when I got my new Passport Card, it came with a little Faraday Cage sleeve (metalized mylar) with the instruction to put the card there when not in use. I don't remember getting anything like that when I got my (RFID carrying) Passport a while back, so maybe there's some realization of the problem on the issuing end...
Yes, unlike the old passports where you had to take them out and show them, with these new RFID-enabled passports with their Faraday sleeves, you merely have to take them out and scan them. Ain't technology great?
RFID doesn't scare me. I think it could be a step in the right direction. As a man who's tired of answering questions and filling out forms, I think this could be a boon, not a bane.
If fake spam messages offering all the usual benefits, and employing all the usual tricks, were sent out by national security agencies around the world, it would select precisely the people who tend to respond to spam. The agencies could then contact them from a suitably important-looking government address, warning about what could have happened. Some might become more cautious as a result, others will not. But again, it is precisely the latter who are more likely to respond to further fake spam messages in the future, allowing the process to be repeated as often as necessary.
Brilliant idea! They could send those out daily, so that the rest of us could receive even more spam. "More spam!" you say, but you're forgetting it'll be FAKE spam. Big difference!
They are gathering intelligence on how to build on of these "web browsers".
So it's like the Mars probes. I guess previous probes have crashed and burned, and this was the first to touch down unscathed, only the Martians have noticed.
The person who quoted 'Freakonomics' in this article either intentionally misrepresented the point, or (more likely) completely missed the point. The point was that we should quit spreading the exact fallacy that is being spread here.
Clearly his parents didn't stock the house with enough books.
since "new versions" normally cost $$$ while service packs do not, this move would make me angry if I were a Vista user. They sell me Vista, then finally get it working 2 years later but change the name so I have to pay again!?
Yeah, you and that one other guy are going to have to pay again.
Television? I watch it, I don't have a problem with it. I'm not one of those people who triumphantly claim they don't watch television as if it makes them smarter.
Yes, but you are one of those people who claims that he doesn't triumphantly claim that he doesn't watch television as if it makes him smarter.
I hate that unskippable crap. Even once you've gotten past the warnings, you have to sit through an animated main menu, then some stupid animation and sound effect transition to the actual feature. I really wouldn't mind just putting the disc in and seeing the damn feature start immediately.
Tip for those stuck with plain-old DVD players: insert disc, wait until it starts playing, hit stop, then hit menu. This often skips the usually-unskippable crap before the menu.
"The Charter Communications bailout bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 2009. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Charter Communications begins to learn, at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."
I think we can fully trust manufacturers to take a shortcut and implement this as dual ROT-13 encryption, perhaps with a delay thrown in to make it seem like it's doing something. How would the average user determine whether the magnetic patterns on the disk are encrypted anyway? This seems very similar to the issue with electronic voting machines, only worse. Encryption on the host machine seems far superior, since the data is never traveling over the I/O bus unencrypted, and it's much easier to verify that the data is actually being encrypted.
After RTFS, my first thought is that all the major ISP's will reverse engineer the tools, such that their traffic 'bandwidth shaping' methods will actually prioritize these packets, so that end users wind up getting lied to (that their network traffic isn't being slowed down AND that they are getting a faster internet connection than they actually are).
Yes, exactly. So the next step is for the users to start making their traffic look like these tools. The final solution for the user is for the test tool to be as much like file transfer tools that the ISP can't tell the difference, so must either play fair or be detected.
This has been in the works for YEARS. I have an old client for my ancient Mac which can... get this... download ALL my e-mail from my free Gmail account. Uses some weird new protocol called POP or something.
That much storage in a single unit seems kind of dangerous.
I never understood this argument. Say you have N drives each with capacity C/N (e.g. C=2TB, N=1 for this new drive, or C=500GB, N=4 as you prefer) and probability P of each drive failing in a given time interval. Your expected data loss is N*P*C/N, which is independent of N. So what's the gain from more drives?
If everything is on a single drive and it completely fails, it's all lost. If it's on two drives (each half the capacity of the original), if one fails, only half is lost. If I have two drives of equal size and one is a mirror, complete failure of one means I lose nothing, and can immediately replace the drive and re-mirror. Thus, multiple drives is better.
They can RECORD VIDEO on their phones for crying out loud. Will they pass a law requiring the phone to make a screeching or barking noise or something when it records?
They'll probably require that they make a constant sound like an old movie camera or film projector.
Or when you're trying to take a picture of any perpetrator, without him or her knowing you're doing so. Kind of like the feature where the phone makes a loud alarm when you dial 911, perfect for when you're hiding in a closet and calling for help.
Recently I had the same problem with a Cat5e cable at some other place; 5 meters, half of that from the IP phone to the wall; as soon as I straightened it up, the phone was able to connect.
That's because the 1's get stuck in the turns but the 0's make it through just fine...
Come on, no need to be so technically inaccurate in a forum like this! Inverted signaling is used, so it's the 0s that get stuck, and the 1s that get through without problem. Sheesh.
biology teachers and biology textbooks would no longer have to cover the 'strengths and weaknesses' of Charles Darwin's theory that man evolved from lower forms of life.
Except that the theory isn't about man being the ultimate goal of evolution, or simpler life forms being "lower". Each life form is suited to its environment.
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Yes, unlike the old passports where you had to take them out and show them, with these new RFID-enabled passports with their Faraday sleeves, you merely have to take them out and scan them. Ain't technology great?
Agreed; convenience is where it's at.
Yeah, things were better when you could drive a vehicle without a license.
Brilliant idea! They could send those out daily, so that the rest of us could receive even more spam. "More spam!" you say, but you're forgetting it'll be FAKE spam. Big difference!
So it's like the Mars probes. I guess previous probes have crashed and burned, and this was the first to touch down unscathed, only the Martians have noticed.
Clearly his parents didn't stock the house with enough books.
Yeah, you and that one other guy are going to have to pay again.
Well OK, but I've been having some x86 GUI problems and you can't blame that on semantics. My PowerPC has no GUI problems, because it's a better chip.
Yes, but you are one of those people who claims that he doesn't triumphantly claim that he doesn't watch television as if it makes him smarter.
Tip for those stuck with plain-old DVD players: insert disc, wait until it starts playing, hit stop, then hit menu. This often skips the usually-unskippable crap before the menu.
If you can catch them before they've burned too long, you might get some good bread out of them too.
"The Charter Communications bailout bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 2009. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Charter Communications begins to learn, at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."
Similar to homeopathy, the RIAA's civil damages seem inversely proportional to the amount, so I'm not sure we can represent the cost of an atom.
I think we can fully trust manufacturers to take a shortcut and implement this as dual ROT-13 encryption, perhaps with a delay thrown in to make it seem like it's doing something. How would the average user determine whether the magnetic patterns on the disk are encrypted anyway? This seems very similar to the issue with electronic voting machines, only worse. Encryption on the host machine seems far superior, since the data is never traveling over the I/O bus unencrypted, and it's much easier to verify that the data is actually being encrypted.
Yes, exactly. So the next step is for the users to start making their traffic look like these tools. The final solution for the user is for the test tool to be as much like file transfer tools that the ISP can't tell the difference, so must either play fair or be detected.
The main page shows exactly 640 comments for this story. I guess this one won't get modded up, since 640 posts should be enough for anybody.
This has been in the works for YEARS. I have an old client for my ancient Mac which can... get this... download ALL my e-mail from my free Gmail account. Uses some weird new protocol called POP or something.
But it's a solvent, not a lubricant.
If everything is on a single drive and it completely fails, it's all lost. If it's on two drives (each half the capacity of the original), if one fails, only half is lost. If I have two drives of equal size and one is a mirror, complete failure of one means I lose nothing, and can immediately replace the drive and re-mirror. Thus, multiple drives is better.
They'll probably require that they make a constant sound like an old movie camera or film projector.
Or when you're trying to take a picture of any perpetrator, without him or her knowing you're doing so. Kind of like the feature where the phone makes a loud alarm when you dial 911, perfect for when you're hiding in a closet and calling for help.
I prefer the more easily-remembered URL: http://miserable-failure.archive.gov/
Don't complain; pleasant Smarch weather is just a month away...
Come on, no need to be so technically inaccurate in a forum like this! Inverted signaling is used, so it's the 0s that get stuck, and the 1s that get through without problem. Sheesh.
Except that the theory isn't about man being the ultimate goal of evolution, or simpler life forms being "lower". Each life form is suited to its environment.