Yep. I figured it was just a fluke the first time it happened. Uninstalled Kindle immediately after the second occurrence. Sucks for amazon because I consume a ton of ebooks on my phone. I'll continue to manage my own ebook library and manually pull.epubs off my calibre server into aldiko rather than put up with an app that spams the notification bar.
Arguing against forceably disallowing "common" (whatever your definition of that is) passwords is not the same as arguing for weak passwords. The more restrictions you put on passwords, the more search space you rule out and the more likely you make users to pick guessable passwords and/or re-use passwords.
That's right up there with wishing the TSAs apparent ineptitude is just a honeypot to catch terrorists and the F-35 is really a cover program for some top secret military hardware that doesn't suck.
Doesn't Windows auto-generate a System Restore Point when you do an "Upgrade"/"Update"?
Two problems with this:
1) The installation and subsequent restore take a significant amount of time (we're talking 2-3 hours on a laptop hdd). My mom experienced the joys of this when her computer spontaneously decided to update in the middle of her typing a report for work. It took 2 hours to install windows 10 (no way to stop it once it starts), and then another 2 hours to restore back to windows 8.1 when I declined the windows 10 EULA.
2) If the computer can't boot to windows 10 after the "upgrade", restoring it back to the previous OS as if nothing ever happened gets complicated (if not impossible). I haven't experienced it firsthand, but other slashdot users have reported windows 10 spontaneously installing on older computers that couldn't support it and basically requiring a clean reinstall in order to work.
Yep. I've always had terrible luck with linux installs breaking in the weirdest ways and requiring several weekends and a reinstall to fix, but dealing with that is preferable to dealing with windows 10.
Windows 7 professional on one, windows 8.1 (probably home, it was whatever came with the users laptop) on the other. On the windows 7 box it also managed to somehow circumvent GWX control panel and re-enable OS upgrades in windows updates.
Yes force. I've personally encountered 3 instances so far of windows 10 installing on it's own without the consent of the user. Twice while the user was in the middle of working on the computer, and once overnight on a non-patch day.
Depends on how fast it blows off the bridge. The way air swirls off passing cars could definitely give it enough acceleration to look like the start of a falling body (also, who says the body needs to be in freefall for the car to decide to stop? I'd think it should stop if it determines there's a potential of collision, regardless of the acceleration profile). If you don't think that will fool the sensor I won't argue, just substitute whatever else you think will.
Regardless of the mechanism, the main point here is that sensors aren't infallible. In the case of sensors making a mistake, that fast reaction time can work against you.
But is that actually any different than a person seeing the same thing? Its not like human vision (and visual interpretation) is foolproof
But remember that a person has a much slower reaction time. Assuming they're subject to the same visual misinterpretation (they may not be), they likely won't process it in time to swerve or brake. It's somewhat analogous to an attentive (but maybe not that smart) driver swerving to miss a small animal and therefore causing an accident vs an oblivious driver just running it over and everything else continuing on as if nothing happened.
I'd actually be more concerned that the new game for kids will be jumping onto busy roads and laughing as the vehicles all come to a halt. If I walk slowly in front of a regular vehicle I know there is a chance the driver could just run me over, but I doubt there will be a 'ram the fucker' override on autonomous vehicles.
Exactly, that's a much better example than the one I came up with.
It's also really obvious when some kid is shining a green laser at cars. Not so obvious when it's in the non-visible spectrum and only shining when it detects compatible LIDAR pulses.
There's also not the threat of a self driving car getting pissed off, pulling over, and then beating you to a pulp if it does notice you shining the laser at it.
I'm more worried about autonomous cars attempting to avoid collisions that wouldn't have actually happened. e.g. say a plastic bag blows off the bridge in such a way that the car thinks it's a person jumping. Engaging brakes at maximum braking force within milliseconds to avoid a collision with what it thinks is a person on the highway would be a great way to cause other accidents.
My issue is that if I want to get there "early" (or on-time, depending on POV) to get a good seat I'm punished for it by having to watch a bunch of stupid commercials.
Apparently you didn't read my post. I was specifically talking about the possibilities this opens up that don't involve a typical smash-n-grab (which, short of a gated community with armed guards, you'd still be vulnerable to regardless of security system).
If all you're considering is people breaking in and stealing your TV, then sure, this is nothing special. The thing is that this gives the attackers the same access as if they were a legitimate user. Having unlimited and undetectable (as compared to breaking the locks or smashing a window) access opens up a whole world of possibilities for things other than just stealing stuff.
Imagine a hacker having a list of compromised homes that he sells to criminals, along with a list of times the access codes are used so that they can be sure of breaking in when the house is unoccupied. Now instead of saying "please try the neighbors house first", your security system has become a giant flashing neon "please come rob me" sign (and you'd probably get cleaned out by the sorts of people who knew what they were doing, rather than the sorts who take the tv and the fake jewelry without realizing the IT equipment in the closet is worth 10x as much). Lists of compromised credit cards are traded all the time, so a list of compromised houses isn't far off at all.
Or say someone wanted to use your house as a drop point for criminal activity. They've got the access codes and know you work 9-5, they could drop some drugs off inside after you leave for work and leave the access code with the buyer for pickup before you get home. You'd never know it was happening unless your neighbors said something or the DEA kicked down your door in a 2am no-knock raid.
I could sit here all day listing other scenarios that would take advantage of this kind of access over the more traditional lockpicking or window smashing.
I wish more people would think strategically like that when planning their education. I took a years worth of ccna classes when I first started my GEs as a fallback plan if CS didn't work out. It added that much more time to my degree, but it was great because it landed me a part time helpdesk job (which later turned into an internship as a software engineer, which turned into a full time software position after I graduated). Also knowing that I had something to show for it if I had to suddenly drop out of school for some unforeseen reason took a ton of pressure off. There were a lot of people I met in the CS program who really weren't cut out for it, but at that point had invested so much time and money they felt they were locked in and had to complete it. As far as I know they're still jobless a year after graduating.
There are still a fair few who take a year out of studying before going to university, but that's mostly for the purposes of working to earn money to help with fees and living costs.
or get stuck in a rut, low-income job that is convenient to not quit (and make you less likely to actually go to college at all).
Sounds crappy, but it beats taking 6 years of college, changing your major 5 times due to falling GPA, graduating with an unemployable degree, and getting stuck in the same job rut but this time with 6 years worth of student debt. Not everyone is cut out for college, and I'd hope the year off allows a few people to either realize they're happier without going and/or figure out what they want to do so they don't spend expensive years floundering.
A lot of people graduate and have no idea what they want... they start making money, even crap money, in a menial job, and it becomes comfortable and "good enough."
If they're comfortable, then good for them. Hopefully they'll drop out of college before the year is up (It's not like they have anything invested in it at that point) and leave room for the people who actually know what they want to do and have an end goal in mind. Less people with unpayable student debt over a degree they aren't using sounds like a good thing to me.
Only one who has no clue about physics would write such nonsense.
That's rich considering the rest of your post.
random gravitational perturbations
There is no randomness in gravity.
Only if you want to get pedantic about it. On the scale we're talking, your mom standing next to this thing would actually have more effect on the acceleration due to her gravitational mass than the engine would. Even if she was an anorexic supermodel. A small earthquake, new building construction, or an abnormally large number of cargo ships passing underneath this thing would probably perturb the orbit enough to matter on the scale of thrust being measured here.
solar radiation Does not influence orbits of satellites around earth.
NASA says you should take your own advice and not show yourself to be a complete ignoramus when calling someone the same: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/n...
interaction with atmosphere There is none if you go high enough.
The specific altitude wasn't mentioned. Additionally, big solar flares can make enough trace atmosphere "bulge" in various directions enough to perturb satellite orbits quite farther out than one would think. Especially someone as well informed as you are about these kinds of things.
collisions with space dust
Would not have an effect on the probe as the dust comes from everywhere.
I don't think you put much thought into your post before you wrote it. I think most other readers of slashdot are smart enough that the ridiculousness of what you just said there is self evident.
measurement accuracy
Irrelevant.
I measure a distance of 1mm today... no idea how accurate.
I measure the same thing 1000 days later and end up with roughly 1000mm... now you can ask how accurate the mm one year ago was. Who cares?
If you measure something today with some digital calipers accurate out to the nearest 1/10thmm and it's.06um, and measure it 1000 days later and it's.10um, your measurement is worthless and it shows nothing because it's so far inside your error bands that you have no idea what caused it.
If something moves in one direction, like global warming, it does not matter how accurate your measuring is. After a reasonable amount of time, you see: it is moving.
What a perfect example. Do you realize just how much of the world thinks man made global warming is total BS? My initial claim was that putting this thing in space is no more helpful than the experiments done to it on the ground, and your example backs it up perfectly.
For a more normal scale, sure. This thing is alleged to be putting out a few micronewtons of thrust for nearly a megawatt of input. A close pass by a man-sized piece of space junk would exert enough gravitational force on it to overpower the thruster.
Yes that force would build up over months and months, but you'd still never be able to account for all of the variables. In the end there would be just as much doubt over the outcome of that as there would be for the ground based experiments, but for 1000x the cost.
Except that at the scale of thrust we're talking about, results from letting one loose in space would always be clouded by random gravitational perturbations from earth (we're not a perfect sphere), solar radiation, interaction with atmosphere, collisions with space dust, measurement accuracy, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. I figured it was just a fluke the first time it happened. Uninstalled Kindle immediately after the second occurrence. Sucks for amazon because I consume a ton of ebooks on my phone. I'll continue to manage my own ebook library and manually pull .epubs off my calibre server into aldiko rather than put up with an app that spams the notification bar.
Arguing against forceably disallowing "common" (whatever your definition of that is) passwords is not the same as arguing for weak passwords. The more restrictions you put on passwords, the more search space you rule out and the more likely you make users to pick guessable passwords and/or re-use passwords.
That's right up there with wishing the TSAs apparent ineptitude is just a honeypot to catch terrorists and the F-35 is really a cover program for some top secret military hardware that doesn't suck.
Doesn't Windows auto-generate a System Restore Point when you do an "Upgrade"/"Update"?
Two problems with this:
1) The installation and subsequent restore take a significant amount of time (we're talking 2-3 hours on a laptop hdd). My mom experienced the joys of this when her computer spontaneously decided to update in the middle of her typing a report for work. It took 2 hours to install windows 10 (no way to stop it once it starts), and then another 2 hours to restore back to windows 8.1 when I declined the windows 10 EULA.
2) If the computer can't boot to windows 10 after the "upgrade", restoring it back to the previous OS as if nothing ever happened gets complicated (if not impossible). I haven't experienced it firsthand, but other slashdot users have reported windows 10 spontaneously installing on older computers that couldn't support it and basically requiring a clean reinstall in order to work.
Yep. I've always had terrible luck with linux installs breaking in the weirdest ways and requiring several weekends and a reinstall to fix, but dealing with that is preferable to dealing with windows 10.
Windows 7 professional on one, windows 8.1 (probably home, it was whatever came with the users laptop) on the other. On the windows 7 box it also managed to somehow circumvent GWX control panel and re-enable OS upgrades in windows updates.
Yes force. I've personally encountered 3 instances so far of windows 10 installing on it's own without the consent of the user. Twice while the user was in the middle of working on the computer, and once overnight on a non-patch day.
Huh? H1-Bs aren't citizens and can't vote.
At least you'd think so anyway.
Depends on how fast it blows off the bridge. The way air swirls off passing cars could definitely give it enough acceleration to look like the start of a falling body (also, who says the body needs to be in freefall for the car to decide to stop? I'd think it should stop if it determines there's a potential of collision, regardless of the acceleration profile). If you don't think that will fool the sensor I won't argue, just substitute whatever else you think will.
Regardless of the mechanism, the main point here is that sensors aren't infallible. In the case of sensors making a mistake, that fast reaction time can work against you.
So if one sensor says "body" but another sensor says "plastic bag", you're going to err on the side of it not being a human and just hit it?
But is that actually any different than a person seeing the same thing? Its not like human vision (and visual interpretation) is foolproof
But remember that a person has a much slower reaction time. Assuming they're subject to the same visual misinterpretation (they may not be), they likely won't process it in time to swerve or brake. It's somewhat analogous to an attentive (but maybe not that smart) driver swerving to miss a small animal and therefore causing an accident vs an oblivious driver just running it over and everything else continuing on as if nothing happened.
I'd actually be more concerned that the new game for kids will be jumping onto busy roads and laughing as the vehicles all come to a halt. If I walk slowly in front of a regular vehicle I know there is a chance the driver could just run me over, but I doubt there will be a 'ram the fucker' override on autonomous vehicles.
Exactly, that's a much better example than the one I came up with.
It's also really obvious when some kid is shining a green laser at cars. Not so obvious when it's in the non-visible spectrum and only shining when it detects compatible LIDAR pulses.
There's also not the threat of a self driving car getting pissed off, pulling over, and then beating you to a pulp if it does notice you shining the laser at it.
I'm more worried about autonomous cars attempting to avoid collisions that wouldn't have actually happened. e.g. say a plastic bag blows off the bridge in such a way that the car thinks it's a person jumping. Engaging brakes at maximum braking force within milliseconds to avoid a collision with what it thinks is a person on the highway would be a great way to cause other accidents.
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/678/
My issue is that if I want to get there "early" (or on-time, depending on POV) to get a good seat I'm punished for it by having to watch a bunch of stupid commercials.
Apparently you didn't read my post. I was specifically talking about the possibilities this opens up that don't involve a typical smash-n-grab (which, short of a gated community with armed guards, you'd still be vulnerable to regardless of security system).
If all you're considering is people breaking in and stealing your TV, then sure, this is nothing special. The thing is that this gives the attackers the same access as if they were a legitimate user. Having unlimited and undetectable (as compared to breaking the locks or smashing a window) access opens up a whole world of possibilities for things other than just stealing stuff.
Imagine a hacker having a list of compromised homes that he sells to criminals, along with a list of times the access codes are used so that they can be sure of breaking in when the house is unoccupied. Now instead of saying "please try the neighbors house first", your security system has become a giant flashing neon "please come rob me" sign (and you'd probably get cleaned out by the sorts of people who knew what they were doing, rather than the sorts who take the tv and the fake jewelry without realizing the IT equipment in the closet is worth 10x as much). Lists of compromised credit cards are traded all the time, so a list of compromised houses isn't far off at all.
Or say someone wanted to use your house as a drop point for criminal activity. They've got the access codes and know you work 9-5, they could drop some drugs off inside after you leave for work and leave the access code with the buyer for pickup before you get home. You'd never know it was happening unless your neighbors said something or the DEA kicked down your door in a 2am no-knock raid.
I could sit here all day listing other scenarios that would take advantage of this kind of access over the more traditional lockpicking or window smashing.
I wish more people would think strategically like that when planning their education. I took a years worth of ccna classes when I first started my GEs as a fallback plan if CS didn't work out. It added that much more time to my degree, but it was great because it landed me a part time helpdesk job (which later turned into an internship as a software engineer, which turned into a full time software position after I graduated). Also knowing that I had something to show for it if I had to suddenly drop out of school for some unforeseen reason took a ton of pressure off. There were a lot of people I met in the CS program who really weren't cut out for it, but at that point had invested so much time and money they felt they were locked in and had to complete it. As far as I know they're still jobless a year after graduating.
There are still a fair few who take a year out of studying before going to university, but that's mostly for the purposes of working to earn money to help with fees and living costs.
heh, I assumed that's what a gap year was.
or get stuck in a rut, low-income job that is convenient to not quit (and make you less likely to actually go to college at all).
Sounds crappy, but it beats taking 6 years of college, changing your major 5 times due to falling GPA, graduating with an unemployable degree, and getting stuck in the same job rut but this time with 6 years worth of student debt. Not everyone is cut out for college, and I'd hope the year off allows a few people to either realize they're happier without going and/or figure out what they want to do so they don't spend expensive years floundering.
A lot of people graduate and have no idea what they want... they start making money, even crap money, in a menial job, and it becomes comfortable and "good enough."
If they're comfortable, then good for them. Hopefully they'll drop out of college before the year is up (It's not like they have anything invested in it at that point) and leave room for the people who actually know what they want to do and have an end goal in mind. Less people with unpayable student debt over a degree they aren't using sounds like a good thing to me.
Only one who has no clue about physics would write such nonsense.
That's rich considering the rest of your post.
random gravitational perturbations
There is no randomness in gravity.
Only if you want to get pedantic about it. On the scale we're talking, your mom standing next to this thing would actually have more effect on the acceleration due to her gravitational mass than the engine would. Even if she was an anorexic supermodel. A small earthquake, new building construction, or an abnormally large number of cargo ships passing underneath this thing would probably perturb the orbit enough to matter on the scale of thrust being measured here.
solar radiation
Does not influence orbits of satellites around earth.
NASA says you should take your own advice and not show yourself to be a complete ignoramus when calling someone the same: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/n...
interaction with atmosphere
There is none if you go high enough.
The specific altitude wasn't mentioned. Additionally, big solar flares can make enough trace atmosphere "bulge" in various directions enough to perturb satellite orbits quite farther out than one would think. Especially someone as well informed as you are about these kinds of things.
collisions with space dust
Would not have an effect on the probe as the dust comes from everywhere.
I don't think you put much thought into your post before you wrote it. I think most other readers of slashdot are smart enough that the ridiculousness of what you just said there is self evident.
measurement accuracy Irrelevant.
I measure a distance of 1mm today ... no idea how accurate.
I measure the same thing 1000 days later and end up with roughly 1000mm ... now you can ask how accurate the mm one year ago was. Who cares?
If you measure something today with some digital calipers accurate out to the nearest 1/10thmm and it's .06um, and measure it 1000 days later and it's .10um, your measurement is worthless and it shows nothing because it's so far inside your error bands that you have no idea what caused it.
If something moves in one direction, like global warming, it does not matter how accurate your measuring is. After a reasonable amount of time, you see: it is moving.
What a perfect example. Do you realize just how much of the world thinks man made global warming is total BS? My initial claim was that putting this thing in space is no more helpful than the experiments done to it on the ground, and your example backs it up perfectly.
For a more normal scale, sure. This thing is alleged to be putting out a few micronewtons of thrust for nearly a megawatt of input. A close pass by a man-sized piece of space junk would exert enough gravitational force on it to overpower the thruster.
Yes that force would build up over months and months, but you'd still never be able to account for all of the variables. In the end there would be just as much doubt over the outcome of that as there would be for the ground based experiments, but for 1000x the cost.
Except that at the scale of thrust we're talking about, results from letting one loose in space would always be clouded by random gravitational perturbations from earth (we're not a perfect sphere), solar radiation, interaction with atmosphere, collisions with space dust, measurement accuracy, etc.
At .2C yeah, that's definitely going to leave a mark if it hits something.