One-time pads are unbreakable in theory. Advances in computing (even in the realm of quantum computing) cannot break messages encrypted with one-time pads (assuming the pad is truly random).
So the one-shot gun you mention is a tactical nuke. Sure, you can only use it once, but so what?
Safety deposit boxes are not necessarily safe; banks I've dealt with are explicitly not responsible for the safety of the contents of safety deposit boxes. There's probably some sort of guaranteed insured storage available soemwhere, but the consumer-grade safety deposit boxes are not it, in my experience. YMMV.
It is all in mp3 or ogg format and it is all from CDs that I personally own or have borrowed from friends (emphasis added)
Ummm...this is illegal, dude. There's no problem borrowing you're friend's CD to listen to it, but making a COPY is a violation of COPYright. If you want your own copy of the music, buy it. If you have a problem with the law, write to your local congress critter. If you want to commit civil disobedience, do so boldly and publicly and be prepared to go to jail. If you want to besmirch the reputation of slashdot, ask everyone to help you violate copyright law.
I can guarantee that the RIAA will be keeping a hard copy of this thread for their files..."See, those Linux geeks talk about 'freedom' but really what they want is to break the law or destroy copyright." And in this case, the facts are on their side.
Friends don't make friends accomplices.
P.S. "Personal use" doesn't mean "me and my friends." It means "me only." Copies for personal use are for use only by you.
That is, if it fails for any reason (file missing, user cancel, etc.), then it will completely roll-back and not leave bits of a partially installed application.
Someopne points out that most sweeping-social-change sci-fi is set about 30 years in the future. You point out that when 1984 was written, it was set about 30 years in the future. Conclusion: the "30-year" rule is wrong.
I believe it was a joke....if you've read the book and take the explanation for the title (or anything else) at face value then what's the point of trying to explain anything different to you?
Re:I work in Broadcast Engineering....(tuna can)
on
Engineer in a Box?
·
· Score: 2
Welcome to the desert of the real...the trick is to continuously worry out loud. "Man, that 40-year old circuit breaker could go any time...hope it doesn't do it in the middle of sweeps week" (or whatever the radio equivalent is.)
"The disk space on these servers...it's nearly 40% full! One busy weekend could shut us down..."
If your boss is smart, of course, none of this is necessary. If your boss is stupid, none of this will help...but at least everyone knows you warned him. If your boss is ignorant and nice, he'll ask what you need to get the job done. If your boss is ignorant and mean, he'll demand you get the job done. Clarify in writing that you will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to get the job done...and do it BOFH style =)
(had one guy in math help session in undergrad who used a calculator to figure out 3 minus 2... I kid you not).
When I was a student teacher, I once saw a kid in a pre-algebra course use a calculator to find 9*1. He did it several times: 9...x...1...=...9??? I could see the wheels turning in his head - "After I hit '=', I'm not supposed to get the first number back. I must have hit a wrong key or something..."
I finally asked him "What's ANY number times one?" and he got it immediately and was embarassed.
Yes, this means that we'll use a numerical method to any arbitrary degree of precision rather than an ingenious manipulation of equations to yield an exact answer. Like unicorns, exact answers are mythical beasts. I was a math major, so there's nothing I like more than an "exact answer" - but they have ZERO practical use (and since we're discussing engineering, I assume we're going in for practicality). If you disagree, I encourage you to show me (4*pi^2)/(2e) on your ruler or ammeter or scale. Can't do it, can you?
Measurements can never be anything but approximations. If your intended result will be converted to a measurement, then you've already settled for something other than an exact answer. The only decision that remains is at what point you want to start approximating. Anyone who suggests that approximating AFTER you've gotten the perfect mathematical result is somehow morally superior to approximating from the get-go is a bit like the lady who told Groucho Marx she'd sleep with him for a million bucks but was offended at his offer of $5. As Groucho pointed out, her character had already been established, and he was merely haggling over price.
I'm an NT admin. I work with NT admins. I have known some great NT admins. NONE OF THEM were engineers. We're glorified technicians. We implement what someone else has created by carefully reading the instructions (whitepapers, technet articles, resource kits, etc.) We are not creating new products; we are implementing and administering existing products.
Engineering is a fundamentally creative profession, IMHO./me dusts off the car analogy
Consider automotive engineers...they design new cars. Assembly line workers build them; mechanics maintain and fix them. A few gearheads add after-market parts. A tiny, tiny minority machine new high-performance parts for stock cars. NT admins are generally closest to assembly line workers or mechanics; paper MCSEs are definitely the former.
every mickey mouse NT admin is calling himself an engineer
Credit where credit is due - NT call themselves engineers because Microsoft does: "Microsoft Certified System Engineer." Why does Microsoft do that? Because of Novell: "Certified Novell Engineer." MS is just as wrong as Novell was, but that's business for you; they couldn't let Novell have a marketing edge. The real problem is that the professional engineering societies didn't respond appropriately; now there stuck with an entire industry that is cheapening the title.
Hmmm...I wonder what the call NT admins at engineering firms?
Turning cognitive processes over to a device is evolution?
When you need to find the sine of 1.395, do you use a scientific calculator, or do you sum the series?
math being a team sport Go rent Apollo 13. There's a priceless scene in there when several engineers do a bit of calculus; each verifies the result. (granted, they did it by hand...but they had to because their computers were so primitive). Go try to publish a proof without peer review. For that matter, try to see farther than others without standing on the shoulders of giants. Math IS a team sport. If you don't understand that, then you've never played a team sport. Football is pretty individualistic in that each player has a individually assigned tasks that he must perform. If he fouls up, the team fails. Success is multiplicative; any zeroes mean that the product is zero. It's as true in math (and science - see the story on the Bell labs guy) as it is in sports.
great music has to come from a passionate and difficult place inside
That's true for a first album, mabe, but after that you're so wrong. Great music comes from writing about how hard it is to write music when the record producers are scammin ya and how that Other Major Artist is stealin ya rhyes and how you hate being compared to Britney and how you don't care if your fans don't understand.
Hey, if it works for everyone else, maybe it'll work for you...
humans have always been pretty smart and crafty people Humans have not always had:
The scientific method Generally-accessible calculus Machine tools (lathes, etc.)
The first led to the explosion in scientific inquiry; the second, to the quantification of those inquiries; the third to what we generally think of as our technological society.
The Greeks were very inquisitive, but much of what they did was speculation without confirmation. Democritus is considered the fathre of atomic theory, because he thought that there was a smallest possible piece of matter. HOWEVER, when you consider all the ideas that were floating around in Greek times, at least one of them had to be correct about the nature of matter, no matter what the reality eventually turned out to be. Democritus had no ability to experimentally confirm/reject and refine his ideas.
Calculus - well, without it, you'd need people of the caliber of Archimedes to find the area under curves or the slope of curves (Archimedes is widely regarded as being one of the three greatest mathematicians of all time, the other two being Newton and some other guy I can never remember).
A machine tool can make itself - you can use a lathe to make another lathe, a mill to make another mill, etc. This gives you exponential growth in your ability to produce machined items such as gears or parts for other machines. With machine tools, mass production really came into its own.
1. Windows is absolutely monopolistic in the consumer space 2. I and people like me can use Linux
The two are not mutually exclusive, because I am not in the consumer space. Neither are most people who buy servers. Let's trot out the old car analogy...Can you build a car from scratch? Can John or Mary Doe? Can a machinist? Does the fact that the machinist can build a car from scratch change the fact that for 99% of the population, car manufacturers are the sole source for cars? If there was only one car manufacturer in the US, would it be OK for that manufacturer to artificially inflate prices, or mandate that you buy a lawnmower when you buy a car?
By your reasoning, this is PERFECTLY OK, because there is a tiny percentage of people who own machine shops who are able to build internal-combustion engines from scratch and put those onto home-built frames and drive them.
Suppose that McDonald's is the only place to buy hamburgers and that there is a vital nutrient in hamburgers (let's call the vital nutrient grease). Now, you can get grease if you buy a steak...but most people can't afford steaks. You can make your own hamburgers...but most people don't know how to assemble an all-beef patty.
Suddenly, McDonald's requires that, in order to get grease, you must pay extra money. You have no choice unless you want to skip your daily grease ration. Furthermore, they are requiring you to purchase a known-addictive substance. You don't have to consume it, of course - you could pour it out and get water from the hose outside. Unfortunately, since most people are sheep, McDonald's knows that most people will drink cola, diminishing the demand for water until cola is so cheap that water is not readily available anymore (of course, you could dig a well and purify it yourself, or you could purchase Dasani (a Coke product) but I digress)
For the irony impaired...McD=MS, grease=consumer software (which the economy is now dependent upon), steak=high-end OS, hamburger=OS distro, McD hamburger=Windows, and home-made burgers=any free Unix-alike.
Wrong. "Moore's Law" is more accurately called "Moore's observation" - "You know, transistor density in ICs seems to have been doubling every 18 months."
Slashdot Mirror
One-time pads are unbreakable in theory. Advances in computing (even in the realm of quantum computing) cannot break messages encrypted with one-time pads (assuming the pad is truly random).
So the one-shot gun you mention is a tactical nuke. Sure, you can only use it once, but so what?
Safety deposit boxes are not necessarily safe; banks I've dealt with are explicitly not responsible for the safety of the contents of safety deposit boxes. There's probably some sort of guaranteed insured storage available soemwhere, but the consumer-grade safety deposit boxes are not it, in my experience. YMMV.
"Ask Slashdot How To Break the Law"
It is all in mp3 or ogg format and it is all from CDs that I personally own or have borrowed from friends (emphasis added)
Ummm...this is illegal, dude. There's no problem borrowing you're friend's CD to listen to it, but making a COPY is a violation of COPYright. If you want your own copy of the music, buy it. If you have a problem with the law, write to your local congress critter. If you want to commit civil disobedience, do so boldly and publicly and be prepared to go to jail. If you want to besmirch the reputation of slashdot, ask everyone to help you violate copyright law.
I can guarantee that the RIAA will be keeping a hard copy of this thread for their files..."See, those Linux geeks talk about 'freedom' but really what they want is to break the law or destroy copyright." And in this case, the facts are on their side.
Friends don't make friends accomplices.
P.S. "Personal use" doesn't mean "me and my friends." It means "me only." Copies for personal use are for use only by you.
Nope. If the license says so, it can be changed at any time, even retroactively.
This bodes well for the development of background objects in Quake. No more sterile bases; now, we can fight in a lush jungle environs!
-en is a German pluralizer. Don't know what the derivation of "boxen" is, but that could be part of it.
Absolutely. The right to petition the government for the redress of grievances (commonly called "suing") is enshrined in the bill of rights.
Yeah, it's the classic situation; those scarecrows wouldn't be out a job if they only had a brain.
time has to be spent on fixing the requirments that could better be spend on coding
If time would better be spent on coding, shouldn't you just code to the requirements you're given?
(grinning, ducking, and running)
Clever sig
That is, if it fails for any reason (file missing, user cancel, etc.), then it will completely roll-back and not leave bits of a partially installed application.
ROTFLMAO
(You were kidding, right?)
Shame it is flawed.
Someopne points out that most sweeping-social-change sci-fi is set about 30 years in the future. You point out that when 1984 was written, it was set about 30 years in the future. Conclusion: the "30-year" rule is wrong.
?????
I believe it was a joke....if you've read the book and take the explanation for the title (or anything else) at face value then what's the point of trying to explain anything different to you?
Welcome to the desert of the real...the trick is to continuously worry out loud. "Man, that 40-year old circuit breaker could go any time...hope it doesn't do it in the middle of sweeps week" (or whatever the radio equivalent is.)
"The disk space on these servers...it's nearly 40% full! One busy weekend could shut us down..."
If your boss is smart, of course, none of this is necessary. If your boss is stupid, none of this will help...but at least everyone knows you warned him. If your boss is ignorant and nice, he'll ask what you need to get the job done. If your boss is ignorant and mean, he'll demand you get the job done. Clarify in writing that you will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to get the job done...and do it BOFH style =)
(had one guy in math help session in undergrad who used a calculator to figure out 3 minus 2... I kid you not).
When I was a student teacher, I once saw a kid in a pre-algebra course use a calculator to find 9*1. He did it several times: 9...x...1...=...9??? I could see the wheels turning in his head - "After I hit '=', I'm not supposed to get the first number back. I must have hit a wrong key or something..."
I finally asked him "What's ANY number times one?" and he got it immediately and was embarassed.
Yes, this means that we'll use a numerical method to any arbitrary degree of precision rather than an ingenious manipulation of equations to yield an exact answer.
Like unicorns, exact answers are mythical beasts. I was a math major, so there's nothing I like more than an "exact answer" - but they have ZERO practical use (and since we're discussing engineering, I assume we're going in for practicality). If you disagree, I encourage you to show me (4*pi^2)/(2e) on your ruler or ammeter or scale. Can't do it, can you?
Measurements can never be anything but approximations. If your intended result will be converted to a measurement, then you've already settled for something other than an exact answer. The only decision that remains is at what point you want to start approximating. Anyone who suggests that approximating AFTER you've gotten the perfect mathematical result is somehow morally superior to approximating from the get-go is a bit like the lady who told Groucho Marx she'd sleep with him for a million bucks but was offended at his offer of $5. As Groucho pointed out, her character had already been established, and he was merely haggling over price.
An NT admin is a SOFTWARE engineer
/me dusts off the car analogy
I'm an NT admin. I work with NT admins. I have known some great NT admins. NONE OF THEM were engineers. We're glorified technicians. We implement what someone else has created by carefully reading the instructions (whitepapers, technet articles, resource kits, etc.) We are not creating new products; we are implementing and administering existing products.
Engineering is a fundamentally creative profession, IMHO.
Consider automotive engineers...they design new cars. Assembly line workers build them; mechanics maintain and fix them. A few gearheads add after-market parts. A tiny, tiny minority machine new high-performance parts for stock cars. NT admins are generally closest to assembly line workers or mechanics; paper MCSEs are definitely the former.
every mickey mouse NT admin is calling himself an engineer
Credit where credit is due - NT call themselves engineers because Microsoft does: "Microsoft Certified System Engineer." Why does Microsoft do that? Because of Novell: "Certified Novell Engineer." MS is just as wrong as Novell was, but that's business for you; they couldn't let Novell have a marketing edge. The real problem is that the professional engineering societies didn't respond appropriately; now there stuck with an entire industry that is cheapening the title.
Hmmm...I wonder what the call NT admins at engineering firms?
Turning cognitive processes over to a device is evolution?
When you need to find the sine of 1.395, do you use a scientific calculator, or do you sum the series?
math being a team sport
Go rent Apollo 13. There's a priceless scene in there when several engineers do a bit of calculus; each verifies the result. (granted, they did it by hand...but they had to because their computers were so primitive). Go try to publish a proof without peer review. For that matter, try to see farther than others without standing on the shoulders of giants. Math IS a team sport. If you don't understand that, then you've never played a team sport. Football is pretty individualistic in that each player has a individually assigned tasks that he must perform. If he fouls up, the team fails. Success is multiplicative; any zeroes mean that the product is zero. It's as true in math (and science - see the story on the Bell labs guy) as it is in sports.
great music has to come from a passionate and difficult place inside
That's true for a first album, mabe, but after that you're so wrong. Great music comes from writing about how hard it is to write music when the record producers are scammin ya and how that Other Major Artist is stealin ya rhyes and how you hate being compared to Britney and how you don't care if your fans don't understand.
Hey, if it works for everyone else, maybe it'll work for you...
humans have always been pretty smart and crafty people
Humans have not always had:
The scientific method
Generally-accessible calculus
Machine tools (lathes, etc.)
The first led to the explosion in scientific inquiry; the second, to the quantification of those inquiries; the third to what we generally think of as our technological society.
The Greeks were very inquisitive, but much of what they did was speculation without confirmation. Democritus is considered the fathre of atomic theory, because he thought that there was a smallest possible piece of matter. HOWEVER, when you consider all the ideas that were floating around in Greek times, at least one of them had to be correct about the nature of matter, no matter what the reality eventually turned out to be. Democritus had no ability to experimentally confirm/reject and refine his ideas.
Calculus - well, without it, you'd need people of the caliber of Archimedes to find the area under curves or the slope of curves (Archimedes is widely regarded as being one of the three greatest mathematicians of all time, the other two being Newton and some other guy I can never remember).
A machine tool can make itself - you can use a lathe to make another lathe, a mill to make another mill, etc. This gives you exponential growth in your ability to produce machined items such as gears or parts for other machines. With machine tools, mass production really came into its own.
DOH!
Ah, the falla
1. Windows is absolutely monopolistic in the consumer space
2. I and people like me can use Linux
The two are not mutually exclusive, because I am not in the consumer space. Neither are most people who buy servers. Let's trot out the old car analogy...Can you build a car from scratch? Can John or Mary Doe? Can a machinist? Does the fact that the machinist can build a car from scratch change the fact that for 99% of the population, car manufacturers are the sole source for cars? If there was only one car manufacturer in the US, would it be OK for that manufacturer to artificially inflate prices, or mandate that you buy a lawnmower when you buy a car?
By your reasoning, this is PERFECTLY OK, because there is a tiny percentage of people who own machine shops who are able to build internal-combustion engines from scratch and put those onto home-built frames and drive them.
Suppose that McDonald's is the only place to buy hamburgers and that there is a vital nutrient in hamburgers (let's call the vital nutrient grease). Now, you can get grease if you buy a steak...but most people can't afford steaks. You can make your own hamburgers...but most people don't know how to assemble an all-beef patty.
Suddenly, McDonald's requires that, in order to get grease, you must pay extra money. You have no choice unless you want to skip your daily grease ration. Furthermore, they are requiring you to purchase a known-addictive substance. You don't have to consume it, of course - you could pour it out and get water from the hose outside. Unfortunately, since most people are sheep, McDonald's knows that most people will drink cola, diminishing the demand for water until cola is so cheap that water is not readily available anymore (of course, you could dig a well and purify it yourself, or you could purchase Dasani (a Coke product) but I digress)
For the irony impaired...McD=MS, grease=consumer software (which the economy is now dependent upon), steak=high-end OS, hamburger=OS distro, McD hamburger=Windows, and home-made burgers=any free Unix-alike.
Your error
Wrong. "Moore's Law" is more accurately called "Moore's observation" - "You know, transistor density in ICs seems to have been doubling every 18 months."
The hoods are duct-taped shut, since metal tearing off at terminal velocity could endanger the "drivers." ...is there anything it can't do?