Any chance of them getting some female artists for this one? What are you trying to say here? GH2 had female artists... It seems like you're slighting Chrissy Hynde, Ann and Nancy Wilson, and Axl Rose! I won't stand for it!
Maybe the GP was referring to things more along the lines of the need for Save Darfur and other such programs to promote and protect basic human rights (not to be killed, not to be raped, not to be tortured) in Africa.
But I guess it's good that you showed us all that gigantic chip on your shoulder.
I will take a longer look at the Tamron/Sigma options, then. I'm very paranoid about getting stuck with something that won't work, especially if I buy over the internet. I thought I had read that there was some recent Tamron compatibility problems (older AF chips wouldn't work with newer Canon bodies), but that is likely my own paranoia at work =)
I don't really regret getting the 28-135, although I am very jealous of f/2.8 at that range. I wanted something that I could get a decent telephoto on, as I already had an OK wide (kit) and normal (50mm), without having to haul a tripod around. 135 (+ the digital multiplier) with IS seemed like a good upper zoom limit w/o a tripod to me, and the price was decent (at least with all other Canon lenses considered). I didn't really even look at the 3P lenses, which in hindsight was pretty dumb. I won't make that mistake again, though, thanks for the advice!
I'm a total amateur, but I've fallen in love with photography thanks to the XT. I've not used a 30D, but I can't imagine that it would present *that* much benefit to a person brand new to photography... I can set everything I need to set on my XT within a second or two. Generally I let it do its own metering and either select aperture or shutter speed, this works very well for me, especially as I'm still learning what combinations yield what results - I'm generally much happier with a shot that's exposed properly so I can see what mistakes I've made, rather than getting something pitch dark or entirely washed out and basically having to throw it away. Still, I can set mode, ISO, speed/aperture very quickly, often without looking. It'd be nice if I had a dial for ISO rather than having to go through the menu but as long as you remember what ISO you're currently on, it's not tough to set it by feel (and you can probably tell by the resulting change in light metering). I'm sure for a pro more speed/flexibility might be desirable, but for hobbyists I would totally agree with the lens comment. I can sell/give away my XT in a few years when I start getting frustrated with the controls (if that ever really happens), and upgrade to the next step up at 20 megapixels or whatever is current.
For Canon, I would strongly recommend the 50mm f/1.8, it's under 100 bucks and will let you take most indoor shots without a flash. It is extremely easy to use and will let you get used to a prime lens. The autofocus is slow and noisy, but it gets the job done. Another great lens I've had experience with is the 28-135 IS - it's got an image stabilizer which isn't quite as useful as I had hoped, but it's a very good range of zoom for typical walkabout photography, it's not too hefty, and the image quality is quite good in my admittedly uncultured opinion! You can get the new XTi, both of these lenses and still walk away paying less than getting a 30D with no lens at all. The XT kit lens isn't horrible either, it lets you get down to 18mm for 100 bucks... I'm not sure if there are that many options that wide without either being fish-eyes or over 700 bucks.
A couple provisos - getting into the DSLR habit is like getting into musical instruments, car tuning, or home theater, or high end PC gaming. You're going to get addicted to it and start spending absurd amounts of money (if you're not careful). "Good" (L) Canon lenses start in the neighborhood of 1000 bucks. I haven't bought into that level yet, because I know it'd be throwing my money away at my current skill level. However, like good musical instruments, the stuff you buy has the potential to last a very long time, and from what I've read the Canon EF lens series has been going strong for quite a while now. But you're still pouring money into what will some day be obsolete technology, or worse, something you're not interested in anymore. Secondly, when you get "serious" about it, you look like a total nerd. I still feel very very awkward carrying a camera bag around - but if you're going to do anything useful with your camera you just about have to. Even without the bag, the camera is very obtrusive in the best of times, with small lens on. If you're reading this far into a comment on Slashdot, you probably don't care, but hey, fair warning. =) In the long run, I will probably buy a point and shoot so I can have something I can stick in my pocket and take places I wouldn't feel comfortable/interested in lugging my real camera around to. Once you start the hobby, you really start thinking about photographing everything interesting you see, in my experience.
Oh, and the other thing that sorta bites about the whole hobby is vendor lock-in. Your camera vendor is your lens vendor is your accessory vendor. There are cheaper knock-off lenses, but in general, the higher quality stuff is single vendor. If you're interested in Canon, or if you're a DSLR initiate like myself, I've found this page to be very, very useful:
I've got the E3c earphones, and I've had them for about a year and a half. I bought them for plane trips, and they're quite good at reducing the overall noise. It's not total silence when you put them in but it is definitely a significant reduction, especially in background noise/talking. As an example, I have to take them out to hear the flight attendant, or someone sitting beside me, but I can typically hear loud noises (e.g. the "ding" for the PA). With music or movies playing you can miss even louder sounds.
As a general recommendation, I've found them to be OK sound quality and good build quality - the cable and connections are still in quite good condition even with regular use over the past 18 months. The E3c model came with a bunch of different "plugs". I find the gray soft rubber ones the most comfortable and best sound reduction, but the harder clear ones the easier to use (i.e. stay in your ears and keep clean). I don't know if the E2cs come with different plugs, I seem to recall that was one of the selling points for the E3cs. The E4cs were recommended to me as a better bass response, which at the time I didn't think was that big of a deal. I still think it might be better for my hearing to skip the louder bass, but that is one area where the E3cs are slightly lacking. The bass response is OK but never stands out (does not compare to even a low end set of good headphones imo).
Just as an aside, I've found that they are somewhat inappropriate for office use. With music playing they will basically silence anyone who might be talking to you directly, potentially even your phone ringing if it's not loud enough. I have a cheap set of normal over-the-ear headphones that do NOT cut out direct noise that I use when I'm in an office environment, that's always been good enough for me.
I disagree quite strongly. I have flown 3 times since Thursday (when the threat was announced). Travellers can very easily get liquids on the plane. You can carry quite a few 1-2oz containers of liquid on your person - no one will check you. The same liquids, in your baggage, will be tossed.
Why?
The security measures are not sufficient to prevent the items from getting on the plane. At Reagan (DC), they were not doing bag checks at gates (at least on domestic flights), so you could bring on whatever you like that you could pick up at the terminal, so long as the gate agent didn't see it.
So, if the threat is small amounts of liquid, the security measures are insufficient to reduce any risk. If the threat is large amounts of liquid, the security measures are irrelevant, and are overkill for the sake of public relations. Worst of all, irregular implementation due to practical limitations of TSA staff have made the biggest hole - lack of gate checks.
So yes, the question is: Why are these security measures being implemented? Even if they were theoretically necessary (an argument I haven't heard proven), they are not sufficiently thorough to do anything other than inconvenience thousands upon thousands of travellers, including myself. They are not reducing risk of people bringing small amounts of liquid/gel on a plane in the slightest, and only partially reducing the risk of large amounts of liquid being smuggled aboard.
In the short term, no big deal. As you say, the risk is somewhat reduced, simply by the increased scrutiny - it would probably be rather difficult to get, say, 2 liters of liquid in, using less than 10 people.
In the long term, it's a useless erosion of personal liberty. People still can't bring lighters on planes, as far as I am aware. This is a similar, useless provision that will only inconvenience people. Why should you have to sit still for it? And on the topic of eliminating carry-on baggage - it will entirely destabilize the business travel market if it makes it over here. We will essentially be left with cavity search public travel, and pre-screened, 1970's style private business travel. I don't care, I'll fly the business airline, but again, I don't see the utility in castrating our own economy and cultural lifestyle in some fictive, groundless effort to make people safer.
Agreed. Although, I will say, RE4 beats anything I saw in the last gen. This is typical of "great" GC games in my experience... Fight Night Round 2 on the GC beats the tar out of Round 3 on PS2. Vice City on Xbox is up to par with RE4/FN2 on GC, imo.
But get Fight Night Rd 3, or Oblivion on 360... wow it's good. I just bought a 50" LCD projection HDTV, and it blows me away. Not every game is as "wow" as those two (e.g. Moto GP), but FN3 totally sold me on the 360. I'm sure it'll be similarly good on PS3, but I'm not willing to buy into the HD/BR battle at this point. I'll be perfectly happy waiting on the PS3 to price drop in 3 or 4 years, and pick up a Wii in the meantime. I did the opposite in this gen (PS2 (launch price, though not at launch) -> Gamecube (first price drop) -> Xbox (refurb at 130)), and I've been able to play all the great games eventually, at a hardware cost under the cost of a launch PS3.
Before the PS2 console gen I used to buy computer parts for gaming... but I'd rather drop 400 bucks on a full system than on a graphics card (which will almost always need a tricked out system to perform at peak). I do most of my work on a laptop nowadays anyway... it's just not worth the time/money to stay on the PC upgrade train for me anymore, when X360 looks like it does... now just to hook a keyboard/mouse into it so I can play FPS games =)
I'm definitely going to keep an eye on the current 180$ *new* packages. They've gotta come down eventually, no one seems to be buying them at that price point. They're not being shipped anymore but my local gaming store had at least two or three of them on the shelf.
I didn't buy any of the output dongles, I just used what came w/ the system. I will definitely grab the remote and a good output set... The video output isn't critical because I have a really cruddy TV (my girlfriend's) with my surround system (klipsch promedia 5.1, nothing amazing). I just really dig the idea and simplicity of the optical link. I imagine the coax would be just as good in my low end setup but the fiber makes me feel all futuristic;)
I have been drooling over 40 to 50" DLP sets, but I haven't had the spare 2K laying around. But I know I'll cave and/or save up enough eventually =)
I'm a bit of a console scavenger. I bought into the SNES after the 64 had been out for a while. I bought a Dreamcast during the Thanksgiving sales where it was 99$ with games and equipment bundles.
I just bought an XBOX last weekend. It is MS refurbed, which I wasn't too hot on, but I have to say, 150$ (130 + 10 dollar usb gaming keyboard + 10 splinter cell) is a PHENOMENAL deal for XBMC. It would have cost me at least 300 bucks to build a quiet media center PC (though it might have been a bit smaller). It was dead simple to softmod it and install XBMC (for the average Slashdot reader, I guess). Plus I now have access to the XBOX catalog, on the strongest hardware of the last round of consoles. I got Vice City used for another 10 bucks. I always wanted to play that Panzer Dragoon game. Fight Night Round 2 on XBOX looks 10x better than Round 3 does on PS2. But again... XBMC makes up for any dearth of games. It can play PAL and NTSC DVDs. It can play video from data discs. It can play streamed music (though the XBOX does lack an optical out, which I love on the PS2). It very well may be able to stream video, but I haven't tried that yet.
My point - I will continue using XBMC until my XBOX dies. I will evangelize XBMC to everyone who enters my home. I know that this alone won't keep the thing alive, but it seems like any current XBOX user who gets into XBMC will keep using as long as the damn thing runs. I'm tempted to buy one of the remaining new ones at retail if they ever knock the price down from 180, just to mothball it for when my current one drops the drive motor or whatever. I took apart my dreamcast to keep it going longer, I'm not sure I can disassemble the behemoth XBOX =)
I don't understand the architecture of the X360 or PS3 well enough to guess whether they can be easily repurposed to run code like XBMC/linux/whatever, but I would hope that by the time I own an HDTV and the next next generation is nigh, one of them has been hacked to allow use to full potential. That will probably be my only criteria to pick between them. Having a quiet, (relatively) attractive media PC for 200 bucks RULES! Tacking on HD output, wireless internet, a 60GB hd, and whatever HD disc format wins out is a nice 200 dollar upgrade, over the XBOX, too =)
The first season of shows was not commercial free. The first few shows were - they actually joked about it and then plugged their own merch - but later shows had commercials for what I imagine are British television or radio shows, in addition to their own merch. They weren't the best commercials - I have no idea what exactly the last few were promoting, nor how I would have tuned in for them if I had wanted to.
Regardless, the new season will probably be commercial free, but even if it's not, I would have gladly paid 6.95 for the past 12 episodes, with commercials in. I really dig Gervais and Merchant riffing on Karl. I currently also pay 6.95 a month or so for the Phil Hendrie show... not a podcast exactly, but he maintains a 30 day mp3 archive of his syndicated radio show, as well as periodic video webcasts of the entire show (all ad free). I certainly couldn't support too many more paid subscriptions... I would love to see a Napster style service for talk shows (I subscribe to Napster too =).
I am a long time Doctor Who fan... I'm sorry, but the new Doctor Who does not stack up against BSG. I enjoyed the new series, and will probably buy the extortion-priced DVD set that is rumored to be headed to the USA, but BSG outclasses Doctor Who in every way other than some comedic dialogue.
The new Dr. Who plotlines are swiss cheese, nonsensical, and full of Davies' hang-ups. The Daleks have religion and hate on humanity while screaming "blasphemy"? Whaaaaat? Giant farting baby headed goblins can't wipe out humanity directly? The TARDIS flies through space and dodges missiles? Whaaaaat? The Langoliers have turned into giant time dragons who eat the past?????? The big plot thread that goes through the entire season is just an absurd, self-referential, paradoxical red-herring that plays on the worst executed deus ex machina since the device was invented THAT IN THE END MEANT NOTHING AT ALL? Huuuuuh?
I've watched the first two seasons of BSG, and I didn't want to like it, but it's good. The acting is great (contrast Rose Tyler, everyone in the bunker episode, etc), the characterizations are great and spot on (contrast the Doctor [humans==apes whaaaat?] and Rose Tyler), the plot is pretty interesting and deep (contrast the Slytheen, the Daleks, the nanovirus, bad wolf), the storylines are cohesive and generally believable even though they are all written by different people...
Again, BSG just outclasses Doctor Who on just about every front, other than comedic dialogue. I don't know if I'm going to buy the payoff for the Cylon plans, the remaining Cylon agents in the fleet, how and why the Kobol scripture reflects reality and its relation to the Cylons, or any of the other plot questions that BSG has set up.... but I'm looking forward to the payoff. With Doctor Who, I'm just hoping Tennant plays the character a little more coherently, and that they come up with more believable and interesting plots. The new Doctor Who had huge potential to set up a rich and detailed universe, even if it broke with canon... instead, the writers hodge-podge together a bunch of contradictory bullshit [THAT THEY PARODY IN THE CHRISTMAS SPECIAL!!!!!!!!] and expect to come up with a good show. BSG has created a deep and involving universe, that has a deep, consistent history. The show's plot revolves around this history, and the struggle to survive a very perilous situation. Doctor Who hints at this kind of thing, but contrast the solution to the Dalek threat (both the one shown in the season and the one referenced in the time war) to the potential Cylon solutions. The Cylon scenario is both vastly more intriguing and vastly more open.
I love the Doctor, and I'll watch the show, but I am addicted the story and characters in BSG. Doctor Who I watch out of nostalgia and cringe at the shitty writing.
And on the other shows you mention, many of them are quite good, but aren't comparable to BSG (e.g. Family Guy, AD, Extras).
Yeah, sure, it could, but it could be that that Wikipedians don't have editors or word limits.
e.g.
Genghis Khan was reportedly irritable; he murdered his family after a lunchtime interruption. (13 words)
vs.
Ghenghis Khan was known to be highly grumpy and quick to anger, and because of this, he decided to make the move to murder his family when they interrupted his lunch. (31 words)
Example 2 is 2.4 times longer than example 1. They contain basically the same information. The second has no more real informational value than the first, and THAT'S the point.
The only (potentially) useful metric is error per unit of information. Word and/or KB is a laughable substitute for unit of information. One error in one fact is 100% error rate. If my paragraph is 100 words long and contains one fact and one factual error, my error rate is still 100%.
I might even agree with you that "reference" might be worth half a "fact" or something, but simply saying "More words = more facts and more external references!" is totally and obviously wrong. Even if it IS true with Wikipedia, that doesn't mean that LESS words mean LESS referential or factual material in EB (they may use "see also:" for instance).
No, I think you would want to change the rating. Essentially, the only useful ratings in your system are "Good", "Questionable" and "Bad". There shouldn't really be any significant gradation. If any facts in a "factual" article are incorrect, the article is "Bad" until the article is fixed. The article on John S. isn't worth having if someone inserts the line "and he did X" where X isn't true. Your theoretical Wikipedia system is in place to enforce non-fraudulent data. If a "bad" user changes one word in an article, the article should shift to questionable. If a "bad" user changes one sentence in an article, the article should shift to "bad", pending review. That is the only benefit of your system; users can be tracked for "bad" entries, and once you have identified them as a troll/liar/whatever, their contributions can be flagged as problems. A quality based system is entirely different and unrelated to the topic at hand. Under the "spellcheck rule", I change a sentence from:
"The truth about Mozart's Great Dane was that it was undeniably his."
to
"The truth about Mozart's great danish was that it was unedibly his."
These changes, small and vaguely similar though they may be, have altered the "truth" into nonsense... the article is now questionable and useless as a fact resource. Anyone reading the article probably isn't going to be deeply involved in your digital signature scheme. The burden should not be on them to determine which parts are signed by a reliable source. Odds are unreliable sources will just be put into a moderation queue, or banned from using the site. But... then they will have to simply generate a new GPG key! Then we are getting into the same user validation problems we have with traditional U/P based systems... tracking dead users, validating new users... requiring a central, important user repository. This erodes the value of distributing authentication data. If repository is unrecoverable, then all the bad users are not bad anymore. The existing "verified" or "signed" data can no longer be relied upon until the user database is rebuilt from reputation, or guesses, or whatever. This is slightly less catastrophic than a U/P DB failure, but not by much.
Still, this is only part of the reason why I disagree with your position that it would be great for any messageboard. The only thing this system is great for is identification... and even that it would fail at in a global context. This wouldn't miraculously solve accountability and identification for every messageboard, as you have posited in other posts. Why don't we have a single sign-on system so we can have one user/password for every site in existence? You're right that a GPG system distributes the storage, but the problem is, you can't know if the user is "good", or "bad" or whatever without having some sort of central user repository, which is either too difficult or too invasive to do, so people don't do it. You, on your site, can keep track of every GPG signature that you get, and assign each signature some meta-data that allows you to know that the user is a troll, or non-contributor, or in a real good mood on Tuesdays, but that doesn't lead to some utopian single sign on system, where I can identify someone by their GPG signature. I still have the problem that they are unknown to me, whether they are "lawpoop" authenticated against a central U/P server or 512 bits of a universally verifiable signature... I still have to have some central repository to tell me that the signature or U/P combination corresponds to some reputation.
Your system distributes authentication data (good), prevents impersonation of users (good), and presents a slightly easier authentication routine (this is questionable, as the other respondant to this post points out, it creates as big of a problem, if not a worse problem, than it solves). It does not alleviate the need for user meta-data tracking (user name, post history, interests, whatever) that most messageboards use. So essentially the messageb
Because it's 20 on a committee of 57, writing a letter to the chairman of said committee (who already approves of the flag). So they're about 8 people away from a simple majority, which will get the broadcast flag included in the digital TV bill, where it will probably pass the House. It has already passed the Senate.
char* target; char temp; int i; for (i = 0; i < strlen(target)/2; i++) {
temp = target[i];
target[i] = target[strlen(target)-1-i];
target[strlen(target)-1-i] = temp; }
But then I thought, hey, there must be a cheat way to do it better! So I came up with this:
char* target; int len = strlen(target); int copyPtr; for (copyPtr = 0; copyPtr < len/2; copyPtr++) {
target[len] = target[copyPtr];
target[copyPtr] = target[len-1-copyPtr];
target[len-1-copyPtr] = target[len];
target[len] = 0; }
But this is worse. Since we're clobbering the null terminator, we can't rely on strlen in the body of the loop, so in the final analysis we're using 2 integers rather than a char and an integer, which in most systems nowadays, is actually worse memory usage (8 vs 5 bytes).
I fiddled around with other solutions, including using a function call and incrementing the base pointer. This really didn't work... I found an alternative representation of the initial solution. No more i, but we have to maintain len... and if the code isn't used in a function call, we're short a char* to the start of the string. D'oh!
char* target; int len = strlen(target); char temp; while(len > 0) {
temp = targ[0];
targ[0]=targ[len-1];
targ[len-1]=temp;
targ++;
len--; }
So it seems that the trivial, obvious solution is actually the best solution! Firstly I am curious if this is the answer you were looking for; I am not the best at seeing neat algorithmic tricks to optimize processes. Secondly, if it is right, I am curious if you would think twice about hiring someone who tried to do the tricks above. They grasp the language, but in their mad rush to be "smarter", they actually create WORSE solutions (both in style and in, as here, actual results).
I am also curious if there is a solution that uses less than char (1 byte) + an integer (generally 4 bytes nowadays)? I surely haven't found one in the 30 minutes I've thought about it! =)
They won't have to change the domain name. As cnn.com represents Cable News Network (or whatever), gmail.com can represent Google Mail as well as it can represent GMail.
fatwas on their opponents: Maybe I'm mistaken, but there was a series of pretty big scandals relating to murder of doctors. Far right Christian activists have published lists of addresses and created things like wanted posters. Sounds like a fatwa to me. BBC reference
infidels to brutalize: One very well-known case is that of Matthew Shepard, who was beaten to death, most likely for being gay. While the argument can certainly be made that hatred for homosexuals isn't an entirely Christian phenomenon in this country, it would be absurd to argue that extreme right-wing Christianity doesn't instigate this kind of violence, and stigmatize homosexuality to a very dangerous degree. (Reference: wikipedia articleGod Hates Fags, a site by the Westboro Baptist Church (while this site seems too absurd to be real, it seems indicative)
suicide bombings: Again, abortion clinics have been bombed by right-wing Christians. Not suicide bombings, but I'm too lazy to search a reference.
I won't argue the rest of the points (though I disagree that all of them are absent here). My point is that you're being a little obstinate and one-sided in your response. We have plenty fo horribly hateful and evil Christians over here. The only reason we might be better off as a whole is because of how amazingly better our conditions are. Maybe the better point is that the vast majority of Christians here (and likely, Muslims there), aren't hateful, evil people. We have plenty of nutjob extremists here, and they are NOT light-years detached from extremists all over the world, regardless of what you may hope. It may not be an everyday occurrence, but zealotry is not the only common bond that I see.
I think properly modularizing your code (breaking process_input() into its own function), and properly documenting the modules (defining good documentation of input, output, exception conditions, return values, side-effects) is more effective than writing verbose comments (like the one you've noted) in poorly segmented code.
This whole discussion is a bit short sighted. The better and clearer your code is, the fewer comments will be necessary. The more useful comments you add, the less time will be necessary parsing and understanding clear code. The better your design overall is, the less code reading overall will be required, because you'll have documentation outside of your code that explains how the system works, and where you need to go make changes. Saying one is more important than another is silly.
Bingo. If the drug analogy was so ludicrous (it was intended to be glaringly simple and absurd to make a point), how about a copy machine?
Imagine there's some wonderful copy machine in the library that can make duplicate copies of a book in 1 minute, but is intended to only be used on public domain works, or fair-use excerpts of works. People figure out they can make copies of whatever they want, so they bring in books and magazines they like, and end up clogging up the machines, so that 70% of the use of the machines is clearly illegal, wasting resources, and even further, degrading access for everyone else.
Is the solution a) buy more copy machines or b) attempt to restrict the illegal and unintended use of the copy machine?
That was the "ludicrous" drug analogy: if people are abusing and over-using a public resource, is the solution to a) acquire more of the resource or b) restrict access?
Not stop network access, not accuse the students of terrorism, but sanely and effectively deal with the problem, rather than encouraging it. The OP said that his solution to Napster was to buy a bigger pipe, not discourage illegal activity. It is ludicrous to me to say "we don't want to be de facto censors of information flow!!!" (hence the intentionally absurd drug analogy). You're faced with your users committing crimes, clearly and egregiously. I can appreciate civil disobedience, but that requires acknowledgment that the activity is intentionally criminal, not some faux-enlightened anti-censorship stance. He didn't say "I'm doing this to buck the system!" He said "I'm not going to do anything because that might somehow tread on the rights I imagine my users have!"
Hey, our chemical supply cabinets are being raided by students for the materials to make methamphetamines! And 70% of our lab equipment is being used to make some substance that looks suspiciously like crystal meth! No, Dr. Brown, we don't need to stop the students... we need to buy more chemicals! Who are we to decide that crystal methamphetamine should be prohibited! We comply with the police when they raid dorm rooms for their enormous stashes of crystal meth, but the people who only sell or use medium size quantities aren't hurting anyone! We don't want to become de facto censors of pharmeceuticals!
That is patently absurd, imo, and, as in the parallel, just shows that you're a meth (or piracy) junkie. I can appreciate the response to the Napster issue in certain respects, but it doesn't seem ethically or legally defensible.
Like you pointed out, the DMCA says you can't be held responsible for things you don't know about... but you did know that 70% of your network traffic was being used by Napster, an application in which, at the time, most if not all of the traffic was illegal. So you knew that the majority portion of your internet bandwidth was being used for piracy, plain and simple, and you're defending the call to say "Woops, we need to get another OC in here!" rather than "We should work to curtail this abuse of our network." That really, really seems like an irresponsible decision, even if you hate copyright.
BitTorrent is a bit different, but if your network is being overwhelmed by illegal use, more reasonable response might be an "opt-in" approach that allows students to request BitTorrent access. The people who are using it legally won't have any problem, and the people who aren't probably won't ask. The fact that your solution to this type of problem was to ignore the issue and throw up another huge pipe amazes me, it really does.
The issue isn't available fiber, the issue is you need a point to point connection for anyone you want to use Quantum Key Distribution with.
Fiber to the home = point home to point Phone CO. You could communicate securely with the Phone CO, and that's it (if even that, it probably goes to some intermediate relay before the CO or equivalent).
QKD (at least w/r/t BB84 style protocols) only works with an uninterrupted, unrelayed quantum channel (a single piece of fiber).
Yes, it's the communication style that is the problem. Talking about visual dimensions, which for humans just happen to be three, is a horrible coincidence. It's rather confusing to laymen without the clear delineation between "dimensions of space" and "dimensions of light wavelength," which is the apparent (though still unclear) meaning you are using. Wavelength channels is a much better description which you seem to have arrived upon at the end of your message.
Similarly, your confusion over sub/super-set is continued. You two are agreeing that the human eye is a SUB-set of the SET of all visual ability (it does not contain all features that exist in nature).
The discussion was interesting to read, though. Turtle eyeballs sound cool. And turtles are so darn amusing, to boot. It's an interesting intellectual puzzle to think "what would an infrared channel of vision be like?" It wouldn't just be an overlay, or anything like that (or else it would be effectively indistinguishable from regular light; e.g. colorblindness [perception without differentiation]). It'd be a color you've literally never seen, or some other manner of sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe the GP was referring to things more along the lines of the need for Save Darfur and other such programs to promote and protect basic human rights (not to be killed, not to be raped, not to be tortured) in Africa.
But I guess it's good that you showed us all that gigantic chip on your shoulder.
I will take a longer look at the Tamron/Sigma options, then. I'm very paranoid about getting stuck with something that won't work, especially if I buy over the internet. I thought I had read that there was some recent Tamron compatibility problems (older AF chips wouldn't work with newer Canon bodies), but that is likely my own paranoia at work =)
I don't really regret getting the 28-135, although I am very jealous of f/2.8 at that range. I wanted something that I could get a decent telephoto on, as I already had an OK wide (kit) and normal (50mm), without having to haul a tripod around. 135 (+ the digital multiplier) with IS seemed like a good upper zoom limit w/o a tripod to me, and the price was decent (at least with all other Canon lenses considered). I didn't really even look at the 3P lenses, which in hindsight was pretty dumb. I won't make that mistake again, though, thanks for the advice!
I'm a total amateur, but I've fallen in love with photography thanks to the XT. I've not used a 30D, but I can't imagine that it would present *that* much benefit to a person brand new to photography... I can set everything I need to set on my XT within a second or two. Generally I let it do its own metering and either select aperture or shutter speed, this works very well for me, especially as I'm still learning what combinations yield what results - I'm generally much happier with a shot that's exposed properly so I can see what mistakes I've made, rather than getting something pitch dark or entirely washed out and basically having to throw it away. Still, I can set mode, ISO, speed/aperture very quickly, often without looking. It'd be nice if I had a dial for ISO rather than having to go through the menu but as long as you remember what ISO you're currently on, it's not tough to set it by feel (and you can probably tell by the resulting change in light metering). I'm sure for a pro more speed/flexibility might be desirable, but for hobbyists I would totally agree with the lens comment. I can sell/give away my XT in a few years when I start getting frustrated with the controls (if that ever really happens), and upgrade to the next step up at 20 megapixels or whatever is current.
For Canon, I would strongly recommend the 50mm f/1.8, it's under 100 bucks and will let you take most indoor shots without a flash. It is extremely easy to use and will let you get used to a prime lens. The autofocus is slow and noisy, but it gets the job done. Another great lens I've had experience with is the 28-135 IS - it's got an image stabilizer which isn't quite as useful as I had hoped, but it's a very good range of zoom for typical walkabout photography, it's not too hefty, and the image quality is quite good in my admittedly uncultured opinion! You can get the new XTi, both of these lenses and still walk away paying less than getting a 30D with no lens at all. The XT kit lens isn't horrible either, it lets you get down to 18mm for 100 bucks... I'm not sure if there are that many options that wide without either being fish-eyes or over 700 bucks.
A couple provisos - getting into the DSLR habit is like getting into musical instruments, car tuning, or home theater, or high end PC gaming. You're going to get addicted to it and start spending absurd amounts of money (if you're not careful). "Good" (L) Canon lenses start in the neighborhood of 1000 bucks. I haven't bought into that level yet, because I know it'd be throwing my money away at my current skill level. However, like good musical instruments, the stuff you buy has the potential to last a very long time, and from what I've read the Canon EF lens series has been going strong for quite a while now. But you're still pouring money into what will some day be obsolete technology, or worse, something you're not interested in anymore. Secondly, when you get "serious" about it, you look like a total nerd. I still feel very very awkward carrying a camera bag around - but if you're going to do anything useful with your camera you just about have to. Even without the bag, the camera is very obtrusive in the best of times, with small lens on. If you're reading this far into a comment on Slashdot, you probably don't care, but hey, fair warning. =) In the long run, I will probably buy a point and shoot so I can have something I can stick in my pocket and take places I wouldn't feel comfortable/interested in lugging my real camera around to. Once you start the hobby, you really start thinking about photographing everything interesting you see, in my experience.
Oh, and the other thing that sorta bites about the whole hobby is vendor lock-in. Your camera vendor is your lens vendor is your accessory vendor. There are cheaper knock-off lenses, but in general, the higher quality stuff is single vendor. If you're interested in Canon, or if you're a DSLR initiate like myself, I've found this page to be very, very useful:
I've got the E3c earphones, and I've had them for about a year and a half. I bought them for plane trips, and they're quite good at reducing the overall noise. It's not total silence when you put them in but it is definitely a significant reduction, especially in background noise/talking. As an example, I have to take them out to hear the flight attendant, or someone sitting beside me, but I can typically hear loud noises (e.g. the "ding" for the PA). With music or movies playing you can miss even louder sounds.
As a general recommendation, I've found them to be OK sound quality and good build quality - the cable and connections are still in quite good condition even with regular use over the past 18 months. The E3c model came with a bunch of different "plugs". I find the gray soft rubber ones the most comfortable and best sound reduction, but the harder clear ones the easier to use (i.e. stay in your ears and keep clean). I don't know if the E2cs come with different plugs, I seem to recall that was one of the selling points for the E3cs. The E4cs were recommended to me as a better bass response, which at the time I didn't think was that big of a deal. I still think it might be better for my hearing to skip the louder bass, but that is one area where the E3cs are slightly lacking. The bass response is OK but never stands out (does not compare to even a low end set of good headphones imo).
Just as an aside, I've found that they are somewhat inappropriate for office use. With music playing they will basically silence anyone who might be talking to you directly, potentially even your phone ringing if it's not loud enough. I have a cheap set of normal over-the-ear headphones that do NOT cut out direct noise that I use when I'm in an office environment, that's always been good enough for me.
I disagree quite strongly. I have flown 3 times since Thursday (when the threat was announced). Travellers can very easily get liquids on the plane. You can carry quite a few 1-2oz containers of liquid on your person - no one will check you. The same liquids, in your baggage, will be tossed.
Why?
The security measures are not sufficient to prevent the items from getting on the plane. At Reagan (DC), they were not doing bag checks at gates (at least on domestic flights), so you could bring on whatever you like that you could pick up at the terminal, so long as the gate agent didn't see it.
So, if the threat is small amounts of liquid, the security measures are insufficient to reduce any risk. If the threat is large amounts of liquid, the security measures are irrelevant, and are overkill for the sake of public relations. Worst of all, irregular implementation due to practical limitations of TSA staff have made the biggest hole - lack of gate checks.
So yes, the question is: Why are these security measures being implemented? Even if they were theoretically necessary (an argument I haven't heard proven), they are not sufficiently thorough to do anything other than inconvenience thousands upon thousands of travellers, including myself. They are not reducing risk of people bringing small amounts of liquid/gel on a plane in the slightest, and only partially reducing the risk of large amounts of liquid being smuggled aboard.
In the short term, no big deal. As you say, the risk is somewhat reduced, simply by the increased scrutiny - it would probably be rather difficult to get, say, 2 liters of liquid in, using less than 10 people.
In the long term, it's a useless erosion of personal liberty. People still can't bring lighters on planes, as far as I am aware. This is a similar, useless provision that will only inconvenience people. Why should you have to sit still for it? And on the topic of eliminating carry-on baggage - it will entirely destabilize the business travel market if it makes it over here. We will essentially be left with cavity search public travel, and pre-screened, 1970's style private business travel. I don't care, I'll fly the business airline, but again, I don't see the utility in castrating our own economy and cultural lifestyle in some fictive, groundless effort to make people safer.
Agreed. Although, I will say, RE4 beats anything I saw in the last gen. This is typical of "great" GC games in my experience... Fight Night Round 2 on the GC beats the tar out of Round 3 on PS2. Vice City on Xbox is up to par with RE4/FN2 on GC, imo.
But get Fight Night Rd 3, or Oblivion on 360... wow it's good. I just bought a 50" LCD projection HDTV, and it blows me away. Not every game is as "wow" as those two (e.g. Moto GP), but FN3 totally sold me on the 360. I'm sure it'll be similarly good on PS3, but I'm not willing to buy into the HD/BR battle at this point. I'll be perfectly happy waiting on the PS3 to price drop in 3 or 4 years, and pick up a Wii in the meantime. I did the opposite in this gen (PS2 (launch price, though not at launch) -> Gamecube (first price drop) -> Xbox (refurb at 130)), and I've been able to play all the great games eventually, at a hardware cost under the cost of a launch PS3.
Before the PS2 console gen I used to buy computer parts for gaming... but I'd rather drop 400 bucks on a full system than on a graphics card (which will almost always need a tricked out system to perform at peak). I do most of my work on a laptop nowadays anyway... it's just not worth the time/money to stay on the PC upgrade train for me anymore, when X360 looks like it does... now just to hook a keyboard/mouse into it so I can play FPS games =)
I'm definitely going to keep an eye on the current 180$ *new* packages. They've gotta come down eventually, no one seems to be buying them at that price point. They're not being shipped anymore but my local gaming store had at least two or three of them on the shelf.
;)
I didn't buy any of the output dongles, I just used what came w/ the system. I will definitely grab the remote and a good output set... The video output isn't critical because I have a really cruddy TV (my girlfriend's) with my surround system (klipsch promedia 5.1, nothing amazing). I just really dig the idea and simplicity of the optical link. I imagine the coax would be just as good in my low end setup but the fiber makes me feel all futuristic
I have been drooling over 40 to 50" DLP sets, but I haven't had the spare 2K laying around. But I know I'll cave and/or save up enough eventually =)
I'm a bit of a console scavenger. I bought into the SNES after the 64 had been out for a while. I bought a Dreamcast during the Thanksgiving sales where it was 99$ with games and equipment bundles.
I just bought an XBOX last weekend. It is MS refurbed, which I wasn't too hot on, but I have to say, 150$ (130 + 10 dollar usb gaming keyboard + 10 splinter cell) is a PHENOMENAL deal for XBMC. It would have cost me at least 300 bucks to build a quiet media center PC (though it might have been a bit smaller). It was dead simple to softmod it and install XBMC (for the average Slashdot reader, I guess). Plus I now have access to the XBOX catalog, on the strongest hardware of the last round of consoles. I got Vice City used for another 10 bucks. I always wanted to play that Panzer Dragoon game. Fight Night Round 2 on XBOX looks 10x better than Round 3 does on PS2. But again... XBMC makes up for any dearth of games. It can play PAL and NTSC DVDs. It can play video from data discs. It can play streamed music (though the XBOX does lack an optical out, which I love on the PS2). It very well may be able to stream video, but I haven't tried that yet.
My point - I will continue using XBMC until my XBOX dies. I will evangelize XBMC to everyone who enters my home. I know that this alone won't keep the thing alive, but it seems like any current XBOX user who gets into XBMC will keep using as long as the damn thing runs. I'm tempted to buy one of the remaining new ones at retail if they ever knock the price down from 180, just to mothball it for when my current one drops the drive motor or whatever. I took apart my dreamcast to keep it going longer, I'm not sure I can disassemble the behemoth XBOX =)
I don't understand the architecture of the X360 or PS3 well enough to guess whether they can be easily repurposed to run code like XBMC/linux/whatever, but I would hope that by the time I own an HDTV and the next next generation is nigh, one of them has been hacked to allow use to full potential. That will probably be my only criteria to pick between them. Having a quiet, (relatively) attractive media PC for 200 bucks RULES! Tacking on HD output, wireless internet, a 60GB hd, and whatever HD disc format wins out is a nice 200 dollar upgrade, over the XBOX, too =)
The first season of shows was not commercial free. The first few shows were - they actually joked about it and then plugged their own merch - but later shows had commercials for what I imagine are British television or radio shows, in addition to their own merch. They weren't the best commercials - I have no idea what exactly the last few were promoting, nor how I would have tuned in for them if I had wanted to.
Regardless, the new season will probably be commercial free, but even if it's not, I would have gladly paid 6.95 for the past 12 episodes, with commercials in. I really dig Gervais and Merchant riffing on Karl. I currently also pay 6.95 a month or so for the Phil Hendrie show... not a podcast exactly, but he maintains a 30 day mp3 archive of his syndicated radio show, as well as periodic video webcasts of the entire show (all ad free). I certainly couldn't support too many more paid subscriptions... I would love to see a Napster style service for talk shows (I subscribe to Napster too =).
I am a long time Doctor Who fan... I'm sorry, but the new Doctor Who does not stack up against BSG. I enjoyed the new series, and will probably buy the extortion-priced DVD set that is rumored to be headed to the USA, but BSG outclasses Doctor Who in every way other than some comedic dialogue.
The new Dr. Who plotlines are swiss cheese, nonsensical, and full of Davies' hang-ups. The Daleks have religion and hate on humanity while screaming "blasphemy"? Whaaaaat? Giant farting baby headed goblins can't wipe out humanity directly? The TARDIS flies through space and dodges missiles? Whaaaaat? The Langoliers have turned into giant time dragons who eat the past?????? The big plot thread that goes through the entire season is just an absurd, self-referential, paradoxical red-herring that plays on the worst executed deus ex machina since the device was invented THAT IN THE END MEANT NOTHING AT ALL? Huuuuuh?
I've watched the first two seasons of BSG, and I didn't want to like it, but it's good. The acting is great (contrast Rose Tyler, everyone in the bunker episode, etc), the characterizations are great and spot on (contrast the Doctor [humans==apes whaaaat?] and Rose Tyler), the plot is pretty interesting and deep (contrast the Slytheen, the Daleks, the nanovirus, bad wolf), the storylines are cohesive and generally believable even though they are all written by different people...
Again, BSG just outclasses Doctor Who on just about every front, other than comedic dialogue. I don't know if I'm going to buy the payoff for the Cylon plans, the remaining Cylon agents in the fleet, how and why the Kobol scripture reflects reality and its relation to the Cylons, or any of the other plot questions that BSG has set up.... but I'm looking forward to the payoff. With Doctor Who, I'm just hoping Tennant plays the character a little more coherently, and that they come up with more believable and interesting plots. The new Doctor Who had huge potential to set up a rich and detailed universe, even if it broke with canon... instead, the writers hodge-podge together a bunch of contradictory bullshit [THAT THEY PARODY IN THE CHRISTMAS SPECIAL!!!!!!!!] and expect to come up with a good show. BSG has created a deep and involving universe, that has a deep, consistent history. The show's plot revolves around this history, and the struggle to survive a very perilous situation. Doctor Who hints at this kind of thing, but contrast the solution to the Dalek threat (both the one shown in the season and the one referenced in the time war) to the potential Cylon solutions. The Cylon scenario is both vastly more intriguing and vastly more open.
I love the Doctor, and I'll watch the show, but I am addicted the story and characters in BSG. Doctor Who I watch out of nostalgia and cringe at the shitty writing.
And on the other shows you mention, many of them are quite good, but aren't comparable to BSG (e.g. Family Guy, AD, Extras).
Yeah, sure, it could, but it could be that that Wikipedians don't have editors or word limits.
e.g.
Genghis Khan was reportedly irritable; he murdered his family after a lunchtime interruption. (13 words)
vs.
Ghenghis Khan was known to be highly grumpy and quick to anger, and because of this, he decided to make the move to murder his family when they interrupted his lunch. (31 words)
Example 2 is 2.4 times longer than example 1. They contain basically the same information. The second has no more real informational value than the first, and THAT'S the point.
The only (potentially) useful metric is error per unit of information. Word and/or KB is a laughable substitute for unit of information. One error in one fact is 100% error rate. If my paragraph is 100 words long and contains one fact and one factual error, my error rate is still 100%.
I might even agree with you that "reference" might be worth half a "fact" or something, but simply saying "More words = more facts and more external references!" is totally and obviously wrong. Even if it IS true with Wikipedia, that doesn't mean that LESS words mean LESS referential or factual material in EB (they may use "see also:" for instance).
No, I think you would want to change the rating. Essentially, the only useful ratings in your system are "Good", "Questionable" and "Bad". There shouldn't really be any significant gradation. If any facts in a "factual" article are incorrect, the article is "Bad" until the article is fixed. The article on John S. isn't worth having if someone inserts the line "and he did X" where X isn't true. Your theoretical Wikipedia system is in place to enforce non-fraudulent data. If a "bad" user changes one word in an article, the article should shift to questionable. If a "bad" user changes one sentence in an article, the article should shift to "bad", pending review. That is the only benefit of your system; users can be tracked for "bad" entries, and once you have identified them as a troll/liar/whatever, their contributions can be flagged as problems. A quality based system is entirely different and unrelated to the topic at hand. Under the "spellcheck rule", I change a sentence from:
"The truth about Mozart's Great Dane was that it was undeniably his."
to
"The truth about Mozart's great danish was that it was unedibly his."
These changes, small and vaguely similar though they may be, have altered the "truth" into nonsense... the article is now questionable and useless as a fact resource. Anyone reading the article probably isn't going to be deeply involved in your digital signature scheme. The burden should not be on them to determine which parts are signed by a reliable source. Odds are unreliable sources will just be put into a moderation queue, or banned from using the site. But... then they will have to simply generate a new GPG key! Then we are getting into the same user validation problems we have with traditional U/P based systems... tracking dead users, validating new users... requiring a central, important user repository. This erodes the value of distributing authentication data. If repository is unrecoverable, then all the bad users are not bad anymore. The existing "verified" or "signed" data can no longer be relied upon until the user database is rebuilt from reputation, or guesses, or whatever. This is slightly less catastrophic than a U/P DB failure, but not by much.
Still, this is only part of the reason why I disagree with your position that it would be great for any messageboard. The only thing this system is great for is identification... and even that it would fail at in a global context. This wouldn't miraculously solve accountability and identification for every messageboard, as you have posited in other posts. Why don't we have a single sign-on system so we can have one user/password for every site in existence? You're right that a GPG system distributes the storage, but the problem is, you can't know if the user is "good", or "bad" or whatever without having some sort of central user repository, which is either too difficult or too invasive to do, so people don't do it. You, on your site, can keep track of every GPG signature that you get, and assign each signature some meta-data that allows you to know that the user is a troll, or non-contributor, or in a real good mood on Tuesdays, but that doesn't lead to some utopian single sign on system, where I can identify someone by their GPG signature. I still have the problem that they are unknown to me, whether they are "lawpoop" authenticated against a central U/P server or 512 bits of a universally verifiable signature... I still have to have some central repository to tell me that the signature or U/P combination corresponds to some reputation.
Your system distributes authentication data (good), prevents impersonation of users (good), and presents a slightly easier authentication routine (this is questionable, as the other respondant to this post points out, it creates as big of a problem, if not a worse problem, than it solves). It does not alleviate the need for user meta-data tracking (user name, post history, interests, whatever) that most messageboards use. So essentially the messageb
Because it's 20 on a committee of 57, writing a letter to the chairman of said committee (who already approves of the flag). So they're about 8 people away from a simple majority, which will get the broadcast flag included in the digital TV bill, where it will probably pass the House. It has already passed the Senate.
This is a fun little problem.
To my mind, the obvious solution is this:
char* target;
char temp;
int i;
for (i = 0; i < strlen(target)/2; i++)
{
temp = target[i];
target[i] = target[strlen(target)-1-i];
target[strlen(target)-1-i] = temp;
}
But then I thought, hey, there must be a cheat way to do it better! So I came up with this:
char* target;
int len = strlen(target);
int copyPtr;
for (copyPtr = 0; copyPtr < len/2; copyPtr++)
{
target[len] = target[copyPtr];
target[copyPtr] = target[len-1-copyPtr];
target[len-1-copyPtr] = target[len];
target[len] = 0;
}
But this is worse. Since we're clobbering the null terminator, we can't rely on strlen in the body of the loop, so in the final analysis we're using 2 integers rather than a char and an integer, which in most systems nowadays, is actually worse memory usage (8 vs 5 bytes).
I fiddled around with other solutions, including using a function call and incrementing the base pointer. This really didn't work... I found an alternative representation of the initial solution. No more i, but we have to maintain len... and if the code isn't used in a function call, we're short a char* to the start of the string. D'oh!
char* target;
int len = strlen(target);
char temp;
while(len > 0)
{
temp = targ[0];
targ[0]=targ[len-1];
targ[len-1]=temp;
targ++;
len--;
}
So it seems that the trivial, obvious solution is actually the best solution! Firstly I am curious if this is the answer you were looking for; I am not the best at seeing neat algorithmic tricks to optimize processes. Secondly, if it is right, I am curious if you would think twice about hiring someone who tried to do the tricks above. They grasp the language, but in their mad rush to be "smarter", they actually create WORSE solutions (both in style and in, as here, actual results).
I am also curious if there is a solution that uses less than char (1 byte) + an integer (generally 4 bytes nowadays)? I surely haven't found one in the 30 minutes I've thought about it! =)
They won't have to change the domain name. As cnn.com represents Cable News Network (or whatever), gmail.com can represent Google Mail as well as it can represent GMail.
Just stepping out on a limb here, but:
fatwas on their opponents: Maybe I'm mistaken, but there was a series of pretty big scandals relating to murder of doctors. Far right Christian activists have published lists of addresses and created things like wanted posters. Sounds like a fatwa to me. BBC reference
infidels to brutalize: One very well-known case is that of Matthew Shepard, who was beaten to death, most likely for being gay. While the argument can certainly be made that hatred for homosexuals isn't an entirely Christian phenomenon in this country, it would be absurd to argue that extreme right-wing Christianity doesn't instigate this kind of violence, and stigmatize homosexuality to a very dangerous degree. (Reference: wikipedia article God Hates Fags, a site by the Westboro Baptist Church (while this site seems too absurd to be real, it seems indicative)
suicide bombings: Again, abortion clinics have been bombed by right-wing Christians. Not suicide bombings, but I'm too lazy to search a reference.
I won't argue the rest of the points (though I disagree that all of them are absent here). My point is that you're being a little obstinate and one-sided in your response. We have plenty fo horribly hateful and evil Christians over here. The only reason we might be better off as a whole is because of how amazingly better our conditions are. Maybe the better point is that the vast majority of Christians here (and likely, Muslims there), aren't hateful, evil people. We have plenty of nutjob extremists here, and they are NOT light-years detached from extremists all over the world, regardless of what you may hope. It may not be an everyday occurrence, but zealotry is not the only common bond that I see.
You need that comment?
if (kbd_input_rcvd)
{
process_input();
}
is not clear?
I think properly modularizing your code (breaking process_input() into its own function), and properly documenting the modules (defining good documentation of input, output, exception conditions, return values, side-effects) is more effective than writing verbose comments (like the one you've noted) in poorly segmented code.
This whole discussion is a bit short sighted. The better and clearer your code is, the fewer comments will be necessary. The more useful comments you add, the less time will be necessary parsing and understanding clear code. The better your design overall is, the less code reading overall will be required, because you'll have documentation outside of your code that explains how the system works, and where you need to go make changes. Saying one is more important than another is silly.
Bingo. If the drug analogy was so ludicrous (it was intended to be glaringly simple and absurd to make a point), how about a copy machine?
Imagine there's some wonderful copy machine in the library that can make duplicate copies of a book in 1 minute, but is intended to only be used on public domain works, or fair-use excerpts of works. People figure out they can make copies of whatever they want, so they bring in books and magazines they like, and end up clogging up the machines, so that 70% of the use of the machines is clearly illegal, wasting resources, and even further, degrading access for everyone else.
Is the solution a) buy more copy machines or b) attempt to restrict the illegal and unintended use of the copy machine?
That was the "ludicrous" drug analogy: if people are abusing and over-using a public resource, is the solution to a) acquire more of the resource or b) restrict access?
Not stop network access, not accuse the students of terrorism, but sanely and effectively deal with the problem, rather than encouraging it. The OP said that his solution to Napster was to buy a bigger pipe, not discourage illegal activity. It is ludicrous to me to say "we don't want to be de facto censors of information flow!!!" (hence the intentionally absurd drug analogy). You're faced with your users committing crimes, clearly and egregiously. I can appreciate civil disobedience, but that requires acknowledgment that the activity is intentionally criminal, not some faux-enlightened anti-censorship stance. He didn't say "I'm doing this to buck the system!" He said "I'm not going to do anything because that might somehow tread on the rights I imagine my users have!"
Hey, our chemical supply cabinets are being raided by students for the materials to make methamphetamines! And 70% of our lab equipment is being used to make some substance that looks suspiciously like crystal meth! No, Dr. Brown, we don't need to stop the students... we need to buy more chemicals! Who are we to decide that crystal methamphetamine should be prohibited! We comply with the police when they raid dorm rooms for their enormous stashes of crystal meth, but the people who only sell or use medium size quantities aren't hurting anyone! We don't want to become de facto censors of pharmeceuticals!
That is patently absurd, imo, and, as in the parallel, just shows that you're a meth (or piracy) junkie. I can appreciate the response to the Napster issue in certain respects, but it doesn't seem ethically or legally defensible.
Like you pointed out, the DMCA says you can't be held responsible for things you don't know about... but you did know that 70% of your network traffic was being used by Napster, an application in which, at the time, most if not all of the traffic was illegal. So you knew that the majority portion of your internet bandwidth was being used for piracy, plain and simple, and you're defending the call to say "Woops, we need to get another OC in here!" rather than "We should work to curtail this abuse of our network." That really, really seems like an irresponsible decision, even if you hate copyright.
BitTorrent is a bit different, but if your network is being overwhelmed by illegal use, more reasonable response might be an "opt-in" approach that allows students to request BitTorrent access. The people who are using it legally won't have any problem, and the people who aren't probably won't ask. The fact that your solution to this type of problem was to ignore the issue and throw up another huge pipe amazes me, it really does.
The issue isn't available fiber, the issue is you need a point to point connection for anyone you want to use Quantum Key Distribution with.
Fiber to the home = point home to point Phone CO. You could communicate securely with the Phone CO, and that's it (if even that, it probably goes to some intermediate relay before the CO or equivalent).
QKD (at least w/r/t BB84 style protocols) only works with an uninterrupted, unrelayed quantum channel (a single piece of fiber).
Uh, OK.
So 40^8 = 6553600000000.
Let's say you'll hit the password halfway through the keyspace on average = 3276800000000.
Let's be really generous, and say a single user can attempt 60 keys / sec. That's 5184000 keys per day.
So, you'd get your password in about 632099 days... about 1700 years. Say you're attacking with 1000 people, that's only 1.7 years!
Oh wait, no supposedly secure system is going to accept 60000 failed key attempts per second, for 1.7 years, before failing. Nice thought, though.
Yes, it's the communication style that is the problem. Talking about visual dimensions, which for humans just happen to be three, is a horrible coincidence. It's rather confusing to laymen without the clear delineation between "dimensions of space" and "dimensions of light wavelength," which is the apparent (though still unclear) meaning you are using. Wavelength channels is a much better description which you seem to have arrived upon at the end of your message.
Similarly, your confusion over sub/super-set is continued. You two are agreeing that the human eye is a SUB-set of the SET of all visual ability (it does not contain all features that exist in nature).
The discussion was interesting to read, though. Turtle eyeballs sound cool. And turtles are so darn amusing, to boot. It's an interesting intellectual puzzle to think "what would an infrared channel of vision be like?" It wouldn't just be an overlay, or anything like that (or else it would be effectively indistinguishable from regular light; e.g. colorblindness [perception without differentiation]). It'd be a color you've literally never seen, or some other manner of sense.
Hopefully it'll go better than that plane company did...
Yes, life in prison is great. Rape and AIDS are a breeze!