If they were hashing the music files, that'd be a good explanation, but they're not. They're just doing a single hash over the whole of the iTunes database - absolutely no use for telling what files have changed.
If you are going for a performance optimization, then the (possibly theoretical) advantage is you check a small hash of the db rather than comparing the whole db between the ipod and itunes.
If the db is unchanged (hashes match) you are done. If the db is different, then you fall back to the old method, and start comparing the dbs. That should tell iTunes which songs have been added, removed, or changed; since that is the kind of thing the db stores.
The only thing a hash of each song would catch is if something other than iTunes changed the song file on disk. I thinks it is reasonable for iTunes not to worry about that possibility. Any changes iTunes makes could be kept in the db.
Hell, according to wikipedia, most electors are nominated by the state political party, sometimes at party conventions.. How are they supposed to be unbiased?
If I remember correctly, the electors don't even have to vote for the candidate with the most ballot votes, they can choose to vote another way, becoming faithless electors
These two points directly relate to one another. Electors aren't suppose to be unbiased. They are picked by the state political party, usual from long time loyal members. The presidential election picks which set (Democratic or Republican) of electors are sent to the electoral college. The selected electors are expected to be biased in favor of their own party, which is why the party trusts that they will vote for the parties selected presidential candidate (aka the guy on the ballet).
Their demonstrated party loyalty make it exceedingly unlikely for any of them to act as faithless electors.
I'm not saying its a great system, but in practice it isn't as vulnerable to faithless electors and you might think.
It wasn't trivial at all to make something like that in the middle ages. Medieval canons, for example, left a huge empty space around the canonball (sometimes up to an inch) rather than even try to get a neat tight fit. As late as the mid-1800, it was easier to make the Minnie ball (first practical rifled bullet for mass army use) just expand its base to engage the rifling than to even try to have it made exactly the right caliber.
The slightly undersized nature of the Minnie "ball" was a feature, not a bug.:)
The technology existed to make bullets that exactly match the caliber of the rifle. In fact that was basically how the previous rifle balls worked, and also why they were impractical for army use.
If the rifle ball exactly matches the caliber of the rifle, then with muzzle loading rifles (which is all they had) it is relatively hard to get the ball pushed down the barrel. The ball engages the rifling on the way down, so you have to force it to twist its way down the length of the barrel. This takes a fair bit of time with the ramming rod, making for a slow reload time, thus making the weapon impractical for army use.
By using an undersized, expanding, round in the Minnie ball design it can be rammed home much more easily, because it doesn't engage the rifling grooves when loaded, only when fired. This make for a faster reload time and a practical weapon.
(None of which detracts from your main point that pre-industrial revolution machining tolerances were poor)
Think about this for a second. The Saturn didn't have computers on board, it's older than the computer age. When it was designed, you probably couldn't fit a computer into it's entire cargo area. It doesn't make sense on any level to try to even pretend that the technology should be classified
Um couldn't the same thing be said about the atomic bomb? After all it is almost twice as old as the Saturn V rocket, and when it was developed you could barely get a computer into the hanger designed for the bomber that carried it.
Now, I agree that destroying public posters showing a generic cut away of a Saturn V is stupid and pointless (and frankly so would destroying the microfilm archives of its actual blueprints which would be a lot more helpful). But you can't make a reasonable claim that simply because something is old it shouldn't be classified.
I dont mind buttons at all. In fact I think the biggest mistake with the ipod is the lack of buttons. A quick and easy way to switch tracks AND volume should be required on all mp3 devices. Having to go through a menu system to change volume is silly.
You don't need to go through a menu system to change the volume on an ipod. Simply move your finger around the click wheel (clockwise = volume up; counter-clockwise = volume down).
(If you press select first it changes possition within the track rather than volume when you do this)
Yes the Belgrano was the first warship that was sunk during the Falklands war... by wire guided torpedoes from a UK sub
Actually, the torpedoes used by the HMS Conqueror were not wire guided. They were an older design, the Mark 8, originally designed in the 1920s. (Although the design had been updated some over the years; the ones used were Mark 8 Mod 4).
The British captain choose not to use his reportedly trouble prone wire guided homing torpedoes (Mark 24 Tigerfish), and preferred to get close and use the old dependable design instead.
Well, yes, I can understand that. But then the appropriate comment from the person should have said, "As a matter of policy, we don't talk about programs -- whether or not they exist." The fact that he was talking about classified programs is what caught my eye...
But that isn't quite right either.
Their policy presumably allows them to talk about existing unclassified programs. And probably allows them to explain that no such program exists when asked specifically about a non-existent (supposedly) unclassified program.
So the actual rule appears to be: "We don't talk about or acknowledge programs which are, or would be, or which you claim are, classified -- whether or not they exist." Which is pretty unwieldy.
Or does this thing look too much like the Planet Express ship for comfort.
Sure, just like the Planet Express ship. Aside from the shape (doesn't have the "chin" of the PE ship), the proportions, the giant wing, the canards, the two jet engines, the lack of ventral fins, the lack of the top turret, and the lack of the gratings near the rocket.
Aside from those tiny insignificant details it is a dead ringer for the Planet Express ship.
Maybe he just worded that wrong, but if you can derive the secret key like that, you're messing up
It could be an (oversimplified) mention of the Diffie-Hellman key agreement protocol. The two sides trade information publicly, and still manage to come up with the a shared secret key. Even someone who monitored all the communication between them can't recreate that key.
That could kind of (but semi-inaccurately) be described as deriving a secret key from "publicly available information".
10. P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently.
But the real question would be, is the ratio of popular to new music on P2P networks higher or lower than the ratio on say Clear Channel radio stations?
New music doesn't have to be in the majority for P2P to be a "hotbed" for discovering it; it only needs to be a higher percentage of music on P2P than through other existing sources.
I.e. if it makes up 1% of music a P2P networks, but only 0.1% of music on mainstream radio, then P2P appears much more effective.
Vehicle climate controls should be something like this.
Fan speed [-----|----] (could be a rotary knob, but needs to be a 0-10 scale) Temp. [-----|----]
Floor [x] Dashboard [x] Windshield [x]
A/C [x] Recirc. [x] Rear Def. [x]
Auto-temp [x]
The controls on my A4 capture almost all of that. But they are digital buttons, rather than analog controls.
Even so, you have temp +/- buttons (thermostat rather than simple hot / cold) Above the temp buttons is the currently programmed temp display Above that is a button Auto [x] (with an indicator to show when activated)
To the right of the temp display are 3 vertically stacked buttons Recirc. [x] Econ [x] (force compressor off) Off. [x] (turns off compressor and fans)
To the right of that is a fan speed display. (10 or 15 segment horizontal bar graph)
Under the fan display are fan speed +/- buttons.
Under those are front and rear defrost buttons
To the right of the fan display are 3 more vertically stacked buttons Windshield [x] Dashboard [x] Floor [x]
The interesting thing is that Auto degrades nicely. If the car is in auto and you mess with the selected vent buttons the fan speed and compressor usage remain auto but only the vents you selected are used.
If you increase the fan speed it will take that as the new minimum but be willing to raise it if necessary. If you lower the fan speed it will take that as the new maximum but be willing to lower it if necessary.
Around here my summer setting is 70 degrees F, 80% max fan speed (they are noisy when full blast), and no windshield vent because the air from that vent hits the windshield cold enough to condense water on the outside of the windshield fogging it.
My somewhat similar phone annoyance is with my cheap non-flip phone. It does have a keyguard, which require pressing 1, 2, 3 in order to unlock the phone. And that works pretty well, even though the keypad is exposed.
The annoyance is that the backlight feature doesn't pay attention to the keyguard feature. There is no way to tell the phone to use the backlight only for (keypress AND !keyguard).
I'm perfectly capable of dialing 1, 2, 3 to disable the keyguard in the dark, I don't need the backlight for that. But to have backlighting at all I have to let it run the battery down by activating, for a minimum of 5 seconds, every time any key is pressed (i.e. all the time), even when the keypad is locked.
do they have similar presentations at conferences, like how the civil war would have ended if the south had stealth bombers... and how Hannibal would have done if he had a fleet of Hummers with 50cal BMGs?
Well, first thing the Hummers would run out of fuel...
OTOH he did get Eliphants across the alps, I guess he could get Hummers into Italy. (Tow them behind the eliphant if nothing else). Not sure why you'd bother. The 50cal BMG would certainly kill plenty of Romans, while the ammo lasted.
But Hannibal's problem was never killing Roman soldiers. It was that he didn't have the people or logistics to beseige Rome (and force a surrender), nor the force to storm the city.
Giving him a couple of trucks of MREs would probably change history more than machine guns.
A lot of people thought Nintendo was crazy when they released the analog stick for the N64. Remember, there was no dual shock controllers at this time for PS1, it's main competitor. A lot of people didn't like it. Now every console (minus the wii) is using this control scheme, and everybody has gotten used to them.
Even on the wii the nunchuck controller attachment has an analog stick on it. So it looks like every current or recent console is using that control scheme.
Problem is, nobody picks up hitchhikers anymore. Living in Iowa, I've helped a few students waiting at bus stops get to class faster, but I certainly wouldn't/don't stop for people with sleeping bags and an outstretched thumb on the highway. For one, it's illegal to stop for anything other than an emergency on most interstates. Hitchhiking just isn't a viable means anymore. Too many laws and too much paranoia. I think most people are worried about the hitchhiker being a problem, not the other way around.
Nobody picks up hitchhikers anymore. Unless they are organized hitchhiking businessmen in suburban areas. See Slugging.
People modded that post funny, but I'd mod it sad:( If that's the case, why is the article written the way it is? I've frequently noticed posts about wonder drugs that in the end seem to have some deleterious effect on the body, and that's never mentioned.
They modded it funny because 'Trutonin' is a ficticious drug from the TV show Stargate SG-1.
The post wasn't about the actual VIRIP from the article.
We may have reached a threashold in unmanned exploration where the operations and software is more expensive than building and launching the hardware itself (at least for going to Mars). This may mean that it is actually cheaper to let failures slip through every now and then. For example, it may be cheaper to have 5 probes with a 40% of failure than 2 probes with 10% failure. However, such may result in national embarassment.
One possibly method to try to address this (other than just letting some probes die) is to accept some inefficiencies and split probes into standard and mission specific pieces (at least for orbital probes).
You could build a base orbiter design around a common chasse, using standardized software to handle things like orbital maneuvering/orientation, power generation/storage/allocation, and communications. There would be reserved weight / volume for mission specific hardware and sensors. That base software (and standard sensors) would have most of the fail safe code of the probe, to handle things like loss of comms, improper orientation, thermal limits, partial power failure, etc. Hopefully that would allow the common software to be improved over time and allow future missions to focus on the sensors they want to install, without having to worry about reinventing fail safe modes for the base orbiter.
However, there would certainly be downsides to doing this. For one thing, it would put a crimp on the size and placement of sensors or other mission hardware because they would have to be built around the volume/mass and probably mass distribution limits of the basic chasse. For another you might have to work around the base chasse having too little power generation/storage for the mission hardware; or conversely waste mass and thus raising the cost of delivery by having much larger solar panels and batteries than you require.
It would really only be practical if you wanted to build quite a few fairly similar probes.
Don't forget: You may be watching it on a TV that has a zoom feature. You need all the pixels you can get when zooming in.
Well yes, but you need those pixels in the source material, not so much in the screen.
Extreme example: If you really zoom in a 1080p screen in on a 480p image it will look worse than if you had a 480p display that internally understood 1080p and zoomed in on that 1080p image.
In the first case it doesn't mater how many pixels the screen can display because it has to make up (interpolate) values to put on them. But you could zoom in a long way on a 1080p signal before you dropped below 480p displayed pixels.
Now my set of conditionals still holds. 1) if the output of a machine is money
2) if the input of the machine was money
3) if there is a call to a random number generator inside the machine it is gambling.
I'd argue that it is only gambling if the output can potentially exceed the input.
I considered phrasing it as, 3) if there is a call to a random number generator where that call affects the output it is gambling.
But realized that your jukebox example could be modified so this was true, and yet still not gambling. (i.e. some song are $1 and some are $2, a song is randomly selected, and your change depends on the cost of the random song)
But to my mind that isn't really gambling because there is no possibility to "win".
McCain's incompetent Web designer couldn't even be bothered to notice that the image in question said "No requests for design help please".
If you'd RTFA (yes, yeas, I know this is/.) you'd have seen that the only person who would see "No requests for design help please" was Mike Davidson because it was in his web cache. Everyone else saw the 'normal' link picture.
Ignoring web caches, only Davidson's myspace page would display the version w/ "No requests for design help please" and anyone who leached from his server would get the version w/o it.
>Do you know of a way to zoom in better with the sniper rifle (other than the on/off d-pad)? it seems kind of neutered in its effectiveness without a scalable zoom, as goldeneye-style long-range kills are a heck of a lot of fun.
Once you turn on zoom (with the d-pad) the left and right shoulder buttons control your zoom scale. Left shoulder = zoom in, Right shoulder = zoom out. The D pad always starts zoom at fully zoomed out.
(BTW the control setting menu / control hints screen kind of shows this. It does show that the shoulders' control zoom as well as reload & grenade. It just doesn't explain that the zoom controls only work after you enable zoom mode)
It also means that if an organization has some requirement for a rather uniquely configured version of OpenSSL that they can build it themselves from certified sources and be comfortable with using it
They may be comfortable using it, but if they were a government agency with a requirement to use validated code it doesn't look like they could use a "uniquely configured version".
Taken from the CMVP validation list on the CMVP website.
(When built, installed, protected and initialized as specified in the provided Security Policy. Appendix B of the provided Security Policy specifies the complete set of source files of this module. There shall be no additions, deletions or alterations of this set as used during module build. All source files, including the specified OpenSSL distribution tar file, shall be verified as specified in Appendix B of the provided Security Policy. Installation, protection, and initialization shall be completed as specified in Appendix C of the provided Security Policy. Any deviation from specified verification, protection, installation and initialization procedures will result in a non FIPS 140-2 compliant module)
That's seems to be a pretty lengthy caveat saying if you make changes it's not the validated version anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
If the db is unchanged (hashes match) you are done. If the db is different, then you fall back to the old method, and start comparing the dbs. That should tell iTunes which songs have been added, removed, or changed; since that is the kind of thing the db stores.
The only thing a hash of each song would catch is if something other than iTunes changed the song file on disk. I thinks it is reasonable for iTunes not to worry about that possibility. Any changes iTunes makes could be kept in the db.
Their demonstrated party loyalty make it exceedingly unlikely for any of them to act as faithless electors.
I'm not saying its a great system, but in practice it isn't as vulnerable to faithless electors and you might think.
The technology existed to make bullets that exactly match the caliber of the rifle. In fact that was basically how the previous rifle balls worked, and also why they were impractical for army use.
If the rifle ball exactly matches the caliber of the rifle, then with muzzle loading rifles (which is all they had) it is relatively hard to get the ball pushed down the barrel. The ball engages the rifling on the way down, so you have to force it to twist its way down the length of the barrel. This takes a fair bit of time with the ramming rod, making for a slow reload time, thus making the weapon impractical for army use.
By using an undersized, expanding, round in the Minnie ball design it can be rammed home much more easily, because it doesn't engage the rifling grooves when loaded, only when fired. This make for a faster reload time and a practical weapon.
(None of which detracts from your main point that pre-industrial revolution machining tolerances were poor)
Now, I agree that destroying public posters showing a generic cut away of a Saturn V is stupid and pointless (and frankly so would destroying the microfilm archives of its actual blueprints which would be a lot more helpful). But you can't make a reasonable claim that simply because something is old it shouldn't be classified.
(If you press select first it changes possition within the track rather than volume when you do this)
The British captain choose not to use his reportedly trouble prone wire guided homing torpedoes (Mark 24 Tigerfish), and preferred to get close and use the old dependable design instead.
Their policy presumably allows them to talk about existing unclassified programs. And probably allows them to explain that no such program exists when asked specifically about a non-existent (supposedly) unclassified program.
So the actual rule appears to be: "We don't talk about or acknowledge programs which are, or would be, or which you claim are, classified -- whether or not they exist." Which is pretty unwieldy.
Sure, just like the Planet Express ship. Aside from the shape (doesn't have the "chin" of the PE ship), the proportions, the giant wing, the canards, the two jet engines, the lack of ventral fins, the lack of the top turret, and the lack of the gratings near the rocket.
Aside from those tiny insignificant details it is a dead ringer for the Planet Express ship.
That could kind of (but semi-inaccurately) be described as deriving a secret key from "publicly available information".
New music doesn't have to be in the majority for P2P to be a "hotbed" for discovering it; it only needs to be a higher percentage of music on P2P than through other existing sources.
I.e. if it makes up 1% of music a P2P networks, but only 0.1% of music on mainstream radio, then P2P appears much more effective.
Even so, you have temp +/- buttons (thermostat rather than simple hot / cold)
Above the temp buttons is the currently programmed temp display
Above that is a button Auto [x] (with an indicator to show when activated)
To the right of the temp display are 3 vertically stacked buttons
Recirc. [x]
Econ [x] (force compressor off)
Off. [x] (turns off compressor and fans)
To the right of that is a fan speed display. (10 or 15 segment horizontal bar graph)
Under the fan display are fan speed +/- buttons.
Under those are front and rear defrost buttons
To the right of the fan display are 3 more vertically stacked buttons
Windshield [x]
Dashboard [x]
Floor [x]
The interesting thing is that Auto degrades nicely. If the car is in auto and you mess with the selected vent buttons the fan speed and compressor usage remain auto but only the vents you selected are used.
If you increase the fan speed it will take that as the new minimum but be willing to raise it if necessary. If you lower the fan speed it will take that as the new maximum but be willing to lower it if necessary.
Around here my summer setting is 70 degrees F, 80% max fan speed (they are noisy when full blast), and no windshield vent because the air from that vent hits the windshield cold enough to condense water on the outside of the windshield fogging it.
My somewhat similar phone annoyance is with my cheap non-flip phone.
It does have a keyguard, which require pressing 1, 2, 3 in order to unlock the phone. And that works pretty well, even though the keypad is exposed.
The annoyance is that the backlight feature doesn't pay attention to the keyguard feature.
There is no way to tell the phone to use the backlight only for (keypress AND !keyguard).
I'm perfectly capable of dialing 1, 2, 3 to disable the keyguard in the dark, I don't need the backlight for that. But to have backlighting at all I have to let it run the battery down by activating, for a minimum of 5 seconds, every time any key is pressed (i.e. all the time), even when the keypad is locked.
OTOH he did get Eliphants across the alps, I guess he could get Hummers into Italy. (Tow them behind the eliphant if nothing else). Not sure why you'd bother. The 50cal BMG would certainly kill plenty of Romans, while the ammo lasted.
But Hannibal's problem was never killing Roman soldiers. It was that he didn't have the people or logistics to beseige Rome (and force a surrender), nor the force to storm the city.
Giving him a couple of trucks of MREs would probably change history more than machine guns.
When I was 9 or 10 the family computer could hold 10 megs. And that was nearly unfillable at the time.
So it looks like every current or recent console is using that control scheme.
Nobody picks up hitchhikers anymore.
Unless they are organized hitchhiking businessmen in suburban areas. See Slugging.
The post wasn't about the actual VIRIP from the article.
You could build a base orbiter design around a common chasse, using standardized software to handle things like orbital maneuvering/orientation, power generation/storage/allocation, and communications. There would be reserved weight / volume for mission specific hardware and sensors. That base software (and standard sensors) would have most of the fail safe code of the probe, to handle things like loss of comms, improper orientation, thermal limits, partial power failure, etc.
Hopefully that would allow the common software to be improved over time and allow future missions to focus on the sensors they want to install, without having to worry about reinventing fail safe modes for the base orbiter.
However, there would certainly be downsides to doing this.
For one thing, it would put a crimp on the size and placement of sensors or other mission hardware because they would have to be built around the volume/mass and probably mass distribution limits of the basic chasse.
For another you might have to work around the base chasse having too little power generation/storage for the mission hardware; or conversely waste mass and thus raising the cost of delivery by having much larger solar panels and batteries than you require.
It would really only be practical if you wanted to build quite a few fairly similar probes.
Extreme example: If you really zoom in a 1080p screen in on a 480p image it will look worse than if you had a 480p display that internally understood 1080p and zoomed in on that 1080p image.
In the first case it doesn't mater how many pixels the screen can display because it has to make up (interpolate) values to put on them. But you could zoom in a long way on a 1080p signal before you dropped below 480p displayed pixels.
I considered phrasing it as,
3) if there is a call to a random number generator where that call affects the output
it is gambling.
But realized that your jukebox example could be modified so this was true, and yet still not gambling. (i.e. some song are $1 and some are $2, a song is randomly selected, and your change depends on the cost of the random song)
But to my mind that isn't really gambling because there is no possibility to "win".
Ignoring web caches, only Davidson's myspace page would display the version w/ "No requests for design help please" and anyone who leached from his server would get the version w/o it.
>Do you know of a way to zoom in better with the sniper rifle (other than the on/off d-pad)? it seems kind of neutered in its effectiveness without a scalable zoom, as goldeneye-style long-range kills are a heck of a lot of fun.
Once you turn on zoom (with the d-pad) the left and right shoulder buttons control your zoom scale. Left shoulder = zoom in, Right shoulder = zoom out. The D pad always starts zoom at fully zoomed out.
(BTW the control setting menu / control hints screen kind of shows this. It does show that the shoulders' control zoom as well as reload & grenade. It just doesn't explain that the zoom controls only work after you enable zoom mode)
They may be comfortable using it, but if they were a government agency with a requirement to use validated code it doesn't look like they could use a "uniquely configured version".
Taken from the CMVP validation list on the CMVP website.
That's seems to be a pretty lengthy caveat saying if you make changes it's not the validated version anymore.