No, it's like if you ask me if I've seen a guy in a red hat and I tell you. I haven't any idea who the guy in the red hat is. You brother? Your shrink? Should I be arrested because he might be your drug dealer?
"I never said he wasn't in the majority in this case."
"YOU ARE NOT IN THE MAJORITY! YOU ARE NOT IN THE MAJORITY! YOU ARE NOT IN THE MAJORITY! YOU ARE NOT IN THE MAJORITY!"
I'm deeply sorry for misinterpreting that. Of course, if he was supposed to say it as a manta it should have been "I am not in the majority.", but that's a perfectly understandable mistake. On your part.
"This isn't an objective study, but it's pretty damn obvious. Do you really disagree?"
If you can't figure out whether I really disagree, you might not want to speak of what is damn obvious. Your apparent beliefs about who constitutes a majority of computer users makes me wonder if you're a student or a cube dweller? Anyway, until you graduate or get a better job, consider applying your own mantra.
But honestly, I don't mind if you, or the original poster, speak from your own experience; that's expected. But next time you have a post that has the same sentence four times in all caps with an exclamation point, and you're cutting and pasting so you can post it for the third time in the same discussion, maybe you should ask yourself "Am I making a positive contribution to the discussion, or just being an ass?"
I don't have any good broad-based survey data on this topic, so I don't have any way to objectively check his statement against reality. My experience is roughly in line with his, and if I had to guess I'd say we were in the majority. But I don't really know. Just like you don't.
If you wanted to make a different guess, and offer your reasoning, that might be interesting. If you want to assume your guess is indisputable truth, and cut and paste the same stupid comment declaring its obviousness 3 times in the same discussion... you'll probably get replies of similar quality to your contribution.
Anything that makes you enter a 26 char hex number without offering to do a secure hash of any password you like is stupid. At that point obscuring it is particularly dumb, because nobody is going to read what you type off the screen, they're going to read it off the piece of paper you had to write it down on.
"1) If I look outside my office window, I can see about 48 office windows (without standing up) and all of them have the lights on and it's dusk outside. Give me a dSLR and a decent set of long distance lenses and I'll prove you wrong."
Give me the same equipment, and I'll take the passwords off the keyboards.
"2) How many times have you typed in your password while somebody was looking at your screen" "3) How many times have you given a presentation where your screen view (but not your keyboard input) goes worldwide"
Not all that often. In any case, the suggestion is to make obscuring the password optional. There are case where obscuring it makes sense. There are cases where obscuring it is a PITA. I, the user, know which case applies.
"4) How difficult is it to create a script that takes screenshots - how difficult is it to create a script that captures keyboard entry as well." I'm not convinced you're right about the relative difficulty of capturing screen-shots vs keyboard input. In any case, if we assume the attacker has access to the machine, obscuring password displays seems like locking the door after the horse has fled and walls of the stable have been dismantled.
"Lets see here.... In a school setting (college or otherwise) lets say a computer in the lab breaks. You are a simi-competent CS student and the admin goes over to fix it. He types in the root password, if it was visible you just got root into any computer at the university and could do whatever you wanted. However if it was masked, it wouldn't be that easy."
So you're not semi-competent enough to watch what keys he hits. And he's not semi-competent enough to hit the "hide password" check box Nielsen recommends. And whoever designed the system isn't semi-competent enough to let a preference get set to have that checked by default if the environment warrants it.
"As for business, what person can't type in 6-10 characters (average length of a password) and can't get it right in 1-5 tries?"
Well, I can certainly remember a number of times I was trying to figure out if I remembered a rarely-used password correctly, and it would be awfully nice to know for sure I was at least typing my guess correctly. On the other hand, I cannot remember any instance in years where someone else was in the room where they could see my password (unless they were helping me try to guess in one of the examples above). And if they were, I can check the hide password box.
"We know the distance" Pointlessly distant. We know the distance to geosyncronous orbit too.
"we know it's movements" We know the movements of geosynchronous satellites too.
"it doesn't involve putting up more floating space junk" You mean besides the discarded booster rockets needed to get such a ridiculously further distance out just so we can deal with the difficulties of an additional gravity well?
"it's surface is always facing the sun" If by "always", you mean half the time - 14 days out of every 28.
"unlike a synchronous satalite, would be our of the sun for at least a few hours" If by "a few hours" you mean "about an hour a night, but only for a short period every six months near the equinox"
"(depending on distance) " Did I say "we" knew the distance to geosynchronous? Well, I do.
I was going to go on, questioning why you imagine there would be any question of beaming during a new moon vs a lunar eclipse. But whatever conception of orbital mechanics you're working with I can't even make enough sense of it to mock.
The amount of energy that constantly hits the earth from the sun utterly dwarfs even the largest amounts of energy you might wildly speculate about generating. So does the the amount of energy constantly radiated from the earth into space.
In our wildest dreams, the amount of power this might generate will be utterly inconsequential to the earths energy balance.
What isn't inconsequential is the efficiency with which power is radiated from the earth into space. Generating more power is no problem for global warming. The problem is whether we can do it in ways that don't impact the efficiency with which heat radiates from the earth into space. In terms of global warming, this system is a great idea. (It may be stupid on other terms.)
Your description seems to imagine a geosynchronous sattelite being only a little way up there, relative to the size of the earth. this is not the case. Geosynchronous orbit is 26,199 miles - more than 10 times the radius of the earth. So when the ground station isn't quite directly opposite the sun, (say at 11pm) the satellite directly above it, but 10 earth radii away, is still out there in the sun, not having passed into the earths shadow yet. A satellite in geosynchronous orbit over the equator will pass through the earths shadow, but will still get something more than 22 hours of sunlight.
No, we lack a launch capacity for human astronauts.
Most orbital launches do not include human astronauts, and hence are much cheaper to do than the launches you have heard of and imagine are all that there is.
"When expressed as an integer (temperature frequently is when talking about weather), Fahrenheit is a more precise unit."
If you're talking about weather, Fahrenheit implies considerably more precision than you can possibly have. It is not more precise; it is falsely specific.
That's cool. My comment, honestly, was trying to be snarky.
"UCCS is the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs"
Good to know. The University of Colorado at Boulder is CU. I've also heard CU applied to the University of Colorado system generally.
"There is also a campus for Colorado University that exists in Colorado Springs."
Do you mean Colorado State University, i.e. CSU? I've honestly never heard of an institution called simply "Colorado University", and even did a quick bit of Google research before I made my "only exists in your head" claim. If it exists, it's obscure enough to escape detection even by people looking for it.
"most folks... have a basic understanding of how clocks work."
I doubt it. I've built a pendulum clock, but outside my one friend who has also done so, I'd be surprised to hear anyone I know describe how one works beyond "Well, there's some gears and stuff..."; they've never even conceived of an escapement. And a crystal oscillator? Forget it.
It's not specific to high-tech devices. The baseline level of knowledge people have regarding *anything* they don't need to know is basically zilch. Ask the next few people you encounter how to pick the two drill-bit sizes you need when installing a wood screw. They won't know anymore than they know how a IP routing works, but they can read the sizes specified on the package just as easily as they can fire up a browser. The wood screw can be explained in about a minute, whereas IP routing is more complex.
It's pointless for most people to know anything about routers and packets, just like it's pointless for them to know about ignition timing. They can reboot their cable modem, which is about on the level of changing the oil, anything more complex than either is a problem for a specialist.
Heck, I do know about routers and packets. As I'm no longer using this knowledge professionally, I can't when having it will ever matter to me again.
That's basically what I'm trying to say. In terms of how this election will actually affect me, i.e. the impact on short-term Iranian foreign policy, it doesn't much matter.
My support for the protesters (and hence Mousavi), is exclusively about democracy, contrary to the other posters suggestion.
"If Mousavi had won and violent protests had started in the face of electoral fraud, the press would be condemning the protesters as a violent minority clinging to a past order"
And this theory is relevant to what? Mousavi (officialy) lost, and in the (fairly apparent) face of electoral fraud, massive non-violent protests began. Given the good evidence of fraud, the massive scope of the protests, and there generally non-violent nature, it's hardly surprising these are being cast differently than how what you describe might be.
I don't know about anybody else, but Mousavi looks to me to be not enough better than Ahmadinejad be worth getting excited about. They're both pretty horrid from my (not terribly relevant) perspective. If anyone (western) is cheering, not for democracy, but because they like Mousavi, they're not paying attention.
The massed populace of a country demanding that an oppressive regime recognize their democratic will? I'm psyched for that. I don't much care what that will is in the short term. In the long term, the more power the people have vs. the oligarchs/theocracy, the better it will be.
The top Google hit for "CSU" is www.ColoState.com, but the content of that page uses "CSU" extensively (and never mentions "ColoState"), so I don't know how badly they "want" to be known as ColoState. They call themselves CSU, just like everyone else.
What's the point of "ColoState" anyway? It's not short enough compared to including the "rado".
"The problem was the CSU is used by California State University."
So they've learned from their CU brethren that the key to looking like a nationally prominent school is to deferentially proclaim your inferiority complex regarding a California school? I can see how CSU people would think that way, but really there is no such confusion. If people say "CSU" in Colorado, they are talking about Colorado State. Outside Colorado if people are talking about Colorado State, they can say the whole name; it's not going to come up enough to warrant abreviation.
"It's called Colorado University, not the University of Colorado, so it would be kind of dumb to flip the acronym. "
Almost as dumb as correcting people about things you have no knowledge of and are, as it happens, wrong about. The University of Colorado goes by CU. Colorado State University goes by CSU. "Colorado University" doesn't go by anything, because it only exists in your head.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's like if you ask me if I've seen a guy in a red hat and I tell you. I haven't any idea who the guy in the red hat is. You brother? Your shrink? Should I be arrested because he might be your drug dealer?
That should be: "Data ain't what it used to are"
"I never said he wasn't in the majority in this case."
"YOU ARE NOT IN THE MAJORITY!
YOU ARE NOT IN THE MAJORITY!
YOU ARE NOT IN THE MAJORITY!
YOU ARE NOT IN THE MAJORITY!"
I'm deeply sorry for misinterpreting that. Of course, if he was supposed to say it as a manta it should have been "I am not in the majority.", but that's a perfectly understandable mistake. On your part.
"This isn't an objective study, but it's pretty damn obvious. Do you really disagree?"
If you can't figure out whether I really disagree, you might not want to speak of what is damn obvious. Your apparent beliefs about who constitutes a majority of computer users makes me wonder if you're a student or a cube dweller? Anyway, until you graduate or get a better job, consider applying your own mantra.
But honestly, I don't mind if you, or the original poster, speak from your own experience; that's expected. But next time you have a post that has the same sentence four times in all caps with an exclamation point, and you're cutting and pasting so you can post it for the third time in the same discussion, maybe you should ask yourself "Am I making a positive contribution to the discussion, or just being an ass?"
I don't have any good broad-based survey data on this topic, so I don't have any way to objectively check his statement against reality. My experience is roughly in line with his, and if I had to guess I'd say we were in the majority. But I don't really know. Just like you don't.
If you wanted to make a different guess, and offer your reasoning, that might be interesting. If you want to assume your guess is indisputable truth, and cut and paste the same stupid comment declaring its obviousness 3 times in the same discussion... you'll probably get replies of similar quality to your contribution.
You're right, that's why he doesn't suggest that obscuring the password should be optional... oh wait...
Anything that makes you enter a 26 char hex number without offering to do a secure hash of any password you like is stupid. At that point obscuring it is particularly dumb, because nobody is going to read what you type off the screen, they're going to read it off the piece of paper you had to write it down on.
"1) If I look outside my office window, I can see about 48 office windows (without standing up) and all of them have the lights on and it's dusk outside. Give me a dSLR and a decent set of long distance lenses and I'll prove you wrong."
Give me the same equipment, and I'll take the passwords off the keyboards.
"2) How many times have you typed in your password while somebody was looking at your screen"
"3) How many times have you given a presentation where your screen view (but not your keyboard input) goes worldwide"
Not all that often. In any case, the suggestion is to make obscuring the password optional. There are case where obscuring it makes sense. There are cases where obscuring it is a PITA. I, the user, know which case applies.
"4) How difficult is it to create a script that takes screenshots - how difficult is it to create a script that captures keyboard entry as well."
I'm not convinced you're right about the relative difficulty of capturing screen-shots vs keyboard input. In any case, if we assume the attacker has access to the machine, obscuring password displays seems like locking the door after the horse has fled and walls of the stable have been dismantled.
And we know he is not in the majority because you shout?
"Lets see here.... In a school setting (college or otherwise) lets say a computer in the lab breaks. You are a simi-competent CS student and the admin goes over to fix it. He types in the root password, if it was visible you just got root into any computer at the university and could do whatever you wanted. However if it was masked, it wouldn't be that easy."
So you're not semi-competent enough to watch what keys he hits. And he's not semi-competent enough to hit the "hide password" check box Nielsen recommends. And whoever designed the system isn't semi-competent enough to let a preference get set to have that checked by default if the environment warrants it.
"As for business, what person can't type in 6-10 characters (average length of a password) and can't get it right in 1-5 tries?"
Well, I can certainly remember a number of times I was trying to figure out if I remembered a rarely-used password correctly, and it would be awfully nice to know for sure I was at least typing my guess correctly. On the other hand, I cannot remember any instance in years where someone else was in the room where they could see my password (unless they were helping me try to guess in one of the examples above). And if they were, I can check the hide password box.
"This satellite will only be able to work while it is in the sun as well."
Which is basically all the time. You lose an hour a night for a few weeks near the equinox.
"We know the distance"
Pointlessly distant. We know the distance to geosyncronous orbit too.
"we know it's movements"
We know the movements of geosynchronous satellites too.
"it doesn't involve putting up more floating space junk"
You mean besides the discarded booster rockets needed to get such a ridiculously further distance out just so we can deal with the difficulties of an additional gravity well?
"it's surface is always facing the sun"
If by "always", you mean half the time - 14 days out of every 28.
"unlike a synchronous satalite, would be our of the sun for at least a few hours"
If by "a few hours" you mean "about an hour a night, but only for a short period every six months near the equinox"
"(depending on distance) "
Did I say "we" knew the distance to geosynchronous? Well, I do.
I was going to go on, questioning why you imagine there would be any question of beaming during a new moon vs a lunar eclipse. But whatever conception of orbital mechanics you're working with I can't even make enough sense of it to mock.
The amount of energy that constantly hits the earth from the sun utterly dwarfs even the largest amounts of energy you might wildly speculate about generating. So does the the amount of energy constantly radiated from the earth into space.
In our wildest dreams, the amount of power this might generate will be utterly inconsequential to the earths energy balance.
What isn't inconsequential is the efficiency with which power is radiated from the earth into space. Generating more power is no problem for global warming. The problem is whether we can do it in ways that don't impact the efficiency with which heat radiates from the earth into space. In terms of global warming, this system is a great idea. (It may be stupid on other terms.)
I blew the math - ~ 6.5 earth radii, not 10. General argument holds.
Your description seems to imagine a geosynchronous sattelite being only a little way up there, relative to the size of the earth. this is not the case. Geosynchronous orbit is 26,199 miles - more than 10 times the radius of the earth. So when the ground station isn't quite directly opposite the sun, (say at 11pm) the satellite directly above it, but 10 earth radii away, is still out there in the sun, not having passed into the earths shadow yet. A satellite in geosynchronous orbit over the equator will pass through the earths shadow, but will still get something more than 22 hours of sunlight.
No, we lack a launch capacity for human astronauts.
Most orbital launches do not include human astronauts, and hence are much cheaper to do than the launches you have heard of and imagine are all that there is.
"When expressed as an integer (temperature frequently is when talking about weather), Fahrenheit is a more precise unit."
If you're talking about weather, Fahrenheit implies considerably more precision than you can possibly have. It is not more precise; it is falsely specific.
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp
Urban legend....
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp
"I am honestly trying to be kind here."
That's cool. My comment, honestly, was trying to be snarky.
"UCCS is the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs"
Good to know. The University of Colorado at Boulder is CU. I've also heard CU applied to the University of Colorado system generally.
"There is also a campus for Colorado University that exists in Colorado Springs."
Do you mean Colorado State University, i.e. CSU? I've honestly never heard of an institution called simply "Colorado University", and even did a quick bit of Google research before I made my "only exists in your head" claim. If it exists, it's obscure enough to escape detection even by people looking for it.
"I say this as a resident of Colorado Springs."
My condolences.
I was just responding to your statement:
"Actually, Colorado State University has not gone by CSU since mid 90's."
This is false. It has gone by CSU all along, and continues to do so, including in all marketing materials I can find.
"most folks ... have a basic understanding of how clocks work."
I doubt it. I've built a pendulum clock, but outside my one friend who has also done so, I'd be surprised to hear anyone I know describe how one works beyond "Well, there's some gears and stuff..."; they've never even conceived of an escapement. And a crystal oscillator? Forget it.
It's not specific to high-tech devices. The baseline level of knowledge people have regarding *anything* they don't need to know is basically zilch. Ask the next few people you encounter how to pick the two drill-bit sizes you need when installing a wood screw. They won't know anymore than they know how a IP routing works, but they can read the sizes specified on the package just as easily as they can fire up a browser. The wood screw can be explained in about a minute, whereas IP routing is more complex.
It's pointless for most people to know anything about routers and packets, just like it's pointless for them to know about ignition timing. They can reboot their cable modem, which is about on the level of changing the oil, anything more complex than either is a problem for a specialist.
Heck, I do know about routers and packets. As I'm no longer using this knowledge professionally, I can't when having it will ever matter to me again.
That's basically what I'm trying to say. In terms of how this election will actually affect me, i.e. the impact on short-term Iranian foreign policy, it doesn't much matter.
My support for the protesters (and hence Mousavi), is exclusively about democracy, contrary to the other posters suggestion.
It's about democracy for me.
"If Mousavi had won and violent protests had started in the face of electoral fraud, the press would be condemning the protesters as a violent minority clinging to a past order"
And this theory is relevant to what? Mousavi (officialy) lost, and in the (fairly apparent) face of electoral fraud, massive non-violent protests began. Given the good evidence of fraud, the massive scope of the protests, and there generally non-violent nature, it's hardly surprising these are being cast differently than how what you describe might be.
I don't know about anybody else, but Mousavi looks to me to be not enough better than Ahmadinejad be worth getting excited about. They're both pretty horrid from my (not terribly relevant) perspective. If anyone (western) is cheering, not for democracy, but because they like Mousavi, they're not paying attention.
The massed populace of a country demanding that an oppressive regime recognize their democratic will? I'm psyched for that. I don't much care what that will is in the short term. In the long term, the more power the people have vs. the oligarchs/theocracy, the better it will be.
The top Google hit for "CSU" is www.ColoState.com, but the content of that page uses "CSU" extensively (and never mentions "ColoState"), so I don't know how badly they "want" to be known as ColoState. They call themselves CSU, just like everyone else.
What's the point of "ColoState" anyway? It's not short enough compared to including the "rado".
"The problem was the CSU is used by California State University."
So they've learned from their CU brethren that the key to looking like a nationally prominent school is to deferentially proclaim your inferiority complex regarding a California school? I can see how CSU people would think that way, but really there is no such confusion. If people say "CSU" in Colorado, they are talking about Colorado State. Outside Colorado if people are talking about Colorado State, they can say the whole name; it's not going to come up enough to warrant abreviation.
"It's called Colorado University, not the University of Colorado, so it would be kind of dumb to flip the acronym. "
Almost as dumb as correcting people about things you have no knowledge of and are, as it happens, wrong about. The University of Colorado goes by CU. Colorado State University goes by CSU. "Colorado University" doesn't go by anything, because it only exists in your head.