Firing simple rockets into the pressure vessels... with a hardened sensor package that was shielded enough to withstand the impact but yet exposed enough to measure the environment... with a radio that will work in the presence of massive amounts of ionizing radiation. Certainly we have enough unobtainium by this day and age.
Is this author saying that when scientists have to prioritize limited personel, time, and money based on incomplete information they sometimes arrive at a suboptimal solution? Shameful.
They should probably wait until they know everything about what they'd like to study before they start studying it - that would really speed things up.
> RIM is still a very innovative company. BlackBerry 10 will absolutely prove this.
Translation - we have been and are an innovative company, and let me point out this vaporware as my sole example of this.
I also like the part about their strong discipline with regard to product delays - on a product that's had numerous delays.
They were 10 years late to the touchscreen party, 5 years late to the functional web browser party, and they are still trying to show up to the UI party.
It's more of a clarification, not a drastic change. For example, the $27.63 is already in current law! Things like "similarly skilled worker" are just spelled out with more examples.
Current law (as of Jan. 7, 2011), from http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode29/usc_sec_29_00000213----000-.html
(17) any employee who is a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is—
(A) the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications;
(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;
(C) the design, documentation, testing, creation, or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or
(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C) the performance of which requires the same level of skills, and
who, in the case of an employee who is compensated on an hourly basis, is compensated at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour.
That really isn't very different from the Proposed bill, from story:
(17) any employee working in a computer or information technology occupation (including, but not limited to, work related to computers, information systems, components, networks, software, hardware, databases, security, internet, intranet, or websites) as an analyst, programmer, engineer, designer, developer, administrator, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is--
(A) the application of systems, network or database analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine or modify hardware, software, network, database, or system functional specifications;
(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, securing, configuration, integration, debugging, modification of computer or information technology, or enabling continuity of systems and applications;
(C) directing the work of individuals performing duties described in subparagraph (A) or (B), including training such individuals or leading teams performing such duties; or
(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C), the performance of which requires the same level of skill;
who is compensated at an hourly rate of not less than $27.63 an hour or who is paid on a salary basis at a salary level as set forth by the Department of Labor in part 541 of title 29, Code of Federal Regulations. An employee described in this paragraph shall be considered an employee in a professional capacity pursuant to paragraph (1).
Um... you overlooked FAR 91.119a. You need to be able to land "safely" if the engine fails. This doesn't necessarily mean that you need to be able to glide to shore, but you do need to give yourself time to react. There's no set limit, but you should be able to justify your choice in a little room with a bright light.
If you're not careful, you can learn a lot of bad habits in Javascript since it'll let you do some fairly messy stuff. This is more than made up for by the lack of a "compile" step, easy and pretty UI, etc. It's easy to do fun little projects with Javascript. Use it to set the hook, then branch into more "formal" languages. If he enjoys programming, he's going to learn Javascript eventually, so you might as well start out with it.
I can take an HTML/Javascript file with a interactive button and a text box and easily explain every line to most anybody. I can't think of a more important criteria.
Flying Visual Rules into Instrument Conditions in mountainous terrain has my vote too - no engine failure required. In fact, an engine failure means he'd be gliding along the ridge - he would have hit wingtip first and cartwheeled, spraying debris.
I think it's fair to assume that a high altitude, high speed, perpendicular impact means he flew into a cloud that happened to have a mountain in the middle. Likely causes were human factors: complacency, feelings of invincibility, and bravado. It's possible the weather closed in around him unexpectedly and he had no choice, but that's pretty unlikely. More likely he got away with it 100 times before and his number was up.
Regardless of the type of instrumentation he had, he wasn't talking to ATC or doing the other stuff he should have been doing to be on instruments - it was an accident waiting to happen.
I wouldn't drive through fog in mountainous terrain at 90 MPH, flying through the same is no better.
Of course, I say that sitting safely in the Midwest with barely a hill within 100 miles. Still, I hope I never get that careless. JFK Jr. and Steve Fosset died doing it and I'm not sure that I'm any better than they were.
If you're not convinced, just head to ntsb.gov and read the fatal accident reports for a while.
This wouldn't work - the animated cursor only appears when the cursor is over the web page and would go away once the mouse was over the dialog box with the "yes"/"no" buttons you mention.
What's actaully happening is that the HTML/CSS is telling IE to display a *.ani file. IE dutifully retrieves this file and says "Here you go OS, display this." The OS takes the *.ani file and tries to parse it, but it's intentionally corrupt. The OS chokes on the corruption and winds up executing the cursor image data instead of displaying it.
A buffer overflow goes something like this:
1. Reserve storage space below for 10 images. 2. Set the 11th stored image to the value "format c:". 3. Jump to step 15. 4-14. Storage space for 10 images goes here. 15. Display image 1.
Step 2 winds up changing step 15. to "format c:" since it sets the 11th item when there is only space for 10.
MS Windows isn't stopping at step 2 and saying "Wha? There is no 11th storage space. I give up!".
This simple example makes a couple of fixes seem easy enough, but they're "hard" in practice once you add in the complications of real life.
The snow and ice in the antarctic (south pole) are well above sea level. The snow stacks up as it falls to the ground. This vertical storage is a much bigger factor than density changes with temperature.
Imagine a glass of water with 2 ice cubes in it. This represents the situation you're imagining - and in this case the water level doesn't change much when the ice melts. The Arctic (North Pole) is just ice floating on water and follows this example.
The Antarctic (South Pole) is a proper continent, with ground and dirt and such. A better model for this is a glass stacked to the brim with ice but only has water to the halfway point. The melting ice will surely cause the water level to rise. The overall volume of water decreases, but the level of the water increases as it runs off the higher points.
The ice sheets of Greenland and Canada, as well as salinity effects complicate a rigorous examination. Someone with much more time and talent than I has already done the math: http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/sea.level.faq.html
Short answer:
South Pole: definite effect. North Pole: much smaller effect.
As a governmental body, I feel the copyright office should give accessibility to citizens a very high priority. This accessibility is best met with the use of tools that function on a broad range of browsers and operating systems by adhering to open and well-documented standards, such as those of the World Wide Web consortium (W3C).
Introducing a requirement for a proprietary browser supplied by a single party goes against this ideal, especially when that party has a history of illegal behaviors that include anti-competitive practices.
Support for open standards is clearly possible, as the open letter states that support for various open and non-Microsoft browsers is planned. It seems a waste of effort to develop a MSIE-only version followed by an open standards version when the open standards version can work with MSIE to begin with.
There is certainly an argument to be made to ensure that the browser used by the majority of Internet users is well-supported, but it is a fallacy to believe that this support must come at the expense of support for browsers unable to support proprietary features.
It will be further troubling if the reason for the lack of support for open browsers is an ActiveX requirement. ActiveX technology has been dogged by security problems for years, and its use cannot be justified given the availability of secure, open alternatives. The suitability of alternatives is demonstrated by the planned support of non-MSIE browsers.
A requirement for businesses and individuals to use MSIE to make submissions to the copyright office is an onerous burden in terms of time, money, and security for those relying on non-Microsoft solutions in their affairs.
Gosh - everyone's getting pretty bent out of shape over a CNN article. Anyone have any ideas on where we can see specifics?
The Cleveland Plain Dealer has another
article:
The general feeling I'm getting is that this is going to apply to auctioneers; those who sell things, for a fee, as a service to other people, or are professional resellers. This would exclude people selling used things that they own.
Until I see the text, I'm reserving judgement.
I'm no expert, so take this with a grain of salt...
The market capitization for SCOX is $69.24M (that's # of shares * price/share), and the current price is $3.96, so there are about 17.5M shares out there.
Even at a penny apiece it'd still cost $175k ($89k for 51%).
That's all well and dandy, but buying all those shares would surely drive the price up and defeat the whole purpose.
They apparently aren't giving this software away for free, so how did this guy get it? Is he really independent?
Also, the source of these three test images is described as "I used my Nikon Coolpix 3MP digital camera to generate JPEG files..." However, the pictures are from Canada, the US, and Japan. It's not like he went out and took three random photos. While he doesn't mention the specific model used, the coolpix cameras appear to be your average consumer models, so the wording is quite suspect. As the total compression times are under a minute, why were only these three pictures chosen? Perhaps they compress better than average? Why can't we download the original.JPG files? There is no way to reproduce this test.
Lastly, the article consistently says 30%, but the average actual compression is 25.53333%. That's 17.5% bull puck.
So, the reviewer isn't objective, the picture sources are suspect, and the numbers are suspect. This sounds like a slashdot-sponsored spin machine to me.
If Stuffit really wanted to prove themselves, they'd put a link on their website to compress/decompress images and have it only work for a week or so. Then they could publicly demonstrate things without giving away an executable to be leaked.
Instead they give a full, working EXE to some guy who's home page is linked to only 83 times (most [all?] of which are junk/link farms).
Don't believe everything you read. Especially not on the Internet, and especially not this junk.
<tinfoil hat>
As stated above, this website effectively has no google presence. How did it survive the slashdot effect with pictures? It appears to be hosted by Roger's Cable in Toronto. Who is paying (presumably) big bucks for bandwidth for an otherwise unremarkable site?
Why does he first describe "The test computer used", then go on to mention "Machine A" and "Machine B"? Also, why is a compression expert using such wimpy hardware?
Some quickresearch on the author only shows how unremarkable it all is for such an important announcement.
Of course, you also have to wonder how Kris_J (apparently from Australia) found out about the story to post it to begin with, since it's so obscure. (No offence Kris_J, I'm just in ultra-skeptic mode here)
The MSNBC cites the space.com article as its source, and the space.com article states:
"It orbits the brown dwarf star at about 30 percent farther than Pluto is from our Sun."
Let's see here... They have 100 specialists on an uninhabited island. They have $67 million in worthless currency (literally - currency has no value if there are no inhabitants to spend it). They have a 100% guarantee but no guarantees. You agree to the jurisdiction of an uninhabited island and wave your rights to a trial. They will charge unspecified surcharges and don't define whether the $19.95 is in US dollars or Palmyra Atoll dollars or something else. "Conveniently located in the heart of Palmyra Atoll." - Thousands of miles from anywhere != convenient.
Their contact email (eprovisia@dione.cc) is interesting too. "whois dione.cc@whois.www.tv" tells me that the domain is registered to a Canadian address, but "www.dione.cc" is full of polish text and is the same as "www.dione.ids.pl".
C'mon, they only have like 4 pages to their site, and each one of them has a obvious scam red flag...
Slashdot Mirror
So, they don't guard it as strictly when the POTUS and family aren't home? I'm pretty OK with that.
They have evidence - the Tor usage.
It's not proof, and it's definitely not convincing evidence, but it's evidence to them.
To put it another way: if you're found not-guilty in court, the evidence is still called evidence.
??? Have you tried pressing the "Emergency Call" text on the lock screen?
Firing simple rockets into the pressure vessels... with a hardened sensor package that was shielded enough to withstand the impact but yet exposed enough to measure the environment... with a radio that will work in the presence of massive amounts of ionizing radiation. Certainly we have enough unobtainium by this day and age.
FreeOTP and/or Google Authenticator may be exactly what you want from the client side.
I made a server-side implemention to get started with a little while ago:
https://github.com/adsllc/PHPO...
Is this author saying that when scientists have to prioritize limited personel, time, and money based on incomplete information they sometimes arrive at a suboptimal solution? Shameful.
They should probably wait until they know everything about what they'd like to study before they start studying it - that would really speed things up.
> RIM is still a very innovative company. BlackBerry 10 will absolutely prove this.
Translation - we have been and are an innovative company, and let me point out this vaporware as my sole example of this.
I also like the part about their strong discipline with regard to product delays - on a product that's had numerous delays.
They were 10 years late to the touchscreen party, 5 years late to the functional web browser party, and they are still trying to show up to the UI party.
It's more of a clarification, not a drastic change. For example, the $27.63 is already in current law! Things like "similarly skilled worker" are just spelled out with more examples.
Current law (as of Jan. 7, 2011), from http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode29/usc_sec_29_00000213----000-.html
(17) any employee who is a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is—
(A) the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications;
(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications;
(C) the design, documentation, testing, creation, or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or
(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C) the performance of which requires the same level of skills, and
who, in the case of an employee who is compensated on an hourly basis, is compensated at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour.
That really isn't very different from the Proposed bill, from story:
(17) any employee working in a computer or information technology occupation (including, but not limited to, work related to computers, information systems, components, networks, software, hardware, databases, security, internet, intranet, or websites) as an analyst, programmer, engineer, designer, developer, administrator, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is--
(A) the application of systems, network or database analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine or modify hardware, software, network, database, or system functional specifications;
(B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, securing, configuration, integration, debugging, modification of computer or information technology, or enabling continuity of systems and applications;
(C) directing the work of individuals performing duties described in subparagraph (A) or (B), including training such individuals or leading teams performing such duties; or
(D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C), the performance of which requires the same level of skill;
who is compensated at an hourly rate of not less than $27.63 an hour or who is paid on a salary basis at a salary level as set forth by the Department of Labor in part 541 of title 29, Code of Federal Regulations. An employee described in this paragraph shall be considered an employee in a professional capacity pursuant to paragraph (1).
Um... you overlooked FAR 91.119a. You need to be able to land "safely" if the engine fails. This doesn't necessarily mean that you need to be able to glide to shore, but you do need to give yourself time to react. There's no set limit, but you should be able to justify your choice in a little room with a bright light.
+1 javascript
If you're not careful, you can learn a lot of bad habits in Javascript since it'll let you do some fairly messy stuff. This is more than made up for by the lack of a "compile" step, easy and pretty UI, etc. It's easy to do fun little projects with Javascript. Use it to set the hook, then branch into more "formal" languages. If he enjoys programming, he's going to learn Javascript eventually, so you might as well start out with it.
I can take an HTML/Javascript file with a interactive button and a text box and easily explain every line to most anybody. I can't think of a more important criteria.
Flying Visual Rules into Instrument Conditions in mountainous terrain has my vote too - no engine failure required. In fact, an engine failure means he'd be gliding along the ridge - he would have hit wingtip first and cartwheeled, spraying debris.
I think it's fair to assume that a high altitude, high speed, perpendicular impact means he flew into a cloud that happened to have a mountain in the middle. Likely causes were human factors: complacency, feelings of invincibility, and bravado. It's possible the weather closed in around him unexpectedly and he had no choice, but that's pretty unlikely. More likely he got away with it 100 times before and his number was up.
Regardless of the type of instrumentation he had, he wasn't talking to ATC or doing the other stuff he should have been doing to be on instruments - it was an accident waiting to happen.
I wouldn't drive through fog in mountainous terrain at 90 MPH, flying through the same is no better.
Of course, I say that sitting safely in the Midwest with barely a hill within 100 miles. Still, I hope I never get that careless. JFK Jr. and Steve Fosset died doing it and I'm not sure that I'm any better than they were.
If you're not convinced, just head to ntsb.gov and read the fatal accident reports for a while.
The most vacuous thing you've ever read? This ought to help expand your horizons.
This wouldn't work - the animated cursor only appears when the cursor is over the web page and would go away once the mouse was over the dialog box with the "yes"/"no" buttons you mention.
What's actaully happening is that the HTML/CSS is telling IE to display a *.ani file. IE dutifully retrieves this file and says "Here you go OS, display this." The OS takes the *.ani file and tries to parse it, but it's intentionally corrupt. The OS chokes on the corruption and winds up executing the cursor image data instead of displaying it.
A buffer overflow goes something like this:
1. Reserve storage space below for 10 images.
2. Set the 11th stored image to the value "format c:".
3. Jump to step 15.
4-14. Storage space for 10 images goes here.
15. Display image 1.
Step 2 winds up changing step 15. to "format c:" since it sets the 11th item when there is only space for 10.
MS Windows isn't stopping at step 2 and saying "Wha? There is no 11th storage space. I give up!".
This simple example makes a couple of fixes seem easy enough, but they're "hard" in practice once you add in the complications of real life.
The snow and ice in the antarctic (south pole) are well above sea level. The snow stacks up as it falls to the ground. This vertical storage is a much bigger factor than density changes with temperature.
l
Imagine a glass of water with 2 ice cubes in it. This represents the situation you're imagining - and in this case the water level doesn't change much when the ice melts. The Arctic (North Pole) is just ice floating on water and follows this example.
The Antarctic (South Pole) is a proper continent, with ground and dirt and such. A better model for this is a glass stacked to the brim with ice but only has water to the halfway point. The melting ice will surely cause the water level to rise. The overall volume of water decreases, but the level of the water increases as it runs off the higher points.
The ice sheets of Greenland and Canada, as well as salinity effects complicate a rigorous examination. Someone with much more time and talent than I has already done the math:
http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/sea.level.faq.htm
Short answer:
South Pole: definite effect.
North Pole: much smaller effect.
Everyone seems to be missing the obvious killer app here...
p ose.htmltest
POSE
http://www.calliopeinc.com/palmprog2/tutorial/s1-
Emulate a palm, on your palm.
The idea that governments might use irrational fear to extend control is a good point.
The rest is a troll. A quick google of "methods of disinformation" and checking against the very post alleging abuse proves it.
See also http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm1600
Here's roughly the letter I'm sending, please adapt it and use it as you see fit. Note that you need to send a total of six copies.
% 20MSIE%20Requirement%20-%20Generic.sxw
m l
t =%22using+a+different+web+browser%22) is a strong argument against another government office requiring its use.
This is on a personal home server over broadband, please be nice.
http://www.mynamehere.com/dave/Copyright%20Office
Text follows in case the server chokes...
August 15, 2005
Full Name
Street Address
City, State, ZIP
Copyright GC/ I&R
P.O. Box 70400
Southwest Station, Washington, DC 20024-0400
Subject: Proposed MSIE requirement for online filing of copyright preregistrations
RE: The open letter published at http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr44878.ht
To whom it may concern;
As a governmental body, I feel the copyright office should give accessibility to citizens a very high priority. This accessibility is best met with the use of tools that function on a broad range of browsers and operating systems by adhering to open and well-documented standards, such as those of the World Wide Web consortium (W3C).
Introducing a requirement for a proprietary browser supplied by a single party goes against this ideal, especially when that party has a history of illegal behaviors that include anti-competitive practices.
Support for open standards is clearly possible, as the open letter states that support for various open and non-Microsoft browsers is planned. It seems a waste of effort to develop a MSIE-only version followed by an open standards version when the open standards version can work with MSIE to begin with.
There is certainly an argument to be made to ensure that the browser used by the majority of Internet users is well-supported, but it is a fallacy to believe that this support must come at the expense of support for browsers unable to support proprietary features.
It will be further troubling if the reason for the lack of support for open browsers is an ActiveX requirement. ActiveX technology has been dogged by security problems for years, and its use cannot be justified given the availability of secure, open alternatives. The suitability of alternatives is demonstrated by the planned support of non-MSIE browsers.
While any complex web browser is subject to security problems, the fact that the US-CERT has repeatedly recommended using a non-Microsoft web browser (http://search.cert.org/query.html?col=vulnotes&q
A requirement for businesses and individuals to use MSIE to make submissions to the copyright office is an onerous burden in terms of time, money, and security for those relying on non-Microsoft solutions in their affairs.
Sincerely,
Full Name
A file format isn't a fact any more than the words that make up a best-selling novel are a fact.
.gif patent for example.
You could try to argue that it's a collection of facts, but collections of facts _ARE_ copyrightable. Either way, it's a tough argument to begin with.
File formats are really procedures, not facts, and procedures are patentable. Take Unisys's (now expired)
Gosh - everyone's getting pretty bent out of shape over a CNN article. Anyone have any ideas on where we can see specifics? The Cleveland Plain Dealer has another article: The general feeling I'm getting is that this is going to apply to auctioneers; those who sell things, for a fee, as a service to other people, or are professional resellers. This would exclude people selling used things that they own. Until I see the text, I'm reserving judgement.
I'm no expert, so take this with a grain of salt...
The market capitization for SCOX is $69.24M (that's # of shares * price/share), and the current price is $3.96, so there are about 17.5M shares out there.
Even at a penny apiece it'd still cost $175k ($89k for 51%).
That's all well and dandy, but buying all those shares would surely drive the price up and defeat the whole purpose.
Also, the source of these three test images is described as "I used my Nikon Coolpix 3MP digital camera to generate JPEG files..." However, the pictures are from Canada, the US, and Japan. It's not like he went out and took three random photos. While he doesn't mention the specific model used, the coolpix cameras appear to be your average consumer models, so the wording is quite suspect. As the total compression times are under a minute, why were only these three pictures chosen? Perhaps they compress better than average? Why can't we download the original .JPG files? There is no way to reproduce this test.
Lastly, the article consistently says 30%, but the average actual compression is 25.53333%. That's 17.5% bull puck.
So, the reviewer isn't objective, the picture sources are suspect, and the numbers are suspect. This sounds like a slashdot-sponsored spin machine to me.
If Stuffit really wanted to prove themselves, they'd put a link on their website to compress/decompress images and have it only work for a week or so. Then they could publicly demonstrate things without giving away an executable to be leaked.
Instead they give a full, working EXE to some guy who's home page is linked to only 83 times (most [all?] of which are junk/link farms). Don't believe everything you read. Especially not on the Internet, and especially not this junk.
<tinfoil hat>
As stated above, this website effectively has no google presence. How did it survive the slashdot effect with pictures? It appears to be hosted by Roger's Cable in Toronto. Who is paying (presumably) big bucks for bandwidth for an otherwise unremarkable site?
Why does he first describe "The test computer used", then go on to mention "Machine A" and "Machine B"? Also, why is a compression expert using such wimpy hardware? Some quick research on the author only shows how unremarkable it all is for such an important announcement.
Of course, you also have to wonder how Kris_J (apparently from Australia) found out about the story to post it to begin with, since it's so obscure. (No offence Kris_J, I'm just in ultra-skeptic mode here)
</tinfoil hat>
The MSNBC cites the space.com article as its source, and the space.com article states:
"It orbits the brown dwarf star at about 30 percent farther than Pluto is from our Sun."
Their contact email (eprovisia@dione.cc) is interesting too. "whois dione.cc@whois.www.tv" tells me that the domain is registered to a Canadian address, but "www.dione.cc" is full of polish text and is the same as "www.dione.ids.pl".
C'mon, they only have like 4 pages to their site, and each one of them has a obvious scam red flag...