The topic was the fallacy of the "something you have" in regards to a 2-digit verification number. No matter how large the pin, a 2-digit verification number will fail, on average in 50 tries. So if someone has left their access code in their browser, and you now have to enter a 2-digit verification number, and they give you 3 guesses before they close the account, you have a 1 in 18 chance of p0wning their account.
"Something you have" will never be foolproof, because if you have it, someone can always take it from you. Heck, if they want your palm print, they can always chop off your hand. There was one native family in northern Canada that kept cashing their dead relative's government cheques for years - he was illiterate, so he would endorse his cheques with his thumbprint - so when they buried him, they kept the thumb. This was in the days before widespread computer use, but even today, someone has to inform the government if you're dead. If nobody does, you just might continue to "exist" for years...
In other words, most people don't need "real computers" - they need bare-bones thin clients with limited functionality.
They won't accept that, though, because they want a "real computer."
Sort of like the person who only needs an econobox to get to and from work, but then complains that his SUV is a gas-guzzler.
In both cases, its the end user who is to blame for not making a more rational choice - and in a lot of cases, these users have made the same choice over and over (from Windows 3.1 to 9x to Xp) and still, irrationally, expect things to be different. In other words, they haven't learned from experience.
That they can't be bothered to is their own problem. There's no other reason. If enough of them altered their habits on the home front, then we would see more diversity in the workplace as well. We're starting to see this with OSX in the workplace, for example - its acceptance is being driven by home users.
1. A tax exemption is relevant, because everyone else makes up the lost revenue, including non-believers, and people of other faiths. Or do you believe in some magic that makes tax exemptions not affect budgets?
2. Tax deductions for donations are subsidies for religion. For a person in a 50% marginal tax bracket, every dollar they donate only "costs" them 50 cents - but it costs everyone else as well, because everyone else is paying 50 cents more into the tax pot to make up the revenue lost.
3. See #1
Your one-off non-statistic of warmer montreal winter is not evidence for global warming. Do some research to understand why not.
It's not one-off. Its been like that for more than a decade - warmer than average winters, warmer than average summers. We've been breaking one record after another.
Also, Environment Canada has gone on the record to state that the warmer winters ARE definitely caused by global warming. Additionally, it was THE headline in yesterdays' paper - that as the climate here continues to warm, we can expect more diseases as vermin and pathogen-carrying insects that would normally be killed off in the winter survive.
We may not be the ONLY cause, but we've certainly contributed to it, and we pushed it over the "tipping point" about a decade ago. The proof is here. People that want to argue against this are being foolish.
If they're asking for 2 digits, there's only 100 possible combinations - 00 to 99
So, you'll hit the right combination, half the time, at 50 tries (n/2).
If you dial random numbers, and they issue random responses, the odds stay the same.
If they allow 3 attempts before disconnection, then the average becomes n/2/3, or 17 tries, on average. Sometimes, you'll get it right away, sometimes it will take 100 tries, or even 200, but, on average, 17 attempts would get you in.
It's a question of creating applications with enough logic to handle common errors such that a file that won't save will at least still be available the next time you open the program.
Quicky question... how do you propose to do that if there's no space to save it to in the first place? If the program says it can't save the file and you close it instead of trying to either free up space or save it elsewhere, you should expect to lose the data.
If people bothered to read the documentation, and to demand quality documentation (or to even create their own documentation if they're not happy with what's already available) the problem would quickly go away. Instead, docs are an afterthought to everyone except the person who writes them.
Most people aren't plumbers, for example, so when water suddenly gushes from the kitchen sink with no way to turn it off, it's completely idiotic to assume that they should have enough basic plumbing skills to be able to troubleshoot the issue.
Maybe not plumbers, but they should know enough to look under the sink and turn off the water supply. Men know this because its a "guy thing". Women know this because, lets face it, even today women are the ones who do most of the cleaning, so they get to see under the sink a lot more than most men.
People don't expect someone who's never driven to get behind the wheel of a car and "it just works." The same with computers. But people don't want to bother with any sort of learning curve. Just look at how many clocks around the house are stuck at 12:00 (or people who unplug and then replug their microwaves and clock radios at exactly noon because that's the only way they can figure out how to get the clock right...)
People like this ARE acting like idiots, and deserve to be made fun of.
Bet you had a lot of guys volunteering to test them:-)
Sounds like tech that was a bit ahead of its time. Nowadays, you could probably find some company that would want to have their ads printed on condoms.
Home Nursing Care ad on condom: "Apply this until the swelling to goes down."
Animal Planet ad on condom: "Crikey.. that's a bug'un!"
Open Source ad on condom: "Open Source beats Open Sores"
SPCA ad on condom: "A puppy... the only love that money can buy."
Lawyer ad on condom: Getting screwed over? Call 1-800-I-AM-FUCKED
Doctor ad on condom: Got AIDS?
Prostitute's ad on condom: If you're reading this, its because you're alone. Call 1-RENT-A-FRIEND now
Religious Right ad on condom: Maybe you should indulge in a little prayer that this thing doesn't break...
Vatican ad on condom: WARNING: This condom approved by the Pope - open at both ends!
Tire company ad on condom: "When the rubber hits the road..."
Parent's ad on condom: "Why aren't youdoing your homework?"
Symantec ad on condom: "You protect yourself, why not protect your computer?"
Government ad on condom: "Stop! Politicians are the only ones allowed to f$ck everyone over."
Gay Hot Line ad on condom: "Eat right! Call 1-800-JEFF_GANNON for your next MAN-DATE"
Lesbian Hot Line ad on condom: "Tastes better... less filling."
Viagra ad on condom: "Up, up and away..."
Excedrin ad on condom: "She has a headache? You should have brought excedrin."
Boy Scouts of America ad on condom: "Be prepared!"
Pedophile Priests/Politician ad on condom: "Comes in bubblegum, graperoo, and cherry flavours."
George W Bush ad on condom: A copy of the constitiution and the phrase "Fuck the Constitution! I did!"
Planned Parenthood ad on condom: "May all your problems NOT be little ones..."
National Geographic ad on condom: "Exploring dark caverns?"
The screen grab wasn't of his original question, but of his question after they deleted all but the subject line.
It was only after the question was deleted that he began questioning Apple's motives.
My take on it is that nobody would buy a 3-gig box if they can't properly use the extra gig of ram, and this could hurt sales, as well as give people justification for post-xmas returns (and then buying the 2-gig machine at a post-xmas price).
Its all about competing with Microsoft to make sure they don't get yet another monopoly, this time on Evil...
Two years ago, it was Sun's turn to be evil... last year it was google's ; Novell tried last month, but they pretty much failed it, so Apple got the nod.
We know that children of about age eight have twice as many brain cells, and twice as many neuron connections between brain cell as do adults. After age 8, the brains of children begin to cull out brain cells and the interconnections between brain cells, and to reorganize its connections.
Think of it as a maze - the culling removes all the dead ends, and keeps the useful highways and roads.
Without this culling, you'd have MORE random posts on/., not fewer:-)
I've spent weeks writing usr manuals, with plenty of screen shots, big easy-to-read type, a good table of contents and an index, step-by-step instructions with diagrams, and people STILL don't bother, even when its turned into online documentation that's a click away. Why? Because they're lazy. They just assume that its okay to keep bugging people with the same stupid questons that you've already answered in the manual, because they can't be bothered to open it up.
Me: "Look in the table of contents at the beginning of the manual. See something that looks like what you're asking? Read it - its all there, with pictures and a step-by-step explanation."
Them: "I don't want to read it. Just do it for me."
Me: "Isn't that supposed to be part of YOUR JOB?"
Them: "I'll read it later..."
Me: "That's what you said last time."
We tell people to stop being enabler for drunks or druggies... why should it be any different for people who are computer-illiterate by choice?
wait since when did Canada have troops? I always figured you just sent a group of mounties out for those policing duties.
(I live an hour from the border, I know what you do and don't really have)
They're in Afghanistan... remember? As for everyone else talking about invading Canada elsewhere in this thread...
Lets see - you can't use nukes, because we're too close, and you'd end up getting the fallout... not to mention what it would do to supplies you import from us (oil, electricity, etc).
You can't invade, because we can turn off the electricity, and a third of your electrical grid would immediately collapse, and much of it would stay down...
You can't use a trade embargo, because we supply you with more petroleum products than any other country in the world... and the shortages would be immediate (pipelines - within hours), unlike tankers (lead times of months)... think of a permanent "Hurricane Katrina" shortfall...
Also, we get along pretty well with Mexico, so they'd probably join us, so think of TWO Hurricane Katrinas...
Gee, why not just agree to continue to be good neighbours? Threatening us is more like putting a gun to your own head and saying "Stop or I'll shoot!"
How much work is it to pres F1 and read the online help? But people "can't be bothered..."
Igorance in such cases IS their own fault.
Look on your screen right now - the browser you're using - it even has a help menu. So do most apps. But does anyone ever think to actually try it? Nooooo....
They'll pay good money for self-help books to help them get thin, get a date, solve their marriage problems, raise their kids, learn how to win at poker/the lottery/whatever, advance their careers, etc., but they won't even try the free help that's sitting right there, complete with indexes and searchability... lazy fucktards.
As for the car analogy - every make and model has its own differences, and you don't see people getting all bent out of shape because the controls for the radio work differently, or the shifter isn't in the same place (console or column mount) or the tranny sn't the same (manual, automatic, 3, 4, 5, 6-speed, overdrive/no overdrive) or the brakes aren't the same (power, non-power, abs) or the windows aren't all alike (power, crank) or the heading/cooling systems are different (air, no air, etc), or the handling is different...
And yet computers are supposed to be easier to use than back in the green-screen days...
There's no excuse for remaining ignorant when the solution is literally staring you in the face, but clicking on Help and reading a page or two is "too much work".
There's a reason why we say "RTFM" - it actually contains the answers to many of your questions (both asked and unasked), and it'll also give you context to discuss any further problems if you still need to talk to IT.
Okay, you want to be crippled and unable to run properly, a bit long in the tooth, crufty around the edges, with no finesse, and people keep saying you're an anachronism... voila, your wish is granted. You are now Windows Milennium Edition.
At some point, when everyone was still riding around in horse-drawn buggys, the automobile was a newfangled, different, and scary thing. But at some point you really do have to tell people to just suck it up, accept that new things are invented and the world changes, and to get with the times.
You can have my abacus when you pry it from my cold dead hands...:-)
I'm a lot closer to thirty than twenty, myself; so I'm pretty well into the "obsolete and over the hill" box, technology-wise
There's no reason for anyone in the workplace to use the excuse "I'm over the hill technology-wise." If you want something bad enough, you put the effort in (just look at any older guy falling all over himself chasing after someone half his age...).
The problem, as others have pointed out, is that people don't WANT to learn. They don't feel that its part and parcel of their job, and then they complain when things don't work the way they want.
People who don't want to take 15 minutes to learn how to organize their files, for example. So, now that they can't find anything (they've got a bazillion icons on their desktop, so "wait a minute, it's here somewhere...") they complain that computers are complicated. They made their own "complications", same as anyone with a messy bedroom shouldn't complain when they can't find something.
And this then gets compounded, because, since they don't know much about their files, they can't just drag them onto a usb keychain to back them up (and forget about having them check anything into cvs or svn, or zipping it all into a zip or tarball and dumping it on a server or dvd)...
They're called lusers for a reason... they're losers who keep losing things, and they really need a good LARTing... or to be fired and replaced by someone else who is willing to take that one-time 15 minutes to learn how to be a better worker for the next 20 years.
Just a shot in the dark. I'm assuming from your self-richeous point of view that you take that attitude whenever dealing with IT too. Did you stop to wonder why they called you "unprofessional?"
Nah... couldn't be. Developers fix their own problems, set up their own system configurations, run their own servers, and can fix most hardware issues with a rubber band, duct tape, a screw driver and a post-it - and when that fails, a sledge-hammer, 'cuz it was broken anyway.
... unless you're talking developers on Windows... in which case its "... I'll try rebooting..." - same as other users.
Now they have a right to be that way... I never said they didn't... but they don't have a right to use the school system to linfect the next generation with their wacko beliefs.
Many people might say the same thing about you and some of the positions you hold.
The difference being that their religious claims aren't backed up by any proof, are totally untested and untestable, and have no place in policy-making. Global warming has a lot of proof behind it, it is currently being tested world-wide (and we're all test subjects), and we'd better formulate policy for the worst-case scenario, because it looks like even that one was optimistic...
Trying to use religion to keep the next generation from learning about this, and criticizing their parents for being such prolifigate assholes, is an ignorant policy from ignorant people.
Never thought I'd see the day when there'd be an alliance between church and oil company - but then again, Bush invoked god when going after Iraq's oil.
True, but if all they're doing is grabbing a dtd from there, who will notice ? It's offline right now anyway...
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After all, in Spaceballs, we WERE promised "Spaceballs 2 - The Search for More Money".
How many games out there gave us such great lines as:
The topic was the fallacy of the "something you have" in regards to a 2-digit verification number. No matter how large the pin, a 2-digit verification number will fail, on average in 50 tries. So if someone has left their access code in their browser, and you now have to enter a 2-digit verification number, and they give you 3 guesses before they close the account, you have a 1 in 18 chance of p0wning their account.
"Something you have" will never be foolproof, because if you have it, someone can always take it from you. Heck, if they want your palm print, they can always chop off your hand. There was one native family in northern Canada that kept cashing their dead relative's government cheques for years - he was illiterate, so he would endorse his cheques with his thumbprint - so when they buried him, they kept the thumb. This was in the days before widespread computer use, but even today, someone has to inform the government if you're dead. If nobody does, you just might continue to "exist" for years ...
In other words, most people don't need "real computers" - they need bare-bones thin clients with limited functionality.
They won't accept that, though, because they want a "real computer."
Sort of like the person who only needs an econobox to get to and from work, but then complains that his SUV is a gas-guzzler.
In both cases, its the end user who is to blame for not making a more rational choice - and in a lot of cases, these users have made the same choice over and over (from Windows 3.1 to 9x to Xp) and still, irrationally, expect things to be different. In other words, they haven't learned from experience.
That they can't be bothered to is their own problem. There's no other reason. If enough of them altered their habits on the home front, then we would see more diversity in the workplace as well. We're starting to see this with OSX in the workplace, for example - its acceptance is being driven by home users.
1. A tax exemption is relevant, because everyone else makes up the lost revenue, including non-believers, and people of other faiths. Or do you believe in some magic that makes tax exemptions not affect budgets?
2. Tax deductions for donations are subsidies for religion. For a person in a 50% marginal tax bracket, every dollar they donate only "costs" them 50 cents - but it costs everyone else as well, because everyone else is paying 50 cents more into the tax pot to make up the revenue lost.
3. See #1
Your one-off non-statistic of warmer montreal winter is not evidence for global warming. Do some research to understand why not. It's not one-off. Its been like that for more than a decade - warmer than average winters, warmer than average summers. We've been breaking one record after another.
Also, Environment Canada has gone on the record to state that the warmer winters ARE definitely caused by global warming. Additionally, it was THE headline in yesterdays' paper - that as the climate here continues to warm, we can expect more diseases as vermin and pathogen-carrying insects that would normally be killed off in the winter survive.
We may not be the ONLY cause, but we've certainly contributed to it, and we pushed it over the "tipping point" about a decade ago. The proof is here. People that want to argue against this are being foolish.
If they're asking for 2 digits, there's only 100 possible combinations - 00 to 99
So, you'll hit the right combination, half the time, at 50 tries (n/2).
If you dial random numbers, and they issue random responses, the odds stay the same.
If they allow 3 attempts before disconnection, then the average becomes n/2/3, or 17 tries, on average. Sometimes, you'll get it right away, sometimes it will take 100 tries, or even 200, but, on average, 17 attempts would get you in.
Sio I can do a denial of service at random on any account ... sweet. NOT!
How about Canadian Beer, Canadian Bacon, and Poutine ... nothing like a good coronary :-)
We'll throw in Stephen Harper. He's already more Religious Right-Wing American than most Americans.
We'll also agree to take up to 100,000 draft dodgers off your hands.
Quicky question ... how do you propose to do that if there's no space to save it to in the first place? If the program says it can't save the file and you close it instead of trying to either free up space or save it elsewhere, you should expect to lose the data.
If people bothered to read the documentation, and to demand quality documentation (or to even create their own documentation if they're not happy with what's already available) the problem would quickly go away. Instead, docs are an afterthought to everyone except the person who writes them.
Maybe not plumbers, but they should know enough to look under the sink and turn off the water supply. Men know this because its a "guy thing". Women know this because, lets face it, even today women are the ones who do most of the cleaning, so they get to see under the sink a lot more than most men.
People don't expect someone who's never driven to get behind the wheel of a car and "it just works." The same with computers. But people don't want to bother with any sort of learning curve. Just look at how many clocks around the house are stuck at 12:00 (or people who unplug and then replug their microwaves and clock radios at exactly noon because that's the only way they can figure out how to get the clock right ...)
People like this ARE acting like idiots, and deserve to be made fun of.
Bet you had a lot of guys volunteering to test them :-)
Sounds like tech that was a bit ahead of its time. Nowadays, you could probably find some company that would want to have their ads printed on condoms.
Just a thought ...
Hens can start laying eggs after 20 weeks.
http://gworrell.freeyellow.com/chickenfaq.html
Cows, on the other hand, only start producing milk after their first calf (so 2 years old before they get preggo, then another 9 months gestation). http://www.animalcorner.co.uk/farm/cows/cow_milk.h tml
Also, you can use lower-quality feed for chickens - up to 87% chicken shit.
The screen grab wasn't of his original question, but of his question after they deleted all but the subject line.
It was only after the question was deleted that he began questioning Apple's motives.
My take on it is that nobody would buy a 3-gig box if they can't properly use the extra gig of ram, and this could hurt sales, as well as give people justification for post-xmas returns (and then buying the 2-gig machine at a post-xmas price).
Its all about competing with Microsoft to make sure they don't get yet another monopoly, this time on Evil ...
Two years ago, it was Sun's turn to be evil ... last year it was google's ; Novell tried last month, but they pretty much failed it, so Apple got the nod.
I'm still waiting for them to cross chickens with octopii ... everyone gets a drumstick.
Chickens are better than cows. The furst words of the article summary:
Somehow, I don't see cow eggs as being able to compete, either in quantity, or in ease of access, to hen eggs :-)
The culling of brain cells is a necessary part of organizing the brain along certain pathways and not others ...
For a good example, cats lose 2/3 of their brain cells before adulthood.
Humans lose half
Think of it as a maze - the culling removes all the dead ends, and keeps the useful highways and roads.
Without this culling, you'd have MORE random posts on /., not fewer :-)
As long as you don't return Celine Dion we're all good :-)
Have you even tried?
I've spent weeks writing usr manuals, with plenty of screen shots, big easy-to-read type, a good table of contents and an index, step-by-step instructions with diagrams, and people STILL don't bother, even when its turned into online documentation that's a click away. Why? Because they're lazy. They just assume that its okay to keep bugging people with the same stupid questons that you've already answered in the manual, because they can't be bothered to open it up.
Me: "Look in the table of contents at the beginning of the manual. See something that looks like what you're asking? Read it - its all there, with pictures and a step-by-step explanation." ..."
Them: "I don't want to read it. Just do it for me."
Me: "Isn't that supposed to be part of YOUR JOB?"
Them: "I'll read it later
Me: "That's what you said last time."
We tell people to stop being enabler for drunks or druggies ... why should it be any different for people who are computer-illiterate by choice?
You mis-spelled "arse".
They're in Afghanistan ... remember? As for everyone else talking about invading Canada elsewhere in this thread ...
Lets see - you can't use nukes, because we're too close, and you'd end up getting the fallout ... not to mention what it would do to supplies you import from us (oil, electricity, etc).
You can't invade, because we can turn off the electricity, and a third of your electrical grid would immediately collapse, and much of it would stay down ...
You can't use a trade embargo, because we supply you with more petroleum products than any other country in the world ... and the shortages would be immediate (pipelines - within hours), unlike tankers (lead times of months) ... think of a permanent "Hurricane Katrina" shortfall ...
Also, we get along pretty well with Mexico, so they'd probably join us, so think of TWO Hurricane Katrinas ...
Gee, why not just agree to continue to be good neighbours? Threatening us is more like putting a gun to your own head and saying "Stop or I'll shoot!"
How much work is it to pres F1 and read the online help? But people "can't be bothered ..."
Igorance in such cases IS their own fault.
Look on your screen right now - the browser you're using - it even has a help menu. So do most apps. But does anyone ever think to actually try it? Nooooo ....
They'll pay good money for self-help books to help them get thin, get a date, solve their marriage problems, raise their kids, learn how to win at poker/the lottery/whatever, advance their careers, etc., but they won't even try the free help that's sitting right there, complete with indexes and searchability ... lazy fucktards.
As for the car analogy - every make and model has its own differences, and you don't see people getting all bent out of shape because the controls for the radio work differently, or the shifter isn't in the same place (console or column mount) or the tranny sn't the same (manual, automatic, 3, 4, 5, 6-speed, overdrive/no overdrive) or the brakes aren't the same (power, non-power, abs) or the windows aren't all alike (power, crank) or the heading/cooling systems are different (air, no air, etc), or the handling is different ...
And yet computers are supposed to be easier to use than back in the green-screen days ...
There's no excuse for remaining ignorant when the solution is literally staring you in the face, but clicking on Help and reading a page or two is "too much work".
There's a reason why we say "RTFM" - it actually contains the answers to many of your questions (both asked and unasked), and it'll also give you context to discuss any further problems if you still need to talk to IT.
Okay, you want to be crippled and unable to run properly, a bit long in the tooth, crufty around the edges, with no finesse, and people keep saying you're an anachronism ... voila, your wish is granted. You are now Windows Milennium Edition.
You can have my abacus when you pry it from my cold dead hands ... :-)
There's no reason for anyone in the workplace to use the excuse "I'm over the hill technology-wise." If you want something bad enough, you put the effort in (just look at any older guy falling all over himself chasing after someone half his age ...).
The problem, as others have pointed out, is that people don't WANT to learn. They don't feel that its part and parcel of their job, and then they complain when things don't work the way they want.
People who don't want to take 15 minutes to learn how to organize their files, for example. So, now that they can't find anything (they've got a bazillion icons on their desktop, so "wait a minute, it's here somewhere ...") they complain that computers are complicated. They made their own "complications", same as anyone with a messy bedroom shouldn't complain when they can't find something.
And this then gets compounded, because, since they don't know much about their files, they can't just drag them onto a usb keychain to back them up (and forget about having them check anything into cvs or svn, or zipping it all into a zip or tarball and dumping it on a server or dvd) ...
They're called lusers for a reason ... they're losers who keep losing things, and they really need a good LARTing ... or to be fired and replaced by someone else who is willing to take that one-time 15 minutes to learn how to be a better worker for the next 20 years.
Nah ... couldn't be. Developers fix their own problems, set up their own system configurations, run their own servers, and can fix most hardware issues with a rubber band, duct tape, a screw driver and a post-it - and when that fails, a sledge-hammer, 'cuz it was broken anyway.
The difference being that their religious claims aren't backed up by any proof, are totally untested and untestable, and have no place in policy-making. Global warming has a lot of proof behind it, it is currently being tested world-wide (and we're all test subjects), and we'd better formulate policy for the worst-case scenario, because it looks like even that one was optimistic ...
We used to believe that climate change would be slow ... we now know that drastic climate change can and has happened in decades, not centuries or millenia. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/06100 4180029.htm
Trying to use religion to keep the next generation from learning about this, and criticizing their parents for being such prolifigate assholes, is an ignorant policy from ignorant people.
Never thought I'd see the day when there'd be an alliance between church and oil company - but then again, Bush invoked god when going after Iraq's oil.
True, but if all they're doing is grabbing a dtd from there, who will notice ? It's offline right now anyway ...
(my bold - not in original)