Edward Snowden has been charged with no crime. He is _alleged_ to have committed crimes, but evidence of due process is so lacking as to be non-existent.
Show me a criminal indictment, and I will happily serve as juror.
Until then, any power seeking unlawfully to curtail the human rights of a person based solely upon their uttered words is a power whose charter I reject. Even if that power is itself the U.S.A.
I never used to harp on security either. Then one day I got a virus while using Firefox and browsing www.theatlantic.com web site. Some loser in the Yahoo! ad network decided to build a Flash ad that allowed scripting access from domain:*. My browser... screwed.
Thanks, Adobe. Thanks for giving every idiot web dev alive an automatic weapon with no safety training.
I do understand the example. They want document.all for *only* two reasons. 1) So old code can check "if (document.all)" and proceed accordingly, as a form of poor man's browser sniffing, and 2) So old code written against document.all can still run.
Neither one of those reasons is violated by my posting, which in essence says that there's nothing wrong with the spirit of document.all, just the implementation(s).
>> The willful violation of the javascript object model for document.all in HTML5 (see bottom of page) is one particularly nasty example...
Not really nasty to implement at all:
get document all() {
return document.getElementById.apply(document, arguments);
}
That's interpreted code, of course, not native code. But if you're in the business of writing parsers and compilers, rolling that into native code is about a 10-minute operation.
Now... I might agree with you that it's misleading to newbies to design a language such that a potentially ubiquitous and expensive call to an external technology (the DOM) is hidden behind a seemingly innocent property lookup. But there again, expensiveness of such a call is an artifact of how browsers are coded, not a deficiency in design.
In principle, there's nothing wrong with providing a associative-array-like API to an action which performs a flat lookup within a namespace of unique keys [albeit admittedly unenforced in this case]. Python, Ruby, JavaScript and most other functional languages offer this functionality as standard fare.
On some server you control, in your "projects" directory (or however you organize your hacker life), do an svn checkout of a small branch of some codebase you care nothing about. Add somewhere a README which is chown root, chmod 600. Maintain your stuff there.
With 99.999% probability your machine isn't going to be stolen by a person who can find the interest to read this, or recursively seek for recently modified files blah blah, much less boot into single-user mode to read it. If you need it remotely, you use ssh of course.
(And if you're on Windows, don't store your passwords there at all. Not trolling -- I have several Windows clients I use daily -- but they're just not the same beast.)
You have all missed the point of the article. It's not that you couldn't have done this 10 years ago with any GPS-enabled tracking device. It's that iPhone users are *doing it now*, and they are *smarter* and *cooler* than you.
encrypt: openssl aes-256-cbc -a -e -salt -in INPUT_FILENAME -out OUTPUT_FILENAME
decrypt: openssl aes-256-cbc -a -d -salt -in INPUT_FILENAME -out OUTPUT_FILENAME
As usual, the field is already tilted
on
D.I.Y. Home Security
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'd love to wire my house security system myself. But I have a financial disincentive not to: my homeowners insurance (State Farm) gives me a significant discount for using my local (Bay Alarm) monitoring provider. The insurance discount almost covers the cost of 24/7 monitoring.
Over time I *would* eventually recoup the costs of DIY. But it would take years to break even. And I have no idea how long it would take for the insurance amortizers to figure out the costs of vigilant DIY alarmers vs. happy outsourcers. I can't even hazard a guess which direction those splits would trend towards.
Bottom line: tech is cool; business is challenged; limited mainstream appeal.
Actually, this problem has existed for over a year, albeit with other Apple products. Many MacBook Pros running Leopard cannot connect through D-Link routers using WPA.
I know: I have one of these machines. In my house we have two iPhones (1st gen) and one MacBook Pro (Tiger) which connect just fine through my D-Link. But the MacBook Pro running Leopard cannot. (It can, however, connect just fine to an Airport device using WPA.)
I don't think it's a D-Link bug. Or else why would everything else under the sun work just fine, including all the guest machines who come over and log in? And it's not a general wireless issue, because the buggy Leopard machine connects through lots of other wireless routers.
I googled this a while back and there are a few other folks who have experienced this. No relief via any Leopard updates, either.
On today's internet we suffer from a very real problem. It's very tough to know what's copyrighted and what's not until it's too late.
For example, I'm constantly downloading movies. Some of them are very good. I'll watch them the whole way through, looking for signs of copyright. And its never until the very end of the movie that they display their copyright! I have to watch the entire movie before I know that it's not a legal copy.
So of course, the first thing I do is delete the movie file. But by then it's too late -- I've already broken the law unknowingly. (And then I binge-eat a bunch of cookies to help me assuage my guilt. What's a guy to do?)
It's a cold, dirty trick to hide the copyright warning at the end of the film. Honest, decent folks like me inevitably get sucker-punched at the end of the film when we see that nasty little (c)!
Have you seen how successful the public bicycle system is in Paris? It's a generation older in terms of tech, but it continues to be a great success. Being able to simply grab (rent) a bike and ride the 15-20 blocks you might need to travel, doing this above ground in a physically exhilarating and liberating fashion (compared to a bus/metro/taxi)... this is all most excellent.
The geek criticism of this technology for its "privacy concerns" and for its "technological weak points" is probably all logically sound. But the very same people who are making these points are also very likely the most keyboard-bound (by habit) people. They are perhaps failing to see the practical gains here, in favor of racing to point out academic faults. To them I say:
Dude! If ever anyone needed a digital rent-a-bike to get you off your ass, it's you! Who do you think they are making this for? It's not the carousing moron with bad credit and too many kids. It's not Dr. MD-PhD who drives to his practice to check his schedule for next week. It's you, pal.
There's nothing about Wi-Fi technology which would prevent AT&T and T-Mobile from both being offered in the same stores. Choose the provider whose price suits you best. (Per-hour for T-Mobile, or mandatory occasional coffee purchase for AT&T.)
If T-Mobile has no exclusivity contract, then my ruling would be that they are up the creek.
Slashdot Mirror
Edward Snowden has been charged with no crime. He is _alleged_ to have committed crimes, but evidence of due process is so lacking as to be non-existent.
Show me a criminal indictment, and I will happily serve as juror.
Until then, any power seeking unlawfully to curtail the human rights of a person based solely upon their uttered words is a power whose charter I reject. Even if that power is itself the U.S.A.
If development is complete 4 years from now, how can they have finished even a single test flight where it worked as advertised?
If by "years ago" you mean sometime after late 2008, then perhaps I agree with you.
In Civilization this is no problem! Build a Factory or an Iron Mine! Problem solved!
I never used to harp on security either. Then one day I got a virus while using Firefox and browsing www.theatlantic.com web site. Some loser in the Yahoo! ad network decided to build a Flash ad that allowed scripting access from domain:*. My browser... screwed.
Thanks, Adobe. Thanks for giving every idiot web dev alive an automatic weapon with no safety training.
Here's a fun game: any time you see the word "faces" in a headline, substitute in your mind the word "feces".
Ah, good times....
This is exactly the sort of question that Stack Overflow was created for....
Many, many paywalls have huge holes in them. I read Salon.com for years without paying -- I just told them I was Googlebot. Works for tons of sites.
I do understand the example. They want document.all for *only* two reasons. 1) So old code can check "if (document.all)" and proceed accordingly, as a form of poor man's browser sniffing, and 2) So old code written against document.all can still run.
Neither one of those reasons is violated by my posting, which in essence says that there's nothing wrong with the spirit of document.all, just the implementation(s).
Cheers....
>> The willful violation of the javascript object model for document.all in HTML5 (see bottom of page) is one particularly nasty example...
Not really nasty to implement at all:
get document all() {
return document.getElementById.apply(document, arguments);
}
That's interpreted code, of course, not native code. But if you're in the business of writing parsers and compilers, rolling that into native code is about a 10-minute operation.
Now... I might agree with you that it's misleading to newbies to design a language such that a potentially ubiquitous and expensive call to an external technology (the DOM) is hidden behind a seemingly innocent property lookup. But there again, expensiveness of such a call is an artifact of how browsers are coded, not a deficiency in design.
In principle, there's nothing wrong with providing a associative-array-like API to an action which performs a flat lookup within a namespace of unique keys [albeit admittedly unenforced in this case]. Python, Ruby, JavaScript and most other functional languages offer this functionality as standard fare.
Pick a different example....
On some server you control, in your "projects" directory (or however you organize your hacker life), do an svn checkout of a small branch of some codebase you care nothing about. Add somewhere a README which is chown root, chmod 600. Maintain your stuff there.
With 99.999% probability your machine isn't going to be stolen by a person who can find the interest to read this, or recursively seek for recently modified files blah blah, much less boot into single-user mode to read it. If you need it remotely, you use ssh of course.
(And if you're on Windows, don't store your passwords there at all. Not trolling -- I have several Windows clients I use daily -- but they're just not the same beast.)
You have all missed the point of the article. It's not that you couldn't have done this 10 years ago with any GPS-enabled tracking device. It's that iPhone users are *doing it now*, and they are *smarter* and *cooler* than you.
http://ieaddons.com/
Actually, IE has many, many plugins. You might even recognize some familiar names from Mozilla-land, eg. Foxmarks, StumbleUpon, Cooliris, ....
encrypt:
openssl aes-256-cbc -a -e -salt -in INPUT_FILENAME -out OUTPUT_FILENAME
decrypt:
openssl aes-256-cbc -a -d -salt -in INPUT_FILENAME -out OUTPUT_FILENAME
I'd love to wire my house security system myself. But I have a financial disincentive not to: my homeowners insurance (State Farm) gives me a significant discount for using my local (Bay Alarm) monitoring provider. The insurance discount almost covers the cost of 24/7 monitoring.
Over time I *would* eventually recoup the costs of DIY. But it would take years to break even. And I have no idea how long it would take for the insurance amortizers to figure out the costs of vigilant DIY alarmers vs. happy outsourcers. I can't even hazard a guess which direction those splits would trend towards.
Bottom line: tech is cool; business is challenged; limited mainstream appeal.
...or else if you don't sell your car you'll be forced to use the throwout bearing.
Beta is the new "Under Construction".
Actually, this problem has existed for over a year, albeit with other Apple products. Many MacBook Pros running Leopard cannot connect through D-Link routers using WPA.
I know: I have one of these machines. In my house we have two iPhones (1st gen) and one MacBook Pro (Tiger) which connect just fine through my D-Link. But the MacBook Pro running Leopard cannot. (It can, however, connect just fine to an Airport device using WPA.)
I don't think it's a D-Link bug. Or else why would everything else under the sun work just fine, including all the guest machines who come over and log in? And it's not a general wireless issue, because the buggy Leopard machine connects through lots of other wireless routers.
I googled this a while back and there are a few other folks who have experienced this. No relief via any Leopard updates, either.
Perhaps you're wrong. I am quite familiar with who they are, as well as who their parents might be.
I also happen to think that most of their work which adds text-based interfaces to existing tools is not exemplary.
I not only read the article, I also even tried out the software for a day or so. (Several days ago.)
Looks more like a classic case of "let's assume someone is ignorant, simply because we don't agree with them" to me...
This is a classic case of "because we can build it"-based design instead of "what problems can we solve for users"-based design.
On today's internet we suffer from a very real problem. It's very tough to know what's copyrighted and what's not until it's too late.
For example, I'm constantly downloading movies. Some of them are very good. I'll watch them the whole way through, looking for signs of copyright. And its never until the very end of the movie that they display their copyright! I have to watch the entire movie before I know that it's not a legal copy.
So of course, the first thing I do is delete the movie file. But by then it's too late -- I've already broken the law unknowingly. (And then I binge-eat a bunch of cookies to help me assuage my guilt. What's a guy to do?)
It's a cold, dirty trick to hide the copyright warning at the end of the film. Honest, decent folks like me inevitably get sucker-punched at the end of the film when we see that nasty little (c)!
Have you seen how successful the public bicycle system is in Paris? It's a generation older in terms of tech, but it continues to be a great success. Being able to simply grab (rent) a bike and ride the 15-20 blocks you might need to travel, doing this above ground in a physically exhilarating and liberating fashion (compared to a bus/metro/taxi)... this is all most excellent.
The geek criticism of this technology for its "privacy concerns" and for its "technological weak points" is probably all logically sound. But the very same people who are making these points are also very likely the most keyboard-bound (by habit) people. They are perhaps failing to see the practical gains here, in favor of racing to point out academic faults. To them I say:
Dude! If ever anyone needed a digital rent-a-bike to get you off your ass, it's you! Who do you think they are making this for? It's not the carousing moron with bad credit and too many kids. It's not Dr. MD-PhD who drives to his practice to check his schedule for next week. It's you, pal.
There's nothing about Wi-Fi technology which would prevent AT&T and T-Mobile from both being offered in the same stores. Choose the provider whose price suits you best. (Per-hour for T-Mobile, or mandatory occasional coffee purchase for AT&T.)
If T-Mobile has no exclusivity contract, then my ruling would be that they are up the creek.
Then again, IANAJ.
So my question for the community is: What fun party ideas would appeal to a group of mostly math-major nerds?
Just a guess: Ridiculously hot zombies who only want a few hours of grinding disease-free love without exchanging phone numbers.
(Spoiler: This is not the party you want to throw for your girlfriend.)