So, does Gates deserve any credit for helping create the world's most valuable company?
The reality is that he probably had little choice in the matter. Not investing in Apple would risk having Microsoft as pretty much the only operating system company in existence (OS/2, Solaris and others had virtually no market share, and Linux was not really a competitor on the desktop back then). With the IE antitrust suits just starting around that time, killing off Windows' biggest competitor was a bad idea. So, you could argue that keeping Apple alive was necessary for MS, even if it might cause future problems, and those could be minimised via network effects (people needing Windows to run their applications).
I wonder if this is part of the reason for the planned speed doubling - replacing the modems for extra speed is easier to explain to the public (via DOCSIS 3, I expect), but getting IPv6 support as a nice "side-effect".
Possibly, although beyond a bit of management work there's nothing wrong with keeping IPv4 management addresses on the network so long as they can keep the number of addresses low enough, so no particular reason to upgrade existing customers, just a reason to start deploying IPv6 kit to new customers.
It's probably as much effort to rewrite the management side to segment/double-NAT the network as it is to switch to v6. The cheaper/easier route is to just burn public address space like Comcast, but requires available space. Double-NAT for end-users would avoid that, but then you're buying new routers for CGN. At that point, there's no reason not to add v6 support while they're at it.
(My personal opinion is that we'll see a lot of dual v6/CGN deployment in the next few years, thanks to management issues and the need for v4 access.)
For a *home network* you're correct. For the generic case of a *private network* you're wrong. I'm informed that Virgin Media are actually very interested in rolling out IPv6 because there aren't enough RFC1918 addresses for device management. I'm sure that they *could* bodge their network to make it work with the restricted number of addresses, but its probably easier in the long run to just bite the bullet and roll out IPv6 (and on a truely private network this is easier because everything is under your control).
I didn't know Virgin Media had that problem yet, but it is the reason Comcast are doing their transition work, despite ARIN having a lot less pressure on their address pool compared to RIPE. If Virgin are getting close to the limit of a/8 (modems+TV boxes+head end?), they have more incentives to start switching soon. I wonder if this is part of the reason for the planned speed doubling - replacing the modems for extra speed is easier to explain to the public (via DOCSIS 3, I expect), but getting IPv6 support as a nice "side-effect". Plus, as long as no one advertises it, there's less pressure if it doesn't work, too!
Overrated was immune to meta-mods in the past. I don't know if it still is now, though, since the new interface lets you meta-mod comments as under/overrated. You get to tag objections to moderations too (say !overrated or !troll), but I don't know if that counts for anything.
The whole system should just be scraped. Disallow anonymous posting and consider implementing a short "lurk" time on new accounts (more for the spam) and the quality of comments is going to improve.
There already is a lurk time for moderation! In fact, I think metamoderation or site visits are a requirement (or at least highly encouraged) before new accounts can start moderating. Commenting does not require waiting, but then the comments have lower starting scores since the new accounts lack karma.
Metamod still exists, but lost the old fair moderation/not fair options. Now, it seems to be tag based: you select +/- (hence tagging metanod/metanix), and then get to tag the comments with suitable moderations. I don't know if it's right or not, but I've often retagged comments as both informative and insightful.
I'm assuming the changes were made so that there's points for both correct direction (-1/+1) and additional bonuses for correct category. In the past, if metamoderators thought an "Score: 5, Insightful" comment was not insightful, but was generally positive (informative/interesting), the moderators would be penalised as badly as if the comment deserved "-1, Troll". In the new system, assuming I'm right, the metamoderators can argue about Troll vs. Flamebait (or whatever) without harming the moderators so much.
If you let users pick all four words in the password, yes, but that's not the suggestion. The actual idea is that the password is a 44-bit random number created by a cryptographically secure RNG. You can hex-encode this in 11 hex digits (difficult to remember), or use 4 base 2^11 digits. Since we don't have 2^11 easy to remember/type symbols, we use one word per symbol, defined in advance. The end user does not pick the alphabet/word-set used for this.
In the UK at least, it's actually slightly more sensible to save the money and not repay the loan faster. You still have to pay the 9% quasi-income-tax to clear it once you reach the (now) £16000 threshold, of course. As I understand it, student loan interest rates are the lower (positive value?) of base rate+1% (1.5%) and RPI (5.6%). If you can save that £2000, even today you can find accounts paying >1.5% interest, and so you gain from saving the money instead of repaying the loan faster.
Now, the question "is it worth paying it off early to reduce debts before getting mortgages?" is interesting. As far as I can tell, less debt is better than more - but mortgage interest rates are higher than the student loan rate. So it seems to make more sense to use the student loan money as a deposit. That way, you're reducing the percentage of house value you're borrowing (reducing interest rates). You're also borrowing less money from the bank, so presumably monthly payments are lower too. You still have to repay both the student loan and mortgage, but the student loan fraction is borrowed at a lower rate of interest, and automatically scales with income (no/low paid job means no student loan payments and no penalty!). The downside is that you get to pay the extra 9% "tax" for longer than if you pay the loan off quicker.
The problem here is that both Firefox and OpenSSL lack support for TLSv1.1 and 1.2. That needs to be addressed before planning to remove SSL3/TLSv1.0 support. In the short-term, the Chrome/OpenSSL fix will hopefully work well enough, and IE9/Opera can disable TLSv1.0 now if you really want.
Having eventually found the actual paper, it looks like it's trying to describe beams with orbital angular momentum (where, if you cut through the beam, the phase of the light depends on the position) in a similar way to that used for linearly or circularly polarized light. The paper itself is entirely theoretical work, but the results will hopefully be used in future experiments to carry more data, pretty much as the parent post says.
It's not that it supports embedded Flash, it's that it supports embedded COM objects, which includes OLE and ActiveX. Now, if you you're including embedded Word documents, charts, images and equations, it's great. If you want to write your own custom control for your own purposes, that might also be useful! It also means that you can embed Flash and Media Player as a side-effect.
The downside is that Excel (and any other program that can embed such objects in their files) can be used to exploit bugs in any COM object that's registered on the system viewing the file. This includes Word and Flash, but also things like the built-in tree controls. A lot of these were never really thought of as at risk of attack from Internet-based files, since only local applications were meant to be using them. They might even be blocked from loading in IE, too, due to not being marked "safe for scripting/instantiation". Excel has less (none?) of IE's sandboxing or restrictions, though, so you get even more opportunity for exploits.
On a different note, Slashdot has finally fixed its fortune cookie generator!
You call that fixed?!? I don't know what you're seeing, but over here on my screen, it's currently showing about 200 different quotes all separated by "%". I wouldn't exactly call that "fixed".
It was unstuck and working here about an hour ago. Now, it's completely broken and showing all of the fortunes.
I could be wrong, having not used Android, but isn't it just a scientific calculator? If you type "0.0634+0.113 sin", it's waiting for the argument to pass in to sin, so "0.0634+0.113 sin 30". All the physical scientific calculators I've seen behave the same way, so they can handle operator precedence correctly, unlike your "normal" desktop calculator.
Removing or disabling the affected CA in the browser would be a simple enough workaround in this case, although you'd then have to trust individual certificates by hand. If previously seen certificates could be trusted directly, without fully trusting the CA, that would be even better. For example, I could trust that the existing Google certificates are good, but no longer trust the CA certificate that signed them.
You'd probably want separate levels of trust, so that certificate revocations would still be valid. That would still allow possible DoS if the CA certs were compromised, but that's still an issue now.
I'm using an nVidia GT 240 connected to a BenQ T241W LCD running in its native resolution of 1920x1200 via HDMI on Windows 7 Ultimate, with graphics drivers updated earlier this month and I'm seeing the font issue as described by the previous poster.
Some letters look randomly bolded. Some letters look randomly thinned.
I believe I've done ClearType tuning already.
In my case, that seemed to be a side effect of the hardware acceleration. If you set gfx.direct2d.disabled=true in about:config and restart Firefox, that might fix the issue for you.
they created an entirely new and huge problem (destroying
SIOCGIFCONF backwards compat hurt IPV6 deployment in operating
systems on a massive scale) by not making their sockaddr be
a power of 2 in size.
I still haven't heard anyone explain why that is so catastrophically bad. It may be, but in practice, I haven't seen how this afflicts me.
There are only two possibilities I can think of here. Based on the Linux definition of sockaddr_in6, word-alignment on 64-bit could be a problem in the case of large arrays, but padding by the compiler would avoid that. Otherwise, the only other possibility is that since a new API was added for querying IPv6 (and v4) addresses, a lot of programs would need to be altered to handle both types of addresses, rather than just v4.
I think the credentials are just your account existing for a while, making sure moderation is enabled in your account preferences, and avoiding lots of downmods (possibly). Metamoderating also seems to help, too, and you'll probably see the metamod invitations at the top of the screen first, before you get mod points.
It's true that home users would not have to replace routers for IPv4+NAT. As a lot of these run Linux, though, these should be flash-upgradable to IPv6 too with little effort. I doubt any manufacturers will provide the updates for this, though, and DD-WRT etc. just aren't easy or reliable enough for general users in my experience.
On the ISP side, I can't see much difference either way, since they'll have to buy new IPv6-capable routers (with IPv4 NAT?) or carrier-grade NAT routers if they want to add any new customers to their networks. The router manufacturers (Cisco, Juniper etc.) get paid regardless!
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So, does Gates deserve any credit for helping create the world's most valuable company?
The reality is that he probably had little choice in the matter. Not investing in Apple would risk having Microsoft as pretty much the only operating system company in existence (OS/2, Solaris and others had virtually no market share, and Linux was not really a competitor on the desktop back then). With the IE antitrust suits just starting around that time, killing off Windows' biggest competitor was a bad idea. So, you could argue that keeping Apple alive was necessary for MS, even if it might cause future problems, and those could be minimised via network effects (people needing Windows to run their applications).
can I get angry birds for linux?
http://chrome.angrybirds.com/ seems to work fine.
I wonder if this is part of the reason for the planned speed doubling - replacing the modems for extra speed is easier to explain to the public (via DOCSIS 3, I expect), but getting IPv6 support as a nice "side-effect".
Possibly, although beyond a bit of management work there's nothing wrong with keeping IPv4 management addresses on the network so long as they can keep the number of addresses low enough, so no particular reason to upgrade existing customers, just a reason to start deploying IPv6 kit to new customers.
It's probably as much effort to rewrite the management side to segment/double-NAT the network as it is to switch to v6. The cheaper/easier route is to just burn public address space like Comcast, but requires available space. Double-NAT for end-users would avoid that, but then you're buying new routers for CGN. At that point, there's no reason not to add v6 support while they're at it.
(My personal opinion is that we'll see a lot of dual v6/CGN deployment in the next few years, thanks to management issues and the need for v4 access.)
For a *home network* you're correct. For the generic case of a *private network* you're wrong. I'm informed that Virgin Media are actually very interested in rolling out IPv6 because there aren't enough RFC1918 addresses for device management. I'm sure that they *could* bodge their network to make it work with the restricted number of addresses, but its probably easier in the long run to just bite the bullet and roll out IPv6 (and on a truely private network this is easier because everything is under your control).
I didn't know Virgin Media had that problem yet, but it is the reason Comcast are doing their transition work, despite ARIN having a lot less pressure on their address pool compared to RIPE. If Virgin are getting close to the limit of a /8 (modems+TV boxes+head end?), they have more incentives to start switching soon. I wonder if this is part of the reason for the planned speed doubling - replacing the modems for extra speed is easier to explain to the public (via DOCSIS 3, I expect), but getting IPv6 support as a nice "side-effect". Plus, as long as no one advertises it, there's less pressure if it doesn't work, too!
Disabling JavaScript works here to get around the SOPA banners (which are pretty pointless outside the US, since we can't do anything much about it).
What difference does using a BSD-like licence in place of the GPL actually make in terms of patents?
If you're using the brcmsmac driver by any chance, it doesn't actually support ad-hoc mode, regardless of IPv6.
Overrated was immune to meta-mods in the past. I don't know if it still is now, though, since the new interface lets you meta-mod comments as under/overrated. You get to tag objections to moderations too (say !overrated or !troll), but I don't know if that counts for anything.
The whole system should just be scraped. Disallow anonymous posting and consider implementing a short "lurk" time on new accounts (more for the spam) and the quality of comments is going to improve.
There already is a lurk time for moderation! In fact, I think metamoderation or site visits are a requirement (or at least highly encouraged) before new accounts can start moderating. Commenting does not require waiting, but then the comments have lower starting scores since the new accounts lack karma.
Metamod still exists, but lost the old fair moderation/not fair options. Now, it seems to be tag based: you select +/- (hence tagging metanod/metanix), and then get to tag the comments with suitable moderations. I don't know if it's right or not, but I've often retagged comments as both informative and insightful.
I'm assuming the changes were made so that there's points for both correct direction (-1/+1) and additional bonuses for correct category. In the past, if metamoderators thought an "Score: 5, Insightful" comment was not insightful, but was generally positive (informative/interesting), the moderators would be penalised as badly as if the comment deserved "-1, Troll". In the new system, assuming I'm right, the metamoderators can argue about Troll vs. Flamebait (or whatever) without harming the moderators so much.
If you let users pick all four words in the password, yes, but that's not the suggestion. The actual idea is that the password is a 44-bit random number created by a cryptographically secure RNG. You can hex-encode this in 11 hex digits (difficult to remember), or use 4 base 2^11 digits. Since we don't have 2^11 easy to remember/type symbols, we use one word per symbol, defined in advance. The end user does not pick the alphabet/word-set used for this.
It could be another WMF-style exploit, too.
In the UK at least, it's actually slightly more sensible to save the money and not repay the loan faster. You still have to pay the 9% quasi-income-tax to clear it once you reach the (now) £16000 threshold, of course. As I understand it, student loan interest rates are the lower (positive value?) of base rate+1% (1.5%) and RPI (5.6%). If you can save that £2000, even today you can find accounts paying >1.5% interest, and so you gain from saving the money instead of repaying the loan faster.
Now, the question "is it worth paying it off early to reduce debts before getting mortgages?" is interesting. As far as I can tell, less debt is better than more - but mortgage interest rates are higher than the student loan rate. So it seems to make more sense to use the student loan money as a deposit. That way, you're reducing the percentage of house value you're borrowing (reducing interest rates). You're also borrowing less money from the bank, so presumably monthly payments are lower too. You still have to repay both the student loan and mortgage, but the student loan fraction is borrowed at a lower rate of interest, and automatically scales with income (no/low paid job means no student loan payments and no penalty!). The downside is that you get to pay the extra 9% "tax" for longer than if you pay the loan off quicker.
The problem here is that both Firefox and OpenSSL lack support for TLSv1.1 and 1.2. That needs to be addressed before planning to remove SSL3/TLSv1.0 support. In the short-term, the Chrome/OpenSSL fix will hopefully work well enough, and IE9/Opera can disable TLSv1.0 now if you really want.
Having eventually found the actual paper, it looks like it's trying to describe beams with orbital angular momentum (where, if you cut through the beam, the phase of the light depends on the position) in a similar way to that used for linearly or circularly polarized light. The paper itself is entirely theoretical work, but the results will hopefully be used in future experiments to carry more data, pretty much as the parent post says.
It's not that it supports embedded Flash, it's that it supports embedded COM objects, which includes OLE and ActiveX. Now, if you you're including embedded Word documents, charts, images and equations, it's great. If you want to write your own custom control for your own purposes, that might also be useful! It also means that you can embed Flash and Media Player as a side-effect.
The downside is that Excel (and any other program that can embed such objects in their files) can be used to exploit bugs in any COM object that's registered on the system viewing the file. This includes Word and Flash, but also things like the built-in tree controls. A lot of these were never really thought of as at risk of attack from Internet-based files, since only local applications were meant to be using them. They might even be blocked from loading in IE, too, due to not being marked "safe for scripting/instantiation". Excel has less (none?) of IE's sandboxing or restrictions, though, so you get even more opportunity for exploits.
Also do we have Perl running inside a browser nowadays?
Only on IE with ActivePerl installed, where you have (optional?) PerlScript.
On a different note, Slashdot has finally fixed its fortune cookie generator!
You call that fixed?!? I don't know what you're seeing, but over here on my screen, it's currently showing about 200 different quotes all separated by "%". I wouldn't exactly call that "fixed".
It was unstuck and working here about an hour ago. Now, it's completely broken and showing all of the fortunes.
I could be wrong, having not used Android, but isn't it just a scientific calculator? If you type "0.0634+0.113 sin", it's waiting for the argument to pass in to sin, so "0.0634+0.113 sin 30". All the physical scientific calculators I've seen behave the same way, so they can handle operator precedence correctly, unlike your "normal" desktop calculator.
Is that a real award?
It was when the achievement system was added (1st April 2009).
Removing or disabling the affected CA in the browser would be a simple enough workaround in this case, although you'd then have to trust individual certificates by hand. If previously seen certificates could be trusted directly, without fully trusting the CA, that would be even better. For example, I could trust that the existing Google certificates are good, but no longer trust the CA certificate that signed them.
You'd probably want separate levels of trust, so that certificate revocations would still be valid. That would still allow possible DoS if the CA certs were compromised, but that's still an issue now.
I'm using an nVidia GT 240 connected to a BenQ T241W LCD running in its native resolution of 1920x1200 via HDMI on Windows 7 Ultimate, with graphics drivers updated earlier this month and I'm seeing the font issue as described by the previous poster.
Some letters look randomly bolded. Some letters look randomly thinned.
I believe I've done ClearType tuning already.
In my case, that seemed to be a side effect of the hardware acceleration. If you set gfx.direct2d.disabled=true in about:config and restart Firefox, that might fix the issue for you.
they created an entirely new and huge problem (destroying SIOCGIFCONF backwards compat hurt IPV6 deployment in operating systems on a massive scale) by not making their sockaddr be a power of 2 in size.
I still haven't heard anyone explain why that is so catastrophically bad. It may be, but in practice, I haven't seen how this afflicts me.
There are only two possibilities I can think of here. Based on the Linux definition of sockaddr_in6, word-alignment on 64-bit could be a problem in the case of large arrays, but padding by the compiler would avoid that. Otherwise, the only other possibility is that since a new API was added for querying IPv6 (and v4) addresses, a lot of programs would need to be altered to handle both types of addresses, rather than just v4.
I think the credentials are just your account existing for a while, making sure moderation is enabled in your account preferences, and avoiding lots of downmods (possibly). Metamoderating also seems to help, too, and you'll probably see the metamod invitations at the top of the screen first, before you get mod points.
It's true that home users would not have to replace routers for IPv4+NAT. As a lot of these run Linux, though, these should be flash-upgradable to IPv6 too with little effort. I doubt any manufacturers will provide the updates for this, though, and DD-WRT etc. just aren't easy or reliable enough for general users in my experience.
On the ISP side, I can't see much difference either way, since they'll have to buy new IPv6-capable routers (with IPv4 NAT?) or carrier-grade NAT routers if they want to add any new customers to their networks. The router manufacturers (Cisco, Juniper etc.) get paid regardless!