One (*err* more) thing I don't get.. How do they know quantum entanglement even happens? They entangle a pair of particles. Then they measure the state of one, causing the other to collapse into the same state with no regard to distance between the two.
However, as it is impossible to measure the quantum properties of these particles without collapsing them into a non-super state, how do we know that the entanglement wasn't just the two particles gaining the same properties at the moment of entanglement? Obviously, this would result in them having the same properties once measured.
How do we know that this super state exists, when it is impossible to measure? If a piece of equipment paints two balls a random color and puts them in separate boxes aren't the balls, by the same definition, in a super state as we can't know their color until we open the box? And can they be said to be entangled, as once you open the first box and observe that the ball inside is for example red, the other ball will also be red even though it has yet to be "measured"?
This might be a bit of a Captain Obvious statement, but I don't freaggin get it! =(
Thanks for the long reply, but I don't think you got the whole "me being the village idiot"-part. Your post doesn't really impart any understanding of a qubit as a computational unit. =/
Yes, I understand the benefits of parallel processing. Hook up huge number of MUC's, send every MCU in "level 1" the same number, have MCU nr. 1 divide the incoming number by '2', MCU nr. 2 by '3', and so on, and pass on only the results that are whole numbers to the next level. Lather, rinse and repeat for however many steps the number takes to factor. Given enough MCU's (or a proper system, not a nerd-rant), it would almost certainly factor any number faster than my computer could ever dream of.
Ok, so parallel processing is cool. Still, how does this thingie most commonly visualized as a small, spinning ball, actually process anything? How does a qubit divide a number by 5 any more than the shot glass? I can't for the life of me see how this works..
And how do you "feed" a qubit anything? Following the (allegedly poor) shot glass analogy, do you simply "take the shot" to "write zero", I mean, do we know from measuring what to do to make the qubit collapse into the desired state? If true, I see how 1 qubit == 1 bit write-once storage, but the rest still doesn't make sense to me.
Please, please don't leave me scratching my scraggly beard while reading "how quantum computing works"-articles written by people with no more understanding of the subject than me, while trying to contemplate how a n*(shot glass in the dark) can factor numbers! This technology is way too cool for me to not understand at all!
Re:Autotune the News
on
Carl Sagan Sings
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Opinion != fact
Sadly, a vast majority of people, when faced with this argument, will reply (as Sheldon Cooper's mother did when discussing creationism) "..and that is your opinion!". Sad state of affairs indeed!
How about sports? Africans seem to dominate near every sport that doesn't involve skies or ice skates. The middle-east was the epicenter of early civilization, math, science and astronomy for a long time, as were the Asian regions of the world. Scientific aptitude on a geographical scale isn't about genetics, it's about your part of the world having the money and government for you to not worry about who's shooting at you today and instead get a proper education, job and research grants.
If the nazies with their love of athletes and sports, were in fact looking for a "master race", they should have looked south rather than north. Racism is crap but I do acknowledge that my genes are inferior to those coming from the very cradle of human life, perhaps as a result of me coming from a comparatively tiny population just south of the North Pole. =P
Ok, so on this site bursting with intelligent, educated folk, the following question(s) might make me look like a village idiot, but what the hell. It's damn interesting stuff and I want to know!
Exactly how does quantum computing work? I have a fleeting grip the basic stuff; qubits existing with states 0, 1 and "superposition" (i.e. all possible states) and that by actively measuring it's state (sending a photon or whatever bumping into it) you collapse it, and it's entangled mate, into a "classical state". If I place a shot glass in a dark room and tell you it could be empty, full or anything in between but the only way for you to find out is to A) Take the shot, or B) dump another 4cc of Tequila into the glass and see if it spills over, is the shot glass a cubit? To you, it is in a "superstate" until you actively measure it, an act that in itself makes the glass full or empty.
How does this equate to computing? I might just have spent too much time with Proteus fiddling about with gates and stuff trying to make a very basic functional computing device, but isn't some sort of computing device needed to compute something? Even with Quantum Gates, 30 qubits seem like a very insignificant amount of building blocks to compute anything..
Lastly, how would/will qubits be used to revolutionize storage? I get the allure of storing bits on a subatomic level but if the whole hype is about storage density, it sort of kills the magic for me.
Or set up a webshop in a less policed part of the world and sell it as the BEST ULTIMATE SUPER EASY DIET PILL EVER! Guaranteed to make you stop feeling fat!
Tiny writing on the back of bottle: "May cause death, consult physician before use."
Yeah, I know *cough* MS Office *cough* but as far as I know most desktop applications don't feature a lock timeout. At least MS Office doesn't. The solution I am suggesting solves this elegantly and as a whole presents exactly one of each file to the users, and that file is locked for the duration of the edit (plus, say 10 minutes for the timeout).
I see no flaws in this approach but please inform me if you do!
What do you mean? There are many pills that cure stupidity! Potassium cyanide, saxitoxin.. You can't force people to take a pill though, but simply removing the warning labels on all potentially dangerous products would go a long way towards curing stupidity.
Not the best technology approach to shared data unless everyone's in the same room.
..unless the locks time out after some set period of inactivity and the users know this well enough to not whine horribly when they screw up and have to retype their changes in the new document (or fetch what they wrote from the temporary, read-only, auto-saved document that was created when they clicked "edit").
Or what about this! Using AJAX, you save every change the users do on the fly and also reload the contents of the document the user has open. It would be even more multiplayer notepad than IRC and there would never be any issues with anyone losing information due to system weirdness/bugs/shortcomings!
I agree, there is no reason to go with an inferior solution just because it's perceived as simpler. Lock the document when it is opened for editing, refresh the lock timestamp periodically (as long as the user is actually changing the document), release the lock when the user saves the document or when it times out (from user closing the window/tab, browser crashing, inactivity).
Of course version control is a great feature but from my experience users want, and need, simplicity. They want to relate to one version of a file, not an ever growing tree of different versions. Thus, the best implementation of this in my mind is exclusive locking coupled with saving the document as a new entry in the database with an increased version number.
See my post further up. Setting a timeout and having it updated as long as the page is open is nothing short of trivial and should work very well. There might be better ways of doing this, but I fail to see any.
Seconded! jQuery is pure genius! It takes the tedious work of making JavaScript work reliably across different browsers and turns it into something fun, easy and efficient (and of course, automatically cross-browser compatible).
Very elegant solution, but it doesn't solve the problem of users leaving their computers for short periods of time without saving documents and such. Let's say we're talking about someone who has a receptionist type role. The user who has the document open would have to get a grace period of at least, say, 10 minutes to click yes or no, and that would severely try the patience of whoever was trying to open the document.
As I said below, I think a better solution would be to detect keypresses in the forms or the entire document and add "?active=1" to the update query. If the open document hasn't been changed in 10 minutes, it becomes unlocked. Perhaps the user's temporary incarnation of the file (with auto-save and all that) stays in the system as a read-only document only available to the creator, so that he/she doesn't completely lose their work even if they forget to save and suffer a timeout.
Sorry if I failed to make myself clear, the post was written pretty early in the morning. =P
If the user leaves the browser tab open, the JavaScript running in the background keeps the document locked. While this prevents any loss of data it also prevents other users from editing the file should the user decide to leave work early and not close the tab (which, on second thought, is probably what you meant).
This, of course, could (and should) be mitigated by having an inactivity timeout for the user's login session. Just make sure the users know that if they leave their computers for 20 (or whatever works for your application) minutes they will be logged out. Add a bit of JavaScript (jQuery, oh sweet cross-browser compatibility) to the updatelock() function that adds "?active=1" to the AJAX query if the document has been changed, and code in updatelock.php that updates the user's activity timestamp if !empty($_GET['active']).
The result is document locking that allows only one user editing any given document, inactivity timeout (sensitive to typing in the document) and making the document available soon after the user is done, even should (s)he simply close the tab/window. And, since only one user is allowed to edit the document at any given time, one could even implement autosave.
For the sake of not losing information, I'd definitely not be adverse to creating a temporary copy of a document when a user opens it for editing, auto-saving to this temp document and leaving any older versions of the document read-only when the user clicks "Save". Still, I'd stick with my one-user lock scheme to avoid two users editing a document and having only the version saved last appear as the most current version.
One really simple way of doing it is (as a previous poster suggested) having the client send an AJAX call signifying that the document is still open. So, when I click "Edit" on "shopping_list.txt" it's database entry gets it's "edit_by" set to my userID and "ts_editing" field set to unix_timestamp() (for mysql or time() for php). The edit-page sends an AJAX request every.. say.. 30 seconds to a file that updates the timestamp.
Now, when you list the available files, you will see that I am editing "shopping_list.txt" because it's current "ts_editing" is larger than (unix_timestamp() - 60). At most 1 minute after I leave the editing page, either by saving or by closing the window, the document will become available for editing again.
If you are uncomfortable with JavaScript, check out jquery. In fact, check it out, even if you consider your js skills to be badass. The code for updating the editing-timestamp can be as simple as follows:
function updatelock()
{
$.get("updatelock.php");
}
Assuming you set the flags mentioned earlier upon opening the file for edit, updatelock.php really only needs to do a UPDATE `files` SET ts_editing = UNIX_TIMESTAMP() WHERE edit_by = $_SESSION['userid'] AND ts_editing > UNIX_TIMESTAMP() - 60
(updating the timestamp on anything you temporarily own that hasn't timed out) or something like that. =P
Why the need to ask? If I had a keyboard with OLED screens, I'd run stuff like CPU-monitors on them simply because I don't have any other horribly useful ideas right now and want some cool geekery flashing and blinking on my awesome keyboard! =D
Nice touch there, hehe. I of course understand reasons for concealing one's real identity. For the most part though, your opinions would have to be fairly extreme for this to be the case.
I might be missing out on something vital here, but as to this dual personality scheme.. I don't see the need (unless, as I said, your opinions are really extreme). What is a '"professional" nick' anyways? In professional (as in, work related) situations, I use my name. Online, I use my nick but I make no effort to hide who I am. Yes, people tend to perceive me as rather strongly opinionated and yes, I do engage in rather heated discussions online, as in real life, about everything from abortion and religion to immigration and a host of other things that get people rather riled up when you disagree with them.
Not trying to be an asshat here, this is purely in the interest of sating my curiosity and understanding your arguments. Could you please give me a few examples of things someone might be so afraid of talking about yet at the same time so interested in that they need to make up a "secret alias" so to speak? Excluding, of course, members of the KKK, neo-nazis, drug abusers, child molesters and other (as I said) extreme groups.
Good points, but not being able to block all executables in all circumstances isn't a real good excuse for not blocking the 95%+ you can.
The e-mail scanners I am somewhat familiar with can scan anything but password encrypted archives where even the filenames in the archive is hidden. It still stops spam containing "compiled" PowerPoint presentations and the typical "my ex nude.jpg.exe" files. If we were to remove that protection, we'd likely be swamped by trash in a matter of hours, as the average Word/Excel users don't have a clue as to the difference between a safe and an unsafe filetype nor the savvy to check who sent the mail (and that can be faked well enough to trick most users anyways).
In the rare cases where a trusted outside sender needs to get something delivered to an inside user, whitelisting goes a long way. As for downloading drivers and the like, that is work for the IT department. Users shouldn't be able (nor ever need) to download or install anything, and us IT guys are on a much more free vlan of our own where we can download whatever we need.
A friend of mine recently blew one of my aliases and emailed everyone he knew about it, instantly exposing me to ridicule and shame.
Sooo.. what, exactly, was this alias if yours doing to incur insta-ridecule and -shame? Well respected husband, father and friend at day, shemale prostitute specializing in less-than-savory fetishes..?
Personally, I have no "online aliases". I have my nick, plastbox, but it's not like I consider my nick a different person than myself.
If you're doing stuff so strange, or voicing opinions so stupid, that you need an alias to hide behind.. Might I suggest you stop your dumbassery and stand for what you mean? If I am horribly wrong here, please enlighten and entertain me details about your shameful alias!
When you are, you provide it on separate machines on a separate vlan. "general internet access" has no place on the "general workers" work computer, no matter how competent the users feels (s)he is with MS Word!
At the very least, you never allow mail with executable attachments through your defences (nor mails with archives containing executables, etc.)
Surely you mean they say "light brownish off-white" to refer to the very light reddish tan that appears light pink to people who don't have thousands of mental snapshots of flashy pink outfits to compare them to.
"light brownish off-white" sounds a lot like how they describe the color. Doesn't change the actual color one bit though! It's still pink, just as ligt blue is still light blue no matter how much I insist it's "light indigoish off-white". =P
That being said.. I enjoyed the movie and I look forward to enjoying the next ones. Yeah, mindless drivel and whatnot but it's got vampires and it's definitely quite far from the worst mindless drivel I have forced myself through. I'd rather see Twilight again, three times in a row at that, than suffer through Kill Bill again!
Slashdot Mirror
One (*err* more) thing I don't get.. How do they know quantum entanglement even happens? They entangle a pair of particles. Then they measure the state of one, causing the other to collapse into the same state with no regard to distance between the two.
However, as it is impossible to measure the quantum properties of these particles without collapsing them into a non-super state, how do we know that the entanglement wasn't just the two particles gaining the same properties at the moment of entanglement? Obviously, this would result in them having the same properties once measured.
How do we know that this super state exists, when it is impossible to measure? If a piece of equipment paints two balls a random color and puts them in separate boxes aren't the balls, by the same definition, in a super state as we can't know their color until we open the box? And can they be said to be entangled, as once you open the first box and observe that the ball inside is for example red, the other ball will also be red even though it has yet to be "measured"?
This might be a bit of a Captain Obvious statement, but I don't freaggin get it! =(
Thanks for the long reply, but I don't think you got the whole "me being the village idiot"-part. Your post doesn't really impart any understanding of a qubit as a computational unit. =/
Yes, I understand the benefits of parallel processing. Hook up huge number of MUC's, send every MCU in "level 1" the same number, have MCU nr. 1 divide the incoming number by '2', MCU nr. 2 by '3', and so on, and pass on only the results that are whole numbers to the next level. Lather, rinse and repeat for however many steps the number takes to factor. Given enough MCU's (or a proper system, not a nerd-rant), it would almost certainly factor any number faster than my computer could ever dream of.
Ok, so parallel processing is cool. Still, how does this thingie most commonly visualized as a small, spinning ball, actually process anything? How does a qubit divide a number by 5 any more than the shot glass? I can't for the life of me see how this works..
And how do you "feed" a qubit anything? Following the (allegedly poor) shot glass analogy, do you simply "take the shot" to "write zero", I mean, do we know from measuring what to do to make the qubit collapse into the desired state? If true, I see how 1 qubit == 1 bit write-once storage, but the rest still doesn't make sense to me.
Please, please don't leave me scratching my scraggly beard while reading "how quantum computing works"-articles written by people with no more understanding of the subject than me, while trying to contemplate how a n*(shot glass in the dark) can factor numbers! This technology is way too cool for me to not understand at all!
Opinion != fact
Sadly, a vast majority of people, when faced with this argument, will reply (as Sheldon Cooper's mother did when discussing creationism) "..and that is your opinion!". Sad state of affairs indeed!
Horribly off topic, and feeding trolls but..
How about sports? Africans seem to dominate near every sport that doesn't involve skies or ice skates. The middle-east was the epicenter of early civilization, math, science and astronomy for a long time, as were the Asian regions of the world. Scientific aptitude on a geographical scale isn't about genetics, it's about your part of the world having the money and government for you to not worry about who's shooting at you today and instead get a proper education, job and research grants.
If the nazies with their love of athletes and sports, were in fact looking for a "master race", they should have looked south rather than north. Racism is crap but I do acknowledge that my genes are inferior to those coming from the very cradle of human life, perhaps as a result of me coming from a comparatively tiny population just south of the North Pole. =P
Ok, so on this site bursting with intelligent, educated folk, the following question(s) might make me look like a village idiot, but what the hell. It's damn interesting stuff and I want to know!
Exactly how does quantum computing work? I have a fleeting grip the basic stuff; qubits existing with states 0, 1 and "superposition" (i.e. all possible states) and that by actively measuring it's state (sending a photon or whatever bumping into it) you collapse it, and it's entangled mate, into a "classical state". If I place a shot glass in a dark room and tell you it could be empty, full or anything in between but the only way for you to find out is to A) Take the shot, or B) dump another 4cc of Tequila into the glass and see if it spills over, is the shot glass a cubit? To you, it is in a "superstate" until you actively measure it, an act that in itself makes the glass full or empty.
How does this equate to computing? I might just have spent too much time with Proteus fiddling about with gates and stuff trying to make a very basic functional computing device, but isn't some sort of computing device needed to compute something? Even with Quantum Gates, 30 qubits seem like a very insignificant amount of building blocks to compute anything..
Lastly, how would/will qubits be used to revolutionize storage? I get the allure of storing bits on a subatomic level but if the whole hype is about storage density, it sort of kills the magic for me.
Or set up a webshop in a less policed part of the world and sell it as the BEST ULTIMATE SUPER EASY DIET PILL EVER! Guaranteed to make you stop feeling fat!
Tiny writing on the back of bottle: "May cause death, consult physician before use."
Yeah, I know *cough* MS Office *cough* but as far as I know most desktop applications don't feature a lock timeout. At least MS Office doesn't. The solution I am suggesting solves this elegantly and as a whole presents exactly one of each file to the users, and that file is locked for the duration of the edit (plus, say 10 minutes for the timeout).
I see no flaws in this approach but please inform me if you do!
What do you mean? There are many pills that cure stupidity! Potassium cyanide, saxitoxin.. You can't force people to take a pill though, but simply removing the warning labels on all potentially dangerous products would go a long way towards curing stupidity.
Not the best technology approach to shared data unless everyone's in the same room.
..unless the locks time out after some set period of inactivity and the users know this well enough to not whine horribly when they screw up and have to retype their changes in the new document (or fetch what they wrote from the temporary, read-only, auto-saved document that was created when they clicked "edit").
Or what about this! Using AJAX, you save every change the users do on the fly and also reload the contents of the document the user has open. It would be even more multiplayer notepad than IRC and there would never be any issues with anyone losing information due to system weirdness/bugs/shortcomings!
I agree, there is no reason to go with an inferior solution just because it's perceived as simpler. Lock the document when it is opened for editing, refresh the lock timestamp periodically (as long as the user is actually changing the document), release the lock when the user saves the document or when it times out (from user closing the window/tab, browser crashing, inactivity).
Of course version control is a great feature but from my experience users want, and need, simplicity. They want to relate to one version of a file, not an ever growing tree of different versions. Thus, the best implementation of this in my mind is exclusive locking coupled with saving the document as a new entry in the database with an increased version number.
See my post further up. Setting a timeout and having it updated as long as the page is open is nothing short of trivial and should work very well. There might be better ways of doing this, but I fail to see any.
Seconded! jQuery is pure genius! It takes the tedious work of making JavaScript work reliably across different browsers and turns it into something fun, easy and efficient (and of course, automatically cross-browser compatible).
Very elegant solution, but it doesn't solve the problem of users leaving their computers for short periods of time without saving documents and such. Let's say we're talking about someone who has a receptionist type role. The user who has the document open would have to get a grace period of at least, say, 10 minutes to click yes or no, and that would severely try the patience of whoever was trying to open the document.
As I said below, I think a better solution would be to detect keypresses in the forms or the entire document and add "?active=1" to the update query. If the open document hasn't been changed in 10 minutes, it becomes unlocked. Perhaps the user's temporary incarnation of the file (with auto-save and all that) stays in the system as a read-only document only available to the creator, so that he/she doesn't completely lose their work even if they forget to save and suffer a timeout.
Sorry if I failed to make myself clear, the post was written pretty early in the morning. =P
If the user leaves the browser tab open, the JavaScript running in the background keeps the document locked. While this prevents any loss of data it also prevents other users from editing the file should the user decide to leave work early and not close the tab (which, on second thought, is probably what you meant).
This, of course, could (and should) be mitigated by having an inactivity timeout for the user's login session. Just make sure the users know that if they leave their computers for 20 (or whatever works for your application) minutes they will be logged out. Add a bit of JavaScript (jQuery, oh sweet cross-browser compatibility) to the updatelock() function that adds "?active=1" to the AJAX query if the document has been changed, and code in updatelock.php that updates the user's activity timestamp if !empty($_GET['active']).
The result is document locking that allows only one user editing any given document, inactivity timeout (sensitive to typing in the document) and making the document available soon after the user is done, even should (s)he simply close the tab/window. And, since only one user is allowed to edit the document at any given time, one could even implement autosave.
For the sake of not losing information, I'd definitely not be adverse to creating a temporary copy of a document when a user opens it for editing, auto-saving to this temp document and leaving any older versions of the document read-only when the user clicks "Save". Still, I'd stick with my one-user lock scheme to avoid two users editing a document and having only the version saved last appear as the most current version.
One really simple way of doing it is (as a previous poster suggested) having the client send an AJAX call signifying that the document is still open. So, when I click "Edit" on "shopping_list.txt" it's database entry gets it's "edit_by" set to my userID and "ts_editing" field set to unix_timestamp() (for mysql or time() for php). The edit-page sends an AJAX request every.. say.. 30 seconds to a file that updates the timestamp.
Now, when you list the available files, you will see that I am editing "shopping_list.txt" because it's current "ts_editing" is larger than (unix_timestamp() - 60). At most 1 minute after I leave the editing page, either by saving or by closing the window, the document will become available for editing again.
If you are uncomfortable with JavaScript, check out jquery. In fact, check it out, even if you consider your js skills to be badass. The code for updating the editing-timestamp can be as simple as follows:
function updatelock()
{
$.get("updatelock.php");
}
$(document).ready(function() {
setInterval("updatelock()", 30000);
});
Assuming you set the flags mentioned earlier upon opening the file for edit, updatelock.php really only needs to do a
UPDATE `files` SET ts_editing = UNIX_TIMESTAMP() WHERE edit_by = $_SESSION['userid'] AND ts_editing > UNIX_TIMESTAMP() - 60
(updating the timestamp on anything you temporarily own that hasn't timed out) or something like that. =P
*WHOOOSH*
Because We Can engineering and oneupmanship marketing.
..the best kind!
Why the need to ask? If I had a keyboard with OLED screens, I'd run stuff like CPU-monitors on them simply because I don't have any other horribly useful ideas right now and want some cool geekery flashing and blinking on my awesome keyboard! =D
There are usually two reasons for this, Kim.
Nice touch there, hehe. I of course understand reasons for concealing one's real identity. For the most part though, your opinions would have to be fairly extreme for this to be the case.
I might be missing out on something vital here, but as to this dual personality scheme.. I don't see the need (unless, as I said, your opinions are really extreme). What is a '"professional" nick' anyways? In professional (as in, work related) situations, I use my name. Online, I use my nick but I make no effort to hide who I am. Yes, people tend to perceive me as rather strongly opinionated and yes, I do engage in rather heated discussions online, as in real life, about everything from abortion and religion to immigration and a host of other things that get people rather riled up when you disagree with them.
Not trying to be an asshat here, this is purely in the interest of sating my curiosity and understanding your arguments. Could you please give me a few examples of things someone might be so afraid of talking about yet at the same time so interested in that they need to make up a "secret alias" so to speak? Excluding, of course, members of the KKK, neo-nazis, drug abusers, child molesters and other (as I said) extreme groups.
Good points, but not being able to block all executables in all circumstances isn't a real good excuse for not blocking the 95%+ you can.
The e-mail scanners I am somewhat familiar with can scan anything but password encrypted archives where even the filenames in the archive is hidden. It still stops spam containing "compiled" PowerPoint presentations and the typical "my ex nude.jpg.exe" files. If we were to remove that protection, we'd likely be swamped by trash in a matter of hours, as the average Word/Excel users don't have a clue as to the difference between a safe and an unsafe filetype nor the savvy to check who sent the mail (and that can be faked well enough to trick most users anyways).
In the rare cases where a trusted outside sender needs to get something delivered to an inside user, whitelisting goes a long way. As for downloading drivers and the like, that is work for the IT department. Users shouldn't be able (nor ever need) to download or install anything, and us IT guys are on a much more free vlan of our own where we can download whatever we need.
Holy crap, what happened to that post?! Real sorry about that!
..shemale prostitute specializing in less-than-savory fetishes by night..?
..different person from myself.
..enlighten and entertain me with details about..
A friend of mine recently blew one of my aliases and emailed everyone he knew about it, instantly exposing me to ridicule and shame.
Sooo.. what, exactly, was this alias if yours doing to incur insta-ridecule and -shame? Well respected husband, father and friend at day, shemale prostitute specializing in less-than-savory fetishes..?
Personally, I have no "online aliases". I have my nick, plastbox, but it's not like I consider my nick a different person than myself.
If you're doing stuff so strange, or voicing opinions so stupid, that you need an alias to hide behind.. Might I suggest you stop your dumbassery and stand for what you mean? If I am horribly wrong here, please enlighten and entertain me details about your shameful alias!
When you are, you provide it on separate machines on a separate vlan. "general internet access" has no place on the "general workers" work computer, no matter how competent the users feels (s)he is with MS Word!
At the very least, you never allow mail with executable attachments through your defences (nor mails with archives containing executables, etc.)
Surely you mean they say "light brownish off-white" to refer to the very light reddish tan that appears light pink to people who don't have thousands of mental snapshots of flashy pink outfits to compare them to.
"light brownish off-white" sounds a lot like how they describe the color. Doesn't change the actual color one bit though! It's still pink, just as ligt blue is still light blue no matter how much I insist it's "light indigoish off-white". =P
Suuuure, that's what you were thinking!
That being said.. I enjoyed the movie and I look forward to enjoying the next ones. Yeah, mindless drivel and whatnot but it's got vampires and it's definitely quite far from the worst mindless drivel I have forced myself through. I'd rather see Twilight again, three times in a row at that, than suffer through Kill Bill again!