I wouldn't lose any sleep if tobacco and alcohol were banned - especially alcohol - but the genie is out the bottle with those two. Computer games are an activity, not a chemical you're ingesting whose sole purpose is to alter your brain chemistry - entirely different things.
We have enough problems with alcohol and prescription drugs, without legalising narcotics just so druggie losers like you can burn your braincells out a bit faster without being hassled by
the law. I'd go the other way and follow countries like China and some arab countries - you deal in drugs and you'll be executed. End.
... an ATM would be one of the few places where Windows 8 would probably be a good choice. Just have a touch screen that lets you flick through a few limited options represented by large square icons (or whatever they're called) instead of pressing buttons.
I realise you're probably one of those americans who've never gone beyond your borders, but there is a world outside the USA where approx 6.7 billion people live and some of us there do read this site. And it would be nice on a *technical* site to have standard units used that the majority of the world understands.
Isn't it about time a technical site such as slashdot started using metric units , eg kilos? You know, for the rest of the world outside the USA who has no clue what the hell 96,000 lbs means? Even in the UK hardly anyone under the age of 60 uses lbs as a measurement any more.
Re:I hate to point out the obvious but...
on
If I Had a Hammer
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· Score: 1
I have no problem with working hours going down - but zero working hours is a recipe for disaster. Most people need a purpose in life and for a lot of them their job is their purpose. Sure , for some of us its writing OSS or visiting archeaological sites or just surfing all day , either literally or on a screen or for some its religion. But most people arn't like that , they can't create their own purpose and need one given to them - ie a job.
I hate to point out the obvious but...
on
If I Had a Hammer
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· Score: 2
... the majority of humanity is not creative or particularly smart. And if there are few jobs for them to do because machines do all the grunt work what exactly do you expect them to do? I can tell you what they WILL do if the majority of the population is unemployed - riot.
"The guy who gets drunk and kills people, never really meant for it to happen. Why should you punish someone for something what, when you really thing about it, was just an accident."
Sorry, I've got to disagree here - someone who gets drunk then gets behind the wheel of a car does not just have an "accident". The drink almost certainly contributed to what happened and unless they're complete fools they knew perfectly well what can happen when you drink and drive. I have zero sympathy - if someone runs down someone when driving drunk they should be locked up and the key thrown away. There Is No Excuse.
Yeah, that'll work - until the day the cars computer *requires* there to be a GPS tracker connected and it won't be a simple DC connection either - it'll be an encrypted 2 way protocol which your average joe is rather unlikely to be able to spoof without a lab of equipment and a Phd in cryptography or unless someone has already done it and provided a public hack. Which will work until the cars firmware gets updated over the air.
... and you're an adult , then you're an idiot. And anyone so stupid they can't use a normal toothbrush will probably get lost at page 1 of the instructions of this silly gimmick.
Google might have terabytes of data to sift through , but thats just ones and zeros unless you've developed a decent AI algorithm to turn it into computer knowledge and understanding. It seems IBM are on their way to doing just that and if they have then it'll be a game changer. Whether for good or bad is anyones guess - I suspect like most technology it'll be both.
Oh well - any system security can ultimately be defeated by poor configuration and/or granting certain access rights to people who shouldn't have them.
Quite. The USA likes to see itself as a first world country yet if you get ill and you can't afford health insurance can basically go die in a corner for all they care. Even some 3rd world countries give more of a shit than that.
"We won't import half the existing records and the ones we do can't include any mental or sexual health information because we didn't bother with fine-grained access controls"
I hate to ruin your rant but - and I know because I worked on this - that the database records had various levels of encryption (by which I mean if you just did a SELECT from the DB on certain patient fields all you would see is garbage so even DB admins couldn't see it) which meant that - in theory - only the correct people could access certain parts.
To be fair a single NHS IT system is a very good idea. Its just a shame the contractors smelt money and decided to milk it for all it was worth rather than bother to deliver a working system. I actually worked for a small company that was subcontracted by a certain large telecoms company back in 2007 to work on a subsection of the DB side and we did our best , but unfortunately the powers that be at said telecom company just didn't give a sh*t. We'd send them new binaries which would then never get tested or if they did it would be months before we'd get an in the field report back. Utterly shameful.
The scanf() suit of functions are pretty horrid regardless of security issues. They never do quite what you expect and have endless little quirks that frankly are just a PITA. 99% of the time its a lot easier to roll your own parsing code than get *scanf() kicking and screaming to do what you want , and with C++ you have streams anyway. Its a pity they weren't just put of their (our?) misery years ago and dumped from the C standard altogether.
"is annoying and dangerous when someone decides to pull out in front of 55mph+ traffic and takes 20s to reach highways speeds"
I think you'll find 99% of the time thats down to the driver. Put Granny in a corvette and she'll still take 5 minutes to pull out then another minute get up to highway speed regardless.
"So, in Europe, when the typical drive is a 35mph drive a couple miles to the village shop"
Err, what? You've been watching too many period dramas my friend.
" In the US, where typical drive is 10-20 miles at 55mph+ speeds"
You should try driving on a german autobahn at 155mph+ speeds.
"though the only paper brave enough to print the truth these days is the Guardian"
For various definitions of the word "truth". I wouldn't trust the Guardian any more than any other newspaper with this sort of story - they all have an agenda.
The NewStatesman is a well known left wing magazine and it'll take any opportunity to take pot shots at the Cameron government. Now I don't agree with the porn filter at all, but the assertion that its *currently* being used to block people off from a large part of the net is frankly b0ll0cks.
However, what the filter may be used for in the future is another matter. Once power is available to politicians they will inevitably use it.
In *theory* they can match the values of an N bit code in one go where N is the number of quantum bits. In practice it might be another matter but even if not - that simply means you use more bits in your key. Once a quantum computer has used up all its bits it has to revert to working like a standard computer and doing everything serially. So if the quantum computer is N bits and we have a key with N + 32 bits the machine will still have to try 2^32 matches. So as quantum computer registers get larger so will encryption keys. Someone builds a 256 bit quantum computer? Great! So just use a 512 bit key and it'll have to do 2^256 comparisons. ie - it'll be damn slow.
The constant increase of entropy in the universe is real. Now you can call the process that allows that time or you could call it Kevin, it really doesn't matter. But it DOES exist and entropy DOES increase at different rates depending on relative speed and gravity and pretending it doesn't is simply being the physics equivalent of an Ostrich.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't lose any sleep if tobacco and alcohol were banned - especially alcohol - but the genie is out the bottle with those two. Computer games are an activity, not a chemical you're ingesting whose sole purpose is to alter your brain chemistry - entirely different things.
We have enough problems with alcohol and prescription drugs, without legalising narcotics just so druggie losers like you can burn your braincells out a bit faster without being hassled by
the law. I'd go the other way and follow countries like China and some arab countries - you deal in drugs and you'll be executed. End.
... an ATM would be one of the few places where Windows 8 would probably be a good choice. Just have a touch screen that lets you flick through a few limited options represented by large square icons (or whatever they're called) instead of pressing buttons.
I realise you're probably one of those americans who've never gone beyond your borders, but there is a world outside the USA where approx 6.7 billion people live and some of us there do read this site. And it would be nice on a *technical* site to have standard units used that the majority of the world understands.
Isn't it about time a technical site such as slashdot started using metric units , eg kilos? You know, for the rest of the world outside the USA who has no clue what the hell 96,000 lbs means? Even in the UK hardly anyone under the age of 60 uses lbs as a measurement any more.
I have no problem with working hours going down - but zero working hours is a recipe for disaster. Most people need a purpose in life and for a lot of them their job is their purpose. Sure , for some of us its writing OSS or visiting archeaological sites or just surfing all day , either literally or on a screen or for some its religion. But most people arn't like that , they can't create their own purpose and need one given to them - ie a job.
... the majority of humanity is not creative or particularly smart. And if there are few jobs for them to do because machines do all the grunt work what exactly do you expect them to do? I can tell you what they WILL do if the majority of the population is unemployed - riot.
Are you trolling. are you really this stupid or are you just making pathetic excuses for your own shameful behaviour? I wonder...
"The guy who gets drunk and kills people, never really meant for it to happen. Why should you punish someone for something what, when you really thing about it, was just an accident."
Sorry, I've got to disagree here - someone who gets drunk then gets behind the wheel of a car does not just have an "accident". The drink almost certainly contributed to what happened and unless they're complete fools they knew perfectly well what can happen when you drink and drive. I have zero sympathy - if someone runs down someone when driving drunk they should be locked up and the key thrown away. There Is No Excuse.
Yeah, that'll work - until the day the cars computer *requires* there to be a GPS tracker connected and it won't be a simple DC connection either - it'll be an encrypted 2 way protocol which your average joe is rather unlikely to be able to spoof without a lab of equipment and a Phd in cryptography or unless someone has already done it and provided a public hack. Which will work until the cars firmware gets updated over the air.
... and you're an adult , then you're an idiot. And anyone so stupid they can't use a normal toothbrush will probably get lost at page 1 of the instructions of this silly gimmick.
Another solution looking for a problem.
Is English your second language? If its your first you should be ashamed at your ignorance of a basic past tense.
Google might have terabytes of data to sift through , but thats just ones and zeros unless you've developed a decent AI algorithm to turn it into computer knowledge and understanding. It seems IBM are on their way to doing just that and if they have then it'll be a game changer. Whether for good or bad is anyones guess - I suspect like most technology it'll be both.
Oh well - any system security can ultimately be defeated by poor configuration and/or granting certain access rights to people who shouldn't have them.
Blowfish IIRC. And what was in the Oracle DB was just a key pointing to an encrypted hash DB elsewhere.
Quite. The USA likes to see itself as a first world country yet if you get ill and you can't afford health insurance can basically go die in a corner for all they care. Even some 3rd world countries give more of a shit than that.
"We won't import half the existing records and the ones we do can't include any mental or sexual health information because we didn't bother with fine-grained access controls"
I hate to ruin your rant but - and I know because I worked on this - that the database records had various levels of encryption (by which I mean if you just did a SELECT from the DB on certain patient fields all you would see is garbage so even DB admins couldn't see it) which meant that - in theory - only the correct people could access certain parts.
To be fair a single NHS IT system is a very good idea. Its just a shame the contractors smelt money and decided to milk it for all it was worth rather than bother to deliver a working system. I actually worked for a small company that was subcontracted by a certain large telecoms company back in 2007 to work on a subsection of the DB side and we did our best , but unfortunately the powers that be at said telecom company just didn't give a sh*t. We'd send them new binaries which would then never get tested or if they did it would be months before we'd get an in the field report back. Utterly shameful.
Fair point - though rolling implies designing it as well as writing.
The scanf() suit of functions are pretty horrid regardless of security issues. They never do quite what you expect and have endless little quirks that frankly are just a PITA. 99% of the time its a lot easier to roll your own parsing code than get *scanf() kicking and screaming to do what you want , and with C++ you have streams anyway. Its a pity they weren't just put of their (our?) misery years ago and dumped from the C standard altogether.
"is annoying and dangerous when someone decides to pull out in front of 55mph+ traffic and takes 20s to reach highways speeds"
I think you'll find 99% of the time thats down to the driver. Put Granny in a corvette and she'll still take 5 minutes to pull out then another minute get up to highway speed regardless.
"So, in Europe, when the typical drive is a 35mph drive a couple miles to the village shop"
Err, what? You've been watching too many period dramas my friend.
" In the US, where typical drive is 10-20 miles at 55mph+ speeds"
You should try driving on a german autobahn at 155mph+ speeds.
"though the only paper brave enough to print the truth these days is the Guardian"
For various definitions of the word "truth". I wouldn't trust the Guardian any more than any other newspaper with this sort of story - they all have an agenda.
The NewStatesman is a well known left wing magazine and it'll take any opportunity to take pot shots at the Cameron government. Now I don't agree with the porn filter at all, but the assertion that its *currently* being used to block people off from a large part of the net is frankly b0ll0cks.
However, what the filter may be used for in the future is another matter. Once power is available to politicians they will inevitably use it.
In *theory* they can match the values of an N bit code in one go where N is the number of quantum bits. In practice it might be another matter but even if not - that simply means you use more bits in your key. Once a quantum computer has used up all its bits it has to revert to working like a standard computer and doing everything serially. So if the quantum computer is N bits and we have a key with N + 32 bits the machine will still have to try 2^32 matches. So as quantum computer registers get larger so will encryption keys. Someone builds a 256 bit quantum computer? Great! So just use a 512 bit key and it'll have to do 2^256 comparisons. ie - it'll be damn slow.
The constant increase of entropy in the universe is real. Now you can call the process that allows that time or you could call it Kevin, it really doesn't matter. But it DOES exist and entropy DOES increase at different rates depending on relative speed and gravity and pretending it doesn't is simply being the physics equivalent of an Ostrich.