I know someone who grew up on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, who can't imagine how people live anywhere else.
I personally grew up near a river, and am continually trying to find places to live that are near (slightly secluded) rivers or similar.
I suppose we all have our own favorite bits of nature. But I think we can agree that those who live in the concrete jungle are completely bat-shit insane.
Your reply pretty much sums up the misguided assumption that more characters automatically mean enhanced security.
Just because it inconveniences you, and you don't like it, doesn't mean it's misguided at all. It's a very real field of security, and you won't find anyone knowledgeable in the subject to agree with your assertions here.
All you need to do is try the small number of permutations for capital and lower case letters.
It's not a "small number" at all.
Pick a word: 1 Characters in that word: 5 Possible combinations with all-lower-case: 1 Possible combinations with mixed-case: ~25 And that's for one (short) word. Going through a dictionary attack now takes 100X longer, just by requiring mixed case.
And because you've forced them to fill up with special characters and numbers, the letter string might only be four characters long.
MINIMUM PASSWORD LENGTH=8. See above. It's the simplest of restrictions to enforce, and everyone does so. I don't believe for a second users would be using a 64 character passphrase if good password practices are enforced, so the added complexity most certainly doesn't result in a less secure password.
By specifically requiring a certain (smaller) subset of elements you're decreasing the possible entropy and weakening the system.
In theory, there's an INFINITESIMAL reduction in entropy. In reality, you're PREVENTING the most likely scenario, which is users selecting only a tiny subset of the available key space. In short, small theoretical downside, huge, real-world up-side.
magazines, radio stations & tv stations are owned by corporations, they can't just have foreigners suing them for their dramatic, yet wildly inaccurate and poorly researched news stories.
Right, because nowhere in the world are there tabloids, outside the US... Whenever anyone starts vaunting the quality of the BBC versus CNN or similar, just mention The Sun, and sit back and watch the fireworks.
Giving honest news outlets a hard time about inaccuracies really puts the cart before the horse.
I think Senator Sessions may not like the consequences of starting an international game of "we won't recognize your court judgments because of your 'abusive legal system.'"
You have no perspective.
The US already has one-way extradition treaties with numerous countries, including major ones. A situation which is decidedly more abusive than just choosing to ignore a few foreign court judgments. Considering this only applies to speech, it's not going to get anyone in much more of a huff than they already are over the current relationship.
Must contain lower and upper case symbols? Must contain at least two special characters and numbers? Seriously, what the fuck?
Requiring upper-case letters doubles the key search space. Instead of 26, you've now got 52 characters to try.
Adding numbers and symbols, again, greatly increases the key search space. Now you're up to at least 80 likely characters.
And the requirement for multiple of a give odd character is also an attempt to prevent predictable passwords, as users often have a tendency to put a single word, followed by a single number, which dictionary crackers have taken into account for a very long time now. mississippi1 is about the worst password you could have, despite it meeting any sane length requirement.
Broken analogy. The key doesn't slow him down the more "secure" it becomes.
A lock typically doesn't become more complex. Adding multiple locked doors certainly would. However, "becom[ing]" anything is completely irrelevant. There is a baseline level of hassle associated with security. Whether you were there when security was less stringent or not has no bearing on how much of a hassle the newer security measures are, nor of your responsibility to abide by them.
the ad content will say send a code via ajax back to the server: "i'm now alive in the browser, showing dancing mortgage seekers... ok send the article"
Adblock already has a mode that will download the ad content, it just won't display it to the user. Privoxy and the like have long had modes to "replace" banners with 1-pixel blank images. etc.
The ad-blocking side is far more advanced than those fighting it, and with the user in control of the computer, the deck is heavily stacked in our favor.
it makes its way slowly into most popular web browsers cutting off the revenue stream for content publishers on the internet.
Firefox is more popular than all WebKit browsers, combined, yet we're still here.
internet use drops significantly. only free content is available on it, and the mainstream views it increasingly as a refuge for subversives. most households disconnect.
Let's take a look through the top 100 popular web sites:
7. Wikipedia 16. amazon.com 22. eBay.com 23. Microsoft 32. Craigslist 43. bbc.co.uk 45. Mozilla.com 46. adobe.com 49. apple.com 63. PayPal 92. New York Times 93. Pirate Bay 96. Alibaba.com
Waddaya know... More than 10% of the top websites, are in fact NOT ad-supported. And if we count all the (mostly Google and spin-offs) sites that have text-only ads, that list would balloon.
And even that is only in a world where ad-blocking is PERFECT and absolute. Instead, expect ads to change. Maybe YouTube/Hulu becomes the future business model, with ads embedded in Flash videos... Or maybe ads just have to get complex. No more "banner" or "ads" in the path to the banner ad of pre-defined dimensions, on a separate server from the rest of the content.
Frankly, ads have gone horribly overboard. A static, or even slowly-animated banner is fine. 5 banners, plus on-hover pop-ups, plus "Premium" links, is not. Advertisers not paying enough? Skip the one-size fits all, canned affiliate programs. Advertisers still want to pay 0.000001 USD per click? Convince them they NEED you, and those who are smart enough get a privileged position and cut through the obscurity of ad noise. Too much work for you? Too damn bad.
I think it's time for an ad revolt, where companies have to establish a relationship with their customers, and try to entice them to disable ad-blocking on that particular site, instead of trying harder to force them down everyone's throats.
We could reduce the number of dams we have or allow more water to spill over them here to better serve our commercial fishing industry if we weren't needing to sell that capacity to Californians.
"SELL" being the operative word. California isn't going to stop you from breaking the dams. You WANT to sell the electricity to California. Just as Oregon wants to sell the electricity from wind generation to California.
Californians have been doing this sort of thing for some time, and while we like the money, it really would be better if they stopped behaving like they have the right to export their externalities when folks up here are actually trying to do something about ours.
Just because Washington isn't as heavily populated, doesn't make it any better than California. California simply has a huge population, to the point that it's rather difficult to locally support all those people. If you don't want to sell your hydro to CA, I'm sure they'll go to Nevada, Arizona, or just about any of their other neighbors to get their power instead. If you don't like the dams, get rid of them, and give up the big fat check you get out of it.
Car salesmen like to complain about how their customers are taking advantage of them too, taking a loss on the deal and all that... Don't try to stop them from taking the money, though. At the end of the day, who's getting the better part of the deal. It isn't the buyer.
How much energy it "wastes" is wholly immaterial in circumstances there is a surplus of available energy in the first place, which is the circumstance that the GP poster was talking about.
Nope. How much energy it wastes directly translates into how much return you can get on your investment in these cryogenic hydrogen pumps, storage tanks, and engines or fuel cells to finally turn it back into electricity.
Let's try an experiment. You've got electrical outlets in your walls. Let's pretend it's free. Now, go convert it into hydrogen! Quick! You're loosing money if you don't!
Not all that easy, now is it?
Meanwhile, if we'd used a battery, it would be trivial... One car battery and a simple charger (and later, an inverter), and you're set. Or with hydro, any electric motor connected to a water pump and a decent sized tank would be very efficient, and rather inexpensive, too.
We recently introduced new password rules at work, despite me trying to convince them otherwise. Has to be 8 or more characters, must contain upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. And it has to be changed every 3 months.
They probably don't have much of a choice. You're pretty well listed the minimum requirements for PCI-DSS compliance, which is necessary for any company that accepts credit cards.
Now everyone has these horribly complex passwords, which around half the users are now posting next to their monitor on a sticky note.
We also require reasonably complex passwords. NO ONE has post-it notes with their passwords on them on their monitors (or anywhere else). I can assure you, it's an easy problem to solve. I wonder how your company deals with people who leave their keys to secure areas just lying around on their desks when they leave...
If they'd had made simpler passwords available, not nearly as many people would have resorted to that.
If they were giving away free money, not nearly as many people would resort to crime.
complex passwords are only useful until they hit the threshold at which the user sidesteps around the whole secrecy part of it.
If an employee was making 100 copies of the key to the front door because he never remembers to take it with him, would you remove the lock to make it easier to get in? Of course not. You tell the idiot to observe better security practices, or get the hell out.
I don't want to have to retype a 40 letter string (correctly) every time I turn back to do some work./blockquote Your brain doesn't work on a per-digit accounting basis, and your keyboard isn't designed for random string input, either.
In short, it's much easier to type "telephone" than just "#". 40 letters sounds long, but when it's just 5 common words, it's pretty easy to type (unless you're a really lousy typist, or typing in the dark).
You can't walk away and not use them when poor service angers you.
Sure you can. Anywhere in the US, go Amtrack. Sure, it's slower, but you make it up with the train station down the street rather than the airport an hour's drive away, combined with having to arrive 3 hours early to make sure you get through security, and the like...
And even if you are going all the way across the country, yes, it's slower, but it's like spending a day in a public park, walking around, laying back (in a recliner), talking to people, rather than the airlines, which are like spending 6 hours in a doctor's office, where you're poked, prodded, strapped in, quizzed by authorities, put under bright lights, asked questions, asked to take your clothes off, x-rayed, etc., etc.
I used to love flying. Now, the seats have shrunk to the point that I'm miserable, the service level went from "3-star hotel" to "trashy motel", on-time arrivals are a long forgotten memory, etc. All this happened in less than 10 years.
The best trick the airlines ever played was to convince people that there are no alternatives. For over-seas travel, sure, you don't have much real alternative these days. But for any distance over-land, the train is the way to go. Buses have quite a stigma, but I'd rather take a cross-country bus than fly any more.
Right now, when you visit a ticket site, it just asks departure/return dates and locations, and just shows you base ticket prices.
When a few people start getting upset that they really paid a lot more, and complain, this is what's going to happen:
Travel sites will update their interfaces to ask how many bags you are carrying, whether you'd like a meal, curb-side pick-up, etc., etc.
Customers will input that information, and the ticket price shown will include all those fees.
Airlines that have fees will actually cost more than those who offer a flat bill with everything included, so people will flock to those who haven't resorted to this trend.
All other Airlines will see the trend, and drop their extra fees.
The end.
Add-on charges add overhead, which means the charges have to be high enough to account for the extra hassle, and also high enough so those who opt-in also cover those who opt-out. In short, individual fees will always be more expensive than a flat ticket price. They're in-vogue now only because not everyone is aware of them, and there isn't an easy way to compare ticket price+fees just yet. In the medium-term, people will learn the tricks, take them into account, and all will be right with the world again.
Sure they do. You won't notice unless you get up to highway speeds, through it into neutral, and then slam on the brakes as hard as you can. I'd say there's a 75% chance you've never tried doing exactly that. The other 25% is reserved in case you're an oblivious idiot who just doesn't notice that braking distance has increased 50%.
If you have a car where you need to be accelerating (or revving the engine) to get decent braking
No, not "decent braking"... Being in-gear is required to get MAXIMUM braking. Power brakes are still "decent" at idle, but not as good as you'd want.
the fossil fuel electricity generation companies have the same "anti-environmentalist" stances as these people;
Whatever anyone's "stance" or "symbiosis" is besides the point. You've still failed to show where coal or natural gas companies have enough government influence to affect nuclear power-plant policy.
But it will run off a battery charged by a uranium power plant.
Electric vehicles currently have a far lesser range, and much higher price than traditional vehicles. Making electricity a bit cheaper (or a bit more expensive) won't change the economics of eleictric vehicles AT ALL. Additionally, it's only just now that they're anywhere near the ballpark of being useable by most people, so it surely wasn't a concern through the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
It's the decline that's scary, not the overall output.
The "decline" you've cited is marginal. That chart had to use data all the way back to WWII to show a visible trend, and it wasn't China causing that... and note that the US GDP, standard of living, and everything else has been increasing over most of that very slow downward maufacturing trend. Additionally, the decline figures are from 2009, which is right in the middle of the biggest world-wide recession in over 80 years, so it's can't be used as a sign of a long-term "trend" on it's own.
And making a killing on heavy items does not give you the same stability as a giant consumer manufacturing base.
No it doesn't, it gives you a completely different type of stability. Consumer spending is still way down from where it was a couple years ago, while large projects, requiring "heavy items" are going strong.
the conclusion that what came first was some animal different enough from a chicken that we wouldn't call it that, which laid an egg that contained an animal similar enough to a chicken that we would call it a chicken.
The riddle asks which came first, the chicken, or the [chicken] egg. If you don't get the implied "chicken egg" part of that, you're simply an idiot, since anything else would be, and always have been, completely pointless.
Bringing evolution into the mix most certainly DOES NOT INSTANTLY SOLVE THE RIDDLE, it merely makes the question a bit more narrow... We can now rephrase it to: "What came first, an egg similar enough to be considered a chicken's egg, or an animal similar enough to be considered a chicken?"
But really, that's just to suffer the pedants. I'd much rather paraphrase that into something simple, like: "What came first, the chicken, or the egg?"
America lacks nuclear reactors because we have a strong oil lobby tied with government,
Oil is in no way directly competitive with nuclear power. Your car won't run off uranium, and there are basically no oil-fueled electrical power plants out there.
and America lacks manufacturing because it's cheaper to outsource somewhere with lower CoL and a glut of desperate workers.
Actually, the US remains a strong #1 in manufacturing, well well over 2X as large as China. People get scared because all the cheap junk they buy says "Made in China" and don't notice the heavy equipment, jumbo jets, commercial trucks, et al, that the US leads in. I'm sure there's plent of Chinese business-men cursing the fact that everything is made in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
I know someone who grew up on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, who can't imagine how people live anywhere else.
I personally grew up near a river, and am continually trying to find places to live that are near (slightly secluded) rivers or similar.
I suppose we all have our own favorite bits of nature. But I think we can agree that those who live in the concrete jungle are completely bat-shit insane.
Just because it inconveniences you, and you don't like it, doesn't mean it's misguided at all. It's a very real field of security, and you won't find anyone knowledgeable in the subject to agree with your assertions here.
It's not a "small number" at all.
Pick a word: 1
Characters in that word: 5
Possible combinations with all-lower-case: 1
Possible combinations with mixed-case: ~25
And that's for one (short) word. Going through a dictionary attack now takes 100X longer, just by requiring mixed case.
MINIMUM PASSWORD LENGTH=8. See above. It's the simplest of restrictions to enforce, and everyone does so. I don't believe for a second users would be using a 64 character passphrase if good password practices are enforced, so the added complexity most certainly doesn't result in a less secure password.
In theory, there's an INFINITESIMAL reduction in entropy. In reality, you're PREVENTING the most likely scenario, which is users selecting only a tiny subset of the available key space. In short, small theoretical downside, huge, real-world up-side.
Right, because nowhere in the world are there tabloids, outside the US... Whenever anyone starts vaunting the quality of the BBC versus CNN or similar, just mention The Sun, and sit back and watch the fireworks.
Giving honest news outlets a hard time about inaccuracies really puts the cart before the horse.
You have no perspective.
The US already has one-way extradition treaties with numerous countries, including major ones. A situation which is decidedly more abusive than just choosing to ignore a few foreign court judgments. Considering this only applies to speech, it's not going to get anyone in much more of a huff than they already are over the current relationship.
Requiring upper-case letters doubles the key search space. Instead of 26, you've now got 52 characters to try.
Adding numbers and symbols, again, greatly increases the key search space. Now you're up to at least 80 likely characters.
And the requirement for multiple of a give odd character is also an attempt to prevent predictable passwords, as users often have a tendency to put a single word, followed by a single number, which dictionary crackers have taken into account for a very long time now. mississippi1 is about the worst password you could have, despite it meeting any sane length requirement.
A lock typically doesn't become more complex. Adding multiple locked doors certainly would. However, "becom[ing]" anything is completely irrelevant. There is a baseline level of hassle associated with security. Whether you were there when security was less stringent or not has no bearing on how much of a hassle the newer security measures are, nor of your responsibility to abide by them.
No, I don't. You, however, missed my point entirely.
Generating hydrogen may be free, but storing it most certainly is not.
Right... Most hackers would surely prefer Herring.
Adblock already has a mode that will download the ad content, it just won't display it to the user. Privoxy and the like have long had modes to "replace" banners with 1-pixel blank images. etc.
The ad-blocking side is far more advanced than those fighting it, and with the user in control of the computer, the deck is heavily stacked in our favor.
Firefox is more popular than all WebKit browsers, combined, yet we're still here.
Let's take a look through the top 100 popular web sites:
7. Wikipedia
16. amazon.com
22. eBay.com
23. Microsoft
32. Craigslist
43. bbc.co.uk
45. Mozilla.com
46. adobe.com
49. apple.com
63. PayPal
92. New York Times
93. Pirate Bay
96. Alibaba.com
Waddaya know... More than 10% of the top websites, are in fact NOT ad-supported. And if we count all the (mostly Google and spin-offs) sites that have text-only ads, that list would balloon.
And even that is only in a world where ad-blocking is PERFECT and absolute. Instead, expect ads to change. Maybe YouTube/Hulu becomes the future business model, with ads embedded in Flash videos... Or maybe ads just have to get complex. No more "banner" or "ads" in the path to the banner ad of pre-defined dimensions, on a separate server from the rest of the content.
Frankly, ads have gone horribly overboard. A static, or even slowly-animated banner is fine. 5 banners, plus on-hover pop-ups, plus "Premium" links, is not. Advertisers not paying enough? Skip the one-size fits all, canned affiliate programs. Advertisers still want to pay 0.000001 USD per click? Convince them they NEED you, and those who are smart enough get a privileged position and cut through the obscurity of ad noise. Too much work for you? Too damn bad.
I think it's time for an ad revolt, where companies have to establish a relationship with their customers, and try to entice them to disable ad-blocking on that particular site, instead of trying harder to force them down everyone's throats.
"SELL" being the operative word. California isn't going to stop you from breaking the dams. You WANT to sell the electricity to California. Just as Oregon wants to sell the electricity from wind generation to California.
Just because Washington isn't as heavily populated, doesn't make it any better than California. California simply has a huge population, to the point that it's rather difficult to locally support all those people. If you don't want to sell your hydro to CA, I'm sure they'll go to Nevada, Arizona, or just about any of their other neighbors to get their power instead. If you don't like the dams, get rid of them, and give up the big fat check you get out of it.
Car salesmen like to complain about how their customers are taking advantage of them too, taking a loss on the deal and all that... Don't try to stop them from taking the money, though. At the end of the day, who's getting the better part of the deal. It isn't the buyer.
Nope. How much energy it wastes directly translates into how much return you can get on your investment in these cryogenic hydrogen pumps, storage tanks, and engines or fuel cells to finally turn it back into electricity.
Let's try an experiment. You've got electrical outlets in your walls. Let's pretend it's free. Now, go convert it into hydrogen! Quick! You're loosing money if you don't!
Not all that easy, now is it?
Meanwhile, if we'd used a battery, it would be trivial... One car battery and a simple charger (and later, an inverter), and you're set. Or with hydro, any electric motor connected to a water pump and a decent sized tank would be very efficient, and rather inexpensive, too.
They probably don't have much of a choice. You're pretty well listed the minimum requirements for PCI-DSS compliance, which is necessary for any company that accepts credit cards.
We also require reasonably complex passwords. NO ONE has post-it notes with their passwords on them on their monitors (or anywhere else). I can assure you, it's an easy problem to solve. I wonder how your company deals with people who leave their keys to secure areas just lying around on their desks when they leave...
If they were giving away free money, not nearly as many people would resort to crime.
If an employee was making 100 copies of the key to the front door because he never remembers to take it with him, would you remove the lock to make it easier to get in? Of course not. You tell the idiot to observe better security practices, or get the hell out.
Umm, no, it isn't.
8 VERY common English words, following normal grammar rules, with only the first letter of a few capitalized?
Compare to a random string... 256 characters. With 16 digits, you've got a lot of possible combinations before you hit anything.
Not that a simple english pass-phrase is bad, but claiming it's more complex to attack than a shorter completely random string just isn't true.
A great many people care about being scammed and ripped-off, even for items a lot cheaper than a CPU...
What are YOU personally doing that is going to substantially combat these negative changes to our planet?
Nothing?
Well then, I guess you're free to do something else, huh?
On the one hand, there's sitting on your ass complaining. On the other, teraform other planets. Tough decision...
In neither case do you make "our current planet" any better or worse.
Sure you can. Anywhere in the US, go Amtrack. Sure, it's slower, but you make it up with the train station down the street rather than the airport an hour's drive away, combined with having to arrive 3 hours early to make sure you get through security, and the like...
And even if you are going all the way across the country, yes, it's slower, but it's like spending a day in a public park, walking around, laying back (in a recliner), talking to people, rather than the airlines, which are like spending 6 hours in a doctor's office, where you're poked, prodded, strapped in, quizzed by authorities, put under bright lights, asked questions, asked to take your clothes off, x-rayed, etc., etc.
I used to love flying. Now, the seats have shrunk to the point that I'm miserable, the service level went from "3-star hotel" to "trashy motel", on-time arrivals are a long forgotten memory, etc. All this happened in less than 10 years.
The best trick the airlines ever played was to convince people that there are no alternatives. For over-seas travel, sure, you don't have much real alternative these days. But for any distance over-land, the train is the way to go. Buses have quite a stigma, but I'd rather take a cross-country bus than fly any more.
Right now, when you visit a ticket site, it just asks departure/return dates and locations, and just shows you base ticket prices.
When a few people start getting upset that they really paid a lot more, and complain, this is what's going to happen:
Travel sites will update their interfaces to ask how many bags you are carrying, whether you'd like a meal, curb-side pick-up, etc., etc.
Customers will input that information, and the ticket price shown will include all those fees.
Airlines that have fees will actually cost more than those who offer a flat bill with everything included, so people will flock to those who haven't resorted to this trend.
All other Airlines will see the trend, and drop their extra fees.
The end.
Add-on charges add overhead, which means the charges have to be high enough to account for the extra hassle, and also high enough so those who opt-in also cover those who opt-out. In short, individual fees will always be more expensive than a flat ticket price. They're in-vogue now only because not everyone is aware of them, and there isn't an easy way to compare ticket price+fees just yet. In the medium-term, people will learn the tricks, take them into account, and all will be right with the world again.
You should always use Ajax properly.
Am I missing some attempted nuance here?
3000 feet is 914 meters.
On the off chance you're talking about the length of one edge, the sqrt of 914 is 30 meters. So, still, nothing matches 16.
Sure they do. You won't notice unless you get up to highway speeds, through it into neutral, and then slam on the brakes as hard as you can. I'd say there's a 75% chance you've never tried doing exactly that. The other 25% is reserved in case you're an oblivious idiot who just doesn't notice that braking distance has increased 50%.
No, not "decent braking"... Being in-gear is required to get MAXIMUM braking. Power brakes are still "decent" at idle, but not as good as you'd want.
No, that would be a completely different question entirely.
Whatever anyone's "stance" or "symbiosis" is besides the point. You've still failed to show where coal or natural gas companies have enough government influence to affect nuclear power-plant policy.
Electric vehicles currently have a far lesser range, and much higher price than traditional vehicles. Making electricity a bit cheaper (or a bit more expensive) won't change the economics of eleictric vehicles AT ALL. Additionally, it's only just now that they're anywhere near the ballpark of being useable by most people, so it surely wasn't a concern through the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
The "decline" you've cited is marginal. That chart had to use data all the way back to WWII to show a visible trend, and it wasn't China causing that... and note that the US GDP, standard of living, and everything else has been increasing over most of that very slow downward maufacturing trend. Additionally, the decline figures are from 2009, which is right in the middle of the biggest world-wide recession in over 80 years, so it's can't be used as a sign of a long-term "trend" on it's own.
No it doesn't, it gives you a completely different type of stability. Consumer spending is still way down from where it was a couple years ago, while large projects, requiring "heavy items" are going strong.
The riddle asks which came first, the chicken, or the [chicken] egg. If you don't get the implied "chicken egg" part of that, you're simply an idiot, since anything else would be, and always have been, completely pointless.
Bringing evolution into the mix most certainly DOES NOT INSTANTLY SOLVE THE RIDDLE, it merely makes the question a bit more narrow... We can now rephrase it to: "What came first, an egg similar enough to be considered a chicken's egg, or an animal similar enough to be considered a chicken?"
But really, that's just to suffer the pedants. I'd much rather paraphrase that into something simple, like: "What came first, the chicken, or the egg?"
Oil is in no way directly competitive with nuclear power. Your car won't run off uranium, and there are basically no oil-fueled electrical power plants out there.
Actually, the US remains a strong #1 in manufacturing, well well over 2X as large as China. People get scared because all the cheap junk they buy says "Made in China" and don't notice the heavy equipment, jumbo jets, commercial trucks, et al, that the US leads in. I'm sure there's plent of Chinese business-men cursing the fact that everything is made in the US.