Yes, how are they going to keep the MIT grad students busy now? There goes the "Workspace Augmentation of Photon Impingement Through Impurities Removal" project!
Or maybe they just went the secret question route? That's how Sarah Palin's account was hacked, right? "Where did you meet your husband" or something like that, just google it and bingo, you're in.
Using an "insecure" (but not obvious) password, in itself, should not be a problem as long as the service cannot be brute-forced. It should only allow a limited number of guesses before locking you out, and I believe Hotmail does indeed start bothering you with captchas after 10 tries. If the actual servers were hacked, it's a different story of course. In that case, a 7 lower case letter password gets cracked in minutes these days. All the hacker needs to do is compute the hash for millions of possible combinations until he finds one that matches the hash in the password file. Hashes are designed to take a fair amount of time to calculate, but modern hardware and algorithms can cut it down significantly.
So either they got the password from a keylogger or network snooper, Microsoft got hacked, or the password recovery system was abused.
I once saw a site that limited passwords to maximum 6 characters (yes, six), with no special characters allowed. It wasn't very important, just some forum where I wanted to ask a question, so I said "oh, whatever" and just chose some random word, but it was quite amazing to see such a ridiculous example of insecurity. I bet they stored the passwords in plain text too.
On the other hand, maybe this was intentional because they knew they had poor security on their server and wanted to avoid people reusing the strong passwords of their more important accounts and then having those hacked? Nah, probably not:-)
Yes, I can already imagine everyone switching to this new "healthy fat" meat and then, after a few decades, get diseases caused by the lack of some nutrient that they used to get from the "bad fat". Things switch from the good to the bad column and vice versa all the time, alcohol keeps switching back and forth, healthy margarines are suddenly dangerous, the list is endless.
If we would just all eat a nice varied diet with natural products that contain a bit of everything without excess, and stay away from all the processed and manipulated light/diet crap that's advertised as being healthier than the natural stuff (until proven otherwise in a big scandal), we wouldn't have this sort of problem.
Not that I'm against GM, but when we start genetically changing the contents of food crops and meat to achieve some kind of presumed health effect, I'm getting a bit worried. Especially given the track record of nutrition experts.
Let's just hope that the kids who are playing our SimUniverse don't suddenly get called to supper and they click the quit bu
We would never know anyway.
And for all we know, they may well quit the game every day (whatever a day is for them) and then restart it afterwards to resume from the saved state. Maybe they'll even play certain parts over and over again. We would never be able to tell.
What do you mean "some" banks? I assume you really meant "most" banks?
I know one thing: whenever my (regular, non-investment) banker sends me a message recommending a stock (which in my case is very rare, only happened a few times in the last 15 years or so), the first thing I will do is buy put options on that stock. I would have made a fortune if I had done that on their last few recommendations (Lernout & Hauspie, Fortis,...)
You could also just find out where they live, and stake out their house. If they have children or grandchildren, figure out which school they attend so you can try via them too. O, and check if they have any pets they really like.
Funny how my memory of olympic games seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of commercialisation around them. I used to enjoy watching the olympics, but nowadays I'm hardly even aware they are being held. Is it this year, you say? And 4 years ago, was that China? I seem to remember a Slashdot article (probably completely illegal, by the way) about the Chinese seeding rain clouds to keep the stadium dry, that's about the only thing I remember.
Maybe the fact that publicity is so tightly regulated might have something to do with it. They seem to be actually reducing their audience in their envy of preventing any outsiders from making any money. Keeping non-authorised people from making money actually seems to be more important to them than making money themselves. Maybe somebody ought to tell them that that is not rational behaviour.
Actually, the year 0 does exist. It is also called 1 BC. And the year "-1" is 2 BC, the year "-2" is 3 BC, etc.
You can use either the ridiculous but popular AD/BC notation (going from 1 BC to 1 AD without a 0 in between) or the simpler and mathematically more sensible integer notation where the year 1 is prededed by 0 and then -1. Most people probably prefer AD/BC because it looks prettier and they don't have a clue about how awkward this notation is to use if you need to use AD/BC dates in calculations.
1. Seeing a naked man 2. Having their eyes covered up when a naked man is seen
I would much prefer to have my child see a naked man (and explain to her why he's doing it) rather than giving her the message "a naked body is a bad thing, something awful is happening, this man is evil". The naked man wouldn't bother her in the least anyway. Why make it so?
I know it takes a long time for a cure to be fully tested and available, but many of these articles make it seem like the treatment works and will cure the disease, and then a decade later it turns out not to be the case. This one was about HIV in mice, but not long ago there was one about leucemia in actual humans, 9 out of 10 would be cured or something like that, and I've been reading articles like this for more than a decade. Meanwhile my grandmother died of leucemia and the doctors said there was nothing they could do. So yes, I'm a bit sceptical about all these spectacular results because they are often grossly exaggerated. They usually morph from "we can cure cancer" to "we've got another cure that might make someone live a little bit longer if he's lucky".
Yes, if you believe the hundreds of Slashdot articles that have claimed a new cure for cancer or HIV, you would expect both diseases to have been eradicated a long time ago. "We've engineered new T-cells that only attack cancer cells" - "We've got a new quantum laser that homes in on cancer cells and leaves all other cells intact" - "We've mutated a species of larvae from the Brazilian Rainforest to eat HIV". But somehow. people are still dying many years after those breakthrough discoveries.
Why is that so surprising? Microsoft software has been based on quantum physics for a very long time now. Users are constantly struggling with the uncertainty principle, and can often make systems collapse simply by observing them.
Yes, and it worries me to read "we don't know how it kills the bacteria" and "it's only 20-23C, so it won't damage the skin" in the same article. I'm not one of those "OMG it might cause cancer" types, but this seems to be one example where such fears could be warranted. After all, you could say "it's only 20-23C so it won't kill any bacteria" but that's obviously not true. Could we maybe first figure out what it does exactly before declaring it safe and letting paramedics use it on a daily basis?
How many molecules does a dose contain? I bet even at 1 PPB you'll still find plenty of allergen molecules in there. That's not the case for many homeopathy medicines, where the solution does not contain a single molecule of the "diluted" material.
On the contrary, they will all go to the beach to be protected from radiation. After all, a lot of homeopatic "medicines" work by diluting a harmful components so much that only its "memory" is left, and this supposedly protects you from that component.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, how are they going to keep the MIT grad students busy now? There goes the "Workspace Augmentation of Photon Impingement Through Impurities Removal" project!
Or maybe they just went the secret question route? That's how Sarah Palin's account was hacked, right? "Where did you meet your husband" or something like that, just google it and bingo, you're in.
Using an "insecure" (but not obvious) password, in itself, should not be a problem as long as the service cannot be brute-forced. It should only allow a limited number of guesses before locking you out, and I believe Hotmail does indeed start bothering you with captchas after 10 tries. If the actual servers were hacked, it's a different story of course. In that case, a 7 lower case letter password gets cracked in minutes these days. All the hacker needs to do is compute the hash for millions of possible combinations until he finds one that matches the hash in the password file. Hashes are designed to take a fair amount of time to calculate, but modern hardware and algorithms can cut it down significantly.
So either they got the password from a keylogger or network snooper, Microsoft got hacked, or the password recovery system was abused.
I once saw a site that limited passwords to maximum 6 characters (yes, six), with no special characters allowed. It wasn't very important, just some forum where I wanted to ask a question, so I said "oh, whatever" and just chose some random word, but it was quite amazing to see such a ridiculous example of insecurity. I bet they stored the passwords in plain text too.
On the other hand, maybe this was intentional because they knew they had poor security on their server and wanted to avoid people reusing the strong passwords of their more important accounts and then having those hacked? Nah, probably not :-)
I find the correct horse battery staple password for ages. Thanks xkcd!
What an excellent twelve word passphrase!
Yes, I can already imagine everyone switching to this new "healthy fat" meat and then, after a few decades, get diseases caused by the lack of some nutrient that they used to get from the "bad fat". Things switch from the good to the bad column and vice versa all the time, alcohol keeps switching back and forth, healthy margarines are suddenly dangerous, the list is endless.
If we would just all eat a nice varied diet with natural products that contain a bit of everything without excess, and stay away from all the processed and manipulated light/diet crap that's advertised as being healthier than the natural stuff (until proven otherwise in a big scandal), we wouldn't have this sort of problem.
Not that I'm against GM, but when we start genetically changing the contents of food crops and meat to achieve some kind of presumed health effect, I'm getting a bit worried. Especially given the track record of nutrition experts.
I love that expression, "less than one in 10 billion, if at all". Gives you a warm and cosy feeling.
Next thing you know, they'll come up with "Universal Warming" and create a new tax on space ships...
And then have zillions of forks creating a true multiverse?
Let's just hope that the kids who are playing our SimUniverse don't suddenly get called to supper and they click the quit bu
We would never know anyway.
And for all we know, they may well quit the game every day (whatever a day is for them) and then restart it afterwards to resume from the saved state. Maybe they'll even play certain parts over and over again. We would never be able to tell.
What do you mean "some" banks? I assume you really meant "most" banks?
I know one thing: whenever my (regular, non-investment) banker sends me a message recommending a stock (which in my case is very rare, only happened a few times in the last 15 years or so), the first thing I will do is buy put options on that stock. I would have made a fortune if I had done that on their last few recommendations (Lernout & Hauspie, Fortis,...)
You could also just find out where they live, and stake out their house. If they have children or grandchildren, figure out which school they attend so you can try via them too. O, and check if they have any pets they really like.
Funny how my memory of olympic games seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of commercialisation around them. I used to enjoy watching the olympics, but nowadays I'm hardly even aware they are being held. Is it this year, you say? And 4 years ago, was that China? I seem to remember a Slashdot article (probably completely illegal, by the way) about the Chinese seeding rain clouds to keep the stadium dry, that's about the only thing I remember.
Maybe the fact that publicity is so tightly regulated might have something to do with it. They seem to be actually reducing their audience in their envy of preventing any outsiders from making any money. Keeping non-authorised people from making money actually seems to be more important to them than making money themselves. Maybe somebody ought to tell them that that is not rational behaviour.
Actually, the year 0 does exist. It is also called 1 BC. And the year "-1" is 2 BC, the year "-2" is 3 BC, etc.
You can use either the ridiculous but popular AD/BC notation (going from 1 BC to 1 AD without a 0 in between) or the simpler and mathematically more sensible integer notation where the year 1 is prededed by 0 and then -1. Most people probably prefer AD/BC because it looks prettier and they don't have a clue about how awkward this notation is to use if you need to use AD/BC dates in calculations.
1. Seeing a naked man
2. Having their eyes covered up when a naked man is seen
I would much prefer to have my child see a naked man (and explain to her why he's doing it) rather than giving her the message "a naked body is a bad thing, something awful is happening, this man is evil". The naked man wouldn't bother her in the least anyway. Why make it so?
I know it takes a long time for a cure to be fully tested and available, but many of these articles make it seem like the treatment works and will cure the disease, and then a decade later it turns out not to be the case. This one was about HIV in mice, but not long ago there was one about leucemia in actual humans, 9 out of 10 would be cured or something like that, and I've been reading articles like this for more than a decade. Meanwhile my grandmother died of leucemia and the doctors said there was nothing they could do. So yes, I'm a bit sceptical about all these spectacular results because they are often grossly exaggerated. They usually morph from "we can cure cancer" to "we've got another cure that might make someone live a little bit longer if he's lucky".
Yes, if you believe the hundreds of Slashdot articles that have claimed a new cure for cancer or HIV, you would expect both diseases to have been eradicated a long time ago. "We've engineered new T-cells that only attack cancer cells" - "We've got a new quantum laser that homes in on cancer cells and leaves all other cells intact" - "We've mutated a species of larvae from the Brazilian Rainforest to eat HIV". But somehow. people are still dying many years after those breakthrough discoveries.
I'll believe it when I see it.
as soon as they try to pass an airport security checkpoint...
Why is that so surprising? Microsoft software has been based on quantum physics for a very long time now. Users are constantly struggling with the uncertainty principle, and can often make systems collapse simply by observing them.
Maybe the judge thought they were talking about Germany, Pennsylvania?
Yes, and it worries me to read "we don't know how it kills the bacteria" and "it's only 20-23C, so it won't damage the skin" in the same article. I'm not one of those "OMG it might cause cancer" types, but this seems to be one example where such fears could be warranted. After all, you could say "it's only 20-23C so it won't kill any bacteria" but that's obviously not true. Could we maybe first figure out what it does exactly before declaring it safe and letting paramedics use it on a daily basis?
How many molecules does a dose contain? I bet even at 1 PPB you'll still find plenty of allergen molecules in there. That's not the case for many homeopathy medicines, where the solution does not contain a single molecule of the "diluted" material.
On the contrary, they will all go to the beach to be protected from radiation. After all, a lot of homeopatic "medicines" work by diluting a harmful components so much that only its "memory" is left, and this supposedly protects you from that component.
In a book or a movie, that would be unlikely. But never mind, I guess my joke didn't really work.
Problem is, if a 5 year old comes into a house to fix the cable, that could be considered child porn.
Come on, that comment was funny, definitely not flamebait. Someone here has no sense of irony.