I wanted to respond to this, as well as the sibling posters. The idea that we can hold on to world hegemony by being 'smarter' or 'more innovative' is probably just impossible.
Sure we may all be gunslinging, rugged individualists just itching to make a buck off our fellow man, but these features don't equip us to win in the battle of brains. The world econmy will transfer to the East. As the economy China improves they will have a cultural advantage over the U.S. in terms of education and innovation. Prior to the industrial revolution (and the shift of global economic power from the East to the West) China was the center of trade AND study. The Chinese meritocracy existed thousands of years before the foundation of our young nation... I think this gives them a special cultural advantage in academic pursuits -- and what is innovation if not a byproduct of synthesizing all concepts that have come before. China's masses will fill the labour roll necessary for Japan as their workforce retires (as their are not enough in the new generations to replace them).
I mean it's really just a numbers game... if you take all people to have the same capacity for intelligence, then having 4 times as many brains has got to count for something. (And this is to say nothing for the millions of well educated Indians.)
So that's my two cents. I know there isn't a solution there other than repeating what others have said - services are the key to the American worker's survival, until the rising world tide in labour has made us competitive again in... 200 years or so. Over the next 50 to 75 years we will see dominance in Technology move to the Pacific.
"Then you ignore the fact that most people don't have the intelligence to quickly change careers, start their own businesses, and learn a whole new set of skills. Any economic plan that requires that everyone be of above average intelligense [sic:) tehe] is destined to fail."
I believe the conservative ideology accepts this. As I understand it, everyone 'should' be able to achieve life, liberty and happiness by 'bootstrapping'. Those who are unable to do this do not deserve the American Dream. I think this is why many Conservatives promote the incarceration of the lower classes (through 'mandatory minimums' and such). "Compassionate Conservative" is an oxymoron as I understand it, since being 'anti-social-welfare' promotes social Darwinism. It's ironic that the intersection of Christians and Conservatives don't see the dichotomy.
Some one tag on if I'm wrong, the comments around here like "get a job you lazy bastard" and "economic girly men" and "stop whining" don't sound very compassionate to me, nor do they seem very Christian.
Maybe the 'just train for a new job' argument would be valid if The State provided free education to all interested. Sorry for going kinda off topic.
"Several months ago I watched Joe Hough, President of the Faculty and William E. Dodge Professor of Social Ethics at the Union Theological Seminary, speak on Bill Moyers "Now" and I was immediately impressed by both his passion as well as the following statement that he made:"
I hope you've watched this weeks's Now with Bill Moyers as well. I don't think I've ever agreed with a politician more than when I heard the interview with Peter G. Peterson. Seemed very relevant to what you are saying here.
...without representation. Or is it the other way round these days?
"[...] and how much the organisation is willing to spend to make the information public."
Correction: How much we, the represented taxpayer, are willing to spend to make the information public. The 'organisations' are our surrogates. We fund them or don't.:-\
I know for certain in Safari (and all 'services capable' cocoa apps) that these steps will work:
Next time you are going to post a message on Slashdot... and you are typing in the 'comment box' click on Edit -> Spelling -> Check Spelling as You Type. It should stay clicked forever.
... give me a second to download FireFox and I'll see if it does it too...
Moments later, I've installed FireFox and I've come to find that it doesn't support services in any way... So alas, No spell checking in Firefox or Mozilla. No speaking text or emailing selected text, either.:-\ That's too bad.
Sorry I couldn't help out more.:-\ Maybe there's already a request in bugzilla and it will gain these features soon.
Also, if ctrl-c really did delete your text (which it doesn't), and you didn't know what the command/apple key was for, you could click on Edit ->Undo which is always at the top in the SAME PLACE.
Now, when you clicked on Edit for the first time -- up there at the top -- it would tell you the correct shortcut keys; you would be stunned to find they are command-zxcv, which is interestingly enough the scheme that Windows adopted after the days of shift-delete, ctrl-instert, and shift-insert, which you will now tell me are superior to the now common zxcv. I'd also submit that these short cuts are also less annoying than the bad old days of moving text around in X-windows.
(also to nitpick, don't has an apostrophe, if you used a Mac universal spellcheck would have caught that for you. Another benefit is that command-c doesn't conflict with ctrl-c when you're using a terminal, this makes using the clipboard in cli apps even more convenient than in X11. This would make me think that 'switching from Windows to FOSS' also makes people mad when they are using Windows shortcuts.:)
* LED 3 indicates that the computer and the LCD display are communicating. This LED will be ON when the computer is turned on and video signal is being generated.
Holy crap, from reading that it looks like the iMac has to be ON to determine the status of that LED. Now, afiak the setup manual for the iMac at no point indicates that you can turn it on without plugging in the power cord.
I bet a first grader could tell you that to turn on a computer that it needs to be plugged into the wall.
Caveat, I worked tech support for 5 years, so I know people's propensity for idiocy. But I'll have to say I never took a call from a Mac using granny that complained of the computer not turning on and then noticing it was unplugged. (Not that I couldn't have, I have taken a call where the power cord had been chewed through by a dog, but it was a Wintel. So before anyone flames me, I'm not saying Apple's have dog resistant power cords:)
While you are replying to comments - can you tell me how it gets 'better sound quality' than the iPod?
One could take arguments like this at face value if we were talking about casette tape recorder vs a (creatively named) Creative Jukebox; But when you start comparing devices that are essentially the same, and play essentially the same media, you'll have to provide something to back that up.
Does the Creative use Dolby C noise reduction or something!?:)
Yeah parsing language. To communicate. That's how it works. Sadly, I said don't bother to reply unless you addressed our role as world cop. I guess that didn't parse. Thanks for your time!
So lets do away with both and spend all the billions we save on rebuilding Pensacola (public works) and backing all that (private) insurance that's gonna get paid out!
Is that a government entitlement program? Backing the insurance companies with tax-money?
Well if it is, and we have to get rid of that entitlement too lets just refund all that money to the tax payers. Wow, a couple hundred billion dollars divided 300 million ways would be a sweet piece of change!
(Oh, and can you give me a figure for the entitlement program's cost in a year, so I can calculate my check from the IRS? Have I been trolled?:)
By harboring UBL after 9/11 the Taliban was complicit in an act of war.
This isn't really accurate, as an act of violence isn't a war, it's a crime (but you may be confused from all the "war on a word" ideas that have been floating around for the last couple decades). However, by this logic you could say that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- and all countries that harboured bin Laden, and possibly the 9/11 hijackers -- were also complicit.
Hm, Incidentally this might make the U.S. complicit... since we permit so many Queda operatives to live within our borders, and permit the Saudis to fund them (read Senator Graham's book).
I can see that you are a firm believer in the Bush Doctrine (which is really just a different term for the school-yard bully's 'might makes right' doctrine). What is your justification for the World Cop point of view? What makes us the enforcement arm of the U.N. (since that is what you are truly [unwittingly?] implying by mentioning Hussein al-Tikrit's defiance of the U.N.)?
I'm most interested in this last point, as all the others have been flogged to death in the years since the 9/11 attack. Don't bother replying if you don't address your belief in the World Cop stance of the U.S.
(I'm happy to be wrong if I misjudged your point of view:)
Well sure. Again I didn't mean to sound fliamish, just as an employee for nearly seven years I have pretty much seen and heard it all. In your case it sounds like NOC or Fraud detected the compromise of your account (depending on the situation). The odds though that an account would not only get cracked, go undetected, and then get posted about, and replied to are astronomical:)
Your friend may have been correct back when we were all using 386s (or Quadras as the case may be), but those days are long since passed. At least AOL was encrypting passwords in a time when plain text transmission was prolific on public networks. There was a time when you could download/etc/passwd from public ftps (after you logged in with a clear text password) and run satan against them... but those times are also long since passed, it doesn't mean I hate ibiblio (formerly sunsite) or Netcom, right?
The big question is, is AOL's true motivation for offering this to regular customers just to compensate for the service's renowned terrible security?
AOL does not have 'renowned terrible security'. What they do have is legions of 'normal users' that are not trained in best security practices. The majority of the 35 million (larger than everyone in your city) users only ever know about account safety if they read and understand the information we provide them at signup, or they read and understand the information we send to them AGAIN after a comped account.
Additionally, if you had an organizational or overhead account that was continally 'getting hacked' what you mean to say is you had an account used by more than one person, one of which was leaking the password, by getting phished, scammed, or otherwise. The service locks accounts when brute-force attempts detected, and internal changes to passwords are monitored -- especially if the account has been comped before; making 'traditional' (aka like in the movies) hacking improbably at the least, however this encourages social engineering. We would see this all the time on organizational/business accounts: Boss calls up 'cause account(s) has gotten locked. We argue with him for 30 minutes because he says no one uses the account but him, and can't account for the sessions prior to the lock, eventually he asks an underling or a secretary that reads his mail for him, and she says 'yeah, I got an email that said you had purchased a DVD player from AOL, so I went to the site and canceled the order'. Of course the site was a scam, the letter that claimed to be from AOL was not 'official mail' (an authentication system AOL uses to let users know when something is legitamtely from us) and finally, the site asked for login information, something that AOL will never do onced you've signed in. So we'd talk to the secretary for a couple minutes about best practices, send email to all involved about online safety, reset all the passwords, unlock the account and send them on their way. I don't mean to insinuate this is your case. (As you can see, these are organizations small enough that they don't have IT departments to implement and train on security practices.)
The point I'm trying to make is that in a sample size that huge you are going to have people that don't heed the warning that appears on every letter and IM "AOL will never ask you for your password or personal information". In addition, the majority of comps come from downloading 'cute forward-ware' or from cloned sites (tiny urls, or faked urls leading to copy and paste replica's of yahoo, 1800-flowers, match.com, etc).
Wow that would be awesome. What would be even sweeter is to add a simple biometric to that, not for Identification, but just as confirmation. Put in card (it knows who I am), enter physical time dependent password (I'm now authenticated), make my transaction, "would you like another", "Is everything correct? Thumbscan" (card pops out and you go about your merry way).
This way a biometric could be used only in the case of theft of both authenticators (not AS an authenticator). If you don't press your thumb on the pad, the ATM eats the card... mitigating damage caused by a theif not willing to add his thumbprint.
Of course you better hurry and patent this, because someone else is about to. Despite it's obviousness to me.
You're right... and in addition to that, if you are online when an intruder access your account it says this:
"You have been disconnected due to -your screenname- signing on from another location. If this not authorized call now at 1-888-265-Whatever"
At which point the user is aware of a problem, contacts us (CAT or PWA) and can not only have the intruder bumped and the account secured, but also we can send the session trace information to fraud or up the CAT chain.
In real life the damage is mitigated to whatever the intruder can accomplish in the time interval between logging in and the member reaching CAT. Additionally, not much can be accomplished (even online, in kw: billing etc) without also knowing the account's security question. Also, personally idenfifiable information is not available online at kw:billing. So normally what we'd see is a spam run, or another phish run, or some 'domestic abuse' (IM impersonation, reading ex-wife's email, etc).
SecurID ups the social engineering ante, increases the urgency of attempts vs. compromises, and mitigates the damage to one session.
No system is perfect of course, and that's why we try to educate on every call to CAT. Weakest link is you and all.:)
I hate to slam you like this, but, you are totally wrong.
As is mentioned in other places in the thread, the token resets every 30 seconds, that's true, but is it so hard to type 6 numbers in 30 seconds? No, it's not. What a ignorant, short-sighted (and possibly mean-spirited) thing to say. I know you are "holier than thou" and none of your friends require physical passwords, because they all have great memories and are full of best security practices; but that does not excuse the need for many people to protect their "online identities".
This is really old news. In CAT and PWA we had been trialling (offering) securID's to customers for um... gosh I dunno since like last summer? If someone had repeated compromises from phishing/trojans/kids we would offer them a securID.
Parents whose children were on the verge of getting their accounts canceled (and grannies who'd been comped and used as spammers) Loved this feature. So anyhow, this:
Yup that will work for 1% of AOL users. The rest are screwed if it ever becomes mandatory. Sixty seconds is not enough time for about 99% of all AOL users. They'll spend the first 30 seconds trying to get the first password in and then type in the second password in the next thirty seconds -- only to figure out they got the two mixed up. Then they will spend all day typing in the same two passwords until they phone AOL at around 3:30pm.
...is complete BS. SecurID is effective and easy; I did the support to prove it.
(Just don't reveal your tokens. I remember l0pht wrote a brute force for the internal crypt key if you could provide it a number of sequential tokens.)
Sorry that got a little personal. I'm a little riled from the last batch of/.ers slamming AOL's core demographic. Still, needed to be said.
compared to the average of ~47mpg reported by those who drove the Insight
You and I both know it's disingenuous to say the AVERAGE fuel efficiency reported by Insight owners is 47 mpg. Come on now.
I mean, to reach that mean you'd need every one of your 50-something claims balanced out by a low 40s claim, and every 60s claim balanced out with a ludicrous 30s claim. There is no way over all the owner reported averages on the 'net the average comes out below 50.
You've got some very rosey numbers, and are comparing it with a fairly expensive car. Take mine, getting a verifiable ~45mpg, compared to the average of ~47mpg reported by those who drove the Insight, and add into the mix that you can get a used-car like mine for $2500, and it will take decades to pay off the sticker price. And btw, that 45mpg I'm getting is on the lowest grade of gas, not 93 octane.
Wow -- so again -- what $2500 dollar 5 person vehicle do you own that gets you on average 45 miles to the gallon?
My '87 CRX consistently got over 50, but I wouldn't make the stretch to insinuate it could safely carry 5 people.
While we're quoting Insight testimonials, how about the entire contents of the InsightCentral.com forums? I'm not going to bother preserving them for posterity, but owners there have road trips with efficiencies as high as 87 mpg. I mean while we are cherry picking numbers; it cuts both ways.
I guess I just can't see how a '91 Sentra 4 door or whatever you drive could even get close to a mixed power vehicle in terms of fuel efficiency. Maybe plus or minus 10 miles to the gallon is 'close' or 'just as good as' to you. I don't want to argue over semantics. This whole little tit for tat is devolving into pedantry. I'm proud that you could find claims of merely the 50s. That's ok. 50 mpg in an air-conditioned ulev that's faster than a 70s VW Beetle is still moving in the right direction.
And finally, "fairly expensive" - a car that costs [much] less than a years wages? Even a five year old car is typically over 5 grand. A two year old car that's 15k isn't bad. My wife and I just bought a 2003 CRV for 18k -- and that was a deal. To sweeten the deal our insurance went down when we dropped her 91 Pontiac (Just saying newer cars have other less obvious benefits). I guess we are just coming at this from two different perspectives... I see $100,000 Navigators making 11 miles to the gallon and shudder, but you see $15,000 Insights making 55 miles to the gallon and shudder. Sorry for the ranting and meandering. Can we reach some common ground?
You: My smaller car gets just about as good gas mileage as a hybrid, and it cost about 1/10th as much to buy it. Hybrids are a gimmick, designed to bring in more profit to the car company.
Me: Huh. I thought you said your non-hybrid car (that cost $2000, remeber '1/10th of the cost') had 'just as good a milage' as a mixed power vehicle.
You: No I didn't say that. Why do you spread crap like "oh I thought" bs when you could just click on "PARENT" a couple times and copy and paste the exact quote, not the twisted version you think you remember..
So yeah. A tenth of the cost of a hyrbid is 1500 bucks. You've already spilled the beans in another post that you paid 2500 for your car that gets "just about as good gas mileage as a hybrid". So maybe you're comparing your card to a civic 4 door hyrbid. I really don't care which. My point was not about financing, or whether we should all buy 20 years of gasoline and store it ourselves, or whether we should invest in energy hedge funds or money markets... it was quite simply that hybrids are relatively in-expensive when purchased relatively new and that the savings (monetary, tax, environmental) justify their market niche. I was taking issue with the largely flamebait claim that "Hybrids are a gimmick, designed to bring in more profit to the car company."
(I'll head over and address that other comment now)
Sorry - I had a typo. The Insight's warranty covers battery replacement, as they haven't been around long enough for Honda to know how long they'll last.
That aside... as another responder mentions, the price of gasoline isn't going to go down... so the price curve actually FAVORS hybrids paying for themselves... Here's the math:
10,000 miles per year (average distance per year according to kbb.com, a conservative estimate)
2.00 per gallon of gasoline (with an assumption that prices will not increase)
15,000 dollars that a mixed power 2003 Honda insight costs (from kbb.com)
13,300 dollars for conventional 2003 Honda Civic HX (that's the weakest 'best fuel economy' model, also kbb.com)
Fnally we'll assume efficiencies that come from first hand knowledge: a 2D civic gets on average 36 mpgs on average (a generous average), an Insight gets 66 mpgs (depending on driving style, a conservative average)
With these numbers, the conventional (and you'll have to admit very fuel efficient) Civic costs $555 per year in Gasoline. An Insight costs $303 in gasoline.
The difference in price is: $1700
Years it takes the Insight to beat the conventional Civic in gas: 6.7 years. The batteries and power-train on a civic are warranted to remove that argument from your bag. Honda will replace them under this warranty. And finally, the 30 cent difference between cheap gas and premium gas is negligible -- and bad for fuel economy. You get better milage from higher octane gasolines.
Now -- what makes these numbers more interesting is comparing an Insight or Prius against other more expensive, less efficient two door coupes; and as mentioned before looking at the trends in gas prices to increase over the course of years. Also, the time in years that a mixed power vehicle pays for itself decreases the more time you spend on the highway (i.e. driving more than just 10,000 miles per year).
So - hit me with your next round of 'na-uhs' and 'doubting-thomas' rebuttals.
My smaller car gets just about as good gas mileage as a hybrid, and it cost about 1/10th as much to buy it. Hybrids are a gimmick, designed to bring in more profit to the car company. They don't save enough on gas to be worth the cost for year, and years down the road. By that time, you'll have had to repair the thing so much, that you'll be loosing more money.
Hybrids aren't a good option. Wait until car companies are forced to offer better options, rather than settling for lowsy hybrids.
Holy crap! I know my '97 Civic DX (manual) gets grrreat milage (38 mpg on average) but you HAVE to let me in on your secret! What do you drive that reaches 70mpg?! I would love to save an extra $20 or more in a month. Especially if your car only cost as much as an Insight. I think I figured the math once, in Florida here, the savings on 93 octane gas would allow a Insight to pay for itself in seven years or something.
Slashdot Mirror
I wanted to respond to this, as well as the sibling posters. The idea that we can hold on to world hegemony by being 'smarter' or 'more innovative' is probably just impossible.
... 200 years or so. Over the next 50 to 75 years we will see dominance in Technology move to the Pacific.
Sure we may all be gunslinging, rugged individualists just itching to make a buck off our fellow man, but these features don't equip us to win in the battle of brains. The world econmy will transfer to the East. As the economy China improves they will have a cultural advantage over the U.S. in terms of education and innovation. Prior to the industrial revolution (and the shift of global economic power from the East to the West) China was the center of trade AND study. The Chinese meritocracy existed thousands of years before the foundation of our young nation... I think this gives them a special cultural advantage in academic pursuits -- and what is innovation if not a byproduct of synthesizing all concepts that have come before. China's masses will fill the labour roll necessary for Japan as their workforce retires (as their are not enough in the new generations to replace them).
I mean it's really just a numbers game... if you take all people to have the same capacity for intelligence, then having 4 times as many brains has got to count for something. (And this is to say nothing for the millions of well educated Indians.)
So that's my two cents. I know there isn't a solution there other than repeating what others have said - services are the key to the American worker's survival, until the rising world tide in labour has made us competitive again in
"Then you ignore the fact that most people don't have the intelligence to quickly change careers, start their own businesses, and learn a whole new set of skills. Any economic plan that requires that everyone be of above average intelligense [sic :) tehe] is destined to fail."
I believe the conservative ideology accepts this. As I understand it, everyone 'should' be able to achieve life, liberty and happiness by 'bootstrapping'. Those who are unable to do this do not deserve the American Dream. I think this is why many Conservatives promote the incarceration of the lower classes (through 'mandatory minimums' and such). "Compassionate Conservative" is an oxymoron as I understand it, since being 'anti-social-welfare' promotes social Darwinism. It's ironic that the intersection of Christians and Conservatives don't see the dichotomy.
Some one tag on if I'm wrong, the comments around here like "get a job you lazy bastard" and "economic girly men" and "stop whining" don't sound very compassionate to me, nor do they seem very Christian.
Maybe the 'just train for a new job' argument would be valid if The State provided free education to all interested. Sorry for going kinda off topic.
"Several months ago I watched Joe Hough, President of the Faculty and William E. Dodge Professor of Social Ethics at the Union Theological Seminary, speak on Bill Moyers "Now" and I was immediately impressed by both his passion as well as the following statement that he made:"
r l/index=books&field-author=Peterson%2C%252520Peter %252520G.
;). Oh, the first-half segment about the debates was scary too.
I hope you've watched this weeks's Now with Bill Moyers as well. I don't think I've ever agreed with a politician more than when I heard the interview with Peter G. Peterson. Seemed very relevant to what you are saying here.
They also touched on his book Running on Empty... more at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-u
Not trying to shill or anything, just saving you a little bit of typing
While we are nit-picking...
:-D
An apostrophe is also used when you contract the trailing G in a gerund. So it's "F-in'".
Muahahaha... e.g. I enjoy nit-pickin'.
...without representation. Or is it the other way round these days?
:-\
"[...] and how much the organisation is willing to spend to make the information public."
Correction: How much we, the represented taxpayer, are willing to spend to make the information public. The 'organisations' are our surrogates. We fund them or don't.
Just two cents.
Next time you are going to post a message on Slashdot
... give me a second to download FireFox and I'll see if it does it too ...
:-\ That's too bad.
:-\ Maybe there's already a request in bugzilla and it will gain these features soon.
Moments later, I've installed FireFox and I've come to find that it doesn't support services in any way... So alas, No spell checking in Firefox or Mozilla. No speaking text or emailing selected text, either.
Sorry I couldn't help out more.
Also, if ctrl-c really did delete your text (which it doesn't), and you didn't know what the command/apple key was for, you could click on Edit ->Undo which is always at the top in the SAME PLACE.
:)
Now, when you clicked on Edit for the first time -- up there at the top -- it would tell you the correct shortcut keys; you would be stunned to find they are command-zxcv, which is interestingly enough the scheme that Windows adopted after the days of shift-delete, ctrl-instert, and shift-insert, which you will now tell me are superior to the now common zxcv. I'd also submit that these short cuts are also less annoying than the bad old days of moving text around in X-windows.
(also to nitpick, don't has an apostrophe, if you used a Mac universal spellcheck would have caught that for you. Another benefit is that command-c doesn't conflict with ctrl-c when you're using a terminal, this makes using the clipboard in cli apps even more convenient than in X11. This would make me think that 'switching from Windows to FOSS' also makes people mad when they are using Windows shortcuts.
The Mac's auto spell checker could have caught the difference between gnat and nat if NAT wasn't in the dictionary. :-)
I love 'spell checking everywhere'... it's one of the things that makes me feel naked when I'm using Windows.
* LED 3 indicates that the computer and the LCD display are communicating. This LED will be ON when the computer is turned on and video signal is being generated.
:)
Holy crap, from reading that it looks like the iMac has to be ON to determine the status of that LED. Now, afiak the setup manual for the iMac at no point indicates that you can turn it on without plugging in the power cord.
I bet a first grader could tell you that to turn on a computer that it needs to be plugged into the wall.
Caveat, I worked tech support for 5 years, so I know people's propensity for idiocy. But I'll have to say I never took a call from a Mac using granny that complained of the computer not turning on and then noticing it was unplugged. (Not that I couldn't have, I have taken a call where the power cord had been chewed through by a dog, but it was a Wintel. So before anyone flames me, I'm not saying Apple's have dog resistant power cords
While you are replying to comments - can you tell me how it gets 'better sound quality' than the iPod?
:)
One could take arguments like this at face value if we were talking about casette tape recorder vs a (creatively named) Creative Jukebox; But when you start comparing devices that are essentially the same, and play essentially the same media, you'll have to provide something to back that up.
Does the Creative use Dolby C noise reduction or something!?
Yeah parsing language. To communicate. That's how it works. Sadly, I said don't bother to reply unless you addressed our role as world cop. I guess that didn't parse. Thanks for your time!
So lets do away with both and spend all the billions we save on rebuilding Pensacola (public works) and backing all that (private) insurance that's gonna get paid out!
:)
Is that a government entitlement program? Backing the insurance companies with tax-money?
Well if it is, and we have to get rid of that entitlement too lets just refund all that money to the tax payers. Wow, a couple hundred billion dollars divided 300 million ways would be a sweet piece of change!
(Oh, and can you give me a figure for the entitlement program's cost in a year, so I can calculate my check from the IRS? Have I been trolled?
By harboring UBL after 9/11 the Taliban was complicit in an act of war.
:)
This isn't really accurate, as an act of violence isn't a war, it's a crime (but you may be confused from all the "war on a word" ideas that have been floating around for the last couple decades). However, by this logic you could say that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- and all countries that harboured bin Laden, and possibly the 9/11 hijackers -- were also complicit.
Hm, Incidentally this might make the U.S. complicit... since we permit so many Queda operatives to live within our borders, and permit the Saudis to fund them (read Senator Graham's book).
I can see that you are a firm believer in the Bush Doctrine (which is really just a different term for the school-yard bully's 'might makes right' doctrine). What is your justification for the World Cop point of view? What makes us the enforcement arm of the U.N. (since that is what you are truly [unwittingly?] implying by mentioning Hussein al-Tikrit's defiance of the U.N.)?
I'm most interested in this last point, as all the others have been flogged to death in the years since the 9/11 attack. Don't bother replying if you don't address your belief in the World Cop stance of the U.S.
(I'm happy to be wrong if I misjudged your point of view
Well sure. Again I didn't mean to sound fliamish, just as an employee for nearly seven years I have pretty much seen and heard it all. In your case it sounds like NOC or Fraud detected the compromise of your account (depending on the situation). The odds though that an account would not only get cracked, go undetected, and then get posted about, and replied to are astronomical :)
/etc/passwd from public ftps (after you logged in with a clear text password) and run satan against them... but those times are also long since passed, it doesn't mean I hate ibiblio (formerly sunsite) or Netcom, right?
Your friend may have been correct back when we were all using 386s (or Quadras as the case may be), but those days are long since passed. At least AOL was encrypting passwords in a time when plain text transmission was prolific on public networks. There was a time when you could download
So again, nothing personal and w00t macs rule.
The big question is, is AOL's true motivation for offering this to regular customers just to compensate for the service's renowned terrible security?
AOL does not have 'renowned terrible security'. What they do have is legions of 'normal users' that are not trained in best security practices. The majority of the 35 million (larger than everyone in your city) users only ever know about account safety if they read and understand the information we provide them at signup, or they read and understand the information we send to them AGAIN after a comped account.
Additionally, if you had an organizational or overhead account that was continally 'getting hacked' what you mean to say is you had an account used by more than one person, one of which was leaking the password, by getting phished, scammed, or otherwise. The service locks accounts when brute-force attempts detected, and internal changes to passwords are monitored -- especially if the account has been comped before; making 'traditional' (aka like in the movies) hacking improbably at the least, however this encourages social engineering. We would see this all the time on organizational/business accounts: Boss calls up 'cause account(s) has gotten locked. We argue with him for 30 minutes because he says no one uses the account but him, and can't account for the sessions prior to the lock, eventually he asks an underling or a secretary that reads his mail for him, and she says 'yeah, I got an email that said you had purchased a DVD player from AOL, so I went to the site and canceled the order'. Of course the site was a scam, the letter that claimed to be from AOL was not 'official mail' (an authentication system AOL uses to let users know when something is legitamtely from us) and finally, the site asked for login information, something that AOL will never do onced you've signed in. So we'd talk to the secretary for a couple minutes about best practices, send email to all involved about online safety, reset all the passwords, unlock the account and send them on their way. I don't mean to insinuate this is your case. (As you can see, these are organizations small enough that they don't have IT departments to implement and train on security practices.)
The point I'm trying to make is that in a sample size that huge you are going to have people that don't heed the warning that appears on every letter and IM "AOL will never ask you for your password or personal information". In addition, the majority of comps come from downloading 'cute forward-ware' or from cloned sites (tiny urls, or faked urls leading to copy and paste replica's of yahoo, 1800-flowers, match.com, etc).
(sorry again for the long winded reply)
The lifetime of the token is printed on the back. I can confirm this for the RSA fobs we used internally and sent to members (subscribers).
Not to be pedantic, but if one had checked the date, one could have had one's replacement before the token's battery had died.
I didn't reply to the GP because as an ex-eomployee I didn't want to affect his "member experience" by telling him about the date etched in the back.
Wow that would be awesome. What would be even sweeter is to add a simple biometric to that, not for Identification, but just as confirmation. Put in card (it knows who I am), enter physical time dependent password (I'm now authenticated), make my transaction, "would you like another", "Is everything correct? Thumbscan" (card pops out and you go about your merry way).
... mitigating damage caused by a theif not willing to add his thumbprint.
This way a biometric could be used only in the case of theft of both authenticators (not AS an authenticator). If you don't press your thumb on the pad, the ATM eats the card
Of course you better hurry and patent this, because someone else is about to. Despite it's obviousness to me.
You're right ... and in addition to that, if you are online when an intruder access your account it says this:
:)
"You have been disconnected due to -your screenname- signing on from another location. If this not authorized call now at 1-888-265-Whatever"
At which point the user is aware of a problem, contacts us (CAT or PWA) and can not only have the intruder bumped and the account secured, but also we can send the session trace information to fraud or up the CAT chain.
In real life the damage is mitigated to whatever the intruder can accomplish in the time interval between logging in and the member reaching CAT. Additionally, not much can be accomplished (even online, in kw: billing etc) without also knowing the account's security question. Also, personally idenfifiable information is not available online at kw:billing. So normally what we'd see is a spam run, or another phish run, or some 'domestic abuse' (IM impersonation, reading ex-wife's email, etc).
SecurID ups the social engineering ante, increases the urgency of attempts vs. compromises, and mitigates the damage to one session.
No system is perfect of course, and that's why we try to educate on every call to CAT. Weakest link is you and all.
As is mentioned in other places in the thread, the token resets every 30 seconds, that's true, but is it so hard to type 6 numbers in 30 seconds? No, it's not. What a ignorant, short-sighted (and possibly mean-spirited) thing to say. I know you are "holier than thou" and none of your friends require physical passwords, because they all have great memories and are full of best security practices; but that does not excuse the need for many people to protect their "online identities".
This is really old news. In CAT and PWA we had been trialling (offering) securID's to customers for um
Parents whose children were on the verge of getting their accounts canceled (and grannies who'd been comped and used as spammers) Loved this feature. So anyhow, this:...is complete BS. SecurID is effective and easy; I did the support to prove it.
(Just don't reveal your tokens. I remember l0pht wrote a brute force for the internal crypt key if you could provide it a number of sequential tokens.)
Sorry that got a little personal. I'm a little riled from the last batch of
Oh and I better cover this:
compared to the average of ~47mpg reported by those who drove the Insight
You and I both know it's disingenuous to say the AVERAGE fuel efficiency reported by Insight owners is 47 mpg. Come on now.
I mean, to reach that mean you'd need every one of your 50-something claims balanced out by a low 40s claim, and every 60s claim balanced out with a ludicrous 30s claim. There is no way over all the owner reported averages on the 'net the average comes out below 50.
You've got some very rosey numbers, and are comparing it with a fairly expensive car. Take mine, getting a verifiable ~45mpg, compared to the average of ~47mpg reported by those who drove the Insight, and add into the mix that you can get a used-car like mine for $2500, and it will take decades to pay off the sticker price. And btw, that 45mpg I'm getting is on the lowest grade of gas, not 93 octane.
Wow -- so again -- what $2500 dollar 5 person vehicle do you own that gets you on average 45 miles to the gallon?
My '87 CRX consistently got over 50, but I wouldn't make the stretch to insinuate it could safely carry 5 people.
While we're quoting Insight testimonials, how about the entire contents of the InsightCentral.com forums? I'm not going to bother preserving them for posterity, but owners there have road trips with efficiencies as high as 87 mpg. I mean while we are cherry picking numbers; it cuts both ways.
I guess I just can't see how a '91 Sentra 4 door or whatever you drive could even get close to a mixed power vehicle in terms of fuel efficiency. Maybe plus or minus 10 miles to the gallon is 'close' or 'just as good as' to you. I don't want to argue over semantics. This whole little tit for tat is devolving into pedantry. I'm proud that you could find claims of merely the 50s. That's ok. 50 mpg in an air-conditioned ulev that's faster than a 70s VW Beetle is still moving in the right direction.
And finally, "fairly expensive" - a car that costs [much] less than a years wages? Even a five year old car is typically over 5 grand. A two year old car that's 15k isn't bad. My wife and I just bought a 2003 CRV for 18k -- and that was a deal. To sweeten the deal our insurance went down when we dropped her 91 Pontiac (Just saying newer cars have other less obvious benefits). I guess we are just coming at this from two different perspectives... I see $100,000 Navigators making 11 miles to the gallon and shudder, but you see $15,000 Insights making 55 miles to the gallon and shudder. Sorry for the ranting and meandering. Can we reach some common ground?
You're right -- I better be explicit:
You: My smaller car gets just about as good gas mileage as a hybrid, and it cost about 1/10th as much to buy it. Hybrids are a gimmick, designed to bring in more profit to the car company.
Me: Huh. I thought you said your non-hybrid car (that cost $2000, remeber '1/10th of the cost') had 'just as good a milage' as a mixed power vehicle.
You: No I didn't say that. Why do you spread crap like "oh I thought" bs when you could just click on "PARENT" a couple times and copy and paste the exact quote, not the twisted version you think you remember..
So yeah. A tenth of the cost of a hyrbid is 1500 bucks. You've already spilled the beans in another post that you paid 2500 for your car that gets "just about as good gas mileage as a hybrid". So maybe you're comparing your card to a civic 4 door hyrbid. I really don't care which. My point was not about financing, or whether we should all buy 20 years of gasoline and store it ourselves, or whether we should invest in energy hedge funds or money markets... it was quite simply that hybrids are relatively in-expensive when purchased relatively new and that the savings (monetary, tax, environmental) justify their market niche. I was taking issue with the largely flamebait claim that "Hybrids are a gimmick, designed to bring in more profit to the car company."
(I'll head over and address that other comment now)
Sorry - I had a typo. The Insight's warranty covers battery replacement, as they haven't been around long enough for Honda to know how long they'll last.
Huh. I thought you said your non-hybrid car (that cost $2000, remeber '1/10th of the cost') had 'just as good a milage' as a mixed power vehicle.
http://www.google.com/search?q=insight+70mpg&ie=U
Here's any number of folks with personal testimonials to their Insights reaching 70mpg on the highway.
That aside
10,000 miles per year (average distance per year according to kbb.com, a conservative estimate)
2.00 per gallon of gasoline (with an assumption that prices will not increase)
15,000 dollars that a mixed power 2003 Honda insight costs (from kbb.com)
13,300 dollars for conventional 2003 Honda Civic HX (that's the weakest 'best fuel economy' model, also kbb.com)
Fnally we'll assume efficiencies that come from first hand knowledge: a 2D civic gets on average 36 mpgs on average (a generous average), an Insight gets 66 mpgs (depending on driving style, a conservative average)
With these numbers, the conventional (and you'll have to admit very fuel efficient) Civic costs $555 per year in Gasoline. An Insight costs $303 in gasoline.
The difference in price is: $1700
Years it takes the Insight to beat the conventional Civic in gas: 6.7 years. The batteries and power-train on a civic are warranted to remove that argument from your bag. Honda will replace them under this warranty. And finally, the 30 cent difference between cheap gas and premium gas is negligible -- and bad for fuel economy. You get better milage from higher octane gasolines.
Now -- what makes these numbers more interesting is comparing an Insight or Prius against other more expensive, less efficient two door coupes; and as mentioned before looking at the trends in gas prices to increase over the course of years. Also, the time in years that a mixed power vehicle pays for itself decreases the more time you spend on the highway (i.e. driving more than just 10,000 miles per year).
So - hit me with your next round of 'na-uhs' and 'doubting-thomas' rebuttals.
Hybrids aren't a good option. Wait until car companies are forced to offer better options, rather than settling for lowsy hybrids.
Holy crap! I know my '97 Civic DX (manual) gets grrreat milage (38 mpg on average) but you HAVE to let me in on your secret! What do you drive that reaches 70mpg?! I would love to save an extra $20 or more in a month. Especially if your car only cost as much as an Insight. I think I figured the math once, in Florida here, the savings on 93 octane gas would allow a Insight to pay for itself in seven years or something.