Yes and no. If your machine does something different than the book says it should do, you've found a bug in your system. Work around it. Do not rely on it. The next version of the buggy component might have the bug fixed, and your code will break if it relies on it.
/* OK, I could have used the standard library, but hey, I'm paid by lines of code,
so why not just add an implementation of my own? It's not too hard, is it? */ char* find(char* s, char ch) { /* Well, if you didn't already guess what this function is for, the following code
surely will tell you. If not, you're not qualified to change it anyway */
/* Oh, and for the assholes who want to put error checking here: Don't. This
function is only meant to be called with valid input. Error checking would only
cost unnecessary performance. If you call it with invalid input, it's your
fault anyway. */
while (*s && *s != ch)
s++;
/* OK, work done. Let's return. */
return s; }
Clearly the second version is better, don't you think?
OK, so you decide to solve the problem of thermal expansion by measuring the temperature and calculating in software the effect of it on the period of your clock, and correct, still in software, the time accordingly. Patent worthy or not?
If they can prove that your bitcoin came from the money laundering bank, they got you for money laundering. No link to the original crime necessary for that, since money laundering is a crime itself. They'll probably also find hints about the true origin when they study your confiscated computers.
I have a system which is ready to use, and completely anonymous: Trustcoin.
The trick is that the coins only exist in your head, so no trail at all is left, except if someone listens directly to a transaction (and even that part can be made anonymous with known techniques).
It works as follows: You simply remember how many trustcoins you have. If you need to pay someone, you just say e.g. "I pay you five trustcoins" and subtract the five trustcoins in your head, while the other person adds the trust coins to the trustcoins they have in their head.
You probably already can guess why I called them "trustcoin": You have to trust the other party if you accept them.
I had written a large point-to-point reply, but the lame(ness) filter won't let me post it (and doesn't even tell me why; Slashdot is really going downhill!). Therefore here's a summary:
1. RequestPolicy doesn't do all from the list (but most). But I never claimed it was the solution to everything. And BTW, against your claim, hosts files also do not do all of that.
2. RequestPolicy can do things hosts files cannot do. Which was my whole point: It is not made redundant by hosts files. Now it is true that also hosts files can something RequestPolicy cannot do. But I never claimed otherwise.
So, now let's see if the lame(ness) filter likes this.
(BTW, is there any place where I can ask why my original post did not pass the lame(ness) filter?
I didn't "run from this". But sometimes I also do other things than reading/writing on Slashdot (like sleeping, working, or listening to radio broadcasts which certainly don't wait for me while I write comments).
And BTW, your claim that you answered my questions is completely wrong. You answered questions which I never asked, while leaving the questions I asked unanswered (maybe because the answers could have not been in favour of hosts files?)
I don't care about whether you do or want to block YouTube videos on third party sites. But the point is that you claimed that host files are better than RequestPolicy. Which they are not because they simply offer different functionality. You cannot replace RequestPolicy with host file entries. And blocking embedded videos from third-party sites (and especially YouTube) is one thing I use RequestPolicy for.
And no, I do not want to completely block YouTube (if I would want that, then blocking in the hosts file would probably be the better alternative). I want to block embedded YouTube videos in third-party sites (and moreover, I want to easily unblock them in the case that I decide I want to see that video, which happens in the minority of cases). Why? Well, because I don't see why I should let YouTube (that is, Google) know that I'm on that third-party site when I don't have the desire to watch that video.
And BTW, you seem to have the misconception that ring 0 code runs faster than ring 3 code. That is wrong. Unless you try to execute privileged instructions (which code that just compares strings certainly does not do), the code is executed exactly the same..
Suppose this VR apparatus is extensively tested, and some of the test subjects having out-of-body experiences see things that would be impossible to see from the (real) body's location. What then?
Then we would have a repeatable phenomenon which we could investigate (assuming we can exclude plain fraud). However I'm willing to bet that this won't happen.
OK, then please tell me, when sequentially numbering the words in my post you linked, which numbers go to the words "cookies" and "ads". Because I cannot find either in the post.
You just proved that your reading comprehension is a complete failure. Here's a hint to you: If your answer contains the word "ad", it is most probably not a proper answer to my post.
I'm not speaking about ads served on YouTube (actually I didn't remember that those actually exist, having seen none for quite some time). I'm speaking about YouTube embedded videos on non-YouTube sites.
Hosts work for it apparently
I know for sure that those embedded videos, when they come from YouTube, are loaded directly from youtube.com (or one of the other common YouTube domains, like youtube.de). I know that because every one and then, I decide that I want to see the embedded video, and decide that it's worth more for me than the tiny bit of possible tracking that involves (since most accesses are blocked, I don't think that the little tracking data from the very few videos on third party sites I actually watch is too valuable anyway). BTW, that's another thing you cannot do with host files: Easy temporary enabling.
As far as ads on YouTube go, if they were served from the same server as YouTube itself, RequestPolicy wouldn't work either (but then, I've also got AdBlock Plus installed, as a second line of defense). It's not only ads which cause cross-site requests (and thus potential information leaks).
Proof's "in the pudding" results I get!
No, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. But since you were speaking about a whole different pudding than I did, your conclusion doesn't hold.
BTW, I notice the absence of an argument about Facebook (whose "like" buttons are the far more important tracking mechanism anyway).
And the slowdown by RequestPolicy is certainly not noticeable (and my computer is over seven years old; I wonder how old yours must be to notice the difference). Nor should it be; after all, it's just a comparison of short strings.
"In einem Fall habe die NSA zudem den chinesischen Geheimdienst dabei ertappt, ebenfalls zu spionieren. Daraufhin haben die NSA abgefangen, was zuvor die Chinesen abgehört hatten."
Translation (hopefully correct):
"In one case the NSA even had caught the Chinese intelligence service to spy as well. Thereupon the NSA had captured what the Chinese had evesdropped before."
Interesting is also the next sentence:
"Die Spionageaktionen sind illegal, in einem bis heute gültigen Abkommen mit der Uno hat sich die USA verpflichtet, keine verdeckten Aktionen zu unternehmen."
Translation:
"The spying actions are illegal, in a still valid agreement with the UNO the USA have committed to not doing covert actions."
If the leaders of the world tended to act honourably, there would not be much difference between democracy and tyranny. After all, the whole point of democracy is that you cannot trust your leaders, and therefore should be able to get rid of them.
It's not the loading of the HTML file which is avoided with ETags, but the loading of the image. Basically, if the image today is still the same as the image last week, and the image from last week is still in the cache, then it makes sense not to load the image again.
HOW in hell shoud the server now know WHICH of the 50 NATed clients (all coming from the same ip and with timed out syn-ack-fin stuff) wants to upload the funny.cat picture?
Slashdot Mirror
And data structures are nothing but code.
Yes and no. If your machine does something different than the book says it should do, you've found a bug in your system. Work around it. Do not rely on it. The next version of the buggy component might have the bug fixed, and your code will break if it relies on it.
OK, compare the following two functions.
with
Clearly the second version is better, don't you think?
You can save a lot of screen space by omitting comments. That way you can write more complex code without violating that rule. ;-)
In celsius 0 or negative means watch out for ice
100 means the tea is ready.
What else do you need to know?
37.
You've obviously never measured body temperature.
OK, so you decide to solve the problem of thermal expansion by measuring the temperature and calculating in software the effect of it on the period of your clock, and correct, still in software, the time accordingly. Patent worthy or not?
If they can prove that your bitcoin came from the money laundering bank, they got you for money laundering. No link to the original crime necessary for that, since money laundering is a crime itself. They'll probably also find hints about the true origin when they study your confiscated computers.
I have a system which is ready to use, and completely anonymous: Trustcoin.
The trick is that the coins only exist in your head, so no trail at all is left, except if someone listens directly to a transaction (and even that part can be made anonymous with known techniques).
It works as follows: You simply remember how many trustcoins you have. If you need to pay someone, you just say e.g. "I pay you five trustcoins" and subtract the five trustcoins in your head, while the other person adds the trust coins to the trustcoins they have in their head.
You probably already can guess why I called them "trustcoin": You have to trust the other party if you accept them.
I already wrote that. But why am I not surprised that you didn't (or pretend you didn't) notice it?
I had written a large point-to-point reply, but the lame(ness) filter won't let me post it (and doesn't even tell me why; Slashdot is really going downhill!). Therefore here's a summary:
1. RequestPolicy doesn't do all from the list (but most). But I never claimed it was the solution to everything. And BTW, against your claim, hosts files also do not do all of that.
2. RequestPolicy can do things hosts files cannot do. Which was my whole point: It is not made redundant by hosts files. Now it is true that also hosts files can something RequestPolicy cannot do. But I never claimed otherwise.
So, now let's see if the lame(ness) filter likes this.
(BTW, is there any place where I can ask why my original post did not pass the lame(ness) filter?
Or do you have a hosts file solution to it? ;-))
I didn't "run from this". But sometimes I also do other things than reading/writing on Slashdot (like sleeping, working, or listening to radio broadcasts which certainly don't wait for me while I write comments).
And BTW, your claim that you answered my questions is completely wrong. You answered questions which I never asked, while leaving the questions I asked unanswered (maybe because the answers could have not been in favour of hosts files?)
I don't care about whether you do or want to block YouTube videos on third party sites. But the point is that you claimed that host files are better than RequestPolicy. Which they are not because they simply offer different functionality. You cannot replace RequestPolicy with host file entries. And blocking embedded videos from third-party sites (and especially YouTube) is one thing I use RequestPolicy for.
And no, I do not want to completely block YouTube (if I would want that, then blocking in the hosts file would probably be the better alternative). I want to block embedded YouTube videos in third-party sites (and moreover, I want to easily unblock them in the case that I decide I want to see that video, which happens in the minority of cases). Why? Well, because I don't see why I should let YouTube (that is, Google) know that I'm on that third-party site when I don't have the desire to watch that video.
And BTW, you seem to have the misconception that ring 0 code runs faster than ring 3 code. That is wrong. Unless you try to execute privileged instructions (which code that just compares strings certainly does not do), the code is executed exactly the same..
Then we would have a repeatable phenomenon which we could investigate (assuming we can exclude plain fraud). However I'm willing to bet that this won't happen.
OK, then please tell me, when sequentially numbering the words in my post you linked, which numbers go to the words "cookies" and "ads". Because I cannot find either in the post.
You just proved that your reading comprehension is a complete failure. Here's a hint to you: If your answer contains the word "ad", it is most probably not a proper answer to my post.
You're an NSA agent seeking for new material to fapp on, admit it. ;-)
Wikipedia, for a start (whenever you upload a new version of the image).
Also, the image may be dynamically generated from changing data, say stock charts, or captured from a web cam.
I'm not speaking about ads served on YouTube (actually I didn't remember that those actually exist, having seen none for quite some time). I'm speaking about YouTube embedded videos on non-YouTube sites.
I know for sure that those embedded videos, when they come from YouTube, are loaded directly from youtube.com (or one of the other common YouTube domains, like youtube.de). I know that because every one and then, I decide that I want to see the embedded video, and decide that it's worth more for me than the tiny bit of possible tracking that involves (since most accesses are blocked, I don't think that the little tracking data from the very few videos on third party sites I actually watch is too valuable anyway). BTW, that's another thing you cannot do with host files: Easy temporary enabling.
As far as ads on YouTube go, if they were served from the same server as YouTube itself, RequestPolicy wouldn't work either (but then, I've also got AdBlock Plus installed, as a second line of defense). It's not only ads which cause cross-site requests (and thus potential information leaks).
No, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. But since you were speaking about a whole different pudding than I did, your conclusion doesn't hold.
BTW, I notice the absence of an argument about Facebook (whose "like" buttons are the far more important tracking mechanism anyway).
And the slowdown by RequestPolicy is certainly not noticeable (and my computer is over seven years old; I wonder how old yours must be to notice the difference). Nor should it be; after all, it's just a comparison of short strings.
That particular German was very likely not yet born back then.
In the German link, I'Äve found the following:
"In einem Fall habe die NSA zudem den chinesischen Geheimdienst dabei ertappt, ebenfalls zu spionieren. Daraufhin haben die NSA abgefangen, was zuvor die Chinesen abgehört hatten."
Translation (hopefully correct):
"In one case the NSA even had caught the Chinese intelligence service to spy as well. Thereupon the NSA had captured what the Chinese had evesdropped before."
Interesting is also the next sentence:
"Die Spionageaktionen sind illegal, in einem bis heute gültigen Abkommen mit der Uno hat sich die USA verpflichtet, keine verdeckten Aktionen zu unternehmen."
Translation:
"The spying actions are illegal, in a still valid agreement with the UNO the USA have committed to not doing covert actions."
If the leaders of the world tended to act honourably, there would not be much difference between democracy and tyranny. After all, the whole point of democracy is that you cannot trust your leaders, and therefore should be able to get rid of them.
The US would lose its right to veto any decisions of the UN security council.
It's not the loading of the HTML file which is avoided with ETags, but the loading of the image. Basically, if the image today is still the same as the image last week, and the image from last week is still in the cache, then it makes sense not to load the image again.
Session cookies.