I would love to a see a distro, like ubunto, that would ask me if I wanted to create a small boot parition, and a larger *encrypted* primary parition, which would then install to the encrypted partiton, and finally give me the chance to burn a CD from which to boot (or USB stick if my system supported that, etc.).
Then, on boot (either from the HD small boot part, or a read-only CD), I'd enter my password to access the root partition.
As it stands, getting this done requires some expertise, too much time for most of us, and lot manipulating of files, partitions, etc..
Make it easy!
I've been brewing for years, and generally speaking you are correct.
However, our ancestors used moss and clay as fining agents. If you are simply waiting for yeast to drop out you may be waiting for awhile.
I've done all-grain that clear over several weeks of cold conditioning (refrigeration), I've seen room temp meads take many months.
Chances are we were drinking cloudy but not *chunky* beverages before modern times.
We all know that you can 1) force users to change their passwords regularly, or 2) make your password very difficult to guess. Because people tend to remember very few difficult passwords, to require 1) and 2) means that your users are putting post-its on their monitors to remind them (worse than almost-nothing).
So, forget 1), and make sure that the first pw someone picks is almost impossible to guess, and let them keep it.
Slashdot had a recent post about neighborhood/zip based resources, but this is another great place to house them. Neighbors could exchange ideas/strategies for accomplishing regional specific things like commuting paths, best places to get a cup-of-joe, etc..
It would also be nice to have blogging by gov't officials, to get a sense that the person is actually thinking about the job, and the issues they are employed to solve between public elections.
These words have a negative meaning because, and only because of their connection to gay people, and that makes them homophobic.
For all those people who believe that words like "nigger" and "fag" aren't related to their original meaning, I invite you to come to my neighborhood and start calling my neighbors "niggers". I wager you won't walk out intact.
I don't know if you were making a joke here, but I'm not sure why you'd be surprised by this. Videogames are created and played by (generally) younger people, who are going to be more progressively minded than the general population.
Well, I'm not so sure. Everquest aside, the vast majority of the players are young men who, apparently, feel very insecure about their sexuality. I realize this isn't an FPS, and yes, I was using this mis-characterization to joke about games in general, but honestly, I really like multiplayer online gaming, and I can't tell you how many times I've seen pimpled boys message to each other "I reamed your gay ass with that", or "take that you fag", etc.... And, don't bother to recite the eminem argument about fag not refering to gay people...
They speak in the report about the most studied, and most promising, practical means of life extension: calorie restriction with optimal nutrition. As they suggest in the report, the evidence is clear that it extends not just average lifespan, but maximum lifespan, by as much as 50%, in every species that has been tested, including mice, dogs, and now other primates.
Most people will wait for pharm companies to develop mimetics, or ways of producing the same results without actually having to eat less, but for those who have an interest in reading up on human CR visit the CR Society web pages, or pick up one of Roy Walford's books on Amazon. (He's a professor of pathology at UCLA school of medicine, and is a leading researcher of CR. Beyond the 120 year diet is a good layman's introduction to CR.)
Yes, I like gnome a lot. I might even donate money, but the problem with this link is they they don't offer any specific details about what happens with this money? Does it go to administration? How so? To major coders? which? Who qualifies? Bandwidth? Why does the Gnome Foundation do that requires our financial support?
To make matters worse, contributions seem to be handled via Ximian. I have no problem with Ximian forming as a company, or their desire to make money. Still, I'm not entirely confortable with a donation to a company. So, is Ximian providing accounting/banking services here, or are they going to directly benefit from this contribution?
I'm sure there are good answers to all of these questions, but they're not present on the donation page, and they should be.
The submitter didn't bother to read the article he linked very well. According to that fluff article:
"The high-net-worth market segment [defined later as $500k nw] has reached more than seven million in the U.S. and is projected to grow 16% annually for the next three years and control more than $30 trillion in assets at that point. (Web Finance)"
The 30 million w/ $500k net worth is *projected* by the likes of Web Finance, and it's being promoted by a nonpartial group.
You may be able to circumvent a keylogger using the system you outline by having the key burned to the same business card sized CD. I would personally encrypt that key so that BOTH a password, and possession of the CD are needed to boot. You could also tie this to one of those tiny USB devices (DiskOnKey, PenDrive, etc.).
Of course, this still would not give you complete protection.
It is entirely appropriate that universities (notice the name of the insitution) should attempt to teach you more general skills. Their aim is not to help you to succeed in the first 10 years of your career, but to teach you the life skills you will need to lead a full and fruitful life. To me, this is far more important. I want programmers to understand a bit about ethics, philosophy, social sciences, and, yes, even how to write. After all, programmers in one of my fields of research (medical informatics) have the power to influence how people receive medical care, and the quality of the care they get. I want them to consider more than just bits and bytes.
The skills the original poster discusses are narrow professional skills, and if that is all you want to learn you can attend a professional school (like ITT), or learn it on your own. It is worth asking, though, why those degrees, or why a lack of a degree, leaves you at a disadvantage. Many of those who hire recognize the value that a well-rounded person brings to their institution.
Over the course of your career you will find that it is far easier to learn the next popular programming language than it is to learn basic critical thinking skills, or to grasp the greater social and political contexts for your work. You can use those narrow technogolies much more effectively when you understand their general significance.
The english word to describe this would be 'irony'.
It's not clear whether you are serious when you talk about violating the American constitution, and it is particularly 'funny' to Americans that a German citizen would judge Americans to be too restrictive of speach when the situation is far worse for Germans.
Re:Why the preoccupation with "intelligent" animal
on
Uplifting Dolphins
·
· Score: 2
You wrote:
"Intelligence isn't even an evolutionarily important characteristic: just look at how few species possess it -- if it were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it. Which species do have it? Squids, spiders, and other predators. Intelligence has evolved at each stage in animal evolution (cephalopods, arachnids, mammalia, etc.) but only as a means of furthering predation. Where's the morality in that? "
I take exception to this: There are examples of real intelligence that develops NOT to further predation, but to further self-defense and communal living. Rabbits are well known (both in folklore, and to anyone who has ever had a house rabbit) to posses an uncanny intelligence, awareness of the intentions of others, complex communication/body language, etc..., and I have yet to see a rabbit hunt another living being for food. This is simply too reductive a view of intelligence. Intelligence often evolves to promote cooperation, defense, and to make the most of available resources. There isn't much immoral about that in itself.
(I suppose we could also discuss elephants, who have well-documented 'symbolic systems' built on low-frequency vocalization.)
Does anyone else have the sense that this was ripped from The Onion and printed in the Post?
Right down to the glaring irony of the statement: "Those technology people never give anything of their's away!"
Huh?
Let just hope that the books don't begin to come with shrinkwrap agreements that explain to us that we're really purchasing an individual license to the abstract text, which just happens to be manifested on pulp -- and that handing the book to someone else constitutes a crime.
I can't wait for the French to hear American tourists speaking to them through these things. I have a horrible feeling that the stereotype of the Ugly American will be given new life. I have to say that, in all honesty, I think it is a little rude to try to communicate in this way. Most people would appreciate it if you made an effort to actually learn to use their language. (Of course, there may be legitimate and appropriate uses for the technology, but having a conversation over dinner, or getting directions to the local landmark aren't among them.)
Real potential lies with Decion Making
on
Digital Doctoring
·
· Score: 1
I'm currently involved in the development of tools which clinicians can use to find the relevant recommendations contained in a clinical practice guideline, given a particular 'case' (patient characterists, availability of resources, etc.). This kind of project is much more involved, and more complicated, than a reference app -- the kind of thing that tells you which drugs interact with which other drugs -- but it is potentially much more useful.
It's important, I think, to talk about the real potential, and the real danger, of this kind of automation...
Automating the delivery of recommendations from medical Guidelines improves the quality of care because physicians are often too busy to consult lenthy, complicated print guidelines. Having them in electronic format alone isn't much help -- these systems have to pull patient characterists from existing medical record systems and offer recommendations based on those variables. In other words, they have to be able to step through a series of logical statements and offer an evaluation to the physician. This will, in the long run, greatly improve patient care, because decisions will more often be based on empirical evidence rather than on convention or tradition.
The danger is NOT that physicians will blindly follow recommendations (any good system should offer a natural language explanation of how it arrived at a recommendation, which the physician can then accept or reject), but that HMOs and insurance companies will tweak these systems so that the underlying algorithms favor reduced cost rather than highest patient quality of life.
Unfortunately, physicians are no more or less computer literature than any other professional group (which is to say, not very), and so we, as developers, have an ethical obligation to articulate very clearly how these systems function, both to the clinicians who use it, and to the public.
Having said this, I would much rather have my physician pull out his handspring and look at survival curves for various drug treatments than to have him give me 'drug x' because that's simply what they 'do' for my condition!
Your response to the story is completely irrational. Michael didn't say anything to slander these people.
Are you truly suggesting that we should trust corporations, even those corporations who have acted irresponsibly in the past, until they act irresponsibly yet again? This is nonesense. As for the following:
Folks, is this really the world you want to live in? Where people are guilty until proven innocent? Gossip and innuendo should never be acceptable. Never!
Um, corporations don't have constitutional rights, only people do. And, as for the people involved, Michael isn't saying that they've anything illegal, only that we should scrutinize their actions. (And, that we should be suspicious of DC's claims of acting in the public interest.) Nowhere does he call for the DOJ to bust into DC's offices and seize records from their privacy group. Get a grip.
What he does suggest, at the end, is that they are trying to forestall efforts to make their data collection illegal. Who can doubt that this is true?
As for finding direct evidence that DC is 'paying off' these members, I don't think that this is what the story says, nor does political influence often work this way: it works by indirection, subtle 'suggestion' and vague commitments. We won't find any memos from DC asking these people to protect their interests, nor do there need to be any. And we have no obligation to trust them.
If you're so bent out of shape about what you consider to be a violation of Journalistic Integrity, consider it to be an OpEd peice.
There seems to be some concern that the support-based business model contains within it a conflict of interest: that businesses which rely on support won't 'want' to make their products easy to use. These fears seem to assume that this business model is targeting the basic user who wants to center paragraphs, bold text and send one-page memos.
These support arrangements seem to me primarly to offer support to corporations and "Power Users". Clearly, corporations are willing to pay for the peace of mind that comes from guaranteed support -- does anyone remember when "no one was ever fired for buying IBM?"
Power Users are willing to pay to have developers help them to do things that 99.9% of the other users of the program wouldn't dream of doing. (How do I get this mail merge to take data directly from a relational database? How can I ensure that page 425 of my dissertation is formatted using this 'style'? Etc, etc.)
The best thing about this business model is that it provides that large base of basic, individual users the legal right freely to use a very efficient, and very Inuitive program. The kind of conspiracy theory that holds that Miguel would be involved in a project to deliberately confuse users is more than ridiculous.
Linux, and Open Software/Free Software in general, is often perceived to be everything from anarchic, Left, and communitarian to libertarian and meritocratic. Clearly, these categories are self-contradictory (I tend to believe that Free Software is the former rather than the latter), but it is almost never considered to be supportive of hierarchy, or conservative models of organization. There's no reason to believe that using the product of a Left-leaning community would threaten the Royal Family, but did this cause you any concern? Was there any resistance to your decision to use Linux on these grounds?
As I browse through the comments here I'm struck by the number of people who would argue that Wired transformed itself from a vibrant magazine to one pre-occupied with business and corporate interests. As Katz puts it, "It's professional and sober, lacking arguments or ideas, focusing on the business of computing rather than the culture and politics of the Net and the Web."
Wired was, from the very beginning, obsessively and misguidedly attached to extreme libertarianism, and the boring, offensive and oppressive stances it began to take were inevitable. If you didn't see it from the first edition it's because you were blinded by the excitement of something 'new' which I suppose, to some extent, and to some people, it was.
The problem is that the magazine held two incompatible premises: that the importance of the web was that it provided the space for a new kind of community, and as such it was an outgrowth of, and response to, existing social structures; and, that in this new space we could finally shed out communal responsability and revel in the opportunities for purely personal gain, stock-options in start-ups and toilets that would automatically clean our asses while planning our itineraries.
The Web is not, cannot be, and should not be thought of, as a place to escape community, communal responsibility, and inter-relatedness. It is a place to rethink our relationships in the real world, and to transform them.
The real revolution, the one that Wired missed, is the very opportunity provided by projects like Linux, Gnome, and copy-left licences. We are transforming the nature of community and work right here, and it's a new way of approaching old problems precisely because it avoids the old traps of selfish, accumulative (property-centered) individualism.
Slashdot Mirror
> Can you imagine having to tell your grandmother that all of her data is gone
> because she forgot her password?
And how will she feel when thief who grabs her laptop also steals her identity, and leaves her with months of labor to clear her name and her credit?
I would love to a see a distro, like ubunto, that would ask me if I wanted to create a small boot parition, and a larger *encrypted* primary parition, which would then install to the encrypted partiton, and finally give me the chance to burn a CD from which to boot (or USB stick if my system supported that, etc.). Then, on boot (either from the HD small boot part, or a read-only CD), I'd enter my password to access the root partition. As it stands, getting this done requires some expertise, too much time for most of us, and lot manipulating of files, partitions, etc.. Make it easy!
I've done all-grain that clear over several weeks of cold conditioning (refrigeration), I've seen room temp meads take many months.
Chances are we were drinking cloudy but not *chunky* beverages before modern times.
So, forget 1), and make sure that the first pw someone picks is almost impossible to guess, and let them keep it.
Slashdot had a recent post about neighborhood/zip based resources, but this is another great place to house them. Neighbors could exchange ideas/strategies for accomplishing regional specific things like commuting paths, best places to get a cup-of-joe, etc.. It would also be nice to have blogging by gov't officials, to get a sense that the person is actually thinking about the job, and the issues they are employed to solve between public elections.
For all those people who believe that words like "nigger" and "fag" aren't related to their original meaning, I invite you to come to my neighborhood and start calling my neighbors "niggers". I wager you won't walk out intact.
Well, I'm not so sure. Everquest aside, the vast majority of the players are young men who, apparently, feel very insecure about their sexuality. I realize this isn't an FPS, and yes, I was using this mis-characterization to joke about games in general, but honestly, I really like multiplayer online gaming, and I can't tell you how many times I've seen pimpled boys message to each other "I reamed your gay ass with that", or "take that you fag", etc.... And, don't bother to recite the eminem argument about fag not refering to gay people...
Given the option to marry?
I never thought I'd see the day that first person shooters would be more tolerant of social differences the the general U.S. population.
Most people will wait for pharm companies to develop mimetics, or ways of producing the same results without actually having to eat less, but for those who have an interest in reading up on human CR visit the CR Society web pages, or pick up one of Roy Walford's books on Amazon. (He's a professor of pathology at UCLA school of medicine, and is a leading researcher of CR. Beyond the 120 year diet is a good layman's introduction to CR.)
I think someone does need to learn to read more carefully, and it's not me.
I wrote that contributions seem to be handled via Ximian. From the page:
GNOME Foundation
c/o Ximian
401 Park Drive, 3rd West
Boston, MA 02215
And, yes, someone can figure out who the Gnome Foundation is, which tells them absolutely nothing about how they plan to use this money.
Yes, I like gnome a lot. I might even donate money, but the problem with this link is they they don't offer any specific details about what happens with this money? Does it go to administration? How so? To major coders? which? Who qualifies? Bandwidth? Why does the Gnome Foundation do that requires our financial support?
To make matters worse, contributions seem to be handled via Ximian. I have no problem with Ximian forming as a company, or their desire to make money. Still, I'm not entirely confortable with a donation to a company. So, is Ximian providing accounting/banking services here, or are they going to directly benefit from this contribution?
I'm sure there are good answers to all of these questions, but they're not present on the donation page, and they should be.
The submitter didn't bother to read the article he linked very well. According to that fluff article: "The high-net-worth market segment [defined later as $500k nw] has reached more than seven million in the U.S. and is projected to grow 16% annually for the next three years and control more than $30 trillion in assets at that point. (Web Finance)" The 30 million w/ $500k net worth is *projected* by the likes of Web Finance, and it's being promoted by a nonpartial group.
You may be able to circumvent a keylogger using the system you outline by having the key burned to the same business card sized CD. I would personally encrypt that key so that BOTH a password, and possession of the CD are needed to boot. You could also tie this to one of those tiny USB devices (DiskOnKey, PenDrive, etc.). Of course, this still would not give you complete protection.
The skills the original poster discusses are narrow professional skills, and if that is all you want to learn you can attend a professional school (like ITT), or learn it on your own. It is worth asking, though, why those degrees, or why a lack of a degree, leaves you at a disadvantage. Many of those who hire recognize the value that a well-rounded person brings to their institution.
Over the course of your career you will find that it is far easier to learn the next popular programming language than it is to learn basic critical thinking skills, or to grasp the greater social and political contexts for your work. You can use those narrow technogolies much more effectively when you understand their general significance.
The english word to describe this would be 'irony'.
It's not clear whether you are serious when you talk about violating the American constitution, and it is particularly 'funny' to Americans that a German citizen would judge Americans to be too restrictive of speach when the situation is far worse for Germans.
You wrote:
"Intelligence isn't even an evolutionarily important characteristic: just look at how few species possess it -- if it were more valuable, then it would be selected for, and more species would have it. Which species do have it? Squids, spiders, and other predators. Intelligence has evolved at each stage in animal evolution (cephalopods, arachnids, mammalia, etc.) but only as a means of furthering predation. Where's the morality in that? "
I take exception to this: There are examples of real intelligence that develops NOT to further predation, but to further self-defense and communal living. Rabbits are well known (both in folklore, and to anyone who has ever had a house rabbit) to posses an uncanny intelligence, awareness of the intentions of others, complex communication/body language, etc..., and I have yet to see a rabbit hunt another living being for food. This is simply too reductive a view of intelligence. Intelligence often evolves to promote cooperation, defense, and to make the most of available resources. There isn't much immoral about that in itself.
(I suppose we could also discuss elephants, who have well-documented 'symbolic systems' built on low-frequency vocalization.)
Does anyone else have the sense that this was ripped from The Onion and printed in the Post? Right down to the glaring irony of the statement: "Those technology people never give anything of their's away!" Huh? Let just hope that the books don't begin to come with shrinkwrap agreements that explain to us that we're really purchasing an individual license to the abstract text, which just happens to be manifested on pulp -- and that handing the book to someone else constitutes a crime.
I can't wait for the French to hear American tourists speaking to them through these things. I have a horrible feeling that the stereotype of the Ugly American will be given new life. I have to say that, in all honesty, I think it is a little rude to try to communicate in this way. Most people would appreciate it if you made an effort to actually learn to use their language. (Of course, there may be legitimate and appropriate uses for the technology, but having a conversation over dinner, or getting directions to the local landmark aren't among them.)
I'm currently involved in the development of tools which clinicians can use to find the relevant recommendations contained in a clinical practice guideline, given a particular 'case' (patient characterists, availability of resources, etc.). This kind of project is much more involved, and more complicated, than a reference app -- the kind of thing that tells you which drugs interact with which other drugs -- but it is potentially much more useful.
It's important, I think, to talk about the real potential, and the real danger, of this kind of automation...
Automating the delivery of recommendations from medical Guidelines improves the quality of care because physicians are often too busy to consult lenthy, complicated print guidelines. Having them in electronic format alone isn't much help -- these systems have to pull patient characterists from existing medical record systems and offer recommendations based on those variables. In other words, they have to be able to step through a series of logical statements and offer an evaluation to the physician. This will, in the long run, greatly improve patient care, because decisions will more often be based on empirical evidence rather than on convention or tradition.
The danger is NOT that physicians will blindly follow recommendations (any good system should offer a natural language explanation of how it arrived at a recommendation, which the physician can then accept or reject), but that HMOs and insurance companies will tweak these systems so that the underlying algorithms favor reduced cost rather than highest patient quality of life.
Unfortunately, physicians are no more or less computer literature than any other professional group (which is to say, not very), and so we, as developers, have an ethical obligation to articulate very clearly how these systems function, both to the clinicians who use it, and to the public.
Having said this, I would much rather have my physician pull out his handspring and look at survival curves for various drug treatments than to have him give me 'drug x' because that's simply what they 'do' for my condition!
Are you truly suggesting that we should trust corporations, even those corporations who have acted irresponsibly in the past, until they act irresponsibly yet again? This is nonesense. As for the following:
Folks, is this really the world you want to live in? Where people are guilty until proven innocent? Gossip and innuendo should never be acceptable. Never!
Um, corporations don't have constitutional rights, only people do. And, as for the people involved, Michael isn't saying that they've anything illegal, only that we should scrutinize their actions. (And, that we should be suspicious of DC's claims of acting in the public interest.) Nowhere does he call for the DOJ to bust into DC's offices and seize records from their privacy group. Get a grip.
What he does suggest, at the end, is that they are trying to forestall efforts to make their data collection illegal. Who can doubt that this is true?
As for finding direct evidence that DC is 'paying off' these members, I don't think that this is what the story says, nor does political influence often work this way: it works by indirection, subtle 'suggestion' and vague commitments. We won't find any memos from DC asking these people to protect their interests, nor do there need to be any. And we have no obligation to trust them.
If you're so bent out of shape about what you consider to be a violation of Journalistic Integrity, consider it to be an OpEd peice.
That's genuinely funny. Thanks.
There seems to be some concern that the support-based business model contains within it a conflict of interest: that businesses which rely on support won't 'want' to make their products easy to use. These fears seem to assume that this business model is targeting the basic user who wants to center paragraphs, bold text and send one-page memos.
These support arrangements seem to me primarly to offer support to corporations and "Power Users". Clearly, corporations are willing to pay for the peace of mind that comes from guaranteed support -- does anyone remember when "no one was ever fired for buying IBM?"
Power Users are willing to pay to have developers help them to do things that 99.9% of the other users of the program wouldn't dream of doing. (How do I get this mail merge to take data directly from a relational database? How can I ensure that page 425 of my dissertation is formatted using this 'style'? Etc, etc.)
The best thing about this business model is that it provides that large base of basic, individual users the legal right freely to use a very efficient, and very Inuitive program. The kind of conspiracy theory that holds that Miguel would be involved in a project to deliberately confuse users is more than ridiculous.
David
Linux, and Open Software/Free Software in general, is often perceived to be everything from anarchic, Left, and communitarian to libertarian and meritocratic. Clearly, these categories are self-contradictory (I tend to believe that Free Software is the former rather than the latter), but it is almost never considered to be supportive of hierarchy, or conservative models of organization. There's no reason to believe that using the product of a Left-leaning community would threaten the Royal Family, but did this cause you any concern? Was there any resistance to your decision to use Linux on these grounds?
David
As I browse through the comments here I'm struck by the number of people who would argue that Wired transformed itself from a vibrant magazine to one pre-occupied with business and corporate interests. As Katz puts it, "It's professional and sober, lacking arguments or ideas, focusing on the business of computing rather than the culture and politics of the Net and the Web."
Wired was, from the very beginning, obsessively and misguidedly attached to extreme libertarianism, and the boring, offensive and oppressive stances it began to take were inevitable. If you didn't see it from the first edition it's because you were blinded by the excitement of something 'new' which I suppose, to some extent, and to some people, it was.
The problem is that the magazine held two incompatible premises: that the importance of the web was that it provided the space for a new kind of community, and as such it was an outgrowth of, and response to, existing social structures; and, that in this new space we could finally shed out communal responsability and revel in the opportunities for purely personal gain, stock-options in start-ups and toilets that would automatically clean our asses while planning our itineraries.
The Web is not, cannot be, and should not be thought of, as a place to escape community, communal responsibility, and inter-relatedness. It is a place to rethink our relationships in the real world, and to transform them.
The real revolution, the one that Wired missed, is the very opportunity provided by projects like Linux, Gnome, and copy-left licences. We are transforming the nature of community and work right here, and it's a new way of approaching old problems precisely because it avoids the old traps of selfish, accumulative (property-centered) individualism.
As for Wired, Good Ridance!
Haha,
Let me point out that I have a sense of humor and that I'm not above these kinds of mistakes myself:
"and it suggest a lack of professionalism"
should read, "it suggests."
In any case, I do think that comments are quite different than original news posts. I haven't ever criticized a slashdot commentor on their writing.