How is wanting to have servers relevant. If you only plan to have the one server than you nat the ports from the Nat box to the server since you have to have the one ip address regardless. If you need more than one setup port forwarding on the Nat box. Unless you have critical services on ~ 1024 ports you only need one ip, and with dns name based hosting in apache you can get even more bang for your ip address buck.
While I have to agree with you that is pretty much trivial to set up port forwarding on your NAT box, what about those poor schmucks who are getting ripped by Cable and/or DSL companies that use non-routable IP's? Now I know that the customers aren't going to be helped by this, since I doubt that the ISPs will use this on their NATs, but it is a solution--assuming that their reasoning is IP shortage, at least.
Also, for port forwarding, alot of applications (obviously not HTTP, FTP, etc., but some games, perhaps some chat clients (?), perhaps NApster and/or (future) P2P apps) expect a specific port, and will not work with a NAT box that does port forwarding.
That being said, I don't think this offers any more flexibility in the matter, since if I control the NAT hardware, I can already do most of what this does for me without having to rely on the genourisity (or monthly fee) of someone running a waypoint for me.
I'm wonderring about this in a slightly different fashion. "Feeling" graphics aside, I wonder how this could be used to help the blind read web pages. Couldn't this technology be used just as easily to scan the ascii character at the cursor and render it in brail, litterally at the person's fingertips?
I guess you could use it for that purpose, but wouldn't text-to-speech be a lot easier and more appropiate? I can't imagine too many situations where it would be easier to read Braille than to just simply have a voice synthesizer.
Just chiming in from Gainesville, Florida. Valleys on hilly roads and any type of overhead foliage/roof/etc totally destroys my "all-digital nationwide PCS signal built from the ground up".
M$-ified USB? Geez, MS has suddenly stooped to taking existing accepted standards and 'enhancing' them, thus turning an open standard into a proprietar...er...nevermind
You might've missed something here...USB standards are for PC's. The X-Box is a game console. Rinse and repeat.
*Sigh* Can you/.ers read any Microsoft related story without resorting to mindless bashing? Not that MS bashing isn't warranted at some points...but, at least try to think before you post....
This is a Very Good Thing(tm). The problem with MP3's is that they got out of hand. With stuff like Napster wehre my 85 year old grandma could get 6GB of MP3's, the lawyers started coming. If Microsoft doesn't support MP3 recording, then the less technically oriented folks will stick to WMA, if they rip a CD at all. We'll still be able to get programs to encode MP3's, and people will still be able to play them on their XP boxes, but the fervor of MP3's will die down.
That will leave us and our MP3 collections (which, BTW, I say fall under fair use) free at last! I don't know if this is what Microsoft intends to happen, but I fully support it!
BTW, for you folks who didn't bother to read the real article, you can find it here. Please read this one before you chime in with ill-informed comments! Don't bash Microsoft until you actually comprehend the facts. I know that's a lot to ask of/.ers, but I've yet to give up....
The point is that they've added essentially 0 new features to the product since 1994, yet it grows twice as large and twice as slow with each new release. Do you have a good explaination for that?
Yes, I do have a good explanation. First off, that you're not really paying attention. People who use Word as a text editor (as I usually do) are missing out on the many new features that have been added over the years. Here's a list I came up with after perusing the What's New Help topic in Word 2000. Note that these do not include things that have been added or changed for Word 97, although, IMHO, Word 97 added a good bit more to the mix than Word 2000. I think of 2000 as just making Word 97 better, though they did add some new features. Do I use the new features? Not usually, but then I'm not Word's (or Office's) target market. In most cases, I'd be just as happy with my old Boxer (though I still have version 4. something IIRC) shareware text-editor that I used with DOS. For my purposes, it does the job a lot better than most word-processing programs. But, just to write off Word 6.0, 97, and 2000 as not having any new features is naive at best.
General:
Windows Installer Package
Detect and Repair
Roaming Profiles
Personalized Menus
GUI:
Seperate windows for each document
File Open/Save has Places Bar and History
12 Clipboards
Spelling and Grammar:
Better AutoCorrect
Click and Type (AutoFormatting)
Spelling and Grammar check can check other languages
Tables Handling:
Nested tables
Vertical/Horizontal alignment in tables
Better table handling
Text boxes offer more options for text in graphics
Graphics Handling:
Picture bullets
Better text wrapping
Office Art
Web Page Handling:
Web Folders
Web Page Wizard (Web templates)
Support for Frames in Web pages
Web page preview
Better web page options
Web themes
Visual Studio allows scripting
Collaboration:
Discussions
Subscribing to a document on a web server to be notified of changes
Multilingual:
Better Unicode support
Better multilingual support
Some of the new features are more important to some people than others. Personally, I'm appreciative of the Windows Installer, improved tables and graphics handling. The rest I could care less about. But I know others in my company who work with Word 2000 on a daily basis that would kill me if I switched them back to Word 4.0!
And, then the article goes to sum it up stating in effect that this is just a $30million marketing campaign about a changed default:
That's pretty much the case -- Office has been past the bloat horizon for about 5 years now, and it's pretty sad when the most highly touted new feature is turning something off.
Hey, I thought Linux folks were all about customization? So, now you have the best of both worlds. Clippy is off by default, but, for those that still want him, he's still available. What the hell is there to complain about? If you don't want him installed, uncheck the install box (if Windows XP uses the Windows Installer Package, as I'm sure it will, you can even set him to install on first use. Gets rid of your bloat factor, but still allows customization....)
As a graduate student, I do most of my Microsoft Office work in the computer labs at school. I can't permanently change the software settings because they are reset every time I log in. So now, whenever I sit down at a lab computer to start working, I have to first go through five minutes of: blah, blah
Why not just write a macro and save it either on your network drive (if you have one) or on a floppy. Or, a new normal.dot should (IIRC) also keep those optios selected...
They were [trying to] obtaining secret information on China. That's a spy. I say if you want to have planes and submarines and whatever else flying around China's border and gathering intelligence on them (does that please you more than spying?), then you better have a plan that allows those planes to land in the event of an emergency. I don't think you're contingency plan should count on the courteousness of the country you're spying on, however.
If China wanted to start ramming planes outside their borders, then we could have an argument on whether we should call that an act of hostile aggression and declare war. Personally, I think so.
If I said that they are capable of dispersing peacefully protesting students with tanks killing hundreds in process, would you also call it far fetched?
Whoa there cowboy. I'm not defending all of China's rather beleaguered human-rights history, here. However, I don't think Tianmennan (sp?) Square really has a place in this discussion, except perhaps as evidence that we really shouldn't expect them to extend any courtesy to us. That includes landing on their base...even when their plane caused ours damage.
There are two other witnesses that you're ruling out that I have yet to hear _ANY_ information about. I'm thinking that this is mostly because China isn't letting anyone examine the black boxen on the planes. If this incident can be cleared up and people really want to lay blame, then the plane's flight recorders, my other witnesses, should be able to clear up the incident without fail. Of course, this would require China to be cooperative, which I don't see happening. Also, the flight recorders might not produce all of the detail necesary, but, I'm sure some of that data would at least shed some light on the matter.
Good point. I didn't think of that. I'm not sure if military planes have black boxes, and I'm really kind of doubtful that the Chinese planes do, but they could be a valuable asset to the truth. I wonder if we'll ever hear of them, even when our's is back in US hands????
What happened was an accident - there was no intent on either side to cause harm. BUT - if a Porsche sits in the blind spot of a semi trailer for long enough, it'll get squashed when the semi changes lanes. Yeah, that's an accident too. But don't tell me for a minute that the root cause of the accident is anything other "pilot error" on the part of the vehicle - Porsche or J-8 - that chose to situate itself in the blind spot of the larger vehicle.
My god man, I hope you don't drive a semi for a living! Perhaps the "root cause" of the accident would be on the part of the vehicle that was sitting in the blind spot, but guess who's going to be faulted for the accident? That's right, the vehicle that tries to occupy space that's already occupied. No matter if it's a blind spot or not. Don't try to use this as an excuse when you're changing lanes on the highway...it will not work!
They were knocked down in international waters and forced to land in China. The crew was in no way invading Chinese airspace (according to international law) before the collision and the Chinese pilot was entirely responsible for the collision by any logical assessment.
How is that really any different from being shot down?
Well, first, neither your crew nor your plane are in enemy hands. Second, if you didn't cross into Chinese airspace then it is easily proven by your downed location. Third, if they were shot down, an international uproar would be justified. Fourth, if they were shot down, China would be forced into apologizing or going to war. Fifth, we wouldn't be having this conversation because it would be very clear who was in the wrong.
They weren't spies, by the real definition of spies. Spies hide their identity and their mission. These guys were wearing US Military uniforms, in a plainly marked US Military craft, flying in international airspace, with a flight plan that would have kept them in international airspace. They only entered Chinese airspace after their aircraft was rammed by a Chinese military fighter. To call them spies simply indicates that you have no idea what the word actually means.
I know exactly what a spy means. To wit: "an agent employed by a state to obtain secret information, esp. of a military nature, concerning its potential or actual enemies." Are you going to argue with me that they weren't there to obtain secret information?
They landed in China because the flaps on their aircraft were damaged in the collision. Without the ability to deploy the flaps, the plane couldn't fly slow enough at low altitude to ditch safely in the water. Any attempt at a water landing probably would have killed the entire crew. There is no way that they landed on Chinese territory by choice.
Oh, I'm sorry...I didn't realize that they didn't have a choice between crashing or landing in China. What? There's two options there? My god man...I think that's a choice. A tough choice, to be sure, but a choice nonetheless. What would you expect the US would do during the height of the Cold War if a Russian plane chose to land in the US rather than crash? Do you think that we would detain both the pilot and the plane? You betcha.
Oh, and of course they could've tried to land in another country. But some say the Chinese forced them to land in China. Fine, call their bluff. Force the fighters to shoot you down. Do you really think that China would have done that? I don't, but if they did we wouldn't be here arguing about apologies!
I wish that people would accept the fact that a) when you join the military, you should be prepared to die. And b) when you're a spy, you really don't want to end up in the hands of who you're spying on. I'm not outraged at China for keeping the pilots, I'm outraged at the government for putting them there. Not to mention that with a few choice words from Dubya, this whole thing would be over.
Do you think that if Dubya and Cheney were detained in China that they wouldn't be damn quick to apologize? No matter who was at fault? Well, excepting the fact that they have the entire US military forces at their beck and call. This is just silly posturing by 2 gang leaders.
Next time check your facts before you start spouting off.
Next time try to think less like a brainwashed lemming before you jump to the defense of those that wouldn't think twice before sending you off to die. And don't post AC.
"Cought" flying in international waters.
Stop distorting facts.
Why you chose to misspell "caught", I don't know, but whatever. I know they were international waters when they were damaged, but that doesn't change the fact that a) they were spying, and b) they were no longer in international waters when they landed. They were in China. They should be subject to Chinese law, just as any spies that choose to land in US should be.
The US crew were spies. They, along with their plane, were apprehended in foreign territory. I say it's within China's rights to keep both the spies and the plane.
I don't understand why we expect a country we were "caught" spying on should treat us with courtesy. If the aircrew didn't want to be indefinitely detained, then they should have refused to land that plane or go into Chinese airspace. If they were shot down in International waters, this would be a whole different ball of wax.
Not that any of these thoughts are strictly impossible, but the burden of proof would be on you... not those that believe that what you say is not so.
Setting aside the thoughts of the Matrix, I don't believe it's inconceivable that the US Gov't is lying here. Obviously, either China or the US Gov't is lying about who caused the accident. Of course, AFAIK, there were only 3 eye witnesses (assuming the US aircrew as 1 witness, since I'm sure they will all have the same story) and one of them (the Chinese fighter pilot) is missing. The 2 remaining witnesses both have self-preservation at stake here, as do the respective governments. Everybody stands to gain by lying, and I think it just depends on which soil your feet are planted on right now as to who you believe.
Anybody else notice Katz' repeated, repetitive, redundant and duplicated opening paragraph? Deja vu is bad enough...but when it's deja vu on a Jon Katz' article, Yikes!
What a silly problem. The color of the hats are determined my independant coin tosses. No communication is allowed. Other that cheating and viewing your own hat in some way, the maximum chance is 50%. Coin toss. Old statistics problem.
This is like a word problem you would get in third grade where the wording of the problem would be such that you could be tricked. I am amazed that any mathematician would waste their time analyzing it.
Let me guess...I bet you got alot of those tricky word problems wrong, didn't you? But you were always the first one done!
What do you guys think my odds of getting that one right are? =)
Probability is a best guess, when you don't have all the facts. Nothing funny or strange about it all.
No it's not. I think that would be called an estimate or best guess. Probability is the likelihood that something will occur. In this case, the likelihood that your best guess would be correct.
That being said, this doesn't defy random odds because it's not random. By introducing the twist where you can see the other's hats, and only 1 has to make a guess, then you can pull little tricks like having the one with the most complete information (2 hats of the same color) guessing.
Then I'll just re-enable floppy boot.
Password protected BIOS? I'll open your box and remove the battery to blank the password, use the not-so-secret BIOS vendor password, or just replace the BIOS chip (can even be done with the computer ON).
It goes without saying the computer would have a lock on it. Of course, you didn't say anything about Encrypted File System, so you, your 3 1/2" and your MountNTFS can boot all day long, but you'll only be reading winnt32.exe.
You don't make any sense. First, you say that during Prohibition "crime was much lower than before or after" Prohibition, but then go on to say that decriminilizing pot would be unlikely to create the "even-greater-than-when-illegal amount of crime that alcohol does". Well, which is it? Does alcohol produce more crime when it's legal or illegal?
My opinion is that there's more crime when it's illegal. First off, you have the numbers of the people drinking alcohol...it wasn't a crime before, now it is. Secondly, anytime there is a demand (people want alcohol), someone will step in to fill the supply. So now, you have another previously legal class that's illegal.
And of course, the indirect causes are pretty simple. If the market is big enough and the consumer sticky enough to make a lot of money off of, (alcohol is, pot may be, other drugs definitely are) then whoever is the supplier is not likely to give up his share of the market. Since a drug dealer can't exactly complain to the DOJ that the Japanese Mob is an illegal monopoly, this leads to "turf" wars and beatings and killings. Normally, I wouldn't care if 2 drug dealers killed each other, but it's a self-preserving cycle, in that the large amount of easy money to be made brings in more and more people, who are then killed by other people wanting to make the same money. Also, unfortunately, this takes the greatest toll on urban areas and poorer minorities, as they are more prone to being seduced by the money.
And, of course, since the supplier is, in effect, a monopoly, they can charge whatever they want to maximize their profits. This leads people who are addicted to come up with ways to get money to get the alcohol/pot/drugs...this also leads to crimes such as burglaries, car theft, muggings, robberies, etc.
And, lastly, since the supplier is all about making more money, and is not really concerned with laws and ethics (he's breaking both just by doing the job to begin with), there's the issue of selling a)mislabeled drugs/alcohol (which are often more dangerous than the drug/liquor they purport to be), or b)contaminated drugs/alcohol (such as those that have been cut with something Not Very Good (tm)), and c)"pushing" drugs onto younger and younger children, while recruiting them to be dealers of their own.
This doesn't count the crimes caused by wholesalers and importers, people who make the stuff in their garage or a chem lab for resale and overzealous police and federal agents.
The drug dealers are only in the business because it pays (a helluva lot, I might add) to be there. If drugs were legalized and people could get their cocaine FedEx'ed via the Internet for $10.95, how many dealers do you think would show up to work on Monday morning?
If you want to put the dealers out of business, just do it the Capitalist way: take over their job. Deliver a better, cheaper, safer product more conveniently. Federal mandatory (or voluntary) standards for drug contents would make drugs both safer and "better". Without the huge expense dealers incur by fighting the Drug War, not to mention their ungodly profit levels, drugs would be cheaper. Legalizing drugs would make it more convenient.
It's just like Napster...if people want it bad enough, you better give them an alternative or they will break the law. Why not make a few bucks off the alternative while you're at it?
Well, let's look at the example passphrase: "Mollusks peck my galloping genitals." Which word in there falls under "[using] captials (sic), or one extra punctuation, or spelling substitution"?
The original poster's comment was that "The idea is that the emotional impact of the phrase itself makes it unlikely that an outside individual would ever guess it." Unfortunately, except in Hollywood as you mentioned, it's nearly impossible to guess at a passphrase. And, like I mentioned, both dictionary and brute force attacks are immune to the emotional impact or relative nonsense of a passphrase.
An absurd phrase does not allow me (or Joe Q. User) to remember any more words than a sensical phrase such as "Remember to get milk from the store." does.
Perhaps a better suggestion for a passphrase would encompass punctuation and misspelled words. For instance, I nearly always misspell 'reservoir'. I always spell it 'resorvoir', but that's not a word, so it's not in (most) dictionaries. So, if I put it into a passphrase, that's one less word a dictionary attack has.
If I use punctuation as well, it's even more difficult. To make punctuation easier, I suggest using dates and/or times.
Here's my 1 minute thought on a decent example passphrase: "On 12/08/92 (aka 12.01.92) at 1:32am, I will be down at the resorvoir!" Substitute with whatever date, time, and/or misspelling makes it easy for you.
Of course, this passphrase pales in comparison to a truly, decently secure passphrase, such as "~10g.ajj01.00434dd{¦(]Æ3å3H¦32+8¥9ta,199`~", but it's infinitely easier to remember.
For you Perl programmers out there, you could write a small one line program as a passphrase...that should be encryption enough!
I suppose it's good for the ISP, as it pretty much keeps you from being a server of any type (without their firewall knowing about it, at least) but as a customer, I'd be outraged.
It's called Pretty Good Privacy for a reason, you know.
I think what you want is the upgraded version, DGP (Damn Good Privacy), or perhaps UFBP (Unfucking-Believable Privacy). We're expected to release those upgrades Real Soon Now (tm).
Slashdot Mirror
While I have to agree with you that is pretty much trivial to set up port forwarding on your NAT box, what about those poor schmucks who are getting ripped by Cable and/or DSL companies that use non-routable IP's? Now I know that the customers aren't going to be helped by this, since I doubt that the ISPs will use this on their NATs, but it is a solution--assuming that their reasoning is IP shortage, at least.
Also, for port forwarding, alot of applications (obviously not HTTP, FTP, etc., but some games, perhaps some chat clients (?), perhaps NApster and/or (future) P2P apps) expect a specific port, and will not work with a NAT box that does port forwarding.
That being said, I don't think this offers any more flexibility in the matter, since if I control the NAT hardware, I can already do most of what this does for me without having to rely on the genourisity (or monthly fee) of someone running a waypoint for me.
I guess you could use it for that purpose, but wouldn't text-to-speech be a lot easier and more appropiate? I can't imagine too many situations where it would be easier to read Braille than to just simply have a voice synthesizer.
Just chiming in from Gainesville, Florida. Valleys on hilly roads and any type of overhead foliage/roof/etc totally destroys my "all-digital nationwide PCS signal built from the ground up".
You might've missed something here...USB standards are for PC's. The X-Box is a game console. Rinse and repeat.
*Sigh* Can you /.ers read any Microsoft related story without resorting to mindless bashing? Not that MS bashing isn't warranted at some points...but, at least try to think before you post....
That will leave us and our MP3 collections (which, BTW, I say fall under fair use) free at last! I don't know if this is what Microsoft intends to happen, but I fully support it!
BTW, for you folks who didn't bother to read the real article, you can find it here. Please read this one before you chime in with ill-informed comments! Don't bash Microsoft until you actually comprehend the facts. I know that's a lot to ask of /.ers, but I've yet to give up....
Yes, I do have a good explanation. First off, that you're not really paying attention. People who use Word as a text editor (as I usually do) are missing out on the many new features that have been added over the years. Here's a list I came up with after perusing the What's New Help topic in Word 2000. Note that these do not include things that have been added or changed for Word 97, although, IMHO, Word 97 added a good bit more to the mix than Word 2000. I think of 2000 as just making Word 97 better, though they did add some new features. Do I use the new features? Not usually, but then I'm not Word's (or Office's) target market. In most cases, I'd be just as happy with my old Boxer (though I still have version 4. something IIRC) shareware text-editor that I used with DOS. For my purposes, it does the job a lot better than most word-processing programs. But, just to write off Word 6.0, 97, and 2000 as not having any new features is naive at best.
General:
Windows Installer Package
Detect and Repair
Roaming Profiles
Personalized Menus
GUI:
Seperate windows for each document
File Open/Save has Places Bar and History
12 Clipboards
Spelling and Grammar:
Better AutoCorrect
Click and Type (AutoFormatting)
Spelling and Grammar check can check other languages
Tables Handling:
Nested tables
Vertical/Horizontal alignment in tables
Better table handling
Text boxes offer more options for text in graphics
Graphics Handling:
Picture bullets
Better text wrapping
Office Art
Web Page Handling:
Web Folders
Web Page Wizard (Web templates)
Support for Frames in Web pages
Web page preview
Better web page options
Web themes
Visual Studio allows scripting
Collaboration:
Discussions
Subscribing to a document on a web server to be notified of changes
Multilingual:
Better Unicode support
Better multilingual support
Some of the new features are more important to some people than others. Personally, I'm appreciative of the Windows Installer, improved tables and graphics handling. The rest I could care less about. But I know others in my company who work with Word 2000 on a daily basis that would kill me if I switched them back to Word 4.0!
Hey, I thought Linux folks were all about customization? So, now you have the best of both worlds. Clippy is off by default, but, for those that still want him, he's still available. What the hell is there to complain about? If you don't want him installed, uncheck the install box (if Windows XP uses the Windows Installer Package, as I'm sure it will, you can even set him to install on first use. Gets rid of your bloat factor, but still allows customization....)
Why not just write a macro and save it either on your network drive (if you have one) or on a floppy. Or, a new normal.dot should (IIRC) also keep those optios selected...
You can't. So why would you trust either the US or the Chinese government?
If China wanted to start ramming planes outside their borders, then we could have an argument on whether we should call that an act of hostile aggression and declare war. Personally, I think so.
Whoa there cowboy. I'm not defending all of China's rather beleaguered human-rights history, here. However, I don't think Tianmennan (sp?) Square really has a place in this discussion, except perhaps as evidence that we really shouldn't expect them to extend any courtesy to us. That includes landing on their base...even when their plane caused ours damage.
Good point. I didn't think of that. I'm not sure if military planes have black boxes, and I'm really kind of doubtful that the Chinese planes do, but they could be a valuable asset to the truth. I wonder if we'll ever hear of them, even when our's is back in US hands????
My god man, I hope you don't drive a semi for a living! Perhaps the "root cause" of the accident would be on the part of the vehicle that was sitting in the blind spot, but guess who's going to be faulted for the accident? That's right, the vehicle that tries to occupy space that's already occupied. No matter if it's a blind spot or not. Don't try to use this as an excuse when you're changing lanes on the highway...it will not work!
Well, first, neither your crew nor your plane are in enemy hands. Second, if you didn't cross into Chinese airspace then it is easily proven by your downed location. Third, if they were shot down, an international uproar would be justified. Fourth, if they were shot down, China would be forced into apologizing or going to war. Fifth, we wouldn't be having this conversation because it would be very clear who was in the wrong.
I know exactly what a spy means. To wit: "an agent employed by a state to obtain secret information, esp. of a military nature, concerning its potential or actual enemies." Are you going to argue with me that they weren't there to obtain secret information?
Oh, I'm sorry...I didn't realize that they didn't have a choice between crashing or landing in China. What? There's two options there? My god man...I think that's a choice. A tough choice, to be sure, but a choice nonetheless. What would you expect the US would do during the height of the Cold War if a Russian plane chose to land in the US rather than crash? Do you think that we would detain both the pilot and the plane? You betcha.
Oh, and of course they could've tried to land in another country. But some say the Chinese forced them to land in China. Fine, call their bluff. Force the fighters to shoot you down. Do you really think that China would have done that? I don't, but if they did we wouldn't be here arguing about apologies!
I wish that people would accept the fact that a) when you join the military, you should be prepared to die. And b) when you're a spy, you really don't want to end up in the hands of who you're spying on. I'm not outraged at China for keeping the pilots, I'm outraged at the government for putting them there. Not to mention that with a few choice words from Dubya, this whole thing would be over.
Do you think that if Dubya and Cheney were detained in China that they wouldn't be damn quick to apologize? No matter who was at fault? Well, excepting the fact that they have the entire US military forces at their beck and call. This is just silly posturing by 2 gang leaders.
Next time try to think less like a brainwashed lemming before you jump to the defense of those that wouldn't think twice before sending you off to die. And don't post AC.
Why you chose to misspell "caught", I don't know, but whatever. I know they were international waters when they were damaged, but that doesn't change the fact that a) they were spying, and b) they were no longer in international waters when they landed. They were in China. They should be subject to Chinese law, just as any spies that choose to land in US should be.
BTW, exactly what fact was I "distorting"?
I don't understand why we expect a country we were "caught" spying on should treat us with courtesy. If the aircrew didn't want to be indefinitely detained, then they should have refused to land that plane or go into Chinese airspace. If they were shot down in International waters, this would be a whole different ball of wax.
Setting aside the thoughts of the Matrix, I don't believe it's inconceivable that the US Gov't is lying here. Obviously, either China or the US Gov't is lying about who caused the accident. Of course, AFAIK, there were only 3 eye witnesses (assuming the US aircrew as 1 witness, since I'm sure they will all have the same story) and one of them (the Chinese fighter pilot) is missing. The 2 remaining witnesses both have self-preservation at stake here, as do the respective governments. Everybody stands to gain by lying, and I think it just depends on which soil your feet are planted on right now as to who you believe.
Anybody else notice Katz' repeated, repetitive, redundant and duplicated opening paragraph? Deja vu is bad enough...but when it's deja vu on a Jon Katz' article, Yikes!
Let me guess...I bet you got alot of those tricky word problems wrong, didn't you? But you were always the first one done!
What do you guys think my odds of getting that one right are? =)
No it's not. I think that would be called an estimate or best guess. Probability is the likelihood that something will occur. In this case, the likelihood that your best guess would be correct.
That being said, this doesn't defy random odds because it's not random. By introducing the twist where you can see the other's hats, and only 1 has to make a guess, then you can pull little tricks like having the one with the most complete information (2 hats of the same color) guessing.
My opinion is that there's more crime when it's illegal. First off, you have the numbers of the people drinking alcohol...it wasn't a crime before, now it is. Secondly, anytime there is a demand (people want alcohol), someone will step in to fill the supply. So now, you have another previously legal class that's illegal.
And of course, the indirect causes are pretty simple. If the market is big enough and the consumer sticky enough to make a lot of money off of, (alcohol is, pot may be, other drugs definitely are) then whoever is the supplier is not likely to give up his share of the market. Since a drug dealer can't exactly complain to the DOJ that the Japanese Mob is an illegal monopoly, this leads to "turf" wars and beatings and killings. Normally, I wouldn't care if 2 drug dealers killed each other, but it's a self-preserving cycle, in that the large amount of easy money to be made brings in more and more people, who are then killed by other people wanting to make the same money. Also, unfortunately, this takes the greatest toll on urban areas and poorer minorities, as they are more prone to being seduced by the money.
And, of course, since the supplier is, in effect, a monopoly, they can charge whatever they want to maximize their profits. This leads people who are addicted to come up with ways to get money to get the alcohol/pot/drugs...this also leads to crimes such as burglaries, car theft, muggings, robberies, etc.
And, lastly, since the supplier is all about making more money, and is not really concerned with laws and ethics (he's breaking both just by doing the job to begin with), there's the issue of selling a)mislabeled drugs/alcohol (which are often more dangerous than the drug/liquor they purport to be), or b)contaminated drugs/alcohol (such as those that have been cut with something Not Very Good (tm)), and c)"pushing" drugs onto younger and younger children, while recruiting them to be dealers of their own.
This doesn't count the crimes caused by wholesalers and importers, people who make the stuff in their garage or a chem lab for resale and overzealous police and federal agents.
The drug dealers are only in the business because it pays (a helluva lot, I might add) to be there. If drugs were legalized and people could get their cocaine FedEx'ed via the Internet for $10.95, how many dealers do you think would show up to work on Monday morning?
If you want to put the dealers out of business, just do it the Capitalist way: take over their job. Deliver a better, cheaper, safer product more conveniently. Federal mandatory (or voluntary) standards for drug contents would make drugs both safer and "better". Without the huge expense dealers incur by fighting the Drug War, not to mention their ungodly profit levels, drugs would be cheaper. Legalizing drugs would make it more convenient.
It's just like Napster...if people want it bad enough, you better give them an alternative or they will break the law. Why not make a few bucks off the alternative while you're at it?
The original poster's comment was that "The idea is that the emotional impact of the phrase itself makes it unlikely that an outside individual would ever guess it." Unfortunately, except in Hollywood as you mentioned, it's nearly impossible to guess at a passphrase. And, like I mentioned, both dictionary and brute force attacks are immune to the emotional impact or relative nonsense of a passphrase.
An absurd phrase does not allow me (or Joe Q. User) to remember any more words than a sensical phrase such as "Remember to get milk from the store." does.
Perhaps a better suggestion for a passphrase would encompass punctuation and misspelled words. For instance, I nearly always misspell 'reservoir'. I always spell it 'resorvoir', but that's not a word, so it's not in (most) dictionaries. So, if I put it into a passphrase, that's one less word a dictionary attack has.
If I use punctuation as well, it's even more difficult. To make punctuation easier, I suggest using dates and/or times.
Here's my 1 minute thought on a decent example passphrase: "On 12/08/92 (aka 12.01.92) at 1:32am, I will be down at the resorvoir!" Substitute with whatever date, time, and/or misspelling makes it easy for you.
Of course, this passphrase pales in comparison to a truly, decently secure passphrase, such as "~10g.ajj01.00434dd{¦(]Æ3å3H¦32+8¥9ta,199`~", but it's infinitely easier to remember.
For you Perl programmers out there, you could write a small one line program as a passphrase...that should be encryption enough!
I suppose it's good for the ISP, as it pretty much keeps you from being a server of any type (without their firewall knowing about it, at least) but as a customer, I'd be outraged.
I think what you want is the upgraded version, DGP (Damn Good Privacy), or perhaps UFBP (Unfucking-Believable Privacy). We're expected to release those upgrades Real Soon Now (tm).