I've decided in the last year that JavaScript is the unsung hero of computer languages. The biggest reason I feel this way is: JavaScript lowers the bar for program distribution. If you write a program in Java, the bar is high because they have to have a Java interpreter. Same for Perl, Python, Ruby, Flash, etc. If you write in a lower level language like C, C++, etc. you still have to get the program installed, and you have to tailor for their architecture.
I'm a math teacher, and I considered once writing a web article for folks about a topic that would require solving an equation (and not a simple one that could be done with algebra). The obvious support program for the article would be a program that could apply the secant method and approximate the answer, because close is good enough.
I considered writing a little CGI equation solver, but this was unsatisfactory to me. I'd have to take care because I'm letting other people run code on my server. Then it occurred to me that I could write it in JavaScript, and it would run on their computer.
If your program can be done in JavaScript, there is no simpler software distribution model. Click the link and it's going. Nothing to install. It doesn't get any easier than that.
> We are guaranteed the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.
Technically speaking we are not. You're mixing up the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution, and only the Constitution is law. We are guaranteed the rights of life, liberty, and property. Not quite so romantic and beautiful, but important none-the-less.
I did exactly this cable search last week. Look harder. I bought a new cable for under $5 with shipping under $4 from a "Used and New" reseller at Amazon. Hooked it up today in fact and it works great.
I'm not sure it wasn't effective. I'm a regular Amazon user, but I'll admit that all of the buzz about promotions and specials had me checking back way more often than I would normally visit the site. I haven't made many purchases, but I've added a lot of things to my wishlist that might become future purchases.
> Are there book addicts? If so, is it regarded as a problem?
I don't know if it is regarded as a problem, but when I get interested in a new novel, I often put off work that I ought to do and stay up later than I should reading. It is not uncommon for my wife to nag me to put my book away and come to bed.
Now as an academic, some of my work happens in the evenings (say grading and some lecture planning), exactly the time when I would rather read. So I try not to start too many novels during a semester. But I love to pick things up during vacation breaks.
> Oh, and I recommend to people to short MSFT right about now...as I believe they are going the way of the dodo bird in the next 10-15 yrs (or perhaps much sooner).
You've got to be kidding. There's no way that a timeline like that is compatible with an investment practice like "shorting."
> Saddams use of chemical weapons in the 80's was a crime against humanity but the same can be said about the use of Napalm by the US in the 60's & 70's.
I think if we wait a decade or so, we'll see the US use of depleted uranium (in Iraq) on that list of crimes against humanity.
Second, there is no technical way to have an electronic voting system which both preserves the secret ballot and the public vote count.
I suppose technically you are correct. That's not the same as saying that there is no technical way to have an electronic voting system which preserves the secret ballot public verifiability. A great example is David Chaum's paper Secret Ballot Receipts and Transparent Integrity.
Re:Crypto is scary stuff
on
Crypto Snake Oil
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Blasphemy #1: I've heard from a claimed friend of one of the inventors of RSA that it was cracked it years ago. Yet, it continues to get worldwide use. Sure my friend was probably full of it... but who am I suppose to trust here? The government?
I'm a professional mathematician and have had the opportunity to work with and become friends with some big names in number theory and factoring. No one can know for certain, but my friends were of the general opinion that RSA was probably okay.
Blasphemy #2: One of my close friend's mother had to switch fields from Numerics after she published some papers considered too sensitive. It had something to do with factoring.
The US government was very serious about suppressing the publication of some of the early factoring results, but the mathematicians that I know are still working in that field (for over 10 years) after having published anyway. It seems almost surreal now that they were getting calls from the NSA, because the academic cryptography field has grown so much since then. They're still in the field and still publishing.
Blasphemy #3: Anybody else notice that quantum computers have been proven to be capable of factoring really well, but no one has shown that they can solve any NP-hard algorithms? Come on... factoring isn't NP hard.
I can't give any response to this. You may be right.
Yeah, I'm relatively sure that 99% of torrent download ARE legitimate things like linux distros... Because terrabytes of distros are released EVERY DAY and that's what the majority of users are downloading...
Maybe not, but absolutely everything I download with bittorrent is legitimate. And yes, it is almost always software for Linux, i.e. distros and the like.
All it takes to "own the linux market" is good drivers. Not open-source ones. Most people will gravitate towards that which works. Having the source code available is only important for a small group of people.
I disagree. All it takes to own the Linux market is good drivers that ship with distributions and for that to be true wide-spread means open source.
> Should it really be fair to restrict some online service to have to treat all clients the same way just because one version was derived from another? Lets say I modify the source code of some browser that is covered by GPLv3. My version has some quirks that make it interpret css differently from the first browser. Would it then be illegal for a website to serve up different css based on my user agent string?
No. In the situation you describe, the derived work could fake its user-agent string, and in fact the service could not distinguish the difference. What would be illegal is having some kind of crypto that a derived program could not participate in--i.e. if connecting to the service failed unless a special HMAC of the program was correct.
No derived program could then communicate with the service in such a way "that the service cannot distinguish."
The people who do it right
on
PGP & GPG
·
· Score: 1
I have to say, I don't personally use them, but I think the hushmail.com people really do crypto right. First, it is (now) genuine OpenPGP encrypted email, i.e. as standard as standard gets. And for people who aren't experts, there's really no key exchange to work out. If you both use hushmail.com, you can sign/encrypt your messages and the site takes care of hooking you up.
I'm all for traditional fingerprint checking and GPG keysigning parties, and yes I even got RMS to sign my key for cool factor. But for "mortals" I think the hushmail.com system is about right.
For the unitiated, 'Buy It Now' is also a bid--a bid you cannot lose. My wife found this misleading one time when the E-bay site was being error-prone. She clicked 'Buy It Now' and encountered an error. She went to another vender and bought the same item from them instead, ending up with duplicates.
It was very difficult explaining to her that she bought an item when she didn't buy it (i.e. when the page caused an error, there was no confirmation, etc.) It was not clear that 'Buy It Now' was a bid, and like any other bid she was contractually bound to honor it.
In the end, it was essentially straightened out. She contacted the sellers (who ignored her entirely) but held her own and refused to pay for the duplicate. I suppose she has bad feedback on the site now, but it matters not since she won't shop there any more.
In my experience with AT&T, stonewalling is one of their ulimate corporate strengths. Luckily when they were in the wrong on my bill it was only for $10 and I had more resolve than even they did (and naturally they finally caved--not worth the price of collecting). They were so bad that I filed an informal complaint against them with the FCC for puting fraudulent charges on my bill.
Some months later I got the resolution to that. They effectively accused me of trying to defraud them. Stalemate I guess.
I like to remember that telephone companies rip off old people just as often as young people like me. I feel it something of my responsibility to fight over fraudulent charges. I want to make sure that kind of deceipt is as non-lucrative as possible.
This is not necessarily a solution, but I found my allergies getting worse over the years as well. Then a year ago I discovered I was allergic to my shampoo (no wonder I couldn't "get away" from my allergies).
I still have allergies, particularly to tree pollens, but getting rid of that primary allergen has made dealing with my "outdoor" allergies immensely easier.
Amazingly, no allergist ever suggested that I check things like my shampoo, although looking back I realized that the signs were there on every allergy survey I've ever filled out (sneezing in the shower...).
> Now, I'm sure there are exceptions but I think that it would be an interesting survey to compare people who work in dirty grimy environments with people who work in corporate America. I spent my childhood running through the weeds, pulling wood ticks out of my hair and watching my mom put iodine all over my cuts & scrapes (hurts like a b*tch).
Sorry, I grew up in these same kind of conditions, doing the same kind of work (baling hay, mucking animal pens, lack of air conditioning, etc). Allergies have plagued me my entire life.
While this 'common sense' sounds great, I'll be waiting for the actual studies.
> You say that now, but if it were to actually happen to you I very much doubt that you'd rather die than be dependent on that drug.
> It's like all the people that say they'd rather die young, and can't stand the thought of growing old. When it actually happens to you and you're faced with the prospect of death you'll change your mind pretty fast.
That's totally true. Having watched my (young) wife go through stroke, I have to say that living wills make very little sense. You cannot predict while you are perfectly healthy and sitting at the kitchen table what choices you'll want when something happens.
As it was, she refused treatment for a while and changed her mind later. Hard choices came day to day. More than once I believed I had made the hardest decisions my life would contain, only to be wrong the next day.
I think the most useful document is a durable power of attorney document. Find someone you trust, who loves you (more important than the other way around). Talk about things some ahead, but tell them to make the best choices they can.
It may mean a mistake. They might act to save your life when they shouldn't. Or they might act to let you go when they shouldn't. But at least they will be making the decisions with the information available then, when it counts. It's better than you can do in a living will.
I've been on university committees for years talking about this. The answer is hard, and a previous poster was right on when he said it means different things to different people (and different academic specialties).
To make this very apparent, when I taught computer literacy, I wrote up case studies of different computer users based on people I know. Of the 6 cases, one described me, a profoundly literate person who uses Linux. Yet many students would rank me as the least literate because I had trouble opening attachments with complex Word documents, etc.
This year, we finally came on to something that I think makes sense, information literacy. When people talk about computer literacy, they start talking about skills --- vocational skills in my opinion. They are ephemeral and changing, only as solid as the current version of Windows/Mac/Linux and Office/etc.
Information literacy is about how to find, evaluate, and use information. This is an academic question, and you can't take a writing, history, or science class without coming against those kind of questions.
Our committee has recently recommended moving away from the idea of computer literacy and embracing information literacy for the university. Because the vocational computer skills are still valuable and desired by students, we suggested no-credit workshops in different skills. Essentially, we're offering opportunities to learn skills, but they aren't to be a part of the curriculum.
Small workshops offer the flexibility of changing quickly as technology changes. They also allow students to pick and choose the skills they want to learn. And because they are not for credit, the amount of grading can be small (and grading computer coursework is my least favorite grading of all time).
Slashdot Mirror
I've decided in the last year that JavaScript is the unsung hero of computer languages. The biggest reason I feel this way is: JavaScript lowers the bar for program distribution. If you write a program in Java, the bar is high because they have to have a Java interpreter. Same for Perl, Python, Ruby, Flash, etc. If you write in a lower level language like C, C++, etc. you still have to get the program installed, and you have to tailor for their architecture.
I'm a math teacher, and I considered once writing a web article for folks about a topic that would require solving an equation (and not a simple one that could be done with algebra). The obvious support program for the article would be a program that could apply the secant method and approximate the answer, because close is good enough.
I considered writing a little CGI equation solver, but this was unsatisfactory to me. I'd have to take care because I'm letting other people run code on my server. Then it occurred to me that I could write it in JavaScript, and it would run on their computer.
If your program can be done in JavaScript, there is no simpler software distribution model. Click the link and it's going. Nothing to install. It doesn't get any easier than that.
> We are guaranteed the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.
Technically speaking we are not. You're mixing up the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution, and only the Constitution is law. We are guaranteed the rights of life, liberty, and property. Not quite so romantic and beautiful, but important none-the-less.
I did exactly this cable search last week. Look harder. I bought a new cable for under $5 with shipping under $4 from a "Used and New" reseller at Amazon. Hooked it up today in fact and it works great.
I'm not sure it wasn't effective. I'm a regular Amazon user, but I'll admit that all of the buzz about promotions and specials had me checking back way more often than I would normally visit the site. I haven't made many purchases, but I've added a lot of things to my wishlist that might become future purchases.
> Why not use bittorrent for it's best legal use...
I totally would. I'd even leave my client on and seed for tomorrow when the real rush comes. But there's no Linux versions when I click the link.
> Are there book addicts? If so, is it regarded as a problem?
I don't know if it is regarded as a problem, but when I get interested in a new novel, I often put off work that I ought to do and stay up later than I should reading. It is not uncommon for my wife to nag me to put my book away and come to bed.
Now as an academic, some of my work happens in the evenings (say grading and some lecture planning), exactly the time when I would rather read. So I try not to start too many novels during a semester. But I love to pick things up during vacation breaks.
> Oh, and I recommend to people to short MSFT right about now...as I believe they are going the way of the dodo bird in the next 10-15 yrs (or perhaps much sooner).
You've got to be kidding. There's no way that a timeline like that is compatible with an investment practice like "shorting."
> Saddams use of chemical weapons in the 80's was a crime against humanity but the same can be said about the use of Napalm by the US in the 60's & 70's.
I think if we wait a decade or so, we'll see the US use of depleted uranium (in Iraq) on that list of crimes against humanity.
Another alternative to BB is Moodle, http://moodle.org/
I suppose technically you are correct. That's not the same as saying that there is no technical way to have an electronic voting system which preserves the secret ballot public verifiability. A great example is David Chaum's paper Secret Ballot Receipts and Transparent Integrity .
I'm a professional mathematician and have had the opportunity to work with and become friends with some big names in number theory and factoring. No one can know for certain, but my friends were of the general opinion that RSA was probably okay.
The US government was very serious about suppressing the publication of some of the early factoring results, but the mathematicians that I know are still working in that field (for over 10 years) after having published anyway. It seems almost surreal now that they were getting calls from the NSA, because the academic cryptography field has grown so much since then. They're still in the field and still publishing.
I can't give any response to this. You may be right.
Maybe not, but absolutely everything I download with bittorrent is legitimate. And yes, it is almost always software for Linux, i.e. distros and the like.
All it takes to "own the linux market" is good drivers. Not open-source ones. Most people will gravitate towards that which works. Having the source code available is only important for a small group of people.
I disagree. All it takes to own the Linux market is good drivers that ship with distributions and for that to be true wide-spread means open source.
What you suggest sounds like this:
/ Chaum-SecretBallotReceiptsTrueVoterVerifiableElect ions.pdf
Secret Ballot Receipts:
http://crypto.csail.mit.edu/~rivest/voting/papers
Really, really brilliant idea.
> Should it really be fair to restrict some online service to have to treat all clients the same way just because one version was derived from another? Lets say I modify the source code of some browser that is covered by GPLv3. My version has some quirks that make it interpret css differently from the first browser. Would it then be illegal for a website to serve up different css based on my user agent string?
No. In the situation you describe, the derived work could fake its user-agent string, and in fact the service could not distinguish the difference. What would be illegal is having some kind of crypto that a derived program could not participate in--i.e. if connecting to the service failed unless a special HMAC of the program was correct.
No derived program could then communicate with the service in such a way "that the service cannot distinguish."
I have to say, I don't personally use them, but I think the hushmail.com people really do crypto right. First, it is (now) genuine OpenPGP encrypted email, i.e. as standard as standard gets. And for people who aren't experts, there's really no key exchange to work out. If you both use hushmail.com, you can sign/encrypt your messages and the site takes care of hooking you up.
I'm all for traditional fingerprint checking and GPG keysigning parties, and yes I even got RMS to sign my key for cool factor. But for "mortals" I think the hushmail.com system is about right.
Sort of off topic but:
For the unitiated, 'Buy It Now' is also a bid--a bid you cannot lose. My wife found this misleading one time when the E-bay site was being error-prone. She clicked 'Buy It Now' and encountered an error. She went to another vender and bought the same item from them instead, ending up with duplicates.
It was very difficult explaining to her that she bought an item when she didn't buy it (i.e. when the page caused an error, there was no confirmation, etc.) It was not clear that 'Buy It Now' was a bid, and like any other bid she was contractually bound to honor it.
In the end, it was essentially straightened out. She contacted the sellers (who ignored her entirely) but held her own and refused to pay for the duplicate. I suppose she has bad feedback on the site now, but it matters not since she won't shop there any more.
My favorite pad is the one I designed for myself at CafePress http://www.cafepress.com/randomvariable.43609878
Alas, they don't carry hard mousepads, or I'd definitely have done that. But my pad is still an excellent optical mousepad.
In my experience with AT&T, stonewalling is one of their ulimate corporate strengths. Luckily when they were in the wrong on my bill it was only for $10 and I had more resolve than even they did (and naturally they finally caved--not worth the price of collecting). They were so bad that I filed an informal complaint against them with the FCC for puting fraudulent charges on my bill.
Some months later I got the resolution to that. They effectively accused me of trying to defraud them. Stalemate I guess.
I like to remember that telephone companies rip off old people just as often as young people like me. I feel it something of my responsibility to fight over fraudulent charges. I want to make sure that kind of deceipt is as non-lucrative as possible.
This is not necessarily a solution, but I found my allergies getting worse over the years as well. Then a year ago I discovered I was allergic to my shampoo (no wonder I couldn't "get away" from my allergies).
I still have allergies, particularly to tree pollens, but getting rid of that primary allergen has made dealing with my "outdoor" allergies immensely easier.
Amazingly, no allergist ever suggested that I check things like my shampoo, although looking back I realized that the signs were there on every allergy survey I've ever filled out (sneezing in the shower...).
Don
> Now, I'm sure there are exceptions but I think that it would be an interesting survey to compare people who work in dirty grimy environments with people who work in corporate America. I spent my childhood running through the weeds, pulling wood ticks out of my hair and watching my mom put iodine all over my cuts & scrapes (hurts like a b*tch).
Sorry, I grew up in these same kind of conditions, doing the same kind of work (baling hay, mucking animal pens, lack of air conditioning, etc). Allergies have plagued me my entire life.
While this 'common sense' sounds great, I'll be waiting for the actual studies.
> You say that now, but if it were to actually happen to you I very much doubt that you'd rather die than be dependent on that drug.
> It's like all the people that say they'd rather die young, and can't stand the thought of growing old. When it actually happens to you and you're faced with the prospect of death you'll change your mind pretty fast.
That's totally true. Having watched my (young) wife go through stroke, I have to say that living wills make very little sense. You cannot predict while you are perfectly healthy and sitting at the kitchen table what choices you'll want when something happens.
As it was, she refused treatment for a while and changed her mind later. Hard choices came day to day. More than once I believed I had made the hardest decisions my life would contain, only to be wrong the next day.
I think the most useful document is a durable power of attorney document. Find someone you trust, who loves you (more important than the other way around). Talk about things some ahead, but tell them to make the best choices they can.
It may mean a mistake. They might act to save your life when they shouldn't. Or they might act to let you go when they shouldn't. But at least they will be making the decisions with the information available then, when it counts. It's better than you can do in a living will.
I've been on university committees for years talking about this. The answer is hard, and a previous poster was right on when he said it means different things to different people (and different academic specialties).
To make this very apparent, when I taught computer literacy, I wrote up case studies of different computer users based on people I know. Of the 6 cases, one described me, a profoundly literate person who uses Linux. Yet many students would rank me as the least literate because I had trouble opening attachments with complex Word documents, etc.
This year, we finally came on to something that I think makes sense, information literacy. When people talk about computer literacy, they start talking about skills --- vocational skills in my opinion. They are ephemeral and changing, only as solid as the current version of Windows/Mac/Linux and Office/etc.
Information literacy is about how to find, evaluate, and use information. This is an academic question, and you can't take a writing, history, or science class without coming against those kind of questions.
Our committee has recently recommended moving away from the idea of computer literacy and embracing information literacy for the university. Because the vocational computer skills are still valuable and desired by students, we suggested no-credit workshops in different skills. Essentially, we're offering opportunities to learn skills, but they aren't to be a part of the curriculum.
Small workshops offer the flexibility of changing quickly as technology changes. They also allow students to pick and choose the skills they want to learn. And because they are not for credit, the amount of grading can be small (and grading computer coursework is my least favorite grading of all time).
That's my 2 cents.
My favorite cheet sheet is the one here:
R ef
http://limestone.truman.edu/~dbindner/mirror/#Vi-
"The spirit of Vi on one page."
I really like Plans, http://www.planscalendar.com/