When are we going to get a technology that's 5x more secure?
The trick is to know your technology - if you want security, use a secure medium!
Even if your physical layer is insecure (which will invariably be the case with this sort of technology), you can always implement security at higher layers. Don't want someone to know you're transmitting pr0n? Then encrypt it at both ends at the transport layer (ever heard of https??).
Please, someone enlighten me as to why, exactly, 802.11 in itself has to be secure!
Is this the way to drag lesser-populated areas into the modern economy, and promote deurbanization?
Ummm, I don't think that high-speed internet is the main factor keeping people in the cities (geeks excluded):-)
I assume that you were referring to tele-commuting; I wonder what percentage of the population are employed in occupations where working from home is actually feasible...
The article, though, brings up a good point: why do we need this? One speaker told the audience that they need to convince other scientists WHY the money should be spent on this machine. In other words, what are the practical uses? Why should we care about discovering new particles?
And before someone replies with the "science isn't supposed to be concerned with uses, only with knowledge" argument, let me remind you that $5,000,000,000 has a LOT of zeroes behind it. This money could fund a LOT of other scientific endeavours that are just as important as this one (important in the sense that knowledge is important).
So when deciding which projects should be funded by the governments of the world, it is only natural that the people paying for it should ask why they are paying for it. If there are no forseeable (or even potential) practical uses, why should that project be funded rather than another one?
Does it begin with Scott Bakula "leaping" into the body of a starship captain, only to be confronted by a screaming Klingon and sighing "Oh boy"?
Well I missed the first 5 minutes yesterday, but the music that is played with the closing credits is kind of reminiscent of the Quantum Leap theme... In fact, it's REALLY corny...
Re:Too bad it wasn't a FRENCH Canadian company
on
Death of a Rebel
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· Score: 1
The recent bail-out that you're referring to is a direct result of unfair subsidies to a Brazilian aerospace company which prevented Bombardier from competing fairly in international markets.
They're just levelling the playing field, that's all.
I Am Not a Scientist... global warming... [is] just a theory, and as such has yet to be conclusively proven.
Wow - I don't even know where to begin on this one! What do you think a theory is?! And when was the last time any natural-science theory has been "conclusivley proven"? Never, that's when!
... there is very little actual solid evidence about global warming...
Well, the global average temperature has definately risen in the last century. Whether it has risen by a statistically significant amount is the question, and one that won't be known for some time.
However, there is other evidence to look at. For example, look at the planet Venus: smothered in greenhouse gases, Venus is MUCH warmer than it would be if it were to have an earth-like atmosphere.
A competing theory... is that the earth is actually entering a cooler period... and if it weren't for the "greenhouse gas" in the atmosphere, we'd be experiencing another ice age.
OK, let me get this straight. In the first paragraph, you say that there is no evidence that these "greenhouse gases" increase the temperature, and by the time you get to the second paragraph you change you mind and say that these gases do, in fact, increase the temperature (but you spin it differently so that it sounds like a good thing).
Ever picked up your phone and received a "server timeout" error?
As a matter of fact, I have - several times. There have been several times when (during peak usage), a long distance call will result in a message like "all the circuits are busy; please try again later", or a very fast "busy-signal" type tone (which the operators have told me means the same thing).
Let me preface this post by saying that I do not consider myself an environmentalist
I've seen a lot of posts that are state that eco-terroristic acts such as these simply "put people off" of the issue; that's 100% bull.
Environmentalism has fallen out of the mainstream consciousness in the last few years - coincidentally during a period of "unparalleled economic growth" in North America. Ecoterrorism brings the issue back to the forefront by forcing people to take notice.
If you don't agree with their tactics, fine. But at least you're thinking of it now, aren't you? And that is the true goal. Everyone knows that destroying a few SUV's at a dealership isn't going to make a noticeable impact in the Grand Scheme.
And let's face it: as far as targets go, SUV's are an easy one. People hate them for various reasons, not just environmental ones.
Let's say that we have the 64-bit addressing. Thus, every single transfer (either read or write) has to send this 64-bit signal in which some of those are padded with zeroes (i.e. unused). Don't you imagine how much power it wastes to transfer those zeroes?
How much power it wastes? So you transfer an extra 16 bits over the bus - big deal! That's utterly insignificant compared to the 4096 bytes (for example) that are sent to read/write a block at a time.
Although, as far as I know, no cards' support was broken in the upgrade from 4.0.3 to 4.1.0.
DRI support for ATI video cards (specifically, ones with the rage128 chipset) has broken. Used to work with the 4.0.x series. I submitted a bug report last week (to the dri project via sourceforge) and it looks like no one has even looked at it yet.
Disclaimer: I am a 4th-year BSc student in Computing Science who has taken all of 1 economics course, and 0 business course.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but before you go and quit your job to get an MBA, you should take a look at the economic cost and compare that to the "value" of an MBA.
Unlike most graduate-level degrees, many people take MBA's not out of an interest in the subject, but to "further" their careers (read: make more money).
I've seen that an MBA will, on average, increase your income by $10,000 per year. So let's take a look at this.
For the sake of argument, let's say you're making $60,000 per year in your current job.
Now, the actual cost of taking an MBA (a 2-year degree at my university) will cost you around $15,000 total (double that if you're a foreign student).
Add into that the money that you're NOT making at your job for those 2 years, and the economic cost is $135,000.
That mean that, at an extra $10,000 per year, you're looking at almost 14 years just to break even on the investment! Depending on where you are in your career, that may or may not be acceptable to you. When do you want to retire? You may be better off taking the money that you would have invested in that education and stick it in a retirement fund - you'll most likely end up with more money at the end of the day.
The moral of the story: don't quit your day job. If you're thinking of doing an MBA just to make more money, think really hard about it.
Our computing science department switched to Java for first year programming courses a couple of years ago, much to the dismay of most of the professors.
The idea that teaching it because it is "easy" is the wrong way to think about it. People learn and retain more when they are challenged. If it all comes easily from reading the API docs, retention isn't going to be as high.
Furthermore, OO seems to be the golden child of programming these days. In our curriculum, however, OO design philosophies are not taught until at least the 3rd year, and then only the surface is touched (there is an in-depth 4th year course in OO design). A lot of good that does to people taking Java in their first year - that's 2 years to develop poor habits!
I remember talking to a couple of profs (both who are well-respected and rather famous in computing science, as are many of our faculty) about it. They both referred to Java as "C++--" and seemed to be totally against it. They urged me to go to the meeting about it saying that a student saying they didn't want it would be worth 1000 professors saying they didn't want it. Alas, I never went to the meeting - I wonder if it would have made a difference...
Why was I opposed to it? Even at that point in my academic career, I was of the opinion that the first language to learn should be an assembly language. Then maybe C in the second year, Java and C++ in the third. Only then would you have a real appreciation for what each languages' strengths and weaknesses are. When something "just doesn't work" in C or C++, you'd have insight as to WHY it didn't work. You'd really understand different addressing modes and how data is stored in memory.
One of the things that pro-Java people put forward is that you don't have to worry about garbage collection. Is this really a Good Thing though? Maybe, once you understand WHY you need garbage collection.
Um so - you should try reading the article next time.
This article is about how the government should spend its money: subsidize the purchase of satellite dishes by home and business users, or subsidize the development of land lines to remote communities.
OK economists - if I remember my (one) microeconomics class correctly (from a few years back), doesn't an increased granularity actually increase the deadweight loss? So, in fact, they would have less profit than if they, for example, charged on a per-minute (or per-second) basis...
Of course, I guess that this wouldn't matter if the consumer didn't know about the 25 minute minimum; but I'm sure they'd figure it out after exhausting the first card, which leads back to my original point.
But this is starting to drift off-topic... But if anyone can confirm or deny this, please do so!
With all the fans in modern computers, many non-geek people find them extremely noisy and annoying, especially if there are a lot of them crammed into a small (otherwise noiseless) room.
This sounds like a good solution - just stick all of the office computers onto a rack in a closet somewhere - problem solved!
Except that a British "billion" is not the same as an American "billion". Whereas an American or French billion is "a thousand million" or 1,000,000,000, a British "billion" is a million millions, or 1,000,000,000,000.
So 10 billion pounds is really $14.4 trillion in American numeration....
In fact, they may even need to keep the upper levels pressurized. Especially if the elevators move as quickly as mentioned in the article... Otherwise, people might develop that disorder that divers and pilots tend to get (can't remember what it's called - the one where nitrogen bubbles form in the arteries...)
It should be noted, however, that I have no idea what I'm talking about!:-)
Slashdot Mirror
The trick is to know your technology - if you want security, use a secure medium!
Even if your physical layer is insecure (which will invariably be the case with this sort of technology), you can always implement security at higher layers. Don't want someone to know you're transmitting pr0n? Then encrypt it at both ends at the transport layer (ever heard of https??).
Please, someone enlighten me as to why, exactly, 802.11 in itself has to be secure!
Does the new ext3fs increase the maximum filesize? If so, what is the new max size?
Ummm, I don't think that high-speed internet is the main factor keeping people in the cities (geeks excluded) :-)
I assume that you were referring to tele-commuting; I wonder what percentage of the population are employed in occupations where working from home is actually feasible...
The article, though, brings up a good point: why do we need this? One speaker told the audience that they need to convince other scientists WHY the money should be spent on this machine. In other words, what are the practical uses? Why should we care about discovering new particles?
And before someone replies with the "science isn't supposed to be concerned with uses, only with knowledge" argument, let me remind you that $5,000,000,000 has a LOT of zeroes behind it. This money could fund a LOT of other scientific endeavours that are just as important as this one (important in the sense that knowledge is important).
So when deciding which projects should be funded by the governments of the world, it is only natural that the people paying for it should ask why they are paying for it. If there are no forseeable (or even potential) practical uses, why should that project be funded rather than another one?
Fusion and Cold Fusion ARE NOT THE SAME THING!
I mean, really... What more can I say?
Well I missed the first 5 minutes yesterday, but the music that is played with the closing credits is kind of reminiscent of the Quantum Leap theme... In fact, it's REALLY corny...
Wouldn't "sin of the beast" make more sense?
Just a thought :-)
The recent bail-out that you're referring to is a direct result of unfair subsidies to a Brazilian aerospace company which prevented Bombardier from competing fairly in international markets.
They're just levelling the playing field, that's all.
Wow - I don't even know where to begin on this one! What do you think a theory is?! And when was the last time any natural-science theory has been "conclusivley proven"? Never, that's when!
Well, the global average temperature has definately risen in the last century. Whether it has risen by a statistically significant amount is the question, and one that won't be known for some time.
However, there is other evidence to look at. For example, look at the planet Venus: smothered in greenhouse gases, Venus is MUCH warmer than it would be if it were to have an earth-like atmosphere.
OK, let me get this straight. In the first paragraph, you say that there is no evidence that these "greenhouse gases" increase the temperature, and by the time you get to the second paragraph you change you mind and say that these gases do, in fact, increase the temperature (but you spin it differently so that it sounds like a good thing).
Interesting...
As a matter of fact, I have - several times. There have been several times when (during peak usage), a long distance call will result in a message like "all the circuits are busy; please try again later", or a very fast "busy-signal" type tone (which the operators have told me means the same thing).
Let me preface this post by saying that I do not consider myself an environmentalist
I've seen a lot of posts that are state that eco-terroristic acts such as these simply "put people off" of the issue; that's 100% bull.
Environmentalism has fallen out of the mainstream consciousness in the last few years - coincidentally during a period of "unparalleled economic growth" in North America. Ecoterrorism brings the issue back to the forefront by forcing people to take notice.
If you don't agree with their tactics, fine. But at least you're thinking of it now, aren't you? And that is the true goal. Everyone knows that destroying a few SUV's at a dealership isn't going to make a noticeable impact in the Grand Scheme.
And let's face it: as far as targets go, SUV's are an easy one. People hate them for various reasons, not just environmental ones.
Or words to that effect...
How much power it wastes? So you transfer an extra 16 bits over the bus - big deal! That's utterly insignificant compared to the 4096 bytes (for example) that are sent to read/write a block at a time.
Which is, of course, the "Terminate With Return Code" interrupt under DOS V2 and all descendants.
Can you imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these things?!
DRI support for ATI video cards (specifically, ones with the rage128 chipset) has broken. Used to work with the 4.0.x series. I submitted a bug report last week (to the dri project via sourceforge) and it looks like no one has even looked at it yet.
Is this not the correct place to submit it?
*sigh*
Disclaimer: I am a 4th-year BSc student in Computing Science who has taken all of 1 economics course, and 0 business course.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but before you go and quit your job to get an MBA, you should take a look at the economic cost and compare that to the "value" of an MBA.
Unlike most graduate-level degrees, many people take MBA's not out of an interest in the subject, but to "further" their careers (read: make more money).
I've seen that an MBA will, on average, increase your income by $10,000 per year. So let's take a look at this.
For the sake of argument, let's say you're making $60,000 per year in your current job.
Now, the actual cost of taking an MBA (a 2-year degree at my university) will cost you around $15,000 total (double that if you're a foreign student).
Add into that the money that you're NOT making at your job for those 2 years, and the economic cost is $135,000.
That mean that, at an extra $10,000 per year, you're looking at almost 14 years just to break even on the investment! Depending on where you are in your career, that may or may not be acceptable to you. When do you want to retire? You may be better off taking the money that you would have invested in that education and stick it in a retirement fund - you'll most likely end up with more money at the end of the day.
The moral of the story: don't quit your day job. If you're thinking of doing an MBA just to make more money, think really hard about it.
Of course, that's just my opinion. :-)
Our computing science department switched to Java for first year programming courses a couple of years ago, much to the dismay of most of the professors.
The idea that teaching it because it is "easy" is the wrong way to think about it. People learn and retain more when they are challenged. If it all comes easily from reading the API docs, retention isn't going to be as high.
Furthermore, OO seems to be the golden child of programming these days. In our curriculum, however, OO design philosophies are not taught until at least the 3rd year, and then only the surface is touched (there is an in-depth 4th year course in OO design). A lot of good that does to people taking Java in their first year - that's 2 years to develop poor habits!
I remember talking to a couple of profs (both who are well-respected and rather famous in computing science, as are many of our faculty) about it. They both referred to Java as "C++--" and seemed to be totally against it. They urged me to go to the meeting about it saying that a student saying they didn't want it would be worth 1000 professors saying they didn't want it. Alas, I never went to the meeting - I wonder if it would have made a difference...
Why was I opposed to it? Even at that point in my academic career, I was of the opinion that the first language to learn should be an assembly language. Then maybe C in the second year, Java and C++ in the third. Only then would you have a real appreciation for what each languages' strengths and weaknesses are. When something "just doesn't work" in C or C++, you'd have insight as to WHY it didn't work. You'd really understand different addressing modes and how data is stored in memory.
One of the things that pro-Java people put forward is that you don't have to worry about garbage collection. Is this really a Good Thing though? Maybe, once you understand WHY you need garbage collection.
Um so - you should try reading the article next time.
This article is about how the government should spend its money: subsidize the purchase of satellite dishes by home and business users, or subsidize the development of land lines to remote communities.
I think he actually is trying to say "haute cuisine!!," but it doesn't come out right :-)
OK economists - if I remember my (one) microeconomics class correctly (from a few years back), doesn't an increased granularity actually increase the deadweight loss? So, in fact, they would have less profit than if they, for example, charged on a per-minute (or per-second) basis...
Of course, I guess that this wouldn't matter if the consumer didn't know about the 25 minute minimum; but I'm sure they'd figure it out after exhausting the first card, which leads back to my original point.
But this is starting to drift off-topic... But if anyone can confirm or deny this, please do so!
With all the fans in modern computers, many non-geek people find them extremely noisy and annoying, especially if there are a lot of them crammed into a small (otherwise noiseless) room.
This sounds like a good solution - just stick all of the office computers onto a rack in a closet somewhere - problem solved!
Except that a British "billion" is not the same as an American "billion". Whereas an American or French billion is "a thousand million" or 1,000,000,000, a British "billion" is a million millions, or 1,000,000,000,000.
So 10 billion pounds is really $14.4 trillion in American numeration....
In fact, they may even need to keep the upper levels pressurized. Especially if the elevators move as quickly as mentioned in the article... Otherwise, people might develop that disorder that divers and pilots tend to get (can't remember what it's called - the one where nitrogen bubbles form in the arteries...)
It should be noted, however, that I have no idea what I'm talking about! :-)
I hope IBM can afford those enormous prizes they're giving out!
I'd hate to see them go under just when they've started supporting Linux!
:-)