If Archos tried to sue they'd have to show damages, which would be difficult since all this does is make their own product better.
Archos's interface for the PJB was atrocious, I mean really, really bad. Forget that they lied to me when they sold it to me, telling me there would be a firmware update to allow recording (the unit has an audio in jack that is forever worthless), but they didn't have anyone desing the software, just build it.
It sucks, and that's the reason this thing has been in a drawer of mine for the last year. Sure now I have an iPod, but this firmware update will get me to give the Jukebox another try as a supplimentary device, but certainly not for Archos's sake.
"Let me think, there was WWIV, WildCat, VirtualBBS, Renegade, Fido, Searchlight, Hermes, TBBS, First Class in later years. I remember a version of Zmodem that would display GIFs as they came in, so you could tell if you were getting a duplicate with a different name. Those with multiple lines were all either using DesqView or OS/2 for multitasking. I never tried setting one up myself, as I didn't even have a second line to dial out on.
I could go on, but I'm sure I'm starting to bore you guys."
Not at all! I remember TBBS, Hermes (used to run one), WWIV, Fido, and yes, later, FirstClass (oooh... goooooey).
Tsk. I've said it before and I'll say it again: There should be a "Classmates.com" for old school BBS folk, so I can find some of the other couple hundred that frequented Billy's Place, Tommy's Place, Chastity's Playhouse (Val, where art thou?) and a bunch of the other Los Angeles boards...
Seems that verification would be the tricky bit here: Just because you're caught with a copy of a floppy doesn't mean it's not a backup. At purchase time the seller should tatoo the serial number on the licensee. Naturally the license would then be non-transferable, and people should be held liabel if someone else copies their serial number illicitly.
It stands to reason that people would have the 'SN-tat' ("Syntat") etched somewhere intimate, say on the inner thigh. Since an Islamic man should only be sleeping with his wife, theft shouldn't be a problem, as they share property and therefore his license is hers anyhow.
Just think, this new policy could reduce sins such as adultry as a side effect of people protecting their coveted serial numbers!
First we hear about Microsoft being cited for allowing doctored nude photos, and now the FBI accidentally went too far protecting civil rights. I'm dizzy.
I couldn't've thought of a story that: is plausable, shows that the FBI is ultra-concerned with respecting the privacy of ordinary citizens, and uses its overprotectiveness as an excuse for not having intercepted communications that it missed.
The only logical american response is to say "Really guys, we don't care that much about our privacy. If you mess up and snag my email now and then, don't freak. It's okay, you don't have to go delete everything.
After reading the article, it's clear that the real fault for not catching 9/11 isn't the FBI, but slashdotters who raise such a fuss about Carnivore as to make an FBI tech freak out.
"The sad thing is that the radio stations don't even ASK the public about what they like! "
Of course they do. A friend of mine gets called every week and they play a couple dozen song clips and ask her to rate how familiar she is with the song, and how much she likes the song. These are the surveys that define ClearChannel's playlists.
The story post says "Recent advances in technology may render that testament false. "
Given the context of that statement, we're talking about recent advances. If we're talking about RF-hopping that has been around since the 50s, then that's a different sentence, and not the one I'm talking about, thanks.
Let's watch our semantics here: Breakthroughs in technology would render the testament obsolete. Rendering the testament false implies an admission that the testament was made while ignoring the technological realities. That isn't the case here.
In practice, when people have to change their password every few weeks or months, they typically either have a standard modification of a base password, incrementing a number on the end or the like, to make it easy to remember the new password, or because they have to think if 'secure' passwords again and again, they have to record them somewhere to remember them.
The first action renders the new password only barely better than the last, and the second opens a physical attack, by finding the file or piece of paper where the passwords are recorded (ever see Wargames?)
If someone's conducting a brute-force attack on a password, it doesn't matter whether you change it often, as the chance of hitting it in any given time interval stays the same whether it's changed or not.
Expiring passwords only help to lock out people who already have access to your system because they guessed your current password. In most cases once someone has breached your system it's irrelevant to lock out the password they used, as they've either changed the password themselves, created a new account, installed another backdoor, or done the damage/thieving they set out to do.
To sum up: Making passwords expire incents users to make passwords that are easier to guess, or makes them write the passwords down to remember them. Both of these are bad.
From the article: "Some dot-com giants, such as Yahoo, try to make money from the marketing tactic, which experts say is more effective than traditional banner ads but also more annoying."
The Oregonian makes heavy use of popunders. I got two when I followed the link!
"Giving the benefit of the doubt to such a credulous reviewer certainly says something about the intellectual ability or lack thereof of the KFury."
The benefit of the doubt that someone with four degrees (two from MIT) probably has at least one advanced degree? That's not giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, that's giving him the benefit of the odds. Most people wout four degrees do not have four bachelors degrees, but instead have one or two bachelors degrees and two or three advanced degrees.
There's no benefit of the doubt going on here at all. It's not logical to assume that he has four bachelors degrees, even less logical to say it's stupid to think he doesn't.
Unless AC's point is that he might be lying about his degrees, in which case it's far more likely that he's lying about having them at all, rather than trying to puff up 4 bachelors degrees into something more.
This thread has grown stupid, but what should I expect from an anonymous troll?
"Yes the fact that none of the degrees are above the undergrad level certainly does say something about the intellectual ability or lack thereof of the reviewer."
He never said his four degrees were all at the baccalaureate level. The fact that this person assumes so certainly says something about the intellectual ability or lack thereof of the previous poster.
"Everyone else here is using some other lossless encoding that results in files larger than the PCM originals on the CD because when they're listening on their 802.11 wireless iPaqs while mowing the lawn they can hear the difference between the original and some crappy MP3."
Because the loss introduced into a 128Kbit MP3 isn't drowned out by either the subpar sound chip in the iPaq... or the lawnmower!
I thought Gattaca was fantastic, because it wasn't fantastic. It was plausable, a good warning, a compelling story, and relevant.
I believed in the complex characters and, unlike a few recent blockbusters I could mention, I cared what happened to them. That's a much better benchmark than box office receipts.
That and I'd never walked out of a scifi movie before thinking "they're robbed if they don't get the Oscar for artistic direction." Well, they didn't get the Oscar, but they did get a nomination, and that's close enough.
It's great to see this (non-yawn) movie get some much-deserved recognition.
For advice on commenting, as well as so many other issues that differentiate a journeyman software engineer from a master, I highly recommend The Pragmatic Programmer. When I start a new job, I often wish my coworkers had read it, and by the time I leave the job, I try and make sure that as many as possible have.
All right, I know that sounds like a commercial, but it's really a great book.
Okay, look in your office, and put your hand on the lamp. Is your hand resting on the thing with a rounded base, a stalk, and a flourescent emitter at the end? That's your computer. Don't worry, a lot of people make that mistake.
I can't speak for others, but here at Yahoo!'s user experience group we all went en-masse. They paid for our tickets, (waiting in line *for us* two weeks ago) and we all took three hours out to catch it.
Nothing like a little off-site to keep morale high!
And, to be accurate, Yahoo didn't even do this. Yahoo opted people in to Yahoo's own internal mailings. They didn't opt people in to sharing their information with third parties, as Hotmail has done.
Hotmail's policy change goes far further, and lets the genie out of a bottle it can't fit back in just by changing your prefs back, because once your email addy is sold, it's out there forever.
This actually makes Yahoo look good by comparison.
Slashdot Mirror
If Archos tried to sue they'd have to show damages, which would be difficult since all this does is make their own product better.
Archos's interface for the PJB was atrocious, I mean really, really bad. Forget that they lied to me when they sold it to me, telling me there would be a firmware update to allow recording (the unit has an audio in jack that is forever worthless), but they didn't have anyone desing the software, just build it.
It sucks, and that's the reason this thing has been in a drawer of mine for the last year. Sure now I have an iPod, but this firmware update will get me to give the Jukebox another try as a supplimentary device, but certainly not for Archos's sake.
Actually, since these modems were usually half-duples, and there was no local echo, the round trip makes the 300 baud sustained speed only 15cps...
"Let me think, there was WWIV, WildCat, VirtualBBS, Renegade, Fido, Searchlight, Hermes, TBBS, First Class in later years. I remember a version of Zmodem that would display GIFs as they came in, so you could tell if you were getting a duplicate with a different name. Those with multiple lines were all either using DesqView or OS/2 for multitasking. I never tried setting one up myself, as I didn't even have a second line to dial out on.
I could go on, but I'm sure I'm starting to bore you guys."
Not at all! I remember TBBS, Hermes (used to run one), WWIV, Fido, and yes, later, FirstClass (oooh... goooooey).
Tsk. I've said it before and I'll say it again: There should be a "Classmates.com" for old school BBS folk, so I can find some of the other couple hundred that frequented Billy's Place, Tommy's Place, Chastity's Playhouse (Val, where art thou?) and a bunch of the other Los Angeles boards...
- Typing +++ (pause) ATH to hang up...
- 8 bit? 7 bit? Parity??
- Vi}}}sixxn}@ble l{ine noisxç}e
But at least there was no call waiting.Seems that verification would be the tricky bit here: Just because you're caught with a copy of a floppy doesn't mean it's not a backup. At purchase time the seller should tatoo the serial number on the licensee. Naturally the license would then be non-transferable, and people should be held liabel if someone else copies their serial number illicitly.
It stands to reason that people would have the 'SN-tat' ("Syntat") etched somewhere intimate, say on the inner thigh. Since an Islamic man should only be sleeping with his wife, theft shouldn't be a problem, as they share property and therefore his license is hers anyhow.
Just think, this new policy could reduce sins such as adultry as a side effect of people protecting their coveted serial numbers!
A copy of The Ethical Slut.
First we hear about Microsoft being cited for allowing doctored nude photos, and now the FBI accidentally went too far protecting civil rights. I'm dizzy.
I couldn't've thought of a story that: is plausable, shows that the FBI is ultra-concerned with respecting the privacy of ordinary citizens, and uses its overprotectiveness as an excuse for not having intercepted communications that it missed.
The only logical american response is to say "Really guys, we don't care that much about our privacy. If you mess up and snag my email now and then, don't freak. It's okay, you don't have to go delete everything.
After reading the article, it's clear that the real fault for not catching 9/11 isn't the FBI, but slashdotters who raise such a fuss about Carnivore as to make an FBI tech freak out.
"The sad thing is that the radio stations don't even ASK the public about what they like! "
Of course they do. A friend of mine gets called every week and they play a couple dozen song clips and ask her to rate how familiar she is with the song, and how much she likes the song. These are the surveys that define ClearChannel's playlists.
The story post says "Recent advances in technology may render that testament false. "
Given the context of that statement, we're talking about recent advances. If we're talking about RF-hopping that has been around since the 50s, then that's a different sentence, and not the one I'm talking about, thanks.
Let's watch our semantics here: Breakthroughs in technology would render the testament obsolete. Rendering the testament false implies an admission that the testament was made while ignoring the technological realities. That isn't the case here.
In practice, when people have to change their password every few weeks or months, they typically either have a standard modification of a base password, incrementing a number on the end or the like, to make it easy to remember the new password, or because they have to think if 'secure' passwords again and again, they have to record them somewhere to remember them.
The first action renders the new password only barely better than the last, and the second opens a physical attack, by finding the file or piece of paper where the passwords are recorded (ever see Wargames?)
If someone's conducting a brute-force attack on a password, it doesn't matter whether you change it often, as the chance of hitting it in any given time interval stays the same whether it's changed or not.
Expiring passwords only help to lock out people who already have access to your system because they guessed your current password. In most cases once someone has breached your system it's irrelevant to lock out the password they used, as they've either changed the password themselves, created a new account, installed another backdoor, or done the damage/thieving they set out to do.
To sum up: Making passwords expire incents users to make passwords that are easier to guess, or makes them write the passwords down to remember them. Both of these are bad.
From the article: "Some dot-com giants, such as Yahoo, try to make money from the marketing tactic, which experts say is more effective than traditional banner ads but also more annoying."
The Oregonian makes heavy use of popunders. I got two when I followed the link!
"Giving the benefit of the doubt to such a credulous reviewer certainly says something about the intellectual ability or lack thereof of the KFury."
The benefit of the doubt that someone with four degrees (two from MIT) probably has at least one advanced degree? That's not giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, that's giving him the benefit of the odds. Most people wout four degrees do not have four bachelors degrees, but instead have one or two bachelors degrees and two or three advanced degrees.
There's no benefit of the doubt going on here at all. It's not logical to assume that he has four bachelors degrees, even less logical to say it's stupid to think he doesn't.
Unless AC's point is that he might be lying about his degrees, in which case it's far more likely that he's lying about having them at all, rather than trying to puff up 4 bachelors degrees into something more.
This thread has grown stupid, but what should I expect from an anonymous troll?
Tesla
"Yes the fact that none of the degrees are above the undergrad level certainly does say something about the intellectual ability or lack thereof of the reviewer."
He never said his four degrees were all at the baccalaureate level. The fact that this person assumes so certainly says something about the intellectual ability or lack thereof of the previous poster.
"Everyone else here is using some other lossless encoding that results in files larger than the PCM originals on the CD because when they're listening on their 802.11 wireless iPaqs while mowing the lawn they can hear the difference between the original and some crappy MP3."
Because the loss introduced into a 128Kbit MP3 isn't drowned out by either the subpar sound chip in the iPaq... or the lawnmower!
(that was sarcasm, right?)
Yeah, 150 CDs of full bit-rate, uncompressed data stream. that's 1500 CDs worth of MP3s. That's a far more relevant metric.
I thought Gattaca was fantastic, because it wasn't fantastic. It was plausable, a good warning, a compelling story, and relevant.
I believed in the complex characters and, unlike a few recent blockbusters I could mention, I cared what happened to them. That's a much better benchmark than box office receipts.
That and I'd never walked out of a scifi movie before thinking "they're robbed if they don't get the Oscar for artistic direction." Well, they didn't get the Oscar, but they did get a nomination, and that's close enough.
It's great to see this (non-yawn) movie get some much-deserved recognition.
For advice on commenting, as well as so many other issues that differentiate a journeyman software engineer from a master, I highly recommend The Pragmatic Programmer. When I start a new job, I often wish my coworkers had read it, and by the time I leave the job, I try and make sure that as many as possible have.
All right, I know that sounds like a commercial, but it's really a great book.
I don't even remember one of us slashdotters responding to a Transmeta story with 'imagine a beowulf cluster of these...'
This is a new iMac, right?
Okay, look in your office, and put your hand on the lamp. Is your hand resting on the thing with a rounded base, a stalk, and a flourescent emitter at the end? That's your computer. Don't worry, a lot of people make that mistake.
I can't speak for others, but here at Yahoo!'s user experience group we all went en-masse. They paid for our tickets, (waiting in line *for us* two weeks ago) and we all took three hours out to catch it.
Nothing like a little off-site to keep morale high!
And, to be accurate, Yahoo didn't even do this. Yahoo opted people in to Yahoo's own internal mailings. They didn't opt people in to sharing their information with third parties, as Hotmail has done.
Hotmail's policy change goes far further, and lets the genie out of a bottle it can't fit back in just by changing your prefs back, because once your email addy is sold, it's out there forever.
This actually makes Yahoo look good by comparison.
A PIN is user chosen, and isn't unique, hence it wouldn't work as a means of identification.
To call up a photo, you'd need a unique identifier like an ID #.
Both PIN and photo are means of identity verification, not unique identifiers in and of themselves.