Do you complain this much about javascript in HTML?
Yes.
JavaScript was an amazingly stupid idea there, too, because it takes what was originally supposed to be a document (i.e. a static presentation of information) and turns it into software, with all the attendant hazards. I keep JavaScript turned off by default.
The macro viruses that plagued Microsoft Word showed exactly what kind of trouble would inevitably follow if you turned documents into software, but tried to pretend they were still "documents". But apparently no one was willing to learn that lesson. So now we're stuck with JavaScript, pop-up ads, pop-under ads, auto-playing music, and a host of other garbage. Now Adobe seems intent on doing the same thing to PDFs.
And, as we all know, Energy is Power multiplied by Time, so...
Okay, so clearly I had difficulty in Physics 101. That doesn't change the fact that an errant high voltage discharge will turn your shiny Intel Core Duo into a useless, if well-machined, piece of sand...
Energy is not measured in volts. Attempts at debunking things while failing to make basic electrical sense are not impressive. Try harder next time.
Okay, fine, Jack Sarfatti. Corona discharge requires thousands of volts, period. The actual energy involved is quite low, since the Amperes, and therefore resultant Power, is quite small. And, as we all know, Energy is Power multiplied by Time, so...
But the original thrust of my objection remains: Getting thousands of volts near expensive semiconductors is a great way to turn them into worthless semiconductors. So trying to cool a CPU with an ionic breeze generator strikes me, anyway, as a stupendously foolish idea.
Hmm. That rig looks like a spin on those electrical "UFO" toys that fly via high-voltage "wind", with the difference that the rig is fixed and the "wind" blows outward.
However, I'd still say there's little point, since any advantages are far outweighed by the disadvantages:
The volume of air moved is still far smaller than can be moved by a conventional fan,
There are silicon-frying voltages involved,
The charged ions flying out the back will make the dust stick much more firmly to the surrounding surfaces,
You'll get ozone emissions, which are unavoidable with any high-voltage discharge.
It was inevitable this would happen ever since Adobe made the impossibly stupid move of adding JavaScript to their reader. Really, I can't heap enough well-deserved derision on this boneheaded, lame-brained, imbecilic, preposterous, self-serving, idiotic, fucktarded idea.
Every time I install Acrobat Reader, I dive through the preferences panel and fix all the incorrect defaults. One of the things I turn off, and which should be off by default, is JavaScript execution. Whether turning this off will protect against the described vulnerability, I don't know, but it's probably a reasonable first line of defense.
A lot of the factory-default settings in Acrobat Reader are (stupidly) wrong. You should review all of them.
First, for corona discharge to occur at all requires thousands of volts of energy. Basically enough to leap off the conductor -- and into the semiconductor. This is easily several times the amount of voltage needed to fry any VLSI chip.
Second, the amount of airflow generated by corona discharge is infinitesimal, especially given the amount of energy required to get it to happen at all. Some simple thermal models will tell you how much air you have to displace in order to remove a given amount of heat, and you'll see that you're never going to get that kind of volume moved via corona discharge.
Maybe there have been some new discoveries since I last played with static electricity. But personally I think someone's shoveling bovine offal.
There's no DRM in your.wav. There's no DRM in your.mp3. There's no DRM...
You haven't been paying attention.
When you "squirt" a song from a Zune, the recipient is only allowed to play it three times, whether the song is Defective Recorded Media (DRM) or a plain, unencumbered MP3.
Prove that this defect in the Zune will not be "back-ported" to Vista. (Answer: You can't.)
Vista is untrustworthy. Install and use at your own risk.
...the reduction in quality ONLY happens if there is some premium (DRMed) content playing at that time.
Since Vista's desktop sound effects are all supposed to be copy-protected (read: defective), doesn't that mean that Vista is always running in degraded mode?
This has clearly become a real economic problem. I'm surprised our Feck^H^Harless Leader hasn't declared spam a form of economic terrorism, and acted correspondingly. Of course, the ideal solution is to start brutally killing spammers and putting their heads on pikes in the town square. But nobody seems to be willing to do that, so all we have to play with is the network.
So, under the auspices of Economic Security, some random ideas to rebuild confidence in the email network:
Harden DNS
The domain name is the primary reference point for a reputation base. If a domain can be spoofed, reputation fraud ("Identity theft") becomes more likely. So, harden DNS with some ubiquitous public key crypto. If you want a domain, you must provide a public key; the key authenticates you to modify the entry. If you lose the key, tough cookies; you'll have to wait for the registration to expire before you can regain control of it.
Make SMTP AUTH Mandatory, Preferably Over SSL
All clients presenting mail for delivery must present credentials. No credentials, no delivery. In an ideal universe, the client's credentials (public key?) would be presented as part of the SSL connection, so the SMTP server wouldn't have to do anything special.
SMTP Servers Refuse Connections From IPs with No MX Record
If you're not on the local subnet, and your IP is not registered as a Mail Exchange, then no relaying for you without prior arrangement. Assuming a hardened DNS, we can reasonably rely on the authenticity of the MX record.
Throttle Excessive Port 25 Activity
Blanket blocking of connections on port 25 is excessive -- some people have a legitimate need to drop mail on smarthosts outside the local subnet. However, if the routers observe an internal IP address spraying port 25 connections to, say, a dozen different IPs over the course of a minute, then that's probably something the network admins would want to look at more closely. This would do nothing to thwart a parallel "shadow" network of compromised hosts acting as spam relays for the subnets on which they're located. But for a while you'd get a pretty good map of machines to clean up.
The point of the site is to illustrate how the exact same HTML file can be displayed in an infinite number of ways by simply changing the CSS. The site is essentially an argument for a semantic Web.
Brings a whole new meaning to the term Blue Screen of Death.
"It looks like you're trying to open a jar of pickles. Would you like Microsoft Robot to: 1) Open the jar for you; 2) Merely loosen the jar, leaving final jar configuration details to you; 3) Try a different jar; 4) Install Micrsoft Deli, with pickle support?"
So when can us schlubs on the San Francisco peninsula get fiber? The best we can get around here is 6000/768 DSL, or 8000/768 cable (but Comcast are jerks, and their TOS are laughably unrealistic, so they don't get my money).
Please dig up our street. I won't mind, honest. It won't even be that big a deal. Pacific Bell's... er, SBC's... Um, AT&T's central office is just a block and a half away.
nonintuitive- Ever tried to decode all the variations of.bmp?
Yes. I wrote a BMP parser at a previous job just so the Web browser could display those cutesy little icons in the address bar and bookmark list. BMP is an ill-specified piece of $#!+ and should be slain in the public square before jubilant onlookers.
In the interim, it's a shame Bell Labs has gone from world leader to nothing... budget cuts, etc. (Lucent)... there was some real research there, and lots of it was shared with the world.
Don't be too quick to lionize Bell Labs, as they were the research arm of The Phone Company (AT&T), which itself was the object of scorn for decades for abusing their position of being the only game in town. Just as you argue that Micros~1's research are "ill-gotten gains" from their predatory business practices, one could also level the same argument against the Bell Labs of 40 years ago.
Don't misunderstand; I am in no way a Micros~1 apologist, and would richly enjoy watching the company collapse under its own hubris and technical incompetence. It's simply that, if you're going to slam the company, you need to pick your comparisons more carefully.
C "understands" ints and floats. If you do the simple cast:
int i = (int)x;
Then C will simply convert the float value into an integer value (throwing away fractional part). But this isn't what we want. We want to operate on the bits of an IEEE floating point value directly, and integers are the best way to do that.
So first, we lie to the compiler by telling it we have a pointer to an int:
(int *) &f
And then we deference the pointer to get it into an operable int:
i = *(int *) &f
Note what's important here is to keep the compiler from modifying any part of the original 32-bit value.
My mom doesn't own a computer, and is starting to notice. Things that used to be handled by newsletter or phone calls are now handled by email, and she's being left out. So a computer is in her not-too-distant future.
There is no fscking way I'm inflicting Windows on her. System administration aside, she knows nothing about the social engineering hazards out there -- email scams, phishing scams, the vast cornucopia of malware...
Linux is an option, but it would take me weeks to build and tweak a configuration to the point that I'm happy with it and feel it would serve her needs, and I don't have that kind of time (although Ubuntu out of the box is darned close). Further, she has little interest in exploring computing for its own sake.
So that leaves Mac/OS-X. And, frankly, of the three, I think she'd be happiest with that.
So I don't think it's economic factors at work. I think it's because seniors have highly-developed bullshit filters, refined over decades of experience, and have figured out that Macs Just Work.
What kind of environment do you have to be raised in that instills a sense of entitlement so absolute that it reduces onlookers to standing agape in stunned silence?
These people need to be kept away from sharp objects and heavy machinery until they grow up.
'There has been some evidence that companies have to spend a good deal on training and support after you deploy...'
You will spend as much, if not more, on retraining if you roll out Windows Vista and Office 2007.
As for support, raise your hand if you honestly think that, somehow this time, this release of a brand-new version of Windows will be any less of a disaster than all of the previous brand-new versions of Windows...
So, do you have any ideas on how one "prepares" for this? Do we hope that we elect wise leaders that just take over the idea of funding R&D in the future with tax money? Or, are we all just working for the State with the knowledge that they are going to take care of us?
If the question you're asking is, "How do we rearrange the pieces on the chessboard?" the answer is, "You don't, because you need to start learning to play Go."
It will be a different game. You won't be competing for artifacts or resources. You will be competing for reputation, since that's what will drive people to your door. Once they're at your door, then you can manage access to your remaining scarce resource -- your time -- and bill accordingly.
This requires you to go out and learn what's actually important to people. Which reputation elements are they seeking to maximize when they search for a product or service? Which can you do consistently better than anyone else? In the case of Samsung's plight, this is research they can do now to improve their position.
I don't profess to have a complete solution. I don't have the Jeffersonian level of wisdom to come up with one. All I have so far are some general ideas and directions in which to start exploring. This is why I encourage people here to think about it.
The issue of unsanctioned copying ("piracy") comes up on Slashdot every so often. The ensuing discussion eventually boils down to one group shrieking that inventions and artistic creations are "property" and that their "owners" should enjoy absolute control over their disposition; and another group shrieking that imposing such control is tantamount to hoarding and tyrrany, and is socially unredeeming.
I have chosen to look at Reality, something that's been out of fashion since the 2000 US elections. The realities are that science and technology continue to advance and, as a consequence, abundance increases as cost decreases.
In a sense, the computer represents the ultimate achievement in manufacturing, at least as far as bits are concerned: Infinite abundance at zero cost. You can make an infinite number of copies of a digital work for no incremental cost. You are constrained only by the amount of storage you have, and the available energy to run the computer.
I wrote an essay on this subject over ten years ago, vaguely exploring the economic and social ramifications of such manufacturing capability. I've also posted here extensively on the subject. My main thrust was that defective recorded media (DRM) and other forms of copy protection were childish attempts to wish away reality, and that cheap copying was not only not going to go away, but proliferate. I argued that the economy existing in the memories of our computers -- where a given instance of an artifact was inherently valueless -- would one day "leak out" into the physical sphere. I argued that we needed to be prepared for this day, and that the realm of digital media served as an ideal place in which to try out new economic models and risk/reward structures -- structures and conventions that fundamentally acknowledged that digital artifacts were easily and infinitely copyable. I argued that this day was coming, whether we prepared for it or not. I argued that, if we didn't prepare for it, we would be seriously fscked.
Well, guess what? It looks like it's starting to happen.
We are not yet seeing anything close to computer-like ease of duplication, but even this meager advance in physical manufacturing is already causing what could be serious socioeconomic repercussions. Do not think for one moment that manufacturing is somehow going to get "harder" again. Absent a regional plague or war, this issue is only going to accelerate. Manufacturing costs will continue to fall and manufacturing centers will become more prolific as the technology of manufacturing itself becomes smaller and cheaper. Hell, 3D "printers" have fallen below the USD$10,000.00 mark. How long before you can pick them up in BestBuy?
This is not going to go away, and you are not going to stop it or slow it down with silly little notions like copy protection or WTO/WIPO trade agreements. You need to change your thinking. You need to prepare for this. Otherwise... Well, let's just say the social chaos of today's Iraq will look like a parlor game in comparison.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes.
JavaScript was an amazingly stupid idea there, too, because it takes what was originally supposed to be a document (i.e. a static presentation of information) and turns it into software, with all the attendant hazards. I keep JavaScript turned off by default.
The macro viruses that plagued Microsoft Word showed exactly what kind of trouble would inevitably follow if you turned documents into software, but tried to pretend they were still "documents". But apparently no one was willing to learn that lesson. So now we're stuck with JavaScript, pop-up ads, pop-under ads, auto-playing music, and a host of other garbage. Now Adobe seems intent on doing the same thing to PDFs.
Schwab
Okay, so clearly I had difficulty in Physics 101. That doesn't change the fact that an errant high voltage discharge will turn your shiny Intel Core Duo into a useless, if well-machined, piece of sand...
Here's more than you could have ever thought you wanted to know about Electrostatic Discharge (ESD), and why it's so bloody dangerous to get even as little as 100 volts near an unsuspecting chip.
Schwab
Okay, fine, Jack Sarfatti. Corona discharge requires thousands of volts, period. The actual energy involved is quite low, since the Amperes, and therefore resultant Power, is quite small. And, as we all know, Energy is Power multiplied by Time, so...
But the original thrust of my objection remains: Getting thousands of volts near expensive semiconductors is a great way to turn them into worthless semiconductors. So trying to cool a CPU with an ionic breeze generator strikes me, anyway, as a stupendously foolish idea.
Schwab
However, I'd still say there's little point, since any advantages are far outweighed by the disadvantages:
Schwab
Every time I install Acrobat Reader, I dive through the preferences panel and fix all the incorrect defaults. One of the things I turn off, and which should be off by default, is JavaScript execution. Whether turning this off will protect against the described vulnerability, I don't know, but it's probably a reasonable first line of defense.
A lot of the factory-default settings in Acrobat Reader are (stupidly) wrong. You should review all of them.
Schwab
First, for corona discharge to occur at all requires thousands of volts of energy. Basically enough to leap off the conductor -- and into the semiconductor. This is easily several times the amount of voltage needed to fry any VLSI chip.
Second, the amount of airflow generated by corona discharge is infinitesimal, especially given the amount of energy required to get it to happen at all. Some simple thermal models will tell you how much air you have to displace in order to remove a given amount of heat, and you'll see that you're never going to get that kind of volume moved via corona discharge.
Maybe there have been some new discoveries since I last played with static electricity. But personally I think someone's shoveling bovine offal.
Schwab
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mem_card_node bs=256k
If you want to be extra-friendly to the card's buyer, write a new partition table to the card after wiping it and format it for FAT32.
Schwab
You haven't been paying attention.
When you "squirt" a song from a Zune, the recipient is only allowed to play it three times, whether the song is Defective Recorded Media (DRM) or a plain, unencumbered MP3.
Prove that this defect in the Zune will not be "back-ported" to Vista. (Answer: You can't.)
Vista is untrustworthy. Install and use at your own risk.
Schwab
Since Vista's desktop sound effects are all supposed to be copy-protected (read: defective), doesn't that mean that Vista is always running in degraded mode?
Schwab
So, under the auspices of Economic Security, some random ideas to rebuild confidence in the email network:
The domain name is the primary reference point for a reputation base. If a domain can be spoofed, reputation fraud ("Identity theft") becomes more likely. So, harden DNS with some ubiquitous public key crypto. If you want a domain, you must provide a public key; the key authenticates you to modify the entry. If you lose the key, tough cookies; you'll have to wait for the registration to expire before you can regain control of it.
All clients presenting mail for delivery must present credentials. No credentials, no delivery. In an ideal universe, the client's credentials (public key?) would be presented as part of the SSL connection, so the SMTP server wouldn't have to do anything special.
If you're not on the local subnet, and your IP is not registered as a Mail Exchange, then no relaying for you without prior arrangement. Assuming a hardened DNS, we can reasonably rely on the authenticity of the MX record.
Blanket blocking of connections on port 25 is excessive -- some people have a legitimate need to drop mail on smarthosts outside the local subnet. However, if the routers observe an internal IP address spraying port 25 connections to, say, a dozen different IPs over the course of a minute, then that's probably something the network admins would want to look at more closely. This would do nothing to thwart a parallel "shadow" network of compromised hosts acting as spam relays for the subnets on which they're located. But for a while you'd get a pretty good map of machines to clean up.
Schwab
Honestly, if you eagerly waiting for Vista to accomplish anything for you other than make you $200 poorer, you're fooling yourself.
Schwab
In case you didn't, here are a few examples.
The point of the site is to illustrate how the exact same HTML file can be displayed in an infinite number of ways by simply changing the CSS. The site is essentially an argument for a semantic Web.
Schwab
"It looks like you're trying to open a jar of pickles. Would you like Microsoft Robot to: 1) Open the jar for you; 2) Merely loosen the jar, leaving final jar configuration details to you; 3) Try a different jar; 4) Install Micrsoft Deli, with pickle support?"
Butlerian Jihad, here we come...
Schwab
Please dig up our street. I won't mind, honest. It won't even be that big a deal. Pacific Bell's... er, SBC's... Um, AT&T's central office is just a block and a half away.
Schwab
Yes. I wrote a BMP parser at a previous job just so the Web browser could display those cutesy little icons in the address bar and bookmark list. BMP is an ill-specified piece of $#!+ and should be slain in the public square before jubilant onlookers.
Schwab
Schwab
Don't be too quick to lionize Bell Labs, as they were the research arm of The Phone Company (AT&T), which itself was the object of scorn for decades for abusing their position of being the only game in town. Just as you argue that Micros~1's research are "ill-gotten gains" from their predatory business practices, one could also level the same argument against the Bell Labs of 40 years ago.
Don't misunderstand; I am in no way a Micros~1 apologist, and would richly enjoy watching the company collapse under its own hubris and technical incompetence. It's simply that, if you're going to slam the company, you need to pick your comparisons more carefully.
Schwab
int i = (int)x;
Then C will simply convert the float value into an integer value (throwing away fractional part). But this isn't what we want. We want to operate on the bits of an IEEE floating point value directly, and integers are the best way to do that.
So first, we lie to the compiler by telling it we have a pointer to an int:
(int *) &f
And then we deference the pointer to get it into an operable int:
i = *(int *) &f
Note what's important here is to keep the compiler from modifying any part of the original 32-bit value.
Schwab
There is no fscking way I'm inflicting Windows on her. System administration aside, she knows nothing about the social engineering hazards out there -- email scams, phishing scams, the vast cornucopia of malware...
Linux is an option, but it would take me weeks to build and tweak a configuration to the point that I'm happy with it and feel it would serve her needs, and I don't have that kind of time (although Ubuntu out of the box is darned close). Further, she has little interest in exploring computing for its own sake.
So that leaves Mac/OS-X. And, frankly, of the three, I think she'd be happiest with that.
So I don't think it's economic factors at work. I think it's because seniors have highly-developed bullshit filters, refined over decades of experience, and have figured out that Macs Just Work.
Schwab
What kind of environment do you have to be raised in that instills a sense of entitlement so absolute that it reduces onlookers to standing agape in stunned silence?
These people need to be kept away from sharp objects and heavy machinery until they grow up.
Schwab
You will spend as much, if not more, on retraining if you roll out Windows Vista and Office 2007.
As for support, raise your hand if you honestly think that, somehow this time, this release of a brand-new version of Windows will be any less of a disaster than all of the previous brand-new versions of Windows...
Schwab
Gingrich clearly isn't a Republican, but an Authoritarian, and should be derided as such.
Schwab
If the question you're asking is, "How do we rearrange the pieces on the chessboard?" the answer is, "You don't, because you need to start learning to play Go."
It will be a different game. You won't be competing for artifacts or resources. You will be competing for reputation, since that's what will drive people to your door. Once they're at your door, then you can manage access to your remaining scarce resource -- your time -- and bill accordingly.
This requires you to go out and learn what's actually important to people. Which reputation elements are they seeking to maximize when they search for a product or service? Which can you do consistently better than anyone else? In the case of Samsung's plight, this is research they can do now to improve their position.
I don't profess to have a complete solution. I don't have the Jeffersonian level of wisdom to come up with one. All I have so far are some general ideas and directions in which to start exploring. This is why I encourage people here to think about it.
Schwab
I have chosen to look at Reality, something that's been out of fashion since the 2000 US elections. The realities are that science and technology continue to advance and, as a consequence, abundance increases as cost decreases.
In a sense, the computer represents the ultimate achievement in manufacturing, at least as far as bits are concerned: Infinite abundance at zero cost. You can make an infinite number of copies of a digital work for no incremental cost. You are constrained only by the amount of storage you have, and the available energy to run the computer.
I wrote an essay on this subject over ten years ago, vaguely exploring the economic and social ramifications of such manufacturing capability. I've also posted here extensively on the subject. My main thrust was that defective recorded media (DRM) and other forms of copy protection were childish attempts to wish away reality, and that cheap copying was not only not going to go away, but proliferate. I argued that the economy existing in the memories of our computers -- where a given instance of an artifact was inherently valueless -- would one day "leak out" into the physical sphere. I argued that we needed to be prepared for this day, and that the realm of digital media served as an ideal place in which to try out new economic models and risk/reward structures -- structures and conventions that fundamentally acknowledged that digital artifacts were easily and infinitely copyable. I argued that this day was coming, whether we prepared for it or not. I argued that, if we didn't prepare for it, we would be seriously fscked.
Well, guess what? It looks like it's starting to happen.
We are not yet seeing anything close to computer-like ease of duplication, but even this meager advance in physical manufacturing is already causing what could be serious socioeconomic repercussions. Do not think for one moment that manufacturing is somehow going to get "harder" again. Absent a regional plague or war, this issue is only going to accelerate. Manufacturing costs will continue to fall and manufacturing centers will become more prolific as the technology of manufacturing itself becomes smaller and cheaper. Hell, 3D "printers" have fallen below the USD$10,000.00 mark. How long before you can pick them up in BestBuy?
This is not going to go away, and you are not going to stop it or slow it down with silly little notions like copy protection or WTO/WIPO trade agreements. You need to change your thinking. You need to prepare for this. Otherwise... Well, let's just say the social chaos of today's Iraq will look like a parlor game in comparison.
Schwab
Unnecessarily Snide Response: Learn to clean up your own house.
Schwab