From their website: "The RLX System 300ex chassis holds 24 ServerBlades in 3U and supports the new ServerBlade 1200i." -- and it's even based on Linus's Transmeta chipset!
Not sure how Sun's server can top this... somebody help me out here.
You can bet I'm going to be calling a few of my 'friends' in Washington in the near future -- I'm ashamed of this showing.
I became a Republican because I believe in the values of rugged individualism, less government, and more personal responsibility. This is a poor showing (to say the least) of these values.
The few remaining wild areas include the northern forests of Alaska, Canada and Russia; the high plateaus of Tibet and Mongolia; and much of the Amazon River Basin.
Yeah. And the area between Tucson, AZ and Phoenix, AZ isn't 'pristene' or something?? What about most of Nevada? Or parts of Northern California? Sheesh -- this is just the stuff I can name off the TOP OF MY HEAD.
"The map of the human footprint is a clear-eyed view of our influence on the Earth," Eric Sanderson, a landscape ecologist for the WCS, who led the report, said in a statement.
I don't know what's worse -- the guy that makes statements like this, or the company (CNN) that publishes them. This is just irresponsible! 'Clear-eyed view of our influence on the Earth'... more like a 'clear-eyed view of our influence on idiots with half a brain'. Give me a break.
Just wanted to point out that other companies are already working on this concept, too. 'The Mind Electric' has a very nice set of existing Java based web-services tools.
They are apparently expanding this toolkit to a 'grid service platform' called 'Gaia' detailed here.
From the website:
GAIA is a service-oriented grid-computing platform that connects producers and consumers of services and data while shielding them from issues like fail over, load balancing and clustering. GAIA can connect and control web services hosted on any combination of platforms, and uses a P2P architecture for reliability and scalability.
GAIA is based on simple yet powerful concepts, can run on machines ranging from enterprise servers to wireless PDAs, and has native implementations for Java and Microsoft.NET.
Legend has it that if a penny fell from the top of the Empire State Building, by the time it hit the pavement it would be travelling at a speed fast enough to kill somebody, or at least put a big dent in his or her head. This would make sense from a scientific point of view, but what remains to be answered is whether or not the penny could still be spent at the local cornershop afterward. And, one might ask, what if it were bigger change, say a silver dollar, or fifty-pence? Then the person on the pavement, so the answer goes, would be able to buy a paper.
I would agree. Reading Feynman's 'Six easy pieces' and actually learning a thing or two about Quantum Physics might shed some 'light' on the subject (I couldn't resist the pun).:-)
In all these cases, companies are pitching their wares using public information, knowing full well that a small percentage of the population will choose not to check the details. Exploitive? Maybe...but certainly not illegal. And it can't even remotely be considered slamming.
I completely agree! And what you didn't point out (enough, I think) is that they had the CHOICE to read the email, the CHOICE to examine whether or not this was a good purchase decision, the CHOICE to get further information from Comodo (and Comodo made a good CHOICE by being honest), and the CHOICE to purchase the cert from Comodo, or any other company for that matter.
Nevertheless, I've reported the practice to the FTC."
This is exactly what's wrong with the Internet, at this point (IMHO). People are too used to government stepping in and 'protecting' them from 'overpowering' capitalist companies. ("Oh no -- look away, the SSL cert is too inviting... don't stare directly at the cert!")
Also, what happens if this was an overseas company? Who are you going to cry to then? Interpol?
Give me a break -- Comodo is ingenius. I'm kicking myself for not starting up a company that sells certs and doing the same thing before they did. I'd be willing to bet that more folks will take advantage of this type of public information as they realize that Comodo and other companies are making a killing by 'out foxing' the competition.
As someone who went to the 'Con last year (it was my first year) I can highly recommend it. It's nothing like you've ever seen before, and you'll learn more about the inner-workings of security in 3 days than you could in a year at an 'institution of higher learning'. See the Defcon site for more information.
I think it's an INCREDIBLE assumption to say that 'they can not only drink, but breathe when they get to Mars'. The text (from the article itself) 'The same design of instrument was used on the Lunar Prospector spacecraft that discovered ice in the shadowed regions of the Moon's poles in 1998' seems to show why this is a bad assumption. We can't just go trouncing around on our own moon without space-suits 'just because we found water-based ice'.
Some funny idiosyncrasies discovered while reading coverage of this on Wired online:
Then Bell paused for a moment and reconsidered. "There's a risk you could say it covers things like even a digital clock program on your computer," he said.
Later in the article...
"...A second loophole would grandfather in code that existed before the CBDTPA took effect. Software that was manufactured and in the hands of consumers before the FCC's rules take effect would be exempt."
Doesn't this introduce a chicken-and-egg problem? If I can't read my clock (because it's digitially protected using the mechanism discussed) how can I know if the code I'm looking at should be grandfathered in?
While the pirate in me would really would like to see this influencing our courts, it would seem that US Law is sovereign. That's not to say that we wouldn't see this case in action in our court systems, it's just that it might have a completely different outcome in the courts.
("Different outcome" as in 'theoretical' not as in 'real' -- I still think that even if the verdict was that Kazaa was a stinking pile of dung which should be outlawed, there really isn't much that anyone might do because of Kazaa's 'decentralized' nature).
To quote the Constitution of the United States of America - Article 3 section 2:
The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;-- between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects
Note that it seems to say that the laws of the United States (and not other countries) govern the courts in this country -- even though disputes might involve 'foreign states'.
I blame Sandra Bullock (in the movie "The Net"). If she wasn't so darned attractive, and if she didn't make the position of 'beta tester' so darned glamorous, I wouldn't be interested in sharing nudie pictures of her.
Two other major cable companies, AT&T Broadband and AOL Time Warner Inc., as well as Cablevision Systems Corp., which serves 3 million subscribers in suburban New York, all say they allow the use of VPNs by residential subscribers but they won't provide user support.
It doesn't state that they're not allowed, it says it's not SUPPORTED.
If you own the hotel, you get to say who gets in the pool...
Actually, I think that's too small of scope for Microsoft -- they own several small 'countries' and if you want to stay overnight, you now have to stay in a MS Hotel (tm).
This is totally bogus. When are game manufacturers (in this case) going to realize that they don't have to give up this much control over their userbase? Microsoft could potentially steer users to THEIR games (and I'm sure in many cases already do). More companies need to invest in infrastructure and online services and MS's online empire will start to crumble -- but they need to act fast. Microsoft now has the potential to really have a strangle hold on customers: They now have email addresses (read: 'sales leads') for a BUNCH of folks.
Feynman, Einstein -- and Adams???
on
God's Debris
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I guess this idea is already being voiced a lot here -- but I just don't think of Scott Adams as being any kind of a philosopher. He's a cartoonist. A guy who writes without really thinking about a problem -- just someone who writes down observations that occur to HIM, and him alone.
Richard Feynman was a physicist that had some interesting ideas on life.
Albert Einstein was a physicist that had some interesting ideas on life.
Douglas Adams had some interesting ideas on life, the universe, and everything.
Scott Adams is a cartoonist, with some really depressing and unfounded ideas about life.
If you're referring to the 'threat' of someone actually using the phrase 'God bless America' in a sign at a school (see http://www.sacbee.com/news/news/old/local03_200110 13.html for more information) then yep -- I suppose the ACLU is right on target.
If you're referring to Ashcroft 'investigating' whether or not we should create a national ID system, or convict hackers to life in prision (a little extreme, if you ask me) -- the ACLU has been strangely silent (as far as I know -- correct me if I'm wrong, of course).
Sadly, I think the ACLU is actually adding to the distraction of the real issues in our country right now. They're not helping anyone but their own best intrests (which as far as I know, is nothing new).
I think the real issue that the bugs the hell out of the ACLU right now is that it's becoming fashionable to 1.) Stand up against folks like the ACLU who are simply distracting America from being patriotic 2.) Be a patriotic American 3.) Be a 'God fearing' American 4.) be a soldier, actually taking part in an effort to stop terrorism.
Peggy Noonan said it best with her column this past week, "Welcome back Duke" (referring to John Wayne, of course).
Senator Judd Gregg (R - NH) wants to propose legislation that would require all cryptography to have standard 'backdoors'. I personally think that this is 'wrong-headed'... but regardless of what I think, you can LET HIM KNOW PERSONALLY how you feel about his proposed legislation:
Phone: (202) 224-3324
Fax: (202) 224-4952
(Taken from http://politics.yahoo.com/politics/congress/senate/list_of_members/375/ )
While I would agree that this is the classic explanation of this phenomena I think it's important to point out that the photons can't be observed directly (like under a microscope) -- and we honestly don't know what the heck is going on at this point.
The article points out Einsteins famous quote describing this phenomena is "spooky action at a distance" -- which it is. I'm sure if you asked Schroedinger (spelling?) he'd tell you that the photon 'was neither split, nor one photon'... because we just don't know.
If you want an interesting (although hardly scientific) read on this subject, check out Michael Chricton's 'Timeline' book.
Hey... they got Capone on tax evasion. Wouldn't it just be pathetic if Microsoft actually HELPED THE WORLD by giving the US a legal justification for putting him on trial. Yikes. I pray this scenario doesn't unfold -- it wouldn't be pretty.
I think it's a stupid idea to even toss around the idea of a 'crypto back door'. I can understand why politicians are desperately attempting to dig up the 'silver bullet' that would have stopped the WTC tragedy (and will stop the next horrific event from happening) -- but they're barking up the wrong tree for several reasons.
Making crypto 'safe' with a back door effectively makes it useless. Why would anyone in their right mind use a cryptographic algorithm knowing that a perfect stranger has a 'backdoor pass' to their information? The whole point of crypto is to only allow the intended recipient to view the secret information.
This idea would weaken any cipher that this idea is applied to. Why? Simple. Key recovery in a datastream you haven't ever seen before depends basically on one of 2 things: Brute force, and a little ingenuity. If you know that the cipher has a 'universal backdoor' then each stream encrypted with the cipher will be that much easier to crack -- because the streams will have to be somewhat similar.
What happens when the wrong people get the 'back door' key? You don't think that someone dangerous is going to somehow either recover the key manually, or steal it? Think again. A 'back door' key (or set of keys) of this scope would be too good to pass up. Why bother attempting to recover a key that unlocks one stream, when you can unlock a whole set of streams?
The cat's already out of the bag Why would somebody who really wants to keep information secret use a cipher that didn't keep it secret -- especially when there are so many good ciphers (RC4, Twofish, etc.) that don't have a backdoor?
In short -- this is a braindead thought process that will lead the U.S. straight into another disaster.
Slashdot Mirror
From their website: "The RLX System 300ex chassis holds 24 ServerBlades in 3U and supports the new ServerBlade 1200i." -- and it's even based on Linus's Transmeta chipset!
Not sure how Sun's server can top this... somebody help me out here.
I admit it.
I'm a Republican.
You can bet I'm going to be calling a few of my 'friends' in Washington in the near future -- I'm ashamed of this showing.
I became a Republican because I believe in the values of rugged individualism, less government, and more personal responsibility. This is a poor showing (to say the least) of these values.
The few remaining wild areas include the northern forests of Alaska, Canada and Russia; the high plateaus of Tibet and Mongolia; and much of the Amazon River Basin.
Yeah. And the area between Tucson, AZ and Phoenix, AZ isn't 'pristene' or something?? What about most of Nevada? Or parts of Northern California? Sheesh -- this is just the stuff I can name off the TOP OF MY HEAD.
"The map of the human footprint is a clear-eyed view of our influence on the Earth," Eric Sanderson, a landscape ecologist for the WCS, who led the report, said in a statement.
I don't know what's worse -- the guy that makes statements like this, or the company (CNN) that publishes them. This is just irresponsible! 'Clear-eyed view of our influence on the Earth' ... more like a 'clear-eyed view of our influence on idiots with half a brain'. Give me a break.
They are apparently expanding this toolkit to a 'grid service platform' called 'Gaia' detailed here.
From the website:
GAIA is a service-oriented grid-computing platform that connects producers and consumers of services and data while shielding them from issues like fail over, load balancing and clustering. GAIA can connect and control web services hosted on any combination of platforms, and uses a P2P architecture for reliability and scalability.
GAIA is based on simple yet powerful concepts, can run on machines ranging from enterprise servers to wireless PDAs, and has native implementations for Java and Microsoft .NET.
Sorry -- I think this has already been done too many times by other people (sadly). You'd have a hard time proving that there was no 'prior art'.
My $.01
Referring to the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy ...
Legend has it that if a penny fell from the top of the Empire State Building, by the time it hit the pavement it would be travelling at a speed fast enough to kill somebody, or at least put a big dent in his or her head. This would make sense from a scientific point of view, but what remains to be answered is whether or not the penny could still be spent at the local cornershop afterward. And, one might ask, what if it were bigger change, say a silver dollar, or fifty-pence? Then the person on the pavement, so the answer goes, would be able to buy a paper.
I would agree. Reading Feynman's 'Six easy pieces' and actually learning a thing or two about Quantum Physics might shed some 'light' on the subject (I couldn't resist the pun). :-)
I completely agree! And what you didn't point out (enough, I think) is that they had the CHOICE to read the email, the CHOICE to examine whether or not this was a good purchase decision, the CHOICE to get further information from Comodo (and Comodo made a good CHOICE by being honest), and the CHOICE to purchase the cert from Comodo, or any other company for that matter.
Nevertheless, I've reported the practice to the FTC."
This is exactly what's wrong with the Internet, at this point (IMHO). People are too used to government stepping in and 'protecting' them from 'overpowering' capitalist companies. ("Oh no -- look away, the SSL cert is too inviting ... don't stare directly at the cert!")
Also, what happens if this was an overseas company? Who are you going to cry to then? Interpol?
Give me a break -- Comodo is ingenius. I'm kicking myself for not starting up a company that sells certs and doing the same thing before they did. I'd be willing to bet that more folks will take advantage of this type of public information as they realize that Comodo and other companies are making a killing by 'out foxing' the competition.
As someone who went to the 'Con last year (it was my first year) I can highly recommend it. It's nothing like you've ever seen before, and you'll learn more about the inner-workings of security in 3 days than you could in a year at an 'institution of higher learning'. See the Defcon site for more information.
I think it's an INCREDIBLE assumption to say that 'they can not only drink, but breathe when they get to Mars'. The text (from the article itself) 'The same design of instrument was used on the Lunar Prospector spacecraft that discovered ice in the shadowed regions of the Moon's poles in 1998' seems to show why this is a bad assumption. We can't just go trouncing around on our own moon without space-suits 'just because we found water-based ice'.
My $.01
Then Bell paused for a moment and reconsidered. "There's a risk you could say it covers things like even a digital clock program on your computer," he said.
Later in the article...
"...A second loophole would grandfather in code that existed before the CBDTPA took effect. Software that was manufactured and in the hands of consumers before the FCC's rules take effect would be exempt."
Doesn't this introduce a chicken-and-egg problem? If I can't read my clock (because it's digitially protected using the mechanism discussed) how can I know if the code I'm looking at should be grandfathered in?
The good senator needs his head examined.
("Different outcome" as in 'theoretical' not as in 'real' -- I still think that even if the verdict was that Kazaa was a stinking pile of dung which should be outlawed, there really isn't much that anyone might do because of Kazaa's 'decentralized' nature).
To quote the Constitution of the United States of America - Article 3 section 2: The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;-- between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects
Note that it seems to say that the laws of the United States (and not other countries) govern the courts in this country -- even though disputes might involve 'foreign states'.
Apparently, you aren't using Sendmail, or don't know anything about SMTP AUTH.
My $.02
I've got:
With Palm's device, I can't have voice capabilities, the memory is the same, and it's MUCH more expensive.
My $.02
Two other major cable companies, AT&T Broadband and AOL Time Warner Inc., as well as Cablevision Systems Corp., which serves 3 million subscribers in suburban New York, all say they allow the use of VPNs by residential subscribers but they won't provide user support.
It doesn't state that they're not allowed, it says it's not SUPPORTED.
There's a difference.
Actually, I think that's too small of scope for Microsoft -- they own several small 'countries' and if you want to stay overnight, you now have to stay in a MS Hotel (tm).
This is totally bogus. When are game manufacturers (in this case) going to realize that they don't have to give up this much control over their userbase? Microsoft could potentially steer users to THEIR games (and I'm sure in many cases already do). More companies need to invest in infrastructure and online services and MS's online empire will start to crumble -- but they need to act fast. Microsoft now has the potential to really have a strangle hold on customers: They now have email addresses (read: 'sales leads') for a BUNCH of folks.
Ah. But you're wrong.
Richard Feynman was a physicist that had some interesting ideas on life.
Albert Einstein was a physicist that had some interesting ideas on life.
Douglas Adams had some interesting ideas on life, the universe, and everything.
Scott Adams is a cartoonist, with some really depressing and unfounded ideas about life.
Nuff said.
2.) When programmers use these do they really get 'burnt out' after a while?
Dan
If you're referring to the 'threat' of someone actually using the phrase 'God bless America' in a sign at a school (see http://www.sacbee.com/news/news/old/local03_200110 13.html for more information) then yep -- I suppose the ACLU is right on target.
If you're referring to Ashcroft 'investigating' whether or not we should create a national ID system, or convict hackers to life in prision (a little extreme, if you ask me) -- the ACLU has been strangely silent (as far as I know -- correct me if I'm wrong, of course).
Sadly, I think the ACLU is actually adding to the distraction of the real issues in our country right now. They're not helping anyone but their own best intrests (which as far as I know, is nothing new).
I think the real issue that the bugs the hell out of the ACLU right now is that it's becoming fashionable to 1.) Stand up against folks like the ACLU who are simply distracting America from being patriotic 2.) Be a patriotic American 3.) Be a 'God fearing' American 4.) be a soldier, actually taking part in an effort to stop terrorism.
Peggy Noonan said it best with her column this past week, "Welcome back Duke" (referring to John Wayne, of course).
Senator Judd Gregg (R - NH) wants to propose legislation that would require all cryptography to have standard 'backdoors'. I personally think that this is 'wrong-headed' ... but regardless of what I think, you can LET HIM KNOW PERSONALLY how you feel about his proposed legislation:
e /list_of_members/375/ )
Phone: (202) 224-3324
Fax: (202) 224-4952
(Taken from http://politics.yahoo.com/politics/congress/senat
Dan
While I would agree that this is the classic explanation of this phenomena I think it's important to point out that the photons can't be observed directly (like under a microscope) -- and we honestly don't know what the heck is going on at this point.
The article points out Einsteins famous quote describing this phenomena is "spooky action at a distance" -- which it is. I'm sure if you asked Schroedinger (spelling?) he'd tell you that the photon 'was neither split, nor one photon' ... because we just don't know.
If you want an interesting (although hardly scientific) read on this subject, check out Michael Chricton's 'Timeline' book.
Hey ... they got Capone on tax evasion. Wouldn't it just be pathetic if Microsoft actually HELPED THE WORLD by giving the US a legal justification for putting him on trial. Yikes. I pray this scenario doesn't unfold -- it wouldn't be pretty.
Making crypto 'safe' with a back door effectively makes it useless. Why would anyone in their right mind use a cryptographic algorithm knowing that a perfect stranger has a 'backdoor pass' to their information? The whole point of crypto is to only allow the intended recipient to view the secret information.
This idea would weaken any cipher that this idea is applied to. Why? Simple. Key recovery in a datastream you haven't ever seen before depends basically on one of 2 things: Brute force, and a little ingenuity. If you know that the cipher has a 'universal backdoor' then each stream encrypted with the cipher will be that much easier to crack -- because the streams will have to be somewhat similar.
What happens when the wrong people get the 'back door' key? You don't think that someone dangerous is going to somehow either recover the key manually, or steal it? Think again. A 'back door' key (or set of keys) of this scope would be too good to pass up. Why bother attempting to recover a key that unlocks one stream, when you can unlock a whole set of streams?
The cat's already out of the bag Why would somebody who really wants to keep information secret use a cipher that didn't keep it secret -- especially when there are so many good ciphers (RC4, Twofish, etc.) that don't have a backdoor? In short -- this is a braindead thought process that will lead the U.S. straight into another disaster.