My guess is that they are making cash off of the App store, that they'd like to keep, but this isn't the point... If everybody uses their jailbroken device to install apps without paying for them, the incentive to develop for the iPhone kinda disappears.
No developers == no (or at least less) apps created without effort on the part of Apple. I think they must really enjoy the idea of sitting back, waiting to see what the unpaid minions will come up with... it's a nice position to be in, one which adds a lot value to their devices without any serious costs.
The incentive to defend the model is obvious. But I can tell you that when you develop an app that has a web-based component to it, and you find that the majority of your users haven't even bothered to pay $0.99 but really want to eat up your bandwidth and you can't even tell the difference between a legit and cracked app, it really makes you consider moving on to another platform. In cases like this, you're not just losing *potential* profits (which is debatable anyway), releasing the app is actually costing you real dollars... Double plus ungood.
For my part, I wish they'd throttle down the lawyers and focus on at least give devs a way to know which devices have actually bought the app. Wouldn't solve the cracked app install problem, but would at least avoid the case where you end up in the red because of server costs.
From the site's page on computing: The Large Hadron Collider will produce roughly 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data annually - enough to fill more than 1.7 million dual-layer DVDs a year!
Those sneakers might need to be replaced pretty quick...
I just sympathize with people getting blamed for things well beyond their control.
I completely agree. My main problem is that as a consumer, end-user, whatever there is simply no way, ever, to deal directly with someone who actually does have control.
Products are created in such a distributed manner and we are so far removed from anyone with the power or the balls to take some personal responsibility that almost everyone can and will hide behind the "I don't have any control over that, I'm just doing my job" excuse.
Gladly, it seems there are some exceptions... I've yet to try the whole apple store genius thing but the idea that, even if we can't go ask the head honchos at apple to fix issue XYZ, they have arranged to make it not only doable but easy to get some help sounds great. I need to purchase a Mac for some dev work and this goes a long way towards making the pricetag easier to ingest.
Well, if you listen to a device broadcast enough, particularly if you listen in on a conversation between it and what it's supposed to talk to...doesn't it then become relatively simple [...]
To me, that's like saying SSH is easy to crack if you can just listen in on it... but the whole idea is that the (encrypted) conversation can be eavesdropped upon without compromising the data being exchanged.
Not sure how exactly the PUF thing is supposed to work, but it's imaginable to "generate" unique keys based on anything, even physical imperfections in the chips... the account is then somehow setup (say, when you activate your credit card or whatever) without ever exposing the key itself (only the chip ever knows it, only using it to generate interesting numbers for the peer). Thus, you can intercept all you want, you'll never see the unique secret key go by.
All this wouldn't mean it's literally unclonable... the key exchange, generation, whatever may well be vulnerable to crypto attacks in the end. But you couldn't just swipe someone's butt and go on to make purchases like you can at the moment.
I gather the idea is that the singularity is the point at which the rate of change is so great that it's almost "vertical", and I'm not sure this would look that way even to proto-humans.
Not every point along the exponential curve is deemed a singularity, it's just part of the process of accelerating returns (use advance X as a stepping stone to create advance Y, and do so in less time than it took you to get to X. Lather, rinse, repeat. faster and faster).
You're right, of course. Problem is mainly that it's one of those "if everybody does X, all will be fine" solutions.
Right now, all sites that provide for image uploads would need to act or all users would have to disable Java. Reminiscent of the recent DNS caching issue, or 3/4 of the proposed solutions for spam... there's a long turnaround, if it works out at all.
And if we somehow made the applet file format different, more strict to avoid it masquerading as another file type, how would that affect the jillion existing applets? Not sure if a simple solution exists.
OK, so this attack can allow bad guys to put java applets in web pages which appear to be GIF images. So what? You can already put a java applet directly in a web page.
Indeed.
But you can't normally put your own custom applet up and have it downloaded and run from somewhere under, say, facebook.com. This has implications... the simplest to imagine is that your browser will gladly provide facebook cookies to facebook applets--which is why this particularly affects the type of sites where people stay logged in all day.
though the very first cloned animal was a sheep named Dolly
What?
Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell. I think the first cloned animal (if you don't, not counting bacteria and other things that do it on their own) was a tadpole in the 1950s.
All I want to say is hopefully their science is better than their english and/or translators.
Wow.
You seem to be under the impression that we native English speakers are and will continue to be the center of the world.
We'll be lucky if the countries that are actually interested and doing real science and exploration keep bothering to tell us what's going on, even if the english is bad. We're too busy catering to the lowest common denominator by pouring all our collective energy into making every single part of life drool proof and safe, encouraging the impression that anything that's difficult or complex should be avoided.
That's too dangerous. It's not that we'd like them to contribute to scientific advancement--it's that they'll stop it dead in its tracks if they're clueless/fearful/ignorant and some guru/politician/power-hungry-jerk abuses they irrationality for personal gain.
For many reasons, we--the scientist and scientifically minded--kind of gave up on trying to explain our understanding and objectives to the "layman" and now the rift between us just keeps growing... this is bad because sheeple they may be, but they elect those who set the rules and decide where funding goes (think stem cell research, etc.).
Just like with racism or other unacceptable behavior, I always speak up and try to get across my point of view when faced with the irrational. At a minimum, I'm showing them that there is an alternate point of view, that not everyone agrees--usually only the fanatics are heard because they tend to speak most and loudest... Time to be heard!
I, for one, would rather see spammers using my free software than a religious org of any flavor (spammers, in my opinion, have a less detrimental effect on society in the long term and their forms of torture are at least tolerable... plus they've yet to start a war or blow stuff up).
I'd be much more tolerant if these charities weren't just public relations stunts--I mean, unless "Christian's Aid" is really to help some guy called Chris...
Last I checked, in the last decade(decades?), just taking a ride in a stranger's car (and vice versa) was pretty much out of the question if you valued your ass.
You are correct, but it is only the perception of risk which has increased, not the actual risks. There are now 6 billion of us on this rock, and we hear about every bus accident and anal rape and then we fantasize about many more in our fiction on TV and in film.
In real life, the number of "horrible-things-that-happen per person per day" has decreased dramatically... our fertility hasn't changed much (we didn't all of a sudden start having triplets) except to decrease in some places, so how is it we are attaining such high population densities? (yes, I understand exponential growth... But this doesn't happen to all life (else we'd be drowning in bacteria), something normally limits populations. Could it be that, on average, we are safer than before (from all risks, famine & disease to murder at the hands of highway robbers)?
People who've never even spoken to someone on one of these sites are all obsessing about how many bad people there are in the world... We keep focusing on serial killers and terrorists--sheesh, enough! Time to get our risk evaluations straight, and maybe live a little on the side. Time to read "If only gay sex caused global warming" again...
Last I checked, in the last decade(decades?), just taking a ride in a stranger's car (and vice versa) was pretty much out of the question if you valued your ass.
You are correct, but it is only the perception of risk which has increased, not the actual risks. There are now 6 billion of us on this rock, and we hear about every bus accident and anal rape and then we fantasize about many more in our fiction on TV and in film.
In real life, the number of "horrible-things-that-happen per person per day" has decreased dramatically... our fertility hasn't changed much (we didn't all of a sudden start having triplets) except to decrease in some places, so how is it we are attaining such high population densities? (yes, I understand exponential growth... But this doesn't happen to all life (else we'd be drowning in bacteria), something normally limits populations. Could it be that, on average, we are safer than before (from all risks, famine & disease to murder at the hands of highway robbers)?
People who've never even spoken to someone on one of these sites are all obsessing about how many bad people there are in the world... We keep focusing on serial killers and terrorists--sheesh, enough! Time to get our risk evaluations straight, and maybe live a little on the side. Time to read "If only gay sex caused global warming" again...
I'm relatively new to couchsurfing but all my experiences to date (various parties, activities and actual couchsurfing) has been better than positive--the folks are open, fun and intelligent.
As a guy, my risk of encountering predators may be reduced... but really, I think it's articles like the above that will attract the crackpots instead of relying on word of mouth to get the message to interesting folks.
Why bother storing the passphrase. If you enter the wrong passphrase, the output of the drive will simply be scrambled and unreadable/unbootable. I suppose that they may include a passphrase check for user-friendlyness though
Makes sense. But to get the user-friendlyness I'd just stick a hash on the drive somewhere "reserved" say, to avoid needing an eeprom...
I wonder if this could work nicely:
Take the original passphrase and hash it.
Encrypt the resulting hash using that same passphrase and store it on the drive or wherever.
When they log in, you just reverse it
Decrypt the hash on the drive using the entered passphrase and
compare the result with the newly calculated hash.
This provides for your passphrase check and, at first glance, seems harder to work around. But I dunno, I'm not cypherpunk...
I use WorkRave to force myself to take regular breaks and get my "10 to 12 seconds" of wrist relief.
The program can be a real pain when it's getting late and I'm rushing to meet a deadline--but this is where I need it most... You can configure "micro-breaks" as described above, longer rest breaks and even a daily limit. And the program is smart enough to only calculate the time you are actually on the system.
Try it out--it's free software and has Linux and windows versions available for download.
Not sure why the release of this particular set of plans is news, really. There are a ton of guides for DIY projectors, that go from simple fresnel based systems, through LCD + overhead projector, all the way to building the whole thing yourself.
A thinly disguised means of putting a GPS leash on your kids... My guess is the pet angle just makes it look more friendly/gets more press, whereas the paranoid parent market will be the real revenue generator.
bleurk. Must be nice to be treated like a parolee by your parents... really inculcates that sense of responsibility. Ah well, you get the kids you deserve--and then we all deal with the consequences.
I've found that, once you've covered the very basics:
learning to touch type;
learning to get the most out of command line;
mastering favorite shell features (expansions, for loops, etc.);
learning to use screen.
The main trick is to keep your thoughts focused by getting into a few habits. I also use a dual head system but with 8 different workspaces setup in the workspace switcher (so a total of 16 virtual screens). In order to get the most out of this system, I actually use the switcher's facility for naming the workspaces and change them from the usual 1,2,3..8 to something meaningful. When I work on a new project, I rename the workspaces if necessary and then, for instance, always open the libraryXYZ project in my IDE in the correctly named space.
If you use Gnome Terminal, learn to use the Profiles facility and color code or at least name different terminal windows/tabs. You can even associate custom commands to run, rather than the shell (for instance, one of my profiles launches something like "ssh -C -L3128:localhost:3128 -L10025:localhost:25 -L... remotebox" to tunnel important activity through SSH so all I need is double click an icon). Pretty much every terminal app has facilities for doing this. Create Profiles for repetitive tasks and use shortcuts on your desktop to activate them.
You might also consider reserving blocks of time in which to shutdown gaim, your email client and phone.
Could you please clarify the difference by pointing out some other types of replicators found here on Earth that are not tools used by life forms?
My statement doesn't imply that there are replicators on earth not used by life forms (avoiding the whole question of "life forms" was the point... also, it is very arguable that things are actually the other way around: life forms are the tools used by, at least some, replicators).
What I was pointing out is that replicators are the necessary and sufficient condition for evolution, not DNA or life forms.
If you wish to equate "life form" with "replicator", that is fine by me (though this can lead to the interesting situation where the human body is host to two life forms--genetic and memetic replicators). If you instead choose not to equate replicator and life form, then I'd submit that viruses are nothing but replicators and that they evidently do evolve.
It is an interesting question (that of defining/delineating the realm of what is considered "alive", such as with viruses) that has a tendency to lead to endless debate. Regardless, my comment was an attempt to underscore that we do not need:
DNA, or even
"life"
in order to have evolution (unless of course you define "life forms" in terms of being replicators). Some nice sites are listed in the first few hits here that may be useful in exploring replicators further.
And if you don't have DNA, you don't have imperfectly-replicating life forms, which means that you don't have evolution
This statement is baseless, unless you make certain implications about what a "life form" is. In any case, evolution isn't about life forms it's about replicators and DNA is but the mechanism used by one type of replicator here on earth.
Slashdot Mirror
P.S. I get that they're user selected mnemonics... it's mostly that I'd have a pretty hard time assigning meaning to most of the generated blobs...
According to this challenge, I'm totally failing the Turing test. Is http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jblocki/GOTCHA-Challenge_files/Account%200Inkblot4.jpg really a "robot on a skateboard like thing" to anyone here? What am I missing?
My guess is that they are making cash off of the App store, that they'd like to keep, but this isn't the point... If everybody uses their jailbroken device to install apps without paying for them, the incentive to develop for the iPhone kinda disappears.
No developers == no (or at least less) apps created without effort on the part of Apple. I think they must really enjoy the idea of sitting back, waiting to see what the unpaid minions will come up with... it's a nice position to be in, one which adds a lot value to their devices without any serious costs.
The incentive to defend the model is obvious. But I can tell you that when you develop an app that has a web-based component to it, and you find that the majority of your users haven't even bothered to pay $0.99 but really want to eat up your bandwidth and you can't even tell the difference between a legit and cracked app, it really makes you consider moving on to another platform. In cases like this, you're not just losing *potential* profits (which is debatable anyway), releasing the app is actually costing you real dollars... Double plus ungood.
For my part, I wish they'd throttle down the lawyers and focus on at least give devs a way to know which devices have actually bought the app. Wouldn't solve the cracked app install problem, but would at least avoid the case where you end up in the red because of server costs.
From the site's page on computing: The Large Hadron Collider will produce roughly 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data annually - enough to fill more than 1.7 million dual-layer DVDs a year!
Those sneakers might need to be replaced pretty quick...
I just sympathize with people getting blamed for things well beyond their control.
I completely agree. My main problem is that as a consumer, end-user, whatever there is simply no way, ever, to deal directly with someone who actually does have control.
Products are created in such a distributed manner and we are so far removed from anyone with the power or the balls to take some personal responsibility that almost everyone can and will hide behind the "I don't have any control over that, I'm just doing my job" excuse.
Gladly, it seems there are some exceptions... I've yet to try the whole apple store genius thing but the idea that, even if we can't go ask the head honchos at apple to fix issue XYZ, they have arranged to make it not only doable but easy to get some help sounds great. I need to purchase a Mac for some dev work and this goes a long way towards making the pricetag easier to ingest.
Well, if you listen to a device broadcast enough, particularly if you listen in on a conversation between it and what it's supposed to talk to...doesn't it then become relatively simple [...]
To me, that's like saying SSH is easy to crack if you can just listen in on it... but the whole idea is that the (encrypted) conversation can be eavesdropped upon without compromising the data being exchanged.
Not sure how exactly the PUF thing is supposed to work, but it's imaginable to "generate" unique keys based on anything, even physical imperfections in the chips... the account is then somehow setup (say, when you activate your credit card or whatever) without ever exposing the key itself (only the chip ever knows it, only using it to generate interesting numbers for the peer). Thus, you can intercept all you want, you'll never see the unique secret key go by.
All this wouldn't mean it's literally unclonable... the key exchange, generation, whatever may well be vulnerable to crypto attacks in the end. But you couldn't just swipe someone's butt and go on to make purchases like you can at the moment.
Not sure it would qualify as "a singularity"...
I gather the idea is that the singularity is the point at which the rate of change is so great that it's almost "vertical", and I'm not sure this would look that way even to proto-humans.
Not every point along the exponential curve is deemed a singularity, it's just part of the process of accelerating returns (use advance X as a stepping stone to create advance Y, and do so in less time than it took you to get to X. Lather, rinse, repeat. faster and faster).
You're right, of course. Problem is mainly that it's one of those "if everybody does X, all will be fine" solutions.
Right now, all sites that provide for image uploads would need to act or all users would have to disable Java. Reminiscent of the recent DNS caching issue, or 3/4 of the proposed solutions for spam... there's a long turnaround, if it works out at all.
And if we somehow made the applet file format different, more strict to avoid it masquerading as another file type, how would that affect the jillion existing applets? Not sure if a simple solution exists.
Indeed.
But you can't normally put your own custom applet up and have it downloaded and run from somewhere under, say, facebook.com. This has implications... the simplest to imagine is that your browser will gladly provide facebook cookies to facebook applets--which is why this particularly affects the type of sites where people stay logged in all day.
Maybe because we already know it's all about mormons in space?
What?
Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell. I think the first cloned animal (if you don't, not counting bacteria and other things that do it on their own) was a tadpole in the 1950s.
Wow.
You seem to be under the impression that we native English speakers are and will continue to be the center of the world.
We'll be lucky if the countries that are actually interested and doing real science and exploration keep bothering to tell us what's going on, even if the english is bad. We're too busy catering to the lowest common denominator by pouring all our collective energy into making every single part of life drool proof and safe, encouraging the impression that anything that's difficult or complex should be avoided.
That's too dangerous. It's not that we'd like them to contribute to scientific advancement--it's that they'll stop it dead in its tracks if they're clueless/fearful/ignorant and some guru/politician/power-hungry-jerk abuses they irrationality for personal gain.
For many reasons, we--the scientist and scientifically minded--kind of gave up on trying to explain our understanding and objectives to the "layman" and now the rift between us just keeps growing... this is bad because sheeple they may be, but they elect those who set the rules and decide where funding goes (think stem cell research, etc.).
Just like with racism or other unacceptable behavior, I always speak up and try to get across my point of view when faced with the irrational. At a minimum, I'm showing them that there is an alternate point of view, that not everyone agrees--usually only the fanatics are heard because they tend to speak most and loudest... Time to be heard!
Here's my inflammatory two cents:
I, for one, would rather see spammers using my free software than a religious org of any flavor (spammers, in my opinion, have a less detrimental effect on society in the long term and their forms of torture are at least tolerable... plus they've yet to start a war or blow stuff up).
I'd be much more tolerant if these charities weren't just public relations stunts--I mean, unless "Christian's Aid" is really to help some guy called Chris...
You are correct, but it is only the perception of risk which has increased, not the actual risks. There are now 6 billion of us on this rock, and we hear about every bus accident and anal rape and then we fantasize about many more in our fiction on TV and in film.
In real life, the number of "horrible-things-that-happen per person per day" has decreased dramatically... our fertility hasn't changed much (we didn't all of a sudden start having triplets) except to decrease in some places, so how is it we are attaining such high population densities? (yes, I understand exponential growth... But this doesn't happen to all life (else we'd be drowning in bacteria), something normally limits populations. Could it be that, on average, we are safer than before (from all risks, famine & disease to murder at the hands of highway robbers)?
People who've never even spoken to someone on one of these sites are all obsessing about how many bad people there are in the world... We keep focusing on serial killers and terrorists--sheesh, enough! Time to get our risk evaluations straight, and maybe live a little on the side. Time to read "If only gay sex caused global warming" again...
Last I checked, in the last decade(decades?), just taking a ride in a stranger's car (and vice versa) was pretty much out of the question if you valued your ass.
You are correct, but it is only the perception of risk which has increased, not the actual risks. There are now 6 billion of us on this rock, and we hear about every bus accident and anal rape and then we fantasize about many more in our fiction on TV and in film.
In real life, the number of "horrible-things-that-happen per person per day" has decreased dramatically... our fertility hasn't changed much (we didn't all of a sudden start having triplets) except to decrease in some places, so how is it we are attaining such high population densities? (yes, I understand exponential growth... But this doesn't happen to all life (else we'd be drowning in bacteria), something normally limits populations. Could it be that, on average, we are safer than before (from all risks, famine & disease to murder at the hands of highway robbers)?
People who've never even spoken to someone on one of these sites are all obsessing about how many bad people there are in the world... We keep focusing on serial killers and terrorists--sheesh, enough! Time to get our risk evaluations straight, and maybe live a little on the side. Time to read "If only gay sex caused global warming" again...
I'm relatively new to couchsurfing but all my experiences to date (various parties, activities and actual couchsurfing) has been better than positive--the folks are open, fun and intelligent.
As a guy, my risk of encountering predators may be reduced... but really, I think it's articles like the above that will attract the crackpots instead of relying on word of mouth to get the message to interesting folks.
Why bother storing the passphrase. If you enter the wrong passphrase, the output of the drive will simply be scrambled and unreadable/unbootable. I suppose that they may include a passphrase check for user-friendlyness though
Makes sense. But to get the user-friendlyness I'd just stick a hash on the drive somewhere "reserved" say, to avoid needing an eeprom...
I wonder if this could work nicely:
When they log in, you just reverse it
This provides for your passphrase check and, at first glance, seems harder to work around. But I dunno, I'm not cypherpunk...
Too much flash (8!) for my taste, no images... if there was an obvious way to export the data it'd be more useful to me dumped into a MySQL db.
I use WorkRave to force myself to take regular breaks and get my "10 to 12 seconds" of wrist relief.
The program can be a real pain when it's getting late and I'm rushing to meet a deadline--but this is where I need it most... You can configure "micro-breaks" as described above, longer rest breaks and even a daily limit. And the program is smart enough to only calculate the time you are actually on the system.
Try it out--it's free software and has Linux and windows versions available for download.
Not sure why the release of this particular set of plans is news, really. There are a ton of guides for DIY projectors, that go from simple fresnel based systems, through LCD + overhead projector, all the way to building the whole thing yourself.
FYI, see:
- Building a Home Theater (a guide and study of my own experience)
- Operation: Big Screen, using an OHP
- Inventgeek's guide
- Building an LCD projector from the ground up
And there are many more, just a g00gle away...A thinly disguised means of putting a GPS leash on your kids... My guess is the pet angle just makes it look more friendly/gets more press, whereas the paranoid parent market will be the real revenue generator.
bleurk. Must be nice to be treated like a parolee by your parents... really inculcates that sense of responsibility. Ah well, you get the kids you deserve--and then we all deal with the consequences.
The main trick is to keep your thoughts focused by getting into a few habits. I also use a dual head system but with 8 different workspaces setup in the workspace switcher (so a total of 16 virtual screens). In order to get the most out of this system, I actually use the switcher's facility for naming the workspaces and change them from the usual 1,2,3..8 to something meaningful. When I work on a new project, I rename the workspaces if necessary and then, for instance, always open the libraryXYZ project in my IDE in the correctly named space.
If you use Gnome Terminal, learn to use the Profiles facility and color code or at least name different terminal windows/tabs. You can even associate custom commands to run, rather than the shell (for instance, one of my profiles launches something like "ssh -C -L3128:localhost:3128 -L10025:localhost:25 -L... remotebox" to tunnel important activity through SSH so all I need is double click an icon). Pretty much every terminal app has facilities for doing this. Create Profiles for repetitive tasks and use shortcuts on your desktop to activate them.
You might also consider reserving blocks of time in which to shutdown gaim, your email client and phone.
HTH
My statement doesn't imply that there are replicators on earth not used by life forms (avoiding the whole question of "life forms" was the point... also, it is very arguable that things are actually the other way around: life forms are the tools used by, at least some, replicators).
What I was pointing out is that replicators are the necessary and sufficient condition for evolution, not DNA or life forms.
If you wish to equate "life form" with "replicator", that is fine by me (though this can lead to the interesting situation where the human body is host to two life forms--genetic and memetic replicators). If you instead choose not to equate replicator and life form, then I'd submit that viruses are nothing but replicators and that they evidently do evolve.
It is an interesting question (that of defining/delineating the realm of what is considered "alive", such as with viruses) that has a tendency to lead to endless debate. Regardless, my comment was an attempt to underscore that we do not need:
in order to have evolution (unless of course you define "life forms" in terms of being replicators). Some nice sites are listed in the first few hits here that may be useful in exploring replicators further.
Regards.This statement is baseless, unless you make certain implications about what a "life form" is. In any case, evolution isn't about life forms it's about replicators and DNA is but the mechanism used by one type of replicator here on earth.
Have a look at Dawkins' Selfish Gene or Blackmore's Meme Machine for some good explanations of replicators and their evolutionary powers.