That's right. Much better to write out your post, then discard it and let the AC's try to find the auto-stored version!
Seriously, though, don't worry about it. If that AC is too lazy to read subject lines, let them suffer in their own stew of self-imposed ignorance. Your original post was quite readable...and quite on point, I might add.:)
Personally I'd be more amenable to the console that shares the least, or at least has switches that control its behaviour. I would be more impressed by a console which strikes a good balance between privacy and the ability to share and allows users to adjust it further one way or the other as they see fit. And if someone doesn't want to Tweet, Like, live cast or whatever then there should be a simple checkbox in the settings which removes all that shit from the UI.
Exactly.
When I read the headline, my first thought was that they were obscurely talking about which console invades your privacy more (i.e., shares 'better')...disappointing to read the summary and realize they're talking about a fringe feature that only self-obsessed little wankers would care about.
This is the problem with religion. At the moment it just happens to be Islam that's in fashion with the young and impressionable.
No, that's the problem with selfish idiots.
Religion is just like any other tool: in the right hands it does a job, in the wrong hands people get hurt. I mean, really, you might as well be trying to convince the world that ideas themselves are deadly weapons.
A bible sitting on a table is no more dangerous than any other inanimate, non-volatile* object at a state of rest.
* because you know if I didn't qualify that, some idiot would come along with some "dur, bomb!" comment. Hell, I half expect it anyway.
Have you read the Darwin awards? They seem to be a flimsy excuse to laugh at other people's tragedies, with a little bit of superiority thrown in for good measure. There's quite a bit of questionable entries in there. For example.... And that's even if you accept the idea that only people who are stupid because of heritable characteristics ever do dangerous, dumb things. Plus you kind of have to ignore a bunch of more recent evolutionary theory which suggests that individuals within a species dying or living comes down more to chance and doesn't really drive evolution gradually.
Does that stick interfere much with sitting? Seriously.
The entire basis of humour is misfortune, either through the actions of others, the environment, or self-inflicted. Try to think of a joke (other than puns, which IMHO don't count) that doesn't involve something bad / embarrassing happening to someone. They are out there, I am sure, but they aren't the ones people typically remember...or elicit more than a brief chuckle. The Darwin Awards are simply a tongue-in-cheek collection of stories regarding one subset of (admittedly darkly) comedic circumstances. We laugh, because otherwise we'd spend all our time crying.
It is unfortunate, but I would place the blame not on the person who makes the technology, but the one who decides how to use it.
When we design something, we're "the one who decides how to use it"; that's part of designing it. The intentions of the designer matter, and if they're evil the designer should be blamed. Consider, If I make a torture device, can I just shrug my shoulders and say 'they decided to use it the way I designed it, so it's their fault'?
Interesting. I would be curious to know if anyone is actively designing and/or making devices specifically for torture: I don't think the Iron Maiden market is very hot right now, although I could be mistaken.
For the most part, at least from what's heard in the news, 'modern' torture is conducted with a fiendish array of everyday objects, ones that their designers had never intended for that use, and indeed often would void the warranty...shall we blame the designer of the bucket and towel for the actions of the waterboarders? The builder of the 12V battery and jumper cables for the actions of the electrocutioners?
Weapons, now, that's trickier. Yes, active development is progressing on making them lighter, stronger, more accurate, more effective, further ranging, etc. etc. But it still is up to the end user to determine the morality of the target, as well as the morality of the circumstances of use. By barring all your engineers from improving the designs, your own weapons would quickly be outclassed by those from countries without such limitations. This was a huge factor in the Cold War, but it is just as relevant when talking about everyday, ordinary weapons. So long as there is an aggressor with a weapon and they make it clear that they would use it on you given a chance and a provocation, you must show the ability to defend yourself against such weapon, even if it is via using another weapon on them. Passive defense is great in theory, but we don't have city domes yet...
People are curious, inquisitive, and often vicious little monkeys, and I honestly don't believe we'll ever reach the point where weapons will no longer be necessary to defend ourselves from others who would use them on us, except perhaps through some massive technological breakthrough that makes them obsolete (cheap, low-power but highly-effective personal force fields for everyone on the planet, for example). While I am encouraged by the advances in non-lethal weaponry and defense systems, there still needs to be a lot of development in that area before we can throw away the guns and just use stunners on the 'bad guys' instead.
should monitor plant germination and subsequent growth for months, would be much more useful knowledge
That was my first thought as well.
Of course, what this will do is see if the whole concept is viable without committing too much in case it flops. If they won't even sprout, no point in proceeding with more elaborate (and expensive) experiments until you figure out what went wrong with this one, but still, it does seem to be a bit short a timeframe to gain much more than a proof-of-concept level of data. I suppose they're just trying to keep the payload small...
The problem is that some of them (like mine) have electronic ignition. The circuit uses a couple of transistors so it could be susceptible to RFI (it would most likely need a stronger signal to start misbehaving), though I guess it would be much easier to shield that than to shield the electronics in a modern car.
OTOH, cars with contact breaker ignition should be immune to this. Or old diesel cars.
Oh, Slashdot comment moderation randomosity...in my skimming I jumped from the discussion of EMP effects on pacemakers to this comment. Yours has an electronic ignition...wait, what?:)
Guess that bring a whole new meaning to 'jump start your day!'
Indeed. Oracle is a tool. You don't blame the screwdriver if the contractor messes up your kitchen cabinets.
You do if the screwdriver needs to be redesigned and a new one built for every damn screw...but hey, you required that particular screwdriver in the specs, so...
You should just realize that priv^H^H^H^Hdata-analytics is a myth, accept it, and proceed to teach them by polluting their databases with as many fake ZIP codes as you can muster. The liquor store up the street from me thinks they get visitors from Illinois, New York, Flordia, Washington state, and occasionally Alaska. My motto is "Bad data is worse than no data."
"So many visitors from Beverly Hills! Everyone today has the zip code 90210, it's amazing!":)
Unfortunately there's no equivalent Canadian TV show that uses the postal code in the title. "Ottawa K1A 0A9" just doesn't have the same ring to it...and would be dreadfully boring, in any case. Until they start shouting at one another on the House floor like spoiled children...then it's just embarrassing. I suppose Canadians could start peppering the tracking DB's with Santa's postal code: H0H 0H0...
If you think to yourself after reading the first page, "But all of those long passwords were phrases, not nonsense strings!" then you should keep reading to page 2's sidebar for the list of passwords that were cracked using the methods in the article. Crackers have dictionaries of billions of words now and can try combinations and variations at GPU-fueled speeds. Length only protects you if and only if you can exhaust dictionary attacks.
The only safe password is long and either randomly generated or indistinguishable from it. Using some other device to store and auto-fill your passwords like a password manager or a device like a YubiKey is the only long-term solution. Humans are the weakest link.
Using software to store and auto-fill your passwords is the worst possible solution (a post-it on the monitor is more secure in practice). The result of that thinking will be trojan key-stores that simply inform their creator what your password is.
The point of the XKCD is that if you select n random words instead of n random characters you can get a password that can be memorized easily, and exploits the larger search space of words (compared to the smaller search space of characters that exist on your keyboard) meaning your password will be more secure and easier to remember.
Better yet, randomly capitalize and use aural memory to remember where they are. "Correct horse, BATtery staPLE!" If say it aloud a few times (in private, of course), pronouncing it with stress on the capitals, you'll remember it easily, even if it's silly:) Of course you might have to leave out the punctuation, depending on the password field tolerances...which sucks.
Since only people who travel to this private reading room have ever read them, I'm assuming that one of them has confirmed that these torrented stories are actually the ones written by Salinger? Otherwise...
1) Hear about famous short stories that very few people have read, but many people would pay for, 2) Study Salinger's other works closely enough to be able to duplicate his writing style 3) Write a BS story 'in the style of Salinger', add the name of one of the unpublished stories 4) Add enough 'scanning' typos to make it seem legit
4 a) (Bonus points for running it around a bit through ebay, etc. to muddy the acquisition trail) 5) Submit for bounty 6) Profit!
They're totally guilty as charged. They attempted to take down a video that (kinda) had some of their content. The problem was, it was a lecture about fair use AND the topic was about a song that should have been a fair use of their content. The band had been sued by Island back in the early 90's and there were lots of issues with the way the whole thing went down.
Please don't say you think that wasn't deliberate?* "Fair use" is a curse word to these rats, of course they'll fight it any which way they can!
It wouldn't surprise me at all to see them going after libraries next, as they are evil dens of knowledge sharing...why, most people can even get the media they want from a library for free! Oh, the horror...think they'll need to go have a lie down...
*...okay, have to knock off the double negatives for a while, starting to make my own head spin...
Have you actually used DLNA? I personally think it stinks. For a way to get a list of files it is pretty good. For any sort of meta data, thumbs, run time, etc it blows.
yeah, I'd been searching for a decent remote control keyboard for my XBMC (formerly MythTV) box for a while (tried a few 2.4GHz and Bluetooth devices), and never found any I liked (nor do I find the XBMC interface very usable). Then I found out about DLNA and MediaHouse on Android, and now I keep all of our media on the NAS in the basement and the XBMC box is set to receive DLNA and we just use whichever android device is around for a much better remote experience.
I agree, though, there's not much metadata on it (just ID3 AFAIK).
AFAIK, though, they only have native clients developed for LG and Samsung smart TV's right now, but if you have either of those, it's simply da bomb. If you have a Roku box, you can install the client on there too, and it's *much* better than the stock interface. They have Android and iPhone apps available in the respective stores, and it (the android one at least) works well for me, with full metadata support. They also have a decent Windows client, and yes, they provide a DLNA server for 'other' access (although I haven't tried it, so don't know how well it works). Basically our Samsung SmartTV interface is either a Plex or Netflix selection point: we simply have no use for any other of their 'Smart' apps (well, other than YouTube occasionally...)
The one thing that they just can't seem to get right is music and playlists. You can browse your collection by any metadata you like (year, genre, etc.), but there is no way to create or even use pre-created playlists in Plex. It's a damn shame, but as I said, for video at least it's quite excellent:) It seems to have no trouble with even odd, older video types from a decade ago, since we were browsing some old home videos on it last night...and seeing family photos on the big screen is a nice touch, although there are a dozen other ways to do that nowadays:)
Straw perSON? That's sexist and misogynistic. The correct term is straw perchild!
Er...think of the perchildren?
Re:What happens when the App crashes?
on
Rigging Up Baby
·
· Score: 1
I have a two-year old daughter. From the first night, we monitored her breathing using one of those boards you put under the mattress. While this will never prevent a baby from dying, it will alert a parent when a baby has stopped breathing, so CPR can be applied and 911 called. It might just save the life of a baby. We have had a few actual alarms*, which were later attributed by the pediatrician to the low timeout on the device: it screams after 20 seconds without movement.
* The amount of alarms we've had because my wife took her out of the crib for nursing and forgot to turn the damn thing off.. Well... That's a bit higher.
Wait, what? This thing doesn't have a weight sensor to automatically disable it when not in use? Heck, even my heated car seats have that...sounds like poor engineering to me.
I know you're trying to be funny by implying he's reinventing the wheel, but ironically, there's more than one way to clean your ass. In some countries, they use water streams rather than TP. There's not just one unique solution to each problem.
You just made my point. There are already multiple and satisfactory ways to clean one's ass.
So maybe he's developing the ultrasonic ass-cleaning device? Guaranteed to leave your ass sparkly clean in 1/10th the time it takes for 'traditional' methods, and no chance the dog will drag it all over the house while you're at work. Also takes care of unsightly butt-hair...
So you are saying we will evolve to not needing to grow food in the next 500 years?
Food production in 500 years will almost certainly look very different from what it looks like today, just as food production today looks very different than it did 500 years ago.
We are very inquisitive and resourceful monkeys...so in the year 2513 yes, our bananas may primarily be reconstituted yeast byproduct or some such equivalent.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you telling me that watching Spaceballs 10 times is enough?
I see your Schwartz is as big as mine...
Okay, sorry. I'll stop doing that in the future.
That's right. Much better to write out your post, then discard it and let the AC's try to find the auto-stored version!
Seriously, though, don't worry about it. If that AC is too lazy to read subject lines, let them suffer in their own stew of self-imposed ignorance. Your original post was quite readable...and quite on point, I might add. :)
Personally I'd be more amenable to the console that shares the least, or at least has switches that control its behaviour. I would be more impressed by a console which strikes a good balance between privacy and the ability to share and allows users to adjust it further one way or the other as they see fit. And if someone doesn't want to Tweet, Like, live cast or whatever then there should be a simple checkbox in the settings which removes all that shit from the UI.
Exactly.
When I read the headline, my first thought was that they were obscurely talking about which console invades your privacy more (i.e., shares 'better')...disappointing to read the summary and realize they're talking about a fringe feature that only self-obsessed little wankers would care about.
tl;dr
This is the problem with religion. At the moment it just happens to be Islam that's in fashion with the young and impressionable.
No, that's the problem with selfish idiots.
Religion is just like any other tool: in the right hands it does a job, in the wrong hands people get hurt. I mean, really, you might as well be trying to convince the world that ideas themselves are deadly weapons.
A bible sitting on a table is no more dangerous than any other inanimate, non-volatile* object at a state of rest.
* because you know if I didn't qualify that, some idiot would come along with some "dur, bomb!" comment. Hell, I half expect it anyway.
dur, plutonium! :p
It's you that needs to be rectified - the Lord Jesus diode for our sins!
Bah. Get with the current times. What two trans sistors do in the privacy of their own home is their own business, NOT mine NOR yours...
'There's not that much known about Canadian intelligence.'
As A Canadian, I kinda resent that :)
that just means they're doing a really good job. :)
Not much is known about secret stuff Canadians know...guess we're really good at keeping those secrets...secret, eh?
Is murdering murders a crime?
Hey! What do you have against crows??
Have you read the Darwin awards? They seem to be a flimsy excuse to laugh at other people's tragedies, with a little bit of superiority thrown in for good measure. There's quite a bit of questionable entries in there. For example.... And that's even if you accept the idea that only people who are stupid because of heritable characteristics ever do dangerous, dumb things. Plus you kind of have to ignore a bunch of more recent evolutionary theory which suggests that individuals within a species dying or living comes down more to chance and doesn't really drive evolution gradually.
Does that stick interfere much with sitting? Seriously.
The entire basis of humour is misfortune, either through the actions of others, the environment, or self-inflicted. Try to think of a joke (other than puns, which IMHO don't count) that doesn't involve something bad / embarrassing happening to someone. They are out there, I am sure, but they aren't the ones people typically remember...or elicit more than a brief chuckle. The Darwin Awards are simply a tongue-in-cheek collection of stories regarding one subset of (admittedly darkly) comedic circumstances. We laugh, because otherwise we'd spend all our time crying.
It is unfortunate, but I would place the blame not on the person who makes the technology, but the one who decides how to use it.
When we design something, we're "the one who decides how to use it"; that's part of designing it. The intentions of the designer matter, and if they're evil the designer should be blamed. Consider, If I make a torture device, can I just shrug my shoulders and say 'they decided to use it the way I designed it, so it's their fault'?
Interesting. I would be curious to know if anyone is actively designing and/or making devices specifically for torture: I don't think the Iron Maiden market is very hot right now, although I could be mistaken.
For the most part, at least from what's heard in the news, 'modern' torture is conducted with a fiendish array of everyday objects, ones that their designers had never intended for that use, and indeed often would void the warranty...shall we blame the designer of the bucket and towel for the actions of the waterboarders? The builder of the 12V battery and jumper cables for the actions of the electrocutioners?
Weapons, now, that's trickier. Yes, active development is progressing on making them lighter, stronger, more accurate, more effective, further ranging, etc. etc. But it still is up to the end user to determine the morality of the target, as well as the morality of the circumstances of use. By barring all your engineers from improving the designs, your own weapons would quickly be outclassed by those from countries without such limitations. This was a huge factor in the Cold War, but it is just as relevant when talking about everyday, ordinary weapons. So long as there is an aggressor with a weapon and they make it clear that they would use it on you given a chance and a provocation, you must show the ability to defend yourself against such weapon, even if it is via using another weapon on them. Passive defense is great in theory, but we don't have city domes yet...
People are curious, inquisitive, and often vicious little monkeys, and I honestly don't believe we'll ever reach the point where weapons will no longer be necessary to defend ourselves from others who would use them on us, except perhaps through some massive technological breakthrough that makes them obsolete (cheap, low-power but highly-effective personal force fields for everyone on the planet, for example). While I am encouraged by the advances in non-lethal weaponry and defense systems, there still needs to be a lot of development in that area before we can throw away the guns and just use stunners on the 'bad guys' instead.
Should have sent dandelion seeds, those damn things will grow anywhere! And they're technically edible...but still annoying.
should monitor plant germination and subsequent growth for months, would be much more useful knowledge
That was my first thought as well.
Of course, what this will do is see if the whole concept is viable without committing too much in case it flops. If they won't even sprout, no point in proceeding with more elaborate (and expensive) experiments until you figure out what went wrong with this one, but still, it does seem to be a bit short a timeframe to gain much more than a proof-of-concept level of data. I suppose they're just trying to keep the payload small...
This story reminded me of this story.
Not sure if the new standard will help with extreme user-idiot issues like that one (no time to RTFA). Nothing to chisel out of the port, I take it? :)
The problem is that some of them (like mine) have electronic ignition. The circuit uses a couple of transistors so it could be susceptible to RFI (it would most likely need a stronger signal to start misbehaving), though I guess it would be much easier to shield that than to shield the electronics in a modern car.
OTOH, cars with contact breaker ignition should be immune to this. Or old diesel cars.
Oh, Slashdot comment moderation randomosity...in my skimming I jumped from the discussion of EMP effects on pacemakers to this comment. Yours has an electronic ignition...wait, what? :)
Guess that bring a whole new meaning to 'jump start your day!'
Indeed. Oracle is a tool. You don't blame the screwdriver if the contractor messes up your kitchen cabinets.
You do if the screwdriver needs to be redesigned and a new one built for every damn screw...but hey, you required that particular screwdriver in the specs, so...
You should just realize that priv^H^H^H^Hdata-analytics is a myth, accept it, and proceed to teach them by polluting their databases with as many fake ZIP codes as you can muster. The liquor store up the street from me thinks they get visitors from Illinois, New York, Flordia, Washington state, and occasionally Alaska. My motto is "Bad data is worse than no data."
"So many visitors from Beverly Hills! Everyone today has the zip code 90210, it's amazing!" :)
Unfortunately there's no equivalent Canadian TV show that uses the postal code in the title. "Ottawa K1A 0A9" just doesn't have the same ring to it...and would be dreadfully boring, in any case. Until they start shouting at one another on the House floor like spoiled children...then it's just embarrassing. I suppose Canadians could start peppering the tracking DB's with Santa's postal code: H0H 0H0...
Perhaps everyone quoting that xkcd should be aware that such passwords are no longer safe.
If you think to yourself after reading the first page, "But all of those long passwords were phrases, not nonsense strings!" then you should keep reading to page 2's sidebar for the list of passwords that were cracked using the methods in the article. Crackers have dictionaries of billions of words now and can try combinations and variations at GPU-fueled speeds. Length only protects you if and only if you can exhaust dictionary attacks.
The only safe password is long and either randomly generated or indistinguishable from it. Using some other device to store and auto-fill your passwords like a password manager or a device like a YubiKey is the only long-term solution. Humans are the weakest link.
Using software to store and auto-fill your passwords is the worst possible solution (a post-it on the monitor is more secure in practice). The result of that thinking will be trojan key-stores that simply inform their creator what your password is.
The point of the XKCD is that if you select n random words instead of n random characters you can get a password that can be memorized easily, and exploits the larger search space of words (compared to the smaller search space of characters that exist on your keyboard) meaning your password will be more secure and easier to remember.
Better yet, randomly capitalize and use aural memory to remember where they are. "Correct horse, BATtery staPLE!" If say it aloud a few times (in private, of course), pronouncing it with stress on the capitals, you'll remember it easily, even if it's silly :) Of course you might have to leave out the punctuation, depending on the password field tolerances...which sucks.
Since only people who travel to this private reading room have ever read them, I'm assuming that one of them has confirmed that these torrented stories are actually the ones written by Salinger? Otherwise...
1) Hear about famous short stories that very few people have read, but many people would pay for,
2) Study Salinger's other works closely enough to be able to duplicate his writing style
3) Write a BS story 'in the style of Salinger', add the name of one of the unpublished stories
4) Add enough 'scanning' typos to make it seem legit
4 a) (Bonus points for running it around a bit through ebay, etc. to muddy the acquisition trail)
5) Submit for bounty
6) Profit!
They're totally guilty as charged. They attempted to take down a video that (kinda) had some of their content. The problem was, it was a lecture about fair use AND the topic was about a song that should have been a fair use of their content. The band had been sued by Island back in the early 90's and there were lots of issues with the way the whole thing went down.
Please don't say you think that wasn't deliberate?* "Fair use" is a curse word to these rats, of course they'll fight it any which way they can!
It wouldn't surprise me at all to see them going after libraries next, as they are evil dens of knowledge sharing...why, most people can even get the media they want from a library for free! Oh, the horror...think they'll need to go have a lie down...
*...okay, have to knock off the double negatives for a while, starting to make my own head spin...
One of the most obnoxiously intrusive three-letter government agencies is the HOA.
Wait...Hand Off Auto switches are a government conspiracy? I thought they were just good motor management... :)
Have you actually used DLNA? I personally think it stinks. For a way to get a list of files it is pretty good. For any sort of meta data, thumbs, run time, etc it blows.
yeah, I'd been searching for a decent remote control keyboard for my XBMC (formerly MythTV) box for a while (tried a few 2.4GHz and Bluetooth devices), and never found any I liked (nor do I find the XBMC interface very usable). Then I found out about DLNA and MediaHouse on Android, and now I keep all of our media on the NAS in the basement and the XBMC box is set to receive DLNA and we just use whichever android device is around for a much better remote experience.
I agree, though, there's not much metadata on it (just ID3 AFAIK).
You might be interested in Plex.
AFAIK, though, they only have native clients developed for LG and Samsung smart TV's right now, but if you have either of those, it's simply da bomb. If you have a Roku box, you can install the client on there too, and it's *much* better than the stock interface. They have Android and iPhone apps available in the respective stores, and it (the android one at least) works well for me, with full metadata support. They also have a decent Windows client, and yes, they provide a DLNA server for 'other' access (although I haven't tried it, so don't know how well it works). Basically our Samsung SmartTV interface is either a Plex or Netflix selection point: we simply have no use for any other of their 'Smart' apps (well, other than YouTube occasionally...)
The one thing that they just can't seem to get right is music and playlists. You can browse your collection by any metadata you like (year, genre, etc.), but there is no way to create or even use pre-created playlists in Plex. It's a damn shame, but as I said, for video at least it's quite excellent :) It seems to have no trouble with even odd, older video types from a decade ago, since we were browsing some old home videos on it last night...and seeing family photos on the big screen is a nice touch, although there are a dozen other ways to do that nowadays :)
Straw perSON? That's sexist and misogynistic. The correct term is straw perchild!
Er...think of the perchildren?
I have a two-year old daughter. From the first night, we monitored her breathing using one of those boards you put under the mattress. While this will never prevent a baby from dying, it will alert a parent when a baby has stopped breathing, so CPR can be applied and 911 called. It might just save the life of a baby. We have had a few actual alarms*, which were later attributed by the pediatrician to the low timeout on the device: it screams after 20 seconds without movement.
* The amount of alarms we've had because my wife took her out of the crib for nursing and forgot to turn the damn thing off.. Well... That's a bit higher.
Wait, what? This thing doesn't have a weight sensor to automatically disable it when not in use? Heck, even my heated car seats have that...sounds like poor engineering to me.
I know you're trying to be funny by implying he's reinventing the wheel, but ironically, there's more than one way to clean your ass. In some countries, they use water streams rather than TP. There's not just one unique solution to each problem.
You just made my point. There are already multiple and satisfactory ways to clean one's ass.
So maybe he's developing the ultrasonic ass-cleaning device? Guaranteed to leave your ass sparkly clean in 1/10th the time it takes for 'traditional' methods, and no chance the dog will drag it all over the house while you're at work. Also takes care of unsightly butt-hair...
So you are saying we will evolve to not needing to grow food in the next 500 years?
Food production in 500 years will almost certainly look very different from what it looks like today, just as food production today looks very different than it did 500 years ago.
We are very inquisitive and resourceful monkeys...so in the year 2513 yes, our bananas may primarily be reconstituted yeast byproduct or some such equivalent.