Only in a thoroughly corrupt society can big corporations get away with saying "you can't sue me because I don't agree to be sued", while other big corporations win judgments against common people for thousands of times the actual damages. I thought only sovereign nations were supposed to be able to just decline a lawsuit.
Harness ocean waves...."Doesn't that take energy from the environment?"...from a real Slashdotter.
I didn't know that Slashdot now counts as a green group.
It doesn't. We like to think that we've more on the ball (intellectually speaking) than the average Joe but, as that comment clearly demonstrates... some of us don't.
Oh, I wouldn't say they're completely useless. If we could get all the tree-huggers to use a.eco address, it would be very convenient for filtering them out.
spoil the Net, don't they? I mean, come on. Wouldn't dot-org suffice for things ecological in a sense?
Not really, no more than too many channels spoil cable TV. Nobody says you have to actually go there. This is really about people that wanted to have "mygreendomain.com", but found out that somebody beat them to it, can have "mygreendomain.eco", thereby convincing themselves that they're "on the Web" when in reality they've just ensured that nobody will ever find them. Or worse, that everyone trying to find them will actually find "mygreendomain.com" which is not at all what they want.
I suspect that there are some other outfits that might want to have a say in this.
Like the thousands of domain squatters and assorted bozos who would actually want to buy an.eco domain. Why do TLD's remind me of real estate sales in Second Life?.
Give it up already folks.
Yeah. Now if someone would just come up with a more useful TLD, say... XXX.
Can't we just create the "Green Police" that ecosopher Pentti Linkola recommended, and be done with these irksome charities?
I think they're called the EPA.
The unfortunate truth is that only so much can be done by political activism and passing laws and funding bureaucracy. What really needs to be done, on a larger scale, is train or corporte leaders to understand the business case for environmental responsibility. There is one, although many refuse to see it because it does require investment.
Furthermore, the real environmentalists are the scientists and engineers that come up with better, safer ways to manufacture goods and dispose of them, and who convince their corporate overlords to put their dollars there. All the external activism in the world won't convince a hard-nosed businessman to burn cash on making his company produce less waste: it usually takes someone on the inside. The thing is, those people never get much credit: unsung heroes they are.
organizations should have claim to an entire TLD? Even if they "sit down together", that's still an awful lot of authority being placed in the hands of a very few people. I suspect that there are some other outfits that might want to have a say in this.
There's nothing wrong with ATMs running Windows, OS/2 or whatever as long as it's set up right.
But they're not. Many are run through the public Internet (and there are many known instances of them having been compromised, either directly by thieves or indirectly through worm infestations) and furthermore Diebold is not a company that can be trusted to set them up correctly. That's also pretty clear, given their track record. And I disagree with you that there's nothing wrong with an ATM running Windows. In fact, I don't really know where to begin a response to that statement.
I'm 52 and haven't had my wallet stolen since 1969.
And let's not forget that wallets can get lost as well as stolen. Do you trust the stranger that finds it to just destroy that information... or do you think he might be tempted to log in just to see what he can see? And do you further trust him to leave it at that?
I don't. I know several people that lost purses or wallets, and within fifteen or twenty minutes had a couple thousand run up on their credit cards. No, I don't believe that a wallet is a safe place to keep any information that you can't afford to lose.
I'm 52 and haven't had my wallet stolen since 1969.
Then you're overdue. Mine last got ripped off in 1978. Seriously though, the acceptability of storing passwords in insecure places goes up with the potential loss you'll suffer when they're compromised. A wallet is a fine place to keep your Slashdot account info, but not a great place if it's your bank's Web site. Oh sure, if you just put down your password without any other account information you might be okay: but if you're the kind of person that can't memorize a password odds are you're putting the Web site and username in there right along with the password. That's no different than writing your PIN on the back of your ATM card, and plenty of people are that stupid, believe me.
Easy solution: Make it a policy that people found writing their passwords down get fired.
Then you'll find them in people's wallets, on the underside of their keyboards, or other insecure (but non-obvious) places. Getting all Draconian on people only goes so far. Security is a compromise, because people still have to get their jobs done, so finding a middle ground is important. IT departments can put in place all the overbearing policies they want, but if it costs too much productivity (or irritates workers too much) people will find a way to make it more convenient. Period. You have to work with human nature rather than against it, or you're pretty much doomed to failure.
Just assign the damn things! When I was in college (about thirty years ago, now) the school's mainframe would assign users a strong password when you got your account. Choosing a poor one wasn't an option. The system did manage to come up with interesting and easy-to-memorize combinations, I must say. It was actually fairly impressive: I never saw anyone writing down their password because they didn't need to. However, they weren't just random combinations of characters, and they weren't subject to a dictionary attack.
Depending upon individuals to come up with strong passwords is utterly hopeless: you tell them what their password is. However, you can't just give them something like "pz039yq53t" because they'll get frustrated and stick it on a Post-IT note. Come up with an algorithm that generates strong but easy-to-remember passwords and you'll be in good shape.
Or better yet, store it in your wallet. A place that is save enough for your money, credit cards and car keys should be save enough for a bunch of passwords.
Huh? That's not very good advice. If someone steals my wallet, they get access to whatever cash I have in it, and some easily-replaceable plastic. If I report the loss/theft promptly, my liability is limited.
On the other hand, if I put passwords to my important online services there (such as my bank account, 401K, etc.) I could find those assets gone forever. If I have passwords to my company's systems there, they also could be compromised, and it would be my fault for storing those passwords in such a readily accessible place. A wallet is not secure, was not intended to be secure, and is something people carry around out of necessity, and the thought of losing it is a source of constant worry. Plus which, there are people who specialize in relieving us of the burden of carrying said items, you know... they're called "pickpockets."
Also, the problem with carrying arround a "secure authentication device" is that very few services support them. Well, not in the U.S. anyway, and that's where I live. And even if you are able to use one, you'll probably still require a PIN of some kind. Probably not a good idea to put that in your wallet either.
Regardless, you are absolutely correct that people not thinking things through and concerning themselves solely with convenience is human nature, Me, I use difficult passwords and I make the effort to a. memorize them and b. change them now and then. But that's me: few computer users are willing to work that hard, and I also agree with you that they really shouldn't have to. However, the core problem isn't so much hardware and software developers: the problem is that the people in charge of the financial systems in many countries just don't see the investment in secure transaction handling to be worth the money. It's cheaper to pay their insurance underwriters and just charge off the fraud. Of course, that fact that some number of citizens get totally fucked over every year is just acceptable collateral damage.
The United States' banking system is horribly insecure at pretty much every level, and I don't see that improving any time soon because it would cost a lot of money. A good first step might be getting rid of Diebold (I mean, come on, a Windows-based ATM?) but I don't see that happening soon either.
Unless the price comes down to 360 levels. It's not like the PS3 has an exclusive I particularly want anyway.
Besides, this is just going to be another one of Sony's stupid box things that doesn't fucking do the thing it's goddamn fucking supposed to. Most of Sony's products are motherfucking time vampires anyway and are completely ass backwards as fuck, even if they do have more megabytes and megapixels than all the TV shit that I already have.
Ray Kurzweil is a brilliant computer scientist and brought us many improvements -- maybe even the invention of -- the electronic musical keyboard.
As accomplished as he is (and I have a Kurzweil synth in my studio, as well as a couple of Moogs) he's not even close to being the inventor of the synthesizer. Moog would be closer to the mark, and certainly his innovation in the area of voltage control really pushed the analog synthesizer into the mainstream, but his work is predated by others as well.
Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.
No, the last invention that Man need ever make is the Holodeck.
Slashdot Mirror
It's nice how you admit that checking slashdot and keeping up with news are separate things.
What? Slashdot isn't news?
Dear Brits, why o why did you have to make your language so incredibly inconsistent ;)
Mostly to keep the rest of us guessing so they can laugh behind our backs.
This will not hold water in the courts. Don't panic.
Probably not. The problem is that it raises the bar, and makes it that much harder to actually get to court. I presume that's the whole idea.
Only in a thoroughly corrupt society can big corporations get away with saying "you can't sue me because I don't agree to be sued", while other big corporations win judgments against common people for thousands of times the actual damages. I thought only sovereign nations were supposed to be able to just decline a lawsuit.
It's called "Corporate Government".
Mussolini defined it as "corporatism."
As in $$$$$. Sheesh. The usual pattern: From cause to movement to racket. And then the bureaucracy takes it all over. Repeat as needed.
You PETA believe it!
I didn't know that Slashdot now counts as a green group.
It doesn't. We like to think that we've more on the ball (intellectually speaking) than the average Joe but, as that comment clearly demonstrates ... some of us don't.
Oh, I wouldn't say they're completely useless. If we could get all the tree-huggers to use a .eco address, it would be very convenient for filtering them out.
-jcr
Good point.
spoil the Net, don't they? I mean, come on. Wouldn't dot-org suffice for things ecological in a sense?
Not really, no more than too many channels spoil cable TV. Nobody says you have to actually go there. This is really about people that wanted to have "mygreendomain.com", but found out that somebody beat them to it, can have "mygreendomain.eco", thereby convincing themselves that they're "on the Web" when in reality they've just ensured that nobody will ever find them. Or worse, that everyone trying to find them will actually find "mygreendomain.com" which is not at all what they want.
.GOV can come in handy now and then, as well as .EDU. But yeah, the rest are sort of useless for the most part.
Like the thousands of domain squatters and assorted bozos who would actually want to buy an .eco domain. Why do TLD's remind me of real estate sales in Second Life?.
Give it up already folks.
Yeah. Now if someone would just come up with a more useful TLD, say ... XXX.
Can't we just create the "Green Police" that ecosopher Pentti Linkola recommended, and be done with these irksome charities?
I think they're called the EPA.
The unfortunate truth is that only so much can be done by political activism and passing laws and funding bureaucracy. What really needs to be done, on a larger scale, is train or corporte leaders to understand the business case for environmental responsibility. There is one, although many refuse to see it because it does require investment.
Furthermore, the real environmentalists are the scientists and engineers that come up with better, safer ways to manufacture goods and dispose of them, and who convince their corporate overlords to put their dollars there. All the external activism in the world won't convince a hard-nosed businessman to burn cash on making his company produce less waste: it usually takes someone on the inside. The thing is, those people never get much credit: unsung heroes they are.
organizations should have claim to an entire TLD? Even if they "sit down together", that's still an awful lot of authority being placed in the hands of a very few people. I suspect that there are some other outfits that might want to have a say in this.
That is fine until someone figures out what your algorithm is.
Who says you have to use only one, or that knowing it would make any difference whatsoever?
There's nothing wrong with ATMs running Windows, OS/2 or whatever as long as it's set up right.
But they're not. Many are run through the public Internet (and there are many known instances of them having been compromised, either directly by thieves or indirectly through worm infestations) and furthermore Diebold is not a company that can be trusted to set them up correctly. That's also pretty clear, given their track record. And I disagree with you that there's nothing wrong with an ATM running Windows. In fact, I don't really know where to begin a response to that statement.
I'm 52 and haven't had my wallet stolen since 1969.
And let's not forget that wallets can get lost as well as stolen. Do you trust the stranger that finds it to just destroy that information ... or do you think he might be tempted to log in just to see what he can see? And do you further trust him to leave it at that?
I don't. I know several people that lost purses or wallets, and within fifteen or twenty minutes had a couple thousand run up on their credit cards. No, I don't believe that a wallet is a safe place to keep any information that you can't afford to lose.
I'm 52 and haven't had my wallet stolen since 1969.
Then you're overdue. Mine last got ripped off in 1978. Seriously though, the acceptability of storing passwords in insecure places goes up with the potential loss you'll suffer when they're compromised. A wallet is a fine place to keep your Slashdot account info, but not a great place if it's your bank's Web site. Oh sure, if you just put down your password without any other account information you might be okay: but if you're the kind of person that can't memorize a password odds are you're putting the Web site and username in there right along with the password. That's no different than writing your PIN on the back of your ATM card, and plenty of people are that stupid, believe me.
My password at the time was KlonHa
I believe that's Klingon for "Guess this!"
Easy solution: Make it a policy that people found writing their passwords down get fired.
Then you'll find them in people's wallets, on the underside of their keyboards, or other insecure (but non-obvious) places. Getting all Draconian on people only goes so far. Security is a compromise, because people still have to get their jobs done, so finding a middle ground is important. IT departments can put in place all the overbearing policies they want, but if it costs too much productivity (or irritates workers too much) people will find a way to make it more convenient. Period. You have to work with human nature rather than against it, or you're pretty much doomed to failure.
Just assign the damn things! When I was in college (about thirty years ago, now) the school's mainframe would assign users a strong password when you got your account. Choosing a poor one wasn't an option. The system did manage to come up with interesting and easy-to-memorize combinations, I must say. It was actually fairly impressive: I never saw anyone writing down their password because they didn't need to. However, they weren't just random combinations of characters, and they weren't subject to a dictionary attack.
Depending upon individuals to come up with strong passwords is utterly hopeless: you tell them what their password is. However, you can't just give them something like "pz039yq53t" because they'll get frustrated and stick it on a Post-IT note. Come up with an algorithm that generates strong but easy-to-remember passwords and you'll be in good shape.
Or better yet, store it in your wallet. A place that is save enough for your money, credit cards and car keys should be save enough for a bunch of passwords.
Huh? That's not very good advice. If someone steals my wallet, they get access to whatever cash I have in it, and some easily-replaceable plastic. If I report the loss/theft promptly, my liability is limited.
... they're called "pickpockets."
On the other hand, if I put passwords to my important online services there (such as my bank account, 401K, etc.) I could find those assets gone forever. If I have passwords to my company's systems there, they also could be compromised, and it would be my fault for storing those passwords in such a readily accessible place. A wallet is not secure, was not intended to be secure, and is something people carry around out of necessity, and the thought of losing it is a source of constant worry. Plus which, there are people who specialize in relieving us of the burden of carrying said items, you know
Also, the problem with carrying arround a "secure authentication device" is that very few services support them. Well, not in the U.S. anyway, and that's where I live. And even if you are able to use one, you'll probably still require a PIN of some kind. Probably not a good idea to put that in your wallet either.
Regardless, you are absolutely correct that people not thinking things through and concerning themselves solely with convenience is human nature, Me, I use difficult passwords and I make the effort to a. memorize them and b. change them now and then. But that's me: few computer users are willing to work that hard, and I also agree with you that they really shouldn't have to. However, the core problem isn't so much hardware and software developers: the problem is that the people in charge of the financial systems in many countries just don't see the investment in secure transaction handling to be worth the money. It's cheaper to pay their insurance underwriters and just charge off the fraud. Of course, that fact that some number of citizens get totally fucked over every year is just acceptable collateral damage.
The United States' banking system is horribly insecure at pretty much every level, and I don't see that improving any time soon because it would cost a lot of money. A good first step might be getting rid of Diebold (I mean, come on, a Windows-based ATM?) but I don't see that happening soon either.
Pass a law to let the market decide to boil the bastards in oil.
Okay! Now we're talkin'!
Unless the price comes down to 360 levels. It's not like the PS3 has an exclusive I particularly want anyway.
Besides, this is just going to be another one of Sony's stupid box things that doesn't fucking do the thing it's goddamn fucking supposed to. Most of Sony's products are motherfucking time vampires anyway and are completely ass backwards as fuck, even if they do have more megabytes and megapixels than all the TV shit that I already have.
Yes, I shamelessly ripped off the ONN.
Ray Kurzweil is a brilliant computer scientist and brought us many improvements -- maybe even the invention of -- the electronic musical keyboard.
As accomplished as he is (and I have a Kurzweil synth in my studio, as well as a couple of Moogs) he's not even close to being the inventor of the synthesizer. Moog would be closer to the mark, and certainly his innovation in the area of voltage control really pushed the analog synthesizer into the mainstream, but his work is predated by others as well.
Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.
No, the last invention that Man need ever make is the Holodeck.
Is a class action lawsuit #2 or #3 ?
Probably #2, I'd say.
Hands down the worst analogy I've seen on slashdot.
That may be, but I damn sure got a laugh out of it.