I get pissed when you hear programmers say "Oh memory is cheap, we don't need to optimize!"
Preach on, brother. I'd love to see how some of these guys would function in the embedded world, where you often get 1K of flash and 128 bytes of RAM to work with.
I would love to be able to purchase extra throughput, without having to pay for higher speeds at the same time, but such a plan doesn't exist.
Look into any business plans your provider offers. They're more expensive for a given speed, but are often uncapped, plus you get better customer service.
I rather like diesels myself, but part of the problem that I've seen is the price premium associated with them. Most trucks will command an additional $3-4000 for a diesel option, and having just glanced at the Chevy Cruze, it looks like there's about a $6K difference between the starting prices of the gas and diesel models with a 6-speed automatic. That's not going to start paying for itself until you get around 60,000 miles on the car (($6000 / $3.50/gal) * 35 mpg), and even that's not factoring in the higher cost of diesel fuel.
More importantly, they have the legal monopoly on the use of force, which is what it all boils down to. The government has shown time and again that it respects the laws it chooses to, and when voluntary compliance with the law doesn't work all you have left is the use of force.
If you're buying it to make money mining cryptocurrencies, does it really matter whether it's $100 over retail? The parent poster said they were "almost impossible to find now", which clearly is not the case.
I wouldn't say I've been "played", as I think the entire Senate Intelligence Committee is as complicit in this as the NSA itself as they had knowledge of the program, yet still did nothing. That Wyden intentionally put Clapper on the spot doesn't change the fact that Clapper and Alexander both lied to Congress - *why* they did it really doesn't matter, IMO.
It's so impossible to find that I just looked it up on Amazon and found more than half a dozen different vendors on the first page of results that have it in stock.
And the other part of the problem is that those charged with enforcing the laws won't do it. Both James Clapper and Keith Alexander have openly admitted to lying before Congress (which is a federal felony) regarding the NSA issue, and no one responsible for enforcing the law has said boo about it.
The general consensus is that the data not actively needed at the time gets sent back to Utah for storage in case it turns out to be of interest later.
This just states the conclusions, without the arguments in support of each conclusion.
You're totally missing the point. Slashdot "articles" are supposed to be a SHORT SUMMARY of a given newsworthy item, so the detailed arguments that lead to your conclusions are neither necessary nor appropriate there. You can always link to your own blog (or a Slashdot journal) where one can examine your analysis in further detail if readers are interested enough. Slashdot is a tech news aggregation site, not your own personal blog.
What's a paragraph you didn't think was necessary?
Most of them. This article boils down to:
"Google was returning credit card numbers in their search results. I wasn't happy about that, and wrote a blog entry about it. Google then changed their search results a bit to reduce these kinds of search results. A security researcher wrote to me to say that he found there were still ways to get card numbers in the search results. He wrote to Google to tell them about this and got no meaningful response. Fast forward several months - I posted in a Google forum about this issue, quoting the researcher, and a couple of weeks later Google fixed this issue. I'm not happy that neither he nor I got any credit for it or received a reward from the bug bounty program (even though this wasn't a bug and was a personal issue with the search results that were returned from a valid query), because I'm quite sure I'm the one to which they were responding when they "fixed" the query results. Here are some further ideas I have for improving the way these results are computed, and you should pay attention because I'm Bennett Haselton."
I disagree. A paragraph is supposed to convey a single train of thought. When it's broken up into multiple paragraphs, it makes it more difficult to parse since one is expecting that the expressed thought is complete and is expecting something new, but has to rewind a bit. At least that's my opinion, and that of many others as well. It's just bad style.
Yes, and I would still consider 10% a "rather small minority". It still means that 90% of all 15/16 digit numbers would be inappropriately filtered. One could restrict the result set even more by only looking for leading digits in combination with digit counts that correspond to known card issues and bring that percentage down quite a bit more.
The point was that given a random 12-16 digit number, it's not very likely that it will be a valid credit card number (even if the check digit passes), and even then the card number is useless without other unique identifying information.
Gergely sent an email to security@google.com on December 28, 2012 (which he later showed to me), describing the vulnerability in detail. After describing the simple trick, his email stated: "I don't know if this qualifies as a bug bounty bug, but I think it's certainly not in your interest to let these queries through. Using this method one can bypass all your numerical query filters, filters for SSN, TFN, credit cards, maybe DoS prevention and others I can not think of at the moment."
Gergely sent them a follow-up email on August 23, 2013. In both cases he said he received no response except for an auto-reply.
There's really no reason for the last two sentences to be in a separate paragraph, and this is something that is common in the way you write. From The Elements of Style:
"In general, remember that paragraphing calls for a good eye as well as a logical mind. Enormous blocks of print look formidable to readers, who are often reluctant to tackle them. Therefore, breaking long paragraphs in two, even if it is not necessary to do so for sense, meaning, or logical development, is often a visual help. But remember, too, that firing off many short paragraphs in quick succession can be distracting. Paragraph breaks used only for show read like the writing of commerce or of display advertising. Moderation and a sense of order should be the main considerations in paragraphing." (emphasis mine)
This is literally why I come to Slashdot. Nothing warms my heart like an unsolicited insult. I'm all smiling inside.
And best of all, under U.S. law he's allowed to keep it and do with it what he wishes! It's always good to have a box full of insults, especially when you get them for free like that.
Why would you print bullets when lead casting is so cheap and easy? The real sticking point is the availability of primers. You can make your own, but it's labor-intensive and there are some substantial safety issues involved.
The ISPs don't have a right to get paid by a company solely on the basis of "they're making money off of our users" any more than a phone company can charge a pizza place for making money by that phone company's users calling in pizza orders.
That's a really apt comparison, particularly given that a lot of the ISPs in question are themselves phone companies.
Essentially since the ISP is having trouble collecting more money from heavier users, they're angling for Netflix to charge these users more then collecting that money from Netflix
Meaning the ISPs are too cowardly to actually charge the *users* of said bandwidth, i.e., their customers. They would rather try to foist that charge off on another party with whom they have no business relationship and to whom are not providing any service, and have that other party deal with the bad PR. That's bullshit - Netflix is already paying for the bandwidth they use and has already spent a lot of money attempting to mitigate everyone's costs (via colo'd cache boxes), and if the ISP is not happy with the amount of bandwidth their customers are using, they need to charge *them* more, not Netflix. In the process they can also explain to their customers how oversubscription works, and that the new charges are a result of their own poorly-thought-out business model. Bonus points if they include information about how much they're already subsidized by the government in the form of rights-of-way, municipal franchise agreements, etc.
Given that half of all internet traffic comes from Netflix and YouTube, it's going to be a hoot when they start obtaining metrics proving their traffic is being throttled by the ISP, and providing said proof to customers that complain about the resulting sub-par video experience, and it will be trivial for them to do so. The ISPs may find their bargaining position isn't as strong as they thought if customers start cancelling or downgrading their cable/DSL subscriptions as a result.
Where I live, the underground water and sewer lines have far more problems than the overhead cables. In the last 18 months, our water has been off for repairs three times, our cable has had no problems. That suggests to me that underground is not necessarily more reliable than overhead.
On the flip side, Hurricane Charley came directly over where I was living at the time, and we never lost telephone service, power, gas, or water, all of which were delivered underground. Certainly it's not problem-free, but in my experience it's been a lot more reliable.
For quickly getting in touch with somebody, send an SMS.
"Quickly", he/she says. Usually that's the case, but I've had SMS messages delivered days after sending them, and of course none of the suggestions listed work when the person you're trying to contact doesn't have a cell phone or internet service.
This sounds to me like the beginning of a big push for federal dollars by the incumbent phone companies, because if you get rid of POTS you're going to have to spend billions of dollars getting the remote areas of the country wired for IP/cellular, and looking at past experience the phone companies sure aren't going to pay for it.
Slashdot Mirror
I get pissed when you hear programmers say "Oh memory is cheap, we don't need to optimize!"
Preach on, brother. I'd love to see how some of these guys would function in the embedded world, where you often get 1K of flash and 128 bytes of RAM to work with.
I would love to be able to purchase extra throughput, without having to pay for higher speeds at the same time, but such a plan doesn't exist.
Look into any business plans your provider offers. They're more expensive for a given speed, but are often uncapped, plus you get better customer service.
I rather like diesels myself, but part of the problem that I've seen is the price premium associated with them. Most trucks will command an additional $3-4000 for a diesel option, and having just glanced at the Chevy Cruze, it looks like there's about a $6K difference between the starting prices of the gas and diesel models with a 6-speed automatic. That's not going to start paying for itself until you get around 60,000 miles on the car (($6000 / $3.50/gal) * 35 mpg), and even that's not factoring in the higher cost of diesel fuel.
More importantly, they have the legal monopoly on the use of force, which is what it all boils down to. The government has shown time and again that it respects the laws it chooses to, and when voluntary compliance with the law doesn't work all you have left is the use of force.
If you're buying it to make money mining cryptocurrencies, does it really matter whether it's $100 over retail? The parent poster said they were "almost impossible to find now", which clearly is not the case.
I wouldn't say I've been "played", as I think the entire Senate Intelligence Committee is as complicit in this as the NSA itself as they had knowledge of the program, yet still did nothing. That Wyden intentionally put Clapper on the spot doesn't change the fact that Clapper and Alexander both lied to Congress - *why* they did it really doesn't matter, IMO.
This. It's a reasonable way of making a gaming hobby pay for itself.
It's so impossible to find that I just looked it up on Amazon and found more than half a dozen different vendors on the first page of results that have it in stock.
And the other part of the problem is that those charged with enforcing the laws won't do it. Both James Clapper and Keith Alexander have openly admitted to lying before Congress (which is a federal felony) regarding the NSA issue, and no one responsible for enforcing the law has said boo about it.
The general consensus is that the data not actively needed at the time gets sent back to Utah for storage in case it turns out to be of interest later.
This just states the conclusions, without the arguments in support of each conclusion.
You're totally missing the point. Slashdot "articles" are supposed to be a SHORT SUMMARY of a given newsworthy item, so the detailed arguments that lead to your conclusions are neither necessary nor appropriate there. You can always link to your own blog (or a Slashdot journal) where one can examine your analysis in further detail if readers are interested enough. Slashdot is a tech news aggregation site, not your own personal blog.
What's a paragraph you didn't think was necessary?
Most of them. This article boils down to:
"Google was returning credit card numbers in their search results. I wasn't happy about that, and wrote a blog entry about it. Google then changed their search results a bit to reduce these kinds of search results. A security researcher wrote to me to say that he found there were still ways to get card numbers in the search results. He wrote to Google to tell them about this and got no meaningful response. Fast forward several months - I posted in a Google forum about this issue, quoting the researcher, and a couple of weeks later Google fixed this issue. I'm not happy that neither he nor I got any credit for it or received a reward from the bug bounty program (even though this wasn't a bug and was a personal issue with the search results that were returned from a valid query), because I'm quite sure I'm the one to which they were responding when they "fixed" the query results. Here are some further ideas I have for improving the way these results are computed, and you should pay attention because I'm Bennett Haselton."
So what does everyone think?
I disagree. A paragraph is supposed to convey a single train of thought. When it's broken up into multiple paragraphs, it makes it more difficult to parse since one is expecting that the expressed thought is complete and is expecting something new, but has to rewind a bit. At least that's my opinion, and that of many others as well. It's just bad style.
Yes, and I would still consider 10% a "rather small minority". It still means that 90% of all 15/16 digit numbers would be inappropriately filtered. One could restrict the result set even more by only looking for leading digits in combination with digit counts that correspond to known card issues and bring that percentage down quite a bit more.
The point was that given a random 12-16 digit number, it's not very likely that it will be a valid credit card number (even if the check digit passes), and even then the card number is useless without other unique identifying information.
I'll bite. FTFA:
Gergely sent an email to security@google.com on December 28, 2012 (which he later showed to me), describing the vulnerability in detail. After describing the simple trick, his email stated: "I don't know if this qualifies as a bug bounty bug, but I think it's certainly not in your interest to let these queries through. Using this method one can bypass all your numerical query filters, filters for SSN, TFN, credit cards, maybe DoS prevention and others I can not think of at the moment."
Gergely sent them a follow-up email on August 23, 2013. In both cases he said he received no response except for an auto-reply.
There's really no reason for the last two sentences to be in a separate paragraph, and this is something that is common in the way you write. From The Elements of Style:
"In general, remember that paragraphing calls for a good eye as well as a logical mind. Enormous blocks of print look formidable to readers, who are often reluctant to tackle them. Therefore, breaking long paragraphs in two, even if it is not necessary to do so for sense, meaning, or logical development, is often a visual help. But remember, too, that firing off many short paragraphs in quick succession can be distracting. Paragraph breaks used only for show read like the writing of commerce or of display advertising. Moderation and a sense of order should be the main considerations in paragraphing." (emphasis mine)
Very true, although I would think a rather small minority would be 16 digits long and pass the Luhn test.
This is literally why I come to Slashdot. Nothing warms my heart like an unsolicited insult. I'm all smiling inside.
And best of all, under U.S. law he's allowed to keep it and do with it what he wishes! It's always good to have a box full of insults, especially when you get them for free like that.
Why would you print bullets when lead casting is so cheap and easy? The real sticking point is the availability of primers. You can make your own, but it's labor-intensive and there are some substantial safety issues involved.
Not to mention that there are quite a few ABS plastic parts that will be exposed to UV for quite a long time during operation.
The ISPs don't have a right to get paid by a company solely on the basis of "they're making money off of our users" any more than a phone company can charge a pizza place for making money by that phone company's users calling in pizza orders.
That's a really apt comparison, particularly given that a lot of the ISPs in question are themselves phone companies.
Essentially since the ISP is having trouble collecting more money from heavier users, they're angling for Netflix to charge these users more then collecting that money from Netflix
Meaning the ISPs are too cowardly to actually charge the *users* of said bandwidth, i.e., their customers. They would rather try to foist that charge off on another party with whom they have no business relationship and to whom are not providing any service, and have that other party deal with the bad PR. That's bullshit - Netflix is already paying for the bandwidth they use and has already spent a lot of money attempting to mitigate everyone's costs (via colo'd cache boxes), and if the ISP is not happy with the amount of bandwidth their customers are using, they need to charge *them* more, not Netflix. In the process they can also explain to their customers how oversubscription works, and that the new charges are a result of their own poorly-thought-out business model. Bonus points if they include information about how much they're already subsidized by the government in the form of rights-of-way, municipal franchise agreements, etc.
Given that half of all internet traffic comes from Netflix and YouTube, it's going to be a hoot when they start obtaining metrics proving their traffic is being throttled by the ISP, and providing said proof to customers that complain about the resulting sub-par video experience, and it will be trivial for them to do so. The ISPs may find their bargaining position isn't as strong as they thought if customers start cancelling or downgrading their cable/DSL subscriptions as a result.
But exactly how is this Netflix's problem? It's still a problem with the ISP being unhappy that people are actually using the service they paid for.
Where I live, the underground water and sewer lines have far more problems than the overhead cables. In the last 18 months, our water has been off for repairs three times, our cable has had no problems. That suggests to me that underground is not necessarily more reliable than overhead.
On the flip side, Hurricane Charley came directly over where I was living at the time, and we never lost telephone service, power, gas, or water, all of which were delivered underground. Certainly it's not problem-free, but in my experience it's been a lot more reliable.
For quickly getting in touch with somebody, send an SMS.
"Quickly", he/she says. Usually that's the case, but I've had SMS messages delivered days after sending them, and of course none of the suggestions listed work when the person you're trying to contact doesn't have a cell phone or internet service.
This sounds to me like the beginning of a big push for federal dollars by the incumbent phone companies, because if you get rid of POTS you're going to have to spend billions of dollars getting the remote areas of the country wired for IP/cellular, and looking at past experience the phone companies sure aren't going to pay for it.
Hell, I'll do it for $35/page!