Don't worry, start a Reality TV show called: "Vote Them Off The Planet".
Depending on the categories, winners get a one way or return ticket to various space destinations.
The voters pay for the tickets by voting (SMS etc).
And depending on the categories, either the candidates or someone else presents the case for why the candidates should win.
For example:
Proposer #1: "I propose George Bush, 'one way', since he's so keen on going to the Moon, we should send him and it would be a net benefit to the world".
No. Self sustaining colonies should be practiced in orbit around the Earth.
The moon is an X day trip, whereas the time to orbit is much shorter. It's easier to help them if things go wrong.
Once you have self sustaining colonies in space, it doesn't matter so much how long it takes to get to Mars.
But people might then think, hey why bother landing humans on Mars, we'll just stay in our comfy space stations and send robot probes down to mars, while we mine the asteroids (and build more probes if necessary).
I don't see the big plus of inhabiting other "gravity wells". It's not like they're that much nicer places, and it'll be expensive to get back off them.
Better to work on building sustainable space stations with necessary stuff like artificial gravity and radiation shielding, so that people can actually live on them _indefinitely_. Start by building them near the Earth. After that work on space stations that can build space stations out of stuff like asteroids - space factories. Then we can have space colonies and roam about colonizing the solar system.
Once you have a sustainable space station, it doesn't really matter how long it takes to get to Mars or Titan (within reason of course). No rush.
In fact, the long term inhabitants of space colonies might view living on Mars or the Moon far more unpleasant than living in a space colony.
Trying to live on some other planet or some moon without having a "real" space station seems like trying to jump before even being able to stand unsupported. Yes, maybe you can still do it with great effort and cost, but it's ridiculous and stupid.
The current space stations don't count - they're spaceships "going nowhere", the equivalent of living in a cramped subcompact car. Not suitable places for raising future generations of humans.
> unless you're talking about the Australian word for "the unique, subtle sweetness of deep-fried wallaby testicles in garlic sauce on a bed of artichoke hearts".
What's the Australian word for that? I only know the related Australian phrase used in that scenario - "Needs more vegemite".
The UK English word might be "Bollocks!", but I'm not English:).
But which side of your face/neck area would you be more comfortable with a stranger getting close to?
On a related note - when people hug each other which is more common - their head over your right shoulder, or your left shoulder? These would normally be people you feel safe with in the first place.
Anyway I still think it's less to do with understanding and logic:).
"In the second study, the researchers approached 160 clubbers and mumbled an inaudible, meaningless utterance (such as "babababa") and waited for the subjects to turn their head and offer either their left of their right ear. They then asked subjects for a cigarette (in Italian the request specifically was "Hai una sigaretta?" which can be translated in English as "Do you have a cigarette?"). Overall, 58 percent offered their right ear for listening and 42 percent their left. No link was found between the number of cigarettes obtained and the ear receiving the request. "
Note that no link was found in that scenario. If their conclusion was correct, there should still be a link right?
The developer can usually rely on the users being in an environment that's not secure enough for password to be displayed in the clear, though secure enough to assume nobody is video recording keypresses.
With unmasked passwords, you'd have to change important passwords whenever someone walks past you just as you're typing them in. This scenario can be so common - office, starbucks, etc.
Nielsen talks about usability, so how usable is that?
In contrast if someone was _standing_ close by and you suspect him of trying to see what keys you were pressing, you can usually turn to him and say "Hey, do you mind?" or take appropriate countermeasures.
Most people aren't allowed to kill random strangers who just happened to see unmasked passwords. So if someone just walks past, it's password change time. Whoopee for usability.
So I recommend not relying on Nielsen for advice on security at all. And if this is typical of the level of thinking he does, I recommend that people not waste time reading his stuff.
After all if users are in such secure environments as he claims, why bother having passwords at all? Why not just let the website recognize their cookie and log them in right away?
You should allow observers and party representatives to watch the counting of the votes.
Requirement #0 of democratic elections: elections do not just have to be fair, they have to be seen as fair.
Electronic voting systems fail that requirement.
You can have simple scalable solutions like paper based voting that are easily understandable (esp on how easy and hard it is to cheat) and thus satisfy requirement #0.
So it makes no sense to me to use electronic voting systems unless you want elections to be even more easily rigged. Or the country is so screwed up that too few people in the population know how to count high enough...
In theory you can control the sound of individual apps.
So you don't have to go deaf when you're listening to the quiet portion of high dynamic range music and someone messages you on your IM (and you forgot to set your status to "Busy" or the equivalent).
But I'm not going to downgrade from XP yet - I've seen my friend's vista box and MS seems to have added extra useless steps for all sorts of things - just like checking/changing network settings etc - it's not just different, it's worse in many cases.
> Do you think the existing system, of X.509 certificates, of SSL CA's, of private PKI's, is at all working? I sure don't.
I don't, IMO they are just a way for Verisign and Friends to collect toll.
But I don't see how DNSSEC fixes that at all, it just makes it easy for Verisign et all to collect yet more toll.
If people were really interested in security they would have the https cert stuff behave a bit more like ssh does, e.g. if the browser notices the cert for myfavbank.com has changed, and now signed by a different CA (from Elbonia;) ) even though the cert is valid the browser should give a warning. Wouldn't you want to know if your bank's cert's CA was suddenly changed from one CA to another CA even though the original cert still had 1+ year left to go? But as far as I know, none of the browsers do that.
In practice there really is little difference between a self signed cert and one signed by a CA. Like you said - crappy passwords everywhere, and CA's signing stuff blindly. Self signed certs are vulnerable on the "first time", or if/when the cert expires. CA signed certs as currently implemented are vulnerable to the "some idiot CA being tricked/hacked" attack.
Hardly anyone cares, they leave scores of CA certs (30+?) in their browsers, CAs that they don't know at all. And all the certs are left there because people don't want the browser to pop up warnings and "inconvenience" users. And that's the same reason why people pay the CA's money to sign their server certs. It's not about security at all.
Call me cynical, but I feel the same about DNSSEC. Just looking at the complexity and the way it works. It's for collecting toll ala CAs, and it's for making things more complicated so that people can make $$$ from consultancy and support.
But on the bright side I might return to that line one day;).
Everyone gets desensitized to the danger - it's part of getting on with our lives.
Otherwise we'd never cross the street, or be in cars.
Even those grazing animals in Africa just munch away and ignore the lions not far away. They only take notice if the lions start moving towards them. Despite a gazelle or two getting chomped on every so often.
We could move elsewhere of course, but moving is risky too.
Basically right handed people are more comfortable with strangers approaching them from their stronger (and tougher) side, and thus more likely to give them stuff.
I suggest that the decision to give a cigarette to a stranger has little to do with logic and more to do with emotions and gut feel. Once you understand what they want, whether you give it to them is based on your emotions and gut feel. If it's a decision that requires serious logic you'd be asking the stranger a lot more questions and that's not worth a single cig.
That said, I'd be fine if a pretty girl approaches me from my left (I have to say that the ladies tend to punch me more than the guys though - playfully I hope:) ).
Anyway, I guess the researchers just needed to publish something to meet some quota;).
For instance most people are right handed, so usually their stronger and tougher side is their right side. Thus they are more comfortable if a stranger approaches them from the right than from the left (the weaker side).
When people feel more comfortable with you, they are more likely to give you stuff.
See I can make up explanations too.
In fact, I think my explanation makes more sense. Since willingness to give stuff to people is very often not tied to logic or understanding at all. I bet when giving out something like a single cig the decision is more emotional (gut feel) than logical. You seldom bother using logic for such stuff.
Plagiarism in many cases is a form of fraud. Fraud after all is deception for personal gain.
It may not always be something you can take someone to court for (or prosecute) but I'm sure there are scenarios where you can sue someone for plagiarism.
e.g. you gave someone money because he made it look like someone else's wonderful work was his. But after that you find the person is crap and not worth the $$$ you paid or are supposed to pay.
Ghost writing? That's like doing a milli vanilli in my book;).
As for the many-internal-source manual in your example, they can just have the corp as the author[1], which would not be misrepresentation. Many manuals do not have a person's name on them as author.
In many cases only a few authors/compilers would be doing much of the work - they'll talk to the internal sources and write stuff down.
Even in ancient times when country "A" conquers country "B", "A" often takes people from "B" back to "A" to do stuff for them. That does not mean "B" won. Far from it.
Plus Hitler died and stayed dead. That's not normally considered winning.
When you eat bacon does that mean the pig won? I doubt it.
Germany did well after the war and so did the USA. So that's a win-win, but Hitler and the Nazis most certainly did lose.
Slashdot Mirror
No need, there are cat 3 and cat 6 cables.
Don't worry, start a Reality TV show called: "Vote Them Off The Planet".
Depending on the categories, winners get a one way or return ticket to various space destinations.
The voters pay for the tickets by voting (SMS etc).
And depending on the categories, either the candidates or someone else presents the case for why the candidates should win.
For example:
Proposer #1: "I propose George Bush, 'one way', since he's so keen on going to the Moon, we should send him and it would be a net benefit to the world".
No. Self sustaining colonies should be practiced in orbit around the Earth.
The moon is an X day trip, whereas the time to orbit is much shorter. It's easier to help them if things go wrong.
Once you have self sustaining colonies in space, it doesn't matter so much how long it takes to get to Mars.
But people might then think, hey why bother landing humans on Mars, we'll just stay in our comfy space stations and send robot probes down to mars, while we mine the asteroids (and build more probes if necessary).
This has a different POV on it:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/firstonthemoon.html
I don't see the big plus of inhabiting other "gravity wells". It's not like they're that much nicer places, and it'll be expensive to get back off them.
Better to work on building sustainable space stations with necessary stuff like artificial gravity and radiation shielding, so that people can actually live on them _indefinitely_. Start by building them near the Earth. After that work on space stations that can build space stations out of stuff like asteroids - space factories. Then we can have space colonies and roam about colonizing the solar system.
Once you have a sustainable space station, it doesn't really matter how long it takes to get to Mars or Titan (within reason of course). No rush.
In fact, the long term inhabitants of space colonies might view living on Mars or the Moon far more unpleasant than living in a space colony.
Trying to live on some other planet or some moon without having a "real" space station seems like trying to jump before even being able to stand unsupported. Yes, maybe you can still do it with great effort and cost, but it's ridiculous and stupid.
The current space stations don't count - they're spaceships "going nowhere", the equivalent of living in a cramped subcompact car. Not suitable places for raising future generations of humans.
Talk about getting a seal of approval.
> unless you're talking about the Australian word for "the unique, subtle sweetness of deep-fried wallaby testicles in garlic sauce on a bed of artichoke hearts".
:).
What's the Australian word for that? I only know the related Australian phrase used in that scenario - "Needs more vegemite".
The UK English word might be "Bollocks!", but I'm not English
But which side of your face/neck area would you be more comfortable with a stranger getting close to?
On a related note - when people hug each other which is more common - their head over your right shoulder, or your left shoulder? These would normally be people you feel safe with in the first place.
Anyway I still think it's less to do with understanding and logic :).
See also:
http://www.livescience.com/health/090624-right-ear.html
"In the second study, the researchers approached 160 clubbers and mumbled an inaudible, meaningless utterance (such as "babababa") and waited for the subjects to turn their head and offer either their left of their right ear. They then asked subjects for a cigarette (in Italian the request specifically was "Hai una sigaretta?" which can be translated in English as "Do you have a cigarette?"). Overall, 58 percent offered their right ear for listening and 42 percent their left. No link was found between the number of cigarettes obtained and the ear receiving the request. "
Note that no link was found in that scenario. If their conclusion was correct, there should still be a link right?
The developer can usually rely on the users being in an environment that's not secure enough for password to be displayed in the clear, though secure enough to assume nobody is video recording keypresses.
With unmasked passwords, you'd have to change important passwords whenever someone walks past you just as you're typing them in. This scenario can be so common - office, starbucks, etc.
Nielsen talks about usability, so how usable is that?
In contrast if someone was _standing_ close by and you suspect him of trying to see what keys you were pressing, you can usually turn to him and say "Hey, do you mind?" or take appropriate countermeasures.
Most people aren't allowed to kill random strangers who just happened to see unmasked passwords. So if someone just walks past, it's password change time. Whoopee for usability.
So I recommend not relying on Nielsen for advice on security at all. And if this is typical of the level of thinking he does, I recommend that people not waste time reading his stuff.
After all if users are in such secure environments as he claims, why bother having passwords at all? Why not just let the website recognize their cookie and log them in right away?
Why would you encrypt ballots?
You should allow observers and party representatives to watch the counting of the votes.
Requirement #0 of democratic elections: elections do not just have to be fair, they have to be seen as fair.
Electronic voting systems fail that requirement.
You can have simple scalable solutions like paper based voting that are easily understandable (esp on how easy and hard it is to cheat) and thus satisfy requirement #0.
So it makes no sense to me to use electronic voting systems unless you want elections to be even more easily rigged. Or the country is so screwed up that too few people in the population know how to count high enough...
But it says "Too many replies" which is a bit different from what Slashdot says ...
:).
One day I'll get around to changing the video
I haven't tested this myself but I think something like an oxy-acetylene cutter can be pretty effective and fast.
;).
It will take a lot of effort to recover the data from the resulting molten puddles of metal
If you want to wipe very many hard drives at a go, there's always stuff like thermite, furnaces and bessemer converters.
Not all- just the ones they aren't reselling on ebay ( with custom rootkits and other fun stuff ;) ).
In theory you can control the sound of individual apps.
So you don't have to go deaf when you're listening to the quiet portion of high dynamic range music and someone messages you on your IM (and you forgot to set your status to "Busy" or the equivalent).
But I'm not going to downgrade from XP yet - I've seen my friend's vista box and MS seems to have added extra useless steps for all sorts of things - just like checking/changing network settings etc - it's not just different, it's worse in many cases.
> Do you think the existing system, of X.509 certificates, of SSL CA's, of private PKI's, is at all working? I sure don't.
;) ) even though the cert is valid the browser should give a warning. Wouldn't you want to know if your bank's cert's CA was suddenly changed from one CA to another CA even though the original cert still had 1+ year left to go? But as far as I know, none of the browsers do that.
;).
I don't, IMO they are just a way for Verisign and Friends to collect toll.
But I don't see how DNSSEC fixes that at all, it just makes it easy for Verisign et all to collect yet more toll.
If people were really interested in security they would have the https cert stuff behave a bit more like ssh does, e.g. if the browser notices the cert for myfavbank.com has changed, and now signed by a different CA (from Elbonia
In practice there really is little difference between a self signed cert and one signed by a CA. Like you said - crappy passwords everywhere, and CA's signing stuff blindly. Self signed certs are vulnerable on the "first time", or if/when the cert expires. CA signed certs as currently implemented are vulnerable to the "some idiot CA being tricked/hacked" attack.
Hardly anyone cares, they leave scores of CA certs (30+?) in their browsers, CAs that they don't know at all. And all the certs are left there because people don't want the browser to pop up warnings and "inconvenience" users. And that's the same reason why people pay the CA's money to sign their server certs. It's not about security at all.
Call me cynical, but I feel the same about DNSSEC. Just looking at the complexity and the way it works. It's for collecting toll ala CAs, and it's for making things more complicated so that people can make $$$ from consultancy and support.
But on the bright side I might return to that line one day
Everyone gets desensitized to the danger - it's part of getting on with our lives.
Otherwise we'd never cross the street, or be in cars.
Even those grazing animals in Africa just munch away and ignore the lions not far away. They only take notice if the lions start moving towards them. Despite a gazelle or two getting chomped on every so often.
We could move elsewhere of course, but moving is risky too.
What's with you evil overlords and your strong attachments to "self destruct" systems (and volcanic lairs)?
Yeah I think my own bullshit is better:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1280919&cid=28464547
Basically right handed people are more comfortable with strangers approaching them from their stronger (and tougher) side, and thus more likely to give them stuff.
I suggest that the decision to give a cigarette to a stranger has little to do with logic and more to do with emotions and gut feel. Once you understand what they want, whether you give it to them is based on your emotions and gut feel. If it's a decision that requires serious logic you'd be asking the stranger a lot more questions and that's not worth a single cig.
That said, I'd be fine if a pretty girl approaches me from my left (I have to say that the ladies tend to punch me more than the guys though - playfully I hope :) ).
Anyway, I guess the researchers just needed to publish something to meet some quota ;).
Yeah I can make up bullshit explanations too.
For instance most people are right handed, so usually their stronger and tougher side is their right side. Thus they are more comfortable if a stranger approaches them from the right than from the left (the weaker side).
When people feel more comfortable with you, they are more likely to give you stuff.
See I can make up explanations too.
In fact, I think my explanation makes more sense. Since willingness to give stuff to people is very often not tied to logic or understanding at all. I bet when giving out something like a single cig the decision is more emotional (gut feel) than logical. You seldom bother using logic for such stuff.
Plagiarism in many cases is a form of fraud. Fraud after all is deception for personal gain.
It may not always be something you can take someone to court for (or prosecute) but I'm sure there are scenarios where you can sue someone for plagiarism.
e.g. you gave someone money because he made it look like someone else's wonderful work was his. But after that you find the person is crap and not worth the $$$ you paid or are supposed to pay.
Ghost writing? That's like doing a milli vanilli in my book ;).
As for the many-internal-source manual in your example, they can just have the corp as the author[1], which would not be misrepresentation. Many manuals do not have a person's name on them as author.
In many cases only a few authors/compilers would be doing much of the work - they'll talk to the internal sources and write stuff down.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Inc.%20Cisco%20Systems
> Hepatasty.
Tasty? As with fava beans and a nice Chianti? Eat your heart out Hannibal...
Not sure if people here can stomach anymore of this though - might be too galling for them.
Yeah if the German scientists involved could have built atomic bombs for Hitler but intentionally didn't then they are real heroes.
Imagine what Hitler would have done if they had built the bombs. Nazi Germany most certainly had the tech and will to go through with it.
Then both Germany and USA would have had a-bombs. Not good.
Uh they lost.
Even in ancient times when country "A" conquers country "B", "A" often takes people from "B" back to "A" to do stuff for them. That does not mean "B" won. Far from it.
Plus Hitler died and stayed dead. That's not normally considered winning.
When you eat bacon does that mean the pig won? I doubt it.
Germany did well after the war and so did the USA. So that's a win-win, but Hitler and the Nazis most certainly did lose.
Think that's the law of thermodynamics you are obeying?
There is no spoon.