Advogato (mod_virgule) was vulnerable to this sort of thing before (back in 2002). Won't be surprised if there were others too.
Anyway, I've proposed years ago that there be HTML tags to turn off any active/dynamic stuff.
Currently the HTML situation is like only being able to turn off the lights by going to dozens of switches one by one and turning them off. There is no main power switch to turn ALL the lights off, or even groups of lights off.
I guess it's just me who thinks that the HTML equivalent of a "Big Red OFF" switch would be useful.
e.g. <shieldson lock="randomstring" allowed="keyword,keyword,keyword"/> disallowed material disabled <shieldsoff lock="randomstring"/> state restored to before lock
Where keywords: textonly = just text basic = basic formatting <em> <b> <i> <strong> tables = tables urls= plain <a href=""> no javascript etc images= plain images, no javascript etc. java=java javascript=javascript.
The idea is it will be very hard for the attacker to guess the random string.
I bet Archimedes could have easily got 1000-5000 soldiers. Or maybe even archers - who'd be good at this thing (decent eyesight, steady hands etc). Whether he was able to get enough flat bronze mirrors is another issue, but I won't be surprised if he was able to do that - Syracuse wasn't that poor.
It's not that difficult to aim the sun's reflection at a target. As some people have already mention, some methods would involve putting a hole in the flat bronze mirror and using the hole to aim.
I'm sure Archimedes would have figured out many other ways of doing it, possibly more practical given the circumstances. He definitely was smart enough.
So yeah, on a clear sunny day (not uncommon in that part of the world), if you see 1000 people each with a large flat bronze mirror reflecting sunlight to you, I think it'd be best to make a quick retreat and come on a cloudy day.
BTW, Archimedes also had other defenses against ships attacking the city walls by night.
I guess the persistence of the Romans worked in the end.
Yeah that's what I figured, use a good algorithm (e.g. N vs N^2 ) and as long as the processing loop fits in cache you'll be fine.
And if you can't find/figure out a good algorithm yet, don't do really strange stuff. That way someone later can more easily figure out how to fix your code.
I've always wondered why they started using the term disabled vs the term handicapped. Found that very weird when they switched.
I thought handicapped was a much better term. Especially nowadays in the computer age, disabling something means totally turning it off. Whereas if you're handicapped it just means you are disadvantaged in some way.
In golf, handicapping can be used to let people play the game on reasonably even terms.
I have an USB2.0 to PATA "cable" (probably the interface chip is in the connector), accompanied by a power adaptor that converts line AC to 3.5" HDD molex power.
No enclosures, so less of a heat problem.
I got the set for the equiv of USD13 or thereabouts - and that was probably not the best price. Over here the enclosures are overpriced, I refuse to pay 3x to 4x more just to have a cheap case (and a cheap fan if lucky).
I guess it's not a solution if you mind looking at an exposed 3.5" HDD. But it works well enough for me.
I can accept that two objects travelling together at the same near light velocity, appear to slow down relative to each other to "observers" that are at relatively slower speeds.
It's the time stuff I don't understand, especially when people go on to talk about time travel and so on. Why should there still be a past?
Never mind dark matter. Can someone explain to me whether or not time actually exists (at least with respect to our universe)? Sure it's a neat concept to explain certain things, but I don't see why people assume there's such a thing as a past to go back to. You have an object in position A, it moves to B, it takes T seconds. So why should there be a "place where the object is in A" anymore aka "the past"?
Yeah, that's the part that gets me wondering. People keep talking about hiding away the SQL. But if they don't want SQL, then why are they using an SQL RDBMS in the first place?
Shouldn't they be using something else then? Otherwise they'll get the drawbacks of using an SQL database but fewer of the advantages. What happens if performance in a particular area is not good enough?
Say you want to store a session in a database and you want it to expire after X seconds of inactivity.
A simplistic method would be to update the session row each time there's activity. But this would cause lots of writes which would be slower in most proper databases (those that actually write to disk for writes). An alternative would be the databases equivalent of "update sessiontable set lastactive=now() where sessionid='$sessionid' and lastactive+'1 second' <= now()".
With this, you could have thousands of hits per second but only 1 forced write to disk per second due to that query.
How would you achieve this when you're so abstracted away from the SQL database? And it might look strange to others when you try to do the same thing N layers above the database. I'm sure there are better examples.
Those sort of queries are likely to look different on different RDBMSes. You could make a function that looks the same, but someone still is going to have to write the SQL for portability (and sometimes bad luck, it's not possible - DB doesn't support functions or that sort of function). Also, if only the program's session module does that stuff, then what's so bad about leaving the SQL in there? At least then there'll be some context to understand the SQL (and whether it's wrong or right;) ), rather than it being neatly stored with 1000 other nonrelated SQL statements (as functions or otherwise).
Sure it's ugly. But if people want it all so elegant and clean maybe they should write _everything_ in some version of Lisp, and not interface with the rest of the ugly real world.
Not just anyone can fix Innodb bugs or add features to it. And not just anyone can identify the ones who can from the ones who just say they can.
Plus the people who can may be too expensive for a single user to afford. Sure it may be very important to the users, but if they just can't afford it does that mean they miscalculated and should have used some other _cheaper_in_the_long_run_ DB?
The costs of 1000 users each looking for different subcontractors to fix bugs is far more than 1000 users getting fixes from the primary company.
Even if the 1000 users have the same problem, it is harder for them to share the various solutions to the same problem they fixed using different subcontractors. Also if the users lack the expertise, they will have little idea which is the best solution.
If MySQL AB has significant InnoDB expertise then it won't be so bad. MySQL AB can then be the creator, manager and distributor of the bug fixes and features.
Maybe the InnoDB team would refuse to close source their stuff, even if Oracle tells them to. In which case Oracle gets Innobase but not the team, who might leave and work for MySQL or someone else...
It'll be interesting to see what the core people do.
Yeah a whole genre of shit art. In most meanings of the word. Crap art by bullshit artists.
The talent you need to make "art" like that is not the same sort of talent that Michelangelo, Leonardo, Gauguin, Trumbull, etc had (the artists, not the turtles;) ).
Even I can make a sculpture of someone's head with solidified shit/blood/urine/spit or whatever. Bonus points if you pick a subject that offends 2 or more religious/conservative/cultural groups or something. No artistic talent needed.
Same goes for throwing paint into jet engine exhausts.
I guess we call those people trolls here.
Similarly, it takes zero talent to vandalize a wiki, and vandals usually add zero new information - just more noise.
The gene patent people are first in queue for the father's testicles.
Know the full meaning of unauthorized reproduction...
It's not too far-fetched we already are living in a world where farmers can be bankrupted by big corporations just because their crops get patented DNA by pollen blowing in the wind.
One day if you get infected by some virus that inserts some patented genes, and it somehow manages to enter your germ line, you may end up with serious "issues" with "issues"... Wonder who owns rights to your children...
Heh, I wonder if the file swapping of the crap is so low that even they took notice.
Imagine if the P2P statistics were well correlated positively with the box office takings. Then it would be a bit hard to blame downloading for their lack of success... e.g. unsuccessful movie = very few or even zero downloads, successful movie = lots of downloads.
"It discourages risk taking and creativity. Most of all, the idea of actually telling a story is completely overlooked"
Huh? They seem to be willing to take risks alright. But they seem to take the wrong risks all too often. Look at the many movies which annoy the mainstream people which most _normal_ (non-movie industry) people knew weren't going to be great blockbusters anyway.
Think about it: you have tons of people complaining about too much crap and violence on the screens, you don't have tons of people complaining about too little crap and violence on the screen AND you don't have enough tons of people watching the existing levels of stuff on the screen. Go tell me why then does Hollywood insist on making the sort of movies they make.
If Hollywood would stop taking risks and just pump out the stuff that Middle America would be willing to let their kids see, they'd make more money. They'd probably have to lower ticket prices, but they'd fill seats (they could also lower production costs - but I guess that'd annoy their cronies...). The kiddies want to watch the movie, parents come along (take a leaf from McDonalds). If the movie is decent enough, the whole school will want to see.. Go figure.
Sure some of us won't be able to stomach the "Finding Nemo" stuff, but hey, that's what seems to sell.
Hollywood makes movies that are so out of touch with their supposed markets that it makes me wonder whether they are that incompetent or they have some other agenda - they're trying to get people to be as sick and depraved as they are? I mean sometimes you'd have the movie people saying "stealth hit" when it's obvious to everyone else that a movie would be popular.
Maybe the movie industry executives are so twisted that they can't recognize something good even if it was handed to them on a golden platter.
BTW, I'm wondering if it turned out that the recent crap movies weren't as popular at the P2P sites/networks and someone actually noticed? That would be a laugh;)...
The problem with communism is that Marx, by condoning (or even promoting?) violence as a valid means of achieving communism, put a substantial flaw in the "design"/implementation plans.
That opened a much larger window for the evil and violent sociopaths to get to the top and start running the show.
Otherwise, you might just have the run of the mill sociopaths, who would be like those parasites that don't inflict so much harm to their hosts. If you are fortunate some of those sociopaths might actually choose to be symbiotic.
The average users can't configure a VCR or maybe even a microwave oven. Not surprisingly they can't really handle Windows - they can just about get it started, and their apps. So they'll be just as frustrated with Linux.
So much so that if Desktop Linux ever gets popular, and they want to install a fancy "Britney Spears" screensaver, they'd paste and run a test message that's some obfuscated perl that installs a trojan.
Most users send their cars to "professionals" for maintenance AND for adding of 3rd party accessories.
The trouble with Windows or Linux is while most people know that cars need to be refuelled every now and then, most don't seem to run the O/S update stuff regularly. The other trouble with either Windows or Linux Desktops is that a certain bunch of people want to add 3rd party stuff very often, and when they can't figure out how to do it, it's the "manufacturer's" fault (that said computers are supposed to be a lot more extensible than cars).
Of course there are the vast numbers of people driving around with unmaintained bangers that are nearly falling apart and giving problems to everyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah Oracle isn't that great either. For strings, on Oracle it's hard to tell the difference between the empty string '' and NULL.
Firstly it's on the same site :).
/>
Advogato (mod_virgule) was vulnerable to this sort of thing before (back in 2002). Won't be surprised if there were others too.
Anyway, I've proposed years ago that there be HTML tags to turn off any active/dynamic stuff.
Currently the HTML situation is like only being able to turn off the lights by going to dozens of switches one by one and turning them off. There is no main power switch to turn ALL the lights off, or even groups of lights off.
I guess it's just me who thinks that the HTML equivalent of a "Big Red OFF" switch would be useful.
e.g.
<shieldson lock="randomstring" allowed="keyword,keyword,keyword"
disallowed material disabled
<shieldsoff lock="randomstring"/>
state restored to before lock
Where keywords:
textonly = just text
basic = basic formatting <em> <b> <i> <strong>
tables = tables
urls= plain <a href=""> no javascript etc
images= plain images, no javascript etc.
java=java
javascript=javascript.
The idea is it will be very hard for the attacker to guess the random string.
Oh well...
I bet Archimedes could have easily got 1000-5000 soldiers. Or maybe even archers - who'd be good at this thing (decent eyesight, steady hands etc). Whether he was able to get enough flat bronze mirrors is another issue, but I won't be surprised if he was able to do that - Syracuse wasn't that poor.
It's not that difficult to aim the sun's reflection at a target. As some people have already mention, some methods would involve putting a hole in the flat bronze mirror and using the hole to aim.
I'm sure Archimedes would have figured out many other ways of doing it, possibly more practical given the circumstances. He definitely was smart enough.
So yeah, on a clear sunny day (not uncommon in that part of the world), if you see 1000 people each with a large flat bronze mirror reflecting sunlight to you, I think it'd be best to make a quick retreat and come on a cloudy day.
BTW, Archimedes also had other defenses against ships attacking the city walls by night.
I guess the persistence of the Romans worked in the end.
Yeah that's what I figured, use a good algorithm (e.g. N vs N^2 ) and as long as the processing loop fits in cache you'll be fine.
And if you can't find/figure out a good algorithm yet, don't do really strange stuff. That way someone later can more easily figure out how to fix your code.
I've always wondered why they started using the term disabled vs the term handicapped. Found that very weird when they switched.
I thought handicapped was a much better term. Especially nowadays in the computer age, disabling something means totally turning it off. Whereas if you're handicapped it just means you are disadvantaged in some way.
In golf, handicapping can be used to let people play the game on reasonably even terms.
I have an USB2.0 to PATA "cable" (probably the interface chip is in the connector), accompanied by a power adaptor that converts line AC to 3.5" HDD molex power.
No enclosures, so less of a heat problem.
I got the set for the equiv of USD13 or thereabouts - and that was probably not the best price. Over here the enclosures are overpriced, I refuse to pay 3x to 4x more just to have a cheap case (and a cheap fan if lucky).
I guess it's not a solution if you mind looking at an exposed 3.5" HDD. But it works well enough for me.
Huh? Who is Saddam bin Laden?
;).
I really wonder sometimes what they put in the USA drinking water
Or perhaps it's the mercury in the vaccines (google for thimerosal). Mercury is not so good for the brain.
Yep. That's what I meant.
But so many physicists seem to think that we are moving forward through time and there are coordinates.
Is this "time as a dimension" thing valid? And if so is there an easy way to prove that?
Yeah, but that's time as a measurement concept. That stuff I understand.
However, that's not the same as the concept of time where there's such a thing as a past to go back to.
Recently there were physicists talking about time travel via warping space etc. That's the bit I don't understand.
But what's time? I don't understand that part.
I can accept that two objects travelling together at the same near light velocity, appear to slow down relative to each other to "observers" that are at relatively slower speeds.
It's the time stuff I don't understand, especially when people go on to talk about time travel and so on. Why should there still be a past?
Never mind dark matter. Can someone explain to me whether or not time actually exists (at least with respect to our universe)? Sure it's a neat concept to explain certain things, but I don't see why people assume there's such a thing as a past to go back to. You have an object in position A, it moves to B, it takes T seconds. So why should there be a "place where the object is in A" anymore aka "the past"?
Yeah, that's the part that gets me wondering. People keep talking about hiding away the SQL. But if they don't want SQL, then why are they using an SQL RDBMS in the first place?
;) ), rather than it being neatly stored with 1000 other nonrelated SQL statements (as functions or otherwise).
Shouldn't they be using something else then? Otherwise they'll get the drawbacks of using an SQL database but fewer of the advantages. What happens if performance in a particular area is not good enough?
Say you want to store a session in a database and you want it to expire after X seconds of inactivity.
A simplistic method would be to update the session row each time there's activity. But this would cause lots of writes which would be slower in most proper databases (those that actually write to disk for writes). An alternative would be the databases equivalent of "update sessiontable set lastactive=now() where sessionid='$sessionid' and lastactive+'1 second' <= now()".
With this, you could have thousands of hits per second but only 1 forced write to disk per second due to that query.
How would you achieve this when you're so abstracted away from the SQL database? And it might look strange to others when you try to do the same thing N layers above the database. I'm sure there are better examples.
Those sort of queries are likely to look different on different RDBMSes. You could make a function that looks the same, but someone still is going to have to write the SQL for portability (and sometimes bad luck, it's not possible - DB doesn't support functions or that sort of function). Also, if only the program's session module does that stuff, then what's so bad about leaving the SQL in there? At least then there'll be some context to understand the SQL (and whether it's wrong or right
Sure it's ugly. But if people want it all so elegant and clean maybe they should write _everything_ in some version of Lisp, and not interface with the rest of the ugly real world.
If you pick the right sort of paper to use, you might actually be improving the environment. Because you will be taking carbon out of the air.
The trouble with most sorts of paper is that the process of processing them produces lots of toxic chemicals.
Only 5 hours on battery.
Whereas real fish can swim a lot longer with just a little bit of fish food.
I wonder if there are electric motors continuously turning when the robot fish is in motion, or are they really doing things fish style?
It raises the bar more than just a little..
Not just anyone can fix Innodb bugs or add features to it. And not just anyone can identify the ones who can from the ones who just say they can.
Plus the people who can may be too expensive for a single user to afford. Sure it may be very important to the users, but if they just can't afford it does that mean they miscalculated and should have used some other _cheaper_in_the_long_run_ DB?
The costs of 1000 users each looking for different subcontractors to fix bugs is far more than 1000 users getting fixes from the primary company.
Even if the 1000 users have the same problem, it is harder for them to share the various solutions to the same problem they fixed using different subcontractors. Also if the users lack the expertise, they will have little idea which is the best solution.
If MySQL AB has significant InnoDB expertise then it won't be so bad. MySQL AB can then be the creator, manager and distributor of the bug fixes and features.
Maybe the InnoDB team would refuse to close source their stuff, even if Oracle tells them to. In which case Oracle gets Innobase but not the team, who might leave and work for MySQL or someone else...
It'll be interesting to see what the core people do.
The big difference is with Postgresql you can rollback "drop table" and similar stuff.
AFAIK you can't do that sort of stuff with Oracle. I'd be interested if they've changed things since.
So copyright holders can have arbitrary legally enforceable conditions placed on a work?
Like making users to hop on one leg in a public place and howl at midnight whenever there's a full moon for 1 minute if they want to use your stuff?
I've always wondered about that.
Interesting if that is true.
Yeah a whole genre of shit art. In most meanings of the word. Crap art by bullshit artists.
;) ).
The talent you need to make "art" like that is not the same sort of talent that Michelangelo, Leonardo, Gauguin, Trumbull, etc had (the artists, not the turtles
Even I can make a sculpture of someone's head with solidified shit/blood/urine/spit or whatever. Bonus points if you pick a subject that offends 2 or more religious/conservative/cultural groups or something. No artistic talent needed.
Same goes for throwing paint into jet engine exhausts.
I guess we call those people trolls here.
Similarly, it takes zero talent to vandalize a wiki, and vandals usually add zero new information - just more noise.
In other news:
The gene patent people are first in queue for the father's testicles.
Know the full meaning of unauthorized reproduction...
It's not too far-fetched we already are living in a world where farmers can be bankrupted by big corporations just because their crops get patented DNA by pollen blowing in the wind.
One day if you get infected by some virus that inserts some patented genes, and it somehow manages to enter your germ line, you may end up with serious "issues" with "issues"... Wonder who owns rights to your children...
"He's contriving some experiments"
;).
Nonono. _He_ is the _experiment_.
He's the third in a series of experiments. The first was the pioneering experiment involving Dennis Tito as test subject.
These space experiments are probably more noteworthy and useful than any of those conducted by the NASA in recent years.
NASA did the Mars probe thing decades ago. Now they're trying to do the moon thing again. When did NASA become a branch of Hollywood?
BTW, the test subject becomes a tourist if the newspapers/media don't talk about it. In which event the experiment is considered a success.
The way people cheer and clap whenever the space shuttle takes off sure doesn't give me much confidence in it.
Heh, I wonder if the file swapping of the crap is so low that even they took notice.
Imagine if the P2P statistics were well correlated positively with the box office takings. Then it would be a bit hard to blame downloading for their lack of success... e.g. unsuccessful movie = very few or even zero downloads, successful movie = lots of downloads.
"It discourages risk taking and creativity. Most of all, the idea of actually telling a story is completely overlooked"
;)...
Huh? They seem to be willing to take risks alright. But they seem to take the wrong risks all too often. Look at the many movies which annoy the mainstream people which most _normal_ (non-movie industry) people knew weren't going to be great blockbusters anyway.
Think about it: you have tons of people complaining about too much crap and violence on the screens, you don't have tons of people complaining about too little crap and violence on the screen AND you don't have enough tons of people watching the existing levels of stuff on the screen. Go tell me why then does Hollywood insist on making the sort of movies they make.
If Hollywood would stop taking risks and just pump out the stuff that Middle America would be willing to let their kids see, they'd make more money. They'd probably have to lower ticket prices, but they'd fill seats (they could also lower production costs - but I guess that'd annoy their cronies...). The kiddies want to watch the movie, parents come along (take a leaf from McDonalds). If the movie is decent enough, the whole school will want to see.. Go figure.
Sure some of us won't be able to stomach the "Finding Nemo" stuff, but hey, that's what seems to sell.
Hollywood makes movies that are so out of touch with their supposed markets that it makes me wonder whether they are that incompetent or they have some other agenda - they're trying to get people to be as sick and depraved as they are? I mean sometimes you'd have the movie people saying "stealth hit" when it's obvious to everyone else that a movie would be popular.
Maybe the movie industry executives are so twisted that they can't recognize something good even if it was handed to them on a golden platter.
BTW, I'm wondering if it turned out that the recent crap movies weren't as popular at the P2P sites/networks and someone actually noticed? That would be a laugh
The problem with communism is that Marx, by condoning (or even promoting?) violence as a valid means of achieving communism, put a substantial flaw in the "design"/implementation plans.
That opened a much larger window for the evil and violent sociopaths to get to the top and start running the show.
Otherwise, you might just have the run of the mill sociopaths, who would be like those parasites that don't inflict so much harm to their hosts. If you are fortunate some of those sociopaths might actually choose to be symbiotic.
Yeah. It's kinda funny...
The average users can't configure a VCR or maybe even a microwave oven. Not surprisingly they can't really handle Windows - they can just about get it started, and their apps. So they'll be just as frustrated with Linux.
So much so that if Desktop Linux ever gets popular, and they want to install a fancy "Britney Spears" screensaver, they'd paste and run a test message that's some obfuscated perl that installs a trojan.
Most users send their cars to "professionals" for maintenance AND for adding of 3rd party accessories.
The trouble with Windows or Linux is while most people know that cars need to be refuelled every now and then, most don't seem to run the O/S update stuff regularly. The other trouble with either Windows or Linux Desktops is that a certain bunch of people want to add 3rd party stuff very often, and when they can't figure out how to do it, it's the "manufacturer's" fault (that said computers are supposed to be a lot more extensible than cars).
Of course there are the vast numbers of people driving around with unmaintained bangers that are nearly falling apart and giving problems to everyone else.
CVTs are kinda redundant if you are using electric motors. Conventional engines need transmissions because they don't have much torque at low speeds.
;).
But yeah diesel hybrid would be good. A hydrocarbon fuel cell electric car would be better, if they could actually come up with one