You do realize, of course, that passwords are not the weakest link in computer security?
Users are.
No matter how good a password is, it can be compromised *instantly* if someone can use social engineering to either get it from the owner (e.g., "Hey, I need your password to check if this works...") or get the Sysadmin to change it back (e.g., "I am thusandso and I forgot my password, could you reset it for me please? I need to get some work done this evening but cannot log on..."
It's like with home security and a lock on a door. A weak lock can be forced or may even be left unlocked, but even a set of high-quality dead-bolts can fail if someone on the inside opens the door to let the intruder in or decides to leave a set of keys under the mat.
One of the problems I am seeing is that Lucas is attempting to back-reference *everything* in Episodes 4-6 and a few other things that cropped up in the Star Wars Universe.
So C3P0 and R2D2 come about when, in truth, there is no need for them. Fett's story is (re)created and explained (why not just use the story that was originally given and leave it out of the movies?), &c, &c.
He would likely have more luck if he wouldn't attempt to throw in everything for everyone and just try to write a story.
I will reserve judgment on this movie until I see it, however, some of the things that Lucas has been doing with the story in an effort to make it widely appeal are just frustrating.
1) Since it is attempting to model *climate* and not weather, 5 years is likely *far* too short of a time to verify the model for accuracy--*especially* if we are predicting 50 years into the future, 5 years is simply insufficient to validate.
2) We have 100 years of data to work with at this point. It isn't unreasonable that they could have built their assumptions/model from the first set (of fifty years), are using the second set to verify the subtle variations they have come up with and need to test for, and are actually gaining useful data from the third set.
I am doing agent-based modeling right now involving artificial societies: we create a set of assumptions (which is what the designers of this experiment have done and subtly varied) on the data that we have, then we run the simulation (in our case with variable starting conditions) and see if the end results come out within tolerances for what we know about real societies. (Heavily simplified, but you get the idea)
This is a fairly common technique for verifying a model.
The trick is anticipating problems before they occur. As another posted out, there is nothing that allows for an abort in the launch sequence and there are a long list of things that--should any of them go wrong--repair and getting the shuttle back to Earth with a living crew is going to be *nontrivial*.
The probability of any of them going wrong is actually fairly low (as our record as indicated with 10 deaths, and only 7 in the shuttle) and our ability to recoup is actually pretty good, but I think NASA wants a system in which *if* something does go wrong, they won't loose an astronaut.
>Apple's anti-Linux commercials. (Sending all >other UNIXes to/dev/null)
Actually I thought this was kind of cute. The add you refer to was not "anti-Linux" it was more "Pro-Apple".
There is a huge differance between going "your OS 5ux0rs!" and "We have a better OS than you!"
>Apple people laughing at X Window system
I don't know about other Mac users outside of the CS program at my department, but every one of them that I have spoken to inside of the department (an increasing number) run X-Windows on a daily basis and most certainly do not laugh at it.
That includes the people who have been using Macs since 1984 (me).
>while they know that Apple leech the community >and refuse to share Aqua.
I can't believe you just said this.
The Apple license is considered a true open source license (after much finagaling and a couple of revisions) and no0one forces you to work on it. On top of that, Darwin is as free as Linux and you can run KDE, GNome or any other shell that has been ported.
Why on *earth* should Apple give away Aqua, one of its major selling points? Remember also that if they don't protect their copyright, they *loose it*.
Also, last I checked, they weren't objecting overly to designs which look like Aqua: only to mimics which either used the Apple logo or were being sold.
Where are you getting that they are regularly tested and disproven by science?
Egad, some people.
PEAR, Boundary Institute, Journal of Parapsychology, Rhine Institute, do none of these organizations finding, repeated experiments, and peer reviewed journals count?
Its amazing how many people accept what they are told on blind faith without actually looking into the facts.
"A Wisconsin woman has blamed "EverQuest" in the suicide late last month of her 21-year-old son, who had a history of mental health problems and was an obsessive "EverQuest" player"
Okay, just because Psychos play a game does not mean that said game is a causal factor in making psychos.
How many years have we been saying this about D&D?
Netscape, at least some version of it (Classic 4.77), IS on my new iBook. It isn't Mozilla, but frankly I haven't been impressed with that so far anyways (good potential, we'll see if it comes through in later versions, but right now I am using OmniWeb and am *extremely* pleased with it).
I love it when people make broad statements without checking the facts.
"Before you feel all high and mighty I think I should point out that something likely 75% of all redhat boxes are rooted in the first 24 hours."
I have set up probobly 6 redhat boxes. None of which have been rooted at all in their life cycles while I was running them, much less in the first 24 hours. Most of them have not had the basic security work done on them in that time period, so lets check statistics...
Assuming a binomial distribution n = 6 and p =.75 the odds of none of them having been rooted in the first 24 hours is 244.141*10^-6
I didn't realize I was that much of a statistical anomaly.
0) I am not a Creationist, nor am I a member of an Abrahamic religion. Nor am I a fundamentalist of any sort.
1) Read the works of Robert Shapiro, along with the citations on the talk origins site I know you are referencing (there are two, incidentally, one of which is uncertain the other of which is positive in its conclusions).
2) As the above work will show, it isn't completely a guess as we actually know quite a bit about the processes involved.
3) If we can demonstrate a "proof by mathematical impossibility" and then further demonstrate that with a a chosen starting set it becomes possible but uncertain then we have evidence of Intelligent Design.
4) I am a proponent of Intelligent Design, but what I propose has nothing even remotely to do with Christianity--or any religion's interpretation on Creation.
Another poster has done a fabulous job of critiquing your post, so I'll leave the vast majority of it alone--partly because it is too much of a pain to break down without carriage returns.
Anyways, just one question for you.
Where in this universe did you get the idea that I was critiquing micro or macro evolution?
I was discussing abiogenesis, also known as Chemical Evolution.
None of which can cite their reasons--it is a matter of faith for the scientific community that such is true. I have yet to see one actually work with the probabilities involved and not either:
1) Have an error in the calculations or assumptions.
There is a great deal of doubt whether the mixture of gases used in this experiment actually existed on earth: it assumes a reducing atmosphere, among other things that geology does not tell us.
More than one geologist, in fact, has noted that the only reason that they believe that there ever was a reducing atmosphere on Earth is because life is obviously here and the basic building blocks couldn't form in the presence of Oxygen.
At the same time, however, those amino acids couldn't form without the presence of an ozone layer--which requires free oxygen.
This is interesting and intriguing because it shows how these blocks could form in deep space and then arrive on Earth--since we already know that they can remain intact in their descent through the atmosphere.
It still doesn't even come *close* to answer the criticisms levied against abiogenesis (the formation of proteins, functional alleles, &c), but it is interesting and extremely significant over the Urey-Miller experiment.
"I think this is proof against one of the arguments creationist wackos have been making for quite a long time"
Actually this does nothing of the sort.
What this shows is that the basic components of life--Amino Acids--/can/ be generated in a deep space environment. Whoop de do. The argument against abiogenisis (chemical evolution) stems from the following:
1) Probability versus chance of creating functional proteins. We don't know what this is, but we do know that it is incredibly small. The probability is so small, in fact, that no number of trials that could have occurred within the lifespan of the universe would be sufficient.
2) The number of mutations it takes to create a functional allele (what gives us different characteristics) is a *massive* number. The number of mutations it takes to make a functional allele "nonfunctional" is *one*.
3) It takes millions of mutations to create a hox gene. The number it takes to take one out is *trivial* by comparison.
This does not make the creationist argument correct, but it doesn't mean that this evidence of where Amino Acids can or cannot form lends credence to abiogenesis to the degree or diversity of life that we see.
"The `review' seems to be written to so obviously make Ep2 everything people wanted Ep1 to be? `This time, its great, fantastic, its perfect!' Bit too obvious."
It is missing one critical element to make it "perfect," and this lends the tiniest shred of possiability that this is a real script (however unlikely that might be).
Jar Jar Binks does not "die slowly, cut into a thousand pieces.":-p
Slashdot Mirror
You do realize, of course, that passwords are not the weakest link in computer security?
Users are.
No matter how good a password is, it can be compromised *instantly* if someone can use social engineering to either get it from the owner (e.g., "Hey, I need your password to check if this works...") or get the Sysadmin to change it back (e.g., "I am thusandso and I forgot my password, could you reset it for me please? I need to get some work done this evening but cannot log on..."
It's like with home security and a lock on a door. A weak lock can be forced or may even be left unlocked, but even a set of high-quality dead-bolts can fail if someone on the inside opens the door to let the intruder in or decides to leave a set of keys under the mat.
Humans are the weakest link, not passwords.
One of the problems I am seeing is that Lucas is attempting to back-reference *everything* in Episodes 4-6 and a few other things that cropped up in the Star Wars Universe.
So C3P0 and R2D2 come about when, in truth, there is no need for them. Fett's story is (re)created and explained (why not just use the story that was originally given and leave it out of the movies?), &c, &c.
He would likely have more luck if he wouldn't attempt to throw in everything for everyone and just try to write a story.
I will reserve judgment on this movie until I see it, however, some of the things that Lucas has been doing with the story in an effort to make it widely appeal are just frustrating.
"For instance, we have a really bad screenplay, that is acted really poorly for a really bad movie (so they say)."
Maybe I'm just not with it, but am I the only one who is reserving judgment on the movie until after I see it?
Someone "Luke, I am your Uncle" just doesn't have the same ring. Lucas is just really loosing his touch these days ;-)
You are missing a few things in this.
1) Since it is attempting to model *climate* and not weather, 5 years is likely *far* too short of a time to verify the model for accuracy--*especially* if we are predicting 50 years into the future, 5 years is simply insufficient to validate.
2) We have 100 years of data to work with at this point. It isn't unreasonable that they could have built their assumptions/model from the first set (of fifty years), are using the second set to verify the subtle variations they have come up with and need to test for, and are actually gaining useful data from the third set.
This is actually a fairly normal technique.
I am doing agent-based modeling right now involving artificial societies: we create a set of assumptions (which is what the designers of this experiment have done and subtly varied) on the data that we have, then we run the simulation (in our case with variable starting conditions) and see if the end results come out within tolerances for what we know about real societies. (Heavily simplified, but you get the idea)
This is a fairly common technique for verifying a model.
The trick is anticipating problems before they occur. As another posted out, there is nothing that allows for an abort in the launch sequence and there are a long list of things that--should any of them go wrong--repair and getting the shuttle back to Earth with a living crew is going to be *nontrivial*.
The probability of any of them going wrong is actually fairly low (as our record as indicated with 10 deaths, and only 7 in the shuttle) and our ability to recoup is actually pretty good, but I think NASA wants a system in which *if* something does go wrong, they won't loose an astronaut.
>Apple's anti-Linux commercials. (Sending all /dev/null)
>other UNIXes to
Actually I thought this was kind of cute. The add you refer to was not "anti-Linux" it was more "Pro-Apple".
There is a huge differance between going "your OS 5ux0rs!" and "We have a better OS than you!"
>Apple people laughing at X Window system
I don't know about other Mac users outside of the CS program at my department, but every one of them that I have spoken to inside of the department (an increasing number) run X-Windows on a daily basis and most certainly do not laugh at it.
That includes the people who have been using Macs since 1984 (me).
>while they know that Apple leech the community
>and refuse to share Aqua.
I can't believe you just said this.
The Apple license is considered a true open source license (after much finagaling and a couple of revisions) and no0one forces you to work on it. On top of that, Darwin is as free as Linux and you can run KDE, GNome or any other shell that has been ported.
Why on *earth* should Apple give away Aqua, one of its major selling points? Remember also that if they don't protect their copyright, they *loose it*.
Also, last I checked, they weren't objecting overly to designs which look like Aqua: only to mimics which either used the Apple logo or were being sold.
*Big* difference.
Where are you getting that they are regularly tested and disproven by science?
Egad, some people.
PEAR, Boundary Institute, Journal of Parapsychology, Rhine Institute, do none of these organizations finding, repeated experiments, and peer reviewed journals count?
Its amazing how many people accept what they are told on blind faith without actually looking into the facts.
Heh, if you would explain that to the good folks at the Colorado School of Masochism I would be most grateful :-p
"The real question, why would Apple want to show a GUI on the mac that you could use instead of it's own?"
Run it in rootless and it runs side-by-side with Aqua.
Here is why they would show it and I use it:
I can ssh into our local Math/Comp Sci cluster, load up xemacs on my laptop, and work remotely using XWindows applications.
Using OroborOSX I even get an Aqua appearance to the windows!
"A Wisconsin woman has blamed "EverQuest" in the suicide late last month of her 21-year-old son, who had a history of mental health problems and was an obsessive "EverQuest" player"
Okay, just because Psychos play a game does not mean that said game is a causal factor in making psychos.
How many years have we been saying this about D&D?
Netscape, at least some version of it (Classic 4.77), IS on my new iBook. It isn't Mozilla, but frankly I haven't been impressed with that so far anyways (good potential, we'll see if it comes through in later versions, but right now I am using OmniWeb and am *extremely* pleased with it).
I love it when people make broad statements without checking the facts.
"Before you feel all high and mighty I think I should point out that something likely 75% of all redhat boxes are rooted in the first 24 hours."
.75 the odds of none of them having been rooted in the first 24 hours is 244.141*10^-6
I have set up probobly 6 redhat boxes. None of which have been rooted at all in their life cycles while I was running them, much less in the first 24 hours. Most of them have not had the basic security work done on them in that time period, so lets check statistics...
Assuming a binomial distribution n = 6 and p =
I didn't realize I was that much of a statistical anomaly.
Amazing.
Just goes to show how little we truly know about what lives in the ocean. I'll be interested to see what their analysis is after they examine it.
0) I am not a Creationist, nor am I a member of an Abrahamic religion. Nor am I a fundamentalist of any sort.
1) Read the works of Robert Shapiro, along with the citations on the talk origins site I know you are referencing (there are two, incidentally, one of which is uncertain the other of which is positive in its conclusions).
2) As the above work will show, it isn't completely a guess as we actually know quite a bit about the processes involved.
3) If we can demonstrate a "proof by mathematical impossibility" and then further demonstrate that with a a chosen starting set it becomes possible but uncertain then we have evidence of Intelligent Design.
4) I am a proponent of Intelligent Design, but what I propose has nothing even remotely to do with Christianity--or any religion's interpretation on Creation.
Another poster has done a fabulous job of critiquing your post, so I'll leave the vast majority of it alone--partly because it is too much of a pain to break down without carriage returns.
/then/ write.
Anyways, just one question for you.
Where in this universe did you get the idea that I was critiquing micro or macro evolution?
I was discussing abiogenesis, also known as Chemical Evolution.
The proper order is read
None of which can cite their reasons--it is a matter of faith for the scientific community that such is true. I have yet to see one actually work with the probabilities involved and not either:
1) Have an error in the calculations or assumptions.
2) Come up with the opposite conclusion.
There is a great deal of doubt whether the mixture of gases used in this experiment actually existed on earth: it assumes a reducing atmosphere, among other things that geology does not tell us.
More than one geologist, in fact, has noted that the only reason that they believe that there ever was a reducing atmosphere on Earth is because life is obviously here and the basic building blocks couldn't form in the presence of Oxygen.
At the same time, however, those amino acids couldn't form without the presence of an ozone layer--which requires free oxygen.
This is interesting and intriguing because it shows how these blocks could form in deep space and then arrive on Earth--since we already know that they can remain intact in their descent through the atmosphere.
It still doesn't even come *close* to answer the criticisms levied against abiogenesis (the formation of proteins, functional alleles, &c), but it is interesting and extremely significant over the Urey-Miller experiment.
Prefix: I am not a Creationist.
"I think this is proof against one of the arguments creationist wackos have been making for quite a long time"
Actually this does nothing of the sort.
What this shows is that the basic components of life--Amino Acids--/can/ be generated in a deep space environment. Whoop de do. The argument against abiogenisis (chemical evolution) stems from the following:
1) Probability versus chance of creating functional proteins. We don't know what this is, but we do know that it is incredibly small. The probability is so small, in fact, that no number of trials that could have occurred within the lifespan of the universe would be sufficient.
2) The number of mutations it takes to create a functional allele (what gives us different characteristics) is a *massive* number. The number of mutations it takes to make a functional allele "nonfunctional" is *one*.
3) It takes millions of mutations to create a hox gene. The number it takes to take one out is *trivial* by comparison.
This does not make the creationist argument correct, but it doesn't mean that this evidence of where Amino Acids can or cannot form lends credence to abiogenesis to the degree or diversity of life that we see.
Your experience, in essence, is not the norm for mac users.
My own experience is that a 300 MHz G3 will blow a 500 MHz Pentium out of the water, thats running MacOS 9.
System configurations matter, memory matters, &c.
"Bad design or stupid user? Hmm."
PEBKAC
Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.
"The `review' seems to be written to so obviously make Ep2 everything people wanted Ep1 to be? `This time, its great, fantastic, its perfect!' Bit too obvious."
:-p
It is missing one critical element to make it "perfect," and this lends the tiniest shred of possiability that this is a real script (however unlikely that might be).
Jar Jar Binks does not "die slowly, cut into a thousand pieces."
You forgot the hot grits.
::nog me::
Okay, I am *way* too tired for my own good.
I thought this too, then I thought to myself self:
"Self, who am I fooling? I would go see it if it was titled `Episode II: Jar Jar's Revenge'"