So any site under kids.us is safe for kids. Sites are only safe for kids if they're under kids.us. Why not just create a whitelist of kids-safe sites. In order to get on the list, you must not link to sites that aren't on the whitelist.
Works out the same, but eliminates the cost of the domain to the website owner.
Army investigators had been made aware of the intrusions at Fort Hood weeks earlier and had been looking into the situation when ForensicTec made public what it found, one government official said.
I find it extremely hard to believe the Army's claim. When possibly sensitive military documents are known to pass into the hands of anyone unauthorized, surely the FBI conducts a raid to find out what's leaked. But to do it in direct response to a public statement, the FBI is only doing it for public relations damage control.
The alternative is even worse... The army was aware of the intrusions a few weeks ago, and has been dicking around for weeks with no progress. Although computers left open like this aren't going to have the most competent admins.
Supressing all telephone service in areas where they should not ring has the problem of inconveniencing those people who considerately turn their cellphones to vibrate.
But all telephones of the future could react to the presence of a different type of supressor---one that automatically switches the phone to vibrate only.
This was an excellent article, and gives me great hope that through technological measures we can finally kill spam.
I'm reminded of what Declan McCullagh said in his recent editorial. Through writing code, not necessarily lobbying for more perfect laws, we can overcome some of the obstacles we face online.
Graham makes a bunch of excellent points about how more perfect spam filtering will eliminate spammers for economic reasons. As we've seen political and legal methods don't work.
I am amazed at the timeliness of this article. I find myself in exactly the same place in school and with the exact same problem. I lost the joy of computer science one Saturday night during sophmore year while completing an operating systems project I had been churning out non-stop for days. I came to the epiphany that I did not want to spend the rest of my life in the bondage I percieved a computer science career to be.
Unwilling to completely drop computer science, which had been my passion for so long, I added a minor in Business, hoping I could refocus myself on something completely novel. But I found that business classes are just as awful as Computer Science classes (minus the passion.)
I did find that while my interest in business was low, the entrepreneurship program at my university seemed very exciting. I began to develop the same passion (or rather, anticipation) for starting my own company--where I could still work with computers, but control my own destiny, as it were.
Much to my dismay however entrepreneurship classes are just as uninspiring as computer science classes.
My conclusion: Your passion for computers will define the rest of your life, whether you feel that way right now or not. University courses definitely depress your interest in the subject material. Whether you're studying computer science, business, or fine art, the onus of deadlines and tests will dishearten you. But stick to your passion, and you will find a way to express it in a way that will make you happy.
In my personal opinion, computer science is hardly a dead profession. Despite the declining job market, I am finding a number of ways to market myself to employers (gleaned from my business classes) that encourage me in my job search.
My disheartenment with computer science was a good thing. I discovered it early and had a chance to try some new things in college (in particular, entrepreneurship.) And though I won't be completing either the business or entrepreneurship programs here, they gave me a chance to reevaluate where I want to be in ten years. I'm working toward THOSE goals now, regardless of how a piss-poor computer science program has altered my short-term opinion of computers.
Though cryptography solves the problem of communicating with someone in a country where the communications pathway is insecure, it does not allow you to communicate securely with a 'compromised endpoint.' If your target works at a university and has access to the Internet only through university supplied computers, and Big Brother controls the university, if he decrypts your email on that machine, its now been read by The Man.
The ethical question is, "assuming your peer's communications are tapped (encrypted or not) what do you do then?"
So I read the page about the pegboard computer. Looked like a fun piece of functional art. For ergonomic reasons I decided that it might be a fun project for an hour, so I built my own. This one is my primary machine (PII 400, 128MB, Debian) and its currently chugging away on a large piece of pegboard. I'm going to hang it on the wall, and add some christmas lights and stickers and such. Click here for a picture (before lights.)
Every few weeks or so, IBM's storate division announces a new breakthrough in storage technology. The vast majority of these, while extraordinary, have not and will not ever make it to market. Why is this division so prolific, yet product-free?
Once again, technology rushes ahead leaving the worker in a perilous situation. These robots are stealing jobs away from hardworking American astronauts! "Workers of, er, the World Unite!" Do you think United Auto Workers would take astronauts?
I followed the link to plif.com, and was amused by the latest comic, so I clicked for a random comic ten times, and was laughing hysterically at each one. So I trolled the entire archive, and can attest that every single one of those comics is either incredibly funny, or so random to be above reproach.
Not only that, but for the low, low price of only 19.95 plus shipping and handling, you'll get a extra bottle of Hydrinos ABSOLUTELY FREE!
Look at the amazing things that NEW Hydrinos (scholarly review pending) can do!
* Turn water to rocket fuel * Shrink water (stockpile more for that long Y2K weekend...) * Replace that pesky lava-lamp with a clean, safe nuclear byproduct--ultraviolet light * Use it as gasoline in your car * It also polishes wood, plastic, and glass to a magnetic, semiconducting sheen!
Stay tuned, folks, and you'll see how YOU can make money off this revolutionary new crackpot idea... IPO!
This is not in defense of innocent people, it is in defense of guilty people. (We all hate guilty people, right?)
But it also assumes that the government will go to the trouble of getting a warrant to check your ID, when there are so many more insidious ways of getting what they want.
Its those subversive things, and the innocent people against whom they will be targeted that concern me.
A way of catching counterfeiters is beneficial unless it tramples on the rights of innocent people. (ie, a cash register that detected counterfeit bills upon reciept, as opposed to a universal watermark that affects the guilty and the innocent)
Great. So until we have legislation forcing us to register our printers with the Bureau of Reproductions, the government will initiate a new policy by which every printed material with your name is it is recorded and entered into a database. Why give them the chance?
Hmmm. OK. So cooperation is used to forestall regulation. What with the proliferation and strange application of various laws, I'm actually more comfortable with manufacturer cooperation than regulation. Well, thats tantamount to saying "Someone is going to abridge our freedom; It might as well be corporations cooperating with the government rather than just the government coercing everyone." You take this argument a further step and say "what can the government really do to someone if they can trace his 'subversive' material back to him." They can do plenty, as we've all seen. A government should not be entrusted to always act within its own rules. You cannot give them the power to track everything you print and act benevolently on that information. We get really upset when a company like id steals innocuous information. Its not just the government we have to fear, but the corporations who build this equipment and have power to use this ID. You may also have to worry about the "proprietary, secret (red flag!)" algorithm being cracked and every average joe tracking your documents. This is the sort of thing we have to fight, not concede.
Well, my nifty new radio pen rolled off my slanted ergonomic desk (it didn't alert the computer to that fact by radio) and I rolled over its nice ergonomic surface with my ergonomic chair... erg!
I lose pens unless I put them in my pen cup (an inconvenient place for a pointing device.) But my mouse always peeks out from beneath the junk piles on my desk, and its strung up by the tail to prevent it from straying too far.
Funny someone should bring up IR remotes and controlling your Linux box with an X10 system. Just last week I built an IR reciever with 5 dollars worth of Rat Shack components and use it with the lircd daemon. It runs great. I can control my mp3s from my remote, use it as an IR mouse, I have a button that speaks the time, I wrote some alarm clock software, and the remote has my sleep button (and configurable delay.) The most ironic part of it, of course, is that I'm using an X10 8in1 remote. One of the buttons on this remote tells my Firecracker to turn on and off my lights. Its a trippy circle.
I ordered this book the day it was released, anticipating a masterpiece in Bear's usual style. I was sorely disappointed.
First of all, the style he assumed for this book is of a movie script. I got the same impression from the style of this book as I did from "Airframe" by Michael Crichton (also read recently) that the book was written to be adapted to a movie. Every chapter ends the same way with the same contrived suspense.
Second, I think Bear spent more time explaining aspects of biology than developing the plot. But he explained the wrong things. The simple biology he explained concisely, but the more complicated biology he let pass without an explanation.
Though he characterized well, the plot was thin as hell. The entire book led to a [predictable] conclusion which I feel should have come about 200 pages earlier.
The science fiction in this book was minimal. This felt like the kind of book I get when I'm desperate for something to read on a long airplane ride.
This is a great step forward. I'm very happy that someone will be bringing a product like this to market. It such a shame that it will bwe regulated to death real soon. Oh well.
I don't particularly care for the fact that they used such a cool tiny TCP/IP stack beneath a webserver. They could have implemented chargen for all I care.
But there are a whole lot of applications for a TCP/IP stack so small. I don't want to administer my toaster using the web. I hate the web. Its bloated. But if I'm to administer my toaster at all, it has to be done so using a protocol implementable for less than a dollar on a cheap PIC. I don't want Jini with Sun bloat, or the web and its bloat. Whomever was able to implement that TCP/IP stack (if its real) should be working on a lightweight toaster administration protocol rather than running a damn webserver.
I've always believed that the percieved problems with X are caused by its overuse. X is great for showing pictures. Its great for shoving xterms around and allowing shells and other apps to coexist on the same screen, but its often overused.
When I start X, four huge xterms encompass my screen. They are each running screen, and often one has emacs going (go ahead, flame away.) I make sure nothing hides behind those windows, and when I need to use netscape (as I must infrequently do,) I can do so.
I'm not using to replace my shell and allow me to launch every program with the press of a button. I hate mice. I use it because it allows me to configure the layout of my screen and show pictures.
The problems arise when you throw a kludgy session manager and window manager and toolbars and other junk on your screen which suck memory (yes, I know. Emacs does too) and make things all confuzzled.
Slashdot Mirror
So any site under kids.us is safe for kids. Sites are only safe for kids if they're under kids.us. Why not just create a whitelist of kids-safe sites. In order to get on the list, you must not link to sites that aren't on the whitelist.
Works out the same, but eliminates the cost of the domain to the website owner.
Not for the faint of heart... it uses string theory.
I find it extremely hard to believe the Army's claim. When possibly sensitive military documents are known to pass into the hands of anyone unauthorized, surely the FBI conducts a raid to find out what's leaked. But to do it in direct response to a public statement, the FBI is only doing it for public relations damage control.
The alternative is even worse... The army was aware of the intrusions a few weeks ago, and has been dicking around for weeks with no progress. Although computers left open like this aren't going to have the most competent admins.
Supressing all telephone service in areas where they should not ring has the problem of inconveniencing those people who considerately turn their cellphones to vibrate.
But all telephones of the future could react to the presence of a different type of supressor---one that automatically switches the phone to vibrate only.
This was an excellent article, and gives me great hope that through technological measures we can finally kill spam.
I'm reminded of what Declan McCullagh said in his recent editorial. Through writing code, not necessarily lobbying for more perfect laws, we can overcome some of the obstacles we face online.
Graham makes a bunch of excellent points about how more perfect spam filtering will eliminate spammers for economic reasons. As we've seen political and legal methods don't work.
one cut
stack the two identical segments
one more cut
stack the four identical segments
one more cut
share and enjoy
And a proposition to end a sentence with?
I am amazed at the timeliness of this article. I find myself in exactly the same place in school and with the exact same problem. I lost the joy of computer science one Saturday night during sophmore year while completing an operating systems project I had been churning out non-stop for days. I came to the epiphany that I did not want to spend the rest of my life in the bondage I percieved a computer science career to be.
Unwilling to completely drop computer science, which had been my passion for so long, I added a minor in Business, hoping I could refocus myself on something completely novel. But I found that business classes are just as awful as Computer Science classes (minus the passion.)
I did find that while my interest in business was low, the entrepreneurship program at my university seemed very exciting. I began to develop the same passion (or rather, anticipation) for starting my own company--where I could still work with computers, but control my own destiny, as it were.
Much to my dismay however entrepreneurship classes are just as uninspiring as computer science classes.
My conclusion: Your passion for computers will define the rest of your life, whether you feel that way right now or not. University courses definitely depress your interest in the subject material. Whether you're studying computer science, business, or fine art, the onus of deadlines and tests will dishearten you. But stick to your passion, and you will find a way to express it in a way that will make you happy.
In my personal opinion, computer science is hardly a dead profession. Despite the declining job market, I am finding a number of ways to market myself to employers (gleaned from my business classes) that encourage me in my job search.
My disheartenment with computer science was a good thing. I discovered it early and had a chance to try some new things in college (in particular, entrepreneurship.) And though I won't be completing either the business or entrepreneurship programs here, they gave me a chance to reevaluate where I want to be in ten years. I'm working toward THOSE goals now, regardless of how a piss-poor computer science program has altered my short-term opinion of computers.
Though cryptography solves the problem of communicating with someone in a country where the communications pathway is insecure, it does not allow you to communicate securely with a 'compromised endpoint.' If your target works at a university and has access to the Internet only through university supplied computers, and Big Brother controls the university, if he decrypts your email on that machine, its now been read by The Man.
The ethical question is, "assuming your peer's communications are tapped (encrypted or not) what do you do then?"
So I read the page about the pegboard computer. Looked like a fun piece of functional art. For ergonomic reasons I decided that it might be a fun project for an hour, so I built my own. This one is my primary machine (PII 400, 128MB, Debian) and its currently chugging away on a large piece of pegboard. I'm going to hang it on the wall, and add some christmas lights and stickers and such. Click here for a picture (before lights.)
Every few weeks or so, IBM's storate division announces a new breakthrough in storage technology. The vast majority of these, while extraordinary, have not and will not ever make it to market. Why is this division so prolific, yet product-free?
Once again, technology rushes ahead leaving the worker in a perilous situation. These robots are stealing jobs away from hardworking American astronauts! "Workers of, er, the World Unite!" Do you think United Auto Workers would take astronauts?
I followed the link to plif.com, and was amused by the latest comic, so I clicked for a random comic ten times, and was laughing hysterically at each one. So I trolled the entire archive, and can attest that every single one of those comics is either incredibly funny, or so random to be above reproach.
Not only that, but for the low, low price of only 19.95 plus shipping and handling, you'll get a extra bottle of Hydrinos ABSOLUTELY FREE!
Look at the amazing things that NEW Hydrinos (scholarly review pending) can do!
* Turn water to rocket fuel
* Shrink water (stockpile more for that long Y2K weekend...)
* Replace that pesky lava-lamp with a clean, safe nuclear byproduct--ultraviolet light
* Use it as gasoline in your car
* It also polishes wood, plastic, and glass to a magnetic, semiconducting sheen!
Stay tuned, folks, and you'll see how YOU can make money off this revolutionary new crackpot idea... IPO!
This is not in defense of innocent people, it is in defense of guilty people. (We all hate guilty people, right?)
But it also assumes that the government will go to the trouble of getting a warrant to check your ID, when there are so many more insidious ways of getting what they want.
Its those subversive things, and the innocent people against whom they will be targeted that concern me.
A way of catching counterfeiters is beneficial unless it tramples on the rights of innocent people. (ie, a cash register that detected counterfeit bills upon reciept, as opposed to a universal watermark that affects the guilty and the innocent)
Great. So until we have legislation forcing us to register our printers with the Bureau of Reproductions, the government will initiate a new policy by which every printed material with your name is it is recorded and entered into a database. Why give them the chance?
Hmmm. OK. So cooperation is used to forestall regulation. What with the proliferation and strange application of various laws, I'm actually more comfortable with manufacturer cooperation than regulation. Well, thats tantamount to saying "Someone is going to abridge our freedom; It might as well be corporations cooperating with the government rather than just the government coercing everyone." You take this argument a further step and say "what can the government really do to someone if they can trace his 'subversive' material back to him." They can do plenty, as we've all seen. A government should not be entrusted to always act within its own rules. You cannot give them the power to track everything you print and act benevolently on that information. We get really upset when a company like id steals innocuous information. Its not just the government we have to fear, but the corporations who build this equipment and have power to use this ID. You may also have to worry about the "proprietary, secret (red flag!)" algorithm being cracked and every average joe tracking your documents. This is the sort of thing we have to fight, not concede.
Well, my nifty new radio pen rolled off my slanted ergonomic desk (it didn't alert the computer to that fact by radio) and I rolled over its nice ergonomic surface with my ergonomic chair... erg!
I lose pens unless I put them in my pen cup (an inconvenient place for a pointing device.) But my mouse always peeks out from beneath the junk piles on my desk, and its strung up by the tail to prevent it from straying too far.
Funny someone should bring up IR remotes and controlling your Linux box with an X10 system. Just last week I built an IR reciever with 5 dollars worth of Rat Shack components and use it with the lircd daemon. It runs great. I can control my mp3s from my remote, use it as an IR mouse, I have a button that speaks the time, I wrote some alarm clock software, and the remote has my sleep button (and configurable delay.) The most ironic part of it, of course, is that I'm using an X10 8in1 remote. One of the buttons on this remote tells my Firecracker to turn on and off my lights. Its a trippy circle.
I ordered this book the day it was released, anticipating a masterpiece in Bear's usual style. I was sorely disappointed.
First of all, the style he assumed for this book is of a movie script. I got the same impression from the style of this book as I did from "Airframe" by Michael Crichton (also read recently) that the book was written to be adapted to a movie. Every chapter ends the same way with the same contrived suspense.
Second, I think Bear spent more time explaining aspects of biology than developing the plot. But he explained the wrong things. The simple biology he explained concisely, but the more complicated biology he let pass without an explanation.
Though he characterized well, the plot was thin as hell. The entire book led to a [predictable] conclusion which I feel should have come about 200 pages earlier.
The science fiction in this book was minimal. This felt like the kind of book I get when I'm desperate for something to read on a long airplane ride.
Bleh, skip it.
And if the allegations weren't bad enough, to top it all off, the press release author split an infinitive!
That can get you in far more trouble.
This is a great step forward. I'm very happy that someone will be bringing a product like this to market. It such a shame that it will bwe regulated to death real soon. Oh well.
--Eric Gradman
PGP key available.
(first?)
I don't particularly care for the fact that they used such a cool tiny TCP/IP stack beneath a webserver. They could have implemented chargen for all I care.
But there are a whole lot of applications for a TCP/IP stack so small. I don't want to administer my toaster using the web. I hate the web. Its bloated. But if I'm to administer my toaster at all, it has to be done so using a protocol implementable for less than a dollar on a cheap PIC. I don't want Jini with Sun bloat, or the web and its bloat. Whomever was able to implement that TCP/IP stack (if its real) should be working on a lightweight toaster administration protocol rather than running a damn webserver.
I've always believed that the percieved problems with X are caused by its overuse. X is great for showing pictures. Its great for shoving xterms around and allowing shells and other apps to coexist on the same screen, but its often overused.
When I start X, four huge xterms encompass my screen. They are each running screen, and often one has emacs going (go ahead, flame away.) I make sure nothing hides behind those windows, and when I need to use netscape (as I must infrequently do,) I can do so.
I'm not using to replace my shell and allow me to launch every program with the press of a button. I hate mice. I use it because it allows me to configure the layout of my screen and show pictures.
The problems arise when you throw a kludgy session manager and window manager and toolbars and other junk on your screen which suck memory (yes, I know. Emacs does too) and make things all confuzzled.
Bleh.
Take a Gyropoint mouse, the kind with an internal gyro, and duct tape it to your head. They're cheap, and work well enough.