I usually don't ask for an invitation into something I didn't check out beforehand. What if the ritual of joining includes a human sacrifice, for example:-)
Generally, though, Orkut's model presumes that "you are nothing, we are everything". I don't like that. If I can't join (or leave) on my free will, I don't want it. I want to be in control of my life.
Granted, there are many cases when people must cooperate (and ask each other) to do something. If I want to check in some change on sf.net I'd better ask for write access to the project's CVS. That is understood, because there is a real need to state my cause, and if I am wrong with my changes other people will be inconvenienced.
But why would anyone be denied an access to a glorified bulletin board? That I can not understand. And I see no reason to restrict access for non-members. For example, hide names & emails of everyone; make it read-only; make sessions short... But as it stands, I see none of it and therefore I see no reason why it may benefit me (or anyone else, to that matter). So why should I bother someone who I don't know asking him|her|it to vouch for myself? That was discussed to death on K5 recently.
Ok, I see an article about Orkut. Go to Orkut web site to see what it is about. They tell me GO AWAY. What a nice place!!! In other words, you can't make friends on Orcut unless you already have friends on Orcut...
This Orcut thingy, therefore, may be good or bad, but since they are a closed (secret) society I see no way to judge it. I just walk away, not to be back any time soon.
It would cost $100,000 to review every byte of this disk to ensure that it has no classified data on it (even in encrypted form in unused blocks.) On the other hand, it will cost $0.30 to shred the disk. That's why it is just cheaper to call all such disks classified and deal with them accordingly.
If a commercial airliner has lost all radio contact they would not be able to get through to air traffic control at the airport, making the landing dangerous.
It is possible, but not very likely, to lose radio contact. A commercial aircraft usually has several generators (one per engine) and at least one battery. The battery is never used, except in emergencies. Normally all generators work and all the equipment is powered up. If one or several generators fail then automatically some equipment is disconnected, in order of importance. The radio stays on even if *all* generators fail (it is then powered from the battery, and will last for long enough to land the aircraft. The battery will also provide electrical power to the engines (fuel pumps etc.)
In any case, if the radio indeed fails, the ATC on the ground will know it before even the pilots do. And as soon as pilots realize that they have no contact, they will take some safe course until instructed by any means possible to land. Any other aircraft may be instructed to approach and to lead them, not just a military one.
It depends on facility-specific rules. Given the fairly high sensitivity of the work at LANL, I would not be surprised that unclassified information can only come in, but never leave (except through the official deslassification channels, where it will be reviewed and logged.)
As related to your scenario, the floppy write protection is optical in nature, and it is easy to hack the drive so that it sees all floppies as write-enabled.
I would assume the data is self-describing somehow. It may be a spreadsheet, for example. I doubt that anyone would just write 1.4 MB of raw data onto a floppy. And in any case, even if the data is not obvious to decode, if someone takes it then this person probably knows what it is.
In this case, though, it's more likely that the floppy was used just to send some data between researchers, and once the data was copied onto computer the disk was destroyed, but the guy forgot to record the fact.
A few [pins] commemorated the Arirang Festival, plus one or two sported the North Korean flag. Wearing either pin could probably get us jail time, or at the very least deported, in the South.
Doesn't look like South Korea is very different from North. They indeed jail anyone who advocates unification or just closer ties...
TEMPLATE=app TARGET=foobar HEADERS=foobar.h SOU RCES=foobar.cpp
That's all it takes. Run qmake on this and then make. And it is platform-independent too, meaning that it will use whatever *make you have (gmake, nmake etc.) on any supported OS (the list is long enough.)
I had a look at Maven's project description file, and I definitely won't use it any time soon even if I get a Java project to work on. It will cost me and other developers way too much time to learn it. I say, this may be OK for some CMM Level 999 compliance (such as overmanaged beyond belief), where each code line requires 1000 approvals from 2000 unrelated departments (and it costs $1,000,000 per line too.) But until you come up with a check that large I won't be even looking in that direction.
I think the USSR died because it tried the "Keep up with the Jones'" game with the US. We flat out broke their economy.
That is not the case. Actions of USA had no effect on USSR at that time, and I am sure of that because I was there.
There are many reasons why USSR fell apart, but the main one is the economy (as usual). It was mortally damaged by inefficiency of management by the government, and that goes back to 1920's. This is not something that Reagan thought up or did.
The economy was so bad, you couldn't buy anything unless you know where it is sold, and when. There was overproduction of some things and underproduction of other, and the government, being a dinosaur, wouldn't even react until several years later. Meanwhile, the shortages of basic necessities became serious.
The production of food was never sorted out. All Lenin could think of was to confiscate all the grain from the peasants (during the Civil War.) Later, he and Stalin conscripted all peasants and forced them to join communes, which were managed by the government, directly or indirectly. Manual labor was the norm, and the agriculture was ery inefficient, and not enough food was produced.
As result, by 1990, people were quite bitter about shortages and suffering. But they still didn't want to break away. This last step required Gorbachev's actions - and then local politicians, party flunkies, and other busybodies started working hard on separation from anything imaginable. This gave them the reins of power in their tiny fiefdoms, and with power came money. Some of those fiefdoms abused their position beyond belief, becoming crime havens. And generally the people haven't gained anything from the independence; most only became poorer.
Majority of any population doesn't want to break apart or to join something else. The majority only wants to live quietly, in peace, and to raise families.
However the tiny minority of politicians do their best (and often efficiently) to inspire the masses to do something they otherwise wouldn't do. These politicians have a lot of interest in separatism, for example. After the breakup of the USSR hundreds of mini-tzars appeared, every one controlling his domain. Some were foolish, some were pragmatic, some were (and are) tyrants... the usual mix. Wars broke out between those tzars, and many people died (see events around Georgia or Uzbekistan, for example.)
It's the responsibility of the government to create an environment where most people _want_ to stay.
Not necessarily. People can be sick of each other, and the government can't do much about it. For example, what an atheist in California can do if a religious mob forces him to pray? (this refers to the recent judgement.) He only can despise the people who forced him (or his child) to do unnatural (to him) things.
If most people in an area in China want to leave (Tibet?) doesn't it seem wrong to force the region to stay?
From all technical points of view, Tibet is better off as part of China. It simply can't be anything but a banana republic (without bananas), situated between huge countries and being generally inaccessible. If you are a young tibetan, what options would you like to have - to go study in a nearby monastery, or to go study in a good university in Shanghai, and then work anywhere you want?
But there are feelings, of course, and that's why people rarely do what is better for them. If you ask me if I want Tibet to be independent... I don't know, it's up to them. It makes no sense logistically, but if most of tibetans want independence, let them be. And charge twice the normal fee when they want to join China again:-)
Simply put, the Chinese government only wants to keep the country in one piece. Already people are allowed to do everything legal (and illegal) as long as it is not politics. If taken off the leash, the country will disintegrate in a moment (see USSR as a reference case.) But given that China has 10x more people, and a proportional volume of munitions of all kinds is stored everywhere, such a process is very risky (Does Yugoslavia ring a bell?)
If the leash is removed right now and the Party dissolved, only the worst types of people - the most despicable arch-villains, mobsters, aspiring politicians - will be on top, simply because they know how to wield power. It would be awfully reckless to give them the power. China will be torn into pieces, and every one will have The Bomb.
The encryption would be too cumbersome for most people. Secret key system would restrict you to point-to-point encryption, and you have to manage all the keys yourself. Public key system would work great, but it really must be built into the phone, and it isn't small.
Today one can use some Java app that runs on a Java-enabled phone. This way at least you know what you are running. But a generic solution would need to be built into all the phones, and that can't happen overnight.
That's why the card is there - to give them the answer without searching. Once they know who you pretend to be (don't trust the card!) then they download the biometrics of that person and check if you match them - and if your card matches those centralized records. No search needed.
Of course, if you say you are someone, but the biometrics don't match, or the card's data doesn't match the central data, then that person will be taken aside and talked to, and quite possibly a wider search will be done to find out who he really is. But I don't think such incidents will be common; most people don't say they are someone else, and even if a mechanical problem occurs (such as faulty scanner) there are usually other documents to prove your identity.
In addition, a faulty scanner in an airport will be detected very fast, since one passenger after another will be failing the test... as the error rate increases, the security people should be smart enough to close the lane and put people through other scanners while a technician swaps the device.
Why can people registered only use the designated checkpoints at their "home" airport?
I guess they have only very few airports equipped with iris and fingerprint scanners. So they want to maximize the efficiency of this beta-testing by ensuring that people who sign up *will* be using the system. Nothing suspicious in that.
It's just reallocation of resources. Some people will be searched less, other people will be searched more, exactly as they do now. The card will only help them to be more efficient in that.
The card is necessary because it's awfully expensive to check relations of one pair of eyes against 260,000,000 pairs of eyes. You'd need a lifetime to do that.
However if the card says "I am John Smith, iris 0x1234ABCD5678FEDC" then it is trivial to pull the said iris' pattern out of the central database and check your real eyes against that trusted copy. By changing the direction of search they simplified the task immensely.
Besides, right now there is no central d/b yet, and all passengers carry their pieces of the database with them. This won't last, though - it is far more practical to have the database centralized. Then even a nudist can fly, as long as he remembers his SSN. Maybe that's the whole point, after all:-)
It is supposed to be compensated by more stringent checks before you get into the program. In other words, suspicious (?) people won't be allowed to join. On the other hand, majority of suicide bombers never attack twice...
Don't be so sad, I described things correctly. As I recall, only two cities (Moscow and Leningrad) had mandatory and hard to obtain residence permit system. Also, it applied to residence only, not to temporary visits (which could be as long as you want). The limiting factor was, as other people already indicated, the inability to get a job without a residence permit. There were millions of people coming into Moscow and going back every day, and not a single one needed such a permit.
If you want to go into deeper details, this lax system was abandoned exactly in 1990s, and replaced with much more draconian system; now a visitor must register with police (and pay some money), and failure to do so will cost him even more. That's what is there now, in a "free society".
The reasons for both scenarios are obvious. Large cities, especially "the capitals", attracted everyone, and if such an influx of people is not controlled, the cities would collapse. So the migration into largest cities was restricted, and at the same time there was some effort to make the other cities more interesting to live in. But the grass is always greener elsewhere, so the limits were in place.
Also, as I mentioned already, I lived there and know these things firsthand.
Just invent an ATM robot on wheels, and you can patent that easily. Walk into Washington Mutual, whistle, and a nearby ATM robot will approach you. This would be more patentable than their furniture arrangement.
Slashdot Mirror
Generally, though, Orkut's model presumes that "you are nothing, we are everything". I don't like that. If I can't join (or leave) on my free will, I don't want it. I want to be in control of my life.
Granted, there are many cases when people must cooperate (and ask each other) to do something. If I want to check in some change on sf.net I'd better ask for write access to the project's CVS. That is understood, because there is a real need to state my cause, and if I am wrong with my changes other people will be inconvenienced.
But why would anyone be denied an access to a glorified bulletin board? That I can not understand. And I see no reason to restrict access for non-members. For example, hide names & emails of everyone; make it read-only; make sessions short... But as it stands, I see none of it and therefore I see no reason why it may benefit me (or anyone else, to that matter). So why should I bother someone who I don't know asking him|her|it to vouch for myself? That was discussed to death on K5 recently.
This Orcut thingy, therefore, may be good or bad, but since they are a closed (secret) society I see no way to judge it. I just walk away, not to be back any time soon.
It would cost $100,000 to review every byte of this disk to ensure that it has no classified data on it (even in encrypted form in unused blocks.) On the other hand, it will cost $0.30 to shred the disk. That's why it is just cheaper to call all such disks classified and deal with them accordingly.
It is possible, but not very likely, to lose radio contact. A commercial aircraft usually has several generators (one per engine) and at least one battery. The battery is never used, except in emergencies. Normally all generators work and all the equipment is powered up. If one or several generators fail then automatically some equipment is disconnected, in order of importance. The radio stays on even if *all* generators fail (it is then powered from the battery, and will last for long enough to land the aircraft. The battery will also provide electrical power to the engines (fuel pumps etc.)
In any case, if the radio indeed fails, the ATC on the ground will know it before even the pilots do. And as soon as pilots realize that they have no contact, they will take some safe course until instructed by any means possible to land. Any other aircraft may be instructed to approach and to lead them, not just a military one.
As related to your scenario, the floppy write protection is optical in nature, and it is easy to hack the drive so that it sees all floppies as write-enabled.
In this case, though, it's more likely that the floppy was used just to send some data between researchers, and once the data was copied onto computer the disk was destroyed, but the guy forgot to record the fact.
Doesn't look like South Korea is very different from North. They indeed jail anyone who advocates unification or just closer ties...
I had a look at Maven's project description file, and I definitely won't use it any time soon even if I get a Java project to work on. It will cost me and other developers way too much time to learn it. I say, this may be OK for some CMM Level 999 compliance (such as overmanaged beyond belief), where each code line requires 1000 approvals from 2000 unrelated departments (and it costs $1,000,000 per line too.) But until you come up with a check that large I won't be even looking in that direction.
Or, perhaps, who is living in a city or a neighborhood where being seen at this movie is bad.
Or, perhaps, who is living in a city where not a single theater has this movie.
That is not the case. Actions of USA had no effect on USSR at that time, and I am sure of that because I was there.
There are many reasons why USSR fell apart, but the main one is the economy (as usual). It was mortally damaged by inefficiency of management by the government, and that goes back to 1920's. This is not something that Reagan thought up or did.
The economy was so bad, you couldn't buy anything unless you know where it is sold, and when. There was overproduction of some things and underproduction of other, and the government, being a dinosaur, wouldn't even react until several years later. Meanwhile, the shortages of basic necessities became serious.
The production of food was never sorted out. All Lenin could think of was to confiscate all the grain from the peasants (during the Civil War.) Later, he and Stalin conscripted all peasants and forced them to join communes, which were managed by the government, directly or indirectly. Manual labor was the norm, and the agriculture was ery inefficient, and not enough food was produced.
As result, by 1990, people were quite bitter about shortages and suffering. But they still didn't want to break away. This last step required Gorbachev's actions - and then local politicians, party flunkies, and other busybodies started working hard on separation from anything imaginable. This gave them the reins of power in their tiny fiefdoms, and with power came money. Some of those fiefdoms abused their position beyond belief, becoming crime havens. And generally the people haven't gained anything from the independence; most only became poorer.
However the tiny minority of politicians do their best (and often efficiently) to inspire the masses to do something they otherwise wouldn't do. These politicians have a lot of interest in separatism, for example. After the breakup of the USSR hundreds of mini-tzars appeared, every one controlling his domain. Some were foolish, some were pragmatic, some were (and are) tyrants... the usual mix. Wars broke out between those tzars, and many people died (see events around Georgia or Uzbekistan, for example.)
It's the responsibility of the government to create an environment where most people _want_ to stay.
Not necessarily. People can be sick of each other, and the government can't do much about it. For example, what an atheist in California can do if a religious mob forces him to pray? (this refers to the recent judgement.) He only can despise the people who forced him (or his child) to do unnatural (to him) things.
If most people in an area in China want to leave (Tibet?) doesn't it seem wrong to force the region to stay?
From all technical points of view, Tibet is better off as part of China. It simply can't be anything but a banana republic (without bananas), situated between huge countries and being generally inaccessible. If you are a young tibetan, what options would you like to have - to go study in a nearby monastery, or to go study in a good university in Shanghai, and then work anywhere you want?
But there are feelings, of course, and that's why people rarely do what is better for them. If you ask me if I want Tibet to be independent... I don't know, it's up to them. It makes no sense logistically, but if most of tibetans want independence, let them be. And charge twice the normal fee when they want to join China again :-)
If the leash is removed right now and the Party dissolved, only the worst types of people - the most despicable arch-villains, mobsters, aspiring politicians - will be on top, simply because they know how to wield power. It would be awfully reckless to give them the power. China will be torn into pieces, and every one will have The Bomb.
Today one can use some Java app that runs on a Java-enabled phone. This way at least you know what you are running. But a generic solution would need to be built into all the phones, and that can't happen overnight.
All the militaries, always prepare for the last war. No surprise when the war breaks out they are caught with their pants down.
Of course, if you say you are someone, but the biometrics don't match, or the card's data doesn't match the central data, then that person will be taken aside and talked to, and quite possibly a wider search will be done to find out who he really is. But I don't think such incidents will be common; most people don't say they are someone else, and even if a mechanical problem occurs (such as faulty scanner) there are usually other documents to prove your identity.
In addition, a faulty scanner in an airport will be detected very fast, since one passenger after another will be failing the test... as the error rate increases, the security people should be smart enough to close the lane and put people through other scanners while a technician swaps the device.
I guess they have only very few airports equipped with iris and fingerprint scanners. So they want to maximize the efficiency of this beta-testing by ensuring that people who sign up *will* be using the system. Nothing suspicious in that.
It's just reallocation of resources. Some people will be searched less, other people will be searched more, exactly as they do now. The card will only help them to be more efficient in that.
However if the card says "I am John Smith, iris 0x1234ABCD5678FEDC" then it is trivial to pull the said iris' pattern out of the central database and check your real eyes against that trusted copy. By changing the direction of search they simplified the task immensely.
Besides, right now there is no central d/b yet, and all passengers carry their pieces of the database with them. This won't last, though - it is far more practical to have the database centralized. Then even a nudist can fly, as long as he remembers his SSN. Maybe that's the whole point, after all :-)
Indeed - this businessman's smart card may well encode "Search me!" and he won't know it for sure.
It is supposed to be compensated by more stringent checks before you get into the program. In other words, suspicious (?) people won't be allowed to join. On the other hand, majority of suicide bombers never attack twice...
The airline will then fire half of its clerks.
Within a few years this "innovation" will be mandatory, and nobody will be allowed to fly without it.
In fact, the cost of the *time* a user has to spend to pay for page view is more than the cost of the page view itself.
If you want to go into deeper details, this lax system was abandoned exactly in 1990s, and replaced with much more draconian system; now a visitor must register with police (and pay some money), and failure to do so will cost him even more. That's what is there now, in a "free society".
The reasons for both scenarios are obvious. Large cities, especially "the capitals", attracted everyone, and if such an influx of people is not controlled, the cities would collapse. So the migration into largest cities was restricted, and at the same time there was some effort to make the other cities more interesting to live in. But the grass is always greener elsewhere, so the limits were in place.
Also, as I mentioned already, I lived there and know these things firsthand.
Just invent an ATM robot on wheels, and you can patent that easily. Walk into Washington Mutual, whistle, and a nearby ATM robot will approach you. This would be more patentable than their furniture arrangement.