Well, the strength of your password depends on what you're guarding.
And how weak the other weak points are.
To me it's no big deal that: "many people don't seem to care very much, or don't think enough about it." Why? Because many sites themselves don't care very much or don't think enough about it.
They do stuff like encourage users to set security questions with easily guessable answers.
Yes users don't always[1] have to set "my first pet's name" to their actual first pet's name, but those sort of questions encourage the particularly exploitable people to do the wrong thing.
Why waste your time using a 30 character long secure passphrase when the backdoor you are forced to provide is so much easier to get in? Just stick with something more convenient for you. You don't always have to outrun the bear- just outrun the ignorant:).
Despite all that stupidity, only a small percentage get exploited.
[1] There are some places that actually limit the range of answers you can give to those questions. I wonder if there would be a site stupid enough to have: "what state were you born in" with the answer choices in a drop down list?:).
If you're really just a mere puppet on strings, then it should not be considered a great loss if you are discarded just because you turned out to not meet the specs.
On the other hand if you somehow disagreed and took appropriate actions as a result, you might not be a mere puppet on strings to be discarded lightly...:)
Seriously, it is silly to think the universe is so simple that those popular but stupid arguments/statements about freewill actually _must_ apply.
After all it sure seems bloody obvious to me that the universe isn't that boring (or at least this particular universe).
If physicists can realize that F=ma isn't good enough, and things are "more interesting" than that (quantum physics vs gravity etc), why should we assume that "free will" and the universe is so simple that:
"god's supposed omnipotence makes free will an impossibility."
Maybe God and the universe aren't as boring as you assume.
FWIW if God exists and is that boring, an eternity in heaven might not be much better than hell.
Maybe even sensors (RADAR, LIDAR etc) for not just altitude detection but real terrain and obstacle awareness.
Stuff like "After one hour where will it be in three dimensions relative to its original position?" for avoiding CFIT seems about as relevant and useful as "after one hour where will my car be" calculations for avoiding car crashes.
More useful is if the plane can tell the pilot where the plane's projected trajectory is going to be for the next 2 minutes (based on current inputs), and where it's going to intersect anything nasty. Doing this by drawing it on the screen or projecting an image would be nice. If possible also allow the pilot to ask the plane to draw on screen an estimated "flight volume" of where the plane can be within the limits of the plane and the current wind. So in event of an emergency the pilot could more easily pick a valid path to out.
"The country is expected to build around 22 reactors in the five years ending 2010 and projected to build 132 units after and has the most aggressive nuclear power expansion program in the world."
I won't be surprised if they get rather experienced at building nuclear reactors, and build them for cheaper and cheaper. Hopefully without decreasing safety too much;).
Can it learn stuff like: "Plane is to jet fuel as cow is to grass", and "Granddad is to Dad, as Dad is to Son"?
Right now it seems like it's just putting stuff into categories. Categories are just "zero level" stuff.
It needs to learn relationships too. Otherwise it has no way to "relate":). Seriously, if you just categorize stuff it gets you only so far in understanding the world.
There's more - it needs to automatically build simulations of the world outside, and use them to predict stuff. Then if it recursively self-simulates and self-predicts we can say it has some form of self-awareness or consciousness.
If after so many decades of AI research this is about the best the current AIs are doing then it's kind of pathetic.
On the bright side, no worries about Skynet or cruelty to machine minds.
So the patent system rewards those who come up with stuff like "one click" and trolls, but the real innovators often won't get rewarded because by the time the masses "get it", your patent has expired.
To me "Prizes for Innovation" would work better for that. Since hindsight is better than an overworked patent examiner figuring stuff out from vague descriptions. Could have two categories of prizes one selected by the Public, and one by "Experts in the Field".
Inventing the wheel and a chariot before figuring out how to tame a horse or cow, wouldn't get you as far;). But when someone else finally tames a horse, a horse drawn cart/chariot might be more obvious to them.
Money only has value because of people. Lots of things we do only have value and meaning because of people.
If you're the only person around, having lots of money is a sad joke.
If you're the only person around, many jobs in the world are really unnecessary, even if there were robots available that could do them. No need for banking, stock markets. Far less need for email (just some notifications from the bots?). No need for Slashdot - you'd be the only person posting.
Even if you were an sociopath who doesn't care about people, if you were an _intelligent_ sociopath, you'd take the effort to learn about people so that you could use them better so you can achieve your personal goals whatever they are.
Not saying that intelligent people should be like that or be so cynical about it (revisit the first part of my post for perspective), but my point is a rational intelligent human being would at least learn some social skills. Especially when to shut up and not say what you are thinking "as is";). Truth is important, but so is discretion. Being able to convey truths with discretion is a valuable skill, and part of being wise[1].
[1] FWIW, intelligence is overrated. Intelligence is about providing the right answers to questions. Wisdom is responding correctly to the situation.
How's it going to work for ladies who carry phones in handbags etc (many don't use the same bag all the time).
Those ladies actually have a high chance of getting their phones stolen - the thieves steal the bag with the phone inside etc. Many ladies typically don't wear any garments that have pockets. Or worse there are pockets but they are sewn shut so that you don't use them by mistake and make an ugly looking bulge;).
As for guys, it might work, but I doubt a significant number of us would intentionally buy a phone with this. If us guys wanted an antitheft phone we'd just buy a really cheap phone. Or "customize" it to the point where its fence value drops immensely.
A way to reduce phone theft is by phone makers making their phone IMEIs very hard to change (and ensuring that they are unique), and the cellular providers blocking stolen phones (even globally).
Well if you check them in, they could more easily steal stuff... Over here, people's cameras etc regularly get stolen when going through the airport baggage system.
On the bright side it stops them from exploding in the plane of course;).
BTW if you ever need to load billions of records (restore or upgrade) into a DB be prepared to wait for hours. Hope the boss/customer doesn't expect it'll be done in just an hour or so;).
At a prev work place they were using an older version of MySQL and the DB guy had to resort to switching from innodb to myisam just to load in a multiGB DB (he was restoring from a backup). Not good to lose transactions just because of this limitation, but given they picked MySQL, I doubt they cared that much about data integrity (the company did lose data or have it corrupted because of MySQL more than once, but hey the company survived it;) ).
If you're smart/lucky enough not to get shot/killed/arrested while doing so.
Might be safer to tape a sticker securely on it: "Hi! (big smiley here). Please keep passing this on to someone else, thanks! Details will be at our project website (url)".
Then pass it to someone that looks friendly (and less likely to just throw it away).
ssh is Secure Shell. It is supposed to be a secure method of accessing a system (remote or otherwise). It does this job well.
But it still has had bugs over the years. So running on a nonstandard port buys me time to install patches. Lots of time probably - see below.
Eventually, what ever port you have sshd running on will come under attack, and it would be best to have a plan for how to handle the malicious traffic.
On my own server I have had ssh running on a nonstandard port for years and I have experienced ZERO of those ssh brute force attacks.
In contrast, that same server's firewall logs has port 22 connection attempts many times a day. I won't be surprised that if those connections had succeeded they would be followed by a brute forcing attempt, because at my prev workplace, our servers scattered around the world were listening on 22 and would get ssh brute force attacks on a regular basis.
If I ever get a brute force attack on my nonstandard port, there would be a high chance someone is targeting me specifically. The action to take in such a case would often be different compared to those "nothing personal" attacks.
Even if I had an IDS/IPS I would still have external ssh access on a different port. Why waste resources (machine and human) on this? Let it protect my nonstandard port.
It's not like I'm running an ssh server for the general public.
To be honest, my ssh server is actually listening on port 22. But 127.x.y.z:22 to be exact. The server's firewall has to be active and redirecting the nonstandard port to 127.x.y.z:22 in order for external connections to succeed. Feel free to guess the correct values of x, y and z. I ain't telling...
So if the firewall gets turned off or the rules get removed/disabled/bypassed for whatever reason, external ssh access could become harder:).
Quote: "Bloomberg has been trying for almost two years to break down a brick wall of secrecy in order to vindicate the public's right to learn basic information," Golden wrote in court filings
So printing money to pay off China wouldn't make a big difference. The US only owes China 2 plus trillion.
2) And even though the US might fuck itself and its citizens by printing trillions, theoretically this is not a necessary/guaranteed result.
When you create money, in effect you are taxing those who already hold net positive amounts of it (whether as cash or as a net creditor). What they hold or are owed becomes worth less.
In Zimbabwe, when Mugabe did that, he and his cronies were basically transferring wealth from the other Zimbabwe citizens to themselves. The rest of the world was mostly unaffected, some even laughed at Zimbabwe.
BUT in the US case, the rest of the world holds trillions of US dollars, and they use it to buy and sell oil, other raw materials and finished goods. So no they won't be laughing.
When the US Gov creates US dollars, the US Gov gets richer, and most of the world living in US's "Zimbabwe" become poorer. If the US Gov doesn't use the created money for the benefit of the US citizens, then yes the US citizens are fucked too. Otherwise, no they aren't fucked - they'd be like Mugabe's cronies, not as rich as Mugabe, but better than the rest of Zimbabwe.
If after a while the rest of the world decide that they are getting screwed more than it's worth, then they will leave the "US Zimbabwe" and use different currencies for trade.
When that happens the US is "fucked" BUT only in relative terms: Before: the US gets to fuck everyone whenever the US feels like it via the petrodollar. After: the US doesn't get to fuck everyone else that way anymore.
If the US was doing things right, they would have used their advantageous position to build up a lead that would persist.
If China sells you stuff cheap, and you pay them in borrowed money that you can create trillions of, you're actually in a better situation than China. BUT if you buy cheap toys and trinkets and don't put the savings to good use, then you're wasting that temporary advantage.
The US is holding good cards. What they do with them is another matter.
When you owe a bank $100,000,000,000, the bank has a problem. If the U.S. ever decides to default on its loan to China
It's not even the same problem. Why would the US ever have to default?
The problem is more like: when TheLink owes the bank 2 trillion payable in TheLink tokens, the bank has a problem, not me.
Since I can create as many tokens as I want:).
Think about it more, and you'll see how even more ridiculous the scaremongering about Evil China screwing and holding America to ransom is.
Sure if the USA creates too many trillions out of thin air, people might stop lending them money, but I think they've already created trillions without too many problems (google for: federal reserve trillions).
And that's not really China's fault the US is borrowing trillions etc. You can say they are artificially controlling the price of their currency. But it's relative to the US dollar;).
If someone is selling stuff too cheap to you, and you are paying them for it with money you borrowed from them, and the debt is payable in money that you can create any time you like, how is that screwing you?
If you somehow screw yourself as a result, it's your own fault.
People can say it's all very complicated finance stuff, but I'm telling the truth as it is:).
Uh how did you come to such a conclusion from his post? Maybe you should have used a better helmet;).
His post was in reply to someone claiming that motorcycle safety gear can allow drivers to "walk away with only minor bruises from a 100mph crash".
Which is harder to achieve than with a "car" scenario.
From what I see the main reason why motorcycle riders in official races walk away after crashes and the ones on the street don't is because on a certified race circuit when "stuff happens" riders usually get to slide a great distance without anything impaling or dismembering or squishing them.
In contrast on the street, all that fancy bike gear isn't going to save you if you smack into a tree or vehicle at 100mph. Or a truck rolls over you.
Most normal cars don't do well against a fair sized tree at such speeds.
So it'll be very very impressive to see a bike suit that can effectively protect a rider in such scenarios. I'm not sure if that "inflatable airbag" suit thing would be significantly better in this case. Better perhaps, but good enough?
So we should just swamp everyone who commits a single crime with fines that are so high that they can never be paid off so the person can never recover?
Well he should sue Facebook if Facebook made incorrect claims about him doing this: "According to Facebook, Guerbuez fooled its users into providing him with their usernames and passwords. One method was the use of fake websites that posed as legitimate destinations."
If he really just sent spam from his own accounts and didn't get usernames and passwords, then yes he should get a much smaller fine. But he used many other people's accounts to send millions of spam.
So to me it does depend on how many accounts he took control of.
Keep in mind that "unauthorised access" to computer material/systems/accounts is normally treated as a serious offense by the courts unless you're "blessed" like Sony... Maybe he should get a good lawyer and argue from the Sony angle;).
When I was in I had the chance to shoot match grade ammunition through a competition grade M-16. The improvement over the standard issue stuff was remarkable. Much more accurate. Much much more reliable.
I think if a country is really interested in defense and not offense it should:
1) Get nukes 2) Train and equip its military force for "insurgent" operations - e.g. sniping with match grade ammo through competition grade stuff, maybe even sniper training with silencers. Portable rocket launchers, bombs, ELINT equipment, long range listening devices etc. 10000 very good snipers/"insurgents" can get rather annoying... Nobody in the enemy team would want to get promoted - since they get their heads blown off the next day.
Of course you'd have to careful that this military force doesn't decide to take over the actual elected government too:).
All these nuclear aircraft carrier stuff is more about offense than defense.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the strength of your password depends on what you're guarding.
And how weak the other weak points are.
To me it's no big deal that: "many people don't seem to care very much, or don't think enough about it."
Why? Because many sites themselves don't care very much or don't think enough about it.
They do stuff like encourage users to set security questions with easily guessable answers.
Yes users don't always[1] have to set "my first pet's name" to their actual first pet's name, but those sort of questions encourage the particularly exploitable people to do the wrong thing.
Why waste your time using a 30 character long secure passphrase when the backdoor you are forced to provide is so much easier to get in? Just stick with something more convenient for you. You don't always have to outrun the bear- just outrun the ignorant :).
Despite all that stupidity, only a small percentage get exploited.
[1] There are some places that actually limit the range of answers you can give to those questions. I wonder if there would be a site stupid enough to have: "what state were you born in" with the answer choices in a drop down list? :).
reporting of an event, happy or sad, can be consumed as entertainment and not as an occasion for reflection.
because the event is presented primarily to arouse emotions
Yeah like Foxnews, Daily Mail and even Slashdot.
And the way many treat US politics like prowrestling, only dirtier (and with nuclear options).
Thus I think it not so much technology that's the problem. It's the lack of integrity and sincerity. No respect for the truth.
The mass media etc are just cynically trolling their "consumers" for hits/circulation.
Like this Slashdot article perhaps? :)
If you're really just a mere puppet on strings, then it should not be considered a great loss if you are discarded just because you turned out to not meet the specs.
On the other hand if you somehow disagreed and took appropriate actions as a result, you might not be a mere puppet on strings to be discarded lightly... :)
Seriously, it is silly to think the universe is so simple that those popular but stupid arguments/statements about freewill actually _must_ apply.
After all it sure seems bloody obvious to me that the universe isn't that boring (or at least this particular universe).
If physicists can realize that F=ma isn't good enough, and things are "more interesting" than that (quantum physics vs gravity etc), why should we assume that "free will" and the universe is so simple that:
"god's supposed omnipotence makes free will an impossibility."
Maybe God and the universe aren't as boring as you assume.
FWIW if God exists and is that boring, an eternity in heaven might not be much better than hell.
Because Eternity is a very very very long time.
OTH if your business is avoiding controlled flight into terrain then the example I gave might be more relevant.
For avoiding controlled flight into terrain I'd prefer something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EGPWS
Maybe even sensors (RADAR, LIDAR etc) for not just altitude detection but real terrain and obstacle awareness.
Stuff like "After one hour where will it be in three dimensions relative to its original position?" for avoiding CFIT seems about as relevant and useful as "after one hour where will my car be" calculations for avoiding car crashes.
More useful is if the plane can tell the pilot where the plane's projected trajectory is going to be for the next 2 minutes (based on current inputs), and where it's going to intersect anything nasty. Doing this by drawing it on the screen or projecting an image would be nice. If possible also allow the pilot to ask the plane to draw on screen an estimated "flight volume" of where the plane can be within the limits of the plane and the current wind. So in event of an emergency the pilot could more easily pick a valid path to out.
The real problem might not actually be super babies. But instead super dead babes, e.g. super dead lois lanes.
:)
Superejaculation can be dangerous...
it will just sit there with a website detailing its budget, schedule, and design as a lesson to us all.
Meanwhile I watch with interest that China is building LOTS of old fashioned reactors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
"The country is expected to build around 22 reactors in the five years ending 2010 and projected to build 132 units after and has the most aggressive nuclear power expansion program in the world."
I won't be surprised if they get rather experienced at building nuclear reactors, and build them for cheaper and cheaper. Hopefully without decreasing safety too much ;).
Not so fast.
:). Seriously, if you just categorize stuff it gets you only so far in understanding the world.
Can it learn stuff like: "Plane is to jet fuel as cow is to grass", and "Granddad is to Dad, as Dad is to Son"?
Right now it seems like it's just putting stuff into categories. Categories are just "zero level" stuff.
It needs to learn relationships too. Otherwise it has no way to "relate"
There's more - it needs to automatically build simulations of the world outside, and use them to predict stuff. Then if it recursively self-simulates and self-predicts we can say it has some form of self-awareness or consciousness.
If after so many decades of AI research this is about the best the current AIs are doing then it's kind of pathetic.
On the bright side, no worries about Skynet or cruelty to machine minds.
It's serious. Just look at Douglas Engelbart and his team. Google for Mother of all Demos.
He came up with all that but 20+ years too soon, and some of his ideas that aren't widely implemented yet are probably still valid too.
Despite him being too early, his work led to stuff in Xerox PARC, which led to Apple's GUI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface
So the patent system rewards those who come up with stuff like "one click" and trolls, but the real innovators often won't get rewarded because by the time the masses "get it", your patent has expired.
To me "Prizes for Innovation" would work better for that. Since hindsight is better than an overworked patent examiner figuring stuff out from vague descriptions. Could have two categories of prizes one selected by the Public, and one by "Experts in the Field".
Inventing the wheel and a chariot before figuring out how to tame a horse or cow, wouldn't get you as far ;). But when someone else finally tames a horse, a horse drawn cart/chariot might be more obvious to them.
Just curious - how does it work?
Money only has value because of people. Lots of things we do only have value and meaning because of people.
;). Truth is important, but so is discretion. Being able to convey truths with discretion is a valuable skill, and part of being wise[1].
If you're the only person around, having lots of money is a sad joke.
If you're the only person around, many jobs in the world are really unnecessary, even if there were robots available that could do them. No need for banking, stock markets. Far less need for email (just some notifications from the bots?). No need for Slashdot - you'd be the only person posting.
Even if you were an sociopath who doesn't care about people, if you were an _intelligent_ sociopath, you'd take the effort to learn about people so that you could use them better so you can achieve your personal goals whatever they are.
Not saying that intelligent people should be like that or be so cynical about it (revisit the first part of my post for perspective), but my point is a rational intelligent human being would at least learn some social skills. Especially when to shut up and not say what you are thinking "as is"
[1] FWIW, intelligence is overrated. Intelligence is about providing the right answers to questions. Wisdom is responding correctly to the situation.
How's it going to work for ladies who carry phones in handbags etc (many don't use the same bag all the time).
;).
Those ladies actually have a high chance of getting their phones stolen - the thieves steal the bag with the phone inside etc. Many ladies typically don't wear any garments that have pockets. Or worse there are pockets but they are sewn shut so that you don't use them by mistake and make an ugly looking bulge
As for guys, it might work, but I doubt a significant number of us would intentionally buy a phone with this. If us guys wanted an antitheft phone we'd just buy a really cheap phone. Or "customize" it to the point where its fence value drops immensely.
A way to reduce phone theft is by phone makers making their phone IMEIs very hard to change (and ensuring that they are unique), and the cellular providers blocking stolen phones (even globally).
Well if you check them in, they could more easily steal stuff... Over here, people's cameras etc regularly get stolen when going through the airport baggage system.
;).
On the bright side it stops them from exploding in the plane of course
Or assumes has committed a "real crime" but is hard to prosecute?
BTW if you ever need to load billions of records (restore or upgrade) into a DB be prepared to wait for hours. Hope the boss/customer doesn't expect it'll be done in just an hour or so ;).
This guy took 45 minutes to insert 40 million rows:
http://www.justincarmony.com/blog/2009/01/12/mysql-40-million-rows-myisam-innodb/
This guy probably did better:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Mysql-and-a-billion-rows-using-innodb-87890
At a prev work place they were using an older version of MySQL and the DB guy had to resort to switching from innodb to myisam just to load in a multiGB DB (he was restoring from a backup). Not good to lose transactions just because of this limitation, but given they picked MySQL, I doubt they cared that much about data integrity (the company did lose data or have it corrupted because of MySQL more than once, but hey the company survived it ;) ).
Though, if you lifted it from the bottom....
Yeah some people do "move house" like that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T6Md60pBd4
If you're smart/lucky enough not to get shot/killed/arrested while doing so.
Might be safer to tape a sticker securely on it: "Hi! (big smiley here). Please keep passing this on to someone else, thanks! Details will be at our project website (url)".
Then pass it to someone that looks friendly (and less likely to just throw it away).
1. Pretend it's not there and go on a tour of the most patriotic American landmarks to demonstrate your loyalty to the United States.
That could be rather dangerous.
How about put a sticker on it: "Hi! :). Please pass this to the next person you see, thanks! Details at our project website (url here)".
ssh is Secure Shell. It is supposed to be a secure method of accessing a system (remote or otherwise). It does this job well.
But it still has had bugs over the years. So running on a nonstandard port buys me time to install patches. Lots of time probably - see below.
Eventually, what ever port you have sshd running on will come under attack, and it would be best to have a plan for how to handle the malicious traffic.
On my own server I have had ssh running on a nonstandard port for years and I have experienced ZERO of those ssh brute force attacks.
In contrast, that same server's firewall logs has port 22 connection attempts many times a day. I won't be surprised that if those connections had succeeded they would be followed by a brute forcing attempt, because at my prev workplace, our servers scattered around the world were listening on 22 and would get ssh brute force attacks on a regular basis.
If I ever get a brute force attack on my nonstandard port, there would be a high chance someone is targeting me specifically. The action to take in such a case would often be different compared to those "nothing personal" attacks.
Even if I had an IDS/IPS I would still have external ssh access on a different port. Why waste resources (machine and human) on this? Let it protect my nonstandard port.
It's not like I'm running an ssh server for the general public.
To be honest, my ssh server is actually listening on port 22. But 127.x.y.z:22 to be exact. The server's firewall has to be active and redirecting the nonstandard port to 127.x.y.z:22 in order for external connections to succeed. Feel free to guess the correct values of x, y and z. I ain't telling...
So if the firewall gets turned off or the rules get removed/disabled/bypassed for whatever reason, external ssh access could become harder :).
1) They have already printed trillions. As I said in my post, google for: federal reserve trillions.
Example: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=armOzfkwtCA4
And they've been trying to hide it: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-03-19/fed-loses-bid-for-review-of-disclosure-ruling-on-u-s-bank-bailout-records.html
Quote: "Bloomberg has been trying for almost two years to break down a brick wall of secrecy in order to vindicate the public's right to learn basic information," Golden wrote in court filings
So printing money to pay off China wouldn't make a big difference. The US only owes China 2 plus trillion.
2) And even though the US might fuck itself and its citizens by printing trillions, theoretically this is not a necessary/guaranteed result.
When you create money, in effect you are taxing those who already hold net positive amounts of it (whether as cash or as a net creditor). What they hold or are owed becomes worth less.
In Zimbabwe, when Mugabe did that, he and his cronies were basically transferring wealth from the other Zimbabwe citizens to themselves. The rest of the world was mostly unaffected, some even laughed at Zimbabwe.
BUT in the US case, the rest of the world holds trillions of US dollars, and they use it to buy and sell oil, other raw materials and finished goods. So no they won't be laughing.
When the US Gov creates US dollars, the US Gov gets richer, and most of the world living in US's "Zimbabwe" become poorer. If the US Gov doesn't use the created money for the benefit of the US citizens, then yes the US citizens are fucked too. Otherwise, no they aren't fucked - they'd be like Mugabe's cronies, not as rich as Mugabe, but better than the rest of Zimbabwe.
If after a while the rest of the world decide that they are getting screwed more than it's worth, then they will leave the "US Zimbabwe" and use different currencies for trade.
When that happens the US is "fucked" BUT only in relative terms:
Before: the US gets to fuck everyone whenever the US feels like it via the petrodollar.
After: the US doesn't get to fuck everyone else that way anymore.
If the US was doing things right, they would have used their advantageous position to build up a lead that would persist.
If China sells you stuff cheap, and you pay them in borrowed money that you can create trillions of, you're actually in a better situation than China. BUT if you buy cheap toys and trinkets and don't put the savings to good use, then you're wasting that temporary advantage.
The US is holding good cards. What they do with them is another matter.
When you owe a bank $100,000,000,000, the bank has a problem. If the U.S. ever decides to default on its loan to China
It's not even the same problem. Why would the US ever have to default?
The problem is more like: when TheLink owes the bank 2 trillion payable in TheLink tokens, the bank has a problem, not me.
Since I can create as many tokens as I want :).
Think about it more, and you'll see how even more ridiculous the scaremongering about Evil China screwing and holding America to ransom is.
Sure if the USA creates too many trillions out of thin air, people might stop lending them money, but I think they've already created trillions without too many problems (google for: federal reserve trillions).
And that's not really China's fault the US is borrowing trillions etc. You can say they are artificially controlling the price of their currency. But it's relative to the US dollar ;).
If someone is selling stuff too cheap to you, and you are paying them for it with money you borrowed from them, and the debt is payable in money that you can create any time you like, how is that screwing you?
If you somehow screw yourself as a result, it's your own fault.
People can say it's all very complicated finance stuff, but I'm telling the truth as it is :).
Uh how did you come to such a conclusion from his post? Maybe you should have used a better helmet ;).
His post was in reply to someone claiming that motorcycle safety gear can allow drivers to "walk away with only minor bruises from a 100mph crash".
Which is harder to achieve than with a "car" scenario.
From what I see the main reason why motorcycle riders in official races walk away after crashes and the ones on the street don't is because on a certified race circuit when "stuff happens" riders usually get to slide a great distance without anything impaling or dismembering or squishing them.
In contrast on the street, all that fancy bike gear isn't going to save you if you smack into a tree or vehicle at 100mph. Or a truck rolls over you.
Most normal cars don't do well against a fair sized tree at such speeds.
So it'll be very very impressive to see a bike suit that can effectively protect a rider in such scenarios. I'm not sure if that "inflatable airbag" suit thing would be significantly better in this case. Better perhaps, but good enough?
So we should just swamp everyone who commits a single crime with fines that are so high that they can never be paid off so the person can never recover?
Well he should sue Facebook if Facebook made incorrect claims about him doing this: "According to Facebook, Guerbuez fooled its users into providing him with their usernames and passwords. One method was the use of fake websites that posed as legitimate destinations."
If he really just sent spam from his own accounts and didn't get usernames and passwords, then yes he should get a much smaller fine. But he used many other people's accounts to send millions of spam.
So to me it does depend on how many accounts he took control of.
Keep in mind that "unauthorised access" to computer material/systems/accounts is normally treated as a serious offense by the courts unless you're "blessed" like Sony... Maybe he should get a good lawyer and argue from the Sony angle ;).
When I was in I had the chance to shoot match grade ammunition through a competition grade M-16. The improvement over the standard issue stuff was remarkable. Much more accurate. Much much more reliable.
I think if a country is really interested in defense and not offense it should:
1) Get nukes
2) Train and equip its military force for "insurgent" operations - e.g. sniping with match grade ammo through competition grade stuff, maybe even sniper training with silencers. Portable rocket launchers, bombs, ELINT equipment, long range listening devices etc. 10000 very good snipers/"insurgents" can get rather annoying... Nobody in the enemy team would want to get promoted - since they get their heads blown off the next day.
Of course you'd have to careful that this military force doesn't decide to take over the actual elected government too :).
All these nuclear aircraft carrier stuff is more about offense than defense.
What makes this worse is this guys own son had the exact same situation happen
Really? First his son's house catches fire, now his house?
That's amazing. Are their family a bunch of pyromaniacs or arsonists?
Maybe they really do deserve to have their houses burn down.
Got to hand it to the Brits, now they've even got noncolonies wanting to join the exclusive excolonies club.
:).
Jolly good show and tally ho