Your beloved MibiByte units were invented long after hard-drives became common, in fact they were invented as a reaction to the dishonest manufacturers who tried to redefine the megabyte to their advantage. At best, the wibi-units are a confusing compromise.
Computing k and greater are common in computing, where they are applied to information and storage units like the bit and the byte. Since these come in powers of two, the prefixes' meaning changes:
K = 2^10 = 1,024
M = 2^20 = 1,048,576
G = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824
T = 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776
P = 2^50 = 1,125,899,906,842,624.
I (and thousands upon thousands of business travelers) end up having to fly one way, three legged trips all the fucking time, and we all become "terrorists".
Do you get a "suspected terrorist" pin-badge like Gilmore?
"Under this idiotic interpretation, Linux would clearly infringe on Unix simply because it works like it."
As would a tree because they've both got roots. Obiously there are some people here who realise where this case is headed, but hey, they patented the wheel, right?
"You KNOW this is someone's actual name. I feel so bad for him."
On the bright side, if your name was John Doe, you'd get filtered out of all the spam-lists and marketing databases:
"Huh, another joker with false info? Toss it out."
Of course, you might end up having to defend 57 million lawsuits with your name on them, but it would probably crash the court's computer if they convicted you.
"Anyway, this is a spammer people, dont click those links."
If you were to do a "while(1){ wget "link" }, it might activate some alarm bells at Amazon's script-detector, designed to clear the payment account of anyone who runs scripts on an amazon referer.
One of the HTML presentation editors I saw was Phil Greenspun's (Link), which is hosted/server-based, and lets people log in to edit or display their presentations. It looks pretty 1990's until you apply one of the CSS styles to it.
Of course, it's possible that a standalone editor would suit many people better, but then doesn't KPresent export as HTML?
"Much as it pains me to say it, Powerpoint has become almost indispensable"
C'mon, Powerpoint is a piddling little program that you could replace in a week, and several people have. Display a line of text on a pretty background, now there's a difficult task.
HTML slides seem to be the future. (KPresent and Impress notwithstanding) - even if you don't have a program to generate them, it's a 5-minute template job.
Scrolly effects and PING! sounds? You say you've use PPT for more than an hour, so I assume you've got over the novelty and don't use them
p.s. you can use your wallpapers directory as a good source of backgrounds for slides. (not that powerpoint supported that, the last time I looked; I discovered it in KPresent)
"I suppose you could go do the StarOffice pitch to your boss, the only problem I forsee is trying to keep up with M$ and their new ideas for keeping Office locked down..."
I find the "I need such-and-such features. You could pay $600, or I have this system which is available free..." tends to work quite well.
Of course, after the first "these 5000 documents are in Word97 format, and if we want Office2003, it'll cost 3 man-weeks to convert them" conversation, some people might have a serious think about file formats.
Keeping up with the latest file formats? Doesn't that cost $500 per year per computer, plus half a day of everyone's time? And for what? The feature-list hasn't changed in 8 years.
"I've always wondered that if there were some crew memember aboard the ISS and something catastrophic happened to Earth how long could they survive?"
And (b) if something big enough to destroy Earthbourne life hit us, what are the odds of the space-station remaining in orbit? Even the ISS is affected by gravity...
The "off-planet backup" idea is the most logical (genetically-speaking) reason for a space programme, but it depends on being able to return to Earth by it's own resources. Would a permanently-manned space station with a re-entry pod be sufficient?
"But the controlled explosives brings home a key point: It takes a LOT of energy to get into orbit, and even more energy to leave orbit."
Well yeah, was the original post not made by someone who uses lots of controlled explosions to get from home to work everyday? What's so bad about explosions? It's the ones being dropped by the americans into hotels and homes you want to be worried about, not the ones powering rockets into space.
"The obvious answer is to redesign the passanger compartment to make it a properly grounded faraday cage."
The second most obvious answer is to just put the wiring inside structural metal components of the aircraft. Not only is this probably lighter than the 'faraday cage around the whole aircraft' idea, but it doesn't suffer from the "guy at the end of the runway with a big transmitter" problem.
And yes, it's already being done, on any modern aircraft.
Of course, this doesn't solve the "guy at the end of the runway with an ILS transmitter" problem, but hey, let's start with the perceived threats, and deal with the real ones later.
"Go take some flying lessons. You'll learn that..."
You trying to have the poor lad arrested/captured as a terrorist or something?
Re:We really need a different language
on
Secure Programming
·
· Score: 1
"That they do not have security holes is implausible, if not actually impossible, to prove"
I'd go for "impossible to prove": you can only be secure if you've guarded against any method an attacker can use. So no matter how much you guard against, you'll always be insecure against an attacker with more imagination than you. And imagination doesn't have an upper-bound. So you can't prove any system is secure.
Slashdot Mirror
"PHP usage in the enterprise"
Wouldn't they use StarOffice in the Enterprise?
"So that gives you just over 300 miles a "tank" before you have to stop and recharge."
At 27 miles per gallon equivalent
We have petrol cars which are more efficient than this, but I don't believe that anything capable of accelerating that fast does 27mpg.
"Okay, let me get this straight -
# No PIM (Outlook)
# No document review functions
# Fonts don't look right"
I think you'd better go back to using emacs.
"I've (unfortunately) been programming in VBA for Excel for a couple of months, and it's buggy as hell."
Did you ever find out why it has a "shutdown Windows without asking to save" function?
I must say, I've never found the need to use such a function within an Excel macro.
"YES IT DOES! It's 1024 MiB that equals 1 GiB."
Your beloved MibiByte units were invented long after hard-drives became common, in fact they were invented as a reaction to the dishonest manufacturers who tried to redefine the megabyte to their advantage. At best, the wibi-units are a confusing compromise.
To quote an actual definition:
Computing
k and greater are common in computing, where they are applied to information and storage units like the bit and the byte. Since these come in powers of two, the prefixes' meaning changes:
K = 2^10 = 1,024
M = 2^20 = 1,048,576
G = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824
T = 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776
P = 2^50 = 1,125,899,906,842,624.
I (and thousands upon thousands of business travelers) end up having to fly one way, three legged trips all the fucking time, and we all become "terrorists".
Do you get a "suspected terrorist" pin-badge like Gilmore?
"Under this idiotic interpretation, Linux would clearly infringe on Unix simply because it works like it."
As would a tree because they've both got roots. Obiously there are some people here who realise where this case is headed, but hey, they patented the wheel, right?
"You KNOW this is someone's actual name. I feel so bad for him."
On the bright side, if your name was John Doe, you'd get filtered out of all the spam-lists and marketing databases:
"Huh, another joker with false info? Toss it out."
Of course, you might end up having to defend 57 million lawsuits with your name on them, but it would probably crash the court's computer if they convicted you.
"Anyway, this is a spammer people, dont click those links."
If you were to do a "while(1){ wget "link" }, it might activate some alarm bells at Amazon's script-detector, designed to clear the payment account of anyone who runs scripts on an amazon referer.
Of course, it might only trigger on a purchase.
"oh and don't forget to through in a t-shirt or to for all the hard work"
suggested second prize: a dictionary?
"Why is that ironic?"
Patent-holder says you can't use plug-ins.
One of the HTML presentation editors I saw was Phil Greenspun's (Link), which is hosted/server-based, and lets people log in to edit or display their presentations. It looks pretty 1990's until you apply one of the CSS styles to it.
Of course, it's possible that a standalone editor would suit many people better, but then doesn't KPresent export as HTML?
"It would mean I could get rid of the 'emergency Plan B' device I keep in my bedroom, one of those magnets they use to move cars."
BZZZ! (smash) Clink.
"Sir, my rifle has just disappeared into that bedroom window"
Like if you save as HTML from Abiword and open it in OpenOffice, or vice-versa, it doesn't display the source-code as text, right?
Right? How soon do we get an independant standard for Free Software word-processed documents?
"Much as it pains me to say it, Powerpoint has become almost indispensable"
C'mon, Powerpoint is a piddling little program that you could replace in a week, and several people have. Display a line of text on a pretty background, now there's a difficult task.
HTML slides seem to be the future. (KPresent and Impress notwithstanding) - even if you don't have a program to generate them, it's a 5-minute template job.
Scrolly effects and PING! sounds? You say you've use PPT for more than an hour, so I assume you've got over the novelty and don't use them
p.s. you can use your wallpapers directory as a good source of backgrounds for slides. (not that powerpoint supported that, the last time I looked; I discovered it in KPresent)
"I suppose you could go do the StarOffice pitch to your boss, the only problem I forsee is trying to keep up with M$ and their new ideas for keeping Office locked down..."
I find the "I need such-and-such features. You could pay $600, or I have this system which is available free..." tends to work quite well.
Of course, after the first "these 5000 documents are in Word97 format, and if we want Office2003, it'll cost 3 man-weeks to convert them" conversation, some people might have a serious think about file formats.
Keeping up with the latest file formats? Doesn't that cost $500 per year per computer, plus half a day of everyone's time? And for what? The feature-list hasn't changed in 8 years.
"Very cool... but not as cool as the breeder reactor this Boy Scout was cooking up."
Best quote from a TV article about that: "An Environmental team turned up in radiation suits, took his shed, and buried it in the Nevada desert..."
Garden lights? No, my shed glows in the dark...
"I'd definitely feel better just contacting security@mylinuxdistribution.com."
Why, does that resolve to VeriSign?
"But I'm a nudist you insensitive clod !"
Paint it on
(best not post the link... at work...)
"Cheap and environmentally friendly energy"
Okay... take the cost of a shuttle-launch. take the cost of a hydroelectric power station. Divide one from the other, and you get...
More than one?
"I've always wondered that if there were some crew memember aboard the ISS and something catastrophic happened to Earth how long could they survive?"
And (b) if something big enough to destroy Earthbourne life hit us, what are the odds of the space-station remaining in orbit? Even the ISS is affected by gravity...
The "off-planet backup" idea is the most logical (genetically-speaking) reason for a space programme, but it depends on being able to return to Earth by it's own resources. Would a permanently-manned space station with a re-entry pod be sufficient?
"But the controlled explosives brings home a key point: It takes a LOT of energy to get into orbit, and even more energy to leave orbit."
Well yeah, was the original post not made by someone who uses lots of controlled explosions to get from home to work everyday? What's so bad about explosions? It's the ones being dropped by the americans into hotels and homes you want to be worried about, not the ones powering rockets into space.
"The obvious answer is to redesign the passanger compartment to make it a properly grounded faraday cage."
The second most obvious answer is to just put the wiring inside structural metal components of the aircraft. Not only is this probably lighter than the 'faraday cage around the whole aircraft' idea, but it doesn't suffer from the "guy at the end of the runway with a big transmitter" problem.
And yes, it's already being done, on any modern aircraft.
Of course, this doesn't solve the "guy at the end of the runway with an ILS transmitter" problem, but hey, let's start with the perceived threats, and deal with the real ones later.
"Go take some flying lessons. You'll learn that..."
You trying to have the poor lad arrested/captured as a terrorist or something?
"That they do not have security holes is implausible, if not actually impossible, to prove"
I'd go for "impossible to prove": you can only be secure if you've guarded against any method an attacker can use. So no matter how much you guard against, you'll always be insecure against an attacker with more imagination than you. And imagination doesn't have an upper-bound. So you can't prove any system is secure.