I *really* prefer ctrl-tab to open the previous tab, and not cycle through the tabs. So Tab Mix Plus. Anybody know of another plugin to do that for me?
As someone who works at a decent-sized bank, and knowing what other 'big' banks are doing around the area, I really wonder what the writer was thinking here. Financial services are roughly three categories: * Backoffice -- Mostly IT, so maintenance, development etc. (on aging platforms from time to time, but that doesn't matter). Not something you want to do mobile, you want a decent workstation. Maybe outsourced, maybe in-house (if deemed sensitive enough) * Frontoffice: helpdesks, financial advisors, etc. They already have apps/tablet software, etc, so they can come to your house to sell you their product. So, nothing new there * management: doesn't need anything, really. They might want mobile, but all they need is to receive their email, make minutes, etc. And they do that on mobile devices just fine already
(of course, this is traditional banking, not the asset/trust/stock/portfolio management... But even then, they still wouldn't want to do that mobile)
So really, are there *any* advantages to going mobile? The article (which, yes, I browsed), is about employees wanting to go mobile. Really, nobody wants that but some lazy-ass phonepeckering controlfreak manager (and I mean lazy-ass because if you want to do your work quickly, you want a decent workstation to type mails at speed, or call while typing... with 10 fingers instead of one).
This research shows it's feasible. As others have said, there are a multitude of crypto-systems for which it is worthwhile to determine the private key. * Determining what algorithm is used isn't that hard. Most are 'off the shelf'. Modifying cryptographic algorithms is almost always a no-no, as it requires heavy resources to ensure it's still accurately safe. * Determining when an RSA algorithm runs is also not as hard. First, turn down the clock speed. Second, check the energy input/output. This gives a fairly good idea which sort of statements are executed. And then match it to RSA. * Inducing faults at the proper time then isn't also that hard. Again, turn down clock speed, and do it a couple of times.
In short, it has been done. If there's a one in 50 chance that you insert a proper glitch... and each glitch exposes one bit of the private key, then you'd (only) need 256 successfull glitches. Maybe you can cut it short to, say 200 (as the last 56 you can guess, which might be quicker/easier), so it would require some 1000 break-attempts. That's still far short of the 2^255 which you'd need to guess the key.
And for expensive systems, it could mean good money. If I were to pay a couple of students $2000 for a week of dull work, they'd probably do it for me...
So, briefly skimming the article, it's about the solar challenge. 60 MPH is squat. Previous winner Nuna 4 did almost 90, as it had a top speed of 142 km/h (or 88MPH) The version before that did an average of 63.8 MPH for the entire race. (after that they changed the rules)
So what's the news value of this? have the rules changed for this years solar challenge?
The fact that 90% of the respondants went along with saying that a beta was really cool is nothing new. Have fancy new features and it's in the bag.
But for the study...
These people had their expectations lowered by being told it was a BETA... So this is just a study showing that vista is a nice as an operating system in beta.
For a proper release product however... I think market has shown that it really, *REALLY* isn't at that stage.
Comparing against constants also prevents nullpointerexceptions. Assume value is null: value.equals(constant) crashes, whereas constant.equals(value) does not.
Such a shame that the excerpt speaks of "the Founders".
The Founding Fathers had nothing to do with patents, if wikipedia can be believed. Patents have been around a long time, and were simply 'blockcopied' by the US. It's an important piece, but such a (bad) excerpts initially made me feel as if it was a piece of badly-written marketing....:( /offtopic
Re:This is how economics is supposed to work!
on
The SUV Is Dethroned
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Not via regulation or per-category taxes that artificially manipulate, but by consumers adjusting their buying habits as costs change. I think you're forgetting that taxing is a way to adjust to the real price. Roads need to be twice as big, and thrice as strong as a SUV is much bigger and much heavier then a normal car. And it pollutes more. So... * tax oil appropriately for the pollution it causes. * tax the car for the pollution its creation causes * pretax the car for the pollution its destruction/demanufacture will create * tax the cars usage of the roads (both by space it takes and damage/stress it deals to the road)
(gawd, I should get a job at the government... the moneyz... Teh moneyz!!)
Let's see... What are universal binaries?... type of format... Universal binaries typically include both PowerPC and x86 versions of a compiled application. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_binary/
Hey, they're just precompiled stuff! That's a really great idea! Let's use square wheels too! Sounds great!
Do you even know what you are talking about? When i give you a copy of a program in universal binary format, all I'm really doing is giving you two copies: one for x86, and one for PowerPC. It sucks if you want to use it on your casio fancy calculator, because that just happens to be neither of them. Properly porting the program would mean including compiled code for each and every specific architecture. Guess what. I'm not going to do that. The other option being emulating one of those (presumably mandatory) implementations, starting the emulator, running the proper binary in there, and using it. Guess what. That's a shitload of work *and* a severe performance hit. Compare to java which is starting the 'emulator', running the (only) binary in there, and using it, makes it seem that that option is already covered by java. Moreover, the latter probably has much better performance because any performance trick which might work on a x86 architecture could be severely screwed by the emulator for the universal binary. And the JVM has a proper model: you're not programming on an x86 architecture, you're programming on a JVM which is both specific and platform independant. Catching bugs in a program is easier if you *know* where the seperation between 'emulator' and program are.
Universal binary format sounds like a fancy name from marketing to misguide people. Apple Archive would be a more decent name. Extension AAR;)
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Not speaking up is doing nothing.
If you don't want to speak up, that means you are guilty of something, because you have a moral obligation to speak up. Crimes are NOT in your best favor to let slide. So speak up.
If you don't want to speak up, that means you're willing to let crimes slide by. If nobody speaks up, that means crimes pay. If crimes pay, the police needs more 'options'. That means more cameras. In or at your house. Because you want to be protected when youre harrased, burgled, attacked, etc....near your house. So to those who are so stellarly sure that the government is against them: the government is the society. The society is you. If you're not willing to help us, that means we won't help you. If a crime is commited near you, that's your problem. If you don't want that happening, accept the cameras in your house. and livefeed them to the police.
So what's it going to be? Stop yelling and start thinking.
Don't think of it as a tool for lie detection. What about putting one in every hospitalbed, to know if people are sweating profusely. It's clean as there's no contact.
Or pilots, to monitor stress levels? Or astronauts, who are (at least, remembering the apollo 13 movie) constantly monitored. No longer having to wear crap but having an external system is much nicer.
Yeah. Like, Namibia. And Bangladesh, and Bhutan. They're the real polluters! We're in front of them! So njah! (the fact that the US is still behind on roughly all (other?) first-world countries... they don't count, right?)
You know, this reasoning is wrong: [quote]A "burglar" (intruder) is a huge risk to the occupant of a house because the intruder has incentive to kill the householder to shut him/her up, and sometimes does.[/quote] Now read: A "politician" is a huge risk to the occupant of a country because the politician has incentive to kill the householder to shut him/her up.
Now, do you see it happening? A burglar has no intent to kill. If he would, why not do armed robbery instead? Why not take people hostage, take them to their home, clear out and kill them?
Why? Because burglars do not have the intent to kill. For some reason burglary is seen as a vile crime. It is nothing more then taking valuable (worldly) possessions, and possessions likely to make money too (which also means that chances are small you're emotionally attached to the possessions - it'll be money, expensive media systems, etc. and probably not your photo albums, your nice comfy chair, or your childs favorite nappy).
For me, burglary is a wee tad more then nicking a purse, but not near as bad as any physical assault (... but that's just *me*) Along that line, I think it is madness to be allowed lethal force inside your home, and inside your home only. What is the difference between someone entering into your house, and someone stealing your luggage? Someone stealing your luggage from your car? Someone stealing your laptop from your car while you are driving in it? And in what case is it allowed to use lethal force to defend yourself? As it is, none. But why is there a difference when the person doing the stealing is in your house?
The fallacy here is that it's not burglars you're worried about - they are just thieves. You're worried about homocidal maniacs entering your house, killing you, *and* stealing everything. But how different is that from the same thing happening in the street? The reason, of course, is that on the street it's relatively unsafe for people pulling guns and start threatening people. They have a big risk vs doing such a thing in a relatively unpatrolled environment of a home. But... we're *still* not talking burglars here. This is homocidal maniacs, and they are few and far between.
Using weapons to intimidate as a means to defend your property is fine. Actually resorting to grievous bodily harm (and really, any gun is designed for it and nothing else, so firing one is) is overly reacting in almost all cases. Shooting a burglar means shooting with intent to hit, which also means shooting with intent to kill (and if you're saying you only wanted to hurt him, you should have tossed the ming vase at him instead). Shooting a burglar is not penalizing said burglar, it's penalizing with possible deadly cause (of course, heavy duty penitentiary might have similar death-risks... but it shouldn't have). Then all of a sudden it is the burglar who is being threatened for life, and who feels a need to defend yourself. Do you really want to go into that spiral?
I'm sorry, but since when is poor equal to stupid?
It is indeed true that old cars with horrible mileage will fall to the poor. However, *any* measure across the board you take will impact the wealthy less, as they can afford it, and b) can effectively use money to quickly take advantage of the 'sweet spots' in a system. Any measure across the board changes the economics of driving. Poor people aren't stupid. If anything, poor people know how to manage money quite well, and will adapt to the change. Carpooling is a decent cost-saver... if you're willing to combine resources for the 40-mile travel to and from work. Getting a job nearby (or towards work instead of suburbia-behind-faraway) instantly gives benefits.
The problem is that compared to 'the rest' of the world, the US has hugely inflated prices on oil. Europeans pay up to 300%, I think (not sure, I haven't checked), and they manage perfectly well. They live closer to work, use public transportation, *and* buy high-mileage cars (or go by foot... or bikes... or even scooters, which really get amazing mileage... something like 100 mpg? not sure... and be quicker at work because a traffic jam is a 'slowdown', not a halt)
Give poor people some credit.
I'm not saying the tax should be big and immediate. But say that we'll increase tax by 3% for the upcoming 10 years.
Because this smells a bit of naysaying. I understand your point, and, given the current mistrust in the current administration, there is some validity in thinking they are stupid enough to suddenly drop in a flat tax which doubles the cost of oil ("It's for our troops in Afghanistan. Oh no. Irak. Eh..then it should be temporary. Where do we have troops again? Oh hmmm. For our troops fighting terrorists! then?"), even they can work it out slowly but surely...
In EU vs. Microsoft, out of 200+ patents, only a few were found meritworthy. Not only is MS afraid that the patents can be worked around, I think they're equally afraid of simply having the patents invalidated.
People can claim McCarthy, but it might also be being afraid that their bag of gold is actually mica.
I'm way not qualified and into this, and haven't read TFA (sue me), but call me bored and wanting to ask a question:
Could this imply that the gross mass of the universe overestimated, thereby reducing the huge amount of 'unknown matter' (or dark matter, or whatever it is) ?
As is known, MS was fined by the EU for abusing their monopoly, namely, bundling MS media player (and other apps) with windows. For not complying, they were fined again. And again. And... One of the requirements was opening up the specs so that third-parties could use the same API as MS media player uses, thus actually having competition on that part.
However, MS argued that this spec contained innovations, and should not be opened up freely, as there were costs involved. The EU found this reasonable. MS opened up the specs, and set a price based on those innovations.
Upon investigation by an independent party at the request of the EU, the independant party found nearly nothing innovative. As the amount of innovation was tied to the cost, it meant that microsoft was way overcharging its specs. This of course is not part of the deal: the cost of the specs should be reasonable, so that third parties could actually use the spec, and compete.
This is where the EU is upset about. The fact that Vista is way overpriced is not the issue here. The issue is MS abusing the wording of the ruling and the subsequent settlement of the antitrust case they had against them.
As said, I'm a metric guy, but that's implying that imperial itself is base 2, which I think it wasn't. In fact, I thought it wasn't even near base ANYTHING (inch-> foot->yard->mile?), so it's easy (very easy) to come up with counterexamples in which halves and doubles don't work as easily. So that argument is fallacy number one.
For short distances, feet is extremely useful. Most things that you eyeball are between 0 and 10 feet, which gives you 11 values without resulting to a decimal, which confuses people. Metric gives you values 0-3 for the same area. There isn't a huge advantage to miles compared with kilometers, but the conversion is kind of irrelevant. If I'm measuring something for working around the house, I don't need to know the fractions of miles, if I am measuring a long distance, who cares about feet?
I can imagine somebody used to imperials being able to really estimate well in imperial measures. I can imagine I do as well. In metric. What you can and are trained is in no way an argument. Although are you thinking that metrics count everything in kilometers? We actually work in fractions and multiples of meters which is roughly a big step. However, when working in feet, be also aware that you're comparing apples with pies. In metric, you either work with meters(~1 yard), or decimeters(4 inches) which implies either a much greater margin, or a much smaller margin of error. say 6 feet (=185 cm = 18.5 dm = 1.85m) and what happens when you're off by 4-5 inches? In metric, that's either a full decimeter, or it's 'close enough' when you call it 2 meters. Is that a problem? if it is, you would've measured it properly in the first place, even imperial. If it isn't, then who cares? What point are you making here?
Similarly, temperatures are more useful for most people in imperial.
I'm sorry, this is just plain nuts. 95% of the world's population is metric, right? You're saying that 'a bizarre scale with no easy points to hang on to' is easier then knowing that 0 = freezing, 100 = boiling? (and hey, when discussing temperature, that doesn't matter. It's the humidity:) )
Did you actually read the article? the idea is that in (quite a lot) of cases, it is possible to do a brute force attack against the blurring (which is what is being described). The blurring function can be thought of as a hash function. if the hash function is known (which is quite probable) and the dataset over which the hash occurs is known (say, a string of up to 20 numbers), it can be brute forced (nothing new here, but that's the actual thing)
However good blurring is, it is still comparable to a hash function. As such, as long as the underlying dataset over which it hashes is small, a brute force attack can simply hash all possible values of the dataset, compare it to the original, and see what the actual value probably (barring collisions) was.
Think. Then think some more. Blurring might work on a sufficiently large dataset. But it's similar to you having to guess my password, which I'll just give you the MD5 hash of, and, oh wait, it's no longer then 8 characters. You'll brute force it if you want to. Even if it's ^#`D_,Hy (or something similarly silly). If you blur an entire page, then all of a sudden the dataset has become much larger (and probably out of brute-force range, although even that might not be the case: similar to cryptography you might be able to make out seperate words, and crack those, quickly reducing the number of total characters to separate strings instead.
And of course, yes, blurring can work. Mark everything black (or white). it's the uberform of blurring. and that works. But that's not what's being done mostly, and it *is* what *should* be done. It's just shown that this is bad security thinking. REALLY bad security thinking.
There is no problem in my mind with having patents recognizing the inventor's right to say "I'll show you how to do X if you promise to do Y.". They should have such right.
The problem is that a) the size of Y is deemed inappropriate to X (which is where most of the disucssion is about), and b) If you or I figure out a similar way of doing X on ourselves we can still be disallowed to do X. In effect, this gives a monopoly of doing X, and everything derived from it
Now, for every X figured out, fruitless research adds up to Y, as Y for some reason is seen as an acceptable cost-post (sp?) for all fruitless research. With that structure in place, fruitless research becomes 'costless', as it only adds to Y, which is unrelated to the current research. Is this fair? No. Do we want it to be fair? In this case, the benefit is that fruitless research is being done. As it can be argued that there is no such thing as fruitless research, just research not giving viable results or yields, it might as well add to Y.
However, this is all nice and dandy, but now Y has risen, because not only am I allowed to do X, I also pay for a lot of fruitless research. And *that* I don't see results of. Moreover, this fruitless research can still be patented on its own, possibly becoming profitable later on even though it has already been paid for!. I'll gladly pay Y, if I only pay for X, or also get what I paid for, namely all the research which was (possibly) fruitless. You want to keep research to yourself? that's your risk, with your cost which has nothing to do with what I am getting.
Slashdot Mirror
I *really* prefer ctrl-tab to open the previous tab, and not cycle through the tabs. So Tab Mix Plus.
Anybody know of another plugin to do that for me?
As someone who works at a decent-sized bank, and knowing what other 'big' banks are doing around the area, I really wonder what the writer was thinking here.
Financial services are roughly three categories:
* Backoffice -- Mostly IT, so maintenance, development etc. (on aging platforms from time to time, but that doesn't matter). Not something you want to do mobile, you want a decent workstation. Maybe outsourced, maybe in-house (if deemed sensitive enough)
* Frontoffice: helpdesks, financial advisors, etc. They already have apps/tablet software, etc, so they can come to your house to sell you their product. So, nothing new there
* management: doesn't need anything, really. They might want mobile, but all they need is to receive their email, make minutes, etc. And they do that on mobile devices just fine already
(of course, this is traditional banking, not the asset/trust/stock/portfolio management... But even then, they still wouldn't want to do that mobile)
So really, are there *any* advantages to going mobile? The article (which, yes, I browsed), is about employees wanting to go mobile. Really, nobody wants that but some lazy-ass phonepeckering controlfreak manager (and I mean lazy-ass because if you want to do your work quickly, you want a decent workstation to type mails at speed, or call while typing... with 10 fingers instead of one).
It's bad clickbait...
This research shows it's feasible. As others have said, there are a multitude of crypto-systems for which it is worthwhile to determine the private key.
* Determining what algorithm is used isn't that hard. Most are 'off the shelf'. Modifying cryptographic algorithms is almost always a no-no, as it requires heavy resources to ensure it's still accurately safe.
* Determining when an RSA algorithm runs is also not as hard. First, turn down the clock speed. Second, check the energy input/output. This gives a fairly good idea which sort of statements are executed. And then match it to RSA.
* Inducing faults at the proper time then isn't also that hard. Again, turn down clock speed, and do it a couple of times.
In short, it has been done. If there's a one in 50 chance that you insert a proper glitch... and each glitch exposes one bit of the private key, then you'd (only) need 256 successfull glitches. Maybe you can cut it short to, say 200 (as the last 56 you can guess, which might be quicker/easier), so it would require some 1000 break-attempts.
That's still far short of the 2^255 which you'd need to guess the key.
And for expensive systems, it could mean good money.
If I were to pay a couple of students $2000 for a week of dull work, they'd probably do it for me...
So, briefly skimming the article, it's about the solar challenge.
60 MPH is squat.
Previous winner Nuna 4 did almost 90, as it had a top speed of 142 km/h (or 88MPH)
The version before that did an average of 63.8 MPH for the entire race. (after that they changed the rules)
So what's the news value of this?
have the rules changed for this years solar challenge?
The fact that 90% of the respondants went along with saying that a beta was really cool is nothing new. Have fancy new features and it's in the bag.
But for the study...
These people had their expectations lowered by being told it was a BETA...
So this is just a study showing that vista is a nice as an operating system in beta.
For a proper release product however... I think market has shown that it really, *REALLY* isn't at that stage.
Funny thing, that.
The dutch wikipedia site shows they do:
Dutch article on Ledlamps
See the table...
Not necessarily the case.
Comparing against constants also prevents nullpointerexceptions.
Assume value is null:
value.equals(constant) crashes, whereas constant.equals(value) does not.
Aww... I almost hoped it would've done a rickroll
Such a shame that the excerpt speaks of "the Founders".
The Founding Fathers had nothing to do with patents, if wikipedia can be believed. :(
/offtopic
Patents have been around a long time, and were simply 'blockcopied' by the US.
It's an important piece, but such a (bad) excerpts initially made me feel as if it was a piece of badly-written marketing....
So...
* tax oil appropriately for the pollution it causes.
* tax the car for the pollution its creation causes
* pretax the car for the pollution its destruction/demanufacture will create
* tax the cars usage of the roads (both by space it takes and damage/stress it deals to the road)
(gawd, I should get a job at the government... the moneyz... Teh moneyz!!)
Let's see... ... type of format...
;)
What are universal binaries?
Universal binaries typically include both PowerPC and x86 versions of a compiled application. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_binary/
Hey, they're just precompiled stuff! That's a really great idea!
Let's use square wheels too! Sounds great!
Do you even know what you are talking about?
When i give you a copy of a program in universal binary format, all I'm really doing is giving you two copies: one for x86, and one for PowerPC. It sucks if you want to use it on your casio fancy calculator, because that just happens to be neither of them. Properly porting the program would mean including compiled code for each and every specific architecture. Guess what. I'm not going to do that. The other option being emulating one of those (presumably mandatory) implementations, starting the emulator, running the proper binary in there, and using it. Guess what. That's a shitload of work *and* a severe performance hit. Compare to java which is starting the 'emulator', running the (only) binary in there, and using it, makes it seem that that option is already covered by java. Moreover, the latter probably has much better performance because any performance trick which might work on a x86 architecture could be severely screwed by the emulator for the universal binary.
And the JVM has a proper model: you're not programming on an x86 architecture, you're programming on a JVM which is both specific and platform independant. Catching bugs in a program is easier if you *know* where the seperation between 'emulator' and program are.
Universal binary format sounds like a fancy name from marketing to misguide people. Apple Archive would be a more decent name. Extension AAR
No. --- Never --- shut up.
...near your house.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Not speaking up is doing nothing.
If you don't want to speak up, that means you are guilty of something, because you have a moral obligation to speak up.
Crimes are NOT in your best favor to let slide. So speak up.
If you don't want to speak up, that means you're willing to let crimes slide by. If nobody speaks up, that means crimes pay. If crimes pay, the police needs more 'options'. That means more cameras. In or at your house.
Because you want to be protected when youre harrased, burgled, attacked, etc.
So to those who are so stellarly sure that the government is against them: the government is the society. The society is you. If you're not willing to help us, that means we won't help you. If a crime is commited near you, that's your problem. If you don't want that happening, accept the cameras in your house. and livefeed them to the police.
So what's it going to be? Stop yelling and start thinking.
--Testify--
Don't think of it as a tool for lie detection. What about putting one in every hospitalbed, to know if people are sweating profusely.
It's clean as there's no contact.
Or pilots, to monitor stress levels?
Or astronauts, who are (at least, remembering the apollo 13 movie) constantly monitored. No longer having to wear crap but having an external system is much nicer.
Yeah. Like, Namibia. And Bangladesh, and Bhutan. They're the real polluters!
We're in front of them!
So njah!
(the fact that the US is still behind on roughly all (other?) first-world countries... they don't count, right?)
You know what's scary? :(
Being a total westerner, and having to give Putin the benefit of the doubt here
I'd more quickly believe that the bush administration was stupid enough to do this, then a manipulative intelligent autocrat...
You know, this reasoning is wrong:
[quote]A "burglar" (intruder) is a huge risk to the occupant of a house because the intruder has incentive to kill the householder to shut him/her up, and sometimes does.[/quote]
Now read:
A "politician" is a huge risk to the occupant of a country because the politician has incentive to kill the householder to shut him/her up.
Now, do you see it happening?
A burglar has no intent to kill. If he would, why not do armed robbery instead? Why not take people hostage, take them to their home, clear out and kill them?
Why? Because burglars do not have the intent to kill.
For some reason burglary is seen as a vile crime. It is nothing more then taking valuable (worldly) possessions, and possessions likely to make money too (which also means that chances are small you're emotionally attached to the possessions - it'll be money, expensive media systems, etc. and probably not your photo albums, your nice comfy chair, or your childs favorite nappy).
For me, burglary is a wee tad more then nicking a purse, but not near as bad as any physical assault (... but that's just *me*)
Along that line, I think it is madness to be allowed lethal force inside your home, and inside your home only.
What is the difference between someone entering into your house, and someone stealing your luggage?
Someone stealing your luggage from your car?
Someone stealing your laptop from your car while you are driving in it?
And in what case is it allowed to use lethal force to defend yourself?
As it is, none. But why is there a difference when the person doing the stealing is in your house?
The fallacy here is that it's not burglars you're worried about - they are just thieves. You're worried about homocidal maniacs entering your house, killing you, *and* stealing everything.
But how different is that from the same thing happening in the street?
The reason, of course, is that on the street it's relatively unsafe for people pulling guns and start threatening people. They have a big risk vs doing such a thing in a relatively unpatrolled environment of a home. But... we're *still* not talking burglars here. This is homocidal maniacs, and they are few and far between.
Using weapons to intimidate as a means to defend your property is fine. Actually resorting to grievous bodily harm (and really, any gun is designed for it and nothing else, so firing one is) is overly reacting in almost all cases. Shooting a burglar means shooting with intent to hit, which also means shooting with intent to kill (and if you're saying you only wanted to hurt him, you should have tossed the ming vase at him instead). Shooting a burglar is not penalizing said burglar, it's penalizing with possible deadly cause (of course, heavy duty penitentiary might have similar death-risks... but it shouldn't have).
Then all of a sudden it is the burglar who is being threatened for life, and who feels a need to defend yourself. Do you really want to go into that spiral?
yourPhone it was, MyPhone it is!
I'm sorry, but since when is poor equal to stupid?
It is indeed true that old cars with horrible mileage will fall to the poor. However, *any* measure across the board you take will impact the wealthy less, as they can afford it, and b) can effectively use money to quickly take advantage of the 'sweet spots' in a system.
Any measure across the board changes the economics of driving. Poor people aren't stupid. If anything, poor people know how to manage money quite well, and will adapt to the change.
Carpooling is a decent cost-saver... if you're willing to combine resources for the 40-mile travel to and from work.
Getting a job nearby (or towards work instead of suburbia-behind-faraway) instantly gives benefits.
The problem is that compared to 'the rest' of the world, the US has hugely inflated prices on oil. Europeans pay up to 300%, I think (not sure, I haven't checked), and they manage perfectly well. They live closer to work, use public transportation, *and* buy high-mileage cars (or go by foot... or bikes... or even scooters, which really get amazing mileage... something like 100 mpg? not sure... and be quicker at work because a traffic jam is a 'slowdown', not a halt)
Give poor people some credit.
I'm not saying the tax should be big and immediate. But say that we'll increase tax by 3% for the upcoming 10 years.
Because this smells a bit of naysaying. I understand your point, and, given the current mistrust in the current administration, there is some validity in thinking they are stupid enough to suddenly drop in a flat tax which doubles the cost of oil ("It's for our troops in Afghanistan. Oh no. Irak. Eh..then it should be temporary. Where do we have troops again? Oh hmmm. For our troops fighting terrorists! then?"), even they can work it out slowly but surely...
In EU vs. Microsoft, out of 200+ patents, only a few were found meritworthy.
Not only is MS afraid that the patents can be worked around, I think they're equally afraid of simply having the patents invalidated.
People can claim McCarthy, but it might also be being afraid that their bag of gold is actually mica.
I'm way not qualified and into this, and haven't read TFA (sue me), but call me bored and wanting to ask a question:
Could this imply that the gross mass of the universe overestimated, thereby reducing the huge amount of 'unknown matter' (or dark matter, or whatever it is) ?
Regards,
Koos
As is known, MS was fined by the EU for abusing their monopoly, namely, bundling MS media player (and other apps) with windows.
s oft_antitrust_case
For not complying, they were fined again. And again. And...
One of the requirements was opening up the specs so that third-parties could use the same API as MS media player uses, thus actually having competition on that part.
However, MS argued that this spec contained innovations, and should not be opened up freely, as there were costs involved.
The EU found this reasonable.
MS opened up the specs, and set a price based on those innovations.
Upon investigation by an independent party at the request of the EU, the independant party found nearly nothing innovative.
As the amount of innovation was tied to the cost, it meant that microsoft was way overcharging its specs.
This of course is not part of the deal: the cost of the specs should be reasonable, so that third parties could actually use the spec, and compete.
This is where the EU is upset about. The fact that Vista is way overpriced is not the issue here. The issue is MS abusing the wording of the ruling and the subsequent settlement of the antitrust case they had against them.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Micro
Point by point.
As said, I'm a metric guy, but that's implying that imperial itself is base 2, which I think it wasn't. In fact, I thought it wasn't even near base ANYTHING (inch-> foot->yard->mile?), so it's easy (very easy) to come up with counterexamples in which halves and doubles don't work as easily. So that argument is fallacy number one.
I can imagine somebody used to imperials being able to really estimate well in imperial measures. I can imagine I do as well. In metric. What you can and are trained is in no way an argument. Although are you thinking that metrics count everything in kilometers? We actually work in fractions and multiples of meters which is roughly a big step. However, when working in feet, be also aware that you're comparing apples with pies. In metric, you either work with meters(~1 yard), or decimeters(4 inches) which implies either a much greater margin, or a much smaller margin of error. say 6 feet (=185 cm = 18.5 dm = 1.85m) and what happens when you're off by 4-5 inches? In metric, that's either a full decimeter, or it's 'close enough' when you call it 2 meters. Is that a problem? if it is, you would've measured it properly in the first place, even imperial. If it isn't, then who cares? What point are you making here?
I'm sorry, this is just plain nuts. 95% of the world's population is metric, right? You're saying that 'a bizarre scale with no easy points to hang on to' is easier then knowing that 0 = freezing, 100 = boiling?
(and hey, when discussing temperature, that doesn't matter. It's the humidity
Did you actually read the article?
the idea is that in (quite a lot) of cases, it is possible to do a brute force attack against the blurring (which is what is being described).
The blurring function can be thought of as a hash function. if the hash function is known (which is quite probable) and the dataset over which the hash occurs is known (say, a string of up to 20 numbers), it can be brute forced (nothing new here, but that's the actual thing)
However good blurring is, it is still comparable to a hash function. As such, as long as the underlying dataset over which it hashes is small, a brute force attack can simply hash all possible values of the dataset, compare it to the original, and see what the actual value probably (barring collisions) was.
Think. Then think some more. Blurring might work on a sufficiently large dataset. But it's similar to you having to guess my password, which I'll just give you the MD5 hash of, and, oh wait, it's no longer then 8 characters. You'll brute force it if you want to. Even if it's ^#`D_,Hy (or something similarly silly).
If you blur an entire page, then all of a sudden the dataset has become much larger (and probably out of brute-force range, although even that might not be the case: similar to cryptography you might be able to make out seperate words, and crack those, quickly reducing the number of total characters to separate strings instead.
And of course, yes, blurring can work. Mark everything black (or white). it's the uberform of blurring. and that works. But that's not what's being done mostly, and it *is* what *should* be done. It's just shown that this is bad security thinking. REALLY bad security thinking.
There is no problem in my mind with having patents recognizing the inventor's right to say "I'll show you how to do X if you promise to do Y.".
They should have such right.
The problem is that
a) the size of Y is deemed inappropriate to X
(which is where most of the disucssion is about), and
b) If you or I figure out a similar way of doing X on ourselves we can still be disallowed to do X. In effect, this gives a monopoly of doing X, and everything derived from it
Now, for every X figured out, fruitless research adds up to Y, as Y for some reason is seen as an acceptable cost-post (sp?) for all fruitless research.
With that structure in place, fruitless research becomes 'costless', as it only adds to Y, which is unrelated to the current research.
Is this fair? No.
Do we want it to be fair? In this case, the benefit is that fruitless research is being done. As it can be argued that there is no such thing as fruitless research, just research not giving viable results or yields, it might as well add to Y.
However, this is all nice and dandy, but now Y has risen, because not only am I allowed to do X, I also pay for a lot of fruitless research. And *that* I don't see results of. Moreover, this fruitless research can still be patented on its own, possibly becoming profitable later on even though it has already been paid for!.
I'll gladly pay Y, if I only pay for X, or also get what I paid for, namely all the research which was (possibly) fruitless.
You want to keep research to yourself? that's your risk, with your cost which has nothing to do with what I am getting.
just Gimme mah pie, dammit!
I think it's a four-letter agency which zealously protects against copying of (motion) pictures.
Although you could be implying that there are 3-letter agencies interested enough in the technology to show up on your doorstep with a job offer.