What I don't understand is why they want to believe that Stealing code is a piece of property....But Importing Code from another country is just information (not requiring import taxes etc....) How on earth can it be both?
Easy. Like this: "Hey, legislator, I want a new law passed that makes absolutely no sense but will benefit me greatly. In exchange, I'll pay for your re-election campaign." "derp derp herp derp." "Okay then! Thank you for your cooperation."
Nice to see some intelligence in the courts now and then.
All they have done is stated that code is non-corporeal. They haven't said stealing it isn't a crime... It's mostly a case of "Oh, so I see you filed the blue form here, but you need to fill out the green form instead." "But it's the same thing!" "No, one is blue, the other is green."
This is a procedural error, not a statement that 'stealing' code isn't a crime. Rest assured, legislation is being drafted that will ensure that stealing from a poor, innocent company, will earn you at least 30 years in jail and an 8 trillion dollar fine. Really, it would be less troublesome to just murder the CEO the way the laws are being written these days...
Downloading things from backwater websites has a higher risk of malware being present than downloading from reputable sources....That's some fine detective work there, Lou.
More seriously; It shouldn't come as any surprise that given how valuable your location data and personal information is, and how much of that is stored on a cell phone, and how most companies have declared themselves to have absolute rights to it (go ahead, try and stop us! *evil overlord laugh*), it shouldn't be surprising that other people (legitimately or otherwise) are hopping on the "All Your Privacy Are Belong To Us" gravy train.
So people will be all like "Oh noes! Someone wrote an evil bot!"... Of course, they'll forget that the malware that the telecos have loaded on your phone makes that look positively amateur.
Can you honestly say with a straight face that a crumbling Enterprise in Vegas would draw the nation in to repair it as was done with the Statue of Liberty?
Actually, yes. It's Nevada. It's a giant desert... nothing is ever going to 'crumble' out there... There are cars out there that were parked in the 1930s and except for damage caused by the sun are still exactly the way they were left. If you build something out there and right after civilization ends, it would take hundreds of years before it started to show traces of weathering beyond what you'd expect from being sandblasted. -_-
...one of the chapters of Professor Yunus's book calls for IT specialists to take the initiative and create some infrastructure that would help people to uplift themselves out of poverty. that still hasn't really happened yet, and i'm really perplexed and slightly frustrated that it hasn't happened.
There are many initatives for this kind of thing, but it's very hard to see how the pieces fit together to produce that kind of infrastructure. There's a good reason for that too: Anything that could be cost effective as a communications medium in the 3rd world would oblitherate those company's strangehold on the current (expensive) infrastructure.
But we're all well aware that the internet as we know it has gone to shit and we need to solve the problem of how to create a connection between two nodes that cannot be eavesdropped, does not rely on a 3rd party (central authority) to work, and can provide for anonymity. It's obvious that money is required to build an IT network, but we need some very strong controls to make sure that the interests providing that money can't later co-opt the network for their own purposes. The network needs to provide communications in a way that can't be fucked with to selectively block content.
The only way to do that is wirelessly. Software defined radio will eventually create the network outlined above, but it will probably be "pirate radio" as it were, since every country in the west auctions off spectrum to corporations -- there is no concept of 'public use' across most of the spectrum, and the few areas that are 'public use' are actively being attacked by corporate interests who want to reclaim it.
In short, it's a non-trivial problem to solve. People are working on it, believe me... but we're not being public about it nor are we recruiting many of the youth of today because they've grown up in a DRM-enabled world where everything is ruled by a corporation. My 15 yo sister is deathly afraid of using anything but iTunes because she fears the government will bust our door down and take her to Guantanamo bay if she downloads a.mp3, despite the fact that she knows I have 4x 1TB drives filled with 'pirate' material under my bed and download with impunity.
Ironic that for the first time in history, it's the 'older' generation that is risking their lives and livelihood to ensure freedom for the 'current' generation... usually it's the kids we sacrifice to war. -_-
The textbook companies love digital because they can control it and prevent resale.
Yeah. As if there aren't enough problems with funding for our schools as-is, now students can't even be taught basic skills without forking money over to some corporation and getting nothing but a 'license' in return. If this is the future, I think we should whip a shitty and get the hell out of here before the locals try and eat our brains or... something...
Because "One Computer Per Child" worked so well, we're going to follow up on it with another, similar initiative? I've got a better idea: How about we build some sewers, electricity, get them some running water, and then setup some better agricultural facilities (read: big farms!), and when that's done, some factories and office buildings for them to work in? Then, with the money they make, they can not only purchase things like tablet pcs, but clothes, food, education, and health care.
Sigh. Every one of these initiatives fail because people assume access to technology will make people more educated, and education leads to a better life. The problem is, that's not true. What leads to a better life is taking care of basic survival needs sufficiently to allow the local population time to pursue those things. Our industrial civilization evolved away from an aquarian civilization because of advancements in certain key technologies. Tablets were not one of those technologies.
I was expecting something at least as maddening as spending an hour trying to cancel an AOL account, or involving disused lavatories filled with leopards.
Taxes are due in 8 days. You still have a shot at getting your wish.
I have everything else, but I'm presently missing "[guy on couch]". I've never run into a distribution system that required one. But if I must have one, can you tell me what the minimum system requirements are? I'm not sure what the battery life of 'guy on couch' is, but I've heard from my heterosexual friends that economy models generally weigh more, have limited ram, and the processor has what was described to me as a "very aggressive power saving feature". I'd also like to know how much these things cost and if there are any maintenance requirements beyond feeding him and giving him access to the bathroom. Again, very new to the market, so apologies in advance.
So unless you're allowing usernames such as "root" or "admin" or "administrator" AND using dictionary passwords wouldn't this fail? And be obvious in the logs?
You're thinking... this makes you a bad reference model for the average user.
...a market shake-out, causing many specialty services to exit, would ensue.
The raisin de etre for cable tv is specialty service. All that non-sense about buying 'packages' is a way for the company to extort more money from customers.The channels have to put advertising in place to support themselves; They do not get that subscription money, and they wouldn't under a 'pick and choose' model anymore than they do now. But what it would do is force cable companies to disclose which assets are valuable and which are not, meaning those channels could then dictate terms to the cable companies, instead of the other way around; It would be an accurate way of figuring out how many people actually watch your channel, rather than relying on 3rd party services to provide that information.
So no. It wouldn't result in a market 'shakeout'.... and if it did, that's capitalism in action. Don't you support capitalism, oh great Cable TV executive with your very fancy hat? What you're really saying is your profits would be lower because you'd have to be honest about the numbers, rather than being able to use (achem) creative accounting.
the U.S. does not, and cannot, commit any war crimes
A long list of war crimes would like to tell you to stop drinking the koolaid.
For those of you patriots who accept that all U.S. action is lawful, by virtue of it being U.S. action, then prosperity and salvation await.
Some restrictions apply. See your local government office for full details. Offer not valid outside of US. Void where prohibited by law.
For all others, who would engage with the socialist press and outside agitators in conspiring to disparage this flawless nation, only purgatory and a jail cell await you.
There are a lot of agitators in this country. More than any other country even. But you're right, I'm sure they have nothing to complain about.
So does your reading comprehension. Say you login to Facebook. Okay. Login complete. One way hash is fine. Now say, Facebook had a feature where it would check your gmail account for you, just provide the password. So you provide it with your gmail account password. Now how the hell is Facebook going to login to your gmail account if it doesn't have the plain text password?
Specialists think you are being a bit harsh in deriding their unfounded claims. 100% of experts interviewed agree!
"Right and wrong do exist. Just because you don't know what the right answer is, even if there is no way for you to know what the right answer is, doesn't make your answer right or even okay. It's much simpler than that... It's just plain wrong." -- Dr. House
... and if they HAD known that they'd be slapped with a $250,000 fine for it they would have done it different.
I'm not convinced. A few years ago I came across a curious story about how companies dumping toxic waste into the ocean were filming themselves doing it and then attaching a check to the EPA for the fine without being contacted by the agency. As it turns out, the cost for disposing of the materials at sea was less than the cost of disposing of it properly even when the fine was assessed for every infraction -- by a considerable margin.
So from that I learned that while a fine might seem large to me ($250,000 is not pocket change to me!), in a business sense it could mean next to nothing, or even be preferable to 'doing it right'.
As well, the cost of that fine will not be borne by the people in charge of causing this train wreck: It will be the people who use the product. As long as there is no individual accountability, the system is fundamentally flawed -- those people can keep right on doing what they are doing, and the company will absorb and dissipate the responsibility and costs of doing so, often with impunity. Fines/punishments should only ever be levelled against the individuals responsible, which provides much greater assurances of competency and ethics than fining a company.
By participating you will not only be helping university students, you will also get to express your opinion and compete with others to show that you have the most accurate prediction."
So basically, participating gets me bragging rights. But who would I brag to? In any case, I think this study is a simple 'wisdom of the crowds' experiment and they should just come out and say it. "helping university students" is a poor reason to participate. Most places when they do a "count the number of pennies in the jar" game, offer to give the jar to the person with the closest answer. So... where's the jar?
Specialists warn that using tablets in excess could cause attention deficit disorder and even autism
Oh yeah, I forgot to add this bit: Also, the specialists above are morons. Nobody has yet conclusively determined the cause of either condition, but it appears to be hereditary, at least in part. Suggesting that tablets cause autism is as scientifically irresponsible as saying vaccinations cause autism. Let me be clear here: Nobody knows why these things happen. Anyone who says otherwise should be immediately imposed upon to provide compelling evidence to support their claim, since many studies have been done and no clear answer has emerged yet.
I wish people would stop making the assumption that there is only one way to learn something. It implies that there is one superior form of learning and a bunch of inferior ones. One problem of one-to-many teaching is that it must use a learning style which is effective to the broadest audience, which can (and usually does) mean that the learning style used is not the optimal one for some, if not most, of the audience. Another is that not all material is equal; You do not teach math the same way as you do phy ed; The goals are different, and in fact the areas of the brain targeted for development are different. Radically so.
So to ask a question "Do tablets help children learn?" is disengenuous at best. They will help in some situations. They will not help in all situations.
With that out of the way, I have some personal experience worth sharing. My sister is age 15 and has struggled with reading and math; Her verbal vocabulary vastly outstrips her written vocabulary. I purchased an iPad 2 for her this christmas (not cheap!) after several previous failed attempts to get her interested in reading. Since then, her reading comprehension has improved, and I believe access to a tablet device can be credited with that, because of it's interactive and hands-on nature. It is a more intuitive design for written material than a computer, and it is in a more accessible format. As well, because she can just swipe her finger over a word and get a definition and a spoken example of the word, it helps associate the written form of the word to the spoken one. I think tablets are very good for certain specific cases like this; and could be very beneficial for people with specific learning disorders.
But I do not suggest everyone buy a tablet for their child (or 'a' child, as the case may be!).
f you're putting a server on the Internet and you have NOT solved the problem of hashing the passwords then there is a core problem that has not been addressed. Something is wrong with your business model or programmer or management or whatever.
Not necessarily. If your website depends on impersonating you via login credentials to a third party, then without that website's cooperation, the login information is going to have to be stored in the clear. That was my only point: The headline and article indicates the FTC fined them because that information was stored in the clear, not gross negligence on the part of the web designer and company which allowed that information to be leaked. That is what the FTC should be punishing: Lack of code auditing, lack of access controls, etc. They should be saying the design was defective, instead of saying the data format was.
Breaking one of the rules of grammar, say, by using while the way the Slashdot summary does, might be the means by which one conveys precisely that innuendo. If the speaker overall cares very little about the rules, I'm afraid no one would perceive their intentions as that subtle signal would be drowned in the flood of noise.
Yes, but that was an example, not the conclusion. I get tired of people spell-flaming on the internet. It's like... if you can't attack the argument, attack the grammar, and if you can't attack the grammar, attack the person. It's not like he wrote the summary in txt-speak or something... -_-
There are perfectly legitimate reasons to maintain user account information in the clear: Namely, that you can't one-way hash anything except the login credentials and have it remain useful. So storing something in plaintext, or not, is not something worth suing and fining someone over. That said, storing the passwords in the clear is almost always a bad idea; and in this day and age, everyone should be using password hashes, preferably with a salt as well, as rainbow tables are increasingly common and accessible as storage costs decrease.
So just want that out there: There are some limited cases where storing login credentials in the clear is a necessity. But that's no excuse for not sanitizing the data... SQL injection attacks are stupidly easy to prevent, and the web designer who wrote the code that allowed it should probably be censured. If you're going to fine a company -- fine them for the injection attack... but leaving data in plain text is not a problem per se.
And yet another awkward summary graces the Slashdot homepage, in the grand tradition.
And yet another grammar troll graces the comments, also in the grand tradition. I know this may be hard to accept but the human mind can parse language that's full of errors, paradox, contradictions, and incomplete information; And does so often. As well, linguistic rules and content both can be mutated without warning based on prior communication, current context, or implication.
Now I can understand how a certain subset of the population could have an issue with this -- they were never invited to 'those' kind of parties, have never enjoyed an interpersonal relationship with another person or group where in-jokes and contextual language created a stronger bond between them, or ever flirted with someone using innuendo so skillfully that anyone observing mid-conversation would be unable to tell any kind of flirting was going on -- a sort of sexual encryption if you will. To those poor, poor bastards (like the OP), such linguistic acrobatics would be yet another reminder that they're missing out on something.
For that subset of the population, any departure of language from the perfectly ordered and rigidly rule-bound statements would be threatening: It would be just another social nuance beyond their grasp. Another way in which those otherwise average, stupid, mouth breathers are better than them, because they don't get tripped up on details like whether a comma at the end of a statement should go inside or outside a direct quotation. For most of us language is just a tool, organically evolved, and generally not worth paying much attention to -- as long as the point gets across it's "yay! language! woo."
And, life! goes... on.
The fundamental problem here is that Tor is accessible to the public. No, you read that right. As long as anyone can download a Tor client and connect, that person will have the IP address of at least one other Tor user. There is very little that can be done to prevent this without limiting access to the Tor network by some kind of handshake/authentication model. At the very least, the network is vulnerable to a denial of service attack; Since it can't tell a legitimate user from an illegitimate one: By design, the traffic is encrypted and the source obfusciated.
Tor can't ever fully succeed in its objective -- it can only maintain network integrity so long as the ratios between different types of users, client accesses, etc., remain in the green. Should the balance ever tilt, the network will become unusable.
A real solution is end to end encryption network-wide, which is what IPv6 was supposed to do, but as I'm sure you've all realized; the capitalist owners of the routers, switches, ISPs, etc., have decided artificial scarcity of IP address space could be profitable to them, so IPv6 is sort of dead on arrival. But even if it weren't, the notion that the ISP can't control what connections are made based on content is not something any of them want to give up; again, in the name of profits.
So basically, we need a whole new internet, built by the people, from the ground up. And it will probably have to be wireless. The problems of wireless high speed internet between buildings is hard enough; Try between cities.:\ But that's the only way I see of re-establishing a free and democratic digital communications medium.
Slashdot Mirror
What I don't understand is why they want to believe that Stealing code is a piece of property....But Importing Code from another country is just information (not requiring import taxes etc....) How on earth can it be both?
Easy. Like this: "Hey, legislator, I want a new law passed that makes absolutely no sense but will benefit me greatly. In exchange, I'll pay for your re-election campaign." "derp derp herp derp." "Okay then! Thank you for your cooperation."
Nice to see some intelligence in the courts now and then.
All they have done is stated that code is non-corporeal. They haven't said stealing it isn't a crime... It's mostly a case of "Oh, so I see you filed the blue form here, but you need to fill out the green form instead." "But it's the same thing!" "No, one is blue, the other is green."
This is a procedural error, not a statement that 'stealing' code isn't a crime. Rest assured, legislation is being drafted that will ensure that stealing from a poor, innocent company, will earn you at least 30 years in jail and an 8 trillion dollar fine. Really, it would be less troublesome to just murder the CEO the way the laws are being written these days...
Downloading things from backwater websites has a higher risk of malware being present than downloading from reputable sources. ...That's some fine detective work there, Lou.
More seriously; It shouldn't come as any surprise that given how valuable your location data and personal information is, and how much of that is stored on a cell phone, and how most companies have declared themselves to have absolute rights to it (go ahead, try and stop us! *evil overlord laugh*), it shouldn't be surprising that other people (legitimately or otherwise) are hopping on the "All Your Privacy Are Belong To Us" gravy train.
So people will be all like "Oh noes! Someone wrote an evil bot!" ... Of course, they'll forget that the malware that the telecos have loaded on your phone makes that look positively amateur.
Can you honestly say with a straight face that a crumbling Enterprise in Vegas would draw the nation in to repair it as was done with the Statue of Liberty?
Actually, yes. It's Nevada. It's a giant desert... nothing is ever going to 'crumble' out there... There are cars out there that were parked in the 1930s and except for damage caused by the sun are still exactly the way they were left. If you build something out there and right after civilization ends, it would take hundreds of years before it started to show traces of weathering beyond what you'd expect from being sandblasted. -_-
...one of the chapters of Professor Yunus's book calls for IT specialists to take the initiative and create some infrastructure that would help people to uplift themselves out of poverty. that still hasn't really happened yet, and i'm really perplexed and slightly frustrated that it hasn't happened.
There are many initatives for this kind of thing, but it's very hard to see how the pieces fit together to produce that kind of infrastructure. There's a good reason for that too: Anything that could be cost effective as a communications medium in the 3rd world would oblitherate those company's strangehold on the current (expensive) infrastructure.
But we're all well aware that the internet as we know it has gone to shit and we need to solve the problem of how to create a connection between two nodes that cannot be eavesdropped, does not rely on a 3rd party (central authority) to work, and can provide for anonymity. It's obvious that money is required to build an IT network, but we need some very strong controls to make sure that the interests providing that money can't later co-opt the network for their own purposes. The network needs to provide communications in a way that can't be fucked with to selectively block content.
The only way to do that is wirelessly. Software defined radio will eventually create the network outlined above, but it will probably be "pirate radio" as it were, since every country in the west auctions off spectrum to corporations -- there is no concept of 'public use' across most of the spectrum, and the few areas that are 'public use' are actively being attacked by corporate interests who want to reclaim it.
In short, it's a non-trivial problem to solve. People are working on it, believe me... but we're not being public about it nor are we recruiting many of the youth of today because they've grown up in a DRM-enabled world where everything is ruled by a corporation. My 15 yo sister is deathly afraid of using anything but iTunes because she fears the government will bust our door down and take her to Guantanamo bay if she downloads a .mp3, despite the fact that she knows I have 4x 1TB drives filled with 'pirate' material under my bed and download with impunity.
Ironic that for the first time in history, it's the 'older' generation that is risking their lives and livelihood to ensure freedom for the 'current' generation... usually it's the kids we sacrifice to war. -_-
The textbook companies love digital because they can control it and prevent resale.
Yeah. As if there aren't enough problems with funding for our schools as-is, now students can't even be taught basic skills without forking money over to some corporation and getting nothing but a 'license' in return. If this is the future, I think we should whip a shitty and get the hell out of here before the locals try and eat our brains or... something...
Sigh. Every one of these initiatives fail because people assume access to technology will make people more educated, and education leads to a better life. The problem is, that's not true. What leads to a better life is taking care of basic survival needs sufficiently to allow the local population time to pursue those things. Our industrial civilization evolved away from an aquarian civilization because of advancements in certain key technologies. Tablets were not one of those technologies.
I was expecting something at least as maddening as spending an hour trying to cancel an AOL account, or involving disused lavatories filled with leopards.
Taxes are due in 8 days. You still have a shot at getting your wish.
Go and fetch the parts you are currently missing.
I have everything else, but I'm presently missing "[guy on couch]". I've never run into a distribution system that required one. But if I must have one, can you tell me what the minimum system requirements are? I'm not sure what the battery life of 'guy on couch' is, but I've heard from my heterosexual friends that economy models generally weigh more, have limited ram, and the processor has what was described to me as a "very aggressive power saving feature". I'd also like to know how much these things cost and if there are any maintenance requirements beyond feeding him and giving him access to the bathroom. Again, very new to the market, so apologies in advance.
So unless you're allowing usernames such as "root" or "admin" or "administrator" AND using dictionary passwords wouldn't this fail? And be obvious in the logs?
You're thinking... this makes you a bad reference model for the average user.
...a market shake-out, causing many specialty services to exit, would ensue.
The raisin de etre for cable tv is specialty service. All that non-sense about buying 'packages' is a way for the company to extort more money from customers.The channels have to put advertising in place to support themselves; They do not get that subscription money, and they wouldn't under a 'pick and choose' model anymore than they do now. But what it would do is force cable companies to disclose which assets are valuable and which are not, meaning those channels could then dictate terms to the cable companies, instead of the other way around; It would be an accurate way of figuring out how many people actually watch your channel, rather than relying on 3rd party services to provide that information.
So no. It wouldn't result in a market 'shakeout'.... and if it did, that's capitalism in action. Don't you support capitalism, oh great Cable TV executive with your very fancy hat? What you're really saying is your profits would be lower because you'd have to be honest about the numbers, rather than being able to use (achem) creative accounting.
the U.S. does not, and cannot, commit any war crimes
A long list of war crimes would like to tell you to stop drinking the koolaid.
For those of you patriots who accept that all U.S. action is lawful, by virtue of it being U.S. action, then prosperity and salvation await.
Some restrictions apply. See your local government office for full details. Offer not valid outside of US. Void where prohibited by law.
For all others, who would engage with the socialist press and outside agitators in conspiring to disparage this flawless nation, only purgatory and a jail cell await you.
There are a lot of agitators in this country. More than any other country even. But you're right, I'm sure they have nothing to complain about.
So essentially you wish to ELIMINATE the corporate veil.
It never should have existed in the first place. Sovereignty is reserved for countries, not corporations.
I could and my programming skills suck.
So does your reading comprehension. Say you login to Facebook. Okay. Login complete. One way hash is fine. Now say, Facebook had a feature where it would check your gmail account for you, just provide the password. So you provide it with your gmail account password. Now how the hell is Facebook going to login to your gmail account if it doesn't have the plain text password?
Specialists think you are being a bit harsh in deriding their unfounded claims. 100% of experts interviewed agree!
"Right and wrong do exist. Just because you don't know what the right answer is, even if there is no way for you to know what the right answer is, doesn't make your answer right or even okay. It's much simpler than that... It's just plain wrong." -- Dr. House
... and if they HAD known that they'd be slapped with a $250,000 fine for it they would have done it different.
I'm not convinced. A few years ago I came across a curious story about how companies dumping toxic waste into the ocean were filming themselves doing it and then attaching a check to the EPA for the fine without being contacted by the agency. As it turns out, the cost for disposing of the materials at sea was less than the cost of disposing of it properly even when the fine was assessed for every infraction -- by a considerable margin.
So from that I learned that while a fine might seem large to me ($250,000 is not pocket change to me!), in a business sense it could mean next to nothing, or even be preferable to 'doing it right'.
As well, the cost of that fine will not be borne by the people in charge of causing this train wreck: It will be the people who use the product. As long as there is no individual accountability, the system is fundamentally flawed -- those people can keep right on doing what they are doing, and the company will absorb and dissipate the responsibility and costs of doing so, often with impunity. Fines/punishments should only ever be levelled against the individuals responsible, which provides much greater assurances of competency and ethics than fining a company.
By participating you will not only be helping university students, you will also get to express your opinion and compete with others to show that you have the most accurate prediction."
So basically, participating gets me bragging rights. But who would I brag to? In any case, I think this study is a simple 'wisdom of the crowds' experiment and they should just come out and say it. "helping university students" is a poor reason to participate. Most places when they do a "count the number of pennies in the jar" game, offer to give the jar to the person with the closest answer. So... where's the jar?
Specialists warn that using tablets in excess could cause attention deficit disorder and even autism
Oh yeah, I forgot to add this bit: Also, the specialists above are morons. Nobody has yet conclusively determined the cause of either condition, but it appears to be hereditary, at least in part. Suggesting that tablets cause autism is as scientifically irresponsible as saying vaccinations cause autism. Let me be clear here: Nobody knows why these things happen. Anyone who says otherwise should be immediately imposed upon to provide compelling evidence to support their claim, since many studies have been done and no clear answer has emerged yet.
I wish people would stop making the assumption that there is only one way to learn something. It implies that there is one superior form of learning and a bunch of inferior ones. One problem of one-to-many teaching is that it must use a learning style which is effective to the broadest audience, which can (and usually does) mean that the learning style used is not the optimal one for some, if not most, of the audience. Another is that not all material is equal; You do not teach math the same way as you do phy ed; The goals are different, and in fact the areas of the brain targeted for development are different. Radically so.
So to ask a question "Do tablets help children learn?" is disengenuous at best. They will help in some situations. They will not help in all situations.
With that out of the way, I have some personal experience worth sharing. My sister is age 15 and has struggled with reading and math; Her verbal vocabulary vastly outstrips her written vocabulary. I purchased an iPad 2 for her this christmas (not cheap!) after several previous failed attempts to get her interested in reading. Since then, her reading comprehension has improved, and I believe access to a tablet device can be credited with that, because of it's interactive and hands-on nature. It is a more intuitive design for written material than a computer, and it is in a more accessible format. As well, because she can just swipe her finger over a word and get a definition and a spoken example of the word, it helps associate the written form of the word to the spoken one. I think tablets are very good for certain specific cases like this; and could be very beneficial for people with specific learning disorders.
But I do not suggest everyone buy a tablet for their child (or 'a' child, as the case may be!).
f you're putting a server on the Internet and you have NOT solved the problem of hashing the passwords then there is a core problem that has not been addressed. Something is wrong with your business model or programmer or management or whatever.
Not necessarily. If your website depends on impersonating you via login credentials to a third party, then without that website's cooperation, the login information is going to have to be stored in the clear. That was my only point: The headline and article indicates the FTC fined them because that information was stored in the clear, not gross negligence on the part of the web designer and company which allowed that information to be leaked. That is what the FTC should be punishing: Lack of code auditing, lack of access controls, etc. They should be saying the design was defective, instead of saying the data format was.
Breaking one of the rules of grammar, say, by using while the way the Slashdot summary does, might be the means by which one conveys precisely that innuendo. If the speaker overall cares very little about the rules, I'm afraid no one would perceive their intentions as that subtle signal would be drowned in the flood of noise.
Yes, but that was an example, not the conclusion. I get tired of people spell-flaming on the internet. It's like... if you can't attack the argument, attack the grammar, and if you can't attack the grammar, attack the person. It's not like he wrote the summary in txt-speak or something... -_-
So just want that out there: There are some limited cases where storing login credentials in the clear is a necessity. But that's no excuse for not sanitizing the data... SQL injection attacks are stupidly easy to prevent, and the web designer who wrote the code that allowed it should probably be censured. If you're going to fine a company -- fine them for the injection attack... but leaving data in plain text is not a problem per se.
And yet another awkward summary graces the Slashdot homepage, in the grand tradition.
And yet another grammar troll graces the comments, also in the grand tradition. I know this may be hard to accept but the human mind can parse language that's full of errors, paradox, contradictions, and incomplete information; And does so often. As well, linguistic rules and content both can be mutated without warning based on prior communication, current context, or implication.
Now I can understand how a certain subset of the population could have an issue with this -- they were never invited to 'those' kind of parties, have never enjoyed an interpersonal relationship with another person or group where in-jokes and contextual language created a stronger bond between them, or ever flirted with someone using innuendo so skillfully that anyone observing mid-conversation would be unable to tell any kind of flirting was going on -- a sort of sexual encryption if you will. To those poor, poor bastards (like the OP), such linguistic acrobatics would be yet another reminder that they're missing out on something.
For that subset of the population, any departure of language from the perfectly ordered and rigidly rule-bound statements would be threatening: It would be just another social nuance beyond their grasp. Another way in which those otherwise average, stupid, mouth breathers are better than them, because they don't get tripped up on details like whether a comma at the end of a statement should go inside or outside a direct quotation. For most of us language is just a tool, organically evolved, and generally not worth paying much attention to -- as long as the point gets across it's "yay! language! woo."
And,
life!
goes...
on.
The fundamental problem here is that Tor is accessible to the public. No, you read that right. As long as anyone can download a Tor client and connect, that person will have the IP address of at least one other Tor user. There is very little that can be done to prevent this without limiting access to the Tor network by some kind of handshake/authentication model. At the very least, the network is vulnerable to a denial of service attack; Since it can't tell a legitimate user from an illegitimate one: By design, the traffic is encrypted and the source obfusciated.
Tor can't ever fully succeed in its objective -- it can only maintain network integrity so long as the ratios between different types of users, client accesses, etc., remain in the green. Should the balance ever tilt, the network will become unusable.
A real solution is end to end encryption network-wide, which is what IPv6 was supposed to do, but as I'm sure you've all realized; the capitalist owners of the routers, switches, ISPs, etc., have decided artificial scarcity of IP address space could be profitable to them, so IPv6 is sort of dead on arrival. But even if it weren't, the notion that the ISP can't control what connections are made based on content is not something any of them want to give up; again, in the name of profits.
So basically, we need a whole new internet, built by the people, from the ground up. And it will probably have to be wireless. The problems of wireless high speed internet between buildings is hard enough; Try between cities. :\ But that's the only way I see of re-establishing a free and democratic digital communications medium.