I've hated this "feature" for a while now. Even if I don't use it, they'd theoretically know what site I'd been to when I load the images from their server, right? If nothing else, it's the most obnoxious script that doesn't install malware since it makes my browser contact Facebook 4 times a second - then I stop it - then it starts again, so I have to disable Javascript to have a moment's peace and privacy. Not that the privacy really counts at that point; it's gone.
That's precisely why it's illegal. Cops are infallible, and having recordings of them lets that be disproven easily. So now, police are always "on the phone" so you can't record them, even if they're across the street, shooting people execution style.
I'd rather see Facebook's embedded code banned from websites - the one that lets you comment on any site because you're already signed in with your FB account, even though you never did and never would - but it's too late, because you've already requested all the user icons, so FB knows where you're browsing....then after the page loads in Opera, it contacts Facebook once every 0.25 seconds until you disable Javascript... I loathe it.
I'm a very active Gawker user, though that's nothing to be that proud of. Gawker staff often (varies by subsite) hops on bandwagons, smears others, and uses inflammatory and misleading headlines to get people to click on their pages. Ultimately all that matters is page views.
I'm interested in seeing if there's anything more to this Assange charge, especially since the charge was earlier withdrawn due to lack of evidence - presumably they found some? But Gawker's motives are not noble, I'm sure - they want to jump onto this media scrum and get as many curious clicks as possible, and I'm sure they'll say or do anything to make it happen. They're information mercenaries.
Yeah, I help a lot of users who need their passwords reset - so we give them a fairly standard set, plus a little randomization, to get them up and running again. It's more optimized to be read over the phone, including to those who don't know English well, so I can't really say "capital I, tilde, seven, g, capital J, ampersand..." etc.
So I explain where to change their password and tell them that the one they have isn't that secure. Then I tell them that it has to be six or more characters, numbers and letters at least, and can't repeat their last 24 passwords. Often they'll try 5-10 passwords, give up, and leave it as the temp password until it expires and forces them to change it. Then they probably forget what they changed it to because it was so outlandish, before calling us again for another easy one.
Our system will also lock them out for a while after three relatively closely-timed attempts in the first place.
But... I don't set the password policy, and some of it is even in place to appease the auditor general's requirements, so... there's not much we can do except sympathize with the users as they complain.
Why haven't they thought of that for the kiosks? A good question - I'd have hoped they were so crude they wouldn't run a common infectable OS, but I guess this is progress...
What I want to know is why is it so damn hard to get a USB flashdrive with write protection? I had one from around 2002, and when it broke, I never saw another. The best I could do is get one of those apps that writes every single unused sector with a dummy file, but I don't want to waste write and erase cycles on a not-really-fixed kludge in the first place.
But then, I haven't had photos developed this decade, so personally I'm in the clear. I'll just use a color printer if I really want a physical copy.
I'd vouch for this. I bought an Inspiron in 2003, and now at work we got a bunch of Latitudes that we ordered in 2008-09 with the EXACT same power adapters. Even their docking stations just take the 90W adapter and that's that.
I really don't want ONE supply to charge all laptops because it would have to be big and bulky to support the most demanding ones. One in each of several power classes could be nice though. For example, I have a laptop that takes 1W from a little wall wart plug (OLPC XO-1), one that takes 65-95W and has an adapter for each, and I've worked on one that even takes 150W and had an adapter like an XBox 360!
Even in rodents that may be eaten by cats, it seems that when it affects a creature's brain, it makes them less averse to taking risks. In humans it can be a subtle difference, but I can see how it might improve someone's game at many sports.
I have an XO-1 and its screen is fantastic in the sun. Of course Pixel Qi screens will excel there.
What I'm curious about is whether they fixed the reflection angle (reflective mode indoors only works if you bounce light off a wall, otherwise you just get a point of reflected light somewhere on the screen.) Also, when you go backlit, there's color, but everything looks fuzzy, and you get a diagonal line effect across the screen. I'm wondering if they've fixed those yet...
I'm cheering for their efforts though. Some day hopefully I have a laptop that's visible outside AND performs better than my desktop in 1998.
That sums it up pretty well. Actually, I'm not bothered by the idea of EATING GM crops, but I've seen so many cases from different sources explaining how Monsanto essentially enslaves American farmers, even those who didn't sign up to use their seeds, and will legally bully them into bankruptcy even if they don't have a defensible case, in order to make them comply.
I don't avoid GM crops for picky eating, but I'd avoid them when I even know they're there in the first place, due to who it ends up supporting, the tendency to underexamine how they overtake traditional crops in the wild, and like you said, because in this case they're basically engineered to survive herbicides.
Holy crap, that's way too cheap! This is bad... I think many people won't wear goggles, and many more will use these for pranks on unprotected people. Blue light is more energetic and potentially harmful in secondary ways (though lasers are pretty tight color-wise so I wouldn't expect other frequencies unless it's a frequency doubled type like the common greens and their powerful IR leakage on cheap unfiltered models.) The big problem I see is that lasers that powerful can often give you blind spots if you catch a glint reflecting off of something without goggles... before you can even blink.
Purely speculation, but having read about high powered laser safety, I'm betting that: As self-defense it'll be useless on skin. It'll hit clothing and super heat it, but not what's below until it burns through. If your target is moving at all, it'll just make a slightly warmed line. For blinding? If you hit an eye, probably a matter of miliseconds, though you may just take out part of their field of view.
If you think blinding someone in self defense is viable, I recommend a high power tactical flashlight like you'd mount on a gun. The blindness may be temporary, but it should be well more than enough to get away (if they don't shoot/swing blindly and kill you...) and should blind them quite effectively AND draw a ton of attention to them as they light up.
Ditto... I drifted across some slush, but when I snapped the car straight, it was so greasy out it snapped past straight and right into the outside of the turn... crashed into a tree at a brisk walking pace. That was a costly mistake.
Still, my choice of car and bike and liking both was influenced by video games, and I drive them hard and have also been saved by techniques I learned in sims. I do drive more aggressively than I probably would without having played games. It's not exactly GTA or Gran Turismo though! Even if someone's playing with me and racing, I let them go in the long run because I'll always check and signal before changing lanes, and follow pretty well all the road rules except the speed limit on non-residential main streets and highways.
That would be great. Unfortunately something like that still counts as a profound personal realization, and while you may be so enlightened, it won't stop others from holding something you said when you were 12 on a random message board against you till the day you die.
Personally I just change pseudonyms from time to time, but that can be hard in cases where you have an active group of friends who knows one name. If you publicly refer to the change, to a data harvester it's as good as using the old name.
If you think Windows XP is from the 1990s, I think you've seen one too many Apple commercials. Win98 is from the 90s. ME/2000/XP are not. Also, is XP failing you, or are you simply bored with it? When you move from one OS to another, you're going to see certain programs and devices stop working if you're in a large organization. That's what's holding back my org - we have to test a LOT of user apps and make sure we have a solution in place so we don't make anyone's job impossible with this upgrade.
I also forgot to mention, after my Visor, I had a Sony Clie PEG-SJ33, which was a Sony Palm PDA that was basically an iPod Touch - PDA functions, downloadable apps, MP3 playback in the player app, or the background, and movie playback. (Also, IR, jogdial for quick navigation, double-res, high-color PalmOS hack, etc... it really was like an iPod Touch you could freely hack all you wanted to.)
This happens all the time in tech, though I like seeing it pointed out for Apple products since Apple fanboys like to pretend they invented everything (my boss was just talking about how Apple decided to come up with MP3 and put it in a portable player... hrrrng...)
I don't know if I have the real originators here - someone can probably point out earlier, but... Apple made the Newton, which was a great idea, but too bulky, and it died in its niche. 3Com made the PalmPilot - which was a similar idea, but smaller and less powerful. It took off. Handspring made Palm PDAs (loved my Visor...), and made the Treo, which was later bought by Palm, which was a company of its own by then. Now Apple has made a phone that is also a very Palm-like PDA, but the timing was right, and look at it dominate!...now they've made the iPad, which is like a dumbed down Newton, so it's all come full circle!
I think borrowing of ideas like this is great - sure, the inventors should get some royalties, and patents have their place - but without the ability to use existing tech ideas like this, innovation will wither and die, and we'll be left with stagnated products that could have gone somewhere... but didn't.
I love when someone tries to launch a lawsuit on the premise of a medical impossibility. The burns were especially funny - I don't know what kind of scanner uses LEDs, but I'm thinking it probably put off no more than 500 lumens in total, if it was really bright. Probably a nice low-energy red too, like most. Assuming it was a laser? I think those have to be under 5mW output... you're warned not to shine those in your eyes, but there have been cases of laser pointers on that power level shone straight into eyes (self-inflicted by kids) for 10 seconds straight and higher, with no lasting damage.
So even a vampire could take a light like that, haha... I know it's obvious, but I had to geek out and try guessing some numbers.
You're right that the problem is procedural. In this case, saying a taser is less lethal is ignoring a lot - you usually aren't shot for not complying quickly enough or talking back. Cops also usually don't shoot ten year olds with handguns.
Basically, pulling numbers out of thin air for illustration, if you have one fatality for every 10 shootings, and one fatality for every 1000 taserings (tasings?) and say, 20 shootings a year, and 2000 taserings, that's two deaths per period either way. Many subjects caught on video get 5-10 jolts or more too, just like they're not supposed to do in practice, and probably don't do in testing.
So, like you were suggesting, with training and accountability it wouldn't be as bad. I really don't want to take these weapons away from the officers either - in principle - but I've seen so many flagrant abuses all over the world now, with such regularity, that I think they should take them back and return to guns and clubs...
I think the line that summed it up from the linked story was "Most planetary scientists are not aware of how ubiquitous these sorts of patterns are in fluid dynamics."
This is in no way my field, and I certainly have no chops to do a proper proof of it, but as soon as it said hexagon, I thought "oh, so it's probably a deposit of ice then?"
Hopefully it supports some kind of gesture system - maybe touch a corner and then draw the shape? After getting used to mouse gestures, I can't go to any other browser; it just feels clunky, like browsing without a scroll wheel.
I've been saying since XP that they should start from scratch and "go BeOS on it." Major "upgrades" like Vista break compatibility with loads of things anyway as they creep toward better security practices - I think they should just admit that every 15-30 years, they have to wipe the slate and start over. It will inconvenience everyone, but they have the market share to weather it and force adoption - it'll be like when Macs when from OS 9 to X. Support what legacy software you can by emulation and virtualization, but primarily, do it right from the ground up.
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I've hated this "feature" for a while now. Even if I don't use it, they'd theoretically know what site I'd been to when I load the images from their server, right? If nothing else, it's the most obnoxious script that doesn't install malware since it makes my browser contact Facebook 4 times a second - then I stop it - then it starts again, so I have to disable Javascript to have a moment's peace and privacy. Not that the privacy really counts at that point; it's gone.
That's precisely why it's illegal. Cops are infallible, and having recordings of them lets that be disproven easily. So now, police are always "on the phone" so you can't record them, even if they're across the street, shooting people execution style.
I'd rather see Facebook's embedded code banned from websites - the one that lets you comment on any site because you're already signed in with your FB account, even though you never did and never would - but it's too late, because you've already requested all the user icons, so FB knows where you're browsing. ...then after the page loads in Opera, it contacts Facebook once every 0.25 seconds until you disable Javascript... I loathe it.
I'm a very active Gawker user, though that's nothing to be that proud of. Gawker staff often (varies by subsite) hops on bandwagons, smears others, and uses inflammatory and misleading headlines to get people to click on their pages. Ultimately all that matters is page views.
I'm interested in seeing if there's anything more to this Assange charge, especially since the charge was earlier withdrawn due to lack of evidence - presumably they found some? But Gawker's motives are not noble, I'm sure - they want to jump onto this media scrum and get as many curious clicks as possible, and I'm sure they'll say or do anything to make it happen. They're information mercenaries.
Yeah, I help a lot of users who need their passwords reset - so we give them a fairly standard set, plus a little randomization, to get them up and running again. It's more optimized to be read over the phone, including to those who don't know English well, so I can't really say "capital I, tilde, seven, g, capital J, ampersand..." etc.
So I explain where to change their password and tell them that the one they have isn't that secure. Then I tell them that it has to be six or more characters, numbers and letters at least, and can't repeat their last 24 passwords. Often they'll try 5-10 passwords, give up, and leave it as the temp password until it expires and forces them to change it. Then they probably forget what they changed it to because it was so outlandish, before calling us again for another easy one.
Our system will also lock them out for a while after three relatively closely-timed attempts in the first place.
But... I don't set the password policy, and some of it is even in place to appease the auditor general's requirements, so... there's not much we can do except sympathize with the users as they complain.
Why haven't they thought of that for the kiosks? A good question - I'd have hoped they were so crude they wouldn't run a common infectable OS, but I guess this is progress...
What I want to know is why is it so damn hard to get a USB flashdrive with write protection? I had one from around 2002, and when it broke, I never saw another. The best I could do is get one of those apps that writes every single unused sector with a dummy file, but I don't want to waste write and erase cycles on a not-really-fixed kludge in the first place.
But then, I haven't had photos developed this decade, so personally I'm in the clear. I'll just use a color printer if I really want a physical copy.
I'd vouch for this. I bought an Inspiron in 2003, and now at work we got a bunch of Latitudes that we ordered in 2008-09 with the EXACT same power adapters. Even their docking stations just take the 90W adapter and that's that.
I really don't want ONE supply to charge all laptops because it would have to be big and bulky to support the most demanding ones. One in each of several power classes could be nice though. For example, I have a laptop that takes 1W from a little wall wart plug (OLPC XO-1), one that takes 65-95W and has an adapter for each, and I've worked on one that even takes 150W and had an adapter like an XBox 360!
Even in rodents that may be eaten by cats, it seems that when it affects a creature's brain, it makes them less averse to taking risks. In humans it can be a subtle difference, but I can see how it might improve someone's game at many sports.
I have an XO-1 and its screen is fantastic in the sun. Of course Pixel Qi screens will excel there.
What I'm curious about is whether they fixed the reflection angle (reflective mode indoors only works if you bounce light off a wall, otherwise you just get a point of reflected light somewhere on the screen.) Also, when you go backlit, there's color, but everything looks fuzzy, and you get a diagonal line effect across the screen. I'm wondering if they've fixed those yet...
I'm cheering for their efforts though. Some day hopefully I have a laptop that's visible outside AND performs better than my desktop in 1998.
That sums it up pretty well. Actually, I'm not bothered by the idea of EATING GM crops, but I've seen so many cases from different sources explaining how Monsanto essentially enslaves American farmers, even those who didn't sign up to use their seeds, and will legally bully them into bankruptcy even if they don't have a defensible case, in order to make them comply.
I don't avoid GM crops for picky eating, but I'd avoid them when I even know they're there in the first place, due to who it ends up supporting, the tendency to underexamine how they overtake traditional crops in the wild, and like you said, because in this case they're basically engineered to survive herbicides.
Holy crap, that's way too cheap!
This is bad... I think many people won't wear goggles, and many more will use these for pranks on unprotected people. Blue light is more energetic and potentially harmful in secondary ways (though lasers are pretty tight color-wise so I wouldn't expect other frequencies unless it's a frequency doubled type like the common greens and their powerful IR leakage on cheap unfiltered models.) The big problem I see is that lasers that powerful can often give you blind spots if you catch a glint reflecting off of something without goggles... before you can even blink.
Purely speculation, but having read about high powered laser safety, I'm betting that:
As self-defense it'll be useless on skin. It'll hit clothing and super heat it, but not what's below until it burns through. If your target is moving at all, it'll just make a slightly warmed line.
For blinding? If you hit an eye, probably a matter of miliseconds, though you may just take out part of their field of view.
If you think blinding someone in self defense is viable, I recommend a high power tactical flashlight like you'd mount on a gun. The blindness may be temporary, but it should be well more than enough to get away (if they don't shoot/swing blindly and kill you...) and should blind them quite effectively AND draw a ton of attention to them as they light up.
Ditto... I drifted across some slush, but when I snapped the car straight, it was so greasy out it snapped past straight and right into the outside of the turn... crashed into a tree at a brisk walking pace. That was a costly mistake.
Still, my choice of car and bike and liking both was influenced by video games, and I drive them hard and have also been saved by techniques I learned in sims. I do drive more aggressively than I probably would without having played games. It's not exactly GTA or Gran Turismo though! Even if someone's playing with me and racing, I let them go in the long run because I'll always check and signal before changing lanes, and follow pretty well all the road rules except the speed limit on non-residential main streets and highways.
That would be great. Unfortunately something like that still counts as a profound personal realization, and while you may be so enlightened, it won't stop others from holding something you said when you were 12 on a random message board against you till the day you die.
Personally I just change pseudonyms from time to time, but that can be hard in cases where you have an active group of friends who knows one name. If you publicly refer to the change, to a data harvester it's as good as using the old name.
If you think Windows XP is from the 1990s, I think you've seen one too many Apple commercials. Win98 is from the 90s. ME/2000/XP are not.
Also, is XP failing you, or are you simply bored with it? When you move from one OS to another, you're going to see certain programs and devices stop working if you're in a large organization. That's what's holding back my org - we have to test a LOT of user apps and make sure we have a solution in place so we don't make anyone's job impossible with this upgrade.
Noooo!
Hopefully this doesn't add a bunch of 20+ stroke kanji to the JLPTs.
Thanks. When I view this page, there's no link in the article at all. Just a comment about how it's nice that there's a song.
I also forgot to mention, after my Visor, I had a Sony Clie PEG-SJ33, which was a Sony Palm PDA that was basically an iPod Touch - PDA functions, downloadable apps, MP3 playback in the player app, or the background, and movie playback. (Also, IR, jogdial for quick navigation, double-res, high-color PalmOS hack, etc... it really was like an iPod Touch you could freely hack all you wanted to.)
This happens all the time in tech, though I like seeing it pointed out for Apple products since Apple fanboys like to pretend they invented everything (my boss was just talking about how Apple decided to come up with MP3 and put it in a portable player... hrrrng...)
I don't know if I have the real originators here - someone can probably point out earlier, but... ...now they've made the iPad, which is like a dumbed down Newton, so it's all come full circle!
Apple made the Newton, which was a great idea, but too bulky, and it died in its niche.
3Com made the PalmPilot - which was a similar idea, but smaller and less powerful. It took off.
Handspring made Palm PDAs (loved my Visor...), and made the Treo, which was later bought by Palm, which was a company of its own by then.
Now Apple has made a phone that is also a very Palm-like PDA, but the timing was right, and look at it dominate!
I think borrowing of ideas like this is great - sure, the inventors should get some royalties, and patents have their place - but without the ability to use existing tech ideas like this, innovation will wither and die, and we'll be left with stagnated products that could have gone somewhere... but didn't.
I love when someone tries to launch a lawsuit on the premise of a medical impossibility.
The burns were especially funny - I don't know what kind of scanner uses LEDs, but I'm thinking it probably put off no more than 500 lumens in total, if it was really bright. Probably a nice low-energy red too, like most.
Assuming it was a laser? I think those have to be under 5mW output... you're warned not to shine those in your eyes, but there have been cases of laser pointers on that power level shone straight into eyes (self-inflicted by kids) for 10 seconds straight and higher, with no lasting damage.
So even a vampire could take a light like that, haha... I know it's obvious, but I had to geek out and try guessing some numbers.
You're right that the problem is procedural. In this case, saying a taser is less lethal is ignoring a lot - you usually aren't shot for not complying quickly enough or talking back. Cops also usually don't shoot ten year olds with handguns.
Basically, pulling numbers out of thin air for illustration, if you have one fatality for every 10 shootings, and one fatality for every 1000 taserings (tasings?) and say, 20 shootings a year, and 2000 taserings, that's two deaths per period either way. Many subjects caught on video get 5-10 jolts or more too, just like they're not supposed to do in practice, and probably don't do in testing.
So, like you were suggesting, with training and accountability it wouldn't be as bad. I really don't want to take these weapons away from the officers either - in principle - but I've seen so many flagrant abuses all over the world now, with such regularity, that I think they should take them back and return to guns and clubs...
I think the line that summed it up from the linked story was "Most planetary scientists are not aware of how ubiquitous these sorts of patterns are in fluid dynamics."
This is in no way my field, and I certainly have no chops to do a proper proof of it, but as soon as it said hexagon, I thought "oh, so it's probably a deposit of ice then?"
Hopefully it supports some kind of gesture system - maybe touch a corner and then draw the shape? After getting used to mouse gestures, I can't go to any other browser; it just feels clunky, like browsing without a scroll wheel.
I've been saying since XP that they should start from scratch and "go BeOS on it." Major "upgrades" like Vista break compatibility with loads of things anyway as they creep toward better security practices - I think they should just admit that every 15-30 years, they have to wipe the slate and start over. It will inconvenience everyone, but they have the market share to weather it and force adoption - it'll be like when Macs when from OS 9 to X. Support what legacy software you can by emulation and virtualization, but primarily, do it right from the ground up.