You are making a ridiculous assumption that DRM is the only thing that prevents someone from distriduting copies of copyrighted works. That is utterly false. There is this thing called copyright law that works just fine without DRM. Photocopiers didn't kill the book publishers.
Copyright law is hardly what keeps most people from using photocopiers on books, but rather the expense and time/effort required in the copying process. P2P apps make the only real problem finding the content you need. People don't obey laws that are rarely enforced, make little sense to them, and are inconvenient. The "law" has done little to prevent millions of Americans from downloading whatever they please.
It looks like validation of document structure significantly complicates the problem of creating a hash collision (the technique mentioned relied on padding the document with junk at the end, which, IIRC, is not in line with modern XHTML specs). Of course it's best to use a secure hash to begin with, but this does add yet another layer of resistence.
If the climate change is going to be catastrophic, we should do something serious about it, even if it is natural.
Well, there's basically two things we can do about global warming: Alter the climate artificially, or adapt to the changing climate. If this warming is anthropegenic, that tells us that we already have technology capable of making drastic climate changes, and that investing in more technology that can cause helpful (rather than harmful) changes is a good idea. If this turns out to be completely natural, then it casts doubt onto whether or not there's much we can do about it (short of inducing a "nuclear winter" or "nuclear fall"). It may turn out that simply adapting to the changing climate is an easier proposition in the long run.
That's the problem with these studies - we know enough scientifically to state with some confidence that there exists a problem, but we do not know enough about the risk/reward payoffs of various actions to make any kind of informed policy. I think we, as a planet, should spend a hundred billion dollars every year on the research and policy formation that will remove enough uncertainty that we can fix this issue.
As long as guerilla marketing is entertaining, I'm all for it. Anything to stop the never-ending stream of "apply directly to the forehead" and the like.
I've had some good experiences with voice-activated menus (and some not-so-good ones), however my favorite part is usually just saying "representative" will get you to talk to a live rep - saves me a lot of time listening to options etc (although 0 sometimes sends you to a rep, sometimes it doesn't).
Air Locks...... Hmmmm, maybe a double door entry system to a building would work?
That's actually a very good idea (I can honestly say I had not thought of that), however you'd also have to faraday cage all of the windows, floors, and cielings as well. Outside the building, (if you own the property) a bunch of other wireless access points sending random info etc might provide some good "jamming", or perhaps even as a honeynet.
I've been "spamming" slashdot with a link in my sig for a while now... I wonder how much more effective the pagerank spamming in this article would be - does google have some way to filter out sigs from a site?
Also, I emailed the Ultramax guy a while back (I happen to rather like the music and purchased an album of theirs) and he seems to have good intentions with things. I'd prefer this type of spam to Roland P's any day.
I'm sure this will help minimize effects of leakage, but no building can have a "perfect" faraday cage on standard wifi frequencies - the wavelengths are far smaller than the openings required for humans to enter and exit the building.
Once again, it's probably better to focus on good encryption, though this is hardly much help to defeat certain on-site DOS attacks. Then again, that's what your security force is for:)
TC can put a hidden "inner" volume inside your encrypted volume, that is simply mountable with a different password. But there's no way to prove that such a volume exist (TC volumes are indistinguishable from random data, and even file system and unused data is encrypted) and that you have more passwords than one for the "outer" regular encrypted volume.
IMHO, the fact that TC can do this means that governments (or whoever) will be suspicious any time you surrender your password key to them. There are still situations in which having *any* encrypted data (i.e. something to hide) will get the rubber hose cryptoanalysis going on you.
P.S. Nice to see you around here, I haven't talked to you since the golden era of #maestro on freenode.
Do I trust them to host my files and not go through them?
Absolutely. As long as your files are in a TrueCrypt volume.
Interestingly enough, there are many in which merely allowing outside third parties to be aware of the existance of your data may be as bad as them being able to read it. Case in point: if you are arrested by a government in places that permit it, they may compell you to give your encryption keys, and thus they can read whatever they want. Your best bet against that kind of intrusion is to not have data, encrypted or otherwise, anywhere that you cannot physically destroy it. Of course some might call that paranoid, but isn't that what security is -- applied paranoia?
I know a lot of people who have struggled with depression, and I really hope more effective treatments are created as a result of this study. But, and this is a big "but" (not the J Lo kind), this kind of treatment practically begs for "A Brave New World" type exploitation by a government (even a "benign" one). Considering all of the other means by which some governments force their will upon a population, they would be stupid not to take advantage of this type of advanced "happy pill."
Of course, it's possible that this type of demeanor just isn't stable in a human, or (more likely) it reduces the usable work output of a person enough that it could not be abused on that scale. Of course there's also the problems of individuals taking drugs like these for personal use and ending up apathetic about everything else (a "safe" version of crack, so to speak). Any thoughts on preventing/solving these problems?
There must be huge profit margins for personal care products (especially female-related; shampoo, skin goo and creams, body washes, etc.) given the amount of TV advertising for them.
Margin is irrelevant, it's the total profit that is the real factor here. The products are cheap (and you're probably right, there's probably a lot of margin when you consider how much cheaper the knockoff brands are), but people have to buy a *lot* of shampoo etc (unless they are bald or are a hippy).
Also daytime commercials are probably very inexpensive, as viewership is down, and the demographic is less than prime (middle aged mothers anyone?)
You're gonna buy insurance from some company because they have a nice ad? And this is "Insightful"? WTF?
It's insightful not because it is smart, but because it's very irrational (yet pervasive). Ads are tremendously powerful in shaping how we think about things, and try as I might, I just can't muster enough willpower to not give in, at least a little bit, to the idea that Geico is a really cool company. Maybe if I immersed myself in unbiased research on the subject (yeah right, who has time for that?) I could... but for now, they win.
[...] because it didn't show up on MS Word's spell check, he didn't think it was that important.
On my old Performa, I had a version of Microsoft Word where the spellcheck would not recognize the work "Microsoft." I guess that means they aren't important!
I can't really see how Google helping to create ad contect would equal the success of the Geico ads, but...
The point of my post is really that Google's ad targeting approach may lead to less ads that are better focussed, and have strong incentives to have higher qualtiy content.
Whenever I'm skipping through ads, I always rewind if I catch a Geico ad, or an Apple ad. These ads are often more entertaining than whatever I'm watching, and I hope that google helps advertisers to create content, rather than the awful propaganda that most ads are today.
Of course, I find myself scared that, while I've never purchased car insurance myself, the first place I will look will be Geico when I turn 25 - not because I have any reason to believe they are actually a better company, but their ads have caused me to think very highly of them on a subjective level. Even knowing this, I cannot undo this manipulation.
An example is the Travelling Salesman Problem, although there are literally thousands of them. This category is a particularly interesting target from a commercial perspective because most real-life business problems are in it....
Quantum computers can be used to get approximate solutions to large NP-complete optimization problems much more quickly than the best known methods running on any supercomputer.
If anyone is interested in how quantum computers can (at least may be able to) appoximately solve TSP efficiently, check out thisinteresting article submitted to Physical Review Letters. I would caution that this does not seem to be mentioned on the wikipedia article, and may be rather contraversial.
The ability to generate any visible light frequency would not only extend the gamut to the full human range (unlike other schemes, like the 6-color Iridori system presented at SIGGRAPH 2004), but it would also allow tetrachromats to enjoy television and computers much better (this issue was discussed previously on slashdot).
Of course, as the article suggests, they will still have to use multiple emitters per pixel, as it can only generate colors on the edge of the CIE Color Space (warning, you can't see what colors they are, because your monitor cannot display anything outside the RGB Triangle). And of course tetrachromats are rare but have been found.
Slashdot Mirror
You are making a ridiculous assumption that DRM is the only thing that prevents someone from distriduting copies of copyrighted works. That is utterly false. There is this thing called copyright law that works just fine without DRM. Photocopiers didn't kill the book publishers.
Copyright law is hardly what keeps most people from using photocopiers on books, but rather the expense and time/effort required in the copying process. P2P apps make the only real problem finding the content you need. People don't obey laws that are rarely enforced, make little sense to them, and are inconvenient. The "law" has done little to prevent millions of Americans from downloading whatever they please.
It looks like validation of document structure significantly complicates the problem of creating a hash collision (the technique mentioned relied on padding the document with junk at the end, which, IIRC, is not in line with modern XHTML specs). Of course it's best to use a secure hash to begin with, but this does add yet another layer of resistence.
Well, there's basically two things we can do about global warming: Alter the climate artificially, or adapt to the changing climate. If this warming is anthropegenic, that tells us that we already have technology capable of making drastic climate changes, and that investing in more technology that can cause helpful (rather than harmful) changes is a good idea. If this turns out to be completely natural, then it casts doubt onto whether or not there's much we can do about it (short of inducing a "nuclear winter" or "nuclear fall"). It may turn out that simply adapting to the changing climate is an easier proposition in the long run.
That's the problem with these studies - we know enough scientifically to state with some confidence that there exists a problem, but we do not know enough about the risk/reward payoffs of various actions to make any kind of informed policy. I think we, as a planet, should spend a hundred billion dollars every year on the research and policy formation that will remove enough uncertainty that we can fix this issue.
As long as guerilla marketing is entertaining, I'm all for it. Anything to stop the never-ending stream of "apply directly to the forehead" and the like.
I've had some good experiences with voice-activated menus (and some not-so-good ones), however my favorite part is usually just saying "representative" will get you to talk to a live rep - saves me a lot of time listening to options etc (although 0 sometimes sends you to a rep, sometimes it doesn't).
Air Locks...... Hmmmm, maybe a double door entry system to a building would work?
That's actually a very good idea (I can honestly say I had not thought of that), however you'd also have to faraday cage all of the windows, floors, and cielings as well. Outside the building, (if you own the property) a bunch of other wireless access points sending random info etc might provide some good "jamming", or perhaps even as a honeynet.
I've been "spamming" slashdot with a link in my sig for a while now... I wonder how much more effective the pagerank spamming in this article would be - does google have some way to filter out sigs from a site?
Also, I emailed the Ultramax guy a while back (I happen to rather like the music and purchased an album of theirs) and he seems to have good intentions with things. I'd prefer this type of spam to Roland P's any day.
I'm sure this will help minimize effects of leakage, but no building can have a "perfect" faraday cage on standard wifi frequencies - the wavelengths are far smaller than the openings required for humans to enter and exit the building.
:)
Once again, it's probably better to focus on good encryption, though this is hardly much help to defeat certain on-site DOS attacks. Then again, that's what your security force is for
Is it so hard to understand that some people do things just because they love to, and don't like the burdens that come with fame?
TC can put a hidden "inner" volume inside your encrypted volume, that is simply mountable with a different password. But there's no way to prove that such a volume exist (TC volumes are indistinguishable from random data, and even file system and unused data is encrypted) and that you have more passwords than one for the "outer" regular encrypted volume.
IMHO, the fact that TC can do this means that governments (or whoever) will be suspicious any time you surrender your password key to them. There are still situations in which having *any* encrypted data (i.e. something to hide) will get the rubber hose cryptoanalysis going on you.
P.S. Nice to see you around here, I haven't talked to you since the golden era of #maestro on freenode.
Do I trust them to host my files and not go through them?
Absolutely. As long as your files are in a TrueCrypt volume.
Interestingly enough, there are many in which merely allowing outside third parties to be aware of the existance of your data may be as bad as them being able to read it. Case in point: if you are arrested by a government in places that permit it, they may compell you to give your encryption keys, and thus they can read whatever they want. Your best bet against that kind of intrusion is to not have data, encrypted or otherwise, anywhere that you cannot physically destroy it. Of course some might call that paranoid, but isn't that what security is -- applied paranoia?
I know a lot of people who have struggled with depression, and I really hope more effective treatments are created as a result of this study. But, and this is a big "but" (not the J Lo kind), this kind of treatment practically begs for "A Brave New World" type exploitation by a government (even a "benign" one). Considering all of the other means by which some governments force their will upon a population, they would be stupid not to take advantage of this type of advanced "happy pill."
Of course, it's possible that this type of demeanor just isn't stable in a human, or (more likely) it reduces the usable work output of a person enough that it could not be abused on that scale. Of course there's also the problems of individuals taking drugs like these for personal use and ending up apathetic about everything else (a "safe" version of crack, so to speak). Any thoughts on preventing/solving these problems?
There must be huge profit margins for personal care products (especially female-related; shampoo, skin goo and creams, body washes, etc.) given the amount of TV advertising for them.
Margin is irrelevant, it's the total profit that is the real factor here. The products are cheap (and you're probably right, there's probably a lot of margin when you consider how much cheaper the knockoff brands are), but people have to buy a *lot* of shampoo etc (unless they are bald or are a hippy).
Also daytime commercials are probably very inexpensive, as viewership is down, and the demographic is less than prime (middle aged mothers anyone?)
You're gonna buy insurance from some company because they have a nice ad? And this is "Insightful"? WTF?
It's insightful not because it is smart, but because it's very irrational (yet pervasive). Ads are tremendously powerful in shaping how we think about things, and try as I might, I just can't muster enough willpower to not give in, at least a little bit, to the idea that Geico is a really cool company. Maybe if I immersed myself in unbiased research on the subject (yeah right, who has time for that?) I could... but for now, they win.
indie and homebrew are two separate entities.
Precisely. That is why I listed them both.
I'm very much into independent/homebrew games... is there a site that's "the place" for the indie/homebrew scene?
'a Linux distribution for everyone -- designed to be easy to install and learn for users without prior Linux'
Seriously, isn't this what Ubuntu (or Kubunto, for those who prefer KDE) is supposed to be? Or Red Hat? Or did I miss something?
Am I the only one who finds this article insightful, rather than funny?
[...] because it didn't show up on MS Word's spell check, he didn't think it was that important.
On my old Performa, I had a version of Microsoft Word where the spellcheck would not recognize the work "Microsoft." I guess that means they aren't important!
Except you'll be getting lots of ads about male hygiene products...
As long as they are so absorbant!
I can't really see how Google helping to create ad contect would equal the success of the Geico ads, but...
The point of my post is really that Google's ad targeting approach may lead to less ads that are better focussed, and have strong incentives to have higher qualtiy content.
If this means I don't have to see any more feminine hygene product ads, go Google, go!
Whenever I'm skipping through ads, I always rewind if I catch a Geico ad, or an Apple ad. These ads are often more entertaining than whatever I'm watching, and I hope that google helps advertisers to create content, rather than the awful propaganda that most ads are today.
Of course, I find myself scared that, while I've never purchased car insurance myself, the first place I will look will be Geico when I turn 25 - not because I have any reason to believe they are actually a better company, but their ads have caused me to think very highly of them on a subjective level. Even knowing this, I cannot undo this manipulation.
I've posted some pretty dumb comments, but if you think that was the "dumbest thing ever" on slashdot, you haven't been reading hard enough :)
The ability to generate any visible light frequency would not only extend the gamut to the full human range (unlike other schemes, like the 6-color Iridori system presented at SIGGRAPH 2004), but it would also allow tetrachromats to enjoy television and computers much better (this issue was discussed previously on slashdot).
Of course, as the article suggests, they will still have to use multiple emitters per pixel, as it can only generate colors on the edge of the CIE Color Space (warning, you can't see what colors they are, because your monitor cannot display anything outside the RGB Triangle). And of course tetrachromats are rare but have been found.