Hah! I've been doing this for years, I have a centralized CUPS server, and all the workstation clients use it to send jobs to any of the printers in the lab.
Phear me, for I am become THE CLOUD!!one!!!eleven!
Yes. It's basically impossible to rent a car with a manual gearbox ("standard transmission", we say here), and when you buy one, the sales people give you all kinds of raised eyebrows and warnings about how you might think you're saving money, but actually the trade-in/resale value of a standard-transmission vehicle is effectively zero.
I got one anyways, to satisfy my control freak ("certainty enthusiast", we say here) tendencies.
The problem with illegal immigration isn't a lack of legislation -- as you might perhaps guess from the name, illegal immigration is already illegal.
There is already a card you're supposed to have in order to be employed in the US -- it's the Social Security card, which your employer needs to see in order to do payroll deductions.
Illegal immigration is a problem because existing laws are not enforced. I think they should start there.
You clearly don't understand how these things work. He had to resign as VP of the student body so that the student government could then award him a contract as an ethics consultant.
I actually do that http thing. It's not that I'm espeically diligent, or think the browser won't guess correctly, it's somewhere between a persistent habit and a neurosis. On the other hand, I am diligent about getting the https:/// ones right.
> You can perform a barrel roll in Boeing commercial airliners, and someone actually did so with a 707 when they introduced the model during an airshow.
That wasn't "somebody", that was Alvin "Tex" Johnston, and it wasn't an airshow, it was a demonstration flight for the 707's future customers. The Boeing folks just about had heart attacks.
He's got a Wikipedia page, of course. And there's video.
So Google can change theirs to "Goscript", and gain the clarity of the Java/Javascript situation. And nobody will confuse it with ghostscript. It's perfect!
> People need to learn that a vocal minority is just that regardless of the issue
Indeed. And unless a majority of Washington citizens signed the petition to get R-71 on the ballot, then the signers of the R-71 petitions are also a vocal (or at least public) minority.
The actual vote takes place later on, and there's no reason to think that won't be a secret ballot.
> A runabout crashing into a borg cube at warp seven would do quite a bit more damage than a photon torpedo, I would imagine
Depends on how you think the tech works, but you can make a conservation-of-energy argument that Trek-universe ships at warp don't actually have that much kinetic energy, based on a (rather rough, of course) estimate of the energy inputs. The old rec.arts.startrek.tech explanation was that the "warp field" made the inertia go away somehow. Since photon torpedoes use the same power source (matter-antimatter annihilation) directly, they may well be more effective.
Which is to say (hauling this back on-topic...) that this kind of thoughtfulness is sometimes a quick way to get bogged down in the tech details of the universe in question, which can compromise the storytelling.
The article is light on details, but at least it's not as dumb as it sounds. The bacteria can sequester the heavy metals into chemically inert compounds, which can then be separated mechanically ("settle to the bottom of a lake") from the environment.
They don't appear to be claiming that they have a biological process that can change the half-life of a Plutonium atom by eating it in a clever way, though the headline-writer may have thought that.
It really isn't. Binocular stereopsis is not the most important depth cue that human vision uses, it's just a fairly compelling one that's easy to produce mechanically. Real-world vision uses a combination of relative size, parallax and relative motion, illumination, focus, and binocular cues to figure out depth information. There are one-eyed folks out there with excellent depth perception, and two-eyed folks with poor depth perception. Almost all of the depth action is visual-cortex post-processing.
One of the causes of eyestrain from typical binocular 3D systems is that the images mix up the binocular and focal cues -- the binocular info says that the stuff is a few meters in front of you, but the focal cue says it's all in the same plane.
I personally seem to be sensitive to the focal cue, for some reason -- I seem to get full-on migraines from ViewMaster[tm]-style binocular 3D viewers, and noticeable eyestrain from desktop-scale 3D systems, but can watch theatrical 3D movies comfortably, which I think is due to the differing screen sizes and distances.
> Your cell phone battery will likely outlast the battery at the local exchange.
Your cell phone battery isn't the issue -- the cell tower also needs power for the cell-phone system to work, as we all learned after Hurricane Katrina.
Right, like how the Soviet Union kicked our asses in the 1960s and 70s, because they weren't hobbled by safety and health regulations, and could use nuclear power to its full potential...
I work at a civilian government lab, and P2P stuff is already forbidden on our network, but the reason is rather prosaic.
P2P schemes imply the transfer of data between government systems and third parties. Even for legal content, helping J. Random third party download their Ubuntu ISO or whatever is not government business, and so is not an appropriate use of the government network.
Not sure what a "ram raid" is, but crooks will also steal older, ordinary-looking cars to courier illicit substances around. In 1997, my twelve-year-old ultra-boring econobox was stolen and later recovered, and when I got it back, there were cavities gouged out of the bottom of the seat cushions. The police said this matched the profile of a drug-gang courier operation, they stash the stuff in the seats, and the boringness of the car helps keep it off the police radar.
Hah, you *fool*, you've already fallen for it! You think this is a simulator? The government has been secretly colonizing Mars for years now, they just spin these "simulator" stories to "explain" why certain individual astronauts are out of touch for long periods of time. You think mere robots could do what the recent Mars probes and rovers have done? Oh, no. They can go to Mars whenever they want.
But they are POWERLESS against my ALL CAPS and "inappropriate" quoting! I "shall" EXPOSE them!
Well, as discussed in the article, it's a question of level of effort.
A malware packet-sniffer can watch for outgoing FTP connections, and skim plain-text passwords out of them. This is very easy, and, according to the article, quite common.
A highly sophisticated malware disk-browser can locate and, if required, decrypt your stored password from your SFTP profile. Or, a keylogger could log all your keystrokes, and try to figure out when you're typing passwords, and store them. These attacks are harder, and according to the article, quite uncommon.
By using SFTP, you're protected against the common, easy attack, but you remain vulnerable to the uncommon, difficult attack. It's not perfect, but you actually are less vulnerable. Thinking otherwise is like insisting on using a bad analogy, because people always misunderstand analogies anyways, so using a good one won't help.
The first is Ukraine, which inherited some fraction of the Soviet stockpile, which they turned over to Russia in exchange (IIRC) for Russia assuming Ukraine's portion of the Soviet Union's international debt and various treaty obligations.
The second is much more interesting, and less widely known -- South Africa. The Apartheid South African government developed a nuclear capability in the 1970s, primarily as a deterrent (they only ever had a few bombs), and made it known through secret channels that, were the Union of South Africa threatened militarily (e.g. by Communist forces in Angola), they were prepared to strike back hard. The government later joined the NPT, and dismantled their nuclear capability, and no longer have an arsenal. They do still have the capability and materials, of course.
There was a good write-up in "Foreign Affairs" magazine several years ago, and the FAS has this on the topic (which doesn't exactly match my summary above, so I may have mis-remembered it...)
> I think Anderson is kind of stumbling upon a point an MBA told me once, that given enough time, all new technology becomes a commodity.
There's a pithy quote along these lines, for which I can't find an attribution, but which I swear I did not make up, which paraphrases Arthur C. Clarke:
"Any sufficiently commercial communications technology is indistinguishable from television."
And the corollary, for those seeking to make money on the intertubes: "Any communications technology distinguishable from television is insufficiently commercial."
I got eight new channels on Friday -- the MHz and ION networks went digital in my area, so now I can watch Bollywood movies, English-language Russian TV, NHK Today, and some Chinese thing, among others.
These actually can be quite interesting to browse -- the Russian take on the Iranian election was kind of interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Hah! I've been doing this for years, I have a centralized CUPS server, and all the workstation clients use it to send jobs to any of the printers in the lab.
Phear me, for I am become THE CLOUD!!one!!!eleven!
> Are manual gearboxes that rare in the States?
Yes. It's basically impossible to rent a car with a manual gearbox ("standard transmission", we say here), and when you buy one, the sales people give you all kinds of raised eyebrows and warnings about how you might think you're saving money, but actually the trade-in/resale value of a standard-transmission vehicle is effectively zero.
I got one anyways, to satisfy my control freak ("certainty enthusiast", we say here) tendencies.
A random bookmark I happened to have, here.
This isn't quite the same issue, the focus is on scratch removal, but it's close.
The problem with illegal immigration isn't a lack of legislation -- as you might perhaps guess from the name, illegal immigration is already illegal.
There is already a card you're supposed to have in order to be employed in the US -- it's the Social Security card, which your employer needs to see in order to do payroll deductions.
Illegal immigration is a problem because existing laws are not enforced. I think they should start there.
You clearly don't understand how these things work. He had to resign as VP of the student body so that the student government could then award him a contract as an ethics consultant.
That is how great politicians do it.
Link for those who haven't heard of it.
Maybe Harlan Ellison could come back and salvage his original vision. Maybe this time the Magicam will work.
I actually do that http thing. It's not that I'm espeically diligent, or think the browser won't guess correctly, it's somewhere between a persistent habit and a neurosis. On the other hand, I am diligent about getting the https:/// ones right.
Actually, that chart only says that there are about 70 stars whose distance is approximately 80 l.y. from here.
The cumulative total is more than that.
> You can perform a barrel roll in Boeing commercial airliners, and someone actually did so with a 707 when they introduced the model during an airshow.
That wasn't "somebody", that was Alvin "Tex" Johnston, and it wasn't an airshow, it was a demonstration flight for the 707's future customers. The Boeing folks just about had heart attacks.
He's got a Wikipedia page, of course.
And there's video.
Well, for cool people, it would restrict it to the Mac platform....
So Google can change theirs to "Goscript", and gain the clarity of the Java/Javascript situation. And nobody will confuse it with ghostscript. It's perfect!
> People need to learn that a vocal minority is just that regardless of the issue
Indeed. And unless a majority of Washington citizens signed the petition to get R-71 on the ballot, then the signers of the R-71 petitions are also a vocal (or at least public) minority.
The actual vote takes place later on, and there's no reason to think that won't be a secret ballot.
> A runabout crashing into a borg cube at warp seven would do quite a bit more damage than a photon torpedo, I would imagine
Depends on how you think the tech works, but you can make a conservation-of-energy argument that Trek-universe ships at warp don't actually have that much kinetic energy, based on a (rather rough, of course) estimate of the energy inputs. The old rec.arts.startrek.tech explanation was that the "warp field" made the inertia go away somehow. Since photon torpedoes use the same power source (matter-antimatter annihilation) directly, they may well be more effective.
Which is to say (hauling this back on-topic...) that this kind of thoughtfulness is sometimes a quick way to get bogged down in the tech details of the universe in question, which can compromise the storytelling.
The article is light on details, but at least it's not as dumb as it sounds. The bacteria can sequester the heavy metals into chemically inert compounds, which can then be separated mechanically ("settle to the bottom of a lake") from the environment.
They don't appear to be claiming that they have a biological process that can change the half-life of a Plutonium atom by eating it in a clever way, though the headline-writer may have thought that.
> It's a binocular world out there...
It really isn't. Binocular stereopsis is not the most important depth cue that human vision uses, it's just a fairly compelling one that's easy to produce mechanically. Real-world vision uses a combination of relative size, parallax and relative motion, illumination, focus, and binocular cues to figure out depth information. There are one-eyed folks out there with excellent depth perception, and two-eyed folks with poor depth perception. Almost all of the depth action is visual-cortex post-processing.
One of the causes of eyestrain from typical binocular 3D systems is that the images mix up the binocular and focal cues -- the binocular info says that the stuff is a few meters in front of you, but the focal cue says it's all in the same plane.
I personally seem to be sensitive to the focal cue, for some reason -- I seem to get full-on migraines from ViewMaster[tm]-style binocular 3D viewers, and noticeable eyestrain from desktop-scale 3D systems, but can watch theatrical 3D movies comfortably, which I think is due to the differing screen sizes and distances.
> Your cell phone battery will likely outlast the battery at the local exchange.
Your cell phone battery isn't the issue -- the cell tower also needs power for the cell-phone system to work, as we all learned after Hurricane Katrina.
Right, like how the Soviet Union kicked our asses in the 1960s and 70s, because they weren't hobbled by safety and health regulations, and could use nuclear power to its full potential...
I work at a civilian government lab, and P2P stuff is already forbidden on our network, but the reason is rather prosaic.
P2P schemes imply the transfer of data between government systems and third parties. Even for legal content, helping J. Random third party download their Ubuntu ISO or whatever is not government business, and so is not an appropriate use of the government network.
> Speaking every every word and makes it...
You don't have to read it aloud to catch this one. Which is good, you might hurt yourself.
Not sure what a "ram raid" is, but crooks will also steal older, ordinary-looking cars to courier illicit substances around. In 1997, my twelve-year-old ultra-boring econobox was stolen and later recovered, and when I got it back, there were cavities gouged out of the bottom of the seat cushions. The police said this matched the profile of a drug-gang courier operation, they stash the stuff in the seats, and the boringness of the car helps keep it off the police radar.
> If they ever do manage to land on Mars...
Hah, you *fool*, you've already fallen for it! You think this is a simulator? The government has been secretly colonizing Mars for years now, they just spin these "simulator" stories to "explain" why certain individual astronauts are out of touch for long periods of time. You think mere robots could do what the recent Mars probes and rovers have done? Oh, no. They can go to Mars whenever they want.
But they are POWERLESS against my ALL CAPS and "inappropriate" quoting! I "shall" EXPOSE them!
Well, as discussed in the article, it's a question of level of effort.
A malware packet-sniffer can watch for outgoing FTP connections, and skim plain-text passwords out of them. This is very easy, and, according to the article, quite common.
A highly sophisticated malware disk-browser can locate and, if required, decrypt your stored password from your SFTP profile. Or, a keylogger could log all your keystrokes, and try to figure out when you're typing passwords, and store them. These attacks are harder, and according to the article, quite uncommon.
By using SFTP, you're protected against the common, easy attack, but you remain vulnerable to the uncommon, difficult attack. It's not perfect, but you actually are less vulnerable. Thinking otherwise is like insisting on using a bad analogy, because people always misunderstand analogies anyways, so using a good one won't help.
There are two historical examples.
The first is Ukraine, which inherited some fraction of the Soviet stockpile, which they turned over to Russia in exchange
(IIRC) for Russia assuming Ukraine's portion of the Soviet Union's international debt and various treaty obligations.
The second is much more interesting, and less widely known -- South Africa. The Apartheid South African government developed a nuclear capability in the 1970s, primarily as a deterrent (they only ever had a few bombs), and made it known through secret channels that, were the Union of South Africa threatened militarily (e.g. by Communist forces in Angola), they were prepared to strike back hard. The government later joined the NPT, and dismantled their nuclear capability, and no longer have an arsenal. They do still have the capability and materials, of course.
There was a good write-up in "Foreign Affairs" magazine several years ago, and the FAS has this on the topic (which doesn't exactly match my summary above, so I may have mis-remembered it...)
> I think Anderson is kind of stumbling upon a point an MBA told me once, that given enough time, all new technology becomes a commodity.
There's a pithy quote along these lines, for which I can't find an attribution, but which I swear I did not make up, which paraphrases Arthur C. Clarke:
"Any sufficiently commercial communications technology is indistinguishable from television."
And the corollary, for those seeking to make money on the intertubes: "Any communications technology distinguishable from television is insufficiently commercial."
Not saying it's true, just tossing it in there.
I got eight new channels on Friday -- the MHz and ION networks went digital in my area, so now I can watch Bollywood movies, English-language Russian TV, NHK Today, and some Chinese thing, among others.
These actually can be quite interesting to browse -- the Russian take on the Iranian election was kind of interesting.