What's exciting to me is that I do have the skill to beat guitar hero songs on Expert. I've always wanted to try a "Piano Hero" type thing to work up that kind of impressive super-fast skill with an actual instrument, and a piano is perfect because it's just buttons like the GH controller.
The worst part is that the purpose of the update is to fix a bug in data reporting with their optional spyware program!
In an Internet browser, you specify a homepage that is not a fully qualified URL. However, Windows Live Toolbar, MSN Toolbar, or Bing Bar may not categorize your homepage correctly. Therefore, the homepage reporting may be generated incorrectly for users who select the Help improve our services option when they install these toolbars
Well it's not exactly that easy. How do you define "require authentication"? If you guess/private/ then that's certainly fair game, but if you guess someone's password, the jury isn't going to be able to tell the difference no matter how many giant cards you hold up containing millions of 1s and 0s:)
It's going to become news when this hits the courts:
in what appears to be a legal fashion by querying a public interface
Since when does the interface being public have anything to do with whether accessing it is legal? The law makes statements about authorized and unauthorized access, not technically possible and technically impossible access. In all hacking crimes the system is happily serving up content exactly as built by the designers, but it's still a crime. In many cases, the system is even working as intended (no buffer overflows and the like) but if unauthorized access is obtained, it's still a crime.
Does anyone else remember this case that was on slashdot some years ago? A computer security consultant was convicted in the UK for typing "/../../" after a URL and hitting enter. Obviously this destroyed his career.
This is the text of the law that convicted him.
a person is guilty of an offence if: he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer and the access he intends to secure is unauthorised and he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case
Maybe they're using a new kind of heat shield and want to see how it performs. It's really expensive to get something massive up into space and accelerate it down into the atmosphere at a speed that would cause it to burn up; maybe they have to wait for occasions like this to get good data.
Do you suggest that all important electrical equipment be monitored and controlled physically by an operator? Any kind of remote control can make the grid vulnerable to a serious enough security breach.
There likely aren't people who are responsible. It's probably just management under pressure from higher management to meet deadlines, and stupid policies crafted by committee politics. It's probably just people trying to do their jobs while being yelled at as little as possible, to go home at night and have money.
I'm going to pass on this one since I'm only a student, I could solve all of the given 2008 problems immediately, and the contest is open to everyone. I figure I don't have a chance when it's this easy.
Little bit of faulty logic there. What's the point of printing out a big barcode so that people can decode it with their computers? If they're using their computers anyway they could just download the book.
The whole idea in TFA is similarly stupid. The only conceivable reason for using barcodes is to make sure that the premium content only goes to people who bought the book, and to assign a unique ID in each barcode. How is the consumer supposed to get excited about this? All it is for the consumer is an extra artificial step to protect the publisher. It also deprives them of resale rights.
What is this 1966? You can't just look at the flashing lights to see what it's doing. Besides, all they have to do is put it in a box and lock the box.
The drives are fine, it's just a firmware issue. They'll fix it in the next few months. It's not like people who bought the drives are screwed because of faulty equipment.
25 light years is a long way. Even if the explosion propagated at 0.1 c it would take 250 years for the plasma to engulf us. Are you sure that's the destruction zone?
You don't have to configure each subdomain separately, you can just approve the whole domain. And if you don't want to sort through which domains are ads and trackers, you can just use "Temporarily allow all this page" and it will unblock all of the scripts on the page for the duration of your browser session.
It does take some getting used to, but I love it. It's like steaming up and down the coast in an ironclad while the enemy tries to shoot little cannonballs at you from wooden ships.
Well the phone networks would probably be more inclined to promote Microsoft's phones if their users spend $900/mo more on average than everyone else:P
I think you're too kind to itunes. It's not a matter of intuitiveness, the software just sucks, period. With a hundred million devices, most of those users are going to be on Windows. And the Windows version of itunes carries along the ridiculously out-of-place Cocoa look and feel. Why anyone considers that acceptable (and why Apple thinks it's a good idea) is baffling to me.
Why do you think the United States has the authority to dismantle BP's worldwide operations? It's not even an American-based corporation, the B stands for British.
Well since BP's unconscionable business practices are being thoroughly exposed, you don't necessarily have to give them a second chance. There's a point where their organization is so flawed that it would be an unacceptable danger to have these people continue to drill when millions of lives can be affected. The best solution may be to dismantle BP's US operations entirely and let it serve as a warning to the rest.
Yep, this is exactly the kind of situation where you'd expect communism to work, and this is the situation where in real life it fails. In theory the government should reserve water for its citizens. In practice, the people who are actually in charge have more incentive to make tons of money from Intel and Coke than to protect the lives of nearly-worthless workers.
Slashdot Mirror
What's exciting to me is that I do have the skill to beat guitar hero songs on Expert. I've always wanted to try a "Piano Hero" type thing to work up that kind of impressive super-fast skill with an actual instrument, and a piano is perfect because it's just buttons like the GH controller.
The worst part is that the purpose of the update is to fix a bug in data reporting with their optional spyware program!
g
Well it's not exactly that easy. How do you define "require authentication"? If you guess /private/ then that's certainly fair game, but if you guess someone's password, the jury isn't going to be able to tell the difference no matter how many giant cards you hold up containing millions of 1s and 0s :)
It's going to become news when this hits the courts:
Since when does the interface being public have anything to do with whether accessing it is legal? The law makes statements about authorized and unauthorized access, not technically possible and technically impossible access. In all hacking crimes the system is happily serving up content exactly as built by the designers, but it's still a crime. In many cases, the system is even working as intended (no buffer overflows and the like) but if unauthorized access is obtained, it's still a crime.
Does anyone else remember this case that was on slashdot some years ago? A computer security consultant was convicted in the UK for typing "/../../" after a URL and hitting enter. Obviously this destroyed his career.
This is the text of the law that convicted him.
Did you even read the summary?
Maybe they're using a new kind of heat shield and want to see how it performs. It's really expensive to get something massive up into space and accelerate it down into the atmosphere at a speed that would cause it to burn up; maybe they have to wait for occasions like this to get good data.
I don't think that 500 kilograms moving at supersonic speed are going to care how tough you are..
Do you suggest that all important electrical equipment be monitored and controlled physically by an operator? Any kind of remote control can make the grid vulnerable to a serious enough security breach.
There likely aren't people who are responsible. It's probably just management under pressure from higher management to meet deadlines, and stupid policies crafted by committee politics. It's probably just people trying to do their jobs while being yelled at as little as possible, to go home at night and have money.
The quake sources had at least a few comments though. Aquaria's sources are sprawling and comment-free.
I'm going to pass on this one since I'm only a student, I could solve all of the given 2008 problems immediately, and the contest is open to everyone. I figure I don't have a chance when it's this easy.
I agree; I doubt that the caffeine in coca-cola makes it sell better.
Little bit of faulty logic there. What's the point of printing out a big barcode so that people can decode it with their computers? If they're using their computers anyway they could just download the book.
The whole idea in TFA is similarly stupid. The only conceivable reason for using barcodes is to make sure that the premium content only goes to people who bought the book, and to assign a unique ID in each barcode. How is the consumer supposed to get excited about this? All it is for the consumer is an extra artificial step to protect the publisher. It also deprives them of resale rights.
What is this 1966? You can't just look at the flashing lights to see what it's doing. Besides, all they have to do is put it in a box and lock the box.
The drives are fine, it's just a firmware issue. They'll fix it in the next few months. It's not like people who bought the drives are screwed because of faulty equipment.
25 light years is a long way. Even if the explosion propagated at 0.1 c it would take 250 years for the plasma to engulf us. Are you sure that's the destruction zone?
You don't have to configure each subdomain separately, you can just approve the whole domain. And if you don't want to sort through which domains are ads and trackers, you can just use "Temporarily allow all this page" and it will unblock all of the scripts on the page for the duration of your browser session.
It does take some getting used to, but I love it. It's like steaming up and down the coast in an ironclad while the enemy tries to shoot little cannonballs at you from wooden ships.
Well the phone networks would probably be more inclined to promote Microsoft's phones if their users spend $900/mo more on average than everyone else :P
It's more like:
What is the result when there's a ridiculous bully who talks big and roughs everyone up, and you laugh in his face defusing his power?
I think you're too kind to itunes. It's not a matter of intuitiveness, the software just sucks, period. With a hundred million devices, most of those users are going to be on Windows. And the Windows version of itunes carries along the ridiculously out-of-place Cocoa look and feel. Why anyone considers that acceptable (and why Apple thinks it's a good idea) is baffling to me.
Why do you think the United States has the authority to dismantle BP's worldwide operations? It's not even an American-based corporation, the B stands for British.
Well since BP's unconscionable business practices are being thoroughly exposed, you don't necessarily have to give them a second chance. There's a point where their organization is so flawed that it would be an unacceptable danger to have these people continue to drill when millions of lives can be affected. The best solution may be to dismantle BP's US operations entirely and let it serve as a warning to the rest.
Uh so the evidence isn't destroyed obviously. Presumably because the FTC is investigating.
Yep, this is exactly the kind of situation where you'd expect communism to work, and this is the situation where in real life it fails. In theory the government should reserve water for its citizens. In practice, the people who are actually in charge have more incentive to make tons of money from Intel and Coke than to protect the lives of nearly-worthless workers.