We have scanners and printers running no problem in our office on Ubuntu. Why exactly does he mention having to program printer and scanner drivers?
Now I'm just throwing this out there, but it might be possible that there's more then one printer company that makes more than one type of printer so that there might exist in one of the foreign offices of the German government a printer of a make and model which isn't the exact same as yours?
I've yet to find a printer that didn't work with Linux.
In fact: I've had more problems with Win7 x64 drivers than with Linux x64.
I'd like to see the Government's list of actual non-functional printers (wouldn't you?).
If this exhibition is really going to be about "the art of videogames," I hope the curators don't give short shrift to the art on the outside of the game cabinets.
I would also like them to take notice of the retail box art and the catchy music as well. To this end, I nominate MegaMan.
0. The game was very popular and spawned many sequels, cartoons, and tons of merchandise.
1. The simplistic art has withstood the test of time (and palette swapping).
2. The in game music was great, as well as the tribute songs it spawned.
3. The box art is on a totally different level of "art" that can only be described as "special"
--
Dear Slashdot: Ordered lists (<ol> tag) now have no numbers. Why?
That's like asking why it's called the 100 meter dash instead of the 1 hectometer dash. Despite it being a valid measurement, when was the last time you saw the measurement used in the real world? Most people know what a centimeter is. We all had rulers in grade school that had inches and centimeters. Most people only know millimeters, centimeters, meters, and kilometers. All the other units are pretty much left to scientists.
It's called: significant digits. By saying, "10cm", they are establishing two significant digits worth of precision.
Of course, the words "up to" mean 0 to 10cm, and the distribution is most likely not a bell curve -- If it were, then that would be sensational.
Also note: The area of the oil coated sea floor is not mentioned -- that would also limit the sensationalism.
Given that these important details are not present, they are probably not sensational. However, there is mention of an oily crab 1.0 dekamiles (American spelling) away from the drill site.
For the record, in the embedded world it's pretty common to see malloc() used without free(). The use case is providing pointers with memory blocks during program initialization.
Hell, since the OS reclaims all allocated memory when a program exits, calling malloc() without free() for "singleton" instances and other program-lifespan objects is common.
For the record, I think All programs & libs should at least have a few #ifdef DEBUG sections in which the free() is called simply to make debugging memory leaks easier...
(... GTK+ is in "common" use, and doesn't free() everything it malloc()s. This is one of the reasons I hate debugging GTK+ apps. You need the "exceptions" file for your version of the lib just to give Valgrind a go because someone decided that a few milliseconds of free() at the program close is just a waste. I could see this reasoning for rapid execution of terminal apps, but for GUI frameworks?)
Copyright originally was on par with our patent system limitations (14 years). That's plenty of time to profit by monopoly, while also allowing the public domain time within the lifetimes of the generation in which the work was produced to benefit...
It is, of course, the public society -- the collective culture -- in which the copyrighted works gain worth in the first place.
I have recently created my own language & numerical systems based on the concepts of dimensions (point, line, plane, 3D space) positions, and movements. The language has 16 characters, and the sentence structure is mathematical. I've created a programming language that is a subset of my new language. The introduction to how to read & speak & program in this language is written in simple terms of the language itself. Both my 18 year old brother, and my 30yr old neighbour have picked up the language & programming language with no further instruction other than the book. Interestingly, tinkering with "live" instantly interpreted code helped them learn more complex ideas faster than the literature alone...
I plan on using these languages I've created as the language of the Aliens in an immersive video game I'm creating. Visual virtual state machines and alien data terminals can be directly manipulated and used to re-program the logic of the alien technology around the player (much of the game's actual logic is written in the "alien" programming language -- "machine code" is almost exactly the same as normal "speech").
However, since my original language is known by so few (2) people, I can't get a publisher interested... You see, would I have written in English the book would have worth in the English speaking culture that I live in. Would I have stood on the shoulder's of giants my work would be worth more to society. Therefore I must infer that all common works protected by copyright include HUGE portions of common culture and should not be granted such lengthy copyrights in my opinion.
Even in my own work, designed to be very different from other literary works, I've borrowed concepts taken from the culture in which I live. The idea of being able to reprogram a machine's function, virtual state machines, puns, the concept of extraterrestrial life, humour, love, suspense, politics, wonder, and even poetry -- All of these and MANY more ideas are borrowed from my society and used to create my "original" works.
Any work that is purely unique and truly original would have very little worth at all; It would be too alien to be popular except perhaps among scientists & linguists -- both of which have scoffed at my "sophomoric" attempt to create an interesting language (it need not be deep and complex. "It's for a game", I say; normal people should be able to learn it in the course of play, and replaying the game with a deeper understanding yields new solutions & paths and ever more meaningful glimpses into Alien politics, humour, and philosophy, as under-complex and un-evolved as it may be).
It is so very strange to me that works are protected by copyrights for over the lifespan of the generation in which they are created, when essentially the works themselves are MOSTLY created from the ideas and culture of ones own generation...
You wouldn't believe how many people actually browse that way. I have seen my fair share of people that type URLs in the searchfield of their google homepage.
I do. Google spellchecks the URL for me so I don't accidentally get typo-phished. Most times Google will even warn me if the site I'm about to go to may harm my system... Think of this as a manual phishing filter that takes 0% additional resources when not in use, and no effort to disable / re-enable (In FF anyhow: left entry = manual URL; right entry = Search box / URL sanitiser)
So long as indie/casual gaming isn't done cheaply on devices OTHER than consoles
I had trouble parsing this part of your post.
I was implying that indie & casual gaming is done just as easily on devices other than consoles... I hope you don't just develop for consoles -- it's a profit limiting move, esp. in the indie / casual market where game play trumps graphics (and thus reduces the need to tie your games to just one platform).
Even if you just go 360 only, surely you don't deny the indie & casual game markets that exist beyond your chosen platform... Competition is competition, even if (especially if?) the competition exists on different and possibly more accessible platforms.
Chemical and microbial analyses both indicate that a rare subglacial ecosystem of autotrophic bacteria developed that metabolizes sulfate and ferric ions. According to geomicrobiologist Jill Mikucki at Dartmouth College, water samples from Blood Falls contained at least 17 different types of microbes, and almost no oxygen. An explanation may be that the microbes use sulfate as a catalyst to respire with ferric ions and metabolize the trace levels of organic matter trapped with them. Such a metabolic process had never before been observed in nature.
A puzzling observation is the coexistence of Fe2+ and SO42– ions under anoxic conditions. No sulfide anions (HS–) are found in the system. This suggests an intricate and poorly-understood interaction between the sulfur and the iron biochemical cycles.
The other silly thing is that whole "life as we know it" thing. I'm not so sure that other intelligent life-forms must resemble "life as we know it". Finding exoplanets is neat, but we really don't even know where to begin when setting the parameters for the equation to compute existence of life...
1. Identify the individual you want to spy on.
2. Identify the web services you want to spy via.
3. Obtain the SSL certificates of the web services.
3. Gag & Order the certificate authorities named in the SSL certs to create the FBI/NSA a new fake trusted cert.
4. Use the unwarranted wire-tap systems already in place to "Man in the Middle" any connections the individual makes to the web services you wish t spy on.
5. Return the fake cert to the individual, and re-encrypt the data to the web service using the real cert.
6. Spy on the individual as much as you like.
7....
8. Oppress!
Note: If the CA is not a US company, then simply use Verisign or other US company to creat the fake certs -- No one checks to see if the cert is actually the one that the domain normally uses...
CAs can make certificates without the domain owner's permissions -- As long as the certificate authorities don't need the domain owner's permission to generate certificates the SECURITY THEATER of SSL will remain intact.
Also Note: FF > Preferences > Advanced > Security Tab > View Certificates > CNNIC ROOT
This is the root certificate that China will use in these types of MITM attacks.
So true. One day my cable Internet went down (I work at home). My city has WIFI coverage, so I took my laptop to the park directly across the street from my house to get better reception. On the other side of the park (over 150 meters away) is an elementary school.
While I downloaded my email a couple walked past on the way to pick up their child from school. We made small talk about the speed & cost of the city WIFI.
Five minutes later a police officer walked up and began questioning me. He said that a few parents reported a suspicious man in the park near the school with a computer. I told the cop exactly what I was doing -- Using the WIFI I've paid for in a public place. He asked if I was waiting on the children to be let out of school, and if I would mind if he took a look at the computer.
I told him that my fiancée's son goes to a different school, and I had no children of my own. I also refused any searches unless he had a warrant to do so. The officer became visibly aggravated at this point. He called his partner over while he checked my ID and asked asked why I preferred to be working on my computer closer to the school than in the comfort of my own home (across the street). I pointed out the WIFI antenna above my head, explained in detail how signal to noise ratio relates to WIFI speed, and asked his partner if he didn't prefer being couped up in the stuffy police car instead of this park on such a pretty day.
After a questioning me for another half an hour (trying to get me to slip up and say something suspicious?) the officers eventually left me alone. I thanked them for "doing a fine job", and finally realised why I never see anyone in the park. Apparently, being a 30-something male in a public place is suspicious -- especially if the place is a park near a school (regardless of the proximity of your home).
The most fundamental problem with Javascript is the fact that modern browsers encounter JS code, compile it into machine code, and run that.
JS was initially interpreted and therefore the code could be limited in function. Machine code is not limited in function...
What if C had been chosen instead of JS? I wouldn't want my browser compiling to machine code and running any C code that any website (or 3rd party plugin for that website) delivered to my browser... Why do we allow JS Engines to do this? For Speed!?
It only takes one error in the JS engine and then we're running machine binary code coming from unknown sources.
Compare this to an interpreted language where no data (including scripts downloaded from remote sources) except the engine is flagged as executable. There is a much smaller attack surface when you don't just compile and flag executable any code you find littering the Internet (as modern browsers do).
IMHO, there is no fundamental design issue -- Interpreted Dynamic Typed languages are expected to be slower than Static Typed languages. To increase speed we must trade security, code complexity (and possibly memory). The security trade off for speed approach that modern JS Engines employ is the real appalling fundamental problem to me.
Finally, I can put into mass production my revised & updated Necronomicon 2nd Edition!
I hope the printer's drivers support the most diabolical font-face: Comic Sans! (Bwa ha ha!)
Um, what?
A group of people doing activist things like busting open HB Gary, shutting down the Tunisian government websites and protesting Scientology - what else could they be but a group of activists?
Anonymous is a "group" only inasmuch as the folks who are "doing activist things" all claim to be Anonymous.
The only reason they "group" themselves together is to hide within the larger group...
There is no "leader" there are no agendas, there are just a bunch of folks, many are pissed off about different things. Sometimes people who are pissed off about the same thing get together, claim: "We are Anonymous and [some statement here]!"
Much like how the citizens in "V for Vendetta" hid behind the Guy Fawkes masks, some activists hide behind the name "Anonymous" (this is why they use that mask as their symbol).
That's the rub, they have no unified banner to uphold. There is no "group" until some unknown set of like minded individuals decides to protest something under the name...
When there is no protest going on, there is no "group" called Anonymous.
Not that I really care one way or the other, but shouldn't people who are "The Voice of Free Speech" not really make threats upon other groups use of free speech?
I didn't take the time to look into any of their claims against whoever they are accusing of whatever today.
You give Anonymous more credit than is due. Both GodHatesFags.com and Anonymous use "free speech" to piss off people they don't like. Sit back, Get some popcorn: It's all about trollin' for the sake of LOLs. The "free speech" gibberish is part of the troll.
If this childish crap is uninteresting to you, the best thing to do is ignore both parties (Don't feed the Trolls!).
Scratch a progressive, find a fascist. Every. Time.
Dealing with Chaotic Neutrals -- it's a real bitch sometimes, but I wouldn't call them fascists (there's no unified agenda, labels do not apply).
Every anonymous unit thinks a different way. Anonymous is not really "united" at all. Please, re-read these statements and remember that very few (perhaps only one?) of those calling themselves Anonymous actually give a damn about the statement, fewer still care enough to take any sort of action at all. It's strange when you think that such a small portion of their numbers has any impact at all...
If they really were organised and unified in their agenda perhaps Anonymous really would be "a serious force to be taken seriously" -- I'll LOLed @ that.
Your view is too narrow. Algorithms designed for one purpose may also suit another.
I created a library that uses any cryptographic hash function (MD5, Whirlpool, SHA1-512, etc), in a special Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) mode to provide a flexible strong encryption & decryption system.
Having a more secure & faster encryption/decryption system for real-time encryption is great (bonus, without rewriting any of the encryption code I can take advantage of the new hash algorithms as they become available instead of being chained to a few dated AES algorithms).
Cryptographic hash functions can (and are) used in many areas of cryptography, not just for password hashing and file CRCs. See: using one way encryption (hashes) to perform two-way (reversible) encryption.
Hmm, pseudo random noise? Really? Then output could depend on the pseudo-random generator you use (which may be non-portable unless you implement your prandom gen yourself).
I would just use more iterations:
digest = HMAC( pass, salt );
for ( i = 2048; i --> 0; ) digest = H( digest );
return digest;
This is good for Android more than its bad for Microsoft.
How is it good for Android? There isn't a set-top Android box to compete with Microsoft's Xbox 360.
1. Android is not competing with consoles (yet).
2. All consoles are just computers.
3. Android Computers exist (Phones, Netbooks, Pads, Notebooks, etc.)
4. New TVs have integrated computers, many with USB, Ethernet, WIFI, etc.
5. Google TV exists.
6. Soon Android devices will be more powerful than MS's 360 due to Moore's Law.
7. How many more years will people put up with the dated Xbox hardware?
Really, the 360 is the only game in town for console game development by individuals.
Well, MS is doesn't make a hand held console -- In the space that Android and Windows App overlap, this is better for Android because they can use existing GPL code that MS App devs can't. Also: The Android and MS App stores do not only contain games...
I guess what you're saying is that in the very different markets (Consoles vs Smartphones / Pads / Portable Computers) Android isn't competing with MS? I don't really get your logic: Android allows GPL, MS doesn't, but it won't hurt WP7 App store because there's no competing Android game console. ???
I agree that the MS XNA is pretty neat, but many indie games I've played on the 360 could easily be created on Android as well. C# runs in a VM anyhow, so does Android -- but, wait, indie Android Devs can now use native code.
Or, do you mean there's no MFG approved, App store resident, GPL indie game/app developers for WP7 like there is on Android, so it won't matter?
Also: 360 isn't the only console in town -- Wii Homebrew comes to mind. So does PS2, PSP and PS3 homebrew.
I suppose that I agree: From an indie console game developer's perspective, who gives a damn about GPL because there's not much GPL code for indie game devs to use anyhow (in MS 360's C#).
So long as indie/casual gaming isn't done cheaply on devices OTHER than consoles, and there are no free to use (L)GPL game dev libs available on those devices, why should an indie game developer care? </sarcasm>
You shouldn't ever let your browser store passwords.......
Why not? I let my computer store my passwords.
I have to unlock the key-ring with my master password; I drop access rights to the key-ring when I'm done "entering" the stored password; The passwords are encrypted while stored. What's the big deal? Don't all modern operating systems have this feature?
Is the issue, "Single point of failure"? I have a strong 23 character master password. It's much easier to remember than 30 different variable length passwords, and no less secure than a keyed/salted password hashing algorithm based on the domain name (still a singe point of failure).
Without the saved passwords I would have to weaken the strength of all my online passwords so that I can remember them.
now there's no doubt about what needs to be redacted, and wikileaks can get on with their job without that extra accusation being thrown at them. just redact protected names and be done with it.
::Poof:: Suddenly every member of the US government and all persons they associate with is instantly an American intelligence source who collaborates with the US military or intelligence community.
You know, sort of like how info that's not really a "threat to national security" yet is embarrassing to the US government finds its way under a "Classified" stamp?
I'll bet that there will be unlimited supply of classified documents that specify any name they choose as an American intelligence source.
The only clarification I see here is that the US will stop at nothing to silence those who reveal their embarrassments and/or corruption; 1st amendment rights be damned.
I'm assuming that the warrant said that mooo.com was hosting child porn, which one of its subdomains likely was. What wasn't mentioned was that mooo.com is fairly special among domains, since it also carries 84,000 completely unrelated sites. To notice that, someone would have to be familiar with FreeDNS and what it does, which is a bit much to ask of an ICE investigator. This isn't a case of due process being ignored. It's a case of due process not covering every crazy special situation that changes the case.
No, this is a case of incompetence.
If we're going to grant ban hammer powers to any one, I'll expect them to competently wield it or NOT USE IT AT ALL.
P.S. Apologists can suck it too, your site's visitors didn't get spammed with a "THIS SITE HAS CHILD PORN ON IT" page that instantly reduced hits (after recovery) to 1% of what they were before hand. (Pre-Pedantic comment Note: visitors don't fully read or understand the warning page, to them, the site was found guilty of delivering child porn, and they are not coming back)
This is Just plain fucking outrageous -- There's no acceptable excuse for this level of retardation and carelessness.
Inches given, miles taken, a foreshadow of things to come.
It was probably intentional that they did not give it a realistic, human-sounding voice. Research has shown that people do not want machines to appear too human. They react negatively.
[citation needed]
[Star Trek and Asimov references don't count]
Actually, I think humans DO want robots that appear very human, and have wanted them for hundreds of years. I'd also put it to you that humans do and have, in fact, reacted in certain positive ways towards machines that appear human.
The dame de voyage (French) or dama de viaje (Spanish) was a direct predecessor to today's sex dolls that originated in the seventeenth century. Dames de voyage were makeshift fornicatory dolls made of sewn cloth or old clothes, used by French and Spanish sailors while isolated at sea during long voyages.
One of the earliest recorded appearances of manufactured sex dolls dates to 1908, in Iwan Bloch's The Sexual Life of Our Time. Bloch wrote:
In this connection we may refer to fornicatory acts effected with artificial imitations of the human body, or of individual parts of that body. There exist true Vaucansons in this province of pornographic technology, clever mechanics who, from rubber and other plastic materials, prepare entire male or female bodies, which, as hommes or dames de voyage, subserve fornicatory purposes. More especially are the genital organs represented in a manner true to nature. Even the secretion of Bartholin's glans is imitated, by means of a "pneumatic tube" filled with oil. Similarly, by means of fluid and suitable apparatus, the ejaculation of the semen is imitated. Such artificial human beings are actually offered for sale in the catalogue of certain manufacturers of "Parisian rubber articles.
So, yeah, it may be a bit taboo to some people, but not admitting to your family that your girlfriend is a Nexus 6 doesn't count as "reacting negatively" to the idea of humanoid machines.
On the average, I'd say people at fascinated by human-like machines (see: Androids/cyborgs in science fiction, or, uh, the 80s/early 90s for fuck's sake, it was full of interest) -- Curiosity is a positive trait in my book, and lusting after our machines is a trait that people from gear-heads to PC Gamers and realdoll owners all share to a degree.
(Keep in mind: As a new technolgy TV was unsettling to some, but like all common place technology it's not a big deal now)
Slashdot Mirror
We have scanners and printers running no problem in our office on Ubuntu. Why exactly does he mention having to program printer and scanner drivers?
Now I'm just throwing this out there, but it might be possible that there's more then one printer company that makes more than one type of printer so that there might exist in one of the foreign offices of the German government a printer of a make and model which isn't the exact same as yours?
I've yet to find a printer that didn't work with Linux.
In fact: I've had more problems with Win7 x64 drivers than with Linux x64.
I'd like to see the Government's list of actual non-functional printers (wouldn't you?).
If this exhibition is really going to be about "the art of videogames," I hope the curators don't give short shrift to the art on the outside of the game cabinets.
I would also like them to take notice of the retail box art and the catchy music as well. To this end, I nominate MegaMan.
--
Dear Slashdot: Ordered lists (<ol> tag) now have no numbers. Why?
That's like asking why it's called the 100 meter dash instead of the 1 hectometer dash. Despite it being a valid measurement, when was the last time you saw the measurement used in the real world? Most people know what a centimeter is. We all had rulers in grade school that had inches and centimeters. Most people only know millimeters, centimeters, meters, and kilometers. All the other units are pretty much left to scientists.
It's called: significant digits. By saying, "10cm", they are establishing two significant digits worth of precision.
Of course, the words "up to" mean 0 to 10cm, and the distribution is most likely not a bell curve -- If it were, then that would be sensational.
Also note: The area of the oil coated sea floor is not mentioned -- that would also limit the sensationalism.
Given that these important details are not present, they are probably not sensational. However, there is mention of an oily crab 1.0 dekamiles (American spelling) away from the drill site.
For the record, in the embedded world it's pretty common to see malloc() used without free(). The use case is providing pointers with memory blocks during program initialization.
Hell, since the OS reclaims all allocated memory when a program exits, calling malloc() without free() for "singleton" instances and other program-lifespan objects is common.
For the record, I think All programs & libs should at least have a few #ifdef DEBUG sections in which the free() is called simply to make debugging memory leaks easier...
(... GTK+ is in "common" use, and doesn't free() everything it malloc()s. This is one of the reasons I hate debugging GTK+ apps. You need the "exceptions" file for your version of the lib just to give Valgrind a go because someone decided that a few milliseconds of free() at the program close is just a waste. I could see this reasoning for rapid execution of terminal apps, but for GUI frameworks?)
Copyright originally was on par with our patent system limitations (14 years). That's plenty of time to profit by monopoly, while also allowing the public domain time within the lifetimes of the generation in which the work was produced to benefit...
It is, of course, the public society -- the collective culture -- in which the copyrighted works gain worth in the first place.
I have recently created my own language & numerical systems based on the concepts of dimensions (point, line, plane, 3D space) positions, and movements. The language has 16 characters, and the sentence structure is mathematical. I've created a programming language that is a subset of my new language. The introduction to how to read & speak & program in this language is written in simple terms of the language itself. Both my 18 year old brother, and my 30yr old neighbour have picked up the language & programming language with no further instruction other than the book. Interestingly, tinkering with "live" instantly interpreted code helped them learn more complex ideas faster than the literature alone...
I plan on using these languages I've created as the language of the Aliens in an immersive video game I'm creating. Visual virtual state machines and alien data terminals can be directly manipulated and used to re-program the logic of the alien technology around the player (much of the game's actual logic is written in the "alien" programming language -- "machine code" is almost exactly the same as normal "speech").
However, since my original language is known by so few (2) people, I can't get a publisher interested... You see, would I have written in English the book would have worth in the English speaking culture that I live in. Would I have stood on the shoulder's of giants my work would be worth more to society. Therefore I must infer that all common works protected by copyright include HUGE portions of common culture and should not be granted such lengthy copyrights in my opinion.
Even in my own work, designed to be very different from other literary works, I've borrowed concepts taken from the culture in which I live. The idea of being able to reprogram a machine's function, virtual state machines, puns, the concept of extraterrestrial life, humour, love, suspense, politics, wonder, and even poetry -- All of these and MANY more ideas are borrowed from my society and used to create my "original" works.
Any work that is purely unique and truly original would have very little worth at all; It would be too alien to be popular except perhaps among scientists & linguists -- both of which have scoffed at my "sophomoric" attempt to create an interesting language (it need not be deep and complex. "It's for a game", I say; normal people should be able to learn it in the course of play, and replaying the game with a deeper understanding yields new solutions & paths and ever more meaningful glimpses into Alien politics, humour, and philosophy, as under-complex and un-evolved as it may be).
It is so very strange to me that works are protected by copyrights for over the lifespan of the generation in which they are created, when essentially the works themselves are MOSTLY created from the ideas and culture of ones own generation...
You wouldn't believe how many people actually browse that way. I have seen my fair share of people that type URLs in the searchfield of their google homepage.
I do. Google spellchecks the URL for me so I don't accidentally get typo-phished. Most times Google will even warn me if the site I'm about to go to may harm my system... Think of this as a manual phishing filter that takes 0% additional resources when not in use, and no effort to disable / re-enable (In FF anyhow: left entry = manual URL; right entry = Search box / URL sanitiser)
So long as indie/casual gaming isn't done cheaply on devices OTHER than consoles
I had trouble parsing this part of your post.
I was implying that indie & casual gaming is done just as easily on devices other than consoles... I hope you don't just develop for consoles -- it's a profit limiting move, esp. in the indie / casual market where game play trumps graphics (and thus reduces the need to tie your games to just one platform).
Even if you just go 360 only, surely you don't deny the indie & casual game markets that exist beyond your chosen platform... Competition is competition, even if (especially if?) the competition exists on different and possibly more accessible platforms.
Clayton Donley, Sr. Director, Development
Oracle Identity Management
Hmm, Well, of course an identity manager would attempt to manage Oracle's identity by posting something like the above.
So long as you're not astroturfing for Microsoft, we'll allow it.
who knows about all the other possible variables that may be required for life as we know it at least.
One of the silly things is that we keep having to redefine our ideas of what is required for life to exist.
See: Extremophiles
For instance: Take the ecosystem under the glacier that's responsible for the "Blood Falls".
Chemical and microbial analyses both indicate that a rare subglacial ecosystem of autotrophic bacteria developed that metabolizes sulfate and ferric ions. According to geomicrobiologist Jill Mikucki at Dartmouth College, water samples from Blood Falls contained at least 17 different types of microbes, and almost no oxygen. An explanation may be that the microbes use sulfate as a catalyst to respire with ferric ions and metabolize the trace levels of organic matter trapped with them. Such a metabolic process had never before been observed in nature.
A puzzling observation is the coexistence of Fe2+ and SO42– ions under anoxic conditions. No sulfide anions (HS–) are found in the system. This suggests an intricate and poorly-understood interaction between the sulfur and the iron biochemical cycles.
The other silly thing is that whole "life as we know it" thing. I'm not so sure that other intelligent life-forms must resemble "life as we know it". Finding exoplanets is neat, but we really don't even know where to begin when setting the parameters for the equation to compute existence of life...
Here's how it works:
1. Identify the individual you want to spy on. ...
2. Identify the web services you want to spy via.
3. Obtain the SSL certificates of the web services.
3. Gag & Order the certificate authorities named in the SSL certs to create the FBI/NSA a new fake trusted cert.
4. Use the unwarranted wire-tap systems already in place to "Man in the Middle" any connections the individual makes to the web services you wish t spy on.
5. Return the fake cert to the individual, and re-encrypt the data to the web service using the real cert.
6. Spy on the individual as much as you like.
7.
8. Oppress!
Note: If the CA is not a US company, then simply use Verisign or other US company to creat the fake certs -- No one checks to see if the cert is actually the one that the domain normally uses...
CAs can make certificates without the domain owner's permissions -- As long as the certificate authorities don't need the domain owner's permission to generate certificates the SECURITY THEATER of SSL will remain intact.
Also Note: FF > Preferences > Advanced > Security Tab > View Certificates > CNNIC ROOT
This is the root certificate that China will use in these types of MITM attacks.
P.S. Remember when a large portion of the Internet was "accidentally" routed through China?
So true. One day my cable Internet went down (I work at home). My city has WIFI coverage, so I took my laptop to the park directly across the street from my house to get better reception. On the other side of the park (over 150 meters away) is an elementary school.
While I downloaded my email a couple walked past on the way to pick up their child from school. We made small talk about the speed & cost of the city WIFI.
Five minutes later a police officer walked up and began questioning me. He said that a few parents reported a suspicious man in the park near the school with a computer. I told the cop exactly what I was doing -- Using the WIFI I've paid for in a public place. He asked if I was waiting on the children to be let out of school, and if I would mind if he took a look at the computer.
I told him that my fiancée's son goes to a different school, and I had no children of my own. I also refused any searches unless he had a warrant to do so. The officer became visibly aggravated at this point. He called his partner over while he checked my ID and asked asked why I preferred to be working on my computer closer to the school than in the comfort of my own home (across the street). I pointed out the WIFI antenna above my head, explained in detail how signal to noise ratio relates to WIFI speed, and asked his partner if he didn't prefer being couped up in the stuffy police car instead of this park on such a pretty day.
After a questioning me for another half an hour (trying to get me to slip up and say something suspicious?) the officers eventually left me alone. I thanked them for "doing a fine job", and finally realised why I never see anyone in the park. Apparently, being a 30-something male in a public place is suspicious -- especially if the place is a park near a school (regardless of the proximity of your home).
The most fundamental problem with Javascript is the fact that modern browsers encounter JS code, compile it into machine code, and run that.
JS was initially interpreted and therefore the code could be limited in function. Machine code is not limited in function...
What if C had been chosen instead of JS? I wouldn't want my browser compiling to machine code and running any C code that any website (or 3rd party plugin for that website) delivered to my browser... Why do we allow JS Engines to do this? For Speed!?
It only takes one error in the JS engine and then we're running machine binary code coming from unknown sources.
Compare this to an interpreted language where no data (including scripts downloaded from remote sources) except the engine is flagged as executable. There is a much smaller attack surface when you don't just compile and flag executable any code you find littering the Internet (as modern browsers do).
IMHO, there is no fundamental design issue -- Interpreted Dynamic Typed languages are expected to be slower than Static Typed languages. To increase speed we must trade security, code complexity (and possibly memory). The security trade off for speed approach that modern JS Engines employ is the real appalling fundamental problem to me.
Finally, I can put into mass production my revised & updated Necronomicon 2nd Edition! I hope the printer's drivers support the most diabolical font-face: Comic Sans! (Bwa ha ha!)
Um, what? A group of people doing activist things like busting open HB Gary, shutting down the Tunisian government websites and protesting Scientology - what else could they be but a group of activists?
Anonymous is a "group" only inasmuch as the folks who are "doing activist things" all claim to be Anonymous.
The only reason they "group" themselves together is to hide within the larger group...
There is no "leader" there are no agendas, there are just a bunch of folks, many are pissed off about different things. Sometimes people who are pissed off about the same thing get together, claim: "We are Anonymous and [some statement here]!"
Much like how the citizens in "V for Vendetta" hid behind the Guy Fawkes masks, some activists hide behind the name "Anonymous" (this is why they use that mask as their symbol).
That's the rub, they have no unified banner to uphold. There is no "group" until some unknown set of like minded individuals decides to protest something under the name...
When there is no protest going on, there is no "group" called Anonymous.
Not that I really care one way or the other, but shouldn't people who are "The Voice of Free Speech" not really make threats upon other groups use of free speech? I didn't take the time to look into any of their claims against whoever they are accusing of whatever today.
You give Anonymous more credit than is due. Both GodHatesFags.com and Anonymous use "free speech" to piss off people they don't like. Sit back, Get some popcorn: It's all about trollin' for the sake of LOLs. The "free speech" gibberish is part of the troll.
If this childish crap is uninteresting to you, the best thing to do is ignore both parties (Don't feed the Trolls!).
Scratch a progressive, find a fascist. Every. Time.
Dealing with Chaotic Neutrals -- it's a real bitch sometimes, but I wouldn't call them fascists (there's no unified agenda, labels do not apply).
Every anonymous unit thinks a different way. Anonymous is not really "united" at all. Please, re-read these statements and remember that very few (perhaps only one?) of those calling themselves Anonymous actually give a damn about the statement, fewer still care enough to take any sort of action at all. It's strange when you think that such a small portion of their numbers has any impact at all...
If they really were organised and unified in their agenda perhaps Anonymous really would be "a serious force to be taken seriously" -- I'll LOLed @ that.
The problem is all speech can be called hate speech,
Why, you Speech Hating Mute!
How dare you write words of hate about speech!
Your view is too narrow. Algorithms designed for one purpose may also suit another.
I created a library that uses any cryptographic hash function (MD5, Whirlpool, SHA1-512, etc), in a special Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) mode to provide a flexible strong encryption & decryption system.
Having a more secure & faster encryption/decryption system for real-time encryption is great (bonus, without rewriting any of the encryption code I can take advantage of the new hash algorithms as they become available instead of being chained to a few dated AES algorithms).
Cryptographic hash functions can (and are) used in many areas of cryptography, not just for password hashing and file CRCs. See: using one way encryption (hashes) to perform two-way (reversible) encryption.
I would just use more iterations:
digest = HMAC( pass, salt );
for ( i = 2048; i --> 0; ) digest = H( digest );
return digest;
This is good for Android more than its bad for Microsoft.
How is it good for Android? There isn't a set-top Android box to compete with Microsoft's Xbox 360.
1. Android is not competing with consoles (yet).
2. All consoles are just computers.
3. Android Computers exist (Phones, Netbooks, Pads, Notebooks, etc.)
4. New TVs have integrated computers, many with USB, Ethernet, WIFI, etc.
5. Google TV exists.
6. Soon Android devices will be more powerful than MS's 360 due to Moore's Law.
7. How many more years will people put up with the dated Xbox hardware?
Really, the 360 is the only game in town for console game development by individuals.
Well, MS is doesn't make a hand held console -- In the space that Android and Windows App overlap, this is better for Android because they can use existing GPL code that MS App devs can't. Also: The Android and MS App stores do not only contain games...
I guess what you're saying is that in the very different markets (Consoles vs Smartphones / Pads / Portable Computers) Android isn't competing with MS? I don't really get your logic: Android allows GPL, MS doesn't, but it won't hurt WP7 App store because there's no competing Android game console. ???
I agree that the MS XNA is pretty neat, but many indie games I've played on the 360 could easily be created on Android as well. C# runs in a VM anyhow, so does Android -- but, wait, indie Android Devs can now use native code.
Or, do you mean there's no MFG approved, App store resident, GPL indie game/app developers for WP7 like there is on Android, so it won't matter?
Also: 360 isn't the only console in town -- Wii Homebrew comes to mind. So does PS2, PSP and PS3 homebrew.
I suppose that I agree: From an indie console game developer's perspective, who gives a damn about GPL because there's not much GPL code for indie game devs to use anyhow (in MS 360's C#).
So long as indie/casual gaming isn't done cheaply on devices OTHER than consoles, and there are no free to use (L)GPL game dev libs available on those devices, why should an indie game developer care? </sarcasm>
You shouldn't ever let your browser store passwords.......
Why not? I let my computer store my passwords.
I have to unlock the key-ring with my master password; I drop access rights to the key-ring when I'm done "entering" the stored password; The passwords are encrypted while stored. What's the big deal? Don't all modern operating systems have this feature?
Is the issue, "Single point of failure"? I have a strong 23 character master password. It's much easier to remember than 30 different variable length passwords, and no less secure than a keyed/salted password hashing algorithm based on the domain name (still a singe point of failure).
Without the saved passwords I would have to weaken the strength of all my online passwords so that I can remember them.
Please, inform me of my folly.
in a way this could be good.
now there's no doubt about what needs to be redacted, and wikileaks can get on with their job without that extra accusation being thrown at them. just redact protected names and be done with it.
You know, sort of like how info that's not really a "threat to national security" yet is embarrassing to the US government finds its way under a "Classified" stamp?
I'll bet that there will be unlimited supply of classified documents that specify any name they choose as an American intelligence source.
The only clarification I see here is that the US will stop at nothing to silence those who reveal their embarrassments and/or corruption; 1st amendment rights be damned.
I'm assuming that the warrant said that mooo.com was hosting child porn, which one of its subdomains likely was. What wasn't mentioned was that mooo.com is fairly special among domains, since it also carries 84,000 completely unrelated sites. To notice that, someone would have to be familiar with FreeDNS and what it does, which is a bit much to ask of an ICE investigator. This isn't a case of due process being ignored. It's a case of due process not covering every crazy special situation that changes the case.
No, this is a case of incompetence.
If we're going to grant ban hammer powers to any one, I'll expect them to competently wield it or NOT USE IT AT ALL.
P.S. Apologists can suck it too, your site's visitors didn't get spammed with a "THIS SITE HAS CHILD PORN ON IT" page that instantly reduced hits (after recovery) to 1% of what they were before hand. (Pre-Pedantic comment Note: visitors don't fully read or understand the warning page, to them, the site was found guilty of delivering child porn, and they are not coming back)
This is Just plain fucking outrageous -- There's no acceptable excuse for this level of retardation and carelessness.
Inches given, miles taken, a foreshadow of things to come.
You are not a precog. You are a time traveler, as am I.
I am glad we meet at last for I have travelled here from the year 1980 to bring you this important message:
Jeopardy playing Supercomputers Beat Humans!
(P.S. Oblig)
It was probably intentional that they did not give it a realistic, human-sounding voice. Research has shown that people do not want machines to appear too human. They react negatively.
[citation needed]
[Star Trek and Asimov references don't count]
Actually, I think humans DO want robots that appear very human, and have wanted them for hundreds of years. I'd also put it to you that humans do and have, in fact, reacted in certain positive ways towards machines that appear human.
The dame de voyage (French) or dama de viaje (Spanish) was a direct predecessor to today's sex dolls that originated in the seventeenth century. Dames de voyage were makeshift fornicatory dolls made of sewn cloth or old clothes, used by French and Spanish sailors while isolated at sea during long voyages.
-- Ferguson, Anthony. The Sex Doll: A History. McFarland, 2010
One of the earliest recorded appearances of manufactured sex dolls dates to 1908, in Iwan Bloch's The Sexual Life of Our Time. Bloch wrote:
In this connection we may refer to fornicatory acts effected with artificial imitations of the human body, or of individual parts of that body. There exist true Vaucansons in this province of pornographic technology, clever mechanics who, from rubber and other plastic materials, prepare entire male or female bodies, which, as hommes or dames de voyage, subserve fornicatory purposes. More especially are the genital organs represented in a manner true to nature. Even the secretion of Bartholin's glans is imitated, by means of a "pneumatic tube" filled with oil. Similarly, by means of fluid and suitable apparatus, the ejaculation of the semen is imitated. Such artificial human beings are actually offered for sale in the catalogue of certain manufacturers of "Parisian rubber articles.
-- Bloch, Iwan. The Sexual Life of Our Time
So, yeah, it may be a bit taboo to some people, but not admitting to your family that your girlfriend is a Nexus 6 doesn't count as "reacting negatively" to the idea of humanoid machines.
On the average, I'd say people at fascinated by human-like machines (see: Androids/cyborgs in science fiction, or, uh, the 80s/early 90s for fuck's sake, it was full of interest) -- Curiosity is a positive trait in my book, and lusting after our machines is a trait that people from gear-heads to PC Gamers and realdoll owners all share to a degree.
(Keep in mind: As a new technolgy TV was unsettling to some, but like all common place technology it's not a big deal now)