There's no reason why one study should be inherently more valid than the other, especially since many of these other studies have been conducted directly on humans.
Except this study is directly studying the problem by blasting rats with cell phone radiation and studying the effects. The study you cited was nothing more than a survey conducted on Israelis with tumors in their salivary gland. There is a HUGE difference.
The best you'll ever be able to claim with a survey is correlation, you cannot prove causation that way. However, you CAN prove causation with controlled experiments on rats, a-la TFA.
Again, one study is a group actually experimenting on rats, the other is a group surveying cancer patients. Which is more valuable and more scientific should be abundantly clear.
My biggest complaint with Vista was that they stopped giving error codes in the error messages. WTF? Who cares if the user has no clue, -I- can go look it up quickly and have a resolution in minutes instead of digging through the error logs for error codes first, damnit!
Why tie it in with the filesystem and string parsing at all?
Because A.) they started doing this back in Windows 2000, (actually earlier but it wasn't as well documented).
B.) The whole point is for 3rd party developers to have the option of creating their own special folders of their own aggregate tools. That's why they structured it that way, so you aren't locked in to whatever MS decides to label it or whathaveyou.
And C.) These are real live folders, you can put stuff in them and access real files if you need to. The CLSID extension just tells the GUI to display something other than the contents of the folder for the purposes of the GUI. You can't do that with a void folder.
I think 'developers' in that context meant Microsoft Developers who develop Windows and possibly testers of the OS.
No, it doesn't. This is a well documented feature of Windows since Windows 2000, Microsoft has used it to create a lot of special folders in the OS (like the control panel), and has encouraged other developers to use it to create their own special folders.
If you set things up properly, you can use your own CLSID to create a custom aggregate folder similar to the Control Panel or any of the other special folders in Windows.
This is very old news, it's just some dumbass bloggers who had never heard of it before discovered it and went nuts, claiming "GodMode" folders when all they really found was another aggregate folder option that MS set up but didn't impliment. There are a dozen others and like I said, you can create your own if you want to.
This is really starting to get on my nerves. Speak friggin english, don't use random coding shortcuts in your everyday speech. It's lazy and it makes you appear to have below average intelligence when speaking to anybody who doesn't know the reference, and even to some people who do get the reference (like me). We aren't talking code, we aren't referencing code, why the hell would you use "this" for something other than what it means in the current context?
Just quit it already. You're using it wrong anyway, it's not agreement or anything, just a class reference within the class itself. You don't see a bunch of VB programmers running around saying "With" improperly, now, do you? No. Because it's retarded. So is using "This" improperly. Just stop already, it's incredibly annoying./rant
Secondly, your whole post is redundant, as that's exactly what the GP said. The point of the CLSID folders was that a developer could make his own such folder, because MS set up the convention that way and told everyone how to use it, and in fact used it themselves extensively.
It's odd that as their OSes became more complex, they also had less and less documentation.
This is not even remotely true.
I have in my drawer a large DVD case filled with MSDN documentation on primarily Microsoft OS and Server products. I get a new disk every couple of months. This is the Microsoft documentation, and it is vast.
In fact, if it were on paper, I'd probably need an entire library dedicated to it.
In other words, you don't know what you are talking about. There is, in fact, so much documentation that it can be difficult to find exactly what you need in the MSDN library.
The documentation isn't meant for end users, Microsoft designs their OS to be as easy as they can manage to make it for the user at the expense of making things more difficult for the developer. As such, all of the documentation is for developers, not users, because it is the developers who need it.
Getting the full documentation requires a subscription, but there is a lot online at http://msdn.microsoft.com./
It is meant for developers, and was documented in the Microsoft Developer Network documentation, of which you must be a subscriber to get.
In other words, Microsoft told the people who they cared to tell about it via their well known documentation system, and dumbass bloggers found it and said "Oh oh! Undocumented features!"
Tell me, how the hell can it be "undocumented" if Microsoft was the one who revealed it in their standard documentation system in the first place?
You have way, WAY too much free time on your hands. It's freakin slashdot man, we dredge up other people's news and talk about it. It's not exactly the preimminent news organization, and it certainly is not a bastion of truth and fairness in journalism.
So this guy's a douchebag, so what? Why get your panties in a bunch about something that really doesn't matter.
I think the concept is awesome, but that was the first thing I thought too: damn that thing is ugly!
I don't care so much about that though, they could just use white plastic instead of grey and all of the sudden it is pretty, or black shiny plastic and suddenly it is "slick" looking. Not that big of a hurdle really. Straighter edges maybe, they dont' need to do much to make it a lot more attractive.
My concerns were more about the apparent bulk of the thing. A full 10" LCD is cool, but can I separate the two if I don't want to use the LCD and find it cumbersom with it attached? If not, does the LCD fold around the back side of the e-ink screen (looks like it does), but then how is that screen protected? Et cetera et cetera.
Like I said, I love the concept, but I'm not sure I'd buy this particular implimentation. Still, they are definitely on the right track!
Most of the current crop of problems are caused by programmers not recognizing Binary Coded Decimal numbers, probably when fixing the Y2k bug itself.
See, 0-9 look identical in Binary and BCD. However, what looks like 10 in BCD is 16 and Binary, so if you were dealing with BCD digits and thought they were plain Binary, then when the clock strikes 2010, the clock suddenly jumps to 2016. Thus, the 2010 bug.
This was a simple mistake, and an easy one to make given the circumstances. Now, all of the other problems caused by 2010 tend to be caused by pure, unadulterated stupidity on someone's part (not necessarily the programmer's, but could be).
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Goethe has a more long-winded version, which I like:
"Minsunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence."
Re:idiocy? Incompetence?
on
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· Score: 3, Insightful
This is precisely why Windows no longer even fits on a DVD disc any more, and they are moving on to Blu-ray discs for distribution.
Says someone who has no clue what their talking about.
Windows OS code is not bloated because of inefficient libraries, it is bloated because, with the exception of Vista, MS bends over backwards to include hacks for legacy software. Essentially they make sure people whose code relied on some bug or quirk in a previous version of Windows still works in the next version of windows, even though the bug itself was fixed.
One example was SimCity 2000 back in the Windows 95 days. Microsoft actually put in a SC2000 specific hack just so that program would work on the next version of Windows, because they had relied on some odd behavior of Windows at the time, and there was no way to update all the copies of SC2000.
They do that kind of thing for thousands of companies with each new version of Windows, just to maintain compatibility.
Combine that with all of the new features each new upgrade brings, and you have your size increase right there. And I predict the next one will be even larger, for these very reasons.;)
The weakness is the "password accepted, ok to decrypt" command which actually causes the drive to decrypt the data is always the same, no matter what the password is. The key is never re-negotiated, it is set at the factory and that's it. That's a massive, massive weakness, because you can now ignore the password and spoof the "all clear" sequence and get the drive to decrypt itself.
A strong system would at the very least create an encryption/decryption key based on the password, and a very strong system would revise that key every time the data is decrypted and re-encrypted. Once the password is shared between the software and the thumbdrive, revisions to the key need not be communicated between them, making it a very difficult system to break.
it doesn't make the data available until it receives a special instruction generated by the proprietary software
That would never qualify for government use. Simply remove the flash chip and attach it to the same type of controller if that's the case and you have unfettered access to the data.
No, this is an app on the USB drive that decrypts the data, the "all clear" command is sent by the corresponding software after the password has been accepted.
The weakness is that the device never re-negotiates the all-clear command. In that case it doesn't matter if the command is encrypted or not, because it is always the exact same sequence of bits that is sent. They got lazy basically, and didn't think through all the points of attack outside cracking the AES encryption. Basically they had an unbreakable door and left the key hanging next to the doorbell. Oops.
Also remember the old axiom: never ascribe to malaice what can best be explained by incompetance.
Actually the way copyright treaties work is that Americans are protected by Chinese copyright laws if their copyright is infringed in China.
It does not mean the American copyright applies in China.
Unfortunately it is worded such that they would get the same copyright protection as a Chinese citizen, so they may be SOL on this one anyway, given the way they treat their citizens.
Has there ever been a recorded incident where an unwitting passenger caused an explosion? It would be very difficult for someone to open a piece of luggage, and plant a bomb without the owner being aware of it.
Did you even bother to read the TITLE of this story? You obviously didn't read the summary or article itself, because that's exactly what the Slovakian Police did. If the Slovakian Police can do it, a terrorist can do it.
Get this and get this straight, he was shot because he ran and he ran because he was a criminal.
First, the police had no evidence suggesting he was a criminal, and in fact he was not a criminal. He was never tried and convicted of anything, he was not under surveilance for any reason (until that day), nothing. While there were some inconsistancies regarding his Visa, records show that he had entered the UK via Ireland and was well within the automatic 3 month limit granted to people entering the UK via Ireland. The inquest determined he was in the country legally at the time he was shot.
The inquest also determined that Menezes was never running, he had been under surveilance because he lived in the same building as the suspected bombers, but all the suspecions the plainclothes officers had on him were based on that fact and the fact that he had brown skin and "mongolian eyes" as one officer put it. While sitting on the train, newspaper in hand, he was grabbed and shot 7 times in the head. He was not doing anything a normal person wouldn't, his only crimes were living in a building where four suspected bombers lived, and having brown skin.
The inquest determined that the police did not identify themselves before shooting, essentially he stood up, was tackled, and shot before he knew anything was going on. They did this at point blank range, according to eyewitness reports, after having subdued him.
This was an example of where the Police got it very, very wrong, and killed an innocent man for no reason other than they were scared. They did not even give him fair warning, they simply killed him almost execution style. Way to keep us safe, eh?
I've worked for the fed too, and as far as budgets go it's always "oh no, we have money left over, quick find something to spend it on NOW or we'll never get that money next year, and we might actually NEED it then!"
It's basically the flip side of the coin you're talking about, and it comes about when congress could give a rats ass about the actual needs of a government agency. Nothing is based in reality for congress, and it forcess the agencies to base nothing in reality as well. You might be able to save the government 3% of your budget one year, but you'd better not do that, because you know you'll need that 3% the next year, and you'll never get that because your budget for next year will be based on what you spent this year. The best bet is to send Congress a bill because you went over-budget.
It all results in a horribly inefficient and wasteful beaurocracy. There is no incentive to be under-budget, in fact the incentive is the opposite. Going over, but not TOO over, gets you a better budget for next year. It's bullshit.
And people want more things run this way? I shudder at the thought.
About a year and half ago a co-worker of mine accidentaly carried a box cutter (you know those razor-knives the terrorists used to hijack the planes on 9/11) through at least 6 TSA checkpoints before he realised he had left it in his carry-on and took it out.
Way to go TSA, all that theater makes me feel REAL secure.
What if their plain-clothed agents were all bad actors? Or they wanted to test how a non-slovakian would do getting through security?
This just tells terrorists they only need to try 15-20 times at the most and they'll succeed. The recent bomber on Christmas is a case in point - he got on just fine from an area with poorer security. Of course, he was a dumbass, and didn't do any real damage, but he got as far as getting his little bomb to go off.
Another way to look at it, is that at the instant before the big bang there was no universe, or you could say the universe was infinitely small. After the BB the universe was expanding, but there was still no space outside the universe. Everything we consider "space" is all packed inside the universe, and the universe was a lot smaller then than it is.
The classic analogy is the balloon analogy. Imagine three dimensional space is the two dimensional surface of a balloon with tiny points all over it representing matter. As the balloon expands, all points on the surface move away from each other, and the balloon has gotten larger. However, the center of the balloon is not on the 2d surface, the center of the balloon is in the 3rd dimension. Therefore, relative to the surface there is no center.
Now, bump everything up one dimension and you have our universe. The "surface" is three dimensional space, and it is expanding along the fourth dimension. We have no way of seeing the fourth dimension, just like a 2d creature on the surface of the balloon could do nothing but look forward, backward, left and right we can only do that plus up and down. We would need to add another dimension to our repertoir to view the fourth dimension, but we can't conceptualise beyond the abstract about what that might be. However, we can definitely see that everything in the third dimension is moving away from everything else. Therefore space is expanding, and no matter which way we look everything is moving away. In fact, no matter what vantage point you take in the universe it will always look the same, because the "surface" of the universe is what is expanding.
It's a bit mind numbing to think about, but there is no direction you can look at and figure out "where" the big bang was. There is no "where" in the third dimension, the where is in a dimension that we are not equipped to experience. All we can do is measure its effects in our own dimension.
I like Carl Sagan's explanation of the fourth dimension best, but wikipedia does a good job, if a bit on the technical side.
Different elements have a very distinct pattern of frequencies of light they emit when they are radiating. Since we can cause these elements to radiate on Earth to see what the base frequencies are, all we have to do is compare the pattern to the known patterns of the elements to figure out the primary elements in the galaxy. From there we can compare the base frequencies to the red-shifted frequencies and get distance/time. Hydrogen is mostly various blue wavelengths, with a very small amount of red, and absolutely nothing else.
These galaxies are almost exclusively Hydrogen, which radiates primarily blue. That means if you were sitting right in the middle of one of these galaxies at the time this light was emitted (600-700 million years after the big bang), everything would be blue. All the stars, all the gassy clouds (which were probably everywhere), all of it would be blue, because all of it would be hydrogen.
For the pictures, they just shifted the colors back to their original blue, that's not actually what was recorded. We can't see what was actually recorded, because it was recorded with the infra-red equipment on the Hubble.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no reason why one study should be inherently more valid than the other, especially since many of these other studies have been conducted directly on humans.
Except this study is directly studying the problem by blasting rats with cell phone radiation and studying the effects. The study you cited was nothing more than a survey conducted on Israelis with tumors in their salivary gland. There is a HUGE difference.
The best you'll ever be able to claim with a survey is correlation, you cannot prove causation that way. However, you CAN prove causation with controlled experiments on rats, a-la TFA.
Again, one study is a group actually experimenting on rats, the other is a group surveying cancer patients. Which is more valuable and more scientific should be abundantly clear.
My biggest complaint with Vista was that they stopped giving error codes in the error messages. WTF? Who cares if the user has no clue, -I- can go look it up quickly and have a resolution in minutes instead of digging through the error logs for error codes first, damnit!
Why tie it in with the filesystem and string parsing at all?
Because A.) they started doing this back in Windows 2000, (actually earlier but it wasn't as well documented).
B.) The whole point is for 3rd party developers to have the option of creating their own special folders of their own aggregate tools. That's why they structured it that way, so you aren't locked in to whatever MS decides to label it or whathaveyou.
And C.) These are real live folders, you can put stuff in them and access real files if you need to. The CLSID extension just tells the GUI to display something other than the contents of the folder for the purposes of the GUI. You can't do that with a void folder.
I think 'developers' in that context meant Microsoft Developers who develop Windows and possibly testers of the OS.
No, it doesn't. This is a well documented feature of Windows since Windows 2000, Microsoft has used it to create a lot of special folders in the OS (like the control panel), and has encouraged other developers to use it to create their own special folders.
If you set things up properly, you can use your own CLSID to create a custom aggregate folder similar to the Control Panel or any of the other special folders in Windows.
This is very old news, it's just some dumbass bloggers who had never heard of it before discovered it and went nuts, claiming "GodMode" folders when all they really found was another aggregate folder option that MS set up but didn't impliment. There are a dozen others and like I said, you can create your own if you want to.
Basically, this.
This is really starting to get on my nerves. Speak friggin english, don't use random coding shortcuts in your everyday speech. It's lazy and it makes you appear to have below average intelligence when speaking to anybody who doesn't know the reference, and even to some people who do get the reference (like me). We aren't talking code, we aren't referencing code, why the hell would you use "this" for something other than what it means in the current context?
Just quit it already. You're using it wrong anyway, it's not agreement or anything, just a class reference within the class itself. You don't see a bunch of VB programmers running around saying "With" improperly, now, do you? No. Because it's retarded. So is using "This" improperly. Just stop already, it's incredibly annoying. /rant
Secondly, your whole post is redundant, as that's exactly what the GP said. The point of the CLSID folders was that a developer could make his own such folder, because MS set up the convention that way and told everyone how to use it, and in fact used it themselves extensively.
Not when the average reader doesn't know the difference between rain/rein/reign, or break/brake, or lose/loose.
Wait wait, there's a difference? 0.o
Just kidding. ;)
It's odd that as their OSes became more complex, they also had less and less documentation.
This is not even remotely true.
I have in my drawer a large DVD case filled with MSDN documentation on primarily Microsoft OS and Server products. I get a new disk every couple of months. This is the Microsoft documentation, and it is vast.
In fact, if it were on paper, I'd probably need an entire library dedicated to it.
In other words, you don't know what you are talking about. There is, in fact, so much documentation that it can be difficult to find exactly what you need in the MSDN library.
The documentation isn't meant for end users, Microsoft designs their OS to be as easy as they can manage to make it for the user at the expense of making things more difficult for the developer. As such, all of the documentation is for developers, not users, because it is the developers who need it.
Getting the full documentation requires a subscription, but there is a lot online at http://msdn.microsoft.com./
It is meant for developers, and was documented in the Microsoft Developer Network documentation, of which you must be a subscriber to get.
In other words, Microsoft told the people who they cared to tell about it via their well known documentation system, and dumbass bloggers found it and said "Oh oh! Undocumented features!"
Tell me, how the hell can it be "undocumented" if Microsoft was the one who revealed it in their standard documentation system in the first place?
Dumbasses.
You have way, WAY too much free time on your hands. It's freakin slashdot man, we dredge up other people's news and talk about it. It's not exactly the preimminent news organization, and it certainly is not a bastion of truth and fairness in journalism.
So this guy's a douchebag, so what? Why get your panties in a bunch about something that really doesn't matter.
Simmer down man, simmer down.
I think the concept is awesome, but that was the first thing I thought too: damn that thing is ugly!
I don't care so much about that though, they could just use white plastic instead of grey and all of the sudden it is pretty, or black shiny plastic and suddenly it is "slick" looking. Not that big of a hurdle really. Straighter edges maybe, they dont' need to do much to make it a lot more attractive.
My concerns were more about the apparent bulk of the thing. A full 10" LCD is cool, but can I separate the two if I don't want to use the LCD and find it cumbersom with it attached? If not, does the LCD fold around the back side of the e-ink screen (looks like it does), but then how is that screen protected? Et cetera et cetera.
Like I said, I love the concept, but I'm not sure I'd buy this particular implimentation. Still, they are definitely on the right track!
Most of the current crop of problems are caused by programmers not recognizing Binary Coded Decimal numbers, probably when fixing the Y2k bug itself.
See, 0-9 look identical in Binary and BCD. However, what looks like 10 in BCD is 16 and Binary, so if you were dealing with BCD digits and thought they were plain Binary, then when the clock strikes 2010, the clock suddenly jumps to 2016. Thus, the 2010 bug.
This was a simple mistake, and an easy one to make given the circumstances. Now, all of the other problems caused by 2010 tend to be caused by pure, unadulterated stupidity on someone's part (not necessarily the programmer's, but could be).
The proper quote is by Robert Hanlon:
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Goethe has a more long-winded version, which I like:
"Minsunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence."
This is precisely why Windows no longer even fits on a DVD disc any more, and they are moving on to Blu-ray discs for distribution.
Says someone who has no clue what their talking about.
Windows OS code is not bloated because of inefficient libraries, it is bloated because, with the exception of Vista, MS bends over backwards to include hacks for legacy software. Essentially they make sure people whose code relied on some bug or quirk in a previous version of Windows still works in the next version of windows, even though the bug itself was fixed.
One example was SimCity 2000 back in the Windows 95 days. Microsoft actually put in a SC2000 specific hack just so that program would work on the next version of Windows, because they had relied on some odd behavior of Windows at the time, and there was no way to update all the copies of SC2000.
They do that kind of thing for thousands of companies with each new version of Windows, just to maintain compatibility.
Combine that with all of the new features each new upgrade brings, and you have your size increase right there. And I predict the next one will be even larger, for these very reasons. ;)
The data is encrypted, the GP is just a dumbass.
The weakness is the "password accepted, ok to decrypt" command which actually causes the drive to decrypt the data is always the same, no matter what the password is. The key is never re-negotiated, it is set at the factory and that's it. That's a massive, massive weakness, because you can now ignore the password and spoof the "all clear" sequence and get the drive to decrypt itself.
A strong system would at the very least create an encryption/decryption key based on the password, and a very strong system would revise that key every time the data is decrypted and re-encrypted. Once the password is shared between the software and the thumbdrive, revisions to the key need not be communicated between them, making it a very difficult system to break.
it doesn't make the data available until it receives a special instruction generated by the proprietary software
That would never qualify for government use. Simply remove the flash chip and attach it to the same type of controller if that's the case and you have unfettered access to the data.
No, this is an app on the USB drive that decrypts the data, the "all clear" command is sent by the corresponding software after the password has been accepted.
The weakness is that the device never re-negotiates the all-clear command. In that case it doesn't matter if the command is encrypted or not, because it is always the exact same sequence of bits that is sent. They got lazy basically, and didn't think through all the points of attack outside cracking the AES encryption. Basically they had an unbreakable door and left the key hanging next to the doorbell. Oops.
Also remember the old axiom: never ascribe to malaice what can best be explained by incompetance.
Actually the way copyright treaties work is that Americans are protected by Chinese copyright laws if their copyright is infringed in China.
It does not mean the American copyright applies in China.
Unfortunately it is worded such that they would get the same copyright protection as a Chinese citizen, so they may be SOL on this one anyway, given the way they treat their citizens.
Has there ever been a recorded incident where an unwitting passenger caused an explosion? It would be very difficult for someone to open a piece of luggage, and plant a bomb without the owner being aware of it.
Did you even bother to read the TITLE of this story? You obviously didn't read the summary or article itself, because that's exactly what the Slovakian Police did. If the Slovakian Police can do it, a terrorist can do it.
Dumbass.
Get this and get this straight, he was shot because he ran and he ran because he was a criminal.
First, the police had no evidence suggesting he was a criminal, and in fact he was not a criminal. He was never tried and convicted of anything, he was not under surveilance for any reason (until that day), nothing. While there were some inconsistancies regarding his Visa, records show that he had entered the UK via Ireland and was well within the automatic 3 month limit granted to people entering the UK via Ireland. The inquest determined he was in the country legally at the time he was shot.
The inquest also determined that Menezes was never running, he had been under surveilance because he lived in the same building as the suspected bombers, but all the suspecions the plainclothes officers had on him were based on that fact and the fact that he had brown skin and "mongolian eyes" as one officer put it. While sitting on the train, newspaper in hand, he was grabbed and shot 7 times in the head. He was not doing anything a normal person wouldn't, his only crimes were living in a building where four suspected bombers lived, and having brown skin.
The inquest determined that the police did not identify themselves before shooting, essentially he stood up, was tackled, and shot before he knew anything was going on. They did this at point blank range, according to eyewitness reports, after having subdued him.
This was an example of where the Police got it very, very wrong, and killed an innocent man for no reason other than they were scared. They did not even give him fair warning, they simply killed him almost execution style. Way to keep us safe, eh?
I've worked for the fed too, and as far as budgets go it's always "oh no, we have money left over, quick find something to spend it on NOW or we'll never get that money next year, and we might actually NEED it then!"
It's basically the flip side of the coin you're talking about, and it comes about when congress could give a rats ass about the actual needs of a government agency. Nothing is based in reality for congress, and it forcess the agencies to base nothing in reality as well. You might be able to save the government 3% of your budget one year, but you'd better not do that, because you know you'll need that 3% the next year, and you'll never get that because your budget for next year will be based on what you spent this year. The best bet is to send Congress a bill because you went over-budget.
It all results in a horribly inefficient and wasteful beaurocracy. There is no incentive to be under-budget, in fact the incentive is the opposite. Going over, but not TOO over, gets you a better budget for next year. It's bullshit.
And people want more things run this way? I shudder at the thought.
Done and done. Thanks for visiting Slashdot!
About a year and half ago a co-worker of mine accidentaly carried a box cutter (you know those razor-knives the terrorists used to hijack the planes on 9/11) through at least 6 TSA checkpoints before he realised he had left it in his carry-on and took it out.
Way to go TSA, all that theater makes me feel REAL secure.
What if their plain-clothed agents were all bad actors? Or they wanted to test how a non-slovakian would do getting through security?
This just tells terrorists they only need to try 15-20 times at the most and they'll succeed. The recent bomber on Christmas is a case in point - he got on just fine from an area with poorer security. Of course, he was a dumbass, and didn't do any real damage, but he got as far as getting his little bomb to go off.
You don't think the terrorists can use the best actor they can find? Or can't plant a timed bomb on an unwitting passenger?
Another way to look at it, is that at the instant before the big bang there was no universe, or you could say the universe was infinitely small. After the BB the universe was expanding, but there was still no space outside the universe. Everything we consider "space" is all packed inside the universe, and the universe was a lot smaller then than it is.
The classic analogy is the balloon analogy. Imagine three dimensional space is the two dimensional surface of a balloon with tiny points all over it representing matter. As the balloon expands, all points on the surface move away from each other, and the balloon has gotten larger. However, the center of the balloon is not on the 2d surface, the center of the balloon is in the 3rd dimension. Therefore, relative to the surface there is no center.
Now, bump everything up one dimension and you have our universe. The "surface" is three dimensional space, and it is expanding along the fourth dimension. We have no way of seeing the fourth dimension, just like a 2d creature on the surface of the balloon could do nothing but look forward, backward, left and right we can only do that plus up and down. We would need to add another dimension to our repertoir to view the fourth dimension, but we can't conceptualise beyond the abstract about what that might be. However, we can definitely see that everything in the third dimension is moving away from everything else. Therefore space is expanding, and no matter which way we look everything is moving away. In fact, no matter what vantage point you take in the universe it will always look the same, because the "surface" of the universe is what is expanding.
It's a bit mind numbing to think about, but there is no direction you can look at and figure out "where" the big bang was. There is no "where" in the third dimension, the where is in a dimension that we are not equipped to experience. All we can do is measure its effects in our own dimension.
I like Carl Sagan's explanation of the fourth dimension best, but wikipedia does a good job, if a bit on the technical side.
They certainly can, it's called spectrography.
Different elements have a very distinct pattern of frequencies of light they emit when they are radiating. Since we can cause these elements to radiate on Earth to see what the base frequencies are, all we have to do is compare the pattern to the known patterns of the elements to figure out the primary elements in the galaxy. From there we can compare the base frequencies to the red-shifted frequencies and get distance/time. Hydrogen is mostly various blue wavelengths, with a very small amount of red, and absolutely nothing else.
These galaxies are almost exclusively Hydrogen, which radiates primarily blue. That means if you were sitting right in the middle of one of these galaxies at the time this light was emitted (600-700 million years after the big bang), everything would be blue. All the stars, all the gassy clouds (which were probably everywhere), all of it would be blue, because all of it would be hydrogen.
For the pictures, they just shifted the colors back to their original blue, that's not actually what was recorded. We can't see what was actually recorded, because it was recorded with the infra-red equipment on the Hubble.