The UK government was only doing this as a response to a vocal (and typically vicious) campaign from the Daily Mail and other members of the right-wing gutter press. They didn't really want to implement anything like this (being expensive and difficult), but they couldn't afford to have their usual support base turning against them.
This consultation lets them drop it while saving face. "We tried our best, but the people have spoken- sorry grass-root supporters!".
35% of parents. 80% of all respondents, which included non-parents, academics, industry reps, etc.
It is notable that while more parents wanted blocking than the rest of the respondents (proportionally), it was still not a majorit yin favour. That's a pretty sound rejection.
True. But most countries have laws defining "criminal negligence" for people who cause harm by failing to do their job to an expected basic minimum standard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence
So you take intent out of the equation, you're still left with the same "harm done", the same damages. Maybe the sentence would be 5 years instead of 60 then; should we expect the head of Information Security to get a visit from the Feds on THAT basis?
By a curious coincidence, $800,000 is exactly the same "cost of damages" that was levelled at Gary McKinnon for his amateurish computer escapades. ($800,000 being the "fix it" figure, not counting $13.5 million in other costs mentioned). So for Gary McKinnon, $800,000 in damages equals extradition and 60 years in prison. Will whoever was responsible for failing to implement a proper IS policy be expecting a similar visit from the Feds?
Of course not. Punishment is reserved for shifting blame onto others, not for disciplining people who do things wrong.
If it had been a competent agent of Mossad or something they would never have noticed. Or by someone as competent as the guys that made Flame.
They were bloody lucky it was McKinnon and not someone else.
You assume that it WAS only McKinnon. Skilled attackers could have been waltzing in and out of that gaping security hole for years before McKinnon spoiled it for them by drawing attention to it. Who knows how many government secrets have found their way into unfriendly hands because of this?
I will always walk around unarmed, as do the overwhelming majority of people in modern day America (let alone the UK). With that in mind, I'd rate my survivability as far higher if I were attacked by a lone crazy person with a metal club or a knife than I would if I were attacked by a lone crazy person with a semi-automatic handgun.
Can I imagine life with a caved-in skull? No more so than having my brains blown out. But can I imagine life after being smacked in the ribs with a crow bar? More so than after getting a couple of bullet-shaped holes in my chest.
If you want to make a protest about being asked to choose a religion, do it properly. Just write atheist or agnostic, according to your view of things.
Not to nitpick (as I agree with you), but there would be no need to use the write-in option for this- a "No Religion" option was provided right there in the list.
It was (and is- there's always next time, kids!) important to tick No Religion if that's what you are- not Christian "because I was baptised, I think", or Jewish "because my mum is", or anything else. These figures are used to make important decisions- such as opening state-funded faith schools, or tax subsidies for churches. If you want your view to be heard, as a non-religious person, then you've got to make your presence known properly.
It's an interesting thought. But do remember that Elizabeth Windsor is not just the Queen of England, Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland. She is also the Queen of Australia (no official religion, formal separation of church and state), Canada (no official religion, formal separation of church and state), New Zealand (no official religion, formal separation of church and state), and all the other Commonwealth states (I'm not going to look up all of them, but you get the idea).
There are also degrees of separation. I would feel much happier if the Church of England didn't get free seats in parliament for their bishops, for example (especially since they've just reaffirmed their ban on women bishops, and opposition to gay rights). If they wanted to keep the bit where they put the hat on new kings and queens, I'm happy for them to carry on there.
There was a write-in option ("other, please specify"), and this was the most popular write-in.
Far more interesting to me is that Christianity declined to less than 60% of the population, while No Religion almost doubled to get around 25%. That's a massive attitude shift for a 10 year period. Really brings into question why we have a state religion- although I suspect the figures will have to sink even lower before we can use census data as an excuse to separate church and state.
Notable, perhaps, that the Kickstarter campaign is almost halfway through its allotted time, and has raised less than half the required funds. For a project as huge and well supported as VLC, £40,000 should be easy. Maybe a Slashdot story will give them a boost (probably the reason it was submitted in the first place), but that's hardly certain considering the Slashdot crowd's opinion of "Metro" apps.
"Military grade" equipment has rarely been about capabilities- it's about reliability. The reason a military walkie-talkie costs 20x what the ones they give to shopping centre security staff cost is not because they have much by way of extra features (although they might have some, that's not what costs the money); it's because they expected to work faultlessly for years in deserts and swamps and to never unexpectedly stop working when you're in the middle of calling in the cavalry.
A hand-held controller is a hand-held controller is a hand-held controller; there's nothing special, in terms of what it can do, between the ones that cost £9.99 on Amazon and the ones that the military probably pays £5000 a piece for. What's special is that if that "tank" gets shaken up a nearby explosion (or a speed-bump), what's the guarantee that the analogue stick isn't going to snap off in your hand, or some little wire is going to get shaken loose and the things going to get stuck on "left arrow button"?
So I understand Valve is going to make a killing off of this, but why would I as a PC gamer want to buy a console that pretends to be a PC? This isn't a PC, although Valve is going to market the shit out of it as that.
You wouldn't; you're not the target market.
The target market is presumably Xbox/PS3/Wii users, who wouldn't touch mainstream PC gaming with a big stick. That's an untapped market for Valve at this point, so why not?
It's also a good back up point for Valve in case Steam on Windows ever stops being viable; the dark murmurings are that Microsoft's Windows Store (or whatever it's called) is an attempt to steal Valve's (and their other rivals) users for themselves, and that they could even stoop to their old dirty tricks to make it happen (by offering software in the Windows store exclusive use of the newest Direct X, or breaking Steam "accidentally" with an update every other month).
If only there were some way to combine those 10 cartridges into just one big cartridge with a big capacity. Like you say, it could stay plugged in the whole time to save on swapping. Maybe there could be a way of downloading new games onto the cartridge, so you can choose which 10 games are stored on there? We could even have the cartridge built inside the console's case, for protection...
I've been cooking as an adult for years, and as a child in my mum's kitchen for years prior- we never use the measurement "cup". Teaspoon/tablespoon, yes, but cup no. My mum (being old-fashioned) always uses pints and ounces (pint of milk, 3 ounces of flour, etc.) measured in a jug for the former and kitchen scales for the latter. I would always use litres (or ml) and grams, measured in the same way. Many recipes might involve informal measures (a splash of vinegar, a handful of herbs, a glass of wine), but these would not usually be quantified or formalised- they're an "it's up to you really" measurement.
One of the most frustrating things about following recipes online written by Americans is the fact that some substance are given in cups (a volume measurement) when for us it would always be a weight measurement. It's not that you can't convert it easily enough, but it forces you to cook in a way you're not used to; trying to measure the level of flour in a measuring jug is frustrating and alien when you're used to sifting it into a bowl sat on some scales.
Is it difficult for you to imagine people not doing things in exactly the same way as you do all over the world?
The Imperial measurement system just happens to be slightly better tuned to everyday use than the metric system. The units fit better because of their size in food preparation for example, 75 grammes is nowhere as easy to comprehend as 3oz for example or a 1lb or 2lb loaf. Of course Newtons and the rest of the SI units work much better than Imperial units in science but actually in these days of instantaneous unit translation on digital devices it doesn't matter very much what units you sell things to as an end consumer who wants a lump of something in understandable units without lots of significant digits. The supply chain doesn't care what the units are.
Its particularly frustrating as well that every translation from an imperial unit to a metric unit has been used to gouge consumers by the marketplace. Buying petrol at 1.48 UK Pounds per liter would give anyone a heart attack if they realized that this was $9 per gallon, 5.60 UK pounds per US gallon, or 6.7 pounds per imperial gallon. He had a legitimate complaint that all of us grumpy old people have when changes introduce rip offs that the young don't see.
In what way is "3" easier to remember than "75"? Other than the fact that it is a smaller number?
I've never bought petrol in gallons- I know that £1.47 per litre is a lot of money for petrol, but I'd have no idea if £6.70 per gallon was comparatively expensive. If you grew up with gallons then maybe the transition has been rough on you, but it just comes down to what you're used to; I know that £1.29 is a good price for petrol these days (but is a lot compared to the 99p per litre I used to pay years ago), and that £1.49 is a lot more than £1.29. That's all that really matters.
BNP aren't "openly violent"- they're the so-called "respectable face" of the National Front, EDL, and other openly violent groups. They attempt to maintain a thin veneer of respectability, and confine themselves to talking not about race and ethnicity, but instead about immigration, lost sovereignty, and the erosion of the "traditional British culture".
Just like UKIP, in pretty much every way. UKIP are just more successful at it.
And no, of course I don't have any better ideas... this is/. and I'm here to pointlessly criticise!
Well, quite. Any system that involves a secret input that the user presents to the system is just as dead. So that's, to varying degrees, passwords, passnumbers, security thumbdrives, secret questions, and so forth all out. Even something like fingerprints, eye scanners or DNA databases are essentially the same- any sufficiently powerful computer can just try random permutations until it hits on a match. All you've done by moving from user-memorable passwords to DNA sampling is increased the length of the key by a few orders of magnitude- you've put off the problem of computers being able to trivially brute force it, but not solved it in the long term. Two factor doesn't help, if both factors are just different flavours of "secret input"- it's just a way of adding extra complexity to the key.
If anyone ever comes up with a security method that no-longer relies on passing secret keys around, and is at the same time actually usable for the average user getting about their day-to-day business, then good luck to them.
Slashdot Mirror
This was not about Child Pornography. It was about blocking children from viewing otherwise legal pornography (consensual adults etc.).
The Government already automatically blocks Child Pornography web pages, where known.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation
The UK government was only doing this as a response to a vocal (and typically vicious) campaign from the Daily Mail and other members of the right-wing gutter press. They didn't really want to implement anything like this (being expensive and difficult), but they couldn't afford to have their usual support base turning against them.
This consultation lets them drop it while saving face. "We tried our best, but the people have spoken- sorry grass-root supporters!".
35% of parents. 80% of all respondents, which included non-parents, academics, industry reps, etc.
It is notable that while more parents wanted blocking than the rest of the respondents (proportionally), it was still not a majorit yin favour. That's a pretty sound rejection.
And what are the comparable survivability ratios for people hit with a metal stick? Better or worse than 6 out of 7?
True. But most countries have laws defining "criminal negligence" for people who cause harm by failing to do their job to an expected basic minimum standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence
So you take intent out of the equation, you're still left with the same "harm done", the same damages. Maybe the sentence would be 5 years instead of 60 then; should we expect the head of Information Security to get a visit from the Feds on THAT basis?
I'm still going to assume no.
Well lets see:
Medium - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantha
Large - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarlacc
By a curious coincidence, $800,000 is exactly the same "cost of damages" that was levelled at Gary McKinnon for his amateurish computer escapades. ($800,000 being the "fix it" figure, not counting $13.5 million in other costs mentioned). So for Gary McKinnon, $800,000 in damages equals extradition and 60 years in prison. Will whoever was responsible for failing to implement a proper IS policy be expecting a similar visit from the Feds?
Of course not. Punishment is reserved for shifting blame onto others, not for disciplining people who do things wrong.
If it had been a competent agent of Mossad or something they would never have noticed. Or by someone as competent as the guys that made Flame.
They were bloody lucky it was McKinnon and not someone else.
You assume that it WAS only McKinnon. Skilled attackers could have been waltzing in and out of that gaping security hole for years before McKinnon spoiled it for them by drawing attention to it. Who knows how many government secrets have found their way into unfriendly hands because of this?
I will always walk around unarmed, as do the overwhelming majority of people in modern day America (let alone the UK). With that in mind, I'd rate my survivability as far higher if I were attacked by a lone crazy person with a metal club or a knife than I would if I were attacked by a lone crazy person with a semi-automatic handgun.
Can I imagine life with a caved-in skull? No more so than having my brains blown out. But can I imagine life after being smacked in the ribs with a crow bar? More so than after getting a couple of bullet-shaped holes in my chest.
Incorrect:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20688479
Deja vu:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/12/12/1331243/engineers-use-electrical-hum-to-fight-crime
FYI, you missed Hinduism, which was number 3 after Islam.
You may now return to your humorous banter.
If you want to make a protest about being asked to choose a religion, do it properly. Just write atheist or agnostic, according to your view of things.
Not to nitpick (as I agree with you), but there would be no need to use the write-in option for this- a "No Religion" option was provided right there in the list.
It was (and is- there's always next time, kids!) important to tick No Religion if that's what you are- not Christian "because I was baptised, I think", or Jewish "because my mum is", or anything else. These figures are used to make important decisions- such as opening state-funded faith schools, or tax subsidies for churches. If you want your view to be heard, as a non-religious person, then you've got to make your presence known properly.
It's an interesting thought. But do remember that Elizabeth Windsor is not just the Queen of England, Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland. She is also the Queen of Australia (no official religion, formal separation of church and state), Canada (no official religion, formal separation of church and state), New Zealand (no official religion, formal separation of church and state), and all the other Commonwealth states (I'm not going to look up all of them, but you get the idea).
There are also degrees of separation. I would feel much happier if the Church of England didn't get free seats in parliament for their bishops, for example (especially since they've just reaffirmed their ban on women bishops, and opposition to gay rights). If they wanted to keep the bit where they put the hat on new kings and queens, I'm happy for them to carry on there.
There was a write-in option ("other, please specify"), and this was the most popular write-in.
Far more interesting to me is that Christianity declined to less than 60% of the population, while No Religion almost doubled to get around 25%. That's a massive attitude shift for a 10 year period. Really brings into question why we have a state religion- although I suspect the figures will have to sink even lower before we can use census data as an excuse to separate church and state.
Badly worded title. What they mean is that it was the most popular write-in option (the list only included the obvious major religions).
Would that be the same 1200 people who have bought and are enjoying using Windows 8 so far?
Notable, perhaps, that the Kickstarter campaign is almost halfway through its allotted time, and has raised less than half the required funds. For a project as huge and well supported as VLC, £40,000 should be easy. Maybe a Slashdot story will give them a boost (probably the reason it was submitted in the first place), but that's hardly certain considering the Slashdot crowd's opinion of "Metro" apps.
Looking at its progress, it seems like it achieved almost all of its current funding on day one, stagnated for almost 2 weeks (even net losing pledges on one day), before receiving a spike today (presumably because of this article).
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1061646928/vlc-for-the-new-windows-8-user-experience-metro/
"Military grade" equipment has rarely been about capabilities- it's about reliability. The reason a military walkie-talkie costs 20x what the ones they give to shopping centre security staff cost is not because they have much by way of extra features (although they might have some, that's not what costs the money); it's because they expected to work faultlessly for years in deserts and swamps and to never unexpectedly stop working when you're in the middle of calling in the cavalry.
A hand-held controller is a hand-held controller is a hand-held controller; there's nothing special, in terms of what it can do, between the ones that cost £9.99 on Amazon and the ones that the military probably pays £5000 a piece for. What's special is that if that "tank" gets shaken up a nearby explosion (or a speed-bump), what's the guarantee that the analogue stick isn't going to snap off in your hand, or some little wire is going to get shaken loose and the things going to get stuck on "left arrow button"?
So I understand Valve is going to make a killing off of this, but why would I as a PC gamer want to buy a console that pretends to be a PC? This isn't a PC, although Valve is going to market the shit out of it as that.
You wouldn't; you're not the target market.
The target market is presumably Xbox/PS3/Wii users, who wouldn't touch mainstream PC gaming with a big stick. That's an untapped market for Valve at this point, so why not?
It's also a good back up point for Valve in case Steam on Windows ever stops being viable; the dark murmurings are that Microsoft's Windows Store (or whatever it's called) is an attempt to steal Valve's (and their other rivals) users for themselves, and that they could even stoop to their old dirty tricks to make it happen (by offering software in the Windows store exclusive use of the newest Direct X, or breaking Steam "accidentally" with an update every other month).
If only there were some way to combine those 10 cartridges into just one big cartridge with a big capacity. Like you say, it could stay plugged in the whole time to save on swapping. Maybe there could be a way of downloading new games onto the cartridge, so you can choose which 10 games are stored on there? We could even have the cartridge built inside the console's case, for protection...
To the thinking cave!
I've been cooking as an adult for years, and as a child in my mum's kitchen for years prior- we never use the measurement "cup". Teaspoon/tablespoon, yes, but cup no. My mum (being old-fashioned) always uses pints and ounces (pint of milk, 3 ounces of flour, etc.) measured in a jug for the former and kitchen scales for the latter. I would always use litres (or ml) and grams, measured in the same way. Many recipes might involve informal measures (a splash of vinegar, a handful of herbs, a glass of wine), but these would not usually be quantified or formalised- they're an "it's up to you really" measurement.
One of the most frustrating things about following recipes online written by Americans is the fact that some substance are given in cups (a volume measurement) when for us it would always be a weight measurement. It's not that you can't convert it easily enough, but it forces you to cook in a way you're not used to; trying to measure the level of flour in a measuring jug is frustrating and alien when you're used to sifting it into a bowl sat on some scales.
Is it difficult for you to imagine people not doing things in exactly the same way as you do all over the world?
The Imperial measurement system just happens to be slightly better tuned to everyday use than the metric system. The units fit better because of their size in food preparation for example, 75 grammes is nowhere as easy to comprehend as 3oz for example or a 1lb or 2lb loaf. Of course Newtons and the rest of the SI units work much better than Imperial units in science but actually in these days of instantaneous unit translation on digital devices it doesn't matter very much what units you sell things to as an end consumer who wants a lump of something in understandable units without lots of significant digits. The supply chain doesn't care what the units are.
Its particularly frustrating as well that every translation from an imperial unit to a metric unit has been used to gouge consumers by the marketplace. Buying petrol at 1.48 UK Pounds per liter would give anyone a heart attack if they realized that this was $9 per gallon, 5.60 UK pounds per US gallon, or 6.7 pounds per imperial gallon. He had a legitimate complaint that all of us grumpy old people have when changes introduce rip offs that the young don't see.
In what way is "3" easier to remember than "75"? Other than the fact that it is a smaller number?
I've never bought petrol in gallons- I know that £1.47 per litre is a lot of money for petrol, but I'd have no idea if £6.70 per gallon was comparatively expensive. If you grew up with gallons then maybe the transition has been rough on you, but it just comes down to what you're used to; I know that £1.29 is a good price for petrol these days (but is a lot compared to the 99p per litre I used to pay years ago), and that £1.49 is a lot more than £1.29. That's all that really matters.
BNP aren't "openly violent"- they're the so-called "respectable face" of the National Front, EDL, and other openly violent groups. They attempt to maintain a thin veneer of respectability, and confine themselves to talking not about race and ethnicity, but instead about immigration, lost sovereignty, and the erosion of the "traditional British culture".
Just like UKIP, in pretty much every way. UKIP are just more successful at it.
And no, of course I don't have any better ideas... this is /. and I'm here to pointlessly criticise!
Well, quite. Any system that involves a secret input that the user presents to the system is just as dead. So that's, to varying degrees, passwords, passnumbers, security thumbdrives, secret questions, and so forth all out. Even something like fingerprints, eye scanners or DNA databases are essentially the same- any sufficiently powerful computer can just try random permutations until it hits on a match. All you've done by moving from user-memorable passwords to DNA sampling is increased the length of the key by a few orders of magnitude- you've put off the problem of computers being able to trivially brute force it, but not solved it in the long term. Two factor doesn't help, if both factors are just different flavours of "secret input"- it's just a way of adding extra complexity to the key.
If anyone ever comes up with a security method that no-longer relies on passing secret keys around, and is at the same time actually usable for the average user getting about their day-to-day business, then good luck to them.