We don't want you to republish our content. So we will tell you not to do so. But then if you refuse to carry our content, we'll sue. Yeah, that makes sense.
It's just that simple. If some newspaper doesn't want to take part, they should be allowed to not take part. They CAN deny Google access anyway... of course it is their own incompetence that makes them ignorant of what they can do. If you don't want content X republished by Google, then refuse to deliver content X to Google. What Google can do is just give them an easier option to opt-out.
... a big corporate newspaper is like any big corporation. They will strangle any competency they might happen to have in their "IT" department with silly rules, silly procedures, and excessive busywork on pointless efforts to satisfy some big whig in an office no techie would ever be allowed to see. Make their own server smart enough to limit and restrict viewers to just specific content they want to be free? Thousands of Slashdot readers could probably implement and deploy. But it would never happen in those big businesses.
If some newspaper simply wants to NOT allow Google visitors, then Google should just cut them off, entirely, like they don't exist. No news links, no search links, nothing. They don't exist on the net. Maybe these newspapers should see just how much their traffic falls when that happens. Hey, if it doesn't, then it didn't matter.
Generally speaking, it takes more effort to crack encryption than doing it with the known keys. How much more depends on the algorithm. If you do encryption at a level sufficient to just use up a modern CPU (all cores), then it will take a lot more of them to crack it.
But there catches. File sharers are not always communicating continuously, but their cracking computers would be available for that purpose all the time. And they only need to detect if you are doing something suspicious and can batch the cracking until later in many cases. My summary would be: go ahead and use encryption. Once a PK exchange is done, the core cipher is not that much. This stuff is done in integers and GPUs can help speed it up, too. Would they start buying all that compute power just to do the cracking?
Here is my suggestion for a recursive acronym name for the next dumbed down programming language: Imbecile Means Beginner's Easily Coded Interactive Language Environment
Let dumber people program and you end up with dumber programs. Way back in year 2000 I found that most of the Y2K bugs were actually from more recently written programs in dumbed down languages.
This is, of course, bullshit. Being aware that people are assigned to different races, and treated differently because of this, is not racism, it's the first step in getting rid of racism. Pretending race doesn't exist, on the other hand, is just a way of pretending that racism doesn't exist, and so will inevitably perpetuate it.
I don't pretend that race or racism does not exist. But, IMHO, neither needs to exist. Human DNA has lots of variables. Certain groupings of these variables happen to be collected in historical regions of the world. That's what gives rise to the notion of race. But this is just something we created; it has no substantial meaning to the human species any more than any other collective grouping of human variables we might devise.
Race exists. But it's unimportant. The sooner we understand that, the sooner we can go on with the things that really matter.
Cat hair does indeed clog computer air filters. But that can be cleaned easily. Vacuum the filters in the reverse direction, or wash them with plain water (no soap). OTOH, cigarette tar and nicotine passes right through the filter and gradually deposits on the components (usually no harm to the component on the surface for a long time) and connectors (big problems happen here). Hard drives are not really sealed. They do have a breather filter to allow air to pass through. This filter is a very fine (as in very tiny holes) one that can get clogged by cigarette smoke residue. They are also at risk in commercial kitchens and automobile repair shops, in addition to homes of smokers. I charge more... a lot more... to clean/repair computers from these places.
Pet residue in computers is relatively easy to clean. Proper filtering catches most of it. Air blasts get the rest. Not so with cigarette smoke residue. It slips right past the filters used in computers and deposits tar, embedded with nasty chemicals, all over the insides. On places like connectors, even connectors already fully plugged in (like the memory sticks), it causes them to fail. The frequent on/off power cycles cause equally frequent temperature changes, which mechanically moves things around just enough for the microscopic particles to slip in between connections and gradually increase the resistance. While it is true there are many other hazards to computers, cigarette smoke in the home of a smoker is a major one.
What you are reading is not directly from the technician, but from some manager trying to make excuses, and doing a piss poor job of it (as is typical of non-technical managers). I know from many years experience that cigarette smoke is a major hazard... to computers and any other electronics with connectors and fans and such. The manager here doesn't really understand it. They should have let the tech explain it... "You messed up your own computer by smoking in the same room with the computer". Unfortunately for Apple, using the OSHA excuse will backfire on them. They should have just told the truth. Smoking around computers is an abuse of the hardware.
It's all firmware controlled these days, anyway. So hack your monitor to teach it new tricks like displaying video in a subset of the actual LCD pixels available. Blog your results with code.
If there was a strong incentive or motive, that might have made a big difference. If all you get from success in cracking is the recognition, that won't bring in all the possible methods. OTOH, if there was a genuine and significant prize, like actually taking leadership of the country, or a billion dollars, you might find the machines can be cracked.
Of course, as information becomes easier to access people also need to modify behaviors in light of changing technology; which they have been doing since the beginning of time. That is the real solution, IMHO.
I'll consent to adding a clause to the law that makes the law go away within two years of every major (having 1% or more user share) browser having an adequate cookie management feature. The two year part is to have sufficient time for browser upgrades to happen without setting some specific percent goal that might not be achieved.
Browser makers and protocol designers are partial culprits in this.
I don't see an issue with this. Maybe the law should be tweaked to address only cookies that are transmitted back to servers. Another option is to encode the skin name in a variation of the URL and allow the user to bookmark that URL and share it with friends ("hey, try this site with this cool skin I found").
For sites where no such T&C are used, then they can't use cookies. We'll see more T&C sites, then, too. I don't see a problem with it (having such a law).
Of course to allow the user to leave the website and return later without having to re-login, nothing beats a cookie. This behavior happens a lot now that people are in the habit of querying something on the website and use the Google field on the right of the URL field that most browsers have now a days. They like the convenience of typing the restful URL to return to the site, or not having to hit OK to resubmit a form when they use the back button.
What we need is a better managed credentials database within the browser. It would contain all the userids and passwords. It would be encrypted and require the user enter a passphrase to access it when the browser first needs it (optionally configured to ask when the browser first starts). The key derived from the passphrase would be stored in non-swappable memory, as would the decrypted data from the credentials database. When you visit a site you have a login for, you can have it set (per site) to automatically login you in, or prompt you to login (with a choice of ids presented if more than one for the site), with an optional extra passphase for specific sites. This would be done through specific new HTTPS headers (e.g. the browser won't send them via HTTP unless an exemption is made for that site or unless the browser can detect that IPSEC is being used). We would not need OpenID, either, with this.
Actually, I do you Firefox. But I have it set up to discard all cookies every time I leave a site. When (re-)entering a site, there are no cookies set. They can set whatever they want. When I quit, the cookies are gone (or more accurately, temporarily archived elsewhere). The next visit, there are no cookies. I have it set to always accept cookies, knowing that they will go away. Works quite smoothly and achieves what I want.
Why is it that important to not see the same quote again? Just change quotes at some time interval. Just make sure it is not systematically giving people the same quote at the same time of day (so a cycle of 24 hours to go through all quotes is a bad idea).
I'd say this is not an abuse of cookies, though. Still, if you have that much free time, you could think of other ways.
Slashdot Mirror
We don't want you to republish our content. So we will tell you not to do so. But then if you refuse to carry our content, we'll sue. Yeah, that makes sense.
It's just that simple. If some newspaper doesn't want to take part, they should be allowed to not take part. They CAN deny Google access anyway ... of course it is their own incompetence that makes them ignorant of what they can do. If you don't want content X republished by Google, then refuse to deliver content X to Google. What Google can do is just give them an easier option to opt-out.
... a big corporate newspaper is like any big corporation. They will strangle any competency they might happen to have in their "IT" department with silly rules, silly procedures, and excessive busywork on pointless efforts to satisfy some big whig in an office no techie would ever be allowed to see. Make their own server smart enough to limit and restrict viewers to just specific content they want to be free? Thousands of Slashdot readers could probably implement and deploy. But it would never happen in those big businesses.
If some newspaper simply wants to NOT allow Google visitors, then Google should just cut them off, entirely, like they don't exist. No news links, no search links, nothing. They don't exist on the net. Maybe these newspapers should see just how much their traffic falls when that happens. Hey, if it doesn't, then it didn't matter.
... then in a couple weeks, call a "forward planning meeting" and raise the issue of job DESCRIPTIONS and slip in job titles for each description.
Most people never win.
Generally speaking, it takes more effort to crack encryption than doing it with the known keys. How much more depends on the algorithm. If you do encryption at a level sufficient to just use up a modern CPU (all cores), then it will take a lot more of them to crack it.
But there catches. File sharers are not always communicating continuously, but their cracking computers would be available for that purpose all the time. And they only need to detect if you are doing something suspicious and can batch the cracking until later in many cases. My summary would be: go ahead and use encryption. Once a PK exchange is done, the core cipher is not that much. This stuff is done in integers and GPUs can help speed it up, too. Would they start buying all that compute power just to do the cracking?
Here is my suggestion for a recursive acronym name for the next dumbed down programming language: Imbecile Means Beginner's Easily Coded Interactive Language Environment
Let dumber people program and you end up with dumber programs. Way back in year 2000 I found that most of the Y2K bugs were actually from more recently written programs in dumbed down languages.
At first I read that as "PHB has dumbed down programming too much". But that is part of it.
This is, of course, bullshit. Being aware that people are assigned to different races, and treated differently because of this, is not racism, it's the first step in getting rid of racism. Pretending race doesn't exist, on the other hand, is just a way of pretending that racism doesn't exist, and so will inevitably perpetuate it.
I don't pretend that race or racism does not exist. But, IMHO, neither needs to exist. Human DNA has lots of variables. Certain groupings of these variables happen to be collected in historical regions of the world. That's what gives rise to the notion of race. But this is just something we created; it has no substantial meaning to the human species any more than any other collective grouping of human variables we might devise.
Race exists. But it's unimportant. The sooner we understand that, the sooner we can go on with the things that really matter.
Cat hair does indeed clog computer air filters. But that can be cleaned easily. Vacuum the filters in the reverse direction, or wash them with plain water (no soap). OTOH, cigarette tar and nicotine passes right through the filter and gradually deposits on the components (usually no harm to the component on the surface for a long time) and connectors (big problems happen here). Hard drives are not really sealed. They do have a breather filter to allow air to pass through. This filter is a very fine (as in very tiny holes) one that can get clogged by cigarette smoke residue. They are also at risk in commercial kitchens and automobile repair shops, in addition to homes of smokers. I charge more ... a lot more ... to clean/repair computers from these places.
Pet residue in computers is relatively easy to clean. Proper filtering catches most of it. Air blasts get the rest. Not so with cigarette smoke residue. It slips right past the filters used in computers and deposits tar, embedded with nasty chemicals, all over the insides. On places like connectors, even connectors already fully plugged in (like the memory sticks), it causes them to fail. The frequent on/off power cycles cause equally frequent temperature changes, which mechanically moves things around just enough for the microscopic particles to slip in between connections and gradually increase the resistance. While it is true there are many other hazards to computers, cigarette smoke in the home of a smoker is a major one.
What you are reading is not directly from the technician, but from some manager trying to make excuses, and doing a piss poor job of it (as is typical of non-technical managers). I know from many years experience that cigarette smoke is a major hazard ... to computers and any other electronics with connectors and fans and such. The manager here doesn't really understand it. They should have let the tech explain it ... "You messed up your own computer by smoking in the same room with the computer". Unfortunately for Apple, using the OSHA excuse will backfire on them. They should have just told the truth. Smoking around computers is an abuse of the hardware.
It's all firmware controlled these days, anyway. So hack your monitor to teach it new tricks like displaying video in a subset of the actual LCD pixels available. Blog your results with code.
Any bets on whether the reset button will wear out before the 'D' key?
... they're all black ... you insensitive clod.
So just block them at the firewall going to the internet, instead of in the core office switch.
If there was a strong incentive or motive, that might have made a big difference. If all you get from success in cracking is the recognition, that won't bring in all the possible methods. OTOH, if there was a genuine and significant prize, like actually taking leadership of the country, or a billion dollars, you might find the machines can be cracked.
Of course, as information becomes easier to access people also need to modify behaviors in light of changing technology; which they have been doing since the beginning of time. That is the real solution, IMHO.
Oh, you mean like, not murdering people?
... means squat.
I'll consent to adding a clause to the law that makes the law go away within two years of every major (having 1% or more user share) browser having an adequate cookie management feature. The two year part is to have sufficient time for browser upgrades to happen without setting some specific percent goal that might not be achieved.
Browser makers and protocol designers are partial culprits in this.
I don't see an issue with this. Maybe the law should be tweaked to address only cookies that are transmitted back to servers. Another option is to encode the skin name in a variation of the URL and allow the user to bookmark that URL and share it with friends ("hey, try this site with this cool skin I found").
For sites where no such T&C are used, then they can't use cookies. We'll see more T&C sites, then, too. I don't see a problem with it (having such a law).
Of course to allow the user to leave the website and return later without having to re-login, nothing beats a cookie. This behavior happens a lot now that people are in the habit of querying something on the website and use the Google field on the right of the URL field that most browsers have now a days. They like the convenience of typing the restful URL to return to the site, or not having to hit OK to resubmit a form when they use the back button.
What we need is a better managed credentials database within the browser. It would contain all the userids and passwords. It would be encrypted and require the user enter a passphrase to access it when the browser first needs it (optionally configured to ask when the browser first starts). The key derived from the passphrase would be stored in non-swappable memory, as would the decrypted data from the credentials database. When you visit a site you have a login for, you can have it set (per site) to automatically login you in, or prompt you to login (with a choice of ids presented if more than one for the site), with an optional extra passphase for specific sites. This would be done through specific new HTTPS headers (e.g. the browser won't send them via HTTP unless an exemption is made for that site or unless the browser can detect that IPSEC is being used). We would not need OpenID, either, with this.
Actually, I do you Firefox. But I have it set up to discard all cookies every time I leave a site. When (re-)entering a site, there are no cookies set. They can set whatever they want. When I quit, the cookies are gone (or more accurately, temporarily archived elsewhere). The next visit, there are no cookies. I have it set to always accept cookies, knowing that they will go away. Works quite smoothly and achieves what I want.
Why is it that important to not see the same quote again? Just change quotes at some time interval. Just make sure it is not systematically giving people the same quote at the same time of day (so a cycle of 24 hours to go through all quotes is a bad idea).
I'd say this is not an abuse of cookies, though. Still, if you have that much free time, you could think of other ways.