"The presumption [of the Internet] is that you're fully connected," Cerf said. Any attempts to block certain application types or types of content, he said, "will destroy the utility of the Net."
I guess this has been the presumption of the Internet for corporations, but this has never been presumed for consumers.
How many consumers are using broadband providers that prevent them from serving web content on port 80?
What about users who get stiffed when their "unlimited monthly Internet" gets terminated due to "excessive usage" (hence leaving us to wonder what part of the service was "unlimited"?)
I think this is just a case of corporations get preferential treatment, when consumers would never be presumed to have the same rights.
What happens if you violate the terms and conditions by deep linking into their site? They terminate your account and you can't give your money to them? OH well. Problem self-solved.
"The new format is no format," predicted Petersen, a 24-year industry veteran who also owns a record label, a recording studio and a music-publishing company. "What the consumer would buy is a data file, and you could create whatever you need. If you want to make an MP3, you make an MP3. If you want a DVD-Audio surround disc, you make that."
Cool, I guess data files don't need a format! For a second I thought that MP3 was a data file, that just happened to sound like music when played through an MP3 player.
At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.
I'm sure some random number generators use chaotic phenomenon, but not this box.
Because it's pseudo-science that's trying to be serious. Which can be a dangerous thing, although probably isn't in this case.
Red Nova usually has good articles, but every once in awhile, one shows up that belies evidence of lack of scientific rigour. This is the case here.
An example (from the article:)
It was a preposterous idea at the time. The results, however, were stunning and have never been satisfactorily explained.
This sentence is prejudicial because it biases the results as being "stunning", without describing who finds the results stunning.
"Never satisfactorily explained" also presumes that someone finds it worthy of needing explanation.
Again and again, entirely ordinary people proved that their minds could influence the machine and produce significant fluctuations on the graph, 'forcing it' to produce unequal numbers of 'heads' or 'tails'.
"Proved"? Pretty strong words with no supporting detail. Once I read sentences like this, I discount an article as being scientifically unfounded.
In response to the parent post:
No, the laws of chance do not say any such thing. In fact, the laws of chance say exactly the opposite.
I believe you're misinterpreting the laws of chance.
If you have two choices chosen at random over a series (a 1 and a 0; or heads and tails on a coin), there is a high probability that one of the choices will be chosen a significantly higher number of times than the other.
Significant as a percentage? Unlikely.
Over time, the percentage disparity will decrease to near zero, but the total numerical disparity is likely to increase.
This is a trivial statement. If n flips has m total disparities, n+x flips will have between m and m+x disparities. It is therefore impossible for the total number of disparities to decrease, and almost guaranteed that it will increase.
The only significant measure of disparity is that of percentile disparity. And if you measure percentile disparity on a scale equivalent to the number of events being measured, it will in fact appear to be a nearly flat line on the graph.
The thing that bothers me about this "experiment" is that it presumes to assert that people can control a machine that generates random events, without describing the algorithm by which those random events are produced. Trying to simulate true randomness (indeed, what is random?) is a huge topic within math, statistics, and computer science; yet, it's not mentioned once within the article.
The obvious problem with phrases and such, used as passwords, is that most people will choose well-formed English phrases that consist of common words.
Consequently, instead of trying a brute force cracking approach that creates passwords consisting of random letters, the cracking approach would create passwords consisting of random words.
By reducing the cracking approach to only construct phrases using proper English grammar, the number of probably password phrases is reduced dramatically.
Granted, clever users will insert random numbers and punctuation into their password phrases. But this just increases the complexity of memorizing the password, which is what the Microsoft employee advocates against.
In such a scenario, I'm guessing that users who currently use simple passwords would pick phrases that are easy to generate or guess. Users who currently use complex passwords would pick phrases which include numbers and punctuations.
In any event, increasing the number of possible passwords by increasing the number of permutations is a good start. It would make it more difficult to crack the password of any given user. But how much do you want to bet that a cracking utility would hash the following phrases at a large corporation, and get at least one match within the password file?
"There's no place like home"
"Th3r3s n0 plac3 l1k3 h0m3"
"My b0ss suxx0r"
"I need a vacation"
"We don't have a position with respect to dual-core processors. A core is equal to a CPU, and all cores are required to be licensed. Therefore, if you have a dual-core processor, you are required to have two processor licenses." -- Oracle, 2005
Using a new computer model of galaxy formation, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have shown that growing black holes release a blast of energy that fundamentally regulates galaxy evolution and black hole growth itself
Keep in mind that evolution is just a theory, and must be critically examined.
I myself prefer to believe that God himself is pushing around all the energy by hand.
One thing I noticed during testing was that the camera had poor low-light performance despite the 6 infrared LEDs on the face, so I included a mini Mag-Lite in my plans.
I have the same camera. The 6 infrared LEDs on that camera are inoperative. They only work on the black & white camera model, which shares the exact same housing. The circuitry required for infrared to augment an RGB display is much more complex than the circuitry required to augment a monochromatic display, and thus couldn't fit within the housing.
Bah! Two words - mod chip! They will create a lucrative market for all those people popping mod chips into game boxes by adding modchips and hack to pvr's, tv cards etc, etc
A grey market at best - mod chips are a notorious target for litigation.
Our interactive world is the best proof of the axiom that states"if the enemy is in range, so are you"
"Even with the relatively large number of bulletins we released this week, we compare favorably," he said. "Year-to-date for 2005, Microsoft has fixed 15 vulnerabilities affecting Windows Server 2003. In the same time period, for just this year, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 users have had to patch 34 vulnerabilities and SuSE Enterprise Linux 9 users have had to patch over 78 vulnerabilities."
Ooops, better up that to 16. Good thing you're counting Windows Server 2003 and not Windows XP Home edition, huh there?
My understanding is that having an HDTV tuner card doesn't get you anything in terms of the broadcast flag, unless you happen to get one that ignores the broadcast flag, which either are or shortly will be illegal to purchase.
The answer to this at EFF:
"As EFF describes on our Digital Television Liberation page, recent regulations in the United States will ban the manufacture of DTV-receiving hardware described here after July 1, 2005. While we challenge these regulations in court, the clock is ticking, and it's safest to assume that it will be difficult to get unrestricted DTV receiving equipment in the future the way you can today.
However, despite the manufacturing ban, existing equipment will continue to work (and to be lawful to possess and operate); it will be immune from the restrictions imposed on future equipment. That means that the equipment you can buy today is more functional and more useful than what you may be able to buy after July 1, 2005."
"It can be intimidating at first, because they wrap their arms pretty tight around you, and everything they latch onto is pretty much headed straight to their mouth"..."But once you get used to it, I can't describe it: They feel like wet velvet or wet silk."
Sounds pretty obscene without the first sentence, doesn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
I guess this has been the presumption of the Internet for corporations, but this has never been presumed for consumers.
How many consumers are using broadband providers that prevent them from serving web content on port 80?
What about users who get stiffed when their "unlimited monthly Internet" gets terminated due to "excessive usage" (hence leaving us to wonder what part of the service was "unlimited"?)
I think this is just a case of corporations get preferential treatment, when consumers would never be presumed to have the same rights.
Well, duh! Even my grandmother uses Kerberos to solve her single sign-on dilemma!
My computer is an infinite-state machine.
What happens if you violate the terms and conditions by deep linking into their site? They terminate your account and you can't give your money to them? OH well. Problem self-solved.
Cool, I guess data files don't need a format! For a second I thought that MP3 was a data file, that just happened to sound like music when played through an MP3 player.
At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.
I'm sure some random number generators use chaotic phenomenon, but not this box.
The percentage of deviation grows smaller as the set of generated numbers grow larger.
Try it, its no more than a line of perl :-)
Your perl code is suspect.
Red Nova usually has good articles, but every once in awhile, one shows up that belies evidence of lack of scientific rigour. This is the case here.
An example (from the article:)
It was a preposterous idea at the time. The results, however, were stunning and have never been satisfactorily explained.
This sentence is prejudicial because it biases the results as being "stunning", without describing who finds the results stunning.
"Never satisfactorily explained" also presumes that someone finds it worthy of needing explanation.
Again and again, entirely ordinary people proved that their minds could influence the machine and produce significant fluctuations on the graph, 'forcing it' to produce unequal numbers of 'heads' or 'tails'.
"Proved"? Pretty strong words with no supporting detail. Once I read sentences like this, I discount an article as being scientifically unfounded.
In response to the parent post:
No, the laws of chance do not say any such thing. In fact, the laws of chance say exactly the opposite.
I believe you're misinterpreting the laws of chance.
If you have two choices chosen at random over a series (a 1 and a 0; or heads and tails on a coin), there is a high probability that one of the choices will be chosen a significantly higher number of times than the other.
Significant as a percentage? Unlikely.
Over time, the percentage disparity will decrease to near zero, but the total numerical disparity is likely to increase.
This is a trivial statement. If n flips has m total disparities, n+x flips will have between m and m+x disparities. It is therefore impossible for the total number of disparities to decrease, and almost guaranteed that it will increase.
The only significant measure of disparity is that of percentile disparity. And if you measure percentile disparity on a scale equivalent to the number of events being measured, it will in fact appear to be a nearly flat line on the graph.
The thing that bothers me about this "experiment" is that it presumes to assert that people can control a machine that generates random events, without describing the algorithm by which those random events are produced. Trying to simulate true randomness (indeed, what is random?) is a huge topic within math, statistics, and computer science; yet, it's not mentioned once within the article.
Space, the final frontier. To boldly go where no Star Trek fan will get laid.
Consequently, instead of trying a brute force cracking approach that creates passwords consisting of random letters, the cracking approach would create passwords consisting of random words.
By reducing the cracking approach to only construct phrases using proper English grammar, the number of probably password phrases is reduced dramatically.
Granted, clever users will insert random numbers and punctuation into their password phrases. But this just increases the complexity of memorizing the password, which is what the Microsoft employee advocates against.
In such a scenario, I'm guessing that users who currently use simple passwords would pick phrases that are easy to generate or guess. Users who currently use complex passwords would pick phrases which include numbers and punctuations.
In any event, increasing the number of possible passwords by increasing the number of permutations is a good start. It would make it more difficult to crack the password of any given user. But how much do you want to bet that a cracking utility would hash the following phrases at a large corporation, and get at least one match within the password file?
"There's no place like home"
"Th3r3s n0 plac3 l1k3 h0m3"
"My b0ss suxx0r"
"I need a vacation"
MythTV on a chip
Sounds like they have a position.
There's nothing to see here, move along.
My point was that infrared is not visible for these particular brand of color cameras, due to size constraints.
Keep in mind that evolution is just a theory, and must be critically examined.
I myself prefer to believe that God himself is pushing around all the energy by hand.
I had trouble believing it, until I remembered one huge demographic: kids 11-16. IM session:
"Uhm, did u reed hw assmint 2nyte?"
"Yep, sed sthng bout web sight called www.wallstjernal
I have the same camera. The 6 infrared LEDs on that camera are inoperative. They only work on the black & white camera model, which shares the exact same housing. The circuitry required for infrared to augment an RGB display is much more complex than the circuitry required to augment a monochromatic display, and thus couldn't fit within the housing.
This article isn't nearly as amusing as John Dvorak's article claiming that Microsoft will totally disolve in 10 years.
Aim doesn't determine range =p If your enemy has a bigger gun than you, you might be in his range but he won't be in yours.
There's a few thousand people aggregated on behalf of a common cause at Microsoft's campus - I'd hesitate to call that Open Source.
Open Source isn't a particularly good word to describe journalism.
A grey market at best - mod chips are a notorious target for litigation.
Our interactive world is the best proof of the axiom that states"if the enemy is in range, so are you"
Depends on who has the bigger guns.
Ooops, better up that to 16. Good thing you're counting Windows Server 2003 and not Windows XP Home edition, huh there?
The answer to this at EFF:
"As EFF describes on our Digital Television Liberation page, recent regulations in the United States will ban the manufacture of DTV-receiving hardware described here after July 1, 2005. While we challenge these regulations in court, the clock is ticking, and it's safest to assume that it will be difficult to get unrestricted DTV receiving equipment in the future the way you can today.
However, despite the manufacturing ban, existing equipment will continue to work (and to be lawful to possess and operate); it will be immune from the restrictions imposed on future equipment. That means that the equipment you can buy today is more functional and more useful than what you may be able to buy after July 1, 2005."
"It can be intimidating at first, because they wrap their arms pretty tight around you, and everything they latch onto is pretty much headed straight to their mouth"..."But once you get used to it, I can't describe it: They feel like wet velvet or wet silk."
Sounds pretty obscene without the first sentence, doesn't it?
Get a new octopus every 6 months. Put the new octopus in with the old octopus, and see if the old one teaches the new one any tricks.