I pitty the poor folk that take advice about a product from someone who has formed an opinion about it by avoiding it. Granted, past history can certainly be a factor, but I personally like to make informed decisions. Sometimes I do the research myself, other times I turn to sources that do credible research on my behalf. I never take advice from an opinionated source which does not do credible research, and hope to urge others to also make informed decisions.
I agree with you that economic sanctions and international diplomacy do work, despite what some politicians might tell you.
I'd like to make one counter argument to your statement "Cuba is clearly badly off because of their sanctions." While I do agree that in many aspects they are worse off, there is one very interesting consequence of the sanctions which was supposed to hurt Cuba but actually helped it quite a bit. Cuba used to farm with Soviet equipment and fertilizer and enjoyed relative prosperity in agriculture. Once the Soviet Union fell and they had no source of parts for their tractors, fertilizer for their fields, or alternative food imports, they were forced to turn to a very basic method of agriculture.
Using agriculture texts written in the 1800's due to the loss of a lot of the knowledge in the public memory, they employ efficient crop rotation, tilling, and sustainable methods to grow their crops. So while the United States has a very poor food supply, Cuba is enjoying some of the healthiest and most nutritious food in this modern age.
I learned a lot of this from the article "the cuba diet" in the April 2005 Harper's Magazine. [1]
Although I philosophically agree with you, I have reservations when it comes to certain areas of societal life. What you are espousing is that the government stay out of the idividual life. There are areas where I feel the government has a duty to apply its values on others. The first that comes to mind is the environment. According to current economic theory (which ingores the societal aspect), each will do what is best for them. Many effects on the environment do not present a "clear and present danger" with long term and slow environmental changes. Its the government's job to study such changes and invoke a policy that permits a long term sustainability of this society of individuals free to persue their own happiness.
I would like to argue that the Nikon F6 is the top professional camera from Nikon, not the D2X. Perhaps the article should state "top digital professional camera" or somesuch since there is still heated debate in the professional world of digital vs. film. There are things that are easier to do with film and things that are easier to do with digital. The neat thing is that film scanners can produce great digital representations of film exposures, yet getting great film exposures from a digital file is hard. In any case, I don't really want to get into it, but point out that film cameras are still a bit more flexible and many professionals still prefer them.
It already does! It's called NTFS. The reason you might not be aware of this fact is that the standard Windows file management tools ignore this fact. There's a caution statement [1] that one needs specific tools in order to differentiate files whose names differ only in case. Interix, for example, provides such tools. As does Windows Services for Unix.
"Sure, I could get any and all of the above, but... compared to using my existing setup and a PSP to accomplish basically the same goal ( plus play killer games ), I don't see the benefit, unless you're into supporting Microsoft."
I don't quite understand. I do understand your situation: you lack the hardware, software, and already recieve the same content on another pay service to which you already subscribe. When I read, "I don't see the benefit", I understood that to mean just that--there is not benefit for you and your situation. So, what I don't understand stand is "unless you're into supporting Microsoft". Who? The reader? One? Those referants might not have the same situation. Their situation might be already having the hardware, the software, and not already subscribing to the same content through a different pay serivce. Perhaps they find--as you do--that they "pay way too much" for it and are willing to dump their current subscription for one cheaper but better targetted to their needs.
I any case, I too am curious how this service fares. I am hoping for a future where video entertainment is a la carte. No longer will cable providers be able to bundle niche properties with popular properties to establish high channel count subscription levels which might yield about 5% interesting content. No longer will niche properties have obscured demographics--as they are often measured by channel package--to lure advertisers in and stay profitable.
On the other hand, I fear the possibility that an a la carte system will increase the premium on interesting-to-me but not-popular-with-advertiesers content. Imagine a demographic which has heavy TiVo use, never watches commercials, and has expensive production tastes. Producing the programming might cost above average, yet the advertisement yield would be lower than average. So, perhaps the networks go competely--or at least heavily--with subscription income to fund the programming.
Anyhow, sorry for the lengthy brain spill. Here's hoping that the entertainment industry delivers the products we want at reasonable rates so everyone can be happy in the end.
I second that. I first tried parsing it as the cuprit who wrote a virus called Leaked Doctor was found by Episode. I started thinking "What's Episode?" Was it some government initiative I haven't heard of or some monitoring software? And "What's Leaked Doctor?" Perhaps it was a runaway therapist AI or something. After a second and third parse, I grouped the overlapping phrases correctly. So, yeah, how about some quotes around titles.
I suppose you could try. Just hope that the retailed doesn't produce surveillence tapes of you purchaing said big screen TV or else the credit card company might choose to charge you with fraud.
I have a picture on my Bank of America card. And a copy of the signature printed under it on the front, as well as my signature written on the back. I've never had to show a second form of ID, even for large purchases.
The first statement can only (correctly) be interrpreted in one way. The ambiguity arises from poor parsing. A reader might interpret the sentence how he or she see fit based on the fact that many writers may mean to modify the first clause, but in actually modify the second. The proliferation of such writing might condition readers to have to stop and think "did the writer mean to modify the first or second clause?", hence their ambiguity. As it stands though, there really is no ambiguity.
Although you can hide the computer connection through many layers of deception, the actual funds transfer is done within the confines of the banks' network. Large transfers--even electronic ones--have a holding period which allows the banks to verify the transaction. I'm not sure that the holding period helped in this particular case, but it seems to me that ultimatley there are checks in place regardless of how the transfer transaction was entered in the first place.
Exactly, as reported on BBC World this morning. When I read the summary I was like "did I totally misunderstand the anchorwoman earlier?" When I checked the article, it reaffirmed that indead I had understood correctly and the summary is wrong. That's incorragable. Sometimes I wonder if the submitters RTFA.
For good Chocolate, going with truffles made is small batches is best. Something like Lindt (not their mass produced bars, but their hand made truffles on Bahnhoffstr.) or Teuscher. There are a few Teuscher shops in the US, and they fly their chocolate over from Zürich every few days. The reason companies don't do chocolate right is because they add things which shouldn't be there. Check the list of ingredients next time and compare hand made truffles to bar chocolate.
"In fact I want states to go after vehicle purchasers who buy their vehicles in other states to avoid higher taxes."
They do, and quite resonably. In one state, which has almost 10% sales tax on cars, they will charge a use tax when you register your car. That way, say you have a State A license, go to State B and buy a car with 0% tax there. Then you bring it back and start driving around with State B plates (you had to register the car somewhere). You get stopped for a broken tail light, the cop notices you have State A license and State B registration. He checks your address on the license and the registration, if they are both in State A, wham-o, you avoided taxes. Even if they are different, they'll investigate. A woman at work here did just that and got caught just like that and was charged with tax evasion, but got away with heavy fines rather than jail time.
"Both OS's need to be installed, patched and hardened prior to network connection. Both OS's need competent administrators or all bets are off.
Windows is more susceptable to malware/virus attack, but as Linux installations gain marketshare they will get hit as well. Thats a fact of life."
Since you point out the need for competent administrators, we'll go with the assumption that we have them. With that assumption, along with a properly hardened and patched machine, Windows is no more or less susceptable to malware or viruses. I include not running user applications as the super user in my definition of a competently configured machine. I do not know of any malware that has been known to work on a fully patched, competently configured machine, be it Windows XP or Linux. If all bets are off, they are both susceptable (though not necessarily both attacked). If all bets are not off, and the boxes are competently configured, they are both not susceptable (though not necessarily both attacked). So I must disagree with your statement that Windows is more susceptable than Linux.
There certainly is not a finite file size. A file is a set of bits. True, there exist file systems which place constraints on file size, as there exist phsycial media which place constraints on file size. That though is not necessarily always the case. In any case if you find a way of two-way mapping 1:1 an infitite set to a finite set, publish a paper, get famous, and profit handsomly. You'd deserve it.
Also, say you have a file sized 2^(2^48), which is not unreasonable. Hash that with a 160-bit hash. You are mapping 2^(2^48) different points in the original data set to 2^160 different points in the hash set. So each point in the hash set corresponds to 2^(2^48) / 2^160 or 2^(2^48 - 160). That's still a large number. In fact, you've reduced the search space from 2^281474976710656 (no data, hash length of 0, or trying to guess the original file which was infinitely compressed, etc) to 2^281474976710496 (160-bits hash as information, trying to guess the original data). This is a reduction of So even taking into account known headers (which will adjust the search space by a constant factor, not even linear or exponential factor), you still have a lot of guessing to do. Of course, with larger files, your reduction of the search space is going to be even smaller. I suppose it is feasable if you have a very constrained format for your data, but then you'd have to treat all unique, valid combination of bits as a seperate point in the original data set.
I've assumed a large file where any sequence of bits is valid data. But, the more constrained the data, the less information. So in the end we are really talking about only compressing the useful information, which reduces to the same problem really. Take a video file with is 100 bytes header and 1,000,000 bites useful data. You can just treat that as a 1,000,000 byte binary unconstrained file and analyze as above. Unless you want to do very fancy video analysis --"I know this is a news program so I'm going to constrain my search to valid 'talking head' type video" kind of thought.
Saying "My Firefox was not effeceted at all" implies to me that your Firefox had been modified to close this particular vunerability. It seems that the actual case is that you added a layer of security--which everyone should do as much as worthwhile--so the browser you are using is inconsequential in this case. Specifying Firefox might be misleading in this case. Saying that your proxy servers protected your browser might be more apt and not imply you had fixed the actual vulnerability.
They have found a solution to one symptom of content spam. Not solving all the symptoms is a worthy goal, but a small step in the right direction is better than no step at all. Are you suggesting that the only worthy pursuit is one that eradicates the problem completely?
Slashdot Mirror
I pitty the poor folk that take advice about a product from someone who has formed an opinion about it by avoiding it. Granted, past history can certainly be a factor, but I personally like to make informed decisions. Sometimes I do the research myself, other times I turn to sources that do credible research on my behalf. I never take advice from an opinionated source which does not do credible research, and hope to urge others to also make informed decisions.
I agree with you that economic sanctions and international diplomacy do work, despite what some politicians might tell you.
I'd like to make one counter argument to your statement "Cuba is clearly badly off because of their sanctions." While I do agree that in many aspects they are worse off, there is one very interesting consequence of the sanctions which was supposed to hurt Cuba but actually helped it quite a bit. Cuba used to farm with Soviet equipment and fertilizer and enjoyed relative prosperity in agriculture. Once the Soviet Union fell and they had no source of parts for their tractors, fertilizer for their fields, or alternative food imports, they were forced to turn to a very basic method of agriculture.
Using agriculture texts written in the 1800's due to the loss of a lot of the knowledge in the public memory, they employ efficient crop rotation, tilling, and sustainable methods to grow their crops. So while the United States has a very poor food supply, Cuba is enjoying some of the healthiest and most nutritious food in this modern age.
I learned a lot of this from the article "the cuba diet" in the April 2005 Harper's Magazine. [1]
[1] Harper's 4/2005 ToCAlthough I philosophically agree with you, I have reservations when it comes to certain areas of societal life. What you are espousing is that the government stay out of the idividual life. There are areas where I feel the government has a duty to apply its values on others. The first that comes to mind is the environment. According to current economic theory (which ingores the societal aspect), each will do what is best for them. Many effects on the environment do not present a "clear and present danger" with long term and slow environmental changes. Its the government's job to study such changes and invoke a policy that permits a long term sustainability of this society of individuals free to persue their own happiness.
I would like to argue that the Nikon F6 is the top professional camera from Nikon, not the D2X. Perhaps the article should state "top digital professional camera" or somesuch since there is still heated debate in the professional world of digital vs. film. There are things that are easier to do with film and things that are easier to do with digital. The neat thing is that film scanners can produce great digital representations of film exposures, yet getting great film exposures from a digital file is hard. In any case, I don't really want to get into it, but point out that film cameras are still a bit more flexible and many professionals still prefer them.
On the penultimate syllable.
It already does! It's called NTFS. The reason you might not be aware of this fact is that the standard Windows file management tools ignore this fact. There's a caution statement [1] that one needs specific tools in order to differentiate files whose names differ only in case. Interix, for example, provides such tools. As does Windows Services for Unix.
W indows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resour ces/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkc _fil_wqcq.asp
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/
I was thinking: man-dri-va... all short vowels.
If you'd cycle to charge your battery, why not cycle to your destination instead?
"Sure, I could get any and all of the above, but... compared to using my existing setup and a PSP to accomplish basically the same goal ( plus play killer games ), I don't see the benefit, unless you're into supporting Microsoft."
I don't quite understand. I do understand your situation: you lack the hardware, software, and already recieve the same content on another pay service to which you already subscribe. When I read, "I don't see the benefit", I understood that to mean just that--there is not benefit for you and your situation. So, what I don't understand stand is "unless you're into supporting Microsoft". Who? The reader? One? Those referants might not have the same situation. Their situation might be already having the hardware, the software, and not already subscribing to the same content through a different pay serivce. Perhaps they find--as you do--that they "pay way too much" for it and are willing to dump their current subscription for one cheaper but better targetted to their needs.
I any case, I too am curious how this service fares. I am hoping for a future where video entertainment is a la carte. No longer will cable providers be able to bundle niche properties with popular properties to establish high channel count subscription levels which might yield about 5% interesting content. No longer will niche properties have obscured demographics--as they are often measured by channel package--to lure advertisers in and stay profitable.
On the other hand, I fear the possibility that an a la carte system will increase the premium on interesting-to-me but not-popular-with-advertiesers content. Imagine a demographic which has heavy TiVo use, never watches commercials, and has expensive production tastes. Producing the programming might cost above average, yet the advertisement yield would be lower than average. So, perhaps the networks go competely--or at least heavily--with subscription income to fund the programming.
Anyhow, sorry for the lengthy brain spill. Here's hoping that the entertainment industry delivers the products we want at reasonable rates so everyone can be happy in the end.
I second that. I first tried parsing it as the cuprit who wrote a virus called Leaked Doctor was found by Episode. I started thinking "What's Episode?" Was it some government initiative I haven't heard of or some monitoring software? And "What's Leaked Doctor?" Perhaps it was a runaway therapist AI or something. After a second and third parse, I grouped the overlapping phrases correctly. So, yeah, how about some quotes around titles.
I suppose you could try. Just hope that the retailed doesn't produce surveillence tapes of you purchaing said big screen TV or else the credit card company might choose to charge you with fraud.
I have a picture on my Bank of America card. And a copy of the signature printed under it on the front, as well as my signature written on the back. I've never had to show a second form of ID, even for large purchases.
The first statement can only (correctly) be interrpreted in one way. The ambiguity arises from poor parsing. A reader might interpret the sentence how he or she see fit based on the fact that many writers may mean to modify the first clause, but in actually modify the second. The proliferation of such writing might condition readers to have to stop and think "did the writer mean to modify the first or second clause?", hence their ambiguity. As it stands though, there really is no ambiguity.
Actually it does. When one uses a modifying phrase, one must use commas to alter the phrase it modifies. Otherwise it modifies the closest phrase.
Witness:
The sentences above have a single meaning each. The prefered solution is to put the modifing phrase next to the modified phrase.
There is more information about dangling modifiers available on the Web.
Although you can hide the computer connection through many layers of deception, the actual funds transfer is done within the confines of the banks' network. Large transfers--even electronic ones--have a holding period which allows the banks to verify the transaction. I'm not sure that the holding period helped in this particular case, but it seems to me that ultimatley there are checks in place regardless of how the transfer transaction was entered in the first place.
Exactly, as reported on BBC World this morning. When I read the summary I was like "did I totally misunderstand the anchorwoman earlier?" When I checked the article, it reaffirmed that indead I had understood correctly and the summary is wrong. That's incorragable. Sometimes I wonder if the submitters RTFA.
For good Chocolate, going with truffles made is small batches is best. Something like Lindt (not their mass produced bars, but their hand made truffles on Bahnhoffstr.) or Teuscher. There are a few Teuscher shops in the US, and they fly their chocolate over from Zürich every few days. The reason companies don't do chocolate right is because they add things which shouldn't be there. Check the list of ingredients next time and compare hand made truffles to bar chocolate.
http://www.portablemediacentermag.com/
Or buy a portable media center.
If you try http://www.yessmoke.ch/ you might have better luck.
"In fact I want states to go after vehicle purchasers who buy their vehicles in other states to avoid higher taxes."
They do, and quite resonably. In one state, which has almost 10% sales tax on cars, they will charge a use tax when you register your car. That way, say you have a State A license, go to State B and buy a car with 0% tax there. Then you bring it back and start driving around with State B plates (you had to register the car somewhere). You get stopped for a broken tail light, the cop notices you have State A license and State B registration. He checks your address on the license and the registration, if they are both in State A, wham-o, you avoided taxes. Even if they are different, they'll investigate. A woman at work here did just that and got caught just like that and was charged with tax evasion, but got away with heavy fines rather than jail time.
"Both OS's need to be installed, patched and hardened prior to network connection. Both OS's need competent administrators or all bets are off.
Windows is more susceptable to malware/virus attack, but as Linux installations gain marketshare they will get hit as well. Thats a fact of life."
Since you point out the need for competent administrators, we'll go with the assumption that we have them. With that assumption, along with a properly hardened and patched machine, Windows is no more or less susceptable to malware or viruses. I include not running user applications as the super user in my definition of a competently configured machine. I do not know of any malware that has been known to work on a fully patched, competently configured machine, be it Windows XP or Linux. If all bets are off, they are both susceptable (though not necessarily both attacked). If all bets are not off, and the boxes are competently configured, they are both not susceptable (though not necessarily both attacked). So I must disagree with your statement that Windows is more susceptable than Linux.
There certainly is not a finite file size. A file is a set of bits. True, there exist file systems which place constraints on file size, as there exist phsycial media which place constraints on file size. That though is not necessarily always the case. In any case if you find a way of two-way mapping 1:1 an infitite set to a finite set, publish a paper, get famous, and profit handsomly. You'd deserve it.
Also, say you have a file sized 2^(2^48), which is not unreasonable. Hash that with a 160-bit hash. You are mapping 2^(2^48) different points in the original data set to 2^160 different points in the hash set. So each point in the hash set corresponds to 2^(2^48) / 2^160 or 2^(2^48 - 160). That's still a large number. In fact, you've reduced the search space from 2^281474976710656 (no data, hash length of 0, or trying to guess the original file which was infinitely compressed, etc) to 2^281474976710496 (160-bits hash as information, trying to guess the original data). This is a reduction of So even taking into account known headers (which will adjust the search space by a constant factor, not even linear or exponential factor), you still have a lot of guessing to do. Of course, with larger files, your reduction of the search space is going to be even smaller. I suppose it is feasable if you have a very constrained format for your data, but then you'd have to treat all unique, valid combination of bits as a seperate point in the original data set.
I've assumed a large file where any sequence of bits is valid data. But, the more constrained the data, the less information. So in the end we are really talking about only compressing the useful information, which reduces to the same problem really. Take a video file with is 100 bytes header and 1,000,000 bites useful data. You can just treat that as a 1,000,000 byte binary unconstrained file and analyze as above. Unless you want to do very fancy video analysis --"I know this is a news program so I'm going to constrain my search to valid 'talking head' type video" kind of thought.
Saying "My Firefox was not effeceted at all" implies to me that your Firefox had been modified to close this particular vunerability. It seems that the actual case is that you added a layer of security--which everyone should do as much as worthwhile--so the browser you are using is inconsequential in this case. Specifying Firefox might be misleading in this case. Saying that your proxy servers protected your browser might be more apt and not imply you had fixed the actual vulnerability.
"Plus you could send out a one time email to every email address on the list..."
In trying to stop a spammer, I certainly would not turn to spamming. Then I would be no better than those I berate.
They have found a solution to one symptom of content spam. Not solving all the symptoms is a worthy goal, but a small step in the right direction is better than no step at all. Are you suggesting that the only worthy pursuit is one that eradicates the problem completely?