#1 Learn a little about the history of computing. People like yourself never seem to realize, that computers almost resemble biology, with all the different species and relationships. It's quite easy to have an interest in what part these machines played...
On the contrary, it's pretty fucking obvious to anyone with any interest in computing that there's an almost biological heredity tree to the machines and the organizations built around them. I don't see how shelling out $1000 for an example of an outdated machine helps you to understand that. I managed to grasp the idea of man's evolution without buying a fully-functional Neanderthal skeleton. Didn't you?
#2 Teach. Grade schoolers, since obivously any older than that, and they'll be too stupid to appreciate it. Shame we couldn't have got to you in early childhood, you might have turned out better than this...
Nice barb, but let's pretend you're not just being an asshole and look at your point: Sure, it's swell as a teaching aid. I'll admit I hadn't considered that. I currently have no use for such a teaching aid, as I have no kids and my friends either have a decent grasp of basic computing or just aren't interested. Besides, if they were, they could buy their own damned $1000 learning aid.
#3 Learn assembly language on a CPU that is a bit simpler than your modern superpipelined "no one can keep track of it" predictive scheduling and execution chip. Of course, someone like yourself would have no interest in that either. Also would apply to teaching the same.
I actually did have some interest in learning assembly language for a simple CPU, just to get a feel for how the machine works at that level. Guess what? I did it in a fucking emulator, like everyone else born after 1970. Get the fuck over yourself.
#4 Learn electronics and circuit design. Teach it. Sure, I want to do my own custom PCI cards, but this would be a great way to start learning. Though IEEE 696 did have some funky power requirements... may also be a +5/+12v version of the bus. Dunno.
Sure, that could be cool. I'm not so much interested in building hardware, but knock yourself out.
#5 Provide a break from having to use the generic and boring winbox that everyone is forced to use all the time. (Note: For others. For myself I have a nice collection to play with.)
This is my point. Use it for what? The reason this machine was dead was that it wasn't capable of handling modern computing needs. It had its time, I'm sure it was swell, but we've moved on. If you just want it for your collection, that's cool, but don't pretend it's particularly useful.
#6 Annoy stupid fucks like yourself, who will never get it. Yes, I'll openly admit it. It's not by accident we antagonize morons like yourself, we actually like it. It's the one tolerable thing about your entire existence. I mean, you've all but admitted that you and those like you commandeered our hobby and occupation because of decent paychecks, and then have the audacity to insult what little is left of it. If we can't torture you, then the world is even less bareable.
That's a pretty sad state of affairs. I'm not annoyed by your toy computer. I'm not annoyed that you think it's the shit and want to show it off. What annoys me is the holier-than-thou attitude you've adopted for no reason other than your own amusement. You're a textbook asshole, irrespective of my opinion of your toys. If you think you're torturing me, I don't know what to tell you... you're a pathetic dick, but that's hardly nails on a chalkboard to me.
There's a lot of knowledge out there, and I don't feel any need to pursue whatever knowledge this blinky box can give me. I've got other projects, and I'm on them and learning from them. If it offends you personally that I don't share the same interests that you do, that's a damn shame; but to think it reflects on me is the most twisted wishful thinking I've seen in some time.
Like I said, whatever floats your boat. Your buddy was the one who lashed out without provocation, not me.
Hi. I'm into computers because I have a "pure thirst for knowledge". I try new things for the sheer hell of it. I'm not in it for the money.
I'm also not in the least bit interested in this IMSAI toy, in part because it's useless. Stick me in the "whatever floats your boat" camp along with the guy you're responding to.
What you don't seem to understand is that the phrase "unwashed masses" is generally used sarcastically, to mock people who have an elitist attitude like yours. "Carpetbagger" is used similarly nowadays, to mock the unreasonably resentful. You can't imagine how amusing it is to see you use both terms without a trace of sarcasm.
The ability to store my data somewhere the hell else
I enter data, it gets synced (transparently) over the Internet-- first hop wireless-- to my server. Do it through my cellular carrier, I don't care. I read data, it gets cached locally unless it's updated. But there's no need to cache everything locally, so don't load my PDA up with expensive memory.
Do this, make it reliable, and make it cost less than $100, and I'll probably buy a couple and just leave them where I might need them-- one at work, one in the car, one at home.
Actually, this is the free software movement's aim. You're just missing an important piece of the puzzle: all software would be in the public domain.
The GPL does not allow the copyright holder to insist on usage, it only allows him to insist that distributed changes be distributed in source form.
I forget where I read it, but someone from the FSF (maybe it was Stallman) has basically said that the GPL is a hack and necessary because of copyright law... that you have to work within the system to bring an end to it. His contention was that just throwing your code out into the public domain is not effective so long as copyright exists. You have to admit, it makes a lot of sense, if that's your end goal.
Personally, I'm down with copyright. I just think someone needs to put it back in check.
You're missing the point. The important thing here is that he's better than you. He's able to use "quotes" for "sarcastic effect", and to create a "mocking tone".
He also probably does not know who or what Starband is or why he should give a damn, and because he genuinely doesn't care, it follows that you are a fool for even potentially being interested. The fact that you are annoyed by the site editors' complete failure to impart any relevant details whatsoever to help you make up your mind merely indicates your incomplete indoctrination to the Snotty Dork Treehouse Club and outs you as an inferior geek-- despite the fact that he's just faking it himself.
How dare you ask for even a hook in a synopsis? After all, this is the internet. You can google for your own hook, you incompetent, lazy simpleton.
Also, YOU USE THE SAME PASSWORD ON TEN SYSTEMS?!?! So, now instead of cracking one box, anyone who breaks into any one of the 10 systems immediately has access to them all. Awesome.
Sure. But let's bear in mind that I have *active* accounts on upward of thirty systems, nevermind random web crap and so forth. Sure, I can pick thirty weaker passwords to remember than the four or five I actually use, but does that make me more secure?
Let's think about this... If I have thirty weak passwords on thirty systems, someone has thirty points of vulnerability to work with. We're operating on the assumption that I won't know if a password is cracked, because otherwise this is a moot issue... so let's say one of those thirty passwords is compromised. At this point, my passwords fall like dominos because the intruder has a very good shot at watching me log into various systems from the one he cracked.
It depends on where you want the barrier... harder initial entry followed by easier penetration of other systems, or easier initial entry followed by slightly more difficult penetration of other systems. I choose the former, because (A) it makes my life easier, and (B) it's worked quite well for me.
As for your weak password arguement, that should be taken care of when the user changes the password. If you ensure that they have atleast 6 characters: one capitalized letter, one lower case letter, and one number that's a minimum 1.6*10^10 combinations. Not bad.
The very first thing your users will do is write that password down. You can probably enforce that once or twice... on the systems I administer, I enforce it when the user chooses to change his password. But people run out of memorable 6-character partially-capitalized partially-numeric strings pretty rapidly, and the more frequently you make them replace those passwords, the more you aggravate the problem.
The reason mandatory password changes are used to limit the window of vulnerabiltiy in the event someone does get the password (by hook or by crook). What if someone gains access to your strong password without your knowledge? If you don't change it in 3, 6, or 12 months (or years), they have complete access, potentially without your knowledge.
It's very likely that if someone gained access to my strong password without my knowledge, they'll have access to the next one I choose as well. Weakening the passwords just helps them get that initial foothold.
If anything, this will further advance the acceptance of Perl.
The biggest problems with Perl are its uglified, glued-on OO capabilities and its general legibility.
You can do some decent OO with it, yes, but you'll do some language hacking to get there. You can also write some nicely legible Perl code (I try to), but most people don't bother.
Perl5 is going to be around for a long time... a whole lot of code has been written in it, and much of that code is critical due to Perl's usefulness as a glue language and for web programming. So a lot of people are locked into Perl5, at least, for maintaining existing code.
But Perl6 is going to address some of the major problems with Perl5; I expect its adoption rate to be high.
That is the single most hare-brained bit of common security "wisdom" in the world.
Years ago, I picked a password that's random as hell and was very difficult to remember. No password cracker-- dictionary *or* brute force-- has broken it yet. I use this password on about ten systems.
If I changed those passwords on a regular basis, I'd have to come up with something easier to remember to make up for the decreased learning time. That would likely make my password less secure.
I keep running into admins who-- by hook or by crook-- make their users change passwords periodically. The result? Passwords on Post-It notes; passwords that are the names of pets or wives or firstborn children; sets of passwords that are absurdly simple and that get cycled through.
If they had just let the users keep their original passwords and run a cracker against the shadow file to turn up the overly simple ones, their systems would be a lot more secure. But somebody told them changing passwords frequently was a good idea, and by god their users are going to change passwords frequently.
So people from outside the company have a place to contact the company
So employees have a physical space in which to work together
Now, this doesn't really affect the first or second reason for an office. But the third.. what's the point of having a common workspace if your team is never in the same place at the same time?
Hint: If you think telecommunication has advanced to the point that physical, face-to-face communication is no longer necessary, you're nuts. I could maybe work at 80% of my current efficiency without having the other guys a raised voice away, but even then I wouldn't be happy about it.
Call me old-fashioned, but hearing a near-perfect copy of an album I like makes me add it to the list of CDs to look for the next time I go to my local record shop. Literally... I maintain a sorted list.
Part of it is the packaging (album art, liner notes, etc), part of it is a desire to support the artist, part is owning an "original" copy from which "near-perfect" copies can be made endlessly and at will, and part of it is really that a rack full of CDs is just cool.
I buy the disc, rip it to mp3, burn a duplicate, and shelve the "original". The duplicate gets played when I don't have a computer handy-- when I 'm in the car or out walking around-- and otherwise I listen to the mp3s. The mp3s I'd downloaded get tossed, mostly because it's easier to just rip a disc with iTunes than it is to re-tag and organize a bunch of junk I skimmed off the net.
Incidentally, my record budget has grown dangerously since the advent of good music-swapping systems and the proliferation of internet radio; I just find more stuff I didn't know about and that I like. I think I'm averaging a disc a week now, compared to a disc every 4-6 weeks just a couple of years ago. Almost every CD I buy now is something I've already heard in mp3s someone gave me or caught on a stream; the remainder are other albums by those artists. MTV and commercial radio never did a damn thing for me or my music purchasing habits, except perhaps cause me to cringe and lament the state of music in general.
The quotes are there because he's talking about the term itself, not the meaning that it conveys.
If I tell you that the word "word" has four letters, I have to put it in quotes. Otherwise I'm saying that the word word has four letters, and you're left wondering what a "word word" is.
The "simple lesson" here is not that if one commits a crime, one should not brag about it. The lesson is that one should not be a self-centered little prick, with a corollary that messing with other people's stuff as a means of showing off will just piss everyone off and eventually land your arrogant ass in jail.
Even if he hadn't bragged, there's little doubt in my mind that he would have been tracked down and punished, and rightly so.
Slashdot Mirror
It's okay, I get the two mixed up all the time, too.
#1 Learn a little about the history of computing. People like yourself never seem to realize, that computers almost resemble biology, with all the different species and relationships. It's quite easy to have an interest in what part these machines played...
On the contrary, it's pretty fucking obvious to anyone with any interest in computing that there's an almost biological heredity tree to the machines and the organizations built around them. I don't see how shelling out $1000 for an example of an outdated machine helps you to understand that. I managed to grasp the idea of man's evolution without buying a fully-functional Neanderthal skeleton. Didn't you?
#2 Teach. Grade schoolers, since obivously any older than that, and they'll be too stupid to appreciate it. Shame we couldn't have got to you in early childhood, you might have turned out better than this...
Nice barb, but let's pretend you're not just being an asshole and look at your point: Sure, it's swell as a teaching aid. I'll admit I hadn't considered that. I currently have no use for such a teaching aid, as I have no kids and my friends either have a decent grasp of basic computing or just aren't interested. Besides, if they were, they could buy their own damned $1000 learning aid.
#3 Learn assembly language on a CPU that is a bit simpler than your modern superpipelined "no one can keep track of it" predictive scheduling and execution chip. Of course, someone like yourself would have no interest in that either. Also would apply to teaching the same.
I actually did have some interest in learning assembly language for a simple CPU, just to get a feel for how the machine works at that level. Guess what? I did it in a fucking emulator, like everyone else born after 1970. Get the fuck over yourself.
#4 Learn electronics and circuit design. Teach it. Sure, I want to do my own custom PCI cards, but this would be a great way to start learning. Though IEEE 696 did have some funky power requirements... may also be a +5/+12v version of the bus. Dunno.
Sure, that could be cool. I'm not so much interested in building hardware, but knock yourself out.
#5 Provide a break from having to use the generic and boring winbox that everyone is forced to use all the time. (Note: For others. For myself I have a nice collection to play with.)
This is my point. Use it for what? The reason this machine was dead was that it wasn't capable of handling modern computing needs. It had its time, I'm sure it was swell, but we've moved on. If you just want it for your collection, that's cool, but don't pretend it's particularly useful.
#6 Annoy stupid fucks like yourself, who will never get it. Yes, I'll openly admit it. It's not by accident we antagonize morons like yourself, we actually like it. It's the one tolerable thing about your entire existence. I mean, you've all but admitted that you and those like you commandeered our hobby and occupation because of decent paychecks, and then have the audacity to insult what little is left of it. If we can't torture you, then the world is even less bareable.
That's a pretty sad state of affairs. I'm not annoyed by your toy computer. I'm not annoyed that you think it's the shit and want to show it off. What annoys me is the holier-than-thou attitude you've adopted for no reason other than your own amusement. You're a textbook asshole, irrespective of my opinion of your toys. If you think you're torturing me, I don't know what to tell you... you're a pathetic dick, but that's hardly nails on a chalkboard to me.
There's a lot of knowledge out there, and I don't feel any need to pursue whatever knowledge this blinky box can give me. I've got other projects, and I'm on them and learning from them. If it offends you personally that I don't share the same interests that you do, that's a damn shame; but to think it reflects on me is the most twisted wishful thinking I've seen in some time.
Like I said, whatever floats your boat. Your buddy was the one who lashed out without provocation, not me.
I'm also not in the least bit interested in this IMSAI toy, in part because it's useless. Stick me in the "whatever floats your boat" camp along with the guy you're responding to.
What you don't seem to understand is that the phrase "unwashed masses" is generally used sarcastically, to mock people who have an elitist attitude like yours. "Carpetbagger" is used similarly nowadays, to mock the unreasonably resentful. You can't imagine how amusing it is to see you use both terms without a trace of sarcasm.
What transfer? Apple bought Silicon Grail. Apple is Silicon Grail. They hold that license now, and there's no transfer involved.
I'll bet the IRS is pissed.
I think if tomorrow somehow became last year, all bets would be pretty much off.
I enter data, it gets synced (transparently) over the Internet-- first hop wireless-- to my server. Do it through my cellular carrier, I don't care. I read data, it gets cached locally unless it's updated. But there's no need to cache everything locally, so don't load my PDA up with expensive memory.
Do this, make it reliable, and make it cost less than $100, and I'll probably buy a couple and just leave them where I might need them-- one at work, one in the car, one at home.
Yeah, I'd better get one of those.
The GPL does not allow the copyright holder to insist on usage, it only allows him to insist that distributed changes be distributed in source form.
I forget where I read it, but someone from the FSF (maybe it was Stallman) has basically said that the GPL is a hack and necessary because of copyright law... that you have to work within the system to bring an end to it. His contention was that just throwing your code out into the public domain is not effective so long as copyright exists. You have to admit, it makes a lot of sense, if that's your end goal.
Personally, I'm down with copyright. I just think someone needs to put it back in check.
This would not be new.
You've also got fungi ang protista, actually. And those are just your eukariota. Can't forget the prokariota, where we keep all the bacteria.
He also probably does not know who or what Starband is or why he should give a damn, and because he genuinely doesn't care, it follows that you are a fool for even potentially being interested. The fact that you are annoyed by the site editors' complete failure to impart any relevant details whatsoever to help you make up your mind merely indicates your incomplete indoctrination to the Snotty Dork Treehouse Club and outs you as an inferior geek-- despite the fact that he's just faking it himself.
How dare you ask for even a hook in a synopsis? After all, this is the internet. You can google for your own hook, you incompetent, lazy simpleton.
Sure. But let's bear in mind that I have *active* accounts on upward of thirty systems, nevermind random web crap and so forth. Sure, I can pick thirty weaker passwords to remember than the four or five I actually use, but does that make me more secure?
Let's think about this... If I have thirty weak passwords on thirty systems, someone has thirty points of vulnerability to work with. We're operating on the assumption that I won't know if a password is cracked, because otherwise this is a moot issue... so let's say one of those thirty passwords is compromised. At this point, my passwords fall like dominos because the intruder has a very good shot at watching me log into various systems from the one he cracked.
It depends on where you want the barrier... harder initial entry followed by easier penetration of other systems, or easier initial entry followed by slightly more difficult penetration of other systems. I choose the former, because (A) it makes my life easier, and (B) it's worked quite well for me.
As for your weak password arguement, that should be taken care of when the user changes the password. If you ensure that they have atleast 6 characters: one capitalized letter, one lower case letter, and one number that's a minimum 1.6*10^10 combinations. Not bad.
The very first thing your users will do is write that password down. You can probably enforce that once or twice... on the systems I administer, I enforce it when the user chooses to change his password. But people run out of memorable 6-character partially-capitalized partially-numeric strings pretty rapidly, and the more frequently you make them replace those passwords, the more you aggravate the problem.
It's very likely that if someone gained access to my strong password without my knowledge, they'll have access to the next one I choose as well. Weakening the passwords just helps them get that initial foothold.
The biggest problems with Perl are its uglified, glued-on OO capabilities and its general legibility.
You can do some decent OO with it, yes, but you'll do some language hacking to get there. You can also write some nicely legible Perl code (I try to), but most people don't bother.
Perl5 is going to be around for a long time... a whole lot of code has been written in it, and much of that code is critical due to Perl's usefulness as a glue language and for web programming. So a lot of people are locked into Perl5, at least, for maintaining existing code.
But Perl6 is going to address some of the major problems with Perl5; I expect its adoption rate to be high.
Hell no.
That is the single most hare-brained bit of common security "wisdom" in the world.
Years ago, I picked a password that's random as hell and was very difficult to remember. No password cracker-- dictionary *or* brute force-- has broken it yet. I use this password on about ten systems.
If I changed those passwords on a regular basis, I'd have to come up with something easier to remember to make up for the decreased learning time. That would likely make my password less secure.
I keep running into admins who-- by hook or by crook-- make their users change passwords periodically. The result? Passwords on Post-It notes; passwords that are the names of pets or wives or firstborn children; sets of passwords that are absurdly simple and that get cycled through.
If they had just let the users keep their original passwords and run a cracker against the shadow file to turn up the overly simple ones, their systems would be a lot more secure. But somebody told them changing passwords frequently was a good idea, and by god their users are going to change passwords frequently.
- So the company has a place to keep its stuff
- So people from outside the company have a place to contact the company
- So employees have a physical space in which to work together
Now, this doesn't really affect the first or second reason for an office. But the third.. what's the point of having a common workspace if your team is never in the same place at the same time?Hint: If you think telecommunication has advanced to the point that physical, face-to-face communication is no longer necessary, you're nuts. I could maybe work at 80% of my current efficiency without having the other guys a raised voice away, but even then I wouldn't be happy about it.
Part of it is the packaging (album art, liner notes, etc), part of it is a desire to support the artist, part is owning an "original" copy from which "near-perfect" copies can be made endlessly and at will, and part of it is really that a rack full of CDs is just cool.
I buy the disc, rip it to mp3, burn a duplicate, and shelve the "original". The duplicate gets played when I don't have a computer handy-- when I 'm in the car or out walking around-- and otherwise I listen to the mp3s. The mp3s I'd downloaded get tossed, mostly because it's easier to just rip a disc with iTunes than it is to re-tag and organize a bunch of junk I skimmed off the net.
Incidentally, my record budget has grown dangerously since the advent of good music-swapping systems and the proliferation of internet radio; I just find more stuff I didn't know about and that I like. I think I'm averaging a disc a week now, compared to a disc every 4-6 weeks just a couple of years ago. Almost every CD I buy now is something I've already heard in mp3s someone gave me or caught on a stream; the remainder are other albums by those artists. MTV and commercial radio never did a damn thing for me or my music purchasing habits, except perhaps cause me to cringe and lament the state of music in general.
It is a cell phone, PDA, and wireless 2-way pager like RIM. See?
There's a fair chance he will be sending it up with a dead weight in it.
If I tell you that the word "word" has four letters, I have to put it in quotes. Otherwise I'm saying that the word word has four letters, and you're left wondering what a "word word" is.
On the other hand, neither is strapping on a tank of high explosives in your backyard.
Six of one, I suppose.
Yeah, but it's hard to believe he wasn't at least double dog dared into it.
Even if he hadn't bragged, there's little doubt in my mind that he would have been tracked down and punished, and rightly so.