ar.atwola.com, whoever they are, who serve ads for cnn.com. CNN seems to be served by a nice fast server cluster, but then their ads are served by a Pentium III with a flaky network card.
That's the first one I not only ad blocked, but set up a hosts file to block entirely, just so the pages would load.
Everyone at my company, even the founder and CEO, has a cube. But, we're allowed a lot of leeway to define our cube in our own way. In my group, we actually chose half walls so that we could more easily talk to each other.
*Kid screams out in pain downstairs, having tripped and fell, or been punched by brother, etc.*
*Run downstairs and deal with them for 30 minutes*
*Return to view movie again, to find it unable to play again*
Doh
Re:Biometrics not the solution
on
Too Many Passwords
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Yes, fake fingerprints or retina are a problem for biometrics.
But, a bigger problem (for now) is someone cracking your database of biometric data, and being able to retrieve the information you store to identify people. This is why there is research into Replaceable Biometrics.
If the stored database cannot be related to the person, then again a criminal is forced to go directly to the source (you) to copy or steal the finger or retina. Ideally, they would then be stopped by not knowing your password, or not having your key. If a criminal has all three, such as by kidnapping your children and forcing you to retrieve the data yourself, then there is still a fourth identification option:
* Something you do (i.e. something out of the ordinary that draws attention to yourself)
If you walk in and say "Hello Bob" to the security guard every day, and today you say "Hello Jim", maybe he will know something is up and alert the police. Or, maybe the security guard simply notices that you are sweating or looking very nervous, and investigates without you intentinally alerting him at all.
I've tried to build second computers out of primary ones. It usually doesn't work, because I'm replacing a part of the primary system for a reason. (Last upgrade, I had random blue screens that were a bug in the north bridge chip I think, possibly caused by overheating. That machine ran very hot. Upgrade before that, the video card shorted while on the motherboard.)
I do have a second machine, but I maintain its upgrade schedule separately.
... and even this wouldn't kill off all theaters. Heck, I've been waiting for a good movie to release, because I want to go back to the Alamo Drafthouse for dinner.
This is why, once I got over my concerns with leaving my car unattended with the top down, I found it easy to leave it with the windows rolled down, too.
"Hey opportunistic thieves! There's nothing in my car worth taking, see? But hey, that other car over there, the one with its windows up. They must be protecting something?"
The cost of replacing a broken window is higher than the cost of replacing my driving sunglasses or mini flashlight or US atlas. If someone really wanted them enough to steal them, they can have them.
When I went to college, I bought a new computer with a 750 MB drive.
When that filled up after THREE years, I bought a new computer with a 7 GB drive. Keeping the smaller drive around and installed is pointless, given how drastically larger the new drive is.
When that filled up after 2-3 years, I built a computer with a 40 GB drive. 2-3 years later, I rebuilt with a 200 GB drive.
With the exponential growth in hard drive size, very few people ever *need* the space that their old drive provides.
(FWIW, all my old drives are still sitting on a shelf above my desk. I cannot stand the thought of destroying a perfectly good drive, but I don't feel like going back and verifying that they are all clean before giving them away.)
You seem to think it means "invent". That is just a narrow interpretation.
Gore meant "secure funding for and push for its development", which a very good definition.
Read up higher in this very thread. See how it says that "Tesla's AC beat out Edison's DC". You could say that "George Westinghouse took the initiative in creating the power grid" even though George invented nothing. Instead, George listened to Tesla, agreed that it was important, and funded him.
Making heat for your home can be more than 100% efficient.
An electric space heater is nearly 100% efficient. The only waste is the part in the visible spectrum that glows on you. On the other hand, a heat pump (Wikipedia's article is pretty bad, but there ya go.) is more than 100% efficient. The amount of heat moved from the outside air into your house is greater than the amount of energy supplied to your heat pump by the power company.
(Of course, the heat pump isn't creating energy, it is just moving it about efficiently. But if your goal is to "heat the space" as you suggest, a heat pump is much more efficient than an IR heater.)
The road for OpenOffice to become "user friendly" on the desktop is not paved with a downloadable Windows binary.
This is a step in the wrong direction. How will OpenOffice improve the rise of free software if the people who are migrating to it still use Microsoft Windows?
(Sounds silly, right? Most people want continuity, not a clean break. Some will want continuity in the applications, some will want continuity in the operating system. Make both available.)
I have been using Xandros Desktop 2.0 on my second PC at home for a few years. It is our home server, but I also use it as a secondary machine while World of Warcraft is up on my main computer.
Let's just say that, while I use OpenOffice's writer, its spreadsheet program was lacking features I required. So I popped in my Excel CD and installed it. Woo. I never have to reboot that machine into Windows. Actually, I need to recover the Windows partition to add more space for Linux.
Win win for Linux. Success!
I installed several other Windows apps on the machine, too, but in the end I haven't needed them. Just Excel and I'm happy.
...and yet none of the examples given in the story actually involve him using a network sniffer. Indeed, all he used was his own ingenuity and his non-descript looks.
Much like a "computer" was a person who computes, long before there were machines of that name, you could call a "sniffer" one who seeks out information, without the need for a computer.
Funny though, the stuff he describes is basically the same stuff that Kevin Mitnick described as to how he could acquire his own information. Given that, as far as I remember, he also provides security consulting services, I guess they are in the same business.
SBC already offers a bundles package of: Home phone service Long distance DSL internet service Dish Network satellite TV Cingular Wireless phone service
It seems that the cable companies are trying to catch up to DSL, not the other way around.
If cable can integrate their content onto the phones as the article suggests, maybe they will pull ahead.
Indeed. After working in publishing for years, my father bought a PC instead of a Mac as he was used to. Fast forward four years, and I would love to buy him a Mac to get him something he would be happier with. A Mac mini is perfect... but this card is pitiful. I don't want to give him something that can't be easily upgraded that starts out this poor.
Sad, sad. Apple might have just lost a sale for Christmas.
Incidentally, I've thought about moving to one at home, too, but with this video card it can't play World of Warcraft. =(
You pull your house off of the grid, and you can do whatever you want to with the wiring in your house.
As long as you choose to attach to the public electric grid (privately owned or not, there is public interest in its upkeep), you have to accept some level of oversight of the things you do in your house. For example, if you chose to use equipment that had a really bad power factor (i.e. voltage and current were out of phase), the power company could and would order you to adjust your load. Or, if your tweakings injected noise back onto the grid, they would make you fix it or cut you off.
>> We must keep it in mind that Disney is a private corporation and is able to set barriers to access to its parks. As long as they're not discriminating based on protected categories, their requirement for fingerprints must be protested with lack of patronage but little else.
Errr.. but the government can and should set limitations on what data companies can or cannot collect about us.
What if Disney required your home address and social security number to enter their park? You know that some people would provide that, stupid as it may be. Instead, the government has laws that limit who can require your social security number.
Or, what if Disney asked for a list of all medications you take before you enter the park. They could, but there are laws that limit the extent to which they can force you to comply, and the limit to which they could share information provided.
In other words, the government can and should limit the abilites of private corporations to store and share personal information. That's one of the things I want it to do. They just don't do enough of it these days. And biometric data like fingerprints is one of the main things that should be protected.
---------
All that said, supposedly this is just a hand shape scanner anyway, so this is moot.
And I don't buy your argument that private schools should be held to the same standard as public schools just because they receive public funding - plenty of students at private universities receive publicly-funded scholarships and nobody's arguing that they should have to be run like public universities.
.... and those private universities are accredited by the same agencies that accredit public universities. In other words, they are held to the same standards.
I posted this once before, but it is appropriate in this thread again.
------
Consider how academic and athletic achievement are recognized so differently.
For example, a student athlete has their records published in the newspaper, the yearbook, and is recognized at student events. The student athletes that aren't as good don't get as much recognition, but their performances are public record as well.
Contrast this with schools that are having to eliminate 'A' and 'B' honor rolls, because publication of such rolls shows that everyone not on those lists are 'C' or below students.
So someone who's even marginally good at sports get to see their name in the paper, and get talked about at school, while those who are good at academics might get a note from the teacher with an extra smiley face sticker.
---------------
I don't think kids who fail need their grades on the school marquee. But those who score the top grades should be recognized.
He didn't mention that he also gets National Geographic and three magazines/tradejournals related to his job. He reads those during the free times you mention. Hence, no time for Wired.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes!
ar.atwola.com, whoever they are, who serve ads for cnn.com. CNN seems to be served by a nice fast server cluster, but then their ads are served by a Pentium III with a flaky network card.
That's the first one I not only ad blocked, but set up a hosts file to block entirely, just so the pages would load.
Everyone at my company, even the founder and CEO, has a cube. But, we're allowed a lot of leeway to define our cube in our own way. In my group, we actually chose half walls so that we could more easily talk to each other.
*Watching start of movie*
*Kid screams out in pain downstairs, having tripped and fell, or been punched by brother, etc.*
*Run downstairs and deal with them for 30 minutes*
*Return to view movie again, to find it unable to play again*
Doh
Yes, fake fingerprints or retina are a problem for biometrics.
But, a bigger problem (for now) is someone cracking your database of biometric data, and being able to retrieve the information you store to identify people. This is why there is research into Replaceable Biometrics.
If the stored database cannot be related to the person, then again a criminal is forced to go directly to the source (you) to copy or steal the finger or retina. Ideally, they would then be stopped by not knowing your password, or not having your key. If a criminal has all three, such as by kidnapping your children and forcing you to retrieve the data yourself, then there is still a fourth identification option:
* Something you do (i.e. something out of the ordinary that draws attention to yourself)
If you walk in and say "Hello Bob" to the security guard every day, and today you say "Hello Jim", maybe he will know something is up and alert the police. Or, maybe the security guard simply notices that you are sweating or looking very nervous, and investigates without you intentinally alerting him at all.
>> My point exactly. In a browser that's supposed to prevent pop-ups I have to install two additional packages in order to prevent them.
Well, you also installed an extra program (Flash) that bypasses Firefox's protections. Take the issue up with the makers of that software.
(Assuming it is a Flash popup. I dunno - I don't have Flash installed and I didn't see it.)
I've tried to build second computers out of primary ones. It usually doesn't work, because I'm replacing a part of the primary system for a reason. (Last upgrade, I had random blue screens that were a bug in the north bridge chip I think, possibly caused by overheating. That machine ran very hot. Upgrade before that, the video card shorted while on the motherboard.)
I do have a second machine, but I maintain its upgrade schedule separately.
... and even this wouldn't kill off all theaters. Heck, I've been waiting for a good movie to release, because I want to go back to the Alamo Drafthouse for dinner.
This is why, once I got over my concerns with leaving my car unattended with the top down, I found it easy to leave it with the windows rolled down, too.
"Hey opportunistic thieves! There's nothing in my car worth taking, see? But hey, that other car over there, the one with its windows up. They must be protecting something?"
The cost of replacing a broken window is higher than the cost of replacing my driving sunglasses or mini flashlight or US atlas. If someone really wanted them enough to steal them, they can have them.
Why would I need the space?
When I went to college, I bought a new computer with a 750 MB drive.
When that filled up after THREE years, I bought a new computer with a 7 GB drive. Keeping the smaller drive around and installed is pointless, given how drastically larger the new drive is.
When that filled up after 2-3 years, I built a computer with a 40 GB drive. 2-3 years later, I rebuilt with a 200 GB drive.
With the exponential growth in hard drive size, very few people ever *need* the space that their old drive provides.
(FWIW, all my old drives are still sitting on a shelf above my desk. I cannot stand the thought of destroying a perfectly good drive, but I don't feel like going back and verifying that they are all clean before giving them away.)
What does "take the initiative" mean?
You seem to think it means "invent". That is just a narrow interpretation.
Gore meant "secure funding for and push for its development", which a very good definition.
Read up higher in this very thread. See how it says that "Tesla's AC beat out Edison's DC". You could say that "George Westinghouse took the initiative in creating the power grid" even though George invented nothing. Instead, George listened to Tesla, agreed that it was important, and funded him.
In short, what Gore said is 100% true.
Making heat for your home can be more than 100% efficient.
An electric space heater is nearly 100% efficient. The only waste is the part in the visible spectrum that glows on you. On the other hand, a heat pump (Wikipedia's article is pretty bad, but there ya go.) is more than 100% efficient. The amount of heat moved from the outside air into your house is greater than the amount of energy supplied to your heat pump by the power company.
(Of course, the heat pump isn't creating energy, it is just moving it about efficiently. But if your goal is to "heat the space" as you suggest, a heat pump is much more efficient than an IR heater.)
Ahh, Brother Jeb. My wife and I were talking about him just last night, as she had found another coworker with exciting Brother Jeb stories.
It's something special to be called a Whore by Brother Jeb. It means you must be doing something right.
This was 1995-2000, University of Tennessee.
The road for OpenOffice to become "user friendly" on the desktop is not paved with a downloadable Windows binary.
This is a step in the wrong direction. How will OpenOffice improve the rise of free software if the people who are migrating to it still use Microsoft Windows?
(Sounds silly, right? Most people want continuity, not a clean break. Some will want continuity in the applications, some will want continuity in the operating system. Make both available.)
I have been using Xandros Desktop 2.0 on my second PC at home for a few years. It is our home server, but I also use it as a secondary machine while World of Warcraft is up on my main computer.
Let's just say that, while I use OpenOffice's writer, its spreadsheet program was lacking features I required. So I popped in my Excel CD and installed it. Woo. I never have to reboot that machine into Windows. Actually, I need to recover the Windows partition to add more space for Linux.
Win win for Linux. Success!
I installed several other Windows apps on the machine, too, but in the end I haven't needed them. Just Excel and I'm happy.
...and yet none of the examples given in the story actually involve him using a network sniffer. Indeed, all he used was his own ingenuity and his non-descript looks.
Much like a "computer" was a person who computes, long before there were machines of that name, you could call a "sniffer" one who seeks out information, without the need for a computer.
Funny though, the stuff he describes is basically the same stuff that Kevin Mitnick described as to how he could acquire his own information. Given that, as far as I remember, he also provides security consulting services, I guess they are in the same business.
Heck, here in Austin, even the local Italian restaurant has free Wi Fi.
Restaurants that don't have it free just don't get any Wi Fi business, period.
SBC already offers a bundles package of:
Home phone service
Long distance
DSL internet service
Dish Network satellite TV
Cingular Wireless phone service
It seems that the cable companies are trying to catch up to DSL, not the other way around.
If cable can integrate their content onto the phones as the article suggests, maybe they will pull ahead.
Indeed. After working in publishing for years, my father bought a PC instead of a Mac as he was used to. Fast forward four years, and I would love to buy him a Mac to get him something he would be happier with. A Mac mini is perfect... but this card is pitiful. I don't want to give him something that can't be easily upgraded that starts out this poor.
Sad, sad. Apple might have just lost a sale for Christmas.
Incidentally, I've thought about moving to one at home, too, but with this video card it can't play World of Warcraft. =(
You pull your house off of the grid, and you can do whatever you want to with the wiring in your house.
As long as you choose to attach to the public electric grid (privately owned or not, there is public interest in its upkeep), you have to accept some level of oversight of the things you do in your house. For example, if you chose to use equipment that had a really bad power factor (i.e. voltage and current were out of phase), the power company could and would order you to adjust your load. Or, if your tweakings injected noise back onto the grid, they would make you fix it or cut you off.
>> We must keep it in mind that Disney is a private corporation and is able to set barriers to access to its parks. As long as they're not discriminating based on protected categories, their requirement for fingerprints must be protested with lack of patronage but little else.
Errr.. but the government can and should set limitations on what data companies can or cannot collect about us.
What if Disney required your home address and social security number to enter their park? You know that some people would provide that, stupid as it may be. Instead, the government has laws that limit who can require your social security number.
Or, what if Disney asked for a list of all medications you take before you enter the park. They could, but there are laws that limit the extent to which they can force you to comply, and the limit to which they could share information provided.
In other words, the government can and should limit the abilites of private corporations to store and share personal information. That's one of the things I want it to do. They just don't do enough of it these days. And biometric data like fingerprints is one of the main things that should be protected.
---------
All that said, supposedly this is just a hand shape scanner anyway, so this is moot.
Sorry, "nonsense" was the best word that would fit in the space available for the title.
I dunno. Does WalMart sell Sony TVs? Find who they resell and invest there.
And I don't buy your argument that private schools should be held to the same standard as public schools just because they receive public funding - plenty of students at private universities receive publicly-funded scholarships and nobody's arguing that they should have to be run like public universities.
.... and those private universities are accredited by the same agencies that accredit public universities. In other words, they are held to the same standards.
I posted this once before, but it is appropriate in this thread again.
------
Consider how academic and athletic achievement are recognized so differently.
For example, a student athlete has their records published in the newspaper, the yearbook, and is recognized at student events. The student athletes that aren't as good don't get as much recognition, but their performances are public record as well.
Contrast this with schools that are having to eliminate 'A' and 'B' honor rolls, because publication of such rolls shows that everyone not on those lists are 'C' or below students.
So someone who's even marginally good at sports get to see their name in the paper, and get talked about at school, while those who are good at academics might get a note from the teacher with an extra smiley face sticker.
---------------
I don't think kids who fail need their grades on the school marquee. But those who score the top grades should be recognized.
He didn't mention that he also gets National Geographic and three magazines/tradejournals related to his job. He reads those during the free times you mention. Hence, no time for Wired.