Oh, please. Like nobody else has ever created duplicate software before.
Yes, there are probably other utilities that do this. Maybe the NSA was unaware of them. Maybe they were incompatible with their legacy tools or infrastrcture. Maybe they didn't do what the NSA needed.
And even then, sometimes it's worth a rewrite, just to make things better.
Passwords have been a broken concept for quite some time. All the suggestions (length, character set, aging, history, and so on) make security stronger only in theory. In reality, people make bad passwords. They find ways around the system checks. They rotate through the same passwords. They increment counters at the end.
Ironically, the harder IT fights the users, the worse the passwords get.
So, where's the replacement? What is the "something you know" that can be automatically verified?
That requirement (in my experience) is due to legacy systems. Somewhere in the back-end is a system that can only handle 8 character passwords, probably a very old unix server.
Everybody seems to know that 8 characters isn't enough for real security these days, but the cost of upgrading seems to outweigh the cost of compromised security.
Sorry. The sarcasm wasn't pointed at the concept of playing movies on a hard drive, but at the promotion itself.
Let's take the hard drive out of the picture. It's like selling rewritable DVDs with "free" movies on them and then requiring a code to be purchased as well. Oh, and there's nothing free or lower-priced about it.
Yeah, that's a great way of promoting your products!
I think a class that studies those who believe in UFOs would definitely be worth of an anthropology class.
Who are the believers? Why do they so strongly believe they saw a UFO? What is the cultural basis behind this belief? What are the equivalents in other societies? Ghosts? Evil spirits? Angels? A study of the people would be very interesting.
I think this anthropology professor might even be qualified (if biased) to teach such a class.
Newegg has various Seagate 500GB drives priced between $55 and $160. And I can buy the DVD from amazon.com for $17. Or less ($12) if I go with their individual sellers.
What's the point, again? Oh, there's this:
Both companies declined to say if they were taking a loss on the promotional price. Both could be using the offer as a way to lure buyers for other related products they're selling.
Paramount, a unit of Viacom Inc., is selling its other movie titles, while Seagate Technology is selling a device that enables movies stored on hard drives to be played on television sets for $130.
Oh, they're trying to promote the idea of playing movies off a hard drive. Brilliant! Count me in! [/sarcasm]
I find this slightly odd, reading through the comments here suggests that 90% or more of people misunderstand what yellow means – they think it means "go if you think you can squeeze through", rather than "stop, unless you absolutely can't".
When going through a yellow light, I pretend I'm flying a space ship through a slowly narrowing gap, flooring the accelerator and screaming at the same time. Quite exhilarating!
Murphy learned to create touchable images of animals for books for visually impaired children. Then she realized that there was a lack of such books for adults only.
Wait... so the target audience is furries? Please, no.
While the general population may be unaware, electronics gurus know that all components rely on a small amount of magic smoke. Manufacturers want you to think that some sort of fancy semiconductor physics is responsible for the operation of their device. This is a lie.
If the smoke escapes, the device will no longer work. It is vital to the operation of the chip; do not let it out.
You should have to sort out all the details of network storage and collaboration yourself. If you don't have the time or expertise to set that up, you don't deserve to be editing documents.
I don't think that's what anybody thinks, so please avoid turning the issue into a straw man.
The advantages to online document editing are collaboration and decentralization. No more emailing a document around, then having to merge changes together. No more emailing it to yourself (what a ridiculous workaround... and yet we've all done it). No more worries about losing a document from a hard drive crash.
All good things, right?
But is a web-based application like Google Docs the right solution? Well, now we've introduced more problems. What if I lose my connection? Where's all the bells and whistles? But now it's so slow!
Again, all valid complaints.
Personally, I don't have any problem with the application being hosted online, even if a web browser is an odd tool for this. Nor do I have a problem with the data being "in the cloud," as that's the whole reason for using it.
What I do have a problem with is taking two steps backwards in the process. All the complaints I listed above could be eliminated with some sort of hybrid system: let the application be hosted online, but don't make it dependent on any sort of connection.
Minor correction: they're using iridium oxide. That alone make it hard to scale up: iridium (virtually tied with osmium) is the densest material possible on earth that we know about, has an incredibly high melting point (900 *C higher than iron, though less than tungsten), and rare enough and hard enough to process to make it relatively expensive. They're using it in the lab because its a very good catalyst (see the rest of the platinum group).
But fortunately, almost all major advances start out this way: a small process that wouldn't work in real life, but which is later developed with other materials or techniques to scale up production. Unfortunately, many more end up as vaporware. Either way, even small advances like this are exciting.
On the contrary, nature often forks and merges beneficial changes back into the trunk. As long as two branches are close enough to have viable offspring, the beneficial mutations can intermingle enough to spread.
On the other hand, if branches differ by too much, it's impossible to merge the changes back in. Your comment, while humorous, does point out an apt analogy.
Re:The iPad is original Apple Redux
on
The Apple Two
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Your comments sum up my feelings quite well.
I don't think I could use an iPad. Maybe to check Wikipedia or watch Hulu instead of using my laptop, which clutters the room quite a bit. But that doesn't justify the cost at all.
On the other hand, the imagination starts to run wild when I consider other people. You mentioned doctors, mechanics, and hair stylists.
I'll add students (textbooks, email, notes, and calculator make for a killer combination), contractors (make quotes and drawings, look up specs, and plenty more), frequent travelers (great battery life, entertainment, internet), and plenty more.
I see killer apps for lots of small niche markets, but nothing for myself yet. Maybe someone will come out with the app for me, but until then I'll let everybody else explore what the iPad can do for them.
Re:Like Woz didn't move on a LONG time ago?
on
The Apple Two
·
· Score: 1
Though, I can't imagine using it as my only computer as a student, blech
I disagree somewhat. While it could never be used for writing reports and so forth, that's what computer labs are for. On the other hand, it has great potential for taking notes, reading your textbooks, checking email, chat, playing movies, and more. In other words, you can use it for everything that students actually want to do.
For a student on a budget, the iPad makes some sense. Well, it would if the price weren't so high relative to other options. A netbook or cheep laptop fills that role right now, but rather poorly in my opinion.
I had a professor who said that beginner programmers use the Monte Carlo method of programming. You've probably done it, too: change something at random and see if that fixes the problem.
I guess this would be the Monte Carlo method of optimization?
These are hardware patents, not software patents. What's interesting about this case is we have software violating a hardware patent, as it's emulating what the hardware does. A key word here is "emulating."
Now, I have a hard time thinking that all those patents are really being violated. I've worked with processor emulators before, and the way they actually work is very different from the actual hardware. Many of the patents seem to be hardware-specific, and not what you would actually implement in software. I won't speculate beyond that because I don't know much about the hardware and emulator involved in this case.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, please. Like nobody else has ever created duplicate software before.
Yes, there are probably other utilities that do this. Maybe the NSA was unaware of them. Maybe they were incompatible with their legacy tools or infrastrcture. Maybe they didn't do what the NSA needed.
And even then, sometimes it's worth a rewrite, just to make things better.
Field trip: make your own crop circles.
Full points are awarded if someone reports it as a UFO sighting. Extra credit if they refuse to believe you were the one that made it.
Passwords have been a broken concept for quite some time. All the suggestions (length, character set, aging, history, and so on) make security stronger only in theory. In reality, people make bad passwords. They find ways around the system checks. They rotate through the same passwords. They increment counters at the end.
Ironically, the harder IT fights the users, the worse the passwords get.
So, where's the replacement? What is the "something you know" that can be automatically verified?
That requirement (in my experience) is due to legacy systems. Somewhere in the back-end is a system that can only handle 8 character passwords, probably a very old unix server.
Everybody seems to know that 8 characters isn't enough for real security these days, but the cost of upgrading seems to outweigh the cost of compromised security.
Sorry. The sarcasm wasn't pointed at the concept of playing movies on a hard drive, but at the promotion itself.
Let's take the hard drive out of the picture. It's like selling rewritable DVDs with "free" movies on them and then requiring a code to be purchased as well. Oh, and there's nothing free or lower-priced about it.
Yeah, that's a great way of promoting your products!
I think a class that studies those who believe in UFOs would definitely be worth of an anthropology class.
Who are the believers? Why do they so strongly believe they saw a UFO? What is the cultural basis behind this belief? What are the equivalents in other societies? Ghosts? Evil spirits? Angels? A study of the people would be very interesting.
I think this anthropology professor might even be qualified (if biased) to teach such a class.
Newegg has various Seagate 500GB drives priced between $55 and $160. And I can buy the DVD from amazon.com for $17. Or less ($12) if I go with their individual sellers.
What's the point, again? Oh, there's this:
Both companies declined to say if they were taking a loss on the promotional price. Both could be using the offer as a way to lure buyers for other related products they're selling.
Paramount, a unit of Viacom Inc., is selling its other movie titles, while Seagate Technology is selling a device that enables movies stored on hard drives to be played on television sets for $130.
Oh, they're trying to promote the idea of playing movies off a hard drive. Brilliant! Count me in! [/sarcasm]
I find this slightly odd, reading through the comments here suggests that 90% or more of people misunderstand what yellow means – they think it means "go if you think you can squeeze through", rather than "stop, unless you absolutely can't".
When going through a yellow light, I pretend I'm flying a space ship through a slowly narrowing gap, flooring the accelerator and screaming at the same time. Quite exhilarating!
Know what?
*Shrug*
No advantage.
It sounds like all you did was port the interface.
But what does it matter if the interface is native, java, flash, php, or html5? It's the same thing.
Yeah, you get easier installation and updates, but that's about it.
Murphy learned to create touchable images of animals for books for visually impaired children. Then she realized that there was a lack of such books for adults only.
Wait ... so the target audience is furries? Please, no.
... and shooting at real people during training generates a lot of paperwork.
Only if you miss.
Lesson 2: Don't let out the magic smoke.
While the general population may be unaware, electronics gurus know that all components rely on a small amount of magic smoke. Manufacturers want you to think that some sort of fancy semiconductor physics is responsible for the operation of their device. This is a lie.
If the smoke escapes, the device will no longer work. It is vital to the operation of the chip; do not let it out.
You should have to sort out all the details of network storage and collaboration yourself. If you don't have the time or expertise to set that up, you don't deserve to be editing documents.
I don't think that's what anybody thinks, so please avoid turning the issue into a straw man.
The advantages to online document editing are collaboration and decentralization. No more emailing a document around, then having to merge changes together. No more emailing it to yourself (what a ridiculous workaround ... and yet we've all done it). No more worries about losing a document from a hard drive crash.
All good things, right?
But is a web-based application like Google Docs the right solution? Well, now we've introduced more problems. What if I lose my connection? Where's all the bells and whistles? But now it's so slow!
Again, all valid complaints.
Personally, I don't have any problem with the application being hosted online, even if a web browser is an odd tool for this. Nor do I have a problem with the data being "in the cloud," as that's the whole reason for using it.
What I do have a problem with is taking two steps backwards in the process. All the complaints I listed above could be eliminated with some sort of hybrid system: let the application be hosted online, but don't make it dependent on any sort of connection.
Minor correction: they're using iridium oxide. That alone make it hard to scale up: iridium (virtually tied with osmium) is the densest material possible on earth that we know about, has an incredibly high melting point (900 *C higher than iron, though less than tungsten), and rare enough and hard enough to process to make it relatively expensive. They're using it in the lab because its a very good catalyst (see the rest of the platinum group).
But fortunately, almost all major advances start out this way: a small process that wouldn't work in real life, but which is later developed with other materials or techniques to scale up production. Unfortunately, many more end up as vaporware. Either way, even small advances like this are exciting.
Burma Shave
Citation:
http://www.snopes.com/business/money/cocaine.asp
The percentage is probably lower than 90% (33% to 50% in one study, 75% in another, 80% in a fourth, and a staggering 97% in a fifth).
I suppose they have a vested interest due to their game libraries.
Behold the power of vendor lock-in.
What we talking about again? Oh, yeah. Microsoft and OOXML.
On the contrary, nature often forks and merges beneficial changes back into the trunk. As long as two branches are close enough to have viable offspring, the beneficial mutations can intermingle enough to spread.
On the other hand, if branches differ by too much, it's impossible to merge the changes back in. Your comment, while humorous, does point out an apt analogy.
Your comments sum up my feelings quite well.
I don't think I could use an iPad. Maybe to check Wikipedia or watch Hulu instead of using my laptop, which clutters the room quite a bit. But that doesn't justify the cost at all.
On the other hand, the imagination starts to run wild when I consider other people. You mentioned doctors, mechanics, and hair stylists.
I'll add students (textbooks, email, notes, and calculator make for a killer combination), contractors (make quotes and drawings, look up specs, and plenty more), frequent travelers (great battery life, entertainment, internet), and plenty more.
I see killer apps for lots of small niche markets, but nothing for myself yet. Maybe someone will come out with the app for me, but until then I'll let everybody else explore what the iPad can do for them.
Though, I can't imagine using it as my only computer as a student, blech
I disagree somewhat. While it could never be used for writing reports and so forth, that's what computer labs are for. On the other hand, it has great potential for taking notes, reading your textbooks, checking email, chat, playing movies, and more. In other words, you can use it for everything that students actually want to do.
For a student on a budget, the iPad makes some sense. Well, it would if the price weren't so high relative to other options. A netbook or cheep laptop fills that role right now, but rather poorly in my opinion.
Don't worry -- I hear stilts are all the rage among astronauts these days.
Fashion ... I still don't understand it.
I had a professor who said that beginner programmers use the Monte Carlo method of programming. You've probably done it, too: change something at random and see if that fixes the problem.
I guess this would be the Monte Carlo method of optimization?
That's partly because Microsoft makes it so easy, partly because it's fun, and partly because it's an easy way to get modded up!
These are hardware patents, not software patents. What's interesting about this case is we have software violating a hardware patent, as it's emulating what the hardware does. A key word here is "emulating."
Now, I have a hard time thinking that all those patents are really being violated. I've worked with processor emulators before, and the way they actually work is very different from the actual hardware. Many of the patents seem to be hardware-specific, and not what you would actually implement in software. I won't speculate beyond that because I don't know much about the hardware and emulator involved in this case.
At least they listed the patents. That more than can be said about other companies (see also: Microsoft).