We will operate under the same belief that served us well against the Soviet Union. We will build so many nukes and aim them at China that we will be able to destroy their entire country if they should ever attack us.
The problem is that, this time, we'll be playing the part of the Soviet Union and go bankrupt trying to support an Earth-bound force when they can drop rocks on us all night. All of our satelites will be useless. All of our production facilities will be useless. But we'll still spend money on them.
I'd agree with you if this information could be seen as resulting in fewer bankruptcies (organizations giving credit to bad risk cases). But I don't see that as being the case.
The problem is that there is very little risk to the collecting agency but a big risk to the individuals. The agencies don't really care if bad information gets on your report and you end up paying more for a loan than you really need to.
Now, if they had to go to your bank for the info on your account status and the credit card companies for info on how often you paid your bills, that would be different. If I didn't like the info the bank gave out, I could switch banks. The bank risks losing a customer. If my account is a good account, that's important to them. If it's a bad account, it's not that important to them.
And the bank should be checking with me before releasing any information.
Clicking on http://slashdot.org/ would take you to different sites, depending upon where your resolver was pointed... but it wouldn't be because your local government were being jerks. And people would end up pointing to the US servers just to keep everything straight.
I'd much rather that the US stop issuing.com,.org,.net (.edu,.mil,.gov) addresses and switch to.us like the rest of the world.
Using.com was fine, when it was just the US and a few friends. But it doesn't scale. We should take this opportunity to migrate to a system that does scale.
(and we should also adopt the metric system)
(that last bit was humour related for those of you unable to detect it)
Your approval should be REQUIRED before any private firm/individual accesses your data. And mostly, this is already the case. Any credit apps (even movie rental agreements) allow them to check your info.
The only time this should not apply is with a court order.
Now, one step further. You should also approve who collects this information. I don't care if the bank has my bank records on file (including debit card purchases). I do care if some private company is collecting all my info so it can turn a profit selling it (even with my approval).
I know all the arguments about how centralizing the info allows improved credit ratings and such. They're all bullshit. The number of bankruptcies show that.
Why not advocate that each and every nation that wants to should setup its own TLD DNS servers?
If they want them to just forward requests to the ones in the US, that's fine.
If that nation wants to break those searches, that's fine too. The only people they'll be hurting are their own citizens. And the smarter ones will be able to re-direct the queries to other servers.
This is the biggest stupid fight about NOTHING.
The ONLY issue would be.com names and such and what organizations are allowed to register them. But that would also be solved in this fashion. If a Korean site gave "slashdot.org" to one of their friends, then Korea could not get to "slashdot.org"... but everyone else could.
If they can't play nice, they're only hurting their own people.
Yes, the message is broken up into blocks. But each block has to be cracked, individually. And the lookup table is 2 to the 128th and each element is 128 bits.
So, if you manage to brute force one block... you get 16 characters. Or, to put it in context... you'd get "Read "Practical " from the beginning of this message.
Now, for an educational experience, I want you to post what 2 to the 128th would be. 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 now you take it. Go ahead.
Cracking a password means using the hash function to build a list of every possible combination of characters up to however long you want to look.
Cracking all single character passwords takes about a second. And so forth. It's just a matter of time to get all of the combinations of characters. But the time increases exponentially.
Cracking a message means you'll be cracking a LOT more characters. So you can brute force a message, but it will take years and years and years, depending upon the number of bits used in the key.
Sure, they may be the wrong answers, but they're still answers. You can report them up the chain of command. It makes you look like you're efficient at your task.
Cracking someone with psych takes time. Sure the answers you get are correct, but the information won't be as valuable as it was when you first captured the prisoner.
Besides, if the rest of the gang knows that one of them has been captured (along with the computers), they would (in theory) immediately drop or carry out any existing operations that the prisoner knew about and try to contact any of their people that the prisoner knew to tell them to find someplace to hide.
I think the fact that we keep "caputuring" all these "high ranking" al Queda people... but still can't find Osama shows how ineffective torture is at getting real information out of prisoners.
The point is that since you care not about content and prefered to argue mod points in the parent post you are looking for karma not intellectual discussion.
Yet my posts have been mod'ed down.
My statements have offended the moderators.
I have made statements that CONTRADICT the bias of the moderators on/.
"Karma whoring" means when one makes statements that the moderators will mod UP. Not DOWN.
If you are capable of reading, you will see that many of those posts have been mod'ed "Troll".
"Trolling" is the OPPOSITE of "karma whoring".
I trust that this revelation will not cause you undue mental anguish.
Today, I posted comments to the effect that Microsoft was not innovative and those comments were ruled as "trolls" by the moderators.
On/. today, "bashing Microsoft" as you put it is not "karma whoring".
making novel uses of existing technology is "innovation"
So, now the question is "how do you define 'novel' in that context"?
In other words, we're back at the beginning.
I don't know whether this is an acceptable use of the word or not, but either way, taking existing technology and applying it in a new way is most definitely innovative.
And we're still back at the beginning.
What is the "new way" that you claim is "novel", therefore, "innovative"?
The "wheel" was an invention.
Using the wheel to create a cart for humans to push or pull was innovative.
Domesticating horses/mules/oxen was innovative.
Adding a horse/mule/ox to the cart was innovative because it replaced the human and required some expertise in animal control. It also required the invention of the "harness" and/or "horse collar".
Since you are pointing out the modifications to the posts and comparing the "alleged" disparity in comment, you sir, ARE karma whoring.
Strange... how can being mod'ed down be considered "karma whoring"?
It would seem, based upon the current ratings (mine shown): 0, Troll 1, Offtopic 1, Troll 0, Troll 2, Redundant that questioning Microsoft leads to lowered scores. While claiming that/. is anti-Microsoft leads to raised scores.
Or are you defining "karma whoring" the same way you define "innovation"?
Did you miss the entire thread? My point is that Microsoft has not put any "innovative" products on the market yet.
95% of innovation is about building on existing things -- Thats how humanity progresses.
I'm not interested in the 95% that is copying or derivative. Identify the Microsoft products that fit the remaining 5%.
If we use your definition of innovation, then it rarely, if ever, happens.
That is correct. Innovation is very rare.
Yet the word is abused by marketing to refer to products that are 100% derivative.
Every genius, in virtually every field worth mentioning (physics, math, CS, any science, business, economics, politics), is just building upon previous work done in the related subjects.
So? Is there some stigma you attribute to not being innovative.
MS has done plenty of innovation, and not only in computer science, but also in business, marketing, operations, and HR.
So people like you keep claiming.
Yet, for some reason, you are unable to specifically identify those items that are innovative.
The first spreadsheet was innovative. The 10th implementation is not. The 100th implementation is not. No matter how much you want it to be.
The first web browser was innovative (along with the invention of HTTP and web servers). The 10th implementation is not. Nor the 100th. No matter how much you want it to be.
microsoft *has* been responsible for some real innovation, and *does* have a few products that work really well. hell, singularity might even be cool.
Such as what, specifically?
Microsoft is great at waiting until other people have done the development and then buying them out/cloning their work and polishing it. Microsoft is really great at marketing their products. They got people to stand in the rain, at midnight, to buy an OS.
It all comes down to who they want to control (A)
in order to "protect" what/whom (B).
Tipper wanted to control the music industry
in order to "protect" "the children".
Now, some control is necessary. For example, controlling chemical companies so they don't dump toxic waste into the water supply is a "good thing".
As long as you get to define what is "toxic" and "waste" and "water supply".
Which gets down to the level of "threat" posed by A and how much we fear damage to B.
Poisoning every child is usually seen as a "bad thing".
The same with every 10th child. And 100th child, 1,000th, 10,000th.....
But when you're talking about 9,999,999 children being okay for every 1 that gets sick... then you have "political issues". And political issues are all about fear and anger right now.
With FireFox, just add the NoScript extension. Along with the built-in restrictions on installing software (whitelist), this should keep your browser free from anything that isn't an exploit in the browser code itself.
I don't care how "interesting" it is to them. If they can't get their crap installed on my machine, I'm happy.
Novell's old products are great. But their sales force sucks beyond belief. They are one of the few companies where you have to defeat their sales force to get them to sell you anything.
And you had better know exactly what you want because they're not going to offer any advice.
The only time you'll see/hear a Novell rep is when a tech support company goes cruising for clients. The Novell reps love to be driven around to see customers that they wouldn't ever call on their own.
I could double Novell's sales with nothing more than a two line phone and an email account. Seriously. Microsoft takes executives from potential clients to expensive dinners. Novell won't even waste a phone call on an existing customer. They won't even let you know when new products come out that could fit with the stuff they have on record that they sold you.
If this is satire, or even humour, it fails. It doesn't push the boundry at all. This is someone's bad impression of a lit major saying Lucas is very smart.
Yeah, I bet that has them rolling in the aisles.
Now I will do my impression of a political science major buying name-brand cereal at the local co-op.
Wait! Wait! Don't leave. Here's my impression of a male math major doing laundry and finding a bra in the wash!
Slashdot Mirror
A boxer ... an actor ... a singer ... a different actor ... a baseball player ... a radio personality?
... what? It certainly isn't "distinguished service" anymore.
The Medal of Freedom?
So the requirements are
We will operate under the same belief that served us well against the Soviet Union. We will build so many nukes and aim them at China that we will be able to destroy their entire country if they should ever attack us.
The problem is that, this time, we'll be playing the part of the Soviet Union and go bankrupt trying to support an Earth-bound force when they can drop rocks on us all night. All of our satelites will be useless. All of our production facilities will be useless. But we'll still spend money on them.
They're taking the long view of becoming a super power.
And leaving their enemies radiation free.
I'd agree with you if this information could be seen as resulting in fewer bankruptcies (organizations giving credit to bad risk cases). But I don't see that as being the case.
The problem is that there is very little risk to the collecting agency but a big risk to the individuals. The agencies don't really care if bad information gets on your report and you end up paying more for a loan than you really need to.
Now, if they had to go to your bank for the info on your account status and the credit card companies for info on how often you paid your bills, that would be different. If I didn't like the info the bank gave out, I could switch banks. The bank risks losing a customer. If my account is a good account, that's important to them. If it's a bad account, it's not that important to them.
And the bank should be checking with me before releasing any information.
Particularly when you're looking at a webpage.
... but it wouldn't be because your local government were being jerks. And people would end up pointing to the US servers just to keep everything straight.
.com, .org, .net (.edu, .mil, .gov) addresses and switch to .us like the rest of the world.
.com was fine, when it was just the US and a few friends. But it doesn't scale. We should take this opportunity to migrate to a system that does scale.
Clicking on http://slashdot.org/ would take you to different sites, depending upon where your resolver was pointed
I'd much rather that the US stop issuing
Using
(and we should also adopt the metric system)
(that last bit was humour related for those of you unable to detect it)
Your approval should be REQUIRED before any private firm/individual accesses your data. And mostly, this is already the case. Any credit apps (even movie rental agreements) allow them to check your info.
The only time this should not apply is with a court order.
Now, one step further. You should also approve who collects this information. I don't care if the bank has my bank records on file (including debit card purchases). I do care if some private company is collecting all my info so it can turn a profit selling it (even with my approval).
I know all the arguments about how centralizing the info allows improved credit ratings and such. They're all bullshit. The number of bankruptcies show that.
Since they are in the US and under US law, the US's definition of "fraud" and "consumer protection" apply. Not anyone else's.
So the US does control them.
If there is a disagreement over who has what domain name, it is US law that decides the case if it goes to court.
Why not advocate that each and every nation that wants to should setup its own TLD DNS servers?
.com names and such and what organizations are allowed to register them. But that would also be solved in this fashion. If a Korean site gave "slashdot.org" to one of their friends, then Korea could not get to "slashdot.org" ... but everyone else could.
If they want them to just forward requests to the ones in the US, that's fine.
If that nation wants to break those searches, that's fine too. The only people they'll be hurting are their own citizens. And the smarter ones will be able to re-direct the queries to other servers.
This is the biggest stupid fight about NOTHING.
The ONLY issue would be
If they can't play nice, they're only hurting their own people.
Read "Practical Cryptography" by Bruce Schneier.
... you get 16 characters. Or, to put it in context ... you'd get "Read "Practical " from the beginning of this message.
Yes, the message is broken up into blocks. But each block has to be cracked, individually. And the lookup table is 2 to the 128th and each element is 128 bits.
So, if you manage to brute force one block
Now, for an educational experience, I want you to post what 2 to the 128th would be.
1
2
4
8
16
32
64
128
256
512
1024
now you take it. Go ahead.
Cracking a password means using the hash function to build a list of every possible combination of characters up to however long you want to look.
Cracking all single character passwords takes about a second. And so forth. It's just a matter of time to get all of the combinations of characters. But the time increases exponentially.
Cracking a message means you'll be cracking a LOT more characters. So you can brute force a message, but it will take years and years and years, depending upon the number of bits used in the key.
Just this message has 571 characters.
Beating someone gets you answers today.
... but still can't find Osama shows how ineffective torture is at getting real information out of prisoners.
Sure, they may be the wrong answers, but they're still answers. You can report them up the chain of command. It makes you look like you're efficient at your task.
Cracking someone with psych takes time. Sure the answers you get are correct, but the information won't be as valuable as it was when you first captured the prisoner.
Besides, if the rest of the gang knows that one of them has been captured (along with the computers), they would (in theory) immediately drop or carry out any existing operations that the prisoner knew about and try to contact any of their people that the prisoner knew to tell them to find someplace to hide.
I think the fact that we keep "caputuring" all these "high ranking" al Queda people
My statements have offended the moderators.
I have made statements that CONTRADICT the bias of the moderators on
"Karma whoring" means when one makes statements that the moderators will mod UP. Not DOWN.
If you are capable of reading, you will see that many of those posts have been mod'ed "Troll".
"Trolling" is the OPPOSITE of "karma whoring".
I trust that this revelation will not cause you undue mental anguish.
Today, I posted comments to the effect that Microsoft was not innovative and those comments were ruled as "trolls" by the moderators.
On
Either way, you are wrong. Live with it.
In other words, we're back at the beginning.And we're still back at the beginning.
What is the "new way" that you claim is "novel", therefore, "innovative"?
The "wheel" was an invention.
Using the wheel to create a cart for humans to push or pull was innovative.
Domesticating horses/mules/oxen was innovative.
Adding a horse/mule/ox to the cart was innovative because it replaced the human and required some expertise in animal control. It also required the invention of the "harness" and/or "horse collar".
And so on.
It would seem, based upon the current ratings (mine shown):
0, Troll
1, Offtopic
1, Troll
0, Troll
2, Redundant
that questioning Microsoft leads to lowered scores. While claiming that
Or are you defining "karma whoring" the same way you define "innovation"?
Yet the word is abused by marketing to refer to products that are 100% derivative.So? Is there some stigma you attribute to not being innovative.So people like you keep claiming.
Yet, for some reason, you are unable to specifically identify those items that are innovative.
The first spreadsheet was innovative. The 10th implementation is not. The 100th implementation is not. No matter how much you want it to be.
The first web browser was innovative (along with the invention of HTTP and web servers). The 10th implementation is not. Nor the 100th. No matter how much you want it to be.
My posts have not been mod'ed up.
But the post ranting about "bashing of Microsoft" and how it is "karma whoring" is now +4 insightful (and will probably hit +5).
Yet that posts contains no specifics regarding Microsoft's contributions.
It's nice that they applied it to WiFi cards, but the tech have been available for years for regular NIC's.
The question isn't whether they've made flawed products.
The question isn't whether they make flawed products.
The question is what have they made that's "innovative".
If they haven't made anything "innovative", then by definition, their products are copies and derivatives of others.
Don't get upset over the word. I'm sure that you'd buy a new car even if there wasn't a single bit of it that was "innovative".
And "innovative" does not mean "better" or "best" or "great" or anything other than "innovative".
Microsoft is great at waiting until other people have done the development and then buying them out/cloning their work and polishing it. Microsoft is really great at marketing their products. They got people to stand in the rain, at midnight, to buy an OS.
But "innovation"? I don't see that.
It all comes down to who they want to control (A)
.....
... then you have "political issues". And political issues are all about fear and anger right now.
in order to "protect"
what/whom (B).
Tipper wanted to control the music industry
in order to "protect"
"the children".
Now, some control is necessary. For example, controlling chemical companies so they don't dump toxic waste into the water supply is a "good thing".
As long as you get to define what is "toxic" and "waste" and "water supply".
Which gets down to the level of "threat" posed by A and how much we fear damage to B.
Poisoning every child is usually seen as a "bad thing".
The same with every 10th child. And 100th child, 1,000th, 10,000th
But when you're talking about 9,999,999 children being okay for every 1 that gets sick
With FireFox, just add the NoScript extension. Along with the built-in restrictions on installing software (whitelist), this should keep your browser free from anything that isn't an exploit in the browser code itself.
I don't care how "interesting" it is to them. If they can't get their crap installed on my machine, I'm happy.
So, depending .... yes, now might be a good time to buy Novell stock.
Not to mention that the big drop in employee salaries and such will kick up the profit/expense ratio (assuming flat profits).
All of which just thrills the Street. The question is, can you get back out soon enough, at a profit before it comes down again?
Novell's old products are great. But their sales force sucks beyond belief. They are one of the few companies where you have to defeat their sales force to get them to sell you anything.
And you had better know exactly what you want because they're not going to offer any advice.
The only time you'll see/hear a Novell rep is when a tech support company goes cruising for clients. The Novell reps love to be driven around to see customers that they wouldn't ever call on their own.
I could double Novell's sales with nothing more than a two line phone and an email account. Seriously. Microsoft takes executives from potential clients to expensive dinners. Novell won't even waste a phone call on an existing customer. They won't even let you know when new products come out that could fit with the stuff they have on record that they sold you.
If this is satire, or even humour, it fails. It doesn't push the boundry at all. This is someone's bad impression of a lit major saying Lucas is very smart.
Yeah, I bet that has them rolling in the aisles.
Now I will do my impression of a political science major buying name-brand cereal at the local co-op.
Wait! Wait! Don't leave. Here's my impression of a male math major doing laundry and finding a bra in the wash!
Sure, it might be just like the old serials. But why did he limit himself to making a bad copy of them ... with incredibly expensive special effects?
If you want to take that approach, FireFly and Buffy did a better job, with less money.