Hmm, that does sound interesting. Might be a bit harder to find, unfortunately, especially on my current budget (I once checked prices of a C64 on Ebay - they were about as pricy as higher-end modern computers). Maybe I'll luck out and find one for cheap somewhere.
Although I do have plenty of experience with memory-limited programming - I got my start doing stuff on TI calculators. Making a multitasking system on those, using a VERY limited variant of BASIC, was probably considered impossible. I did it anyways. Slow as shit, but it worked.
My laptop has a fingerprint scanner. Works well enough that I usually try that first, but it fails enough that I still log in via password relatievely often.
Being a laptop, and I being a total freak, I often use my laptop in... unusual positions. Seriously, I once used it, standing on my head (leaning against a wall), holding it with one hand and typing with another. Good way to stretch without having to take a break from the Internet.
Anyways, part of that involves logging in, say, one-handed. Or with the laptop tilted at a weird angle relative to my hands. Or typing it in with the bottom of the mouse (using it like a fat ugly stylus). There is absolutely no way I'm going to trust such a system not to lock me out.
Now, I can understand using something like this on something needing absolute security. Not even bank-account level of security - I'm talking "Dead Hand activation code"-level paranoia here. An extra level of security might be useful there. But I would never use this on any computer I would have access to.
However, I do think there might be another place for these: game consoles. Unless you can use a full QWERTY keyboard on them (IIRC, you can plug a USB keyboard into the PS3, and the XBox has a tiny chiclet keyboard thing), I would prefer passwords be something like "up, up, down, down, left-B, right-A, start, start L+R". Adding some very, very loose analysis of entry timings would make that more secure. I can imagine a system like that working (provided it isn't Sony doing the implementation).
I'm a relatively new computer guy, compared to those in the situation of throwing out a closet full of 486s. Sure, I "used" my dad's 486, but I was in the range of 6 years old at the time, and didn't really learn any of it. First OS I had any real experience with was Windows 95 on a Celeron 300.
I've since acquired a pretty wide variety of computer knowledge - I've run every version of Windows, several Linux distros, and a BSD, I've built computers and networks from the ground up, learned a score of programming languages, etc. And as a gamer, I've played dozens of the old games via DOSBox - beating Doom on Nightmare difficulty remains one of my greatest gaming feats.
However, I've always felt I lacked knowledge of computer history. Sure, I know about DR-DOS, the x86 wars, and the conventional/extended memory weirdness, but I never experienced any of it. Would it be worthwhile, even just as a learning experience, to set up and use an authentic DOS-era system? Or would some sort of simpler method be more worthwhile - running it in a VM, or on modern hardware, perhaps? Or is the entire thing entirely unnecessary?
The judiciary actually does has enough power in the US to do this. In fact, several courts have ruled EULAs invalid (see in particular SoftMan v. Adobe, which ruled that software is sold, not licensed, although it did uphold license restrictions as valid).
It doesn't even have to be released as a weapon. Several years ago, a researcher was going through a bunch of American-Civil-War-era documents. Opened one envelope, and a bunch of smallpox scabs fell out. After that long, they weren't very infectious, so he didn't contract anything, but it's plausible that material from the 70s could have survived and remain dangerous. Which is why research into a better vaccine exists - since it's impossible to definitively prove that no smallpox material remains, it's wise to look for a better protection than the current (and rather dangerous) vaccine.
Sure, Americans are too lazy to actually do anything themselves, but that doesn't mean we're not obsessed with fictional vigilantes. Pretty much every superhero comic/movie/game/whatever. Most Westerns. The entire "loose-cannon cop on the edge" genre (Dirty Harry, etc) differs from vigilante justice only on a technicality. And look at the way (certain) Americans look at foreign policy: "Someone needs to do something about $COUNTRY, so we'll do it, even though we've got no justification and no permission for intervening." America just wants to be Batman in country form.
The importance of this isn't that we can now send a team to colonize it. The importance of this is that we now have actual evidence that there are other planets that are theoretically habitable (Gliese581d doesn't sound like a good vacation spot, but it sounds comparable to some parts of Siberia or Antartica). We just one of the lower bounds in the Drake Equation.
Steam is the software package/service. Valve is the company that, among other things, runs Steam (they also make their own games, namely Half-Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, and Counter-Strike).
It's like the difference between Apple and Macintosh - one is the company, the other the product.
How the fuck did that make me a conservative? Both major US parties suck - I blame Bush as much as Obama. Hell, it's preposterous even treating them like they're different entities.
Well, then you run into the problem the PATRIOT Act did - it will just get silently voted into effect again and again, until most people are shocked to learn that it actually was supposed to be temporary. Hell, the Roman Empire made such temporary laws last for decades, even centuries.
Let me put it this way: I have a fan club. Didn't ask for it - it just happened. I've got enough people who admire me that I could probably start a cult. I have had multiple people express a desire to bear my children.
As to how I got that way, fuck if I know. I haven't actually done much besides a few small mods, and chatted a lot. All I know is that if I say "Steam just ripped me off, those fuckers", I'd start a small riot. Torches and pitchforks would be wielded; Gabe Newell would be burned in effigy.
I just automatically assume that anything online is insecure until proven otherwise. My Dropbox contains backups of some open-source programs I'm making, and a bunch of photos I wanted to put online. My GMail contains no information more private than my third-tier passwords (ones for forums/newslists where someone hijacking my account would be harmless). My Facebook contains nothing more than my name and high school. My Twitter has no information at all - just my username. The only online service I keep anything valuable in is my Steam account - and that's mainly because I'm big enough in their community that I could cause enough bad press to harm them (not much, but enough), and because I have enough stored there that a lawsuit would be plausible (should they go out of business without releasing a DRM stripper as promised). And even Steam has the bare minimum of extraneous info - one credit card, a phone contact, and the aforementioned GMail address.
Because I don't think there's a relevant XKCD for this one.
Re:The question nobody wants to ask....
on
Perl 5.14 Released
·
· Score: 0
No, I'm well aware of the problems with floating-point math. Hence why I have code that does "if (x - y
And I also know NEVER to use floats for currency. That's just asking for trouble.
But hey, thanks for flaming. If I'm not pissing someone off, I'm obviously doing something wrong.
Re:The question nobody wants to ask....
on
Perl 5.14 Released
·
· Score: 3, Informative
That reminded me of "Black Perl":
BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.
open spellbook, study, read (scan, select, tell us);
sort the flock (then, warn the "goats" & kill the "sheep");
kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,
values aside, each one;
die sheep! die to reverse the system
you accept (reject, respect);
next step,
kill the next sacrifice, each sacrifice,
wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
do it ("as they say").
do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).
return last victim; package body;
exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it,
select (quickly) & warn your next victim;
AFTERWORDS: tell nobody.
wait, wait until time;
wait until next year, next decade;
sleep, sleep, die yourself,
die at last
That's actually valid Perl (only Perl 3, though - it breaks in later versions). And yes, I'm aware most of you have already seen it.
Re:Perl - the COBOL of scripting languages
on
Perl 5.14 Released
·
· Score: 1
Are you sure all that's in the base install? I can't see why apxs is there, since (last I checked) Apache isn't in the default install. And I think c2ph is only in the compiler "package", which is technically optional.
Although I do agree that most of that could be rewritten in sh or even in C, rather easily. And the package manager does suck.
Re:The question nobody wants to ask....
on
Perl 5.14 Released
·
· Score: 1
Huh. Cool. I never played with Ruby much, never saw that.
Re:Perl - the COBOL of scripting languages
on
Perl 5.14 Released
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Perl makes a GREAT "general-administration" tool. I use it as basically bash++ - it's the best way,bar none, to write programs on the command-line. There's a reason even the ultra-minimalist OpenBSD includes Perl in the default install.
Re:The question nobody wants to ask....
on
Perl 5.14 Released
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Actually, I've always thought there should be one more common operator - "===". In floating-point context, it would be "approximately equal to", returning true if the arguments are within 10 times the smallest representable value. That would reduce problems with floating-point comparison. Hell, make it work for integers too - it might be useful in PLCs and stuff.
In a string context (in Perl, it would have to be something besides ===, but we'll get to that later), it would be "visually equal to" - any characters that are visually equal would be considered equal (useful mainly when using Unicode). So the Cyrillic "e" (0435) would be considered equal to Roman "e" (0065). I'm not sure how to handle complexities like "is the single character 'small a with macron' equal to the sequence 'small a' and 'combining diacritic macron'". We'll need a committee for that, probably. And since Perl uses different operators to determine context, we'd need something else for that. "veq", maybe?
This would, ideally, not just be a Perl construct. I can think of a lot of higher-level languages that could use that. Python. Ruby. Lua. Stuff like that. Lower-level languages probably would be better off without it - C does not need such an operator.
Just something I've always felt could be useful to have. Sure, there's probably some library that can do those things, but it would be nice to make things simpler.
Slashdot Mirror
The article was this Cracked article ("7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly)"), specifically page 7 ("Weapons and the People Who Use Them").
Hmm, that does sound interesting. Might be a bit harder to find, unfortunately, especially on my current budget (I once checked prices of a C64 on Ebay - they were about as pricy as higher-end modern computers). Maybe I'll luck out and find one for cheap somewhere.
Although I do have plenty of experience with memory-limited programming - I got my start doing stuff on TI calculators. Making a multitasking system on those, using a VERY limited variant of BASIC, was probably considered impossible. I did it anyways. Slow as shit, but it worked.
My laptop has a fingerprint scanner. Works well enough that I usually try that first, but it fails enough that I still log in via password relatievely often.
Being a laptop, and I being a total freak, I often use my laptop in... unusual positions. Seriously, I once used it, standing on my head (leaning against a wall), holding it with one hand and typing with another. Good way to stretch without having to take a break from the Internet.
Anyways, part of that involves logging in, say, one-handed. Or with the laptop tilted at a weird angle relative to my hands. Or typing it in with the bottom of the mouse (using it like a fat ugly stylus). There is absolutely no way I'm going to trust such a system not to lock me out.
Now, I can understand using something like this on something needing absolute security. Not even bank-account level of security - I'm talking "Dead Hand activation code"-level paranoia here. An extra level of security might be useful there. But I would never use this on any computer I would have access to.
However, I do think there might be another place for these: game consoles. Unless you can use a full QWERTY keyboard on them (IIRC, you can plug a USB keyboard into the PS3, and the XBox has a tiny chiclet keyboard thing), I would prefer passwords be something like "up, up, down, down, left-B, right-A, start, start L+R". Adding some very, very loose analysis of entry timings would make that more secure. I can imagine a system like that working (provided it isn't Sony doing the implementation).
I'm a relatively new computer guy, compared to those in the situation of throwing out a closet full of 486s. Sure, I "used" my dad's 486, but I was in the range of 6 years old at the time, and didn't really learn any of it. First OS I had any real experience with was Windows 95 on a Celeron 300.
I've since acquired a pretty wide variety of computer knowledge - I've run every version of Windows, several Linux distros, and a BSD, I've built computers and networks from the ground up, learned a score of programming languages, etc. And as a gamer, I've played dozens of the old games via DOSBox - beating Doom on Nightmare difficulty remains one of my greatest gaming feats.
However, I've always felt I lacked knowledge of computer history. Sure, I know about DR-DOS, the x86 wars, and the conventional/extended memory weirdness, but I never experienced any of it. Would it be worthwhile, even just as a learning experience, to set up and use an authentic DOS-era system? Or would some sort of simpler method be more worthwhile - running it in a VM, or on modern hardware, perhaps? Or is the entire thing entirely unnecessary?
The judiciary actually does has enough power in the US to do this. In fact, several courts have ruled EULAs invalid (see in particular SoftMan v. Adobe, which ruled that software is sold, not licensed, although it did uphold license restrictions as valid).
It doesn't even have to be released as a weapon. Several years ago, a researcher was going through a bunch of American-Civil-War-era documents. Opened one envelope, and a bunch of smallpox scabs fell out. After that long, they weren't very infectious, so he didn't contract anything, but it's plausible that material from the 70s could have survived and remain dangerous. Which is why research into a better vaccine exists - since it's impossible to definitively prove that no smallpox material remains, it's wise to look for a better protection than the current (and rather dangerous) vaccine.
Sure, Americans are too lazy to actually do anything themselves, but that doesn't mean we're not obsessed with fictional vigilantes. Pretty much every superhero comic/movie/game/whatever. Most Westerns. The entire "loose-cannon cop on the edge" genre (Dirty Harry, etc) differs from vigilante justice only on a technicality. And look at the way (certain) Americans look at foreign policy: "Someone needs to do something about $COUNTRY, so we'll do it, even though we've got no justification and no permission for intervening." America just wants to be Batman in country form.
That explains why American culture is so obsessed with vigilante justice - the actual judicial system is fucking retarded .
The verb I just was "doubled". My bad.
The importance of this isn't that we can now send a team to colonize it. The importance of this is that we now have actual evidence that there are other planets that are theoretically habitable (Gliese581d doesn't sound like a good vacation spot, but it sounds comparable to some parts of Siberia or Antartica). We just one of the lower bounds in the Drake Equation.
Steam is the software package/service. Valve is the company that, among other things, runs Steam (they also make their own games, namely Half-Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, and Counter-Strike).
It's like the difference between Apple and Macintosh - one is the company, the other the product.
How the fuck did that make me a conservative? Both major US parties suck - I blame Bush as much as Obama. Hell, it's preposterous even treating them like they're different entities.
Well, then you run into the problem the PATRIOT Act did - it will just get silently voted into effect again and again, until most people are shocked to learn that it actually was supposed to be temporary. Hell, the Roman Empire made such temporary laws last for decades, even centuries.
Let me put it this way: I have a fan club. Didn't ask for it - it just happened. I've got enough people who admire me that I could probably start a cult. I have had multiple people express a desire to bear my children.
As to how I got that way, fuck if I know. I haven't actually done much besides a few small mods, and chatted a lot. All I know is that if I say "Steam just ripped me off, those fuckers", I'd start a small riot. Torches and pitchforks would be wielded; Gabe Newell would be burned in effigy.
I just automatically assume that anything online is insecure until proven otherwise. My Dropbox contains backups of some open-source programs I'm making, and a bunch of photos I wanted to put online. My GMail contains no information more private than my third-tier passwords (ones for forums/newslists where someone hijacking my account would be harmless). My Facebook contains nothing more than my name and high school. My Twitter has no information at all - just my username. The only online service I keep anything valuable in is my Steam account - and that's mainly because I'm big enough in their community that I could cause enough bad press to harm them (not much, but enough), and because I have enough stored there that a lawsuit would be plausible (should they go out of business without releasing a DRM stripper as promised). And even Steam has the bare minimum of extraneous info - one credit card, a phone contact, and the aforementioned GMail address.
Because I don't think there's a relevant XKCD for this one.
No, I'm well aware of the problems with floating-point math. Hence why I have code that does "if (x - y
And I also know NEVER to use floats for currency. That's just asking for trouble.
But hey, thanks for flaming. If I'm not pissing someone off, I'm obviously doing something wrong.
BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.
open spellbook, study, read (scan, select, tell us);
write it, print the hex while each watches,
reverse its length, write again;
kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.
unlink arms, shift, wait & listen (listening, wait),
sort the flock (then, warn the "goats" & kill the "sheep");
kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,
values aside, each one;
die sheep! die to reverse the system
you accept (reject, respect);
next step,
kill the next sacrifice, each sacrifice,
wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
do it ("as they say").
do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).
return last victim; package body;
exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it,
select (quickly) & warn your next victim;
AFTERWORDS: tell nobody.
wait, wait until time;
wait until next year, next decade;
sleep, sleep, die yourself,
die at last
That's actually valid Perl (only Perl 3, though - it breaks in later versions). And yes, I'm aware most of you have already seen it.
Are you sure all that's in the base install? I can't see why apxs is there, since (last I checked) Apache isn't in the default install. And I think c2ph is only in the compiler "package", which is technically optional.
Although I do agree that most of that could be rewritten in sh or even in C, rather easily. And the package manager does suck.
Huh. Cool. I never played with Ruby much, never saw that.
Perl makes a GREAT "general-administration" tool. I use it as basically bash++ - it's the best way,bar none, to write programs on the command-line. There's a reason even the ultra-minimalist OpenBSD includes Perl in the default install.
Actually, I've always thought there should be one more common operator - "===". In floating-point context, it would be "approximately equal to", returning true if the arguments are within 10 times the smallest representable value. That would reduce problems with floating-point comparison. Hell, make it work for integers too - it might be useful in PLCs and stuff.
In a string context (in Perl, it would have to be something besides ===, but we'll get to that later), it would be "visually equal to" - any characters that are visually equal would be considered equal (useful mainly when using Unicode). So the Cyrillic "e" (0435) would be considered equal to Roman "e" (0065). I'm not sure how to handle complexities like "is the single character 'small a with macron' equal to the sequence 'small a' and 'combining diacritic macron'". We'll need a committee for that, probably. And since Perl uses different operators to determine context, we'd need something else for that. "veq", maybe?
This would, ideally, not just be a Perl construct. I can think of a lot of higher-level languages that could use that. Python. Ruby. Lua. Stuff like that. Lower-level languages probably would be better off without it - C does not need such an operator.
Just something I've always felt could be useful to have. Sure, there's probably some library that can do those things, but it would be nice to make things simpler.
That sounds suspiciously like legal advice.
I know that, but I figured I shouldn't nest a side-comment within another side-comment. Too LISP-ish.
This is English, not C. "Six" == 6.