As customers we must demand that our ISPs no keep long term IP records.
If you do this, you have to promise not to complain when their DHCP server starts churning out new IP addresses to you ever day or so, screwing the folks who use dynamic DNS to run servers. Just something to keep in mind. Some people do get benefit out of static addresses.
if we call a birthed baby an "advanced-stage fetus"
But we don't. You can't just redefine some words and expect things to make sense. That was my original point. By pretending a baby is the same as an embryo, you reach false conclusions. Just as when you call a baby an "advanced-stage fetus" you reach incorrect conclusions.
but it is most assuredly alive, which is the salient point here.
No, it isn't the salient point. Because I reject categorically the idea that the simple trait of "alive" confers any special status. That single word means nothing. I do value human beings. But I will not hesitate to squash a mosquito which is biting my arm. I feel no guilt when plants, and even animals, are killed in order to provide me with food. In no way do I attempt to discourage my immune system from killing any living bateria it chooses. And I suspect you are no different, in fact. Although you may tell yourself you aren't. Look at what you do, not what you believe.
You post is riddled with non sequiturs and strawmen.
What? Do you even know what those words mean? Good lord. What exactly in my post do you consider a "non sequitur"? I made two points, both of which were directly apropos to the original post.
And strawman? What? A good example of a straw-man is your argument above. Nowhere in my post did I claim it was OK to redefine words. In fact, I claimed the OPPOSITE! And yet you come along and show how by claiming babies==fetus (as the original poster did, and I argued AGAINST) it would be OK to drown babies. Go back and re-read what I posted. You should be disagreeing with the original poster, not me.
You have been on Slashdot a long time! Long enough to suspect I've just been trolled.
I would argue that its more like saying _+_=2 isn't math.
And you would, once again, be wrong. All interesting math involves unknowns and solving for them. X+Y=2 is most certainly math. Algebra to be specific.
You admit yourself that evolution could be dead wrong, yet we still want to base all our scientific research on it?
No, I don't admit it could be dead wrong. Evolution does happen. That's a fact. It's directly observable in a number of instances, such as when bacteria evolve resistence to novel anti-biotics. There is a lot to learn, and some particular details of our theories are almost certainly wrong, but there isn't any doubt about the basic nature of genetics.
Then ask what would be different in our research if base it on a creator?
It would be intentionally ignoring part of the problem. ID is logically equivalent to simply saying that we were put here by aliens and then refusing to study the origin of the aliens. Or are you proposing that we will engage in a scientific search for God? Attempt to observe and quantify his fundamental nature? Pray tell, how are the ID supporters doing in their scientific study of the nature of God?
The nature of the fundamentalist movement and the neo-cons is exploitation by the powerful of those who accept things on faith without evidence. You are being used for your votes because you can be easily suckered into believeing lies. Because you can be suckered into believing warmongers and capital punishment supporters believe in a "culture of life". Because you can be suckered into believing that claiming part of a scientific theory should be considered beyond investigation somehow makes that theory more scientific.
The fact that people like you have somehow convinced yourselves that you are doing the work of Jesus when you believe the lies of thieves and death-dealers disgusts me. How you believe that God is smiling upon a gluttunous rape of natural resources is beyond me. To believe that corporations (a creation of the State) somehow deserve rights and moral standing equivalent to human beings (a creation of your God, right?) is beyond me.
The parable YOU quoted is quite appropriate. For it is YOU who sees without seeing. You see the sprawl in Olathe. The paving over of nature. The destruction of God's work by man's work. And yet you smile on it. You don't truely see it. A pathetic sheep who believes what he is told no matter how unbelievable it is.
If you can explain to me how evolution = science, I will concede. Is it science because it is a widely held opinion?
Go look up the definition for science. Evolution is most certainly science. Even if you don't like, or believe, the theory of evolution, to pretend that it isn't science is like claiming that "1+1=2" isn't math. Even if you don't like the answer, it's clearly math.
Here, I'll help you out: science n. 1. The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
How does evolution not fall under this? Do you know how silly you sound when you claim that evolution is not science? Even if it's eventually proven wrong, it's still science. Eistein eventually showed that Newton's equations were wrong, but Newton's theories were still science.
Concrete roads have grooves built into them because a perfectly smooth concrete road would be about as slippery as black ice with even a little water on it.
Those are different grooves. Most roads have a crown to them so that water runs off. Some concrete roads do have rain grooves cut into them, but these are not what the original poster was talking about. He was referring to the two grooves formed underneath the tires on asphalt roads, and wondering if bendable concrete would have the same problem.
OK, but your anti-religion preaching has no place in schools either.
How is teaching science "anti-religion preaching"? Not unless your religion is one based on illogic. Say by claiming that evolution is too complex to happen on it's own, and then accepting without question an even more complex and powerful force. Where did God come from anyway? "Intelligent Design" is not about finding answers. It's about denying questions.
"fundies" are trying to prevent paying for EMBRYONIC stem cell research because they don't want to be forced to pay to have babies killed.
Boo frickin hoo. I don't want to pay to have Iraqi's killed. I don't want to pay for capital punishment. But the "culture of life" folks think I should. BTW, an embryo is not a baby. There is a reason why it's two different words. Words do have meanings, no matter how much the neo-cons might try to twist them.
How much does this road bend, also what kinda of deformation would we see from traffic. The current roads currently get grooves in them. But make a road that actually felxes, wht kind of effect would that have on the surface of the road? This to me would mean MORE maintaining the road, not less.
I think you'll find that the grooves you see are only on asphalt roads. Concrete roads don't get them. Asphalt gets soft when it gets hot, so the cars can sink in a little bit. Concrete roads never get soft. I suppose with huge traffic volumes an old concrete road could have grooves worn into it, but I think the concrete falls apart from cracks and such long before that happens.
This little chestnut always cracks me up. When I say we went to war for oil, why do people assume that "for the average American" should be tacked on to the end? Let's spell this out. We went to war because the oil companies are going to make out like bandits. According to Yahoo the Oil & Gas industry is posting year-on-year revenue growth of almost 30% and profit growth of almost 40%!!! I don't think the oil companies are unhappy with how the economy is doing. And if you don't like it "go fuck yourself" as Dick Cheney likes to say.
Most of them simply total usage over the month, and if you're over their magic limit (which changes every month, and which they refuse to put in writing), out go the threatening letters.
Well, agreed that is a slimy practice. I've never had an ISP hassle me fortunately, but I also stay away from the cable companies as it seems to be a favorite trick of theirs.
Considering that only a few years ago you would pay well over $100 for a 128Kbps ISDN line and over $1000 for a 1.5Mbps T1, getting a 1Mbps DSL or cable connection for $50 bucks a month is quite reasonable. Out of curiosity, how cheaply would they have to sell bandwidth for you to call it reasonable? $10/Mbps? $1/Mbps? $0.25/Mbps?
If I pay for 1.5Mb/1.5Mb, I want to get the bandwidth that I pay for; it'd be completely unfair otherwise. If the ISP is overselling their capacity, that's *their* problem, not mine.
Awww, that so cute. Terribly naive, but cute. Oversubscription is the name of the game. I would guess that somewhere around 100% of ISP's are oversubscribed in one sense or another. If all of your ISP's customers started trying to use a full 1.5Mbps 24/7 your ISP's network would melt down. But that's OK because that (almost) never happens. Far from being "unfair", this oversubscription is what allows your ISP to offer you a reasonable price for service. Your ISP is probably paying at least $75-$100/month to buy 1.5Mbps from a backbone carrier at bulk prices I would guess. I'm also guessing that you are paying less than that, and that your ISP actually has some overhead of their own. It isn't like 100% of your bill is paying for their bandwidth alone.
I can usually download on my DSL at pretty much 100% of what I'm paying for. But usually for an hour or so in the evening, it slows down. Right when everybody gets home from work it seems like. Is this unfair? Maybe. Am I willing to pay significantly more for service so that my ISP can sustain that one hour burst and have tons of excess service the other 23 hours? Not really.
reasonable restrictions to freeom in the interest of all involved
Wow. You should write propaganda. It comes naturally to you. I'll let you in on a secret. Every government, no matter how totalitarian, claims it offers a free society. And they all claim that their restrictions on freedom are "reasonable". But just because they say it does not make it true.
When you advocate that Americans should not expect to excercise their 4th amendment rights because they are using a road paid for by taxes, you are advocating totalitarianism. Because if something as absolutely necessary to daily existance (such as leaving your property) involves giving up your rights, then your rights don't exist at all. You can pretend that I'm advocating "anarchy". But I'm not.
I'm not advocating for the Stalinization of American,
Yes, actually you are. You are one of these people who says you are free, unless you want to work or even leave your house. Then of course everyone has to submit to the will of the state because taxes are involved. And never do you seem to realize that if people have to give up their rights just to work or travel then they aren't free at all! Dumb shits like you are the ones who will be the death of America. Or at least a free America. If you are so willing to submit to the state, can I suggest visiting China or North Korea . Don't bother coming back. We won't miss you. I promise.
Macromedia should be on my side with this, unless they are somehow benefitting everytime a flash app is loaded (which isn't impossible, but creates a serious conflict of interest).
Did you pay Macromedia for a Flash plugin? No. Did the web developer pay Macromedia for a tool to create Flash? Yes. Does that answer your question as to Macromedia's loyalty?
I'm not sure it's realistic. One nice thing about digital storage is you can copy it to new media with no loss at all. A book, or painting, or photograph, might last longer (in theory). But when it does wear out it can't be magically duplicated like bits can.
So if you want stuff to last forever, each generation of people needs to convert the old stuff into a new format. But if you are only doing this once a generation, it's not that big of a deal. You could even make it a family tradition, the passing of the old to the new. Assuming of course that you actually care about keeping something 'forever'.
You only think this because, (a) you really do not understand authentication, and (b) you hane not looked outside the very propreitary PKI world
Yes. Thank you for talking down to me, and then proceeding to talk about something else entirely. I was talking about hardware tokens like this one or the CryptoCard RB-1 seen here.
I'm quite aware of how certificates work. I'm also quite aware that a private key, whether it's an X509 cert or an SSH key, is quite vulnerable if it's sitting on a user's PC. This is why the hardware tokens are attractive, because it is effectively impossible (i.e., computationally infeasable) for a remote attacker to copy. That's why I was pointing out that hardware tokens seem to be private key based, and asking if anybody knew of a way to perform a public-key based authentication using a typeable number of characters. The private-key nature of the hardware tokens make them unattractive for use in authenticating to multiple domains.
Yes, I'm aware of USB dongles and smart cards that perform public-key based authentication. But they also require drivers/software on the client which hardware tokens do not. They are also vulnerable to misuse as long as the card/dongle is connected to the users PC, even if the private key itself can't be copied.
True, but who cares about home users? Or more accurately, who cares about authentication on the console in a home environment? I take authentication at work quite seriously, where we've been using fobs for some authentication for years and are expanding. But I don't bother locking my screen at home. Why would I? It takes a lot more than a password (or a token) to protect a computer against an adversary with physical access to the machine.
While I applaud the effort to get two-factor authentication more widly deployed, I think there is a critical flaw in most (all?) of the hardware tokens currently in use.
I believe that current hardware tokens are all based on private key encryption algorithms. The key is stored in the device, as well as in the backend authentication server. This works fine within a single administrative domain, but is pretty much useless in cross domain situations.
How can I use my hardware token from work to authenticate to my bank? There are only two ways I know of. Either my bank and my employer both know the secret key for my fob, in which case either one can spoof me to the other one. Or my bank has my employer perform the authentication. Neither one of which is desirable. I suppose someone could start selling hardware tokens where the users can program multiple keys into it, and the user would then have to choose the proper key when logging in, but I've never seen one. Which still leaves the problem of how my bank and I communicate the secret key securely.
Ideally I think these hardware tokens would be public-key based. But as far as I know, there isn't any way to do a public-key authentication using a reasonable number of bits. As in, a type-able number of bits. No body is going to type in the 128 hex characters which result from a 1024-bit RSA key signature for example. Is there any way to get around this? Maybe, but I don't know of it. The other option is to use a USB interface (or something) so the user doesn't have to type the response.
iTunes will show you your complete list of songs on your shuffle when it is plugged in. Yeah, both of my flash players will show me what files are in them when I plug them in as well. I'm pretty sure this feature is universal among MP3 players, and I did take it into account when I made my original post.
You're not required to play "Name that Tune" with your entire library.
But remember, the problem is I don't know what song it is! How does a list of the songs help me figure out what an unknown song is? Sure it narrows it down, but I'd have to go through and play songs until I recognized the unknown one.
I do think the shuffle is a paradigm shift
It may be a paradigm shift for you. I've been doing this exact thing, scripted generation of random mixes for my flash player, for several years. Since I got my 128MB Diva in 2001 in fact. I ran it out of a cron job, and as long as the player was plugged in at night it would have a new batch of songs in the morning. My new one is 512MB, so I don't have to reload it every day and haven't bothered with setting it up for cron yet.
people think they need to a screen (I thought the same thing, especially coming from a 20GB iPod), but I'm telling you, it's overrated.
Believe me when I say, having had the functional equivalent of the iPod Shuffle for several years, I find a screen quite useful. Dropping the screen isn't a 'paradigm shift'. It's just a tradeoff, sacrificing functionality for lower cost and smaller size. And like I said, I almost went for one. But I couldn't justify the $500 for the miniMac I would have felt almost compelled to buy. No point in buying an iPod and half-assing it by trying to use it with Linux. All or nothing I say!
Having had a shuffle since Macworld, I can say it is the only player I use (I also have a 20GB iPod). Screen? Don't really need the screen.
Yeah, I thought about getting one. But the thing is, I load up my flash player with a random mix of music. I don't actually know everything in my source library, so I often hear a song I like but don't know who it's by. With a shuffle, how would I find out? Plus it's nice to know when the battery is getting low so I can charge it back up.
Commenting on the case the FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell said, `the industry must adhere to certain consumer protection norms if television is to remain an open platform for innovation.` He also gave a warning that the FCC will not allow companies to stifle innovation saying that the Commission `acted swiftly to ensure that time shifting remains a viable option for consumers`.
Slashdot Mirror
As customers we must demand that our ISPs no keep long term IP records.
If you do this, you have to promise not to complain when their DHCP server starts churning out new IP addresses to you ever day or so, screwing the folks who use dynamic DNS to run servers. Just something to keep in mind. Some people do get benefit out of static addresses.
- posted anonymously because this post will attract flames as flames attract moths
:-)
Well, that makes it pretty clear that you aren't one of the people who can predict the future
if we call a birthed baby an "advanced-stage fetus"
But we don't. You can't just redefine some words and expect things to make sense. That was my original point. By pretending a baby is the same as an embryo, you reach false conclusions. Just as when you call a baby an "advanced-stage fetus" you reach incorrect conclusions.
but it is most assuredly alive, which is the salient point here.
No, it isn't the salient point. Because I reject categorically the idea that the simple trait of "alive" confers any special status. That single word means nothing. I do value human beings. But I will not hesitate to squash a mosquito which is biting my arm. I feel no guilt when plants, and even animals, are killed in order to provide me with food. In no way do I attempt to discourage my immune system from killing any living bateria it chooses. And I suspect you are no different, in fact. Although you may tell yourself you aren't. Look at what you do, not what you believe.
You post is riddled with non sequiturs and strawmen.
What? Do you even know what those words mean? Good lord. What exactly in my post do you consider a "non sequitur"? I made two points, both of which were directly apropos to the original post.
And strawman? What? A good example of a straw-man is your argument above. Nowhere in my post did I claim it was OK to redefine words. In fact, I claimed the OPPOSITE! And yet you come along and show how by claiming babies==fetus (as the original poster did, and I argued AGAINST) it would be OK to drown babies. Go back and re-read what I posted. You should be disagreeing with the original poster, not me.
You have been on Slashdot a long time!
Long enough to suspect I've just been trolled.
I would argue that its more like saying _+_=2 isn't math.
And you would, once again, be wrong. All interesting math involves unknowns and solving for them. X+Y=2 is most certainly math. Algebra to be specific.
You admit yourself that evolution could be dead wrong, yet we still want to base all our scientific research on it?
No, I don't admit it could be dead wrong. Evolution does happen. That's a fact. It's directly observable in a number of instances, such as when bacteria evolve resistence to novel anti-biotics. There is a lot to learn, and some particular details of our theories are almost certainly wrong, but there isn't any doubt about the basic nature of genetics.
Then ask what would be different in our research if base it on a creator?
It would be intentionally ignoring part of the problem. ID is logically equivalent to simply saying that we were put here by aliens and then refusing to study the origin of the aliens. Or are you proposing that we will engage in a scientific search for God? Attempt to observe and quantify his fundamental nature? Pray tell, how are the ID supporters doing in their scientific study of the nature of God?
The nature of the fundamentalist movement and the neo-cons is exploitation by the powerful of those who accept things on faith without evidence. You are being used for your votes because you can be easily suckered into believeing lies. Because you can be suckered into believing warmongers and capital punishment supporters believe in a "culture of life". Because you can be suckered into believing that claiming part of a scientific theory should be considered beyond investigation somehow makes that theory more scientific.
The fact that people like you have somehow convinced yourselves that you are doing the work of Jesus when you believe the lies of thieves and death-dealers disgusts me. How you believe that God is smiling upon a gluttunous rape of natural resources is beyond me. To believe that corporations (a creation of the State) somehow deserve rights and moral standing equivalent to human beings (a creation of your God, right?) is beyond me.
The parable YOU quoted is quite appropriate. For it is YOU who sees without seeing. You see the sprawl in Olathe. The paving over of nature. The destruction of God's work by man's work. And yet you smile on it. You don't truely see it. A pathetic sheep who believes what he is told no matter how unbelievable it is.
If you can explain to me how evolution = science, I will concede. Is it science because it is a widely held opinion?
Go look up the definition for science. Evolution is most certainly science. Even if you don't like, or believe, the theory of evolution, to pretend that it isn't science is like claiming that "1+1=2" isn't math. Even if you don't like the answer, it's clearly math.
Here, I'll help you out:
science
n.
1. The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
How does evolution not fall under this? Do you know how silly you sound when you claim that evolution is not science? Even if it's eventually proven wrong, it's still science. Eistein eventually showed that Newton's equations were wrong, but Newton's theories were still science.
Concrete roads have grooves built into them because a perfectly smooth concrete road would be about as slippery as black ice with even a little water on it.
Those are different grooves. Most roads have a crown to them so that water runs off. Some concrete roads do have rain grooves cut into them, but these are not what the original poster was talking about. He was referring to the two grooves formed underneath the tires on asphalt roads, and wondering if bendable concrete would have the same problem.
OK, but your anti-religion preaching has no place in schools either.
How is teaching science "anti-religion preaching"? Not unless your religion is one based on illogic. Say by claiming that evolution is too complex to happen on it's own, and then accepting without question an even more complex and powerful force. Where did God come from anyway? "Intelligent Design" is not about finding answers. It's about denying questions.
"fundies" are trying to prevent paying for EMBRYONIC stem cell research because they don't want to be forced to pay to have babies killed.
Boo frickin hoo. I don't want to pay to have Iraqi's killed. I don't want to pay for capital punishment. But the "culture of life" folks think I should. BTW, an embryo is not a baby. There is a reason why it's two different words. Words do have meanings, no matter how much the neo-cons might try to twist them.
Don't forget Olathe. The fundamentalists seem to be taking over there.
How much does this road bend, also what kinda of deformation would we see from traffic. The current roads currently get grooves in them. But make a road that actually felxes, wht kind of effect would that have on the surface of the road? This to me would mean MORE maintaining the road, not less.
I think you'll find that the grooves you see are only on asphalt roads. Concrete roads don't get them. Asphalt gets soft when it gets hot, so the cars can sink in a little bit. Concrete roads never get soft. I suppose with huge traffic volumes an old concrete road could have grooves worn into it, but I think the concrete falls apart from cracks and such long before that happens.
Yes, yes, give me that "but gas costs $2 still".
This little chestnut always cracks me up. When I say we went to war for oil, why do people assume that "for the average American" should be tacked on to the end? Let's spell this out. We went to war because the oil companies are going to make out like bandits. According to Yahoo the Oil & Gas industry is posting year-on-year revenue growth of almost 30% and profit growth of almost 40%!!! I don't think the oil companies are unhappy with how the economy is doing. And if you don't like it "go fuck yourself" as Dick Cheney likes to say.
Most of them simply total usage over the month, and if you're over their magic limit (which changes every month, and which they refuse to put in writing), out go the threatening letters.
Well, agreed that is a slimy practice. I've never had an ISP hassle me fortunately, but I also stay away from the cable companies as it seems to be a favorite trick of theirs.
Considering that only a few years ago you would pay well over $100 for a 128Kbps ISDN line and over $1000 for a 1.5Mbps T1, getting a 1Mbps DSL or cable connection for $50 bucks a month is quite reasonable. Out of curiosity, how cheaply would they have to sell bandwidth for you to call it reasonable? $10/Mbps? $1/Mbps? $0.25/Mbps?
If I pay for 1.5Mb/1.5Mb, I want to get the bandwidth that I pay for; it'd be completely unfair otherwise. If the ISP is overselling their capacity, that's *their* problem, not mine.
Awww, that so cute. Terribly naive, but cute. Oversubscription is the name of the game. I would guess that somewhere around 100% of ISP's are oversubscribed in one sense or another. If all of your ISP's customers started trying to use a full 1.5Mbps 24/7 your ISP's network would melt down. But that's OK because that (almost) never happens. Far from being "unfair", this oversubscription is what allows your ISP to offer you a reasonable price for service. Your ISP is probably paying at least $75-$100/month to buy 1.5Mbps from a backbone carrier at bulk prices I would guess. I'm also guessing that you are paying less than that, and that your ISP actually has some overhead of their own. It isn't like 100% of your bill is paying for their bandwidth alone.
I can usually download on my DSL at pretty much 100% of what I'm paying for. But usually for an hour or so in the evening, it slows down. Right when everybody gets home from work it seems like. Is this unfair? Maybe. Am I willing to pay significantly more for service so that my ISP can sustain that one hour burst and have tons of excess service the other 23 hours? Not really.
reasonable restrictions to freeom in the interest of all involved
Wow. You should write propaganda. It comes naturally to you. I'll let you in on a secret. Every government, no matter how totalitarian, claims it offers a free society. And they all claim that their restrictions on freedom are "reasonable". But just because they say it does not make it true.
When you advocate that Americans should not expect to excercise their 4th amendment rights because they are using a road paid for by taxes, you are advocating totalitarianism. Because if something as absolutely necessary to daily existance (such as leaving your property) involves giving up your rights, then your rights don't exist at all. You can pretend that I'm advocating "anarchy". But I'm not.
Look, I'm all for freedom and liberty
No, actually you aren't.
I'm not advocating for the Stalinization of American,
Yes, actually you are. You are one of these people who says you are free, unless you want to work or even leave your house. Then of course everyone has to submit to the will of the state because taxes are involved. And never do you seem to realize that if people have to give up their rights just to work or travel then they aren't free at all! Dumb shits like you are the ones who will be the death of America. Or at least a free America. If you are so willing to submit to the state, can I suggest visiting China or North Korea . Don't bother coming back. We won't miss you. I promise.
Macromedia should be on my side with this, unless they are somehow benefitting everytime a flash app is loaded (which isn't impossible, but creates a serious conflict of interest).
Did you pay Macromedia for a Flash plugin? No. Did the web developer pay Macromedia for a tool to create Flash? Yes. Does that answer your question as to Macromedia's loyalty?
I'm not sure it's realistic. One nice thing about digital storage is you can copy it to new media with no loss at all. A book, or painting, or photograph, might last longer (in theory). But when it does wear out it can't be magically duplicated like bits can.
So if you want stuff to last forever, each generation of people needs to convert the old stuff into a new format. But if you are only doing this once a generation, it's not that big of a deal. You could even make it a family tradition, the passing of the old to the new. Assuming of course that you actually care about keeping something 'forever'.
Electrons, positrons, protons, and neutrons are particles with mass and they are not light.
;-)
So they are what, heavy? It's a joke. Perhaps a little too subtle, but a joke none the less. Laugh.
You only think this because, (a) you really do not understand authentication, and (b) you hane not looked outside the very propreitary PKI world
Yes. Thank you for talking down to me, and then proceeding to talk about something else entirely. I was talking about hardware tokens like this one or the CryptoCard RB-1 seen here.
I'm quite aware of how certificates work. I'm also quite aware that a private key, whether it's an X509 cert or an SSH key, is quite vulnerable if it's sitting on a user's PC. This is why the hardware tokens are attractive, because it is effectively impossible (i.e., computationally infeasable) for a remote attacker to copy. That's why I was pointing out that hardware tokens seem to be private key based, and asking if anybody knew of a way to perform a public-key based authentication using a typeable number of characters. The private-key nature of the hardware tokens make them unattractive for use in authenticating to multiple domains.
Yes, I'm aware of USB dongles and smart cards that perform public-key based authentication. But they also require drivers/software on the client which hardware tokens do not. They are also vulnerable to misuse as long as the card/dongle is connected to the users PC, even if the private key itself can't be copied.
True, but who cares about home users? Or more accurately, who cares about authentication on the console in a home environment? I take authentication at work quite seriously, where we've been using fobs for some authentication for years and are expanding. But I don't bother locking my screen at home. Why would I? It takes a lot more than a password (or a token) to protect a computer against an adversary with physical access to the machine.
While I applaud the effort to get two-factor authentication more widly deployed, I think there is a critical flaw in most (all?) of the hardware tokens currently in use.
I believe that current hardware tokens are all based on private key encryption algorithms. The key is stored in the device, as well as in the backend authentication server. This works fine within a single administrative domain, but is pretty much useless in cross domain situations.
How can I use my hardware token from work to authenticate to my bank? There are only two ways I know of. Either my bank and my employer both know the secret key for my fob, in which case either one can spoof me to the other one. Or my bank has my employer perform the authentication. Neither one of which is desirable. I suppose someone could start selling hardware tokens where the users can program multiple keys into it, and the user would then have to choose the proper key when logging in, but I've never seen one. Which still leaves the problem of how my bank and I communicate the secret key securely.
Ideally I think these hardware tokens would be public-key based. But as far as I know, there isn't any way to do a public-key authentication using a reasonable number of bits. As in, a type-able number of bits. No body is going to type in the 128 hex characters which result from a 1024-bit RSA key signature for example. Is there any way to get around this? Maybe, but I don't know of it. The other option is to use a USB interface (or something) so the user doesn't have to type the response.
iTunes will show you your complete list of songs on your shuffle when it is plugged in.
Yeah, both of my flash players will show me what files are in them when I plug them in as well. I'm pretty sure this feature is universal among MP3 players, and I did take it into account when I made my original post.
You're not required to play "Name that Tune" with your entire library.
But remember, the problem is I don't know what song it is! How does a list of the songs help me figure out what an unknown song is? Sure it narrows it down, but I'd have to go through and play songs until I recognized the unknown one.
I do think the shuffle is a paradigm shift
It may be a paradigm shift for you. I've been doing this exact thing, scripted generation of random mixes for my flash player, for several years. Since I got my 128MB Diva in 2001 in fact. I ran it out of a cron job, and as long as the player was plugged in at night it would have a new batch of songs in the morning. My new one is 512MB, so I don't have to reload it every day and haven't bothered with setting it up for cron yet.
people think they need to a screen (I thought the same thing, especially coming from a 20GB iPod), but I'm telling you, it's overrated.
Believe me when I say, having had the functional equivalent of the iPod Shuffle for several years, I find a screen quite useful. Dropping the screen isn't a 'paradigm shift'. It's just a tradeoff, sacrificing functionality for lower cost and smaller size. And like I said, I almost went for one. But I couldn't justify the $500 for the miniMac I would have felt almost compelled to buy. No point in buying an iPod and half-assing it by trying to use it with Linux. All or nothing I say!
Having had a shuffle since Macworld, I can say it is the only player I use (I also have a 20GB iPod). Screen? Don't really need the screen.
Yeah, I thought about getting one. But the thing is, I load up my flash player with a random mix of music. I don't actually know everything in my source library, so I often hear a song I like but don't know who it's by. With a shuffle, how would I find out? Plus it's nice to know when the battery is getting low so I can charge it back up.
Commenting on the case the FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell said, `the industry must adhere to certain consumer protection norms if television is to remain an open platform for innovation.` He also gave a warning that the FCC will not allow companies to stifle innovation saying that the Commission `acted swiftly to ensure that time shifting remains a viable option for consumers`.
Something like that? Don't hold your breath.