Ok.. I just updated Wikipedia. The Universe is now 13.5 billion years, it was at 13.7. Sorry for my skepticism. I also apologize for doubting that we mere mortals can measure cosmological constants from an unknown point in the universe of unknown size undergoing a mysterious accelerating expansion.:)
Amen brother. Even in Einstein's own thought experiments regarding time, simultaneity doesn't make since (to me) either. When they say the universe is 13.5 billion years old, my question is by which watch are you measuring. Time dilation really, really bugs me. Why can't it just be the 'same time' everywhere at once. But yes, I agree, the article makes no sense and it just a headline grab. And I might say, a bit of an arrogant headline grab as they are seeking to define a universal clock constant where one does clearly not exist outside of your own inertial reference frame.
There are other problems that I won't even go into, like the speed of light being a universal constant, the size of the universe, and the fact that we can supposedly see objects from distances where the light wouldn't have had enough time in which to propagate from. It is all just maddening. We need to find a way to get outside of the universe so we can study it. I think that making the measurements from inside the system will never ever work.
I agree. I feel this guys pain. I am not exactly sure how you can protect yourself 100% from all the domain grab scams out there. I host with 1&1 and have my domains set for PRIVATE REGISTRATION and CLIENT-TRANSFER-PROHIBITED. I feel this cuts down on phishing and bogus transfer requests. The only other thing I think might be better is to split your hosting and your DNS into two companies. For example, host your data at Rackspace, 1&1, or where-ever and host your DNS at Verisign and transfer your domain there. The fact that your ignored the email is bad, you should have at least called. Please post your secure solution when you figure it out:)
Actually, the procedure is a multistage process. XRY loads custom firmware/software onto the iPhone by putting the phone into recovery mode. For the Android, XRY roots the device. Their software is actually a phone hacking tool
Ha, peer review.... what a joke. Monsanto pays for the research not the farmers. Write a critical paper or review of a GMO practice and no funding for you.
Sony might have done better if they would have launched the Blu Ray with this. TNG ended in 1994 and the Blu Ray launched in 2006 only about a decade too late. I agree it is finally time to get a Blu-Ray player and burner. Does anyone know if you have encode Blu-Ray content onto standard DVDs in Adobe Premiere and play make a short Blu-Ray on a DVD? The Blu-Ray media is obnoxiously expensive, but with a HD camera, it would be nice to pump out 1080 home movies.
Seriously, Google is terrified of Facebook. Google has totally screwed up its UI in order to be more "social" and everyone hates it. The new GMAIL interface is wretched, Plus+, Photo, it's all a mess. It's an attempt to try and turn Google into Facebook. I am really sick of the Google UI changes and which Google would stay Google and Facebook would just go away.
I agree. Macs are a good value for what you get... Oh, and don't forget about being able to actually get support from an English speaking American or the availability of Apple Store geniuses. Microsoft support routes me to India and on my last call they tried to convince all my USB ports had failed and that is definitely was a hardware problem. Apple support rocks.
"I paid for the CPU, memory, motherboard, disk and video I wanted and it was still cheaper. No bloatware.. MACs don't let me select my hardware."
And that is why MACS actually work. No driver hell like in Windows land because you got to select your own hardware off of NewEgg. Note, I am not knocking you, I handcraft my PCs with NewEgg parts as well, but there is always a driver that doesn't work properly, usually the video driver.
Apple gives you a choice of high end, higher end, and the highest end they could squeeze into a tiny package. I have both OSX and Windows 7 on my desk. When I need stuff to work and work fast with nice tools, I go for the MAC. Microsoft needs to develop so apps that aren't crap and include them with the Windows. Yes, I am calling Microsoft Movie Maker crap.
It must be soul crushing to work at Microsoft and get stomped everyday by a company that was nearly dead just a few years ago.
I wanted to know if you could buy a SMART-PHONE, put a pre-paid SIM in in and use the phone for voice/SMS/MMS and use wifi for data? I was told by AT&T that this is impossible and that if you buy a smartphone you must have a data plan. However, if this is a settings feature, can data be turned off for cellular and enabled for WIFI? Since WIFI is now everywhere, I don't need to spend $100/mo on a data plan.
If you could clarify this with specific examples, I would appreciate it since this is how I would like to approach the problem. Oh, and I would also like blue-tooth so I can use it with my FORD Sync package. If you haven't tried FORD Sync, it rocks. Having bluetooth and a USB port on the front panel is really nice, but I digress.
> Is it just me, or shouldn't we already have this by hiring competent, caring, understanding educators in the first place?
No, it's just you. The elite think that spending $5-6k per student per year is good enough for the masses. They however spend over $20k per year to educate their children at private schools with low, low student class sizes and lot of extras. The average good teacher makes it about 5-years before burnout. Anecdotally, I know a really good teacher that just left at the 5-year mark. He worked his ass off to start programs and teach kids. Unfortunately, it was no longer economically sustainable for he and his expanding family so he switched to another job at 2x the pay.
It's not what is best for teaching and learning, it is about how large can we push class sizes and how little resources can we provide. On the other hand, if you start a war, you can get a blank check. Definitely not what is best for kids.
Think about this. Take a city like Detroit. What if just accepted that it sucked and decided we were going to spend whatever it took to educate the kids. What if it student ratio was 3 kids to 1 teacher? How long would it take to fix the problem? 12-years? Seriously? This would be a permanent societal fix. It is just a matter of priorities and resource allocation.
I agree.. The new iPhone is really, really well done. Siri is so simple that my grandma can use the iPhone. This is clearly a time where profits were earned through innovation and delivery, not just accounting tricks. Exxon being the second closet company gets their product for nearly free, so this is definitely an accomplishment. The question is, without Steve is this sustainable.
Thank you, I wish I had mod points... This clears up some questions I had about GPS. I have been trying to use a fixed point (known location) as a starting reference, but I could never come up with an %-error calculation for the Long/Lat as I moved away from that position. Additionally both the %-error and position and it would drift each day and even averaging the data over time never got close to plus/minus 10 feet. I have since switched to gyros, magnometers and accelerometers but they have their issues and they drift over time. It is such a maddening challenge to figure out your exact location to sub-inch accuracy.
Fellow Slashdotters... this is a little off topic, but is there any way to get accuracy out of GPS? I can barely get plus/minus 12 feet of accuracy out of my GPS in the best conditions. How are they able to determine sub-inch accuracy? This sounds impossible, even with "25 extra-precise GPS receivers" as stated in the article. I just don't believe it is possible to measure to this level of accuracy with GPS. Someone please prove me wrong and school me how to build one with this accuracy for my autonomous lawn bot:)
This reminds me an X-files episode where you are left not knowing what to believe. Do you believe the convincing evidence or the "official denial" of the convincing evidence. Hmmmmm..... I guess I just won't carry around one of those personal tracking devices until I know the truth.
In order to understand security, you must first understand how to hack or abuse a website. I recommend spending at least a week as a hacker. Here are some things to get your started:
1. Install Firefox or Chrome, I like Firefox for webdev.
2. Install GreaseMonkey https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/
3. Install TamperData https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tamper-data/
4. Learn about backend resource management and data validation, specifically SQL Injection. http://hackthissite.org/ is a great place to start
5. On your backend database ENCRYPT all sensitive data, names, account #s, social security, birth-dates. I like to encrypt all the fields then use an off-by-one Fibonacci encoding for numeric fields, so even if you are hacked/decrypted, this is still one more layer of encoding. So many fools do not encrypt their database field data and get owned by SQL-injection attacks or sever compromise. The list is long and distinguished.
6. Lastly, if you are running standard open-source packages test your site for cross-scripting vulnerabilities.
7. Web server lockdown depends on your server and platform Apache, IIS, Windows, Linux... but LOCK IT DOWN!
Also, don't do obvious things like put sql connect userid/passwords in your backend scripts especially if you are running a VM on a shared hosting server. Close down all unused ports/services on your server. Never trust the frontend firewall especially if it says CISCO on the front. Run tripwire. Run MRTG with Big Brother and monitor your traffic/activity and always keep an eye out for anomalies. Keep an eye on your logs and do daily backups.
There are hordes of hackers around the world looking to build backdoors into your site, especially if you have bandwidth and storage. Too many folks (including the new cloud guys like Amazon) have no baseline for activity on their system, get hacked, and are clueless.. maybe that is too harsh, I will say mostly clueless but getting better at responding.
If you need further help, I am available as an extremely expensive consultant, but I am slammed with work at the moment. Good Luck and remember the Internet is an extremely dangerous place.
First off, I am not a lawyer.... but the best option is to ignore them and hope that they go away. The BSA sends out scary letters all the time, but what can they really do? Send another even scarier letter? Don't talk to them, hang up when they call, and file their letters in a folder.
Here is how it works on the BSA side. A disgruntled employee contacts the BSA and makes the claim that a entity is using pirated software. They typically talk to the whisteblower multiple times on the phone and ask lots and lots of questions over and over before sending out the scary letter. They always run the risk that the person could be lying, crazy, or disgruntled.
In phase II, they get more legal and more specific and depose the informant and create a sworn statement. They put the informants claims in legalese and make them swear that it is true and sign it. After this happens, you will get scary letter two or three. Often times, the informant isn't disgruntled enough to perjure themselves and risk a countersuit from you company for monetary damages. The BSA will not go further without this because they don't want to be liable in a counter suit for civil damages. They need to show that they are acting in good faith that software piracy is occurring, without a specific sworn statement it amounts to hearsay. They pay a cash reward for information and they make the information work hard for the money they are never going to collect.:)
If you open the door and say, "Come on in and audit us, we've got nothing to hide." you are building a case against yourself. Even if you are legal, you're not since whatever proof you think you have will not be enough to appease them. In my opinion, the only way they can come in is if you let them in or a judge orders the audit as part of a discovery in a lawsuit. Apparently the EULA you clicked "I agree" to on install allows for auditing anytime, but no one has ever tested this legal theory. Meanwhile, do your own audit and make sure you are clean. Make it as difficult as possible on them and hope they go away. Then quit being such a jerk to your employees so they quite calling the BSA or switch to Open Source.:)
Anonymous... why would you make this move? This serves no purpose but to aggravate the military and focus even more attention on P2P. I suspect the Lulzsec kiddies are now a rogue branch of anonymous.
When I leave, I look my fellow co-workers in the eye and say, "If anything happens while I am on vacation. Whatever you do, don't call!" then I turn off my pager and put it on my desk and laugh manically!
Your have a good start but things are far more complex. I would like to add 'video games' and 'professional sports' to your list of distractions.
Even after making all of these changes there still aren't any jobs for engineers, especially at the entry level. Another major culprit is free-trade agreements which constantly make the USA less competitive. While we are producing responsibly respecting the environment and worker safety, our trading partners are creating national Superfund sites (like China, the worlds #1 polluter). It is much more complicated that GOP tax-cut ideology. Just as observation, tax-cuts on the wealthy haven't helped the economy.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok.. I just updated Wikipedia. The Universe is now 13.5 billion years, it was at 13.7. Sorry for my skepticism. I also apologize for doubting that we mere mortals can measure cosmological constants from an unknown point in the universe of unknown size undergoing a mysterious accelerating expansion. :)
Amen brother. Even in Einstein's own thought experiments regarding time, simultaneity doesn't make since (to me) either. When they say the universe is 13.5 billion years old, my question is by which watch are you measuring. Time dilation really, really bugs me. Why can't it just be the 'same time' everywhere at once. But yes, I agree, the article makes no sense and it just a headline grab. And I might say, a bit of an arrogant headline grab as they are seeking to define a universal clock constant where one does clearly not exist outside of your own inertial reference frame. There are other problems that I won't even go into, like the speed of light being a universal constant, the size of the universe, and the fact that we can supposedly see objects from distances where the light wouldn't have had enough time in which to propagate from. It is all just maddening. We need to find a way to get outside of the universe so we can study it. I think that making the measurements from inside the system will never ever work.
I agree. I feel this guys pain. I am not exactly sure how you can protect yourself 100% from all the domain grab scams out there. I host with 1&1 and have my domains set for PRIVATE REGISTRATION and CLIENT-TRANSFER-PROHIBITED. I feel this cuts down on phishing and bogus transfer requests. The only other thing I think might be better is to split your hosting and your DNS into two companies. For example, host your data at Rackspace, 1&1, or where-ever and host your DNS at Verisign and transfer your domain there. The fact that your ignored the email is bad, you should have at least called. Please post your secure solution when you figure it out :)
Actually, the procedure is a multistage process. XRY loads custom firmware/software onto the iPhone by putting the phone into recovery mode. For the Android, XRY roots the device. Their software is actually a phone hacking tool
Here is the video of how it works:
http://www.msab.com/xry/smartphones
Ha, peer review.... what a joke. Monsanto pays for the research not the farmers. Write a critical paper or review of a GMO practice and no funding for you.
This might have something to do with it: http://www.pressherald.com/business/organic-farmers-lament-dismissal-of-lawsuit_2012-02-29.html
Sony might have done better if they would have launched the Blu Ray with this. TNG ended in 1994 and the Blu Ray launched in 2006 only about a decade too late. I agree it is finally time to get a Blu-Ray player and burner. Does anyone know if you have encode Blu-Ray content onto standard DVDs in Adobe Premiere and play make a short Blu-Ray on a DVD? The Blu-Ray media is obnoxiously expensive, but with a HD camera, it would be nice to pump out 1080 home movies.
Seriously, Google is terrified of Facebook. Google has totally screwed up its UI in order to be more "social" and everyone hates it. The new GMAIL interface is wretched, Plus+, Photo, it's all a mess. It's an attempt to try and turn Google into Facebook. I am really sick of the Google UI changes and which Google would stay Google and Facebook would just go away.
I agree. Macs are a good value for what you get... Oh, and don't forget about being able to actually get support from an English speaking American or the availability of Apple Store geniuses. Microsoft support routes me to India and on my last call they tried to convince all my USB ports had failed and that is definitely was a hardware problem. Apple support rocks.
"I paid for the CPU, memory, motherboard, disk and video I wanted and it was still cheaper. No bloatware.. MACs don't let me select my hardware."
And that is why MACS actually work. No driver hell like in Windows land because you got to select your own hardware off of NewEgg. Note, I am not knocking you, I handcraft my PCs with NewEgg parts as well, but there is always a driver that doesn't work properly, usually the video driver.
Apple gives you a choice of high end, higher end, and the highest end they could squeeze into a tiny package. I have both OSX and Windows 7 on my desk. When I need stuff to work and work fast with nice tools, I go for the MAC. Microsoft needs to develop so apps that aren't crap and include them with the Windows. Yes, I am calling Microsoft Movie Maker crap.
It must be soul crushing to work at Microsoft and get stomped everyday by a company that was nearly dead just a few years ago.
That sir is one heck of a rant, best I've seen in awhile.
I wanted to know if you could buy a SMART-PHONE, put a pre-paid SIM in in and use the phone for voice/SMS/MMS and use wifi for data? I was told by AT&T that this is impossible and that if you buy a smartphone you must have a data plan. However, if this is a settings feature, can data be turned off for cellular and enabled for WIFI? Since WIFI is now everywhere, I don't need to spend $100/mo on a data plan.
If you could clarify this with specific examples, I would appreciate it since this is how I would like to approach the problem. Oh, and I would also like blue-tooth so I can use it with my FORD Sync package. If you haven't tried FORD Sync, it rocks. Having bluetooth and a USB port on the front panel is really nice, but I digress.
> Is it just me, or shouldn't we already have this by hiring competent, caring, understanding educators in the first place?
No, it's just you. The elite think that spending $5-6k per student per year is good enough for the masses. They however spend over $20k per year to educate their children at private schools with low, low student class sizes and lot of extras. The average good teacher makes it about 5-years before burnout. Anecdotally, I know a really good teacher that just left at the 5-year mark. He worked his ass off to start programs and teach kids. Unfortunately, it was no longer economically sustainable for he and his expanding family so he switched to another job at 2x the pay.
It's not what is best for teaching and learning, it is about how large can we push class sizes and how little resources can we provide. On the other hand, if you start a war, you can get a blank check. Definitely not what is best for kids.
Think about this. Take a city like Detroit. What if just accepted that it sucked and decided we were going to spend whatever it took to educate the kids. What if it student ratio was 3 kids to 1 teacher? How long would it take to fix the problem? 12-years? Seriously? This would be a permanent societal fix. It is just a matter of priorities and resource allocation.
I agree.. The new iPhone is really, really well done. Siri is so simple that my grandma can use the iPhone. This is clearly a time where profits were earned through innovation and delivery, not just accounting tricks. Exxon being the second closet company gets their product for nearly free, so this is definitely an accomplishment. The question is, without Steve is this sustainable.
Attention Slashdot green-lighters, pay close attention to the following words and their definitions.
Psychics: people who make stuff up.
Physicists: people who go to university for a long time get degrees, then make stuff up and sometime make stuff work (like rockets and lasers).
Because the descriptions are close, I will let it slide this time, but stop green-lighting when you are drunk. Thank you.
Thank you, I wish I had mod points... This clears up some questions I had about GPS. I have been trying to use a fixed point (known location) as a starting reference, but I could never come up with an %-error calculation for the Long/Lat as I moved away from that position. Additionally both the %-error and position and it would drift each day and even averaging the data over time never got close to plus/minus 10 feet. I have since switched to gyros, magnometers and accelerometers but they have their issues and they drift over time. It is such a maddening challenge to figure out your exact location to sub-inch accuracy.
Thanks for your post!
Fellow Slashdotters... this is a little off topic, but is there any way to get accuracy out of GPS? I can barely get plus/minus 12 feet of accuracy out of my GPS in the best conditions. How are they able to determine sub-inch accuracy? This sounds impossible, even with "25 extra-precise GPS receivers" as stated in the article. I just don't believe it is possible to measure to this level of accuracy with GPS. Someone please prove me wrong and school me how to build one with this accuracy for my autonomous lawn bot :)
This reminds me an X-files episode where you are left not knowing what to believe. Do you believe the convincing evidence or the "official denial" of the convincing evidence. Hmmmmm..... I guess I just won't carry around one of those personal tracking devices until I know the truth.
In order to understand security, you must first understand how to hack or abuse a website. I recommend spending at least a week as a hacker. Here are some things to get your started:
1. Install Firefox or Chrome, I like Firefox for webdev.
2. Install GreaseMonkey https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/
3. Install TamperData https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tamper-data/
4. Learn about backend resource management and data validation, specifically SQL Injection. http://hackthissite.org/ is a great place to start
5. On your backend database ENCRYPT all sensitive data, names, account #s, social security, birth-dates. I like to encrypt all the fields then use an off-by-one Fibonacci encoding for numeric fields, so even if you are hacked/decrypted, this is still one more layer of encoding. So many fools do not encrypt their database field data and get owned by SQL-injection attacks or sever compromise. The list is long and distinguished.
6. Lastly, if you are running standard open-source packages test your site for cross-scripting vulnerabilities.
7. Web server lockdown depends on your server and platform Apache, IIS, Windows, Linux... but LOCK IT DOWN!
Also, don't do obvious things like put sql connect userid/passwords in your backend scripts especially if you are running a VM on a shared hosting server. Close down all unused ports/services on your server. Never trust the frontend firewall especially if it says CISCO on the front. Run tripwire. Run MRTG with Big Brother and monitor your traffic/activity and always keep an eye out for anomalies. Keep an eye on your logs and do daily backups.
There are hordes of hackers around the world looking to build backdoors into your site, especially if you have bandwidth and storage. Too many folks (including the new cloud guys like Amazon) have no baseline for activity on their system, get hacked, and are clueless.. maybe that is too harsh, I will say mostly clueless but getting better at responding.
If you need further help, I am available as an extremely expensive consultant, but I am slammed with work at the moment. Good Luck and remember the Internet is an extremely dangerous place.
Pna lbh ernq guvf? Vs fb, lbh pna rznvy zr hfvat ebg13 rapbqvat. rot13.com
In Soviet Russia, cloud does not destroy piracy, but instead destroys YOU (the desktop OS).
:)
If we have cloud, tablets, and HTML 5 life is good
First off, I am not a lawyer.... but the best option is to ignore them and hope that they go away. The BSA sends out scary letters all the time, but what can they really do? Send another even scarier letter? Don't talk to them, hang up when they call, and file their letters in a folder.
:)
:)
Here is how it works on the BSA side. A disgruntled employee contacts the BSA and makes the claim that a entity is using pirated software. They typically talk to the whisteblower multiple times on the phone and ask lots and lots of questions over and over before sending out the scary letter. They always run the risk that the person could be lying, crazy, or disgruntled.
In phase II, they get more legal and more specific and depose the informant and create a sworn statement. They put the informants claims in legalese and make them swear that it is true and sign it. After this happens, you will get scary letter two or three. Often times, the informant isn't disgruntled enough to perjure themselves and risk a countersuit from you company for monetary damages. The BSA will not go further without this because they don't want to be liable in a counter suit for civil damages. They need to show that they are acting in good faith that software piracy is occurring, without a specific sworn statement it amounts to hearsay. They pay a cash reward for information and they make the information work hard for the money they are never going to collect.
If you open the door and say, "Come on in and audit us, we've got nothing to hide." you are building a case against yourself. Even if you are legal, you're not since whatever proof you think you have will not be enough to appease them. In my opinion, the only way they can come in is if you let them in or a judge orders the audit as part of a discovery in a lawsuit. Apparently the EULA you clicked "I agree" to on install allows for auditing anytime, but no one has ever tested this legal theory. Meanwhile, do your own audit and make sure you are clean. Make it as difficult as possible on them and hope they go away. Then quit being such a jerk to your employees so they quite calling the BSA or switch to Open Source.
Watch this video for more details: The Bully Software Alliance
Anonymous... why would you make this move? This serves no purpose but to aggravate the military and focus even more attention on P2P. I suspect the Lulzsec kiddies are now a rogue branch of anonymous.
When I leave, I look my fellow co-workers in the eye and say, "If anything happens while I am on vacation. Whatever you do, don't call!" then I turn off my pager and put it on my desk and laugh manically!
Your have a good start but things are far more complex. I would like to add 'video games' and 'professional sports' to your list of distractions.
Even after making all of these changes there still aren't any jobs for engineers, especially at the entry level. Another major culprit is free-trade agreements which constantly make the USA less competitive. While we are producing responsibly respecting the environment and worker safety, our trading partners are creating national Superfund sites (like China, the worlds #1 polluter). It is much more complicated that GOP tax-cut ideology. Just as observation, tax-cuts on the wealthy haven't helped the economy.