FWIW, I've read (too lazy to look up citation) that closing one CC account and opening another can hurt your credit score. Ask your issuer to assign your account a new number.
I read TFA, and nowhere does it mention the subjects of the patents in question. What are they claiming? What's the prior art? Without that info this is just a “The trolls are coming! The trolls are coming!” piece of hysteria.
Anyone know what it's about? I'm certainly not going to try to figure it out from the patents themselves. My sanity's worth more than that.
So by the time that you've spent months writing a spec, 50% of what you specified will not be what is actually required.
It's worse than that. In all too many cases, users don't know what they want (though they'll describe it in detail). During the time spent in specification, the users will continue to agree with what they've already said. It's only when they get their hands on the widget that the shoe starts to pinch, and they start changing their tune. Therefore, in those cases it makes a lot of sense to get a dummy UI out fast for them to dirty their hands on: only then will the truth come out.
I, too, came here to mention IHNMaIMS. It's one of two works I've read only once because I'm too scared to go back.
The other is Dracula. I started it one evening and finished early the next morning because I was literally too scared to put it down unfinished. I'm thinking that after ~40 years, maybe it's worth a re-read. I Have No Mouth..., never.
Is this the end of the famous/. laissez-faire ``we don't censor comments, we just let you moderate them down'' policy? Or is that already gone and I was looking elsewhere at the time?
Have you ever parked at a meter without plugging it, "hoping" that you'd not get caught? How is that different from stealing from society in other, larger ways, such as robbing a bank (beyond severity of the betrayal)?
It seemed germane to me—how society deals with defectors is an important part of the whole.
Ever heard the expression ``a difference of degree large enough to become a difference in kind''? Certainly there are similarities between shorting a parking meter and robbing a bank, but.... To suggest that the two are not different, except in severity, is to miss the point. Some actions are bad enough that they are warrant a stint in the penitentiary, others only a $25 fine. To pretend otherwise is to fall into the ``zero-tolerance'' trap.
Remember the high-school student who was expelled because she'd left a butter knife in the back of her car (after a picnic?)? That's where zero-tolerance gets you, and it's not a good place for society.
Decades ago, before SA became dumbed down, Philip and Phylis Morrison reviewed books for them. They'd (IIRC) do three or four each month, and with one exception they never got below a very good rating. I always assumed that was because there were way too many good books to make it worth while wasting ink on mediocre or bad ones. The reviews themselves were usually worth reading for their own sake—I learned a lot from them.
I guarantee you they were in no sense cheerleaders or shills. They just knew how to make good use of their time.
The one book with a bad review? The Bell Curve, a pseudo-scientific screed trying to justify racism. The Morrisons devoted that month to the single review, showing why it was such a disaster. (For detailed coverage of what's wrong with it, see Steven Jay Gould'sThe Mismeasure of Man.)
I usually run Firefox, but when I want to do something that might pollute my cookies/tracking info/black helicopters I switch to Arora. It works OK, and then I can nuke all the bits associated with it and not lose anything I care about.
We installed solar panels a couple of years ago, and
they've been a Good Deal. (Like, zero electricity bills four
months a year. In New England.:-)
But my jaw dropped when they explained that they won't
work during power outages(!).
The base problem is you have to avoid putting juice on
the grid when a lineman's up there thinking everything's
dead. Not good. There are ways to avoid this (ask anyone
who has a gasoline generator hooked to their breaker box),
but presumably the vendors want to keep the cost down so
far as is possible.
So there are two aspects that may come to bear.
First, the inverter (takes DC from solar panels and
converts it to AC for the grid) is rigged to shut down
immediately if there's no grid power (and wait five
minutes after it comes back to resume operations).
Second, it must synchronize its AC waveform to accurately
match what's coming in. (Things get wasteful if it's a
little out of phase, and dangerous if it's a lot out.)
So what I'm going to ask the inverter manufacturer come
Monday is whether the incoming waveform is used to decide
whether we've got kosher grid power. If so, will these
experiments cause the frequency to depart from 60.00 Hz enough to
cause the inverter to turn itself off? If so, there'll be
a lot of people with solar panels who'll be very upset
with these changes.
Probably with the vast increase in small generators, wind, solar and hydro etc coming on to the grid, there is much more variation than with the old large base load generators.
Don't bet on it.
Our solar panels' inverter reads the grid waveform and shapes its own to match, very closely.
Think about it—any variance between the two is, at a minimum, a pure waste of power, and if it's big enough it's real danger (as that wasted power starts to generate more heat than the inverter's heat sink can dispose of.)
The
patent's
abstract (a bit long to quote here) sounds like Akamai's
business plan.
The patent was filed in October 1997.
According to the
company's
history
Akamai's founders were finalists in a 1998 MIT competition.
Given that these things don't take shape instantaneously,
there's a fighting chance they've got some documentation of
prior art that would shoot down this claim forthwith.
Check the format (man 5 passwd): If you're going to supply such niceties as usernames rather than UIDs, or group names rather than GIDs, you must read/etc/passwd. For security's sake, the passwords are no longer kept there (at least in GNU/Linux, and I hope in any other modern OS), but in/etc/shadow or/etc/master.passwd (*BSD) which can only be read by root.
Thus, the encrypted passwords, required for brute-force decryption attempts, are not available to every Tom, Dick, and Mallory.
Slashdot Mirror
This exploit rang a bell, so I searched Bruce Schneier's website. And, sure enough, on July 15, 2000, he observed ``Unicode is just too complex to ever be secure.'' Doesn't exactly warm the cockles of the paranoid's heart.
FWIW, I've read (too lazy to look up citation) that closing one CC account and opening another can hurt your credit score. Ask your issuer to assign your account a new number.
The Beta motto is ``News for Nerds''. Looks as if they're admitting that the changes don't matter.
I read TFA, and nowhere does it mention the subjects of the patents in question. What are they claiming? What's the prior art? Without that info this is just a “The trolls are coming! The trolls are coming!” piece of hysteria. Anyone know what it's about? I'm certainly not going to try to figure it out from the patents themselves. My sanity's worth more than that.
It's worse than that. In all too many cases, users don't know what they want (though they'll describe it in detail). During the time spent in specification, the users will continue to agree with what they've already said. It's only when they get their hands on the widget that the shoe starts to pinch, and they start changing their tune. Therefore, in those cases it makes a lot of sense to get a dummy UI out fast for them to dirty their hands on: only then will the truth come out.
Now they don't have to confine themselves to 2-D naked women.
I clicked on the Silent Circle URL, and was immediately offered a cookie. (Which I declined—thanks Firefox.)
Choose ``HTML Formatted'' in the menu below the text-entry box, and type in ``£''.
Alternatively, just cut and paste the character, and ignore the A-ring that /. sticks in front: £
I, too, came here to mention IHNMaIMS. It's one of two works I've read only once because I'm too scared to go back.
The other is Dracula. I started it one evening and finished early the next morning because I was literally too scared to put it down unfinished. I'm thinking that after ~40 years, maybe it's worth a re-read. I Have No Mouth..., never.
Attached this to the wrong article. Sorry.
Is this the end of the famous /. laissez-faire ``we don't censor comments, we just let you moderate them down'' policy? Or is that already gone and I was looking elsewhere at the time?
It would seem the Journal of Irreproducible Results was ahead of its time.
The prosecutor's laptop may contain child porn, too. I vote we investigate its contents first.
I wonder how the Supremes would get around that one? 'Cause you know at least five of them would be upset.
It seemed germane to me—how society deals with defectors is an important part of the whole.
Ever heard the expression ``a difference of degree large enough to become a difference in kind''? Certainly there are similarities between shorting a parking meter and robbing a bank, but.... To suggest that the two are not different, except in severity, is to miss the point. Some actions are bad enough that they are warrant a stint in the penitentiary, others only a $25 fine. To pretend otherwise is to fall into the ``zero-tolerance'' trap. Remember the high-school student who was expelled because she'd left a butter knife in the back of her car (after a picnic?)? That's where zero-tolerance gets you, and it's not a good place for society.
Decades ago, before SA became dumbed down, Philip and Phylis Morrison reviewed books for them. They'd (IIRC) do three or four each month, and with one exception they never got below a very good rating. I always assumed that was because there were way too many good books to make it worth while wasting ink on mediocre or bad ones. The reviews themselves were usually worth reading for their own sake—I learned a lot from them.
.)
I guarantee you they were in no sense cheerleaders or shills. They just knew how to make good use of their time.
The one book with a bad review? The Bell Curve , a pseudo-scientific screed trying to justify racism. The Morrisons devoted that month to the single review, showing why it was such a disaster. (For detailed coverage of what's wrong with it, see Steven Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man
Seriously---check out Pro Publica and follow a couple of links to see how much money the supporters got from the movie and recording industries.
I'd like to think that if I were to sell out the Constitution, it would take at least $5M. :-/
I usually run Firefox, but when I want to do something that might pollute my cookies/tracking info/black helicopters I switch to Arora. It works OK, and then I can nuke all the bits associated with it and not lose anything I care about.
Funny you should ask that.
Check out
MetricT's comment above.
We installed solar panels a couple of years ago, and they've been a Good Deal. (Like, zero electricity bills four months a year. In New England. :-)
But my jaw dropped when they explained that they won't
work during power outages(!).
The base problem is you have to avoid putting juice on the grid when a lineman's up there thinking everything's dead. Not good. There are ways to avoid this (ask anyone who has a gasoline generator hooked to their breaker box), but presumably the vendors want to keep the cost down so far as is possible.
So there are two aspects that may come to bear. First, the inverter (takes DC from solar panels and converts it to AC for the grid) is rigged to shut down immediately if there's no grid power (and wait five minutes after it comes back to resume operations). Second, it must synchronize its AC waveform to accurately match what's coming in. (Things get wasteful if it's a little out of phase, and dangerous if it's a lot out.)
So what I'm going to ask the inverter manufacturer come Monday is whether the incoming waveform is used to decide whether we've got kosher grid power. If so, will these experiments cause the frequency to depart from 60.00 Hz enough to cause the inverter to turn itself off? If so, there'll be a lot of people with solar panels who'll be very upset with these changes.
Don't bet on it. Our solar panels' inverter reads the grid waveform and shapes its own to match, very closely.
Think about it—any variance between the two is, at a minimum, a pure waste of power, and if it's big enough it's real danger (as that wasted power starts to generate more heat than the inverter's heat sink can dispose of.)
I didn't think they needed the shielding.
The patent's abstract (a bit long to quote here) sounds like Akamai's business plan.
The patent was filed in October 1997. According to the company's history Akamai's founders were finalists in a 1998 MIT competition. Given that these things don't take shape instantaneously, there's a fighting chance they've got some documentation of prior art that would shoot down this claim forthwith.
Thus, the encrypted passwords, required for brute-force decryption attempts, are not available to every Tom, Dick, and Mallory.