Yeah, but WHEN? When will we see this available for consumer use?
I see news stories every damn day about some amazing breakthrough in this field or that field, but fuck all if it ever seems to make it to market.
I must have seen 100 stories in the last few years about more efficient and less expensive solar cells, but where the fuck are they?
The same with medications and advances in medical technology....lots of news and hype and excitement but rarely does anything ever appear.
FFS, all I want is to be buried in a casket made of an advanced polymer plastic film that eliminates diabetes and has a 98% solar conversion efficiency rate, and that can autonomously pilot itself down I-5 during rush hour. Is that too fucking much to ask?? Oh, and the battery has to last for a full week without a charge.
I feel safe have in drink in all but the worst bars, walking almost any street at night and never fear being pulled over by the cops. I don't fear someone breaking into my home at night, they will wait until I go to work to break in. I don't lock my car when I drive or get nervous when I stop at the traffic lights.
I feel pretty much the same here in the US, to be frank. I only lock my car door when I drive because if I'm in an accident it prevents the door from flying open and ejecting me from the car (seatbelt or not, that's often what happens). Shootings in bars aren't common here, but the papers play it up and make it sound like it happens all the time, everywhere. In 50+ years I've never seen a shot fired in a bar, and I've been in plenty.:)
The same for break-ins, most criminals will wait until you're gone, but there's always the crazy ones whose goal is to hurt someone and they'll carry a weapon. Guns, knives, machetes, whatever- they're intent is to harm, not rob. You'll find them in every city in the world but I don't think there are more of them in the US per capita than elsewhere. (I may be wrong about that, I haven't looked at any stats.)
-
I like visiting the USA but do feel nervous about where I go and what I do.
Is this due to the presence of firearms, or the general level of violent behavior you perceive in the US?
-
... I figured Slashdotters would be reasoned in their responses, I guess I over estimated them.
Slashdot used to be more of a "reasoned discussion" kind of place, but it's really gone to hell in the last 5 to 10 years. Sadly I think much of the internet has descended into hair-trigger flamewar territory, not just Slashdot.:(
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
If you feel that the intent of this means that only recognized members of an organized militia should have guns, consider this:
"The right of the people to keep and use soap shall not be infringed. Proper sanitation, being necessary to the preparation of healthy food, the right of the people to wash their hands, shall not be infringed."
Would you interpret that statement to say that only people who prepare food are allowed to wash their hands?
Actually there is a "correct" side, the side that says my coworker would not be dead if he meet the same type mentally deranged guy in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, China and most of Europe. If that had happened here my coworker would be in the office the next day with a broken nose and the other guy would be in court on an assault charge.
Guns are readily available in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, China and most of Europe, just not legally. And not to put too fine a point on it, but people here (and elsewhere) get killed in all sorts of ways- knives, bats, cars, bottles, bricks, bare hands, and so on. Yes, a firearm makes it easier but it doesn't follow that getting rid of them would prevent deaths occurring- sadly the perpetrators just move to another kind of weapon.
My sincere condolences for your coworker; by all reports he was a good guy and the kind of person that this country needs- an educated, gentle-natured man who just wanted to work and enjoy his life.
The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control. They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
I'm very liberal, own guns, and you can have a rational discussion about guns with me. We're not all raving gun nuts, frothing at the mouth and screaming about how "the gubbmint is gonna put us all into FEMA camps." (Although now that Trump is president, I start to wonder if some of those cranks might be on to something.)
Give Crimson Editor (CEdeit) a try, it's a lot like Notepad++ but it does a few extra things like bracket-matching, keyword highlighting some other handy stuff: http://www.crimsoneditor.com/
I use it in a very 'minimal view' mode, but I like it a lot.
in the US, you can LOSE YOUR LIFE if you go against a cop.
The same thing can be said about the guy that wants to beat you to the next stoplight or some schmuck standing in line behind you at the store.
So fuck it, I'm not gonna lay down and let them walk all over me. They can kiss my ass if they think they're going to trample my rights without any resistance. I'm a law-abiding citizen and I won't let my rights be chipped away or stripped away, by the police or anyone else.
No, I don't. WordPress or anything else. As said, I created both my sites from scratch (= wrote each single character of their codes);
Same here for 99% of my sites. There are a couple of quickie Wordpress sites I've put up (one for my wife's business, stuff like that) but other than that I code it all by hand, no IDE, just CEdit and a lot of coffee.:)
(e.g., expecting to find WordPress files in a specific location when WordPress isn't even installed on that server)
Yep, these are the mindless bots, just hitting every domain that they can, checking for a Wordpress installation. If they find one then they kick into a more dedicated exploit mode or they note the URL and another bot comes along later to do a comprehensive search for vulnerable WP plugins.
If you use Wordpress, I highly recommend the "Wordfence" plugin- it stops a LOT of stuff and is highly configurable. I consider it a must-have plugin for any WP site.
-
Thanks again for your feedback and helping me understand better what CloudFlare provides exactly
An attorney told me that there is a difference between Asking and Ordering. Asking doesn't require an answer while Ordering does. LEOs can ask or order; the Citizen can respond appropriately.
That's right, and that's how so many cops get people to give them their ID when they actually have no right to get it. They do the "I need to see your ID" and they hold their fingers about 2 inches apart as if they were holding a driver's license. Most people will just hand it over without thinking. Not me.:)
They also do the, "Hey do me a favor and....", but that carries no more weight than if I asked you to do something. For fuck's sake, they're asking for a favor (and saying so!), not giving you an order.
They can ask you anything they want, that doesn't mean you have to satisfy their request.
(Even if they order you to do something it doesn't necessarily mean you have to do it. That's a whole 'nother subject, though.)
When they tell me they "need" to see my ID in a situation where I'm not legally compelled to provide it, I tell them that their "needs" don't outweigh my "rights".
The Fifth Amendment doesn't give you the right to remain silent. It only protects you against self-incrimination.
Actually, it does. You do not have to answer or respond to any question asked of you by a police officer or government official, even though they would like you to believe otherwise. You literally do not have to say one word to them, and that is your right. They cannot compel you to speak a single syllable.
While I totally support the right to record, whatever one can legally observe, I struggle to understand the commonly-used argument, that such making recordings - made silently and without expression - is somehow equivalent to speech.
Could someone, please, explain?
It basically involves the idea of journalists gathering information for a story, and anyone, yes anyone can be a journalist.
You don't need credentials, you don't have to work for a news organization, period. Any citizen can be a journalist as per the 1st Amendment.
So, the upshot is that anyone can gather information for a story, whether they intend to publish it or not. And that means that anyone can video or record ANYTHING that can be seen from a public vantage point without exception. That includes public officials and any members of the government.
In other words, it is perfectly legal to stand on public property and video anything you can see, including the police and members of the public. The "eyes can't trespass", so anything you can see from a public vantage point is fair game.
This was an important win for free speech and for journalism and for your basic rights as a citizen. Otherwise the police would be able to arrest you simply for photographing or videoing them without any crime being committed.
This is the bit which kind of puzzles me. During my quick test, I recall to have seen many threats being blocked. On the other hand, before using it or after disabling it, my site continued running fine (although motivatedly slow). So, the only improvement which I saw on the security front was getting a list of stopped threats, about which I wasn't aware and which didn't seem to have a relevant impact on my site.
I think that 99.9999% of attacks don't succeed which is why we never notice them. Sometimes even when they do succeed we may not notice that the site's been compromised. It depends what the end goal is. Maybe they just want file storage space, maybe they use the site as a low-level attack platform, or use it as part of a botnet, or to run more scripts, etc.
I look through my server logs on some of my unprotected sites and I see a never-ending stream of GET-style attacks and queries and attempted SSH logins which are absolutely malicious in nature. (Fuzzing, malformed queries, GET requests that are obviously probes for vulnerable forms, attempted logins from China, the Maldives, Sweden, etc etc.) They go on 24/7, every single day of the year non-stop. Sometimes there are loads of them, sometimes just a few in any given hour or minute, but they're there.
My guess is that cloudflare is intercepting and stopping many of them, but I really haven't dug into it to see what the specifics are. I don't know if they provide a detailed log of threat activity, I'll have to go look and see if they do.
One thing that cloudflare does is conceal the actual IP that the site is on, and that helps prevent direct DDOS attacks to the IP address. However, you have to make sure that the site doesn't do anything that reveals its IP, like sending confirmation emails that would of course show the originating IP.
Put it behind cloudflare, make sure the IP address isn't discoverable, and you'll be in pretty good shape. If the site does start to get hammered you can go into the cloudflare control panel and turn on a higher level of protection like temporary CAPTCHAs for page requests and stuff like that.
So what happens if you stop carrying your business cards and say refuse theirs, requesting they call your phone to transfer their details into your contact database.
They would label you as a white barbarian and have nothing but contempt for you from that moment on. I'm not kidding.
The whole business card thing is a very formal dance and they take it pretty seriously. Sure, you may do the phone thing later but the business card exchange is not just about exchanging business cards, trust me.
But if all you get out of going out to watch a movie is watching a movie, why not watch an older movie for nothing? Does the newness of a movie really mean that much to you?
Agreed. The newness factor doesn't mean squat to me. In a year it'll still be the same movie and I'll watch it at my leisure from home.
This is basically telling people they can avoid going to the theater for $50.
"According to Ars Technica, "The Federal Communications Commission plans to halt implementation of a privacy rule that requires ISPs to protect the security of its customers' personal information." From the report: The data security rule is part of a broader privacy rulemaking implemented under former Chairman Tom Wheeler but opposed by the FCC's new Republican majority."
Republicans screwing over the American public? This is my shocked face.
I can say that I've been happy with them, and they do provide some decent/interesting metrics on site traffic.
They also have some interesting features like SSL without a cert for your site, HTTPS rewriting, DNS fiddling, some firewall stuff and page rules (which I don't use but they look like they could be very useful).
They do seem to screen out a lot of malicious traffic, if their stats can be believed (and I've no reason not to think they're real). The site is very straightforward to use and easy to figure out.
I have about 25 domains that use cloudflare. I only use their free account services but I've no complaints with them.
Because you were. What we call routine, they call ritual.
Yes, I know. After almost a dozen years with them I'm well versed in the ins and outs of Japanese business/social protocol.
Two hands, both corners of card pinched in index finger and thumb, card facing recipient, face up. Bow (30-60 deg, depending on your back, rank, etc.), look approx at recipients feet, present card. ** hold a 90 degree bow for 30 seconds.
We did a much shorter "business bow", nowhere near 30 seconds, maybe a few seconds just to show deference. And nowhere near 90 degrees, it was a much less formal thing with us and they actually started copying us when we were in an informal setting.
Because they were taught in English class that "too" and "very" are often interchangeable, many of them would shake your hand and say "Thank you too much!" lol
They were some of the best people I ever worked with, period. The company backed us 100% and took care of us like you wouldn't believe.
A client once complained *very* unfairly about me but my boss knew it was total bullshit. The client made noises about disciplining me and my boss told him not to worry, he would. He called me into his office and said, "I am disciplining you," and then he laughed and took me out to dinner at a great steak house in San Francisco.
That client really didn't like Japanese people and he would ask that I come to his lab instead of one of the Japanese guys. My boss would always tell him in fake broken English that, "No, no I discipline him like you ask, he never get to come to your place again, don't worry!" And then he'd send one of the Japanese guys cuz he knew it made the client cranky, lol.
I use Cloudflare for a variety of sites mostly for DDOS protection. And it seems to work pretty well for that.
They claim to do a lot of caching of static content but since most of my sites are dynamic (they have to be) I've never seen much benefit from that end of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but WHEN? When will we see this available for consumer use?
I see news stories every damn day about some amazing breakthrough in this field or that field, but fuck all if it ever seems to make it to market.
I must have seen 100 stories in the last few years about more efficient and less expensive solar cells, but where the fuck are they?
The same with medications and advances in medical technology....lots of news and hype and excitement but rarely does anything ever appear.
FFS, all I want is to be buried in a casket made of an advanced polymer plastic film that eliminates diabetes and has a 98% solar conversion efficiency rate, and that can autonomously pilot itself down I-5 during rush hour. Is that too fucking much to ask?? Oh, and the battery has to last for a full week without a charge.
People can only torture you in those countries. They can't "make" you speak.
Wrong. When they shove a red hot poker up your ass, you'll speak.
Holy crap how pedantic can you be.
How pedantic do you want me to be?
Unlike in many countries, in the US they can't torture you to make you speak or confess or incriminate yourself.
I feel safe have in drink in all but the worst bars, walking almost any street at night and never fear being pulled over by the cops. I don't fear someone breaking into my home at night, they will wait until I go to work to break in. I don't lock my car when I drive or get nervous when I stop at the traffic lights.
I feel pretty much the same here in the US, to be frank. I only lock my car door when I drive because if I'm in an accident it prevents the door from flying open and ejecting me from the car (seatbelt or not, that's often what happens). Shootings in bars aren't common here, but the papers play it up and make it sound like it happens all the time, everywhere. In 50+ years I've never seen a shot fired in a bar, and I've been in plenty. :)
The same for break-ins, most criminals will wait until you're gone, but there's always the crazy ones whose goal is to hurt someone and they'll carry a weapon. Guns, knives, machetes, whatever- they're intent is to harm, not rob. You'll find them in every city in the world but I don't think there are more of them in the US per capita than elsewhere. (I may be wrong about that, I haven't looked at any stats.)
-
I like visiting the USA but do feel nervous about where I go and what I do.
Is this due to the presence of firearms, or the general level of violent behavior you perceive in the US?
-
... I figured Slashdotters would be reasoned in their responses, I guess I over estimated them.
Slashdot used to be more of a "reasoned discussion" kind of place, but it's really gone to hell in the last 5 to 10 years. Sadly I think much of the internet has descended into hair-trigger flamewar territory, not just Slashdot. :(
Judges can compel you to testify, just not against yourself.
They can "compel" you but they can't force you to say anything. You may or may not face penalties for it, but they can't make you speak.
Also it sounds like you were suggesting shitty places to eat lunch and they were doing their best to politely tell you better places to go.
It sounds like you weren't there and are just blowing shit out of your ass.
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
If you feel that the intent of this means that only recognized members of an organized militia should have guns, consider this:
"The right of the people to keep and use soap shall not be infringed. Proper sanitation, being necessary to the preparation of healthy food, the right of the people to wash their hands, shall not be infringed."
Would you interpret that statement to say that only people who prepare food are allowed to wash their hands?
Actually there is a "correct" side, the side that says my coworker would not be dead if he meet the same type mentally deranged guy in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, China and most of Europe. If that had happened here my coworker would be in the office the next day with a broken nose and the other guy would be in court on an assault charge.
Guns are readily available in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, China and most of Europe, just not legally. And not to put too fine a point on it, but people here (and elsewhere) get killed in all sorts of ways- knives, bats, cars, bottles, bricks, bare hands, and so on. Yes, a firearm makes it easier but it doesn't follow that getting rid of them would prevent deaths occurring- sadly the perpetrators just move to another kind of weapon.
My sincere condolences for your coworker; by all reports he was a good guy and the kind of person that this country needs- an educated, gentle-natured man who just wanted to work and enjoy his life.
The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control. They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
I'm very liberal, own guns, and you can have a rational discussion about guns with me. We're not all raving gun nuts, frothing at the mouth and screaming about how "the gubbmint is gonna put us all into FEMA camps." (Although now that Trump is president, I start to wonder if some of those cranks might be on to something.)
Found the Trump voter.
Make America Hate Again!
Heh heh, I used Notepad++ for a long time.
Give Crimson Editor (CEdeit) a try, it's a lot like Notepad++ but it does a few extra things like bracket-matching, keyword highlighting some other handy stuff: http://www.crimsoneditor.com/
I use it in a very 'minimal view' mode, but I like it a lot.
except....
in the US, you can LOSE YOUR LIFE if you go against a cop.
The same thing can be said about the guy that wants to beat you to the next stoplight or some schmuck standing in line behind you at the store.
So fuck it, I'm not gonna lay down and let them walk all over me. They can kiss my ass if they think they're going to trample my rights without any resistance. I'm a law-abiding citizen and I won't let my rights be chipped away or stripped away, by the police or anyone else.
No, I don't. WordPress or anything else. As said, I created both my sites from scratch (= wrote each single character of their codes);
Same here for 99% of my sites. There are a couple of quickie Wordpress sites I've put up (one for my wife's business, stuff like that) but other than that I code it all by hand, no IDE, just CEdit and a lot of coffee. :)
(e.g., expecting to find WordPress files in a specific location when WordPress isn't even installed on that server)
Yep, these are the mindless bots, just hitting every domain that they can, checking for a Wordpress installation. If they find one then they kick into a more dedicated exploit mode or they note the URL and another bot comes along later to do a comprehensive search for vulnerable WP plugins.
If you use Wordpress, I highly recommend the "Wordfence" plugin- it stops a LOT of stuff and is highly configurable. I consider it a must-have plugin for any WP site.
-
Thanks again for your feedback and helping me understand better what CloudFlare provides exactly
You're welcome.
An attorney told me that there is a difference between Asking and Ordering. Asking doesn't require an answer while Ordering does. LEOs can ask or order; the Citizen can respond appropriately.
That's right, and that's how so many cops get people to give them their ID when they actually have no right to get it. They do the "I need to see your ID" and they hold their fingers about 2 inches apart as if they were holding a driver's license. Most people will just hand it over without thinking. Not me. :)
They also do the, "Hey do me a favor and ....", but that carries no more weight than if I asked you to do something. For fuck's sake, they're asking for a favor (and saying so!), not giving you an order.
They can ask you anything they want, that doesn't mean you have to satisfy their request.
(Even if they order you to do something it doesn't necessarily mean you have to do it. That's a whole 'nother subject, though.)
When they tell me they "need" to see my ID in a situation where I'm not legally compelled to provide it, I tell them that their "needs" don't outweigh my "rights".
The Fifth Amendment doesn't give you the right to remain silent. It only protects you against self-incrimination.
Actually, it does. You do not have to answer or respond to any question asked of you by a police officer or government official, even though they would like you to believe otherwise. You literally do not have to say one word to them, and that is your right. They cannot compel you to speak a single syllable.
While I totally support the right to record, whatever one can legally observe, I struggle to understand the commonly-used argument, that such making recordings - made silently and without expression - is somehow equivalent to speech.
Could someone, please, explain?
It basically involves the idea of journalists gathering information for a story, and anyone, yes anyone can be a journalist.
You don't need credentials, you don't have to work for a news organization, period. Any citizen can be a journalist as per the 1st Amendment.
So, the upshot is that anyone can gather information for a story, whether they intend to publish it or not. And that means that anyone can video or record ANYTHING that can be seen from a public vantage point without exception. That includes public officials and any members of the government.
In other words, it is perfectly legal to stand on public property and video anything you can see, including the police and members of the public. The "eyes can't trespass", so anything you can see from a public vantage point is fair game.
This was an important win for free speech and for journalism and for your basic rights as a citizen. Otherwise the police would be able to arrest you simply for photographing or videoing them without any crime being committed.
This is the bit which kind of puzzles me. During my quick test, I recall to have seen many threats being blocked. On the other hand, before using it or after disabling it, my site continued running fine (although motivatedly slow). So, the only improvement which I saw on the security front was getting a list of stopped threats, about which I wasn't aware and which didn't seem to have a relevant impact on my site.
I think that 99.9999% of attacks don't succeed which is why we never notice them. Sometimes even when they do succeed we may not notice that the site's been compromised. It depends what the end goal is. Maybe they just want file storage space, maybe they use the site as a low-level attack platform, or use it as part of a botnet, or to run more scripts, etc.
I look through my server logs on some of my unprotected sites and I see a never-ending stream of GET-style attacks and queries and attempted SSH logins which are absolutely malicious in nature. (Fuzzing, malformed queries, GET requests that are obviously probes for vulnerable forms, attempted logins from China, the Maldives, Sweden, etc etc.) They go on 24/7, every single day of the year non-stop. Sometimes there are loads of them, sometimes just a few in any given hour or minute, but they're there.
My guess is that cloudflare is intercepting and stopping many of them, but I really haven't dug into it to see what the specifics are. I don't know if they provide a detailed log of threat activity, I'll have to go look and see if they do.
One thing that cloudflare does is conceal the actual IP that the site is on, and that helps prevent direct DDOS attacks to the IP address. However, you have to make sure that the site doesn't do anything that reveals its IP, like sending confirmation emails that would of course show the originating IP.
Put it behind cloudflare, make sure the IP address isn't discoverable, and you'll be in pretty good shape. If the site does start to get hammered you can go into the cloudflare control panel and turn on a higher level of protection like temporary CAPTCHAs for page requests and stuff like that.
I've followed Phillip Turner's 1st Amendment audits for a long time and it was very good to see him prevail in court. Very, VERY good.
This was a huge win for everyone in the US that gives a damn about the 1st Amendment.
*(His Youtube channel is "The Battousai", so people call him "Batt" or the Batman.)
You have the absolute right to film the police in public, period. Watch and learn, kids: https://www.youtube.com/user/T...
So what happens if you stop carrying your business cards and say refuse theirs, requesting they call your phone to transfer their details into your contact database.
They would label you as a white barbarian and have nothing but contempt for you from that moment on. I'm not kidding.
The whole business card thing is a very formal dance and they take it pretty seriously. Sure, you may do the phone thing later but the business card exchange is not just about exchanging business cards, trust me.
But if all you get out of going out to watch a movie is watching a movie, why not watch an older movie for nothing? Does the newness of a movie really mean that much to you?
Agreed. The newness factor doesn't mean squat to me. In a year it'll still be the same movie and I'll watch it at my leisure from home.
This is basically telling people they can avoid going to the theater for $50.
"According to Ars Technica, "The Federal Communications Commission plans to halt implementation of a privacy rule that requires ISPs to protect the security of its customers' personal information." From the report: The data security rule is part of a broader privacy rulemaking implemented under former Chairman Tom Wheeler but opposed by the FCC's new Republican majority."
Republicans screwing over the American public? This is my shocked face.
I can say that I've been happy with them, and they do provide some decent/interesting metrics on site traffic.
They also have some interesting features like SSL without a cert for your site, HTTPS rewriting, DNS fiddling, some firewall stuff and page rules (which I don't use but they look like they could be very useful).
They do seem to screen out a lot of malicious traffic, if their stats can be believed (and I've no reason not to think they're real). The site is very straightforward to use and easy to figure out.
I have about 25 domains that use cloudflare. I only use their free account services but I've no complaints with them.
Because you were.
What we call routine, they call ritual.
Yes, I know. After almost a dozen years with them I'm well versed in the ins and outs of Japanese business/social protocol.
Two hands, both corners of card pinched in index finger and thumb, card facing recipient, face up. Bow (30-60 deg, depending on your back, rank, etc.), look approx at recipients feet, present card. ** hold a 90 degree bow for 30 seconds.
We did a much shorter "business bow", nowhere near 30 seconds, maybe a few seconds just to show deference. And nowhere near 90 degrees, it was a much less formal thing with us and they actually started copying us when we were in an informal setting.
Because they were taught in English class that "too" and "very" are often interchangeable, many of them would shake your hand and say "Thank you too much!" lol
They were some of the best people I ever worked with, period. The company backed us 100% and took care of us like you wouldn't believe.
A client once complained *very* unfairly about me but my boss knew it was total bullshit. The client made noises about disciplining me and my boss told him not to worry, he would. He called me into his office and said, "I am disciplining you," and then he laughed and took me out to dinner at a great steak house in San Francisco.
That client really didn't like Japanese people and he would ask that I come to his lab instead of one of the Japanese guys. My boss would always tell him in fake broken English that, "No, no I discipline him like you ask, he never get to come to your place again, don't worry!" And then he'd send one of the Japanese guys cuz he knew it made the client cranky, lol.
I use Cloudflare for a variety of sites mostly for DDOS protection. And it seems to work pretty well for that.
They claim to do a lot of caching of static content but since most of my sites are dynamic (they have to be) I've never seen much benefit from that end of it.