> I need to somehow automagically figure out what device you are using, > the screen sizes, interface capabilities, etc. and CUSTOMIZE > my style sheets (one more nail in the fucktard coffin) just for your device.
Dear web-developer... PLEASE stop strying to customize for what you think my browser+device combo is. You are a pain in the ass. I use 3 different browsers at times, all on Linux...
1) Firefox under linux. When I go to live365.com internet radio, with the native user agent, part of the player selection menu is missing, and I can't play music, When I fake the user agent as Firefox on Windows, it works properly.
2) When I go to various sites with Opera, on my desktop, they seem to think it's "Opera Mobile", and I get the crappy mobile site. Mobile sites are such a bleeping joke that XKCD laughs at them... http://xkcd.com/1174/http://xkcd.com/869/ I have to lie about the user agent to get the desktop version web page.
3) Ditto for uzbl, which is a webkit-based desktop browser. Some web sites see "webkit" and think it's a mobile browser.
Dear web developers... if I *WANTED* to go to "m.bad.example.com" I'd go there. If I ask for "bad.example.com", without the "m", please respect my wishes.
Hint for web developers... you can get away with one web site for mobile and desktop. Smartphones no longer have 240x160 pixel displays. Retina screens can have resolutions equivalant to regular desktops. And smartphones have this ability called pinch-and-zoom. A couple of rules to follow... 1) Allow resizing, so that pinch-and-zoom works. 2) Avoid Schlockwave Trash, and you'll be viewable vy iphone/ipad users
> Have we all forgotten how to use paper, pen, envelope and > stamp? Just leave off your return address - and don't sign it!
And don't forget to buy envelopes and paper in plastic wrappers at the store and wear thin gloves while you * unwrap the paper and envelopes * write the letter * stuff it into the envelope * seal the envelope (using a damp cloth) * put on the stamp (using a damp cloth)
And don't lick the envelope or the stamp, otherwise they could get your DNA from your saliva... sounds like an episode from CSI
> What they really ought to do is come out with service packs for the old > OSs after their EOL dates, and charge subscription fees for patching. > I'm on the record as being willing to pony up $30/yr. for XP patches > rather than replace my old XP machine. A lot of people are in this, > "take our money, please" situation; but MS won't go that way.
I don't have Java installed. I run linux, but Java is cross-platform, and I don't fall into the "it can't happen here" camp. Besides, I save a few hundred megabytes of disk space by not installing Java.
Flash is another issue altogether. I follow one forum that autoruns Flash movie ads on occasion. If you hovered over the ad, it would enable sound too.Firefox used to lock up for a few minutes. Running with system load = 3 or 4, on a 2-core machine is begging for thrashing/near-lockup.
I now use 2 browsers... 1) one browser has Flash disabled entirely 2) the other one I launch when I see a link to Youtube/whatever. When the video finishes, I close it. The taskbar has a mini-version of "top" running. Sometimes, after turning off the Flash browser, I'll watch the system load fall from 1.3 down to 0.3... satisfying.
1) Back in the day when it was universities-only, "what happened on Facebook, stayed on Facebook". So students were candid on Facebook, making it useful to analyze their personalities.
2) Then Facebook opened up to the public, and (potential) employers could view (potential) employees' posts durung their university days. So many students used their privacy settings to hide the bad stuff, and were able to remain candid on Facebook.
A lot of Facebook pages are now glorified Linked-In clones sanitized for employer viewing, because people are scared of being fire/rejected-for-employment.
> Also, the law comes down like a hammer compared to when I was a kid. > Stole something? You got a mean talking to by a police officer and > told "I don't want to see you again". Now you will end up in court. Get > into a fight and break someones nose? Possibly sued and/or court. Today > ISN'T the same for our children as it was for our generation. It is > reasonable to posit that the same upbringing isn't as appropriate
How true. I'm retired. I grew up in the 60's. Kids would be out all day long during summer break. And we didn't have cell phones either. Parents were getting birth-control pills for their 12-year-old daughters. People who used condoms were laughed at. If you got an STD, no problem. A few shots at the local health clinic, and you'd be back in action in a couple of weeks. My parents were rather strict, so I didn't get in on the fun. I was envious of the kids that did.
Then shit happened 1) herpes 2) AIDS 3) easier availability of drugs 4) "Megan's Law" and its variants 5) asshole DA's trying to look "tough on crime" with "zero tolerance".
So parents were genuinely concerned about their kids getting herpes or AIDS, or becoming hooked on drugs. Add to that asshole DA's merely concerned with getting more "notches in their belts". It's now gotten to the point where... * if age-of-consent in a state is 16 * a boy and girl just weeks away from their 16th birthday are caught having sex * they're *BOTH* convicted of statutory rape (sex with an under-16) and they *BOTH* become "registered sex offenders" for the rest of their lives
> Today ISN'T the same for our children as it was for our generation >. It is reasonable to posit that the same upbringing isn't as appropriate
What he said. The risks are much, much greater, and increased risk-avoidance is necessary.
Actually, telecommuting has caught on big time. Problem is that you don't have high-paid locals telecommuting from Phoenix, AZ. They've been replaced by low-paid serfs Telecommuting from Mumbai.
> RTFA. They're not talking about phones; they're talking about assorted > Internet-of-Things devices--how your toaster and your microwave talk to your Roomba.
[...deletia...]
> Of course, if someone hacks the network and reprograms your meter, > that's bad. But don't we have the same risk now?
NO. Right now my toaster and microwave do not talk to, or take orders from other devices, let alone the guy in the car parked out in front of my home, or terrorists on the other side of the planet. This is downright stupid, and treasonous in how it makes us vulnerable to terrorists. All you need is a really hot summer day, with everybody's air-conditioners going full blast, and the electrical utilities pushed to their limits. Now imagine a botnet of things (toasters/microwaves/ovens/whatever) suddenly ramping up a in a couple of million households in a large city. The local system overloads and we have a local blackout. Properly co-ordinate 3 or 4 large cities simultaneously, and you've got a major regional blackout, possibly cascading to a national scale. Who dreamt up this "advance"? Some Al-Quaeda mole?
I'm surprised nobody has commented on this. If a server can confirm your keyboard/mouse activity profile, what's to stop advertisers from doing so via javascript on the the web? This is scary. Even if you log in to site A as John Smith with Firefox, and site B as Jane Doe with Opera, and with Flash supercookies disabled, they might still be able to match your profiles. This would solve the advertising dilemma, of what ads to show on a shared computer used by multiple family members. This would be worse than Facebook.
Law enforcement would love this too. Let's say you're a "meek mild-mannered reporter" (or whatever) by day and "super-hacktivist" by night. It wouldn't matter if you're using multiple layers of TOR/ONION or working via a compromised machine in China, a LEA would still be able to match your daytime work profile to your nighttime alter-ego.
This might start start an arms race. Given websites that analyse user keystrokes, would a random delay inserter work? Also, I assume that doing stuff like typing this comment into a separate text editor, then copy-pasting into the posting submission form might help cover your tracks.
> The Japanese Navy played radio games to inhibit traffic analysis > with the attack force after it sailed in late November. Radio operators normally > assigned to carriers, with a characteristic Morse Code "fist", transmitted from > inland Japanese waters, suggesting the carriers were still near Japan
> Floating point and integer operations are well defined. Unless someone fucks up > with implementing the floating point unit the result should be exactly the same.
1) The installed crapware is on main storage. That means you have less room for the apps and data you really want.
2) The crapware running in the background chews up CPU cycles and RAM, slowing down the programs you really want to run.
3) The crapware running in the background uses power, so you can't go a s long on one charge.
4) Syncing with Google+Facebook and that cute weather app that displays the weather and forecast at your location consumes data; and crapware updates require a whole bunch of data. This can use up a significant chunk of your monthly data quota. And woe unto you if you're roaming outside your carrier's territory, or even worse overseas, when your crapware decides to update. This is the root cause of all those horror stories of people who took along their phones on vacation for-emergency-use-only. They don't make or receive a single call or message, but have a thousand dollar roaming fee when they get home.
> Yeah, one day you can tell your grandkids about what it was like to get DVD/blu-ray > extra features like commentary tracks and making-of featurettes, and what it was > like to watch a movie without seeing "Buffering" messages and heavy compression > artifacts. Yep, streaming is so superior to those ancient physical discs alright.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of VCR tapes hurtling down the highway.
They have *PATENTED* hiring people based on their "social graphs". That means that other employers aren't allowed to do this... without forking over royalties to Google.
>If you were a smart employer, you'd let your employees work from home and > save on office space, not to mention the employee's time and gas money.
a) Not everybody is a code-monkey or a helpdesk-script-reader. How, pray tell, are mechanics, bus drivers, construction workers, etc, supposed to "work from home"?
b) Be careful what you wish for. If your job can be done from the other side of town, it can just as easily be done from the other side of the planet by some 3rd-worlder at a fraction of your current salary.
Slashdot Mirror
> If they were certain to make more money by selling
> Photoshop for three bucks, why wouldn't they do it?
The post that started this sub-thread stated...
> Sure if Photoshop sold for $3 to ***EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO OWNS A PC***
(my emphasis)
Not everybody on the planet would want Photoshop, even if it was free.
> I need to somehow automagically figure out what device you are using,
> the screen sizes, interface capabilities, etc. and CUSTOMIZE
> my style sheets (one more nail in the fucktard coffin) just for your device.
Dear web-developer... PLEASE stop strying to customize for what you think my browser+device combo is. You are a pain in the ass. I use 3 different browsers at times, all on Linux...
1) Firefox under linux. When I go to live365.com internet radio, with the native user agent, part of the player selection menu is missing, and I can't play music, When I fake the user agent as Firefox on Windows, it works properly.
2) When I go to various sites with Opera, on my desktop, they seem to think it's "Opera Mobile", and I get the crappy mobile site. Mobile sites are such a bleeping joke that XKCD laughs at them... http://xkcd.com/1174/ http://xkcd.com/869/ I have to lie about the user agent to get the desktop version web page.
3) Ditto for uzbl, which is a webkit-based desktop browser. Some web sites see "webkit" and think it's a mobile browser.
Dear web developers... if I *WANTED* to go to "m.bad.example.com" I'd go there. If I ask for "bad.example.com", without the "m", please respect my wishes.
Hint for web developers... you can get away with one web site for mobile and desktop. Smartphones no longer have 240x160 pixel displays. Retina screens can have resolutions equivalant to regular desktops. And smartphones have this ability called pinch-and-zoom. A couple of rules to follow...
1) Allow resizing, so that pinch-and-zoom works.
2) Avoid Schlockwave Trash, and you'll be viewable vy iphone/ipad users
> " (data usage okay, but no cell usage)."
Guess what VOIP is? That's right, data.
We only catch the dumb ones, the low-hanging fruit. The smart criminals, by definition are smart enough not to get caught.
> Have we all forgotten how to use paper, pen, envelope and
> stamp? Just leave off your return address - and don't sign it!
And don't forget to buy envelopes and paper in plastic wrappers at the store and wear thin gloves while you
* unwrap the paper and envelopes
* write the letter
* stuff it into the envelope
* seal the envelope (using a damp cloth)
* put on the stamp (using a damp cloth)
And don't lick the envelope or the stamp, otherwise they could get your DNA from your saliva... sounds like an episode from CSI
> What they really ought to do is come out with service packs for the old
> OSs after their EOL dates, and charge subscription fees for patching.
> I'm on the record as being willing to pony up $30/yr. for XP patches
> rather than replace my old XP machine. A lot of people are in this,
> "take our money, please" situation; but MS won't go that way.
No need to to pay anything ReactOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS is probably what you're looking for.
I don't have Java installed. I run linux, but Java is cross-platform, and I don't fall into the "it can't happen here" camp. Besides, I save a few hundred megabytes of disk space by not installing Java.
Flash is another issue altogether. I follow one forum that autoruns Flash movie ads on occasion. If you hovered over the ad, it would enable sound too.Firefox used to lock up for a few minutes. Running with system load = 3 or 4, on a 2-core machine is begging for thrashing/near-lockup.
I now use 2 browsers...
1) one browser has Flash disabled entirely
2) the other one I launch when I see a link to Youtube/whatever. When the video finishes, I close it. The taskbar has a mini-version of "top" running. Sometimes, after turning off the Flash browser, I'll watch the system load fall from 1.3 down to 0.3... satisfying.
1) Back in the day when it was universities-only, "what happened on Facebook, stayed on Facebook". So students were candid on Facebook, making it useful to analyze their personalities.
2) Then Facebook opened up to the public, and (potential) employers could view (potential) employees' posts durung their university days. So many students used their privacy settings to hide the bad stuff, and were able to remain candid on Facebook.
3) Then (potential) employers started demanding Facebook passwords. People started sanitizing their Facebook pages, either manually, or with apps like Facewash http://lifehacker.com/5978872/facewash-makes-sure-your-facebook-profile-is-clean-and-interview+ready ( now renamed http://www.simplewa.sh/ )
A lot of Facebook pages are now glorified Linked-In clones sanitized for employer viewing, because people are scared of being fire/rejected-for-employment.
> Also, the law comes down like a hammer compared to when I was a kid.
> Stole something? You got a mean talking to by a police officer and
> told "I don't want to see you again". Now you will end up in court. Get
> into a fight and break someones nose? Possibly sued and/or court. Today
> ISN'T the same for our children as it was for our generation. It is
> reasonable to posit that the same upbringing isn't as appropriate
How true. I'm retired. I grew up in the 60's. Kids would be out all day long during summer break. And we didn't have cell phones either. Parents were getting birth-control pills for their 12-year-old daughters. People who used condoms were laughed at. If you got an STD, no problem. A few shots at the local health clinic, and you'd be back in action in a couple of weeks. My parents were rather strict, so I didn't get in on the fun. I was envious of the kids that did.
Then shit happened
1) herpes
2) AIDS
3) easier availability of drugs
4) "Megan's Law" and its variants
5) asshole DA's trying to look "tough on crime" with "zero tolerance".
So parents were genuinely concerned about their kids getting herpes or AIDS, or becoming hooked on drugs. Add to that asshole DA's merely concerned with getting more "notches in their belts". It's now gotten to the point where...
* if age-of-consent in a state is 16
* a boy and girl just weeks away from their 16th birthday are caught having sex
* they're *BOTH* convicted of statutory rape (sex with an under-16) and they *BOTH* become "registered sex offenders" for the rest of their lives
> Today ISN'T the same for our children as it was for our generation
>. It is reasonable to posit that the same upbringing isn't as appropriate
What he said. The risks are much, much greater, and increased risk-avoidance is necessary.
Could Slashdot please refuse to post stories that link to paywalled sites? BTW, I put some of the text from the summary into Google, and the first non-paywalled link that popped up was http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/e-books-reading-the-minds-of-reader-to-learn-what-they-crave/articleshow/27903865.cms
Actually, telecommuting has caught on big time. Problem is that you don't have high-paid locals telecommuting from Phoenix, AZ. They've been replaced by low-paid serfs Telecommuting from Mumbai.
> RTFA. They're not talking about phones; they're talking about assorted
> Internet-of-Things devices--how your toaster and your microwave talk to your Roomba.
[...deletia...]
> Of course, if someone hacks the network and reprograms your meter,
> that's bad. But don't we have the same risk now?
NO. Right now my toaster and microwave do not talk to, or take orders from other devices, let alone the guy in the car parked out in front of my home, or terrorists on the other side of the planet. This is downright stupid, and treasonous in how it makes us vulnerable to terrorists. All you need is a really hot summer day, with everybody's air-conditioners going full blast, and the electrical utilities pushed to their limits. Now imagine a botnet of things (toasters/microwaves/ovens/whatever) suddenly ramping up a in a couple of million households in a large city. The local system overloads and we have a local blackout. Properly co-ordinate 3 or 4 large cities simultaneously, and you've got a major regional blackout, possibly cascading to a national scale. Who dreamt up this "advance"? Some Al-Quaeda mole?
> Most airlines have or are adding Internet service to their planes
And if you have VOIP set up on your notebook, that's a connection right there, cell towers not required.
While we're at it, here are Facebook's IP address blocks
31.13.24.0 - 31.13.31.255 aka 31.13.24.0/21
31.13.64.0 - 31.13.127.255 aka 31.13.64.0/18
66.220.144.0 - 66.220.159.255 aka 66.220.144.0/20
69.63.176.0 - 69.63.191.255 aka 69.63.176.0/20
69.171.224.0 - 69.171.255.255 aka 69.171.224.0/19
74.119.76.0 - 74.119.79.255 aka 74.119.76.0/22
103.4.96.0 - 103.4.99.255 aka 103.4.96.0/22
173.252.64.0 - 173.252.127.255 aka 173.252.64.0/18
204.15.20.0 - 204.15.23.255 aka 204.15.20.0/22
In linux we have /etc/mailcap and /etc/mime.types and both can be overridden by similar files in each user's $HOME directory.
I'm surprised nobody has commented on this. If a server can confirm your keyboard/mouse activity profile, what's to stop advertisers from doing so via javascript on the the web? This is scary. Even if you log in to site A as John Smith with Firefox, and site B as Jane Doe with Opera, and with Flash supercookies disabled, they might still be able to match your profiles. This would solve the advertising dilemma, of what ads to show on a shared computer used by multiple family members. This would be worse than Facebook.
Law enforcement would love this too. Let's say you're a "meek mild-mannered reporter" (or whatever) by day and "super-hacktivist" by night. It wouldn't matter if you're using multiple layers of TOR/ONION or working via a compromised machine in China, a LEA would still be able to match your daytime work profile to your nighttime alter-ego.
This might start start an arms race. Given websites that analyse user keystrokes, would a random delay inserter work? Also, I assume that doing stuff like typing this comment into a separate text editor, then copy-pasting into the posting submission form might help cover your tracks.
And this also played a role in the Pearl Harbor attack. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_analysis
> The Japanese Navy played radio games to inhibit traffic analysis
> with the attack force after it sailed in late November. Radio operators normally
> assigned to carriers, with a characteristic Morse Code "fist", transmitted from
> inland Japanese waters, suggesting the carriers were still near Japan
> Floating point and integer operations are well defined. Unless someone fucks up
> with implementing the floating point unit the result should be exactly the same.
Not true in the real world. See http://slashdot.org/story/13/07/28/137209/same-programs--different-computers--different-weather-forecasts There was a scientic paper about the same weather model producing different forecast outputs on different machines.
> who cares where it comes down...
> I'm sure you all know the rest...
Tom Lehrer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V7me25aNtI approx 50 seconds into the video
1) The installed crapware is on main storage. That means you have less room for the apps and data you really want.
2) The crapware running in the background chews up CPU cycles and RAM, slowing down the programs you really want to run.
3) The crapware running in the background uses power, so you can't go a s long on one charge.
4) Syncing with Google+Facebook and that cute weather app that displays the weather and forecast at your location consumes data; and crapware updates require a whole bunch of data. This can use up a significant chunk of your monthly data quota. And woe unto you if you're roaming outside your carrier's territory, or even worse overseas, when your crapware decides to update. This is the root cause of all those horror stories of people who took along their phones on vacation for-emergency-use-only. They don't make or receive a single call or message, but have a thousand dollar roaming fee when they get home.
> Yeah, one day you can tell your grandkids about what it was like to get DVD/blu-ray
> extra features like commentary tracks and making-of featurettes, and what it was
> like to watch a movie without seeing "Buffering" messages and heavy compression
> artifacts. Yep, streaming is so superior to those ancient physical discs alright.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of VCR tapes hurtling down the highway.
They have *PATENTED* hiring people based on their "social graphs". That means that other employers aren't allowed to do this... without forking over royalties to Google.
I thought International Date Line was an outfit that let you chat with, and hook up with Asian chicks.
>If you were a smart employer, you'd let your employees work from home and
> save on office space, not to mention the employee's time and gas money.
a) Not everybody is a code-monkey or a helpdesk-script-reader. How, pray tell, are mechanics, bus drivers, construction workers, etc, supposed to "work from home"?
b) Be careful what you wish for. If your job can be done from the other side of town, it can just as easily be done from the other side of the planet by some 3rd-worlder at a fraction of your current salary.
> I don't get it why people hate Java applets so much they want them to go altogether.
Because Java applets are a honking big security hole, and currently the most-often-used attack-vector to take over unsuspecting users' machines. See http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list.php?vendor_id=5&product_id=1526&version_id=&page=1&hasexp=0&opdos=0&opec=0&opov=0&opcsrf=0&opgpriv=0&opsqli=0&opxss=0&opdirt=0&opmemc=0&ophttprs=0&opbyp=0&opfileinc=0&opginf=0&cvssscoremin=0&cvssscoremax=6.99&year=0&month=0&cweid=0&order=1&trc=35&sha=d158a5520a2bc52f7443268daaab5851ced00564 for a list of recent problems.