The library signs probably have Braille because it's better than noting and a lot cheaper than signs with built-in text to speech facilities.
Elevator buttons often have Braille too.
The drive-up ATM has Braille because it's easier to use the same keyboards everywhere, than to work out which drive-up units can't also be used by non-drivers and leave Braille off those ones only.
But yes, computer applications are likely to be better served by text-to-speech than Braille (apart from users who are both blind and deaf), and a proper Braille terminal would work better than "feeling" bumps with a mouse for the Braille users anyway.
> wouldn't the abbreviation for trinary digits be tits
It might be more amusing if it was, and would work equally well as "ternary digit" (trinary logic is also known as ternary), but trit is standard usage.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/tri t. html
1, 0, and -1, at a logical level. In hardware, +whatever volts, zero volts, and -whatever volts. Each trit (trinary equivalent of bit) position is worth three times the previous one, so the numbers go:
So in four trits, you can count up to 27 + 9 + 3 + 1 = 40, compared with 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 15 in binary, and all your transistors are still either on or off, without needing intermediate voltage levels. (Of course having the extra sign does make e.g. a four trit adder more complex than a four bit adder).
Another big difference - the BSA threatens audits starting from the assumption that most people are guilty, and should have to prove their innocence.
The FSF say they establish compliance programs once it's established that not only was there a violation, but "because the scale of the violation or its persistence in time".
> and the Daily Telegraph especially (as a tabloid newspaper of the highest order)
Actually the Telegraph is a broadsheet.
It's right-wing by UK standards (hence the "Torygraph" nickname), but it's technology reporting isn't as bad as some papers (the Times Interface section, for example) (they do have more web experience than most papers (though it doesn't stop regular redesigns making it flashier but usually less usable)).
> If you read the rest of John Keegan's report,
It's http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/dt?pg=/01/9/14/do0 1.html
and it isn't a report, it's an opinion piece.
And most of it doesn't have anything to do with the internet, any more than, say
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/war/whattodo.html
or any of the many other people calling for bombing raids on bin Laden or the Taleban without any actual evidence they were involved.
> verifying identity requires a trusted third party. I suppose/. counts, except that it's not the most secure site in the world. Even if that were not true, all you've established is that you asserted you were Bruce Perens a long time ago.
He's also established a posting history, which you can see is consistent with the views attributed to Bruce Perens in other media, including other people's reports of talking to him.
Possibilities include:
i) He's the real Bruce Perens.
ii) He's not the real Bruce Perens, but the real Bruce is either unaware someone else is using his name or doesn't mind, and the imposter is convincing enough that no-one who knows the real Bruce has ever realized and posted a comment about it.
iii) There is no real Bruce Perens, he's an android controlled by RMS, and the whole Open Source movement is just a cunning plot by the FSF to get free software accepted by more people, which will be discarded once they take over the world.
Occam's Razor suggests he's the real Bruce Perens.
> While the armchair commandos and flight-simulator captains blow smoke about how anyone could do this
I think finding enough well-trained people to do it, all of whom are prepared to commit suicide for their cause without even getting their names published as heros/martyrs, all capable of keeping quiet about it, and getting them into the country without triggering suspicion, is the hard bit.
The actual "learn to fly well enough to crash into a large target" bit is relatively easy. (The "take over the plane while the crew don't realize this is a suicide mission yet" bit isn't so easy, but no harder than past hijacks).
Using public key authentication for ssh does _not_ stop things like su requiring a password. Timing attacks on the ssh data can (potentially) help an attacker guess that su password.
Look, just read this post from the previous thread -
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20776&cid=22 05 717
> It's constructed of a single sheet of tempered glass 6mm thick
I know someone who happened to be passing a bank when they were refitting, and got a large sheet of free cool-looking bulletproof glass they were throwing out, to make into a tabletop.
Sadly he'd got the last piece, so I couldn't get a matching one.
(The downsides were it was _very_ heavy, and couldn't be trimmed to a smaller size (at least not economically)).
> You can generate a Makefile and compile the whole thing outside the IDE, if you're so inclined.
You can use GNU make and cygwin to use the same Makefiles (with some relatively small platform dependent bits) as you use to compile the code (give or take a few relatively small platform dependent bits) on Unix:-)
Not suitable for all development environments of course, but it beats maintaining two completely different sets of Makefiles where it is.
Exactly - the Dramatic Presentation award went to Crouching Toger, Hidden Dragon, and that's not science fiction either.
Hell, "Apollo 13" got a Dramatic Presentation nomination in 1996, and that's neither science fiction or fantasy (which might be why it didn't win, but does show at least some voters are willing to stretch at least some categories).
> Can you imagine how much client work would pile up if half of your department's staff took the entire month of August off?
Just because someone's entitled to 24 days of holiday a year doesn't mean they are entitled to take it all at once, or whenever they feel like.
I don't know what US practice is, but in the UK you have to generally have get approval from your manager before booking any holiday - if it's a bad time, or too many other people have already booked that time, the manager says no.
Many people do try and take most of their holiday in the summer during the school holidays - but then if most of your customers/clients/suppliers/etc. are on holiday at the same time, that's also when the workload is least.
> I agree that it applies to this usage of RC4, but there are other encryption techniques, like DES, that can be used with a nonsecret init vector
Sure, but we've also known all along that reusing a key for a stream cipher like RC4 was a big mistake, but not so much of a problem with block ciphers like DES, but that doesn't mean stream ciphers are all broken, just that you have to be careful not to reuse keys. The abstract says "The WEP standard uses RC4 IVs improperly, and the attack exploits this design failure."
It's the particular way RC4 is used in WEP that has been broken. Yes, it depends on weaknesses in RC4, but "cracking RC4" is overstating it - this attack doesn't necessarily mean that SSL sessions using RC4 can be read.
> Though why the partition table was nuked by a static discharge, I don't know.
I don't know either, but at a previous job we came in one morning to find every machine had rebooted after a lightning storm - except one that was stuck at "LI". The weird thing was that machine had been a pure Windows machine for months and didn't usually boot through LILO at all.
We ended up reformatting that disk (there wasn't any important data on it, we just had to reinstall the applications).
> The more socialized health care system in Europe has a mandantory 24 hour waiting period prior to antibiotic use
Cite? This isn't true of the National Health Service in Britain (or at least it wasn't last time I had an ear infection, and I'd be surprised if it was introduced without any publicity).
(There are campaigns to educate people and reduce unnecessary antibiotic use.)
> > It's what Nissan used to call itself in English-speaking countries
> In Belgium too, which is not English-speaking.
> Maybe the same reason why Opel is called Vauxhall in the UK?
No, the Nissan company used to brand their cars "Datsun". (Similarly with Mitshbishi/Colt). There's an old joke with the punchline "raining Datsun cogs".
("Fuji Heavy Industry" are still using the Subaru brand for their cars http://www.fhi.co.jp/english/index.htm)
Opel and Vauxhall are companies which are both owned by General Motors, but kept their names and badges.
But back to the original point - there is no such offense as "jaywalking" in the UK, but pedestrians are encouraged to use crossings where possible. Although pedestrians do have right of way on roads (other than motorways (freeways) where they aren't allowed), that doesn't mean a driver who hits a pedestrian on the road is automatically guilty of an offense even if the pedestrian jumped out suddenly.
My technical director has one. Using MapQuest on his laptop while driving down the freeway in his (rented) convertible was cool.
Sadly the frequency they use isn't available for the same use in the UK, so he can't use it even in peer-to-peer mode back home. (Being low power spread-spectrum devices, the chances of them actually causing interference or being detected in use are small, but it's still not worth it).
> The BSA got to treat the LAUSD as if it had found widespread felonious behavior rather than a few years worth of a few people deliberately or mistakenly making copies
Or even a few years of failing to keep adequate records of perfectly legitimate purchased copies.
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The library signs probably have Braille because it's better than noting and a lot cheaper than signs with built-in text to speech facilities.
Elevator buttons often have Braille too.
The drive-up ATM has Braille because it's easier to use the same keyboards everywhere, than to work out which drive-up units can't also be used by non-drivers and leave Braille off those ones only.
But yes, computer applications are likely to be better served by text-to-speech than Braille (apart from users who are both blind and deaf), and a proper Braille terminal would work better than "feeling" bumps with a mouse for the Braille users anyway.
> wouldn't the abbreviation for trinary digits be tits
i t. html
It might be more amusing if it was, and would work equally well as "ternary digit" (trinary logic is also known as ternary), but trit is standard usage.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/tr
> 9 + 3 + -1
9 + 3 + 0
> 9 + 3 + 1
> 1, 0 and a third state.
1, 0, and -1, at a logical level. In hardware, +whatever volts, zero volts, and -whatever volts. Each trit (trinary equivalent of bit) position is worth three times the previous one, so the numbers go:
0
1
3 + -1
3 + 0
3 + 1
9 + -3 + -1
9 + -3 + 0
9 + -3 + 1
9 + 0 + -1
9 + 0 + 0
9 + 0 + 1
9 + 3 + -1
9 + 3 + 1
27 - 9 - 3 - 1
So in four trits, you can count up to 27 + 9 + 3 + 1 = 40, compared with 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 = 15 in binary, and all your transistors are still either on or off, without needing intermediate voltage levels. (Of course having the extra sign does make e.g. a four trit adder more complex than a four bit adder).
Another big difference - the BSA threatens audits starting from the assumption that most people are guilty, and should have to prove their innocence.
The FSF say they establish compliance programs once it's established that not only was there a violation, but "because the scale of the violation or its persistence in time".
> > I've relicensed everything under a libpng/zlib-style agreement, thus distancing myself from the extreme opinions of GPL's adherents.
> Does that mean you'll stop using your "libpng/zlib-style agreement" if RMS starts using it.
Surely it's more likely that if RMS/the FSF start pushing libpng/zlib-style agreement, they won't be seen as extremists?
> and the Daily Telegraph especially (as a tabloid newspaper of the highest order)
0 1.html
Actually the Telegraph is a broadsheet.
It's right-wing by UK standards (hence the "Torygraph" nickname), but it's technology reporting isn't as bad as some papers (the Times Interface section, for example) (they do have more web experience than most papers (though it doesn't stop regular redesigns making it flashier but usually less usable)).
> If you read the rest of John Keegan's report,
It's http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/dt?pg=/01/9/14/do
and it isn't a report, it's an opinion piece.
And most of it doesn't have anything to do with the internet, any more than, say
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/war/whattodo.html
or any of the many other people calling for bombing raids on bin Laden or the Taleban without any actual evidence they were involved.
> verifying identity requires a trusted third party. I suppose /. counts, except that it's not the most secure site in the world. Even if that were not true, all you've established is that you asserted you were Bruce Perens a long time ago.
He's also established a posting history, which you can see is consistent with the views attributed to Bruce Perens in other media, including other people's reports of talking to him.
Possibilities include:
i) He's the real Bruce Perens.
ii) He's not the real Bruce Perens, but the real Bruce is either unaware someone else is using his name or doesn't mind, and the imposter is convincing enough that no-one who knows the real Bruce has ever realized and posted a comment about it.
iii) There is no real Bruce Perens, he's an android controlled by RMS, and the whole Open Source movement is just a cunning plot by the FSF to get free software accepted by more people, which will be discarded once they take over the world.
Occam's Razor suggests he's the real Bruce Perens.
> Women's birthing spaces are GUARDED.
I can see a problem with heavily pregnant women serving in combat....
(Yes, I realize it's really a typo for "berthing").
> While the armchair commandos and flight-simulator captains blow smoke about how anyone could do this
I think finding enough well-trained people to do it, all of whom are prepared to commit suicide for their cause without even getting their names published as heros/martyrs, all capable of keeping quiet about it, and getting them into the country without triggering suspicion, is the hard bit.
The actual "learn to fly well enough to crash into a large target" bit is relatively easy. (The "take over the plane while the crew don't realize this is a suicide mission yet" bit isn't so easy, but no harder than past hijacks).
> How many other things started out as an April Fool's day joke and then actually got implemented?
BWM tyre pressure sensors.
Using public key authentication for ssh does _not_ stop things like su requiring a password. Timing attacks on the ssh data can (potentially) help an attacker guess that su password.
2 05 717
Look, just read this post from the previous thread -
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20776&cid=2
> It's constructed of a single sheet of tempered glass 6mm thick
I know someone who happened to be passing a bank when they were refitting, and got a large sheet of free cool-looking bulletproof glass they were throwing out, to make into a tabletop.
Sadly he'd got the last piece, so I couldn't get a matching one.
(The downsides were it was _very_ heavy, and couldn't be trimmed to a smaller size (at least not economically)).
> You can generate a Makefile and compile the whole thing outside the IDE, if you're so inclined.
:-)
You can use GNU make and cygwin to use the same Makefiles (with some relatively small platform dependent bits) as you use to compile the code (give or take a few relatively small platform dependent bits) on Unix
Not suitable for all development environments of course, but it beats maintaining two completely different sets of Makefiles where it is.
> Plus, this protects against the password keypress timing "attack" mentioned a week or two ago.
No it doesn't, because that was about passwords sent over ssh, not the actual ssh password itself.
> or fantasy
Exactly - the Dramatic Presentation award went to Crouching Toger, Hidden Dragon, and that's not science fiction either.
Hell, "Apollo 13" got a Dramatic Presentation nomination in 1996, and that's neither science fiction or fantasy (which might be why it didn't win, but does show at least some voters are willing to stretch at least some categories).
> Can you imagine how much client work would pile up if half of your department's staff took the entire month of August off?
Just because someone's entitled to 24 days of holiday a year doesn't mean they are entitled to take it all at once, or whenever they feel like.
I don't know what US practice is, but in the UK you have to generally have get approval from your manager before booking any holiday - if it's a bad time, or too many other people have already booked that time, the manager says no.
Many people do try and take most of their holiday in the summer during the school holidays - but then if most of your customers/clients/suppliers/etc. are on holiday at the same time, that's also when the workload is least.
> I agree that it applies to this usage of RC4, but there are other encryption techniques, like DES, that can be used with a nonsecret init vector
Sure, but we've also known all along that reusing a key for a stream cipher like RC4 was a big mistake, but not so much of a problem with block ciphers like DES, but that doesn't mean stream ciphers are all broken, just that you have to be careful not to reuse keys. The abstract says "The WEP standard uses RC4 IVs improperly, and the attack exploits this design failure."
> Cracking RC4
It's the particular way RC4 is used in WEP that has been broken. Yes, it depends on weaknesses in RC4, but "cracking RC4" is overstating it - this attack doesn't necessarily mean that SSL sessions using RC4 can be read.
> Though why the partition table was nuked by a static discharge, I don't know.
I don't know either, but at a previous job we came in one morning to find every machine had rebooted after a lightning storm - except one that was stuck at "LI". The weird thing was that machine had been a pure Windows machine for months and didn't usually boot through LILO at all.
We ended up reformatting that disk (there wasn't any important data on it, we just had to reinstall the applications).
> The more socialized health care system in Europe has a mandantory 24 hour waiting period prior to antibiotic use
Cite? This isn't true of the National Health Service in Britain (or at least it wasn't last time I had an ear infection, and I'd be surprised if it was introduced without any publicity).
(There are campaigns to educate people and reduce unnecessary antibiotic use.)
> > It's what Nissan used to call itself in English-speaking countries
> In Belgium too, which is not English-speaking.
> Maybe the same reason why Opel is called Vauxhall in the UK?
No, the Nissan company used to brand their cars "Datsun". (Similarly with Mitshbishi/Colt). There's an old joke with the punchline "raining Datsun cogs".
("Fuji Heavy Industry" are still using the Subaru brand for their cars http://www.fhi.co.jp/english/index.htm)
Opel and Vauxhall are companies which are both owned by General Motors, but kept their names and badges.
But back to the original point - there is no such offense as "jaywalking" in the UK, but pedestrians are encouraged to use crossings where possible. Although pedestrians do have right of way on roads (other than motorways (freeways) where they aren't allowed), that doesn't mean a driver who hits a pedestrian on the road is automatically guilty of an offense even if the pedestrian jumped out suddenly.
> you should mention to your professor that stealing is stealing
He was talking about copyright violation, not stealing. Making an unauthorized copy of something is not theft.
--
My technical director has one. Using MapQuest on his laptop while driving down the freeway in his (rented) convertible was cool.
Sadly the frequency they use isn't available for the same use in the UK, so he can't use it even in peer-to-peer mode back home. (Being low power spread-spectrum devices, the chances of them actually causing interference or being detected in use are small, but it's still not worth it).
--
> The BSA got to treat the LAUSD as if it had found widespread felonious behavior rather than a few years worth of a few people deliberately or mistakenly making copies
Or even a few years of failing to keep adequate records of perfectly legitimate purchased copies.
--