Agreed. I think the traps should be at a higher level than pure data, such as business logic. Then when someone runs a PutLunchOnBill("JFK") the alarms would go off. I'd also suggest only implementing the honeytokens in the production environment, not development where people will be doing all kinds of ad hoc stuff.
It does raise an interesting question though - who gets told about the honeytokens? The best idea would be to keep the practice as quiet as possible, but then you run the risk of new developers writing stuff that sets everything off (and then the most likely managerial decision would be to turn the honeytoken off, not redevelop).
I think there are places for desktops and laptops, but it's hard to nail down definite comparisons, as each user's requirements and personal experience is so different.
Mobility Laptops win this easily, as they're designed to, but it's interesting to see human self-deception at work here. I've known plenty of students, IT professionals and other workers who tout mobility as a carved-in-stone essential requirement, then leave their expensive new laptop on a desk for the rest of its operational life. Do you really need a portable office, or could you get by with a USB pendrive? Mobility is awesome, but quite often, it's just an expensive illusion.
Basic Performance The stagnation of basic performance requirements is (IMHO) the crucial reason for laptops rising in popularity. Any modern budget laptop will handle web browsing, email, office apps and basic games easily, making them a completely viable option for most users. They realise they don't need a massively powerful new desktop machine, so they spend their money on a laptop, with the benefits (whether they use them or not) of portability.
High Performance Laptops really can't compete with desktops here, with their power-saving components and lack of expandibility. Parts such as CPUs and video cards lag behind desktop versions, steering "I need all the power money can buy" users quickly towards desktops. The difference between laptop and desktop hard drives is particularly large, with standard desktop drives (ATA100, 7200rpm) being about 2-3 times faster than laptop drives (ATA5, 4200rpm). For intensive applications like video editing, this makes using a laptop a fairly painful experience, and you simply can't buy a laptop drive that's any faster.
Aesthetics Since a user's basic computing needs are easily met by any modern machine (portable or otherwise), the issue of aesthetics comes into play, including aspects such as size, neatness and "wow factor". Laptops have a definite edge here, particualarly with executive-types caught up in the reverse-wang-size race ("mine's smaller than yours").
Price There's no doubt that laptops are far, far more expensive than similarly-specced desktop machines. If money is a factor (and it always is, really) then a desktop gives the best bang for the buck. Lack of mobility can often be solved with determination, organization and creativity. But, in reality, it's a highly subjective, personal choice whether mobility and coolness is worth the premium.
Ok, I don't really know what you're doing with your broadband, because I have about a dozen friends who will swear up and down that just about everything you just posted is wrong.
When I left for London 3 years ago, I had Telstra cable, uncapped and unmetered for $80/month. I came back and found this country had been on a steady burn BACKWARDS, with the plan I was on when I left only available if I paid Telstra somewhere in the realm of $2000/month excess bandwidth charges. Give it another 3 years and I expect to be paying $150/month to be connected to the net via two tin cans and a piece of string.
Australia is just about the only place in the world where capping is implemented, which is just plain embarassing. If a UK, Canadian or USA provider applied capping to their service, there would be a slight rushing noise as all their subscribers left and their business imploded. Optus are the villains here, following Telstra's lead into capping hell when they worked out that they could get away with it.
Australia's broadband prices are nowhere near "roughly in keeping with global prices". Most Canadians and Americans and plenty of Europeans get megabit or higher connections for your $A80 a month. Read the other comments for this article if you don't believe me. In the bandwidth-challenged UK, I had a 512/128kbit DSL connection for 30 quid a month, which is about the same as $A80 again, except I had no cap.
The 3GB standard cap IS a huge problem for everyone - not just leechers. Gamers get canned after only a few weeks of play. Hobbyists pull down a new Linux distribution and get cut off. Developers use their connection to work remotely and use up their quota. Kids watch movie trailers or music videos online and end up costing their parents thousands. It's just stupid.
Look, I understand that every country is a different market and Australia has a unique geography, blah blah blah, but we are so far out of kilter when compared to the rest of the world and where Australian broadband was 3 years ago, it's just not acceptable.
A suggestion for a great free first person shooter is Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. About 260MB and available from many places on the net for nothing.
James Bond already did this YEARS ago, playing "Global Thermonuclear War" with Largo in "Never Say Never Again". And he won.
What we need is an Xbox mod that makes chocolate when you win, or gives people orgasms, or downloads porn or gives you credits on iTunes. Simple pain is so uncreative.
"The Union Aerospace Corporation, an arm of the powerful conglomerate on Earth, has been performing secret experiments in their Large Hadron Collider. Tapping into the very fabric of the universe itself... and beyond. UAC scientists have made discoveries that will forever change human existence.
Then something went terribly wrong..."
I preferred these
on
Ant Farm PC
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The other key point in the document is that the Spamhaus Black List (SBL) blocks spam at the destination, not the source. This is a nice implementation of the "you're free to say whatever you like, but I'm free not to listen" aspect of free speech, which is often used by spammers to justify their annoying practices.
It's funny... I've been running into this strange attitude a lot recently. I believe it stems from people who really dislike analysis, particularly self-analysis, because they're either not liking the answers they find, or they plain get confused by the whole analysis process.
As well as movies, I've been told to stop analysing humour, and art in general. Apparently it should "just be funny" or "just be good art" without any reasons WHY it is. It's an idea mostly pushed by art students who like to think "i can make up any crap I want and call it art, because i want to".
Of course, years of working with computers and solving problems logically contribute to a mindset with a need for analysis... which probably means most of Slashdot thinks more like I do, right?
Just thought that antibiotics question had a nice personal touch, one with a simplicity that makes the problem apparent. People always muddy the oil argument with "well you could just walk".
This is a great example of one of the core reasons why overfished and overlogging occur. Even if *you* start acting responsibly, everything can still go to hell if other people still act like idiots. It's like being in a great big swimming pool with a bunch of first-graders. Just because you're nice enough to wait until you get out of the pool to go to the bathroom doesn't stop you from having to swim around in pee.
Joking aside, this kind of situation is also adversely affected by economics too. Acting responsibly usually has a dollar penalty over the standard foolishness, so this means that as a business, responsible players are at a financial disadvantage. They can try and boost sales with "we're being nice people" advertising, but a lot of the time, it's just not worth the effort. Pure and simple, nice companies are often operating at a financial disadvantage. In extreme cases, responsible players go out of business trying to do the right thing, leaving the bad people behind to keep wrecking things.
What would be truly terrifying would be a situation where a society knew it was completely dependent on a resource, yet was steadily using it up (Easter Island, from what I've gathered). Stop cutting down trees for canoes, and people die from starvation because they can't catch enough food. People don't want to die, so they cut down trees, dooming the entire society.
It's akin to the problem modern civilization faces with antibiotics - yes we're breeding stronger and stronger strains of bugs, but what other option do we have, let our patients die? Would you let someone you love die for the sake of the "future" if you knew they could be saved?
Yeah I thought this as well, for about three seconds - I just think I'm going to end up seeing this trailer on TV, or at the cinema, or at a LAN party on a projector, or my friends are going to talk about it no matter how badly I threaten them... so I may as well watch it now and enjoy a little guilty pleasure.
It'll probably help maintain my discipline for the next couple months when people are handing around screener DivXes, previews and shot-by-shot descriptions.
Oh they're so cheerful and earnest about their technology, I feel like a bit of a cad...
The net is not a college network. Traffic can pass through millions of different routes, which means they'll need sniffers at millions of different points in the net, in every country, at every ISP, in every town, on every backbone, etc. It's unlikely that everyone in the world would suddenly agree on something, particularly to do with monitoring.
For the system to be effective, all these sniffers need to communicate constantly, exchanging user data, song info and fingerprint information. The traffic hit on the wider internet would be severe.
(of course, a way to get around the traffic hit would be to build a smaller, slightly less expensive internet just for the sniffer communications, but the costs for that would be pretty painful)
The local storage and processing power of these internet sniffers would have to be several orders of magnitude over their college sniffer. "...it creates a copy of all the traffic flowing past" which at major backbones would be just stupidly, massive, incredibly huge.
(Relating points 2 and 3 will mean the only thing the internet will be capable of anymore will be sniffer communication, but I suspect that would suit these guys)
The money cost of putting these huge sniffer machines all over the world would be astronomical. As in, about the cost of the internet so far. No-one is going to pay it, least of all ISPs, users or record companies. Maybe the Queen, but I doubt it.
Their library of 3.5 million songs is simply puny when put up against the weird tastes of all the black t-shirt-wearing music freaks in every dark corner of the world. Plus... new songs would have to be uploaded as they are released to every sniffer point, making the net explode once again.
Their fingerprinting technology sounds dodgy, just like every other fingerprinting technology ever invented. Does it match 256kbit and 128kbit versions of songs? LAME and Xing? How about VBR? How about mp3s and oggs? How about wmvs? With or without ID3 tags? Not to mention trimmed versions, album versions, live versions, covers, remixes, etc.
Modern P2P networks like Kazaa download files from multiple sources, which would render the sniffer useless. 30% from this IP, 25% from that, 45% from another, are they all part of the same file, or separate pieces? Which way do they go together? Do you get 30% of the thumbprint from one piece? It's all broken.
If the sniffers were implemented, they would be the biggest target for cracking since the RIAA's website. They'd be DOSed off the net, rewritten as warez ftp points, porn image servers, IRC chat servers and Shoutcast servers every third day.
Changing protocols, creating new protocols, garbling data, encrypting data - all these would break the sniffers and are easy to implement, but I doubt they'll ever be needed, as there are too many other barriers in the way.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. I think the traps should be at a higher level than pure data, such as business logic. Then when someone runs a PutLunchOnBill("JFK") the alarms would go off. I'd also suggest only implementing the honeytokens in the production environment, not development where people will be doing all kinds of ad hoc stuff.
It does raise an interesting question though - who gets told about the honeytokens? The best idea would be to keep the practice as quiet as possible, but then you run the risk of new developers writing stuff that sets everything off (and then the most likely managerial decision would be to turn the honeytoken off, not redevelop).
But will he allow them to sell their frozen balls on Ebay?
I think there are places for desktops and laptops, but it's hard to nail down definite comparisons, as each user's requirements and personal experience is so different.
Mobility
Laptops win this easily, as they're designed to, but it's interesting to see human self-deception at work here. I've known plenty of students, IT professionals and other workers who tout mobility as a carved-in-stone essential requirement, then leave their expensive new laptop on a desk for the rest of its operational life. Do you really need a portable office, or could you get by with a USB pendrive? Mobility is awesome, but quite often, it's just an expensive illusion.
Basic Performance
The stagnation of basic performance requirements is (IMHO) the crucial reason for laptops rising in popularity. Any modern budget laptop will handle web browsing, email, office apps and basic games easily, making them a completely viable option for most users. They realise they don't need a massively powerful new desktop machine, so they spend their money on a laptop, with the benefits (whether they use them or not) of portability.
High Performance
Laptops really can't compete with desktops here, with their power-saving components and lack of expandibility. Parts such as CPUs and video cards lag behind desktop versions, steering "I need all the power money can buy" users quickly towards desktops. The difference between laptop and desktop hard drives is particularly large, with standard desktop drives (ATA100, 7200rpm) being about 2-3 times faster than laptop drives (ATA5, 4200rpm). For intensive applications like video editing, this makes using a laptop a fairly painful experience, and you simply can't buy a laptop drive that's any faster.
Aesthetics
Since a user's basic computing needs are easily met by any modern machine (portable or otherwise), the issue of aesthetics comes into play, including aspects such as size, neatness and "wow factor". Laptops have a definite edge here, particualarly with executive-types caught up in the reverse-wang-size race ("mine's smaller than yours").
Price
There's no doubt that laptops are far, far more expensive than similarly-specced desktop machines. If money is a factor (and it always is, really) then a desktop gives the best bang for the buck. Lack of mobility can often be solved with determination, organization and creativity. But, in reality, it's a highly subjective, personal choice whether mobility and coolness is worth the premium.
Dude... when your flesh starts to burn, you should really stop doing it.
Will Micropay if you mod parent down
And now you can touch people in Nigeria, too!
Ok, I don't really know what you're doing with your broadband, because I have about a dozen friends who will swear up and down that just about everything you just posted is wrong.
When I left for London 3 years ago, I had Telstra cable, uncapped and unmetered for $80/month. I came back and found this country had been on a steady burn BACKWARDS, with the plan I was on when I left only available if I paid Telstra somewhere in the realm of $2000/month excess bandwidth charges. Give it another 3 years and I expect to be paying $150/month to be connected to the net via two tin cans and a piece of string.
Australia is just about the only place in the world where capping is implemented, which is just plain embarassing. If a UK, Canadian or USA provider applied capping to their service, there would be a slight rushing noise as all their subscribers left and their business imploded. Optus are the villains here, following Telstra's lead into capping hell when they worked out that they could get away with it.
Australia's broadband prices are nowhere near "roughly in keeping with global prices". Most Canadians and Americans and plenty of Europeans get megabit or higher connections for your $A80 a month. Read the other comments for this article if you don't believe me. In the bandwidth-challenged UK, I had a 512/128kbit DSL connection for 30 quid a month, which is about the same as $A80 again, except I had no cap.
The 3GB standard cap IS a huge problem for everyone - not just leechers. Gamers get canned after only a few weeks of play. Hobbyists pull down a new Linux distribution and get cut off. Developers use their connection to work remotely and use up their quota. Kids watch movie trailers or music videos online and end up costing their parents thousands. It's just stupid.
Look, I understand that every country is a different market and Australia has a unique geography, blah blah blah, but we are so far out of kilter when compared to the rest of the world and where Australian broadband was 3 years ago, it's just not acceptable.
A suggestion for a great free first person shooter is Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. About 260MB and available from many places on the net for nothing.
Dammit, you're completely right. I stand corrected. Bond still would've won though.
James Bond already did this YEARS ago, playing "Global Thermonuclear War" with Largo in "Never Say Never Again". And he won.
What we need is an Xbox mod that makes chocolate when you win, or gives people orgasms, or downloads porn or gives you credits on iTunes. Simple pain is so uncreative.
"The Union Aerospace Corporation, an arm of the powerful conglomerate on Earth, has been performing secret experiments in their Large Hadron Collider. Tapping into the very fabric of the universe itself... and beyond. UAC scientists have made discoveries that will forever change human existence.
Then something went terribly wrong..."
Stained glass case mod (by a hemophiliac too, that's just crazy)
Fish tank case mod (with genuine Neon Tetras)
The other key point in the document is that the Spamhaus Black List (SBL) blocks spam at the destination, not the source. This is a nice implementation of the "you're free to say whatever you like, but I'm free not to listen" aspect of free speech, which is often used by spammers to justify their annoying practices.
and then of course...
+10: Boobies
It's funny... I've been running into this strange attitude a lot recently. I believe it stems from people who really dislike analysis, particularly self-analysis, because they're either not liking the answers they find, or they plain get confused by the whole analysis process.
As well as movies, I've been told to stop analysing humour, and art in general. Apparently it should "just be funny" or "just be good art" without any reasons WHY it is. It's an idea mostly pushed by art students who like to think "i can make up any crap I want and call it art, because i want to".
Of course, years of working with computers and solving problems logically contribute to a mindset with a need for analysis... which probably means most of Slashdot thinks more like I do, right?
Just thought that antibiotics question had a nice personal touch, one with a simplicity that makes the problem apparent. People always muddy the oil argument with "well you could just walk".
This is a great example of one of the core reasons why overfished and overlogging occur. Even if *you* start acting responsibly, everything can still go to hell if other people still act like idiots. It's like being in a great big swimming pool with a bunch of first-graders. Just because you're nice enough to wait until you get out of the pool to go to the bathroom doesn't stop you from having to swim around in pee.
Joking aside, this kind of situation is also adversely affected by economics too. Acting responsibly usually has a dollar penalty over the standard foolishness, so this means that as a business, responsible players are at a financial disadvantage. They can try and boost sales with "we're being nice people" advertising, but a lot of the time, it's just not worth the effort. Pure and simple, nice companies are often operating at a financial disadvantage. In extreme cases, responsible players go out of business trying to do the right thing, leaving the bad people behind to keep wrecking things.
What would be truly terrifying would be a situation where a society knew it was completely dependent on a resource, yet was steadily using it up (Easter Island, from what I've gathered). Stop cutting down trees for canoes, and people die from starvation because they can't catch enough food. People don't want to die, so they cut down trees, dooming the entire society.
It's akin to the problem modern civilization faces with antibiotics - yes we're breeding stronger and stronger strains of bugs, but what other option do we have, let our patients die? Would you let someone you love die for the sake of the "future" if you knew they could be saved?
Probably true... but do we really need Thundervolvo and Firevolvo?
Yeah I thought this as well, for about three seconds - I just think I'm going to end up seeing this trailer on TV, or at the cinema, or at a LAN party on a projector, or my friends are going to talk about it no matter how badly I threaten them... so I may as well watch it now and enjoy a little guilty pleasure.
It'll probably help maintain my discipline for the next couple months when people are handing around screener DivXes, previews and shot-by-shot descriptions.
It may be my dirty mind, but did anyone else read "Prostitute" when they saw Mandrake's "Prosuite" pack?
Interesting to also note that the Animatrix episode "Matriculated" is done by Peter Chung, the guy who did the Aeon Flux series...
That's awesome man... really cool, really useful. Thanks.
Not only will it not work, it will also
a) Cost a massive amount of money
b) Be a right royal pain in the ass to implement and maintain
c) Make people point at you and laugh
Still interested?
(of course, a way to get around the traffic hit would be to build a smaller, slightly less expensive internet just for the sniffer communications, but the costs for that would be pretty painful)
(Relating points 2 and 3 will mean the only thing the internet will be capable of anymore will be sniffer communication, but I suspect that would suit these guys)
Why yes you're right... that steaming pile of fetid goat excrement is FAR superior to that other pile of fetid goat excrement.