You have public key encryption backwards. You never, ever, ever, give your private key to anyone. Ever. That's why it's called private. If I want to know if a message came from Company X, they need to encrypt part of it (call it the signature) with their private key. I try decrypting their signature using their public key. If it works, I know it could only have been encrypted using their private key. If they're the only ones who have access to that private key, it must have come from them.
If you use the public key for signing the email, all the sender has to do is spoof the from address, or whatever it is that indicates how to get the "private" key from the email certifier. Anybody has access to the public key (it's public after all), so anybody could send me that email and it would check out as legitimate.
What do the certifiers add to the process that someone like Verisign doesn't do already? Today a company (or individual) could already send me digitally signed email that I could verify, and I could set up my mail to reject any non-whitelisted mail that's not signed.
introducing an assumption that gravity behaves differently outside a certain distance begs the question why it should be so, and we don't have any compelling answer to that.
If I'm not mistaken, we don't have any answer as to why gravity should exist at all. Is there ever a scientific answer to "why" questions about fundamental forces? Why does a positive electric charge attract a negative one, for example?
People keep lauding the Minority Report UI like it's a good idea.
Really? I laud it because it's cool! Beyond just that though, I love it because it's a computer interface in a movie that is futuristic, but still actually makes some sense. I might not want to use it all day, but if I were a cop, would I be doing that anyway? I think something like that could have a place, especially as a supplement to a keyboard and mouse rather than a replacement. I mean, if I could do window manipulation things (switch apps, minimize, move, resize, etc) with gestures in mid-air (I'm not so excited about touching the screen) instead of with the mouse, that might be really nice. I can use the mouse for precise positioning of the cursor.
I didn't say it was impossible or hard. What I said is that you could end up with something really kooky and distracting, kind of like some of the plot elements that actually made it into the show. Maybe it would be fantastic and maybe it would be terrible. Most likely some people would think it's fantastic and some would think it's terrible. Either way, the costumes they picked 1) probably saved quite a bit of money and 2) personally do not distract me from the story. Obviously your experience is different.
I mean, please, is it hard to come up with a secure computer to count the number of times people press a button? There are people in the industry whose JOB it is to do this, and look at the crap voting machines we have in this country. Just because something is perfectly possible and has been done before doesn't mean it will be done right next time. As we can see, it was their job to come up with good wardrobe selections for the show, and in your opinion they screwed it up, despite the fact it is not hard to do. Or maybe it's actually quite difficult to please all the viwers...
I don't mind. I'd rather they save a few bucks on wardrobes (and really it's probably more than a few bucks given the number of civilians they have in some episodes) rather than pretty much any other place.
And modern 21st century clothing is less jarring and distracting than some of things they might have come up with instead. Imagine what you could get if you gave the wardrobe director the instruction, "just make sure it doesn't look like anything Earthlings wear."
Mostly my thoughts have been covered in other replies, but one thing that I think wasn't mentioned is that this is explicitly not a completely unrelated society. The 12 colonies and Earth, the 13th colony, came from the same place, Kobol. Whether that helps you cope with the projectile weapons and suits and ties I don't know, but there it is.
Of course a big (so far) unresolved question is, if we came here in spaceships from some other planet, what happened to the spaceships and all our advanced technology?
So has HP. My HP Vista notebook always goes to sleep (suspend to RAM) when I close it, and it always wakes right back up when I open it. And if I push the power button it hibernates, and then always wakes up (fast) when I push it again. And if left alone it will automatically sleep and/or hibernate as configured based on whether it's on battery or not.
As you say, I don't know what the difference is. Better hardware? Bug fixes in Vista that are still present in other versions of Windows? Luck?
The myth he's debunking is that it takes so much power to turn on the computer (which would happen all at once in a "surge") that it eliminates the power benefit of leaving it off overnight. So what he's babbling about is calculating the amount of energy a computer uses as it's left idle overnight, the length of time such a computer might take to boot up, compressing that energy use into the boot-up time window, and comparing it to the capacity of a power outlet. Despite the incorrect units, the conclusion is that a normal outlet couldn't possibly supply that much energy in such a short time.
Not necessarily. As mentioned before, with something attached to your head (such as special polarized glasses, or infrared emitters) it is possible to get real 3D effects without using a hologram.
Sort of. There's a theory for how it could work by warping space in front of and behind the ship, but the energy requirements would be prohibitive. Like more energy than there is in the universe IIRC.
Why do fields of study have to proceed at the same relative paces we're familiar with? What is it about building robots and giant spaceships that necessitates a cure for cancer?
Zoos have no trouble keeping birds in. I think a wire mesh above the exercise yard would be fairly cheap. I don't know if it would be cheaper to repair it after severe storms or put it on a framework strong enough to survive though. Probably depends on local climate.
There are already knockoff Legos, and Lego is still doing just fine. They are not going to halve their prices, they are not going to shut their doors, and people will continue to buy their products.
Start worrying about Lego when somebody else starts making totally compatible, equally high quality pieces in interesting sets for less money.
The computers I've been downgrading have primarily been laptops, whose price has ranged between $800 and $1400.
For laptops, I would say basically add $300. I do software development on my Vista laptop that I think would retail for around $800 or so, and its performance gives me no trouble at all. Apparently your users' experience has been different, but for what reason of course I don't know. At any rate, I checked out an Intel P8400 2.26 GHz laptop, 15.4", 3GB RAM, 320GB drive, wireless, bluetooth, DVD burner, upgraded battery for about $1500. If that doesn't run Vista well, I don't even know what to say. Maybe you need to adjust your definition of "well"? If you're running on older hardware by all means go XP. If you're buying a new laptop and the budget is $1400 I just don't understand this performance concern, but I guess it's no worry of mine.
None of these are tasks I think the average home user has to do a whole lot.
What the average user does has no bearing on my personal computing needs:)
What the average user does has no bearing on anybody's computing needs. That doesn't mean it's not useful to talk about. I asked about your particular usage patterns, suggesting that perhaps you do sysadmin type of things that produce UAC prompts more than usual. I also mentioned that I am not trying to convince you of Vista's merits, and that my comments are directed at a general audience.
who really wants to spend $2,500 on a top of the line system when they can run an older OS on a $500 machine?
Brand-new machines that run Vista just fine cost $500 now. There are new ones that come with Vista for under $300 too, but I can't say for sure how well they run it. Computers sure are crazy cheap these days... And without peripherals you can barely even get a prebuilt $2500 desktop anymore. What I mean is you can spend a whole bunch if you buy all the top components yourself and build one, but I just went to HP, picked their top (non-Touchsmart) desktop, specced it all the way to the top and it came in at $2479. That's quad-core, 8GB RAM, 1TB disk, Blu-ray drive, etc. Way, way beyond what's necessary to run Vista. A more modest but still high powered rig is about half that.
the constant "allow/deny" requests are annoying as hell
I'm not sure of your usage pattern, but maybe you only do system admin type tasks on it? The UAC prompts are anything but constant during normal usage. I get them when I install or uninstall software, move something to program files or some other area that Windows is touchy about, or mess with things like the firewall. None of these are tasks I think the average home user has to do a whole lot.
I'm not trying to convince you to like Vista, that's obviously impossible, but I just wanted to respond to some of the factual claims.
Fail! BMW is working on it, it's called a steam engine. Take waste heat that would ordinarily go to the radiator or the exhaust pipe and use it to boil water and run a generator. Use the electricity to charge batteries, power spark plugs, run ac, turn electric motors, whatever.
The Celica GTR doesn't use the same 3SGTE the MR2 uses. The piping is entirely different, as is the frame, and the gearbox, and the radiator and intercooler. It's an entirely unrelated frame because it's an entirely unrelated car except for the top and bottom half of the engine.
I specifically said it uses the same engine. I also said it uses a totally different frame. So we agree on those things.
But as for the claim about the chassis, I'm not changing the original claim. I've built several MR2s out of many more MR2s and I can safely tell you that the frame is way too close on those cars to be "coincidental".
Your original claim was "Toyota already makes the MR2s, which it then turns around and sells the chassis to Lotus". What you just talked about is comparing Toyotas to Toyotas, not Lotuses, and thus has no bearing on your original claim. I still don't believe you unless you can provide a reference.
OK, if you change your claim from "Toyota already makes the MR2s, which it then turns around and sells the chassis to Lotus" to "the chassis is related, and most of the MR cars are related to one another at some distant level" then I have no problem with that.
As a side note, if I'm not mistaken that same engine, or at least the same basic design, has been used in completely unrelated front-engine chassis, such as the Celica GT-R. So engine design really doesn't dictate overall chassis design. The engine (and the rest of the drivetrain) just has to have somewhere it will fit. It would make sense that the Elise, being a very compact mid-engine car designed for a transverse inline 4 engine (or at least that's what they've always put in it) would have certain similarities to the MR2, a very compact mid-engine car designed with a transverse inline 4 engine. That by itself doesn't imply they have a common design origin. There is that wikipedia claim of Lotus basing their chassis on a Toyota design, but there's no citation and I couldn't find any other reference for it.
I think in your last paragraph you're saying it would make sense for Tesla to buy parts from Toyota? Could be. I would guess that would particularly make sense if Lotus bought parts from Toyota for the Elise, like mirrors or lights or interior bits or something. Tesla could just follow suit, knowing that the parts would be compatible. I don't know if that's the case or not, but I know Lotus has bought parts from other manufacturers in the past.
If they were made to last 100 years, they would cost twice as much and nobody would buy them.
Using that logic we'd all live in shantys that collapse every 5 years.
No, using that logic many people would live in houses that pretty much look like crap and need serious work after 50 years, when they could have spent a bunch more money and built a house that would last for 200. And in fact, that is exactly what happens.
The car would need to be highly modular to allow for periodic technology upgrades and styling updates
Thus making it even more expensive. I think this discussion is probably winding down. Nobody has ever bought or sold a car designed to last 100 years, and all we can do is speculate about why. My position is that few are interested in the kind of money that would take, and JeffHornby's and maybe yours is that there's a large unserved market for such cars that none of the world's car manufacturers has either recognized or exploited. Unfortunately nobody really has any evidence.
All true, but I don't know what your point is. Are you trying to refute something? If so, what? And how does your information refute it? Or else, what are you getting at?
Slashdot Mirror
You have public key encryption backwards. You never, ever, ever, give your private key to anyone. Ever. That's why it's called private. If I want to know if a message came from Company X, they need to encrypt part of it (call it the signature) with their private key. I try decrypting their signature using their public key. If it works, I know it could only have been encrypted using their private key. If they're the only ones who have access to that private key, it must have come from them.
If you use the public key for signing the email, all the sender has to do is spoof the from address, or whatever it is that indicates how to get the "private" key from the email certifier. Anybody has access to the public key (it's public after all), so anybody could send me that email and it would check out as legitimate.
What do the certifiers add to the process that someone like Verisign doesn't do already? Today a company (or individual) could already send me digitally signed email that I could verify, and I could set up my mail to reject any non-whitelisted mail that's not signed.
introducing an assumption that gravity behaves differently outside a certain distance begs the question why it should be so, and we don't have any compelling answer to that.
If I'm not mistaken, we don't have any answer as to why gravity should exist at all. Is there ever a scientific answer to "why" questions about fundamental forces? Why does a positive electric charge attract a negative one, for example?
Really? I laud it because it's cool! Beyond just that though, I love it because it's a computer interface in a movie that is futuristic, but still actually makes some sense. I might not want to use it all day, but if I were a cop, would I be doing that anyway? I think something like that could have a place, especially as a supplement to a keyboard and mouse rather than a replacement. I mean, if I could do window manipulation things (switch apps, minimize, move, resize, etc) with gestures in mid-air (I'm not so excited about touching the screen) instead of with the mouse, that might be really nice. I can use the mouse for precise positioning of the cursor.
Maybe Windows 8 will do that. ;-)
I didn't say it was impossible or hard. What I said is that you could end up with something really kooky and distracting, kind of like some of the plot elements that actually made it into the show. Maybe it would be fantastic and maybe it would be terrible. Most likely some people would think it's fantastic and some would think it's terrible. Either way, the costumes they picked 1) probably saved quite a bit of money and 2) personally do not distract me from the story. Obviously your experience is different.
I mean, please, is it hard to come up with a secure computer to count the number of times people press a button? There are people in the industry whose JOB it is to do this, and look at the crap voting machines we have in this country. Just because something is perfectly possible and has been done before doesn't mean it will be done right next time. As we can see, it was their job to come up with good wardrobe selections for the show, and in your opinion they screwed it up, despite the fact it is not hard to do. Or maybe it's actually quite difficult to please all the viwers...
I don't mind. I'd rather they save a few bucks on wardrobes (and really it's probably more than a few bucks given the number of civilians they have in some episodes) rather than pretty much any other place.
And modern 21st century clothing is less jarring and distracting than some of things they might have come up with instead. Imagine what you could get if you gave the wardrobe director the instruction, "just make sure it doesn't look like anything Earthlings wear."
Mostly my thoughts have been covered in other replies, but one thing that I think wasn't mentioned is that this is explicitly not a completely unrelated society. The 12 colonies and Earth, the 13th colony, came from the same place, Kobol. Whether that helps you cope with the projectile weapons and suits and ties I don't know, but there it is.
Of course a big (so far) unresolved question is, if we came here in spaceships from some other planet, what happened to the spaceships and all our advanced technology?
There are at least 2, my HP Vista laptop both sleeps and hibernates just fine. The desktop is not so skilled at it though.
So has HP. My HP Vista notebook always goes to sleep (suspend to RAM) when I close it, and it always wakes right back up when I open it. And if I push the power button it hibernates, and then always wakes up (fast) when I push it again. And if left alone it will automatically sleep and/or hibernate as configured based on whether it's on battery or not.
As you say, I don't know what the difference is. Better hardware? Bug fixes in Vista that are still present in other versions of Windows? Luck?
The myth he's debunking is that it takes so much power to turn on the computer (which would happen all at once in a "surge") that it eliminates the power benefit of leaving it off overnight. So what he's babbling about is calculating the amount of energy a computer uses as it's left idle overnight, the length of time such a computer might take to boot up, compressing that energy use into the boot-up time window, and comparing it to the capacity of a power outlet. Despite the incorrect units, the conclusion is that a normal outlet couldn't possibly supply that much energy in such a short time.
Not necessarily. As mentioned before, with something attached to your head (such as special polarized glasses, or infrared emitters) it is possible to get real 3D effects without using a hologram.
For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
The first time I saw the idea of 3D navigation for the desktop was when Hypercard came out (was that 10, 15 years ago?).
HyperCard came out 21 years ago.
Sort of. There's a theory for how it could work by warping space in front of and behind the ship, but the energy requirements would be prohibitive. Like more energy than there is in the universe IIRC.
Why do fields of study have to proceed at the same relative paces we're familiar with? What is it about building robots and giant spaceships that necessitates a cure for cancer?
Zoos have no trouble keeping birds in. I think a wire mesh above the exercise yard would be fairly cheap. I don't know if it would be cheaper to repair it after severe storms or put it on a framework strong enough to survive though. Probably depends on local climate.
Isn't that 0.1666... gravity (1/6)?
a person's waste water, whether urine, tears, or sweat
Fremen don't cry. ;-)
But a furlong per femtofortnight is damn fast.
There are already knockoff Legos, and Lego is still doing just fine. They are not going to halve their prices, they are not going to shut their doors, and people will continue to buy their products.
Start worrying about Lego when somebody else starts making totally compatible, equally high quality pieces in interesting sets for less money.
The computers I've been downgrading have primarily been laptops, whose price has ranged between $800 and $1400.
For laptops, I would say basically add $300. I do software development on my Vista laptop that I think would retail for around $800 or so, and its performance gives me no trouble at all. Apparently your users' experience has been different, but for what reason of course I don't know. At any rate, I checked out an Intel P8400 2.26 GHz laptop, 15.4", 3GB RAM, 320GB drive, wireless, bluetooth, DVD burner, upgraded battery for about $1500. If that doesn't run Vista well, I don't even know what to say. Maybe you need to adjust your definition of "well"? If you're running on older hardware by all means go XP. If you're buying a new laptop and the budget is $1400 I just don't understand this performance concern, but I guess it's no worry of mine.
None of these are tasks I think the average home user has to do a whole lot.
What the average user does has no bearing on my personal computing needs :)
What the average user does has no bearing on anybody's computing needs. That doesn't mean it's not useful to talk about. I asked about your particular usage patterns, suggesting that perhaps you do sysadmin type of things that produce UAC prompts more than usual. I also mentioned that I am not trying to convince you of Vista's merits, and that my comments are directed at a general audience.
who really wants to spend $2,500 on a top of the line system when they can run an older OS on a $500 machine?
Brand-new machines that run Vista just fine cost $500 now. There are new ones that come with Vista for under $300 too, but I can't say for sure how well they run it. Computers sure are crazy cheap these days... And without peripherals you can barely even get a prebuilt $2500 desktop anymore. What I mean is you can spend a whole bunch if you buy all the top components yourself and build one, but I just went to HP, picked their top (non-Touchsmart) desktop, specced it all the way to the top and it came in at $2479. That's quad-core, 8GB RAM, 1TB disk, Blu-ray drive, etc. Way, way beyond what's necessary to run Vista. A more modest but still high powered rig is about half that.
the constant "allow/deny" requests are annoying as hell
I'm not sure of your usage pattern, but maybe you only do system admin type tasks on it? The UAC prompts are anything but constant during normal usage. I get them when I install or uninstall software, move something to program files or some other area that Windows is touchy about, or mess with things like the firewall. None of these are tasks I think the average home user has to do a whole lot.
I'm not trying to convince you to like Vista, that's obviously impossible, but I just wanted to respond to some of the factual claims.
Fail! BMW is working on it, it's called a steam engine. Take waste heat that would ordinarily go to the radiator or the exhaust pipe and use it to boil water and run a generator. Use the electricity to charge batteries, power spark plugs, run ac, turn electric motors, whatever.
The Celica GTR doesn't use the same 3SGTE the MR2 uses. The piping is entirely different, as is the frame, and the gearbox, and the radiator and intercooler. It's an entirely unrelated frame because it's an entirely unrelated car except for the top and bottom half of the engine.
I specifically said it uses the same engine. I also said it uses a totally different frame. So we agree on those things.
But as for the claim about the chassis, I'm not changing the original claim. I've built several MR2s out of many more MR2s and I can safely tell you that the frame is way too close on those cars to be "coincidental".
Your original claim was "Toyota already makes the MR2s, which it then turns around and sells the chassis to Lotus". What you just talked about is comparing Toyotas to Toyotas, not Lotuses, and thus has no bearing on your original claim. I still don't believe you unless you can provide a reference.
OK, if you change your claim from "Toyota already makes the MR2s, which it then turns around and sells the chassis to Lotus" to "the chassis is related, and most of the MR cars are related to one another at some distant level" then I have no problem with that.
As a side note, if I'm not mistaken that same engine, or at least the same basic design, has been used in completely unrelated front-engine chassis, such as the Celica GT-R. So engine design really doesn't dictate overall chassis design. The engine (and the rest of the drivetrain) just has to have somewhere it will fit. It would make sense that the Elise, being a very compact mid-engine car designed for a transverse inline 4 engine (or at least that's what they've always put in it) would have certain similarities to the MR2, a very compact mid-engine car designed with a transverse inline 4 engine. That by itself doesn't imply they have a common design origin. There is that wikipedia claim of Lotus basing their chassis on a Toyota design, but there's no citation and I couldn't find any other reference for it.
I think in your last paragraph you're saying it would make sense for Tesla to buy parts from Toyota? Could be. I would guess that would particularly make sense if Lotus bought parts from Toyota for the Elise, like mirrors or lights or interior bits or something. Tesla could just follow suit, knowing that the parts would be compatible. I don't know if that's the case or not, but I know Lotus has bought parts from other manufacturers in the past.
If they were made to last 100 years, they would cost twice as much and nobody would buy them.
Using that logic we'd all live in shantys that collapse every 5 years.
No, using that logic many people would live in houses that pretty much look like crap and need serious work after 50 years, when they could have spent a bunch more money and built a house that would last for 200. And in fact, that is exactly what happens.
The car would need to be highly modular to allow for periodic technology upgrades and styling updates
Thus making it even more expensive. I think this discussion is probably winding down. Nobody has ever bought or sold a car designed to last 100 years, and all we can do is speculate about why. My position is that few are interested in the kind of money that would take, and JeffHornby's and maybe yours is that there's a large unserved market for such cars that none of the world's car manufacturers has either recognized or exploited. Unfortunately nobody really has any evidence.
All true, but I don't know what your point is. Are you trying to refute something? If so, what? And how does your information refute it? Or else, what are you getting at?