While I have to agree with you the argument is logically sound, it's completely irrelevant and this whole bit should be OFFTOPIC, because the stem cells aren't ever harvested from potential pregnancies. Can you imagine the sheer horror of trying to find a 200-cell blastocyst in a woman's uterus? Needle in a haystack doesn't even begin to cover it. Not to mention, there's no way for us to know there's a blastocyst in there to go looking for. This just isn't how it's done; it's completely impractical.
Stem cells used in research come from test tubes. There is no way these things could ever, ever become a human. And when we're talking about 100-200 cells, thinking of it as human or life is a TOTAL JOKE. If a 200-cell blastocyst is life that needs to be respected, you're in big trouble considering you kill off more than that every time you take a shit.
You bought TWO COPIES of a game, and then just gave up and/threw them out/ because of DRM?
You're the awesomest customer Rockstar Games ever had. If everyone did what you did, they'd be even richer than they are now, and they wouldn't have to feel the consequences of any action they took...
Maybe a better move woulda' been to make them pay - as in a refund, or at least taking up some of their customer service people's time (and therefore money).
I firmly believe that Craig Smallwood is an appropriately named man with no sense of personal responsibility.
That said, it will be interesting to see how this court case plays out considering there is NO QUESTION that the developers of these games intentionally try to make them as 'addictive' as possible. There are many studies in the industry meant to determine the appropriate level of payout (loot, level gains, etc) required to keep someone interested all the time.
I'd just like to point out that I've successfully trojaned both Mac OSX and my own (fully-patched!) Ubuntu 10.04 machines with clever use of the Metasploit framework. It's not hard, you don't need any knowledge of what you're doing beyond what's in the metasploit tutorials, a script-kiddie could do it. It took me only a few hours of reading the tutorials and only a few MINUTES of using the tools.
I've also seen PRODUCTION BSD servers rootkitted at a previous job. I'm positive it was due to admin incompetence, but it does happen.
So if you were hoping the answer to your question was "none," it's not.
I'm just responding to what you said, though -- don't misunderstand me and think I'd suggest using some other OS.
I appreciate your attempt at an analysis of the claims, but you're really not doing anything but repeating what was said already.
The bits of the article you quote seem clear enough. It's two-way encrypted communication first.
I didn't (think I needed to) want to get into the details of why these claims make no sense. But I will...
If you have an encrypted stream of data, it goes without saying the party you are communicating with must understand what you're saying. So this claim of encrypted communications means (as is spelled out elsewhere) this system uses a client-server architecture/with specifically configured servers/ for people to connect to. It will not take long before those servers are identified and blocked.
On top of that, the encrypted stream is hidden in a stream of normal traffic, to obscure its existence
While that sounds awesome, that traffic all has to GO someplace. So we've got two possible situations: 1) we are sending a bunch of 'normal' data to a server that looks like a proxy, and in some of those normal proxy requests, we hide additional proxy requests and responses that are encrypted. This is probably exactly how it works, and since the system they are connecting to looks exactly like an open proxy, it's going to be blocked no matter what. They lose. 2) The client sends a bunch of normal data to a bunch of normal sites, and the encrypted data to the special haystack servers. This is so stupid and easy to discover/block it surely cannot be at all what they have designed.
Either way, there is a possibility that something of real value has been created here.
I'm positive the author thinks he has created something of real value, but I'm willing to go ahead and say this project is doomed to failure. IT will only work as well as the current system of open proxies works, because it's not effectively any different.
I cannot imagine the Iranian government is so stupid as to only block only open proxies that appear to serve up BAD content; I would assume they block them all as a matter of course once identified. All he's really invented here is an open proxy that doesn't appear to serve anything BAD. As far as that goes, I bet it's probably rather successful... and would make a great product for e.g. surfing porn from a workplace that doesn't take the obvious step of blocking all external proxies. But it will not work in an environment where ALL externally proxied requests are considered a violation.
Thank you for those links. After reading in more detail, I think I'm kind of sticking with my claim of bullshit. Of course I wouldn't put it so strongly now but I still don't see how he can do what he is claiming and make it difficult (or as he claims, IMPOSSIBLE) to block.
Less than a month and many all-nighters later, Heap and a friend had created Haystack. The anti-censorship software is built on a sophisticated mathematical formula that conceals someone's real online destinations inside a stream of innocuous traffic. You may be browsing an opposition Web site, but to the censors it will appear you are visiting, say, weather.com.
This doesn't make sense. It still has to connect to and load the BAD website, too...
Other anti-censorship programs--such as Tor, Psiphon, or Freegate--can successfully hide someone's identity, but censors are able to detect that these programs are being run and then work to disable the communication. With Haystack, the censors aren't even aware the software is in use. "Haystack captures all outgoing connections, encrypts them, and then masquerades the data as something else," explains Heap. "If you want to block Haystack, you are gonna block yourself."
OK, this makes so little sense I can't even figure out how to respond to it.
Heap intends to gradually develop Haystack's presence in the country. He has started to share it with select activists and trusted individuals on an invitation-only basis. They will then be asked to share it with their friends. It is the same model that was originally followed by Google's Gmail. The targeted approach is smarter from a security standpoint. Also, he doesn't want the software to collapse from low-value demand.
SAY WHAT?
Yeah, there's one word for this whole article. BULLSHIT. It stinks.
I've tried researching. Your linked study, while maybe somewhat interesting, isn't a meaningful study. I have yet to find one that is, which is why I was sincerely asking for some help. There is no control, there is no determination in the study of what level of pain reduction is provided by placebo, etc.
"The NHS has four dedicated homeopathic hospitals in the UK, including the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital. An NHS Tayside spokeswoman said homeopathy had been provided in the region for many years, adding: "It is invaluable to many patients referred to the clinic.""
What hospitals like is pretty meaningless. Arguing that it works because hospitals use it is ridiculous.
I'm not aware of a single test of accupuncture with proper controls. If you are, I'd love to hear about it. For example, a good test might be to have two people get acupuncture, but for one of them, put the needles in totally the wrong spots. Of course this would have to be repeated a number of times and you'd need further controls to make sure there was no possibility of knowing who was getting the right spots and who the wrong... then you just figure out if it helped the one group more than the other. Maybe further contrast against some 'control' treatment that is similiarly hands-on like massage. Has anyone done such a thing?
Thousands of years of anecdotes isn't worth anything more than Religion.
I disagree about "Don't skimp". I've got a 100MHz 2-channel scope from Owon in China, and it is great. Only set me back $300. I could buy ten of them for the price of a single Tek. I also have an old analog Tek but it never gets used.
If "...everything [olpc] do is open source..." then why do we have an article saying Negroponte has offered their knowledge? It's already out there, open, right? RIGHT?
Shock of shocks, with a valid translation, suddenly everything reads smoothly and, gasp, even becomes comprehensible.
he has both the proper credentials and the research which validates which translations. And yes, several others have also stepped forward and independently validated small portions of the provided work.
I don't know how to respond to that.
Please provide resources to back up these most remarkable claims.
Richard Feynman has a series of lectures on physics - you can probably find them online... someplace... anyhow, the one on symmetry is great and ends up with a nice (related) punchline I won't spoil.
When you get a pointer to the object of a base class, you can't upgrade it inside of the message dispatch - because that would require the message dispatch to know all the hundreds/thousands interfaces used all over the program. And that's simply impractical, most of the time impossible.
I know I'm a moron, but... why would you do that? You implement the type-specific behaviour in the derived types, and then just call the inherited function on the base (say, 'recievemessage'), that's what polymorphism is fundamentally about... isn't it?
While I agree with you, I'm a developer of... medium-sized systems using Postgresql, and this article greatly piqued my interest, considering the single biggest problem I've had with Postgres is it's lack of any good replication or redundancy methods. Right now I tend to use WAL replication to a "warm-standby" server, but this is hardly ideal in any sense.
Don't misunderstand me, I dearly love Postgres. It's just the replication where it really falls flat. Yes, I am aware of all the projects like Slony and pgcluster. I like the idea of pgcluster, but last time I was able to test it, it would fail in funny ways and didn't seem ready for production.
Slashdot Mirror
How exactly is Burning Man, a for-profit CORPORTION, hosting an event you must BUY tickets to, in any way described as 'non-commercial?'
It's a bunch of dumb hippies paying to get together and do drugs (excuseme, "EXPRESS THEMELVES") in the desert.
$100 an hour? Where can I apply?
While I have to agree with you the argument is logically sound, it's completely irrelevant and this whole bit should be OFFTOPIC, because the stem cells aren't ever harvested from potential pregnancies. Can you imagine the sheer horror of trying to find a 200-cell blastocyst in a woman's uterus? Needle in a haystack doesn't even begin to cover it. Not to mention, there's no way for us to know there's a blastocyst in there to go looking for. This just isn't how it's done; it's completely impractical.
Stem cells used in research come from test tubes. There is no way these things could ever, ever become a human. And when we're talking about 100-200 cells, thinking of it as human or life is a TOTAL JOKE. If a 200-cell blastocyst is life that needs to be respected, you're in big trouble considering you kill off more than that every time you take a shit.
You bought TWO COPIES of a game, and then just gave up and /threw them out/ because of DRM?
You're the awesomest customer Rockstar Games ever had. If everyone did what you did, they'd be even richer than they are now, and they wouldn't have to feel the consequences of any action they took...
Maybe a better move woulda' been to make them pay - as in a refund, or at least taking up some of their customer service people's time (and therefore money).
I firmly believe that Craig Smallwood is an appropriately named man with no sense of personal responsibility.
That said, it will be interesting to see how this court case plays out considering there is NO QUESTION that the developers of these games intentionally try to make them as 'addictive' as possible. There are many studies in the industry meant to determine the appropriate level of payout (loot, level gains, etc) required to keep someone interested all the time.
This sounds like a neat project... even without the speed improvements it would be nice to have a flash player that was portable and Free.
That said, I can't wait to see the security holes of a Flash client combined with the security holes of a Java JVM! This is going to be AWESOME.
I'd just like to point out that I've successfully trojaned both Mac OSX and my own (fully-patched!) Ubuntu 10.04 machines with clever use of the Metasploit framework. It's not hard, you don't need any knowledge of what you're doing beyond what's in the metasploit tutorials, a script-kiddie could do it. It took me only a few hours of reading the tutorials and only a few MINUTES of using the tools.
I've also seen PRODUCTION BSD servers rootkitted at a previous job. I'm positive it was due to admin incompetence, but it does happen.
So if you were hoping the answer to your question was "none," it's not.
I'm just responding to what you said, though -- don't misunderstand me and think I'd suggest using some other OS.
It's odd to me how easily you write off a system that caused the death of ~150 people as "not really ... mission critical."
Bryan,
I appreciate your attempt at an analysis of the claims, but you're really not doing anything but repeating what was said already.
The bits of the article you quote seem clear enough. It's two-way encrypted communication first.
I didn't (think I needed to) want to get into the details of why these claims make no sense. But I will...
If you have an encrypted stream of data, it goes without saying the party you are communicating with must understand what you're saying. So this claim of encrypted communications means (as is spelled out elsewhere) this system uses a client-server architecture /with specifically configured servers/ for people to connect to. It will not take long before those servers are identified and blocked.
On top of that, the encrypted stream is hidden in a stream of normal traffic, to obscure its existence
While that sounds awesome, that traffic all has to GO someplace. So we've got two possible situations: 1) we are sending a bunch of 'normal' data to a server that looks like a proxy, and in some of those normal proxy requests, we hide additional proxy requests and responses that are encrypted. This is probably exactly how it works, and since the system they are connecting to looks exactly like an open proxy, it's going to be blocked no matter what. They lose. 2) The client sends a bunch of normal data to a bunch of normal sites, and the encrypted data to the special haystack servers. This is so stupid and easy to discover/block it surely cannot be at all what they have designed.
Either way, there is a possibility that something of real value has been created here.
I'm positive the author thinks he has created something of real value, but I'm willing to go ahead and say this project is doomed to failure. IT will only work as well as the current system of open proxies works, because it's not effectively any different.
I cannot imagine the Iranian government is so stupid as to only block only open proxies that appear to serve up BAD content; I would assume they block them all as a matter of course once identified. All he's really invented here is an open proxy that doesn't appear to serve anything BAD. As far as that goes, I bet it's probably rather successful... and would make a great product for e.g. surfing porn from a workplace that doesn't take the obvious step of blocking all external proxies. But it will not work in an environment where ALL externally proxied requests are considered a violation.
Sounds like you were all in the same place, tasting together. Classic experimental error. Your results are meaningless.
I wouldn't put X11 on a production server in the first place. Why would you?
Assuming you're not serving X11, I mean.
Thank you for those links. After reading in more detail, I think I'm kind of sticking with my claim of bullshit. Of course I wouldn't put it so strongly now but I still don't see how he can do what he is claiming and make it difficult (or as he claims, IMPOSSIBLE) to block.
Bullshit.
Less than a month and many all-nighters later, Heap and a friend had created Haystack. The anti-censorship software is built on a sophisticated mathematical formula that conceals someone's real online destinations inside a stream of innocuous traffic. You may be browsing an opposition Web site, but to the censors it will appear you are visiting, say, weather.com.
This doesn't make sense. It still has to connect to and load the BAD website, too...
Other anti-censorship programs--such as Tor, Psiphon, or Freegate--can successfully hide someone's identity, but censors are able to detect that these programs are being run and then work to disable the communication. With Haystack, the censors aren't even aware the software is in use. "Haystack captures all outgoing connections, encrypts them, and then masquerades the data as something else," explains Heap. "If you want to block Haystack, you are gonna block yourself."
OK, this makes so little sense I can't even figure out how to respond to it.
Heap intends to gradually develop Haystack's presence in the country. He has started to share it with select activists and trusted individuals on an invitation-only basis. They will then be asked to share it with their friends. It is the same model that was originally followed by Google's Gmail. The targeted approach is smarter from a security standpoint. Also, he doesn't want the software to collapse from low-value demand.
SAY WHAT?
Yeah, there's one word for this whole article. BULLSHIT. It stinks.
I've tried researching. Your linked study, while maybe somewhat interesting, isn't a meaningful study. I have yet to find one that is, which is why I was sincerely asking for some help. There is no control, there is no determination in the study of what level of pain reduction is provided by placebo, etc.
"The NHS has four dedicated homeopathic hospitals in the UK, including the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital.
An NHS Tayside spokeswoman said homeopathy had been provided in the region for many years, adding: "It is invaluable to many patients referred to the clinic.""
What hospitals like is pretty meaningless. Arguing that it works because hospitals use it is ridiculous.
I'm not aware of a single test of accupuncture with proper controls. If you are, I'd love to hear about it. For example, a good test might be to have two people get acupuncture, but for one of them, put the needles in totally the wrong spots. Of course this would have to be repeated a number of times and you'd need further controls to make sure there was no possibility of knowing who was getting the right spots and who the wrong... then you just figure out if it helped the one group more than the other. Maybe further contrast against some 'control' treatment that is similiarly hands-on like massage. Has anyone done such a thing?
Thousands of years of anecdotes isn't worth anything more than Religion.
I disagree about "Don't skimp". I've got a 100MHz 2-channel scope from Owon in China, and it is great. Only set me back $300. I could buy ten of them for the price of a single Tek. I also have an old analog Tek but it never gets used.
If "...everything [olpc] do is open source..." then why do we have an article saying Negroponte has offered their knowledge? It's already out there, open, right? RIGHT?
/. (and me, personally) cared a lot when Jericho got cancelled.
The basic tenets of faith appear to be correct
Shock of shocks, with a valid translation, suddenly everything reads smoothly and, gasp, even becomes comprehensible.
he has both the proper credentials and the research which validates which translations. And yes, several others have also stepped forward and independently validated small portions of the provided work.
I don't know how to respond to that.
Please provide resources to back up these most remarkable claims.
Richard Feynman has a series of lectures on physics - you can probably find them online... someplace... anyhow, the one on symmetry is great and ends up with a nice (related) punchline I won't spoil.
When you get a pointer to the object of a base class, you can't upgrade it inside of the message dispatch - because that would require the message dispatch to know all the hundreds/thousands interfaces used all over the program. And that's simply impractical, most of the time impossible.
I know I'm a moron, but... why would you do that? You implement the type-specific behaviour in the derived types, and then just call the inherited function on the base (say, 'recievemessage'), that's what polymorphism is fundamentally about... isn't it?
Capitalizing god's name means applying a human characteristic to an imaginary being...in other words, it's as silly as capitalizing Jack Bauer.
FTFY. For the record, I'm pretty sure Jack Bauer could tie God up and question Him...
OK, so we have an ancient BBC thing, Taco Bell, Two BMW ads, and the rest are all google? Seriously, not much of a counterpoint.
While I agree with you, I'm a developer of ... medium-sized systems using Postgresql, and this article greatly piqued my interest, considering the single biggest problem I've had with Postgres is it's lack of any good replication or redundancy methods. Right now I tend to use WAL replication to a "warm-standby" server, but this is hardly ideal in any sense.
Don't misunderstand me, I dearly love Postgres. It's just the replication where it really falls flat. Yes, I am aware of all the projects like Slony and pgcluster. I like the idea of pgcluster, but last time I was able to test it, it would fail in funny ways and didn't seem ready for production.
Would you mind letting me know how you used it on your N900? I made a simple go at it recently and failed.