It's interesting to note that the FBI doesn't generally come in to play in porn issues. It's actually the US Customs department. In a past life I had dealings with them several times for porn coming from users of an ISP I worked for.
Re:Quite a few of those must have stories
on
Dumb Laws
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· Score: 1
Under Texas/Beaumont: "Collegiate football is banned at Lamar University."
I don't believe this is technically a law. We just dropped the football team. Nobody ever came to games. Lost $2mil per year.
Texas/Austin: "It is illegal to carry wire-cutters."
Not really. They have to be in your back pocket. THAT'S the part that makes no sense. Back in the "old west" days, there was quite a problem with cattle-rustlers in Texas.
Lastly, Texas/Port Arthur: "It is illegal to emit noxious oders in an elevator."
There is some truth to this: Several years ago, there was a company called AutoShack. RadioShack sued them. RadioShack won. Now there's a lot of "AutoZone"s around the country.
I find it interesting that this suit comes AFTER UPS's IPO. It seams that a few people might want to drop the stock a bit to get in, eh?
And how is UPS funnelling the money away different than an insurance company doing the same thing? How does an insurance company pay claims? By investing the premiums paid to them! It seems that's what UPS is doing. They just cut out the middle-man.
On a little side note, in August it became legal to digitally sign some legal documents in Texas. Digital signatures were not defined in detail in the law, but it's there.
There are several reasons a student could write an "essay" of this quality and get 100:
1) He's got an IEP(Individual Education Plan). This is a piece of paper that allows a student with mental/physical handicap(s) to attend school as if he were a "normal" child. For example, my wife has a student that has an IEP that says, "Grade to pass." The student CAN'T keep up. He's mentally unable to do so. But his parents want "Johnny" to be "normal" so they force him to attend regular classes.
2) The assignment wasn't actually an essay: There's a big difference between a "ghost story" and an essay. The teacher will grade as to what she was looking for. In this case, she might have been looking for descriptive language.
The moral: before you gripe that a grade for a piece of work is not fair, understand the complete context.
The WhistleJet was originally developed by a little company, not IBM. It's arguable that IBM just didn't feel like reengineering a box that already worked well. Not that FreeBSD isn't capable. I run a full ISP on it.
The whole point of quantum cryptography is that it solves the problem of secure key transferral for a one-time pad. One-time pad has been proven unbreakable, given a truly random key.
The article doesn't go into specifics, but quantum crypto has quite a few limitations, distance being the most important for day-to-day communications. The longest quantum channel I've heard of is about 2km. Photodetectors/emitters are also a problem. For quantum crypto to work completely, you have to be sending single photons(or photon pairs) out and detecting single photons. Current experiments are emits "small" numbers of photons. The problem is that Eve can split the group of photons and detect the spin in an undetectable manner.
Quantum crypto has a ways to go before it is practical.
My guess would be that the one-time pad is used for oh-crap-I'm-about-to-die kind of communications. Something like you call a number and say "foogle!" and mother knows to broadcast a meeting point using one-time pad 523 for agent 27 at 2300 Moscow time. Given the size of such message, the agent would probably just memorize the pad. After all, an address is only 40 or 50 bytes. I would assume also that each agent has their own one-time pad, so that capture doesn't invalidate ALL agents' pads. Seems like a very workable system to me, and you KNOW it can't be broken.
This doesn't regenerate cells, it only revives atrophied cells. If you've had actual physical damage to the grey matter, it's not going to help.
Interestingly, though, there has been work in nerve cell regeration, and I believe it's actually been going places in the last few years. See comments previously for a link, I believe.
You know, I'm going to be in Austin that week. I thought about driving out there, but according to MapQuest, it's 529 miles. Nope. Sorry. I can't get out of my previous engagement(a wedding), so I won't make it. The first really close conference, and I can't make it:(.
I would love more centrally located conferences. As a student, I can barely afford a hotel room in another city, much less conference fees and a hotel room AND trip money.
Maybe something in Texas?;)
I imagine Europeans have this same sort of problem, but a bit bigger since a trans-atlantic ticket is more than a Texas-to-Georgia ticket.
Everyone has to live somewhere. I've been looking for the perfect place to live. Something with no hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. Haven't found it yet. You always have at least one thing to make your day a bummer. I live on the coast of Texas. Hurricanes and pollution are our big things(and mosquitoes the size of small children). But don't knock a person because they choose to live somewhere. Florida's pretty nice, if it weren't for the hurricane thing. As far as I can tell, that's their only disaster-prone item.
Re:Big Deal. 9/9/99 wasn't going to be a problem.
on
9/9/99: News? Nein!
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· Score: 2
The place where this is going to be a big deal is in billing. Sure, today's not a big deal: everyone you're printing an invoice for was billed on 9/8. You're not going to notice that you missed 3 bills that should have printed after midnight. But tomorrow, when you should have 75 bills printed and you get none, you'll notice.
As for the "the date would be stored as 09/09/99" argument: You mean your integer reading functions don't strip the leading 0? That's interesting, and possibly useful, but possibly braindead also.
The "9/9/99" sentinel is NOT that old. They were teching us to use that in school less than 7 years ago.
I think there's a little backlash by younger computer people here. "Those old people" lacked the "vision" needed to plan for their programs to be in active use in 1999 or 2000. Get real. I'm not an old computer programmer, and I was taught that 9/9/99 was a good value to use, and I've seen several programs use it.
We've got a non-frame connection out to Houston, and have seen no routing problems. If it was a problem with routes going out, we'd see some effect(besides not being able to hit WC/UUnet frame customers). UUnet's NOC page was blaming Lucent early this week.
Oddly enough, the engineer we usually deal with a UU has been unavailable the past 2-3 weeks because they had him working on a "big project." He didn't even show up as at work when he was on that project. I wonder if this was it?
The problem is that Mitnik spent 4 years in jail and was never tried and convicted. He spent 4 years in jail because he couldn't raise a $1000000 bond for bail. It is somewhat equivilant to being in a crime ring. YOU know you're really guilty, the FEDS know you're really guilty, but they don't have anything to back it up with. In non-computer crimes, they would let you out of jail and hope to get you later. In computer crimes, they just slap you with a huge bail and let you rot, hoping everyone will forget about you.
Actually, I remember in an interview with the director(s?) that BWP is supposed to be MUCH better on standard TVs. I know the preview clips(none of which I saw before the movie) look alot more real. I think it has something to do with being used to "high-res" movies on the big screen. The VHS taping doesn't translate too well. It looked really fuzzy and out of focus. I think DVD will have the same problem. It's just TOO crisp and clear. It'd be like having a nice DAT system to listen to 1943 recordings of jazz bands.
The answer to the first person breaking free is pretty easy. Look at the Oracle. She's been around for longer than anyone can remember("from the beginning" is what Morpheus said) and hasn't died? She knows all sorts of things about what's going on? She's a rogue AI, man! It almost slaps you in the face. It seems relatively obvious that she freed the first human and keeps them going with little "motherly" nudges.
I'd love to see the story of how "she" decided to free the humans as well as how the world was decimated. But I desperately want to see what happens AFTER Neo frees the world also.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you have a link to the sheep software? :-)
It's interesting to note that the FBI doesn't generally come in to play in porn issues. It's actually the US Customs department. In a past life I had dealings with them several times for porn coming from users of an ISP I worked for.
Under Texas/Beaumont:
"Collegiate football is banned at Lamar University."
I don't believe this is technically a law. We just dropped the football team. Nobody ever came to games. Lost $2mil per year.
Texas/Austin:
"It is illegal to carry wire-cutters."
Not really. They have to be in your back pocket. THAT'S the part that makes no sense. Back in the "old west" days, there was quite a problem with cattle-rustlers in Texas.
Lastly, Texas/Port Arthur:
"It is illegal to emit noxious oders in an elevator."
I think this actually makes quite a bit of sense.
There is some truth to this:
Several years ago, there was a company called AutoShack. RadioShack sued them. RadioShack won. Now there's a lot of "AutoZone"s around the country.
I find it interesting that this suit comes AFTER UPS's IPO. It seams that a few people might want to drop the stock a bit to get in, eh?
And how is UPS funnelling the money away different than an insurance company doing the same thing? How does an insurance company pay claims? By investing the premiums paid to them! It seems that's what UPS is doing. They just cut out the middle-man.
On a little side note, in August it became legal to digitally sign some legal documents in Texas. Digital signatures were not defined in detail in the law, but it's there.
There are several reasons a student could write an "essay" of this quality and get 100:
1) He's got an IEP(Individual Education Plan). This is a piece of paper that allows a student with mental/physical handicap(s) to attend school as if he were a "normal" child. For example, my wife has a student that has an IEP that says, "Grade to pass." The student CAN'T keep up. He's mentally unable to do so. But his parents want "Johnny" to be "normal" so they force him to attend regular classes.
2) The assignment wasn't actually an essay: There's a big difference between a "ghost story" and an essay. The teacher will grade as to what she was looking for. In this case, she might have been looking for descriptive language.
The moral: before you gripe that a grade for a piece of work is not fair, understand the complete context.
The WhistleJet was originally developed by a little company, not IBM. It's arguable that IBM just didn't feel like reengineering a box that already worked well. Not that FreeBSD isn't capable. I run a full ISP on it.
Gibson tends to sound weird out of context of larger work, but he is very good at what he does. Read last months Wired, or some of his books.
The whole point of quantum cryptography is that it solves the problem of secure key transferral for a one-time pad. One-time pad has been proven unbreakable, given a truly random key.
The article doesn't go into specifics, but quantum crypto has quite a few limitations, distance being the most important for day-to-day communications. The longest quantum channel I've heard of is about 2km. Photodetectors/emitters are also a problem. For quantum crypto to work completely, you have to be sending single photons(or photon pairs) out and detecting single photons. Current experiments are emits "small" numbers of photons. The problem is that Eve can split the group of photons and detect the spin in an undetectable manner.
Quantum crypto has a ways to go before it is practical.
My guess would be that the one-time pad is used for oh-crap-I'm-about-to-die kind of communications. Something like you call a number and say "foogle!" and mother knows to broadcast a meeting point using one-time pad 523 for agent 27 at 2300 Moscow time. Given the size of such message, the agent would probably just memorize the pad. After all, an address is only 40 or 50 bytes. I would assume also that each agent has their own one-time pad, so that capture doesn't invalidate ALL agents' pads. Seems like a very workable system to me, and you KNOW it can't be broken.
This doesn't regenerate cells, it only revives atrophied cells. If you've had actual physical damage to the grey matter, it's not going to help.
Interestingly, though, there has been work in nerve cell regeration, and I believe it's actually been going places in the last few years. See comments previously for a link, I believe.
You know, I'm going to be in Austin that week. I thought about driving out there, but according to MapQuest, it's 529 miles. Nope. Sorry. I can't get out of my previous engagement(a wedding), so I won't make it. The first really close conference, and I can't make it :(.
I would love more centrally located conferences. As a student, I can barely afford a hotel room in another city, much less conference fees and a hotel room AND trip money.
;)
Maybe something in Texas?
I imagine Europeans have this same sort of problem, but a bit bigger since a trans-atlantic ticket is more than a Texas-to-Georgia ticket.
Everyone has to live somewhere. I've been looking for the perfect place to live. Something with no hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. Haven't found it yet. You always have at least one thing to make your day a bummer. I live on the coast of Texas. Hurricanes and pollution are our big things(and mosquitoes the size of small children). But don't knock a person because they choose to live somewhere. Florida's pretty nice, if it weren't for the hurricane thing. As far as I can tell, that's their only disaster-prone item.
The place where this is going to be a big deal is in billing. Sure, today's not a big deal: everyone you're printing an invoice for was billed on 9/8. You're not going to notice that you missed 3 bills that should have printed after midnight. But tomorrow, when you should have 75 bills printed and you get none, you'll notice.
As for the "the date would be stored as 09/09/99" argument: You mean your integer reading functions don't strip the leading 0? That's interesting, and possibly useful, but possibly braindead also.
The "9/9/99" sentinel is NOT that old. They were teching us to use that in school less than 7 years ago.
I think there's a little backlash by younger computer people here. "Those old people" lacked the "vision" needed to plan for their programs to be in active use in 1999 or 2000. Get real. I'm not an old computer programmer, and I was taught that 9/9/99 was a good value to use, and I've seen several programs use it.
We've got a non-frame connection out to Houston, and have seen no routing problems. If it was a problem with routes going out, we'd see some effect(besides not being able to hit WC/UUnet frame customers). UUnet's NOC page was blaming Lucent early this week.
Oddly enough, the engineer we usually deal with a UU has been unavailable the past 2-3 weeks because they had him working on a "big project." He didn't even show up as at work when he was on that project. I wonder if this was it?
The problem is that Mitnik spent 4 years in jail and was never tried and convicted. He spent 4 years in jail because he couldn't raise a $1000000 bond for bail. It is somewhat equivilant to being in a crime ring. YOU know you're really guilty, the FEDS know you're really guilty, but they don't have anything to back it up with. In non-computer crimes, they would let you out of jail and hope to get you later. In computer crimes, they just slap you with a huge bail and let you rot, hoping everyone will forget about you.
Actually, I remember in an interview with the director(s?) that BWP is supposed to be MUCH better on standard TVs. I know the preview clips(none of which I saw before the movie) look alot more real. I think it has something to do with being used to "high-res" movies on the big screen. The VHS taping doesn't translate too well. It looked really fuzzy and out of focus.
I think DVD will have the same problem. It's just TOO crisp and clear. It'd be like having a nice DAT system to listen to 1943 recordings of jazz bands.
The answer to the first person breaking free is pretty easy. Look at the Oracle. She's been around for longer than anyone can remember("from the beginning" is what Morpheus said) and hasn't died? She knows all sorts of things about what's going on? She's a rogue AI, man! It almost slaps you in the face. It seems relatively obvious that she freed the first human and keeps them going with little "motherly" nudges.
I'd love to see the story of how "she" decided to free the humans as well as how the world was decimated. But I desperately want to see what happens AFTER Neo frees the world also.
It's a parody of the palmpilot ads. I wouldn't read any more into it than that.