Never mind, you could always take a leaf out of Jello Biafra's book and run for mayor of San Francisco.
(For those who don't know, one of his manifesto policies was that all businessmen should be forced to wear clown suits. IIRC, he finished third out of a field of nine.)
Heh. Why should we bother? It would be tempting to say that the only person who might find something useful in those emails might be Tina Fey. But even her efforts are dwarfed by the stupidity of the object of her ridicule.
That's nice, but what does your treasury department have to back any "value" they ascribe to those boring bits of green paper that they print? It's not as if those notes have any defined worth in terms of (say) mangoes, bananas or lumps of gold which are of intrinsic value to someone who has the munchies or who makes shiny bits of jewellery.
There is neither inherent nor legally-enforced value to it...
Well, for that matter, there is no inherent value to your greenback either, and any legally enforced value only holds good for the term of your government.
For this reason, Bitcoin made an interesting thought-experiment in what we are prepared to accept as a token for trade. The fact that it has succeeded (to whatever degree) in crossing into the physical world makes it all the more interesting.
I'm just waiting for Bitcoin to become useful for anything other than buying or selling illicit drugs, since I am now of an age where the consumption of (or trade in) such goods is no longer so enjoyable or part of my mindset.
But you're missing the point: university environments are supposed to be conducive to learning to think outside the square, and in my limited experience, I would have considered it unusual to be ridiculed for asking questions about Linux. Running BeOS might have raised an eyebrow or two, however...
Yes, of course, back in 2000 when I was fresh off the farm, I was constantly ridiculed for asking questions about Linux.
I started a fresh round of education in 2000 when I returned to uni for a new undergrad course, and it was not uncommon for colleagues to be running Solaris boxes, let alone Linux. And that was even without the IT geek quotient, since my area of study was molecular biology.
I was struck by the remark in the OP regarding attitude from an Australian university. I was under the impression that most of them have no problem with cross-platform support these days. Certainly my alma mater has done so for many years, although I did have one cretinous lecturer who insisted on embedding much of his course content in Shockwave apps. But the IT department was perfectly happy to support any system that handled TCP/IP.
...while I'm usually not a fan of IP lawsuits, I hope this guy wins a million or three in damages for what Apple denied to him.
Fat chance. Justice is for those who can afford it, and I would bet that Apple can afford better lawyers than one lowly app developer. Even if he succeeded in winning the case after all the inevitable rounds of appeals, any compensation would be swallowed up by lawyers' fees.
Mozilla did that over 10 years ago. It was called Phoenix. At the time, the original Mozilla browser was even faster if you did your own builds, leaving out all the cruft.
But if any browser occupied a tiny footprint, everybody would whine about how few features it offered. You can't have it both ways, so the simple solution is just to buy more RAM.
It doesn't help when some sites don't even allow non-alphanumeric passwords.
Indeed, and by far the worst culprits I have found for such asinine limitations are banks. I have come across many that impose arbitrarily small password lengths and refuse all non-alphanumeric characters.
I don't know why people think that "leet-ifying" a word makes it a better password.
Leetifying a dictionary word doesn't make it any stronger as a password. However, using "leet" substitutions in a password which cannot be found in a dictionary, but is otherwise memorable increases the range of combinations/permutations of characters, so making a lot more work to brute-force. Thus, "P45sword" is just silly, but "Tb,at5tDg4gitw:" (from "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves \n Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:") would be considered by most to be a pretty strong password.
As a matter of interest, how can you be sure it was brute-forced rather than subjected to some other form of cracking, e.g. via dodgy cookies or some form of compromised admin access? I don't have (or want) a facebook account, so I haven't heard whether or not facebook offers history of failed logins to users.
...Practical Cryptography. It has the information the OP would need to answer the exact questions he's asking.
Seems to me the OP hasn't really thought out what he is trying to secure. The best place to start is to decide exactly what you are worried about, and then go about setting up a suitable system to secure it.
There are some things, such as online banking, where there is no reason to use any level of encryption other than the best available. But having said that, the most critical security aspect is establishing a robust authentication system. If you have the resources to implement a one-time-key system of any kind, you've made a good start.
I'm not so sure this might be referred to as a dirty tactic. The TOS clearly state that some of your bandwidth will be used for the benefit of other callers, and Skype seems to be pretty good at taking into account the fact that many users do not have fat pipes. I've occasionally used Skype on a 56K dialup connection, and I routinely use it via my USB internet dongle or the data plan on my phone, where in both cases my bandwidth is quite limited.
Admittedly, I rarely bother with video calls, since nobody really needs to see my ugly mug at 2.00 in the morning...
I think this is the point where I suggest that you have a laughably small number of friends.
Seriously, if you have any significant number of friends of a non-techie pursuasion (or otherwise, but with more pressing preoccupations than obscure choices of VOIP clients), insisting that everybody uses stinkyfinger to contact you is an easy path to a lonely life.
I consider myself to be reasonably tech-savvy, having worked as a sysprog in the aerospace industry (among others) since the 1970s, and I am not ashamed to say that Skype, despite its drawbacks offers a good enough VOIP/IM client for most purposes. And I don't need to behave like an asswipe with my friends to pursuade them to use it.
...which, of course reminds some of us that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization, said he thought it was "a good idea".
A lot of the problem stems from the fact that the US and other Western countries have got into the habit of licking the asses of the Chinese in order to maintain trade relationships. Acceptance of the principle that China has committed an act of war might presuppose that other sanctions are fair game, but Big Business always squeals when any political move is made counter to their short-term interests.
It is perfectly possible for the rest of the world to pull the plug on China, leaving them to howl for any resources they need to maintain growth and dominance, but it would mean growing a pair. If we aren't prepared to fight back or isolate hostile attackers, then all we can do is play whack-a-mole with them.
I don't have first-hand experience of this (yet), but my wife seems to get over 2 weeks between charges on her Sony PRX-650 reader (a birthday present from yours truly). And she gets through books at a prodigious rate - thousands of page-turns per week. It was mainly the fact that the device seems to offer just about the best multi-format support that was the biggest selling point, but power usage seems fairly impressive to me.
worth $5 per handset to indemnify themselves from litigation.
That sounds exactly like protection money to me. I guess it sort of makes sense for HTC to just build this in as a running cost, rather than face ongoing and open-ended legal bills, but I would be happier if they had just told Microsoft to get professionally fucked.
Apple frankly sucks at innovation. They are reasonably good at improving something somebody else has already invented...
I guess an exception here would have to be the classic iPod interface, which I believe is far and away the best ever designed for this purpose. I find it slightly strange that Apple has chosen to downplay this with their iPod Touch/iPhone offerings, but I guess there are different strokes for different folks.
The most successful IT CEO in history is Steve Jobs.
...Maybe according to Steve Jobs. I don't find either of these characters particularly lovable, but I find I despise Jobs' shameless promotion of his own personality cult. Furthermore, I struggle to make myself believe that Jobs may attempt to redeem himself in the way Gates apparently is. Yes, I have read that the latter was (at least to some extent) shamed into this course of action by reminding him of a pledge made in his youth, but I find I don't really care much.
Jobs, to the best of my knowledge, does not appear to have demonstrated any generosity of spirit whatsoever.
but philanthropy and plutocratic excess are, equally, signals of money that isn't being invested in R&D or being left in customers' hands with lower prices...
Although I have no particular fondness for Bill Gates, it's fair to say that his money is his own, and he is entitled to do whatever he pleases with it. Neither the corporation he founded, nor its shareholders have any claim on it, and he is under no obligation to ask for your opinion on the matter.
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Never mind, you could always take a leaf out of Jello Biafra's book and run for mayor of San Francisco.
(For those who don't know, one of his manifesto policies was that all businessmen should be forced to wear clown suits. IIRC, he finished third out of a field of nine.)
Heh. Why should we bother? It would be tempting to say that the only person who might find something useful in those emails might be Tina Fey. But even her efforts are dwarfed by the stupidity of the object of her ridicule.
That's nice, but what does your treasury department have to back any "value" they ascribe to those boring bits of green paper that they print? It's not as if those notes have any defined worth in terms of (say) mangoes, bananas or lumps of gold which are of intrinsic value to someone who has the munchies or who makes shiny bits of jewellery.
There is neither inherent nor legally-enforced value to it...
Well, for that matter, there is no inherent value to your greenback either, and any legally enforced value only holds good for the term of your government.
For this reason, Bitcoin made an interesting thought-experiment in what we are prepared to accept as a token for trade. The fact that it has succeeded (to whatever degree) in crossing into the physical world makes it all the more interesting.
I'm just waiting for Bitcoin to become useful for anything other than buying or selling illicit drugs, since I am now of an age where the consumption of (or trade in) such goods is no longer so enjoyable or part of my mindset.
Well aren't you hot shit?
Well, of course I am. ;-)
But you're missing the point: university environments are supposed to be conducive to learning to think outside the square, and in my limited experience, I would have considered it unusual to be ridiculed for asking questions about Linux. Running BeOS might have raised an eyebrow or two, however...
Who is still talking about Linux ?
Nobody. We just use it.
Yes, of course, back in 2000 when I was fresh off the farm, I was constantly ridiculed for asking questions about Linux.
I started a fresh round of education in 2000 when I returned to uni for a new undergrad course, and it was not uncommon for colleagues to be running Solaris boxes, let alone Linux. And that was even without the IT geek quotient, since my area of study was molecular biology.
I was struck by the remark in the OP regarding attitude from an Australian university. I was under the impression that most of them have no problem with cross-platform support these days. Certainly my alma mater has done so for many years, although I did have one cretinous lecturer who insisted on embedding much of his course content in Shockwave apps. But the IT department was perfectly happy to support any system that handled TCP/IP.
...while I'm usually not a fan of IP lawsuits, I hope this guy wins a million or three in damages for what Apple denied to him.
Fat chance. Justice is for those who can afford it, and I would bet that Apple can afford better lawyers than one lowly app developer. Even if he succeeded in winning the case after all the inevitable rounds of appeals, any compensation would be swallowed up by lawyers' fees.
Mozilla did that over 10 years ago. It was called Phoenix. At the time, the original Mozilla browser was even faster if you did your own builds, leaving out all the cruft.
But if any browser occupied a tiny footprint, everybody would whine about how few features it offered. You can't have it both ways, so the simple solution is just to buy more RAM.
It doesn't help when some sites don't even allow non-alphanumeric passwords.
Indeed, and by far the worst culprits I have found for such asinine limitations are banks. I have come across many that impose arbitrarily small password lengths and refuse all non-alphanumeric characters.
I don't know why people think that "leet-ifying" a word makes it a better password.
Leetifying a dictionary word doesn't make it any stronger as a password. However, using "leet" substitutions in a password which cannot be found in a dictionary, but is otherwise memorable increases the range of combinations/permutations of characters, so making a lot more work to brute-force. Thus, "P45sword" is just silly, but "Tb,at5tDg4gitw:" (from "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves \n Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:") would be considered by most to be a pretty strong password.
As a matter of interest, how can you be sure it was brute-forced rather than subjected to some other form of cracking, e.g. via dodgy cookies or some form of compromised admin access? I don't have (or want) a facebook account, so I haven't heard whether or not facebook offers history of failed logins to users.
...Practical Cryptography. It has the information the OP would need to answer the exact questions he's asking.
Seems to me the OP hasn't really thought out what he is trying to secure. The best place to start is to decide exactly what you are worried about, and then go about setting up a suitable system to secure it.
There are some things, such as online banking, where there is no reason to use any level of encryption other than the best available. But having said that, the most critical security aspect is establishing a robust authentication system. If you have the resources to implement a one-time-key system of any kind, you've made a good start.
I'm not so sure this might be referred to as a dirty tactic. The TOS clearly state that some of your bandwidth will be used for the benefit of other callers, and Skype seems to be pretty good at taking into account the fact that many users do not have fat pipes. I've occasionally used Skype on a 56K dialup connection, and I routinely use it via my USB internet dongle or the data plan on my phone, where in both cases my bandwidth is quite limited.
Admittedly, I rarely bother with video calls, since nobody really needs to see my ugly mug at 2.00 in the morning...
I think this is the point where I suggest that you have a laughably small number of friends.
Seriously, if you have any significant number of friends of a non-techie pursuasion (or otherwise, but with more pressing preoccupations than obscure choices of VOIP clients), insisting that everybody uses stinkyfinger to contact you is an easy path to a lonely life.
I consider myself to be reasonably tech-savvy, having worked as a sysprog in the aerospace industry (among others) since the 1970s, and I am not ashamed to say that Skype, despite its drawbacks offers a good enough VOIP/IM client for most purposes. And I don't need to behave like an asswipe with my friends to pursuade them to use it.
The collapse of civilization is at hand.
...which, of course reminds some of us that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization, said he thought it was "a good idea".
At least Google is still nice enough to continue funding contributions towards Firefox development.
Attacking China would destroy our economy.
You don't need China, you're doing a good enough job of destroying your economy all by yourselves.
A lot of the problem stems from the fact that the US and other Western countries have got into the habit of licking the asses of the Chinese in order to maintain trade relationships. Acceptance of the principle that China has committed an act of war might presuppose that other sanctions are fair game, but Big Business always squeals when any political move is made counter to their short-term interests.
It is perfectly possible for the rest of the world to pull the plug on China, leaving them to howl for any resources they need to maintain growth and dominance, but it would mean growing a pair. If we aren't prepared to fight back or isolate hostile attackers, then all we can do is play whack-a-mole with them.
I don't have first-hand experience of this (yet), but my wife seems to get over 2 weeks between charges on her Sony PRX-650 reader (a birthday present from yours truly). And she gets through books at a prodigious rate - thousands of page-turns per week. It was mainly the fact that the device seems to offer just about the best multi-format support that was the biggest selling point, but power usage seems fairly impressive to me.
worth $5 per handset to indemnify themselves from litigation.
That sounds exactly like protection money to me. I guess it sort of makes sense for HTC to just build this in as a running cost, rather than face ongoing and open-ended legal bills, but I would be happier if they had just told Microsoft to get professionally fucked.
Apple frankly sucks at innovation. They are reasonably good at improving something somebody else has already invented...
I guess an exception here would have to be the classic iPod interface, which I believe is far and away the best ever designed for this purpose. I find it slightly strange that Apple has chosen to downplay this with their iPod Touch/iPhone offerings, but I guess there are different strokes for different folks.
The most successful IT CEO in history is Steve Jobs.
...Maybe according to Steve Jobs. I don't find either of these characters particularly lovable, but I find I despise Jobs' shameless promotion of his own personality cult. Furthermore, I struggle to make myself believe that Jobs may attempt to redeem himself in the way Gates apparently is. Yes, I have read that the latter was (at least to some extent) shamed into this course of action by reminding him of a pledge made in his youth, but I find I don't really care much.
Jobs, to the best of my knowledge, does not appear to have demonstrated any generosity of spirit whatsoever.
but philanthropy and plutocratic excess are, equally, signals of money that isn't being invested in R&D or being left in customers' hands with lower prices...
Although I have no particular fondness for Bill Gates, it's fair to say that his money is his own, and he is entitled to do whatever he pleases with it. Neither the corporation he founded, nor its shareholders have any claim on it, and he is under no obligation to ask for your opinion on the matter.