the internet, you are wrong.
Now, whether it should connect is a different story. The fact is it does connect and must connect to provide service.
Yeah, let's make sure the medical computers can't get to the internet. Oh wait, that means they no longer work. Now fix it: call the vendor, hear them typing, "Hey, I can't ping that equipment, you must have a network problem. Fix it immediately."
Now while the doctors start to storm the help desk, explain how they chose the wrong requirements for their networked equipment.
Upshot? Doctor puts his thumb down and you are fired. Next person gets the network connection restored. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Yes, I do run a hospital network. If you think your network safety is given a higher priority than the convenience of the equipment configuration and the remote availability for the doctors, you must be stealing something from the pharmacy.
Slashdot Mirror
So this is for all those 11 year olds with iPhones? Can I quickly ask what the fuck an 11 year old is doing with an iPhone?
An f sharp is quite different from a g flat in function, and only sounds identical if your hearing is mediocre
So if I hear middle F# (369.99 Hz) and middle Gb (369.99 Hz) as the same note (when middle C=261.63Hz), my hearing is mediocre?
Wow, that's just... wow.
By 1989, I'd already been posting on the internet for 5 years! Back then my email address was:
...{ decvax!linus | seismo!harvard }!axiom!gts
That is, decvax was a well known location so you'd have to route through all the machines from you to decvax (which you'd presumably know), then on to linus, then axiom, then my account. If you didn't know how to get to decvax, you could also start at seismo. There were about 2 dozen well-known locations, and lists were published on how to route between them.
When I tell the kids today that at one time email addresses didn't have '@' signs, they think I'm cracked. Was it the good old days? Not really, but there was no spam!
I always recommend Cyberiad for new readers of Lem. But for the geeks that are sure to lurk here let me throw out a few more. I've read pretty much everything that's been translated (including a lot of his literaturary criticism), so I know the gems.
Read Memoirs Found In A Bathtub if you liked Futurological Congress. It has the same paranoid glimpses of a distopian, yet familiar, future.
Read Mortal Engines if you liked Cyberiad. Funny stuff.
Read Fiasco for great hard Sci-fi. Greatest density of cool ideas per page.
Read Imaginary Magnitude if you're a geek and want to read about the famous Golem XIV (which has its own wikipedia article).
Read The Chain of Chance and you'll never read another mystery novel again--he pretty much unravels the entire genre with this book.
Read His Master's Voice for dense philosophy presented as a science mystery. This is his masterpiece.
This is just the tip of the iceberg--there's plenty more where that came from.
I know, I know. Don't feed the trolls. But I can't resist.
Year round warm weather means hunting/gathering will completely fulfill a human tribe's needs.
Harsh winters means technology must arise for food storage and shelter construction. Also, stored food is a barterable good allowing specialization of trades and further technological advancement.
People who live in year round warmth need protection from the harsh sun and thus develop extra melanin for this. People who live with harsh winters need better UV reception on the skin (for vitamin D) and thus lose melanin.
Pretty simple really. Now why you'd hate people who have extra melanin due to the location of their ancestors' tribes is really quite beyond me.
I know I'm trying to reason with the unreasonable, but that's just my nature. Excuse me.
I have owned criv.com since 1998. It's short, pronounceable (sort of), and on the com tld. Check it out, it's my wife's flower farm (Coos Riviera).
Over the years I've had a few people asking if I'm looking to sell. Since I am not looking to sell, I have always quoted the same price: $48,000. After reading these negotiating tactics, I understand why I still own it! As for the price, I figure my wife would be angry if I sold the domain, but she'd be mollified by the new car I'd buy with the proceeds.
Anyone else have a pronounceable, 4-letter dot com? What would it take for you to sell?
You can still construct a program with a memory leak in Java.
1. From your Main object, create an object A.
2. Have object A create an object B. Have it pass itself as an argument to the ctor.
3. Have object B keep the reference to object A.
At this point you have 2 references to object A (one from the Main object and one from object B) and 1 reference to object B (from object A).
Now just set object A to null to destroy the reference from Main to A. The reference counter to A drops from 2 to 1 (and object B still has 1). Both objects continue to exist in memory but they cannot be referenced by your program.
Voila! Memory leak in Java.
Java doesn't have malloc( ). That's why it needs an integrated garbage collector. It keeps track of the references to objects that have been instantiated. When the counter reaches zero, the object is automagically removed from memory without explicit programming required. No malloc( ) or free( ) necessary.
Here's a way to build a simple Jeopardy player that would kick a human's ass and doesn't require 4 years of programming:
- Type entire "answer" as given on the board directly into google without quotes.
- Search the returned page for the most common word (ignoring 2 letter ones) in the titles of the pages.
- If the most common word appears more than 3 times, print "What is X?" where X is the common word.
- If no one term appears that often, don't ring in.
Voila. Instant human-crushing Jeopardy player.
If you tweak the rule set to make it a little more complicated (looking for whole phrases, etc) and tweak the threshhold for how "certain" it must be before ringing in (the appearance count), you might be unbeatable.
Back when Polaroid was king, Kodak introduced their own version of an instant camera. It was vastly superior to Polaroid's.
Polaroids had a flat glossy surface. Touch the picture and the fingerprint permanently ruined the photo. Kodak's photos had a textured surface which rejected fingerprints.
Polaroids had a cheesy paper frame. Handling the photo often caused it to disintegrate. Kodak's photos were monolithic plastic slabs--the picture was just an area of color in the middle of the slab.
So why didn't Kodak's instant film take over the market. Well, what do you think a company, who was losing the race due to an inferior product, did? That's right, into court they went and lawyers prevented the technology from improving.
Remind you of any other analogous situations?
The passwords required to run the network equipment at my site are ONLY written down. I have 2 notebooks, one here, one across the street in a different building, in physically secured rooms. The passwords exist in NO OTHER PLACE.
I'd like to see your remote exploit that steals them. Even your onsite attack is going to be tricky. In fact, why don't you tell me the password for our firewall? Good luck.
Yikes!
Imagine the disappointment of the terrorist who goes to all the trouble to break into the water tank in a high rise only to find out no one living in a high rise has ever drunk water from the tap. If only he could've broken into every 12 oz. bottle of water from the store.
No scripts running on a Web page == no drive-by downloads
Unfortunately, with most 'modern' websites...
No scripts == no working links
No scripts == no images
And more often than not
No scripts == no content (blank page)
But you sure won't get drive-bys. Of course, just leaving the machine off has the exact same effect. And is about as useful.
(I use FF3 w/noscript, abp & noflash)
If your high school was small, what was mine? In 35 years, we haven't graduated 1100 students yet.
Why don't robbers break into Fort Knox? Because it's much easier to hijack the armoured car that's on the way.
Your vault is unassailable. I'll just steal your data while it is on one of the 100 machines it is on before it gets to your vault.
That perfect security shields data that started in a rural clinic on a receptionist's laptop. It went over so many channels before it made it to your vault, it probably arrived pre-stolen for your convenience.
Let's say we each run ISPs. You send me spam. I charge you. You charge the spammer. The spammer doesn't pay. You cut off the spammer.
Then I cut off you. After all, you didn't pay. Now no one on my network can email anyone on yours.
Back to the old drawing board.
The safest bet is to just not use your real name when blogging, and not let the company find out.
OK, mark it. Loss of human dignity occurred at 18:29 Tuesday.
I'm sorry, did they want to hire a human or a robot? If they wanted a robot, they should build one. Oh, they can't get a current robot to do everything they need done? Well, I guess they have to hire a human then. And that means they GET a human and not a robot.
I'm human, dammit. The company can replace me with a less problematic robot once one exists. Until then, they can take their dehumanizing bullshit and cram it.
If you want to access the ridge trail (which goes over the Old Man's forehead), you have to take the Aerial Tram up. You park at the base lodge and jump on the lift. It takes about 15 minutes and is as scary as anything you'll do today (maximum distance to ground is a couple hundred feet).
Not only did I grow up in Northern NH, I still live within a few minutes of Franconia Notch. I even graduated from Profile High School, the closest school to the Old Man and named after him.
What most people don't realize is that the Old Man only looked like a profile of a face from the north. From the south or from straight-on, no face was apparent. The rocks didn't form a face at all--they just happen to look like a profile when viewed from the side. That made it quite magical: if you stared at the cliff as you travelled north, it would look like nothing but random rocks until you got to the "viewing area." In that few hundred feet, suddenly a face would pop out of nowhere!
This glass monstrosity would reveal itself from 7 miles south. That's just not right.
Pass.
I didn't say it wasn't done is a 'secure' way. I'm pretty sure it IS secure (3 years without an incident). I know about firewalls and VPN tunnels and vlan segregation and switch access restrictions, etc. But is it 100% secure? It's CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET fer chrissakes. So I guess I should be in jail because there is no way anything connected to the internet can be totally secure.
Let me hear you solution. I'm waiting. Oh? Just tell GE to run their business differently. Yeah, my rural 25-bed has TONS of leverage over GE. Once I snap my fingers, they'll fall right in line.
And then we laughed and we laughed....
Too bad? If GE can't support your $5million 64-slice CT scanner that's TOO BAD?
I'm pretty sure it would be too bad if no patients could be seen because the equipment is down. It's too bad we can't get remote support. It's too bad we are now paying for something that is not generating revenue. It's too bad the head of radiology is yelling at the network admin. It's too bad the CEO has to decide that the head of radiology (who brings in $5 million per month) or the network admin (who COSTS money) needs replacing.
Here's how it goes:
Doc: I want the scanner to work.
Admin: This was a bad pruchasing decision, it wouldn't be safe. I refuse to connect it to the network.
Doc: I want the scanner to work.
Admin#2: But that wouldn't be safe. I refuse.
Doc: I want the scanner to work.
Admin#3: Right away, sir!
--------
Admin#1: Spare change?
Admin#2: You want fries with that?
Should it be this way? Probably not. Is it this way? Oh, yeah.
I'm doing it wrong? Not according to GE who makes some of our CT equipment. They specify the exact networking parameters that better be working. If they can't ping the equipment from the support center in (?)India(?), they claim you're doing it wrong.
Not according to MedQuest. Not according to AGM. Not according to Cardinal Health. They all require internet connections to the equipment.
Yeah, but you keep believing that I'm doing it wrong.
the network that the medical equipment is on should be a closed system with no computers that were ever connected to the internet
You haven't bought any medical equipment in the last 10 years have you? Because if you think medical equipment works without the internet, you are wrong.
Now, whether it should connect is a different story. The fact is it does connect and must connect to provide service.
Yeah, let's make sure the medical computers can't get to the internet. Oh wait, that means they no longer work. Now fix it: call the vendor, hear them typing, "Hey, I can't ping that equipment, you must have a network problem. Fix it immediately."
Now while the doctors start to storm the help desk, explain how they chose the wrong requirements for their networked equipment.
Upshot? Doctor puts his thumb down and you are fired. Next person gets the network connection restored. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Yes, I do run a hospital network. If you think your network safety is given a higher priority than the convenience of the equipment configuration and the remote availability for the doctors, you must be stealing something from the pharmacy.