If you publish a schedule of prices, and I can save money by modifying my behavior, I'll do it.
My idea is that the power company is allowed to adjust its schedule of prices on the fly. So if the aggregate demand is within the output of a nice clean cheap generating station, the rate is low. If it has to bring a dirty generating station on line, or buy watts from a neighboring country, it raises the rate. And if it's heading for a brownout, it raises the rate stupendously.
And each consumer has a box which connects to the power company, perhaps by AM radio, or perhaps by SMS, that tells him what the current rate is. Maybe it connects to his TV or something; anyway, he gets the chance to say "holy mackerel, I'd better turn off the hot tub". Or he can buy his own super-duper box which controls stuff automatically when he's out. Or he can say "this week I need air conditioning more than that new camera I wanted".
At the end of the year, the power company publishes its data, and if the power company has charged more than the regulatory agency has previously allowed, it gives consumers some sort of refund.
So nothing in the consumer's house is under the direct control of the power company or anybody except the consumer, and no information about his usage leaks out except the level of usage. And the power company has much better options in brownout season.
If you want to say he should be apologized to more than any other persecuted gay person because he was somehow more useful to the government than the others, that also doesn't make any sense.
It makes sense to me. Here's another analogy: have you heard of the recent case where a Moslem woman was suing some guy in a German court, the guy starts stabbing her, her husband wades in to stop him, then a guard shows up and shoots the husband? Don't you think the husband deserves more of an apology than the usual innocent bystander gets?
And trust me, I believe persecuted gay guys and shot innocent bystanders both deserve *big* apologies.
The book (Flat Earth News) linked to by the parent is indeed worth reading. It argues that media owners have tried to drive down costs by eliminating actual journalism, and that they have been largely successful in driving more principled competitors out of business.
I think it is too late to reverse this trend.
We will wind up with "news" sites which simply make available press releases. This is essentially what almost every media outlet is doing now, except that it also reproduces AP and Reuters. AP and Reuters, and France-Presse, and all the others, will vanish as their revenue stream dries up (assuming it doesn't come mostly from intelligence agencies).
The only "value add" which such news sites can offer is selecting interesting press releases and indexing them, which Google News can do now.
Of course, with today's perspective we might wonder exactly how much real journalism was *ever* done.
The OP mentioned that "we are primarily a Linux shop, there are a handful of Windows systems that will be on a Windows Active Directory domain".
Does every machine that authenticates to an AD server need a Windows client licence? Or every user? Does the AD server need an additional client or user licence?
I haven't bought client licences for years -- it was back in NT4 days -- but as I recall they were pricey and hard to get. And nobody was prepared to go on the record about how to calculate how many I needed. (Although several people said things that were vague and inconsistent and then stopped returning calls.) Maybe that has changed.
Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep.... Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.
Gosh, the sheepdog looks an *awful lot* like the wolf these days. And sometimes you see him chatting to the wolf, and they both look at you and laugh. Can't quite make out what they're saying, though. Can't quite.
This issue has come up before. My conclusion was that a single pass might indeed be insufficent and it was hard to say how many would be enough.
Why would an attack method which would recover very small fractions of the data from the disk be valuable to the attacker? One suggestion I thought was plausible was this: with sufficiently advanced techniques some good data may be retrieved (for instance, a drive may mark a failing sector as bad and never allow it to be accessed again by normal means, but it may occasionally be readable by drive-specific utilities).
This acts as known plaintext and may reduce the time needed to break encryption (of a separate data source which was fully available to the attackers because it was believed to be safe) from several universes to a few days.
Btw, this known-plaintext idea makes me think it's probably a bad idea to encrypt a system disk which also contains data.
Why is there no "irresponsible speculation" about this? Do we really believe that there was any notification whatsoever of this incredibly threatening operation in advance? Isn't it much more likely that something extremely weird happened -- let's say, the pilot who realized he'd carried cartons of weaponized virus to Mexico in the President's diplomatic baggage was trying to escape a team of US Army assassins and was trying desperately to attract attention after his radio was jammed -- and the PTB are just lying about it?
If they knowingly broke the law, then they should be prepared to face the consequences.
We keep hearing of scenarios like you've captured a terrorist who's planted a nuke in Manhattan, but you can't torture him because of some stupid rules.
I think if something like that ever *did* happen, someone who really wanted to go ahead and torture the guy would take the risk of a few years in prison. And if he *wasn't* prepared to take that risk, then maybe he wasn't really so sure the victim had really planted a nuke, either.
Decision to fire a weapon, or to be more precise the ORDER to go 'weapons hot' will remain the same as it is today, from the chain of command.
If a human receives that order, he has the option of disobeying it. Indeed, I believe that US forces are still taught that it is their *duty* to do so under some circumstances.
I'd like not just a GPS display, but a printout. Ideally showing the route on the map, a text list of streets and turns, date and time of start and stop, itemized charges including tip and change, driver full name and car plate number, name and address of cab company.
It would cut out a lot of scams. Or maybe, when you're in your hotel room and you're looking at the printout and comparing it to the map, you say "Oh... huh. That's why it looked like he was taking a long route".
Skynet noticed this and developed the Cameron model to look cute instead of scary. (Similarly Dick's "Second Variety".)
However, as this process continues -- assuming both sides survive -- the newer models start liking the *human* environment more and more, because that's what they've evolved for. Eventually their loyalties become compromised. Human loyalties too.
The same process happens with human infections. Syphilis arrived in Europe as a ghastly fast-burning killer like E-Bola. Within a few centuries it has adapted to having only a marginal effect on human reproduction. A few centuries from now, assuming it hasn't been eliminated or filtered out on upload or whatever, syphilis will be just another of the thousands of nondescript bugs which live on peaceably in humans which we pay no attention to.
I'd like to see a cellphone that you could plug into a wired jack.
That would often let you make calls more cheaply and reliably. It would presumably use a lot less battery power, and you might be able to charge the phone off the phoneline. And you would have all your stored contacts, messages and whatnot in the phone, so you wouldn't have to rekey anything.
It would probably need some sort of "locale" support, so that you could use different prefixes when dialling via the cell network or via the landline network, but that's doable.
I don't know if the wired network supports SMS, but it would be very handy.
You are ignorant; the universe is already conducting high-energy physics experiments. They are called cosmic rays, and some of them are billions of times more powerful than the LH
On the other hand, cosmic rays arrive now and then, not in fiercely concentrated streams. Have you never heard of resonance cascade phenomena?
Having no faith in the integrity of Anything on the Web, I choose to block those ads
Also, have you ever looked at Adblock's *whitelist*, and wondered why things like "@@/flash.pcworld.com/video/pcw/ads/*.flv|" were on there? And checked what happens when you allow Adblock to update?
...If it makes other people be a little more self conscious about how their words can come across and breaks the social norms of using homosexual terms as insults, then I think it's AWESOME...
I love the movie Liquid Sky (although quite a few people hated it). One of the characters is a tiny lesbian who is sneeringly aggressive towards men. Her preferred term of abuse is "big cock". Every time she tries to use it as a putdown, the intended victim gets this bemused look on his face. You can see that he's wondering whether to explain the details of her misconception to her, but the moment passes.
In other words, it would be nice if "u r teh gheyness!" and suchlike phrases could be perceived differently.
Incidentally, I met the actress at a party in a lesbian's apartment a few years later, and managed to make her think I was an utter dweeb, when I was just trying to say I loved the atmosphere in the movie. Heigh-ho, suck air.
Assuming one cosmic ray hit per m2 per year from all directions; one hole per hit; the surface of the Earth is about 500 M m2; resulting black holes do not have escape velocity; black holes do not evaporate; age of Earth is 5 B years; then the number of black holes inside Earth is 2.5 e18.
Apparently the risk of any individual black hole actually colliding with another particle is quite slight, but how slight can it be?
Maybe black holes are in *very* low Earth orbit and powering the Earth's magnetic field.
the police had a warrant to seize this server which is totally within the law and absolutely not theft of any kind
According to indymedia, their hosting service handed over the server in question without seeing a warrant.
The action of seizing the server was highly unlikely to serve the ostensible purpose of protecting the judge, as explained by previous posters. But it has been quite effective in harrassing indymedia, which was a third party.
Wait until the secret police seize your server -- or your car, or your daughter -- on some pretext. Maybe then you'll see the point.
What the fuck happened to the concept of limited government? 50+ comments on here, and not one asking what business is it of government to make people's decisions for them?
Even if people support the principle that governments should attempt to influence personal decisions, there is a *much* simpler way to achieve the ostensible goals of the proposal: to increase the tax on gasoline. However, that would not reward any special interests.
Dude, first off, stop trying to sound like a lawyer - it's like when a white guy tries to speak urban lingo - he just sounds lame. "A remedy in tort" - LOL.
What's the actual problem with that phrase? Google returns "about 11,800" hits for it. Since you use the word "arse" you presumably use British English, so maybe it's an American expression with which you are not familiar.
Slashdot Mirror
Steveha said:
My idea is that the power company is allowed to adjust its schedule of prices on the fly. So if the aggregate demand is within the output of a nice clean cheap generating station, the rate is low. If it has to bring a dirty generating station on line, or buy watts from a neighboring country, it raises the rate. And if it's heading for a brownout, it raises the rate stupendously.
And each consumer has a box which connects to the power company, perhaps by AM radio, or perhaps by SMS, that tells him what the current rate is. Maybe it connects to his TV or something; anyway, he gets the chance to say "holy mackerel, I'd better turn off the hot tub". Or he can buy his own super-duper box which controls stuff automatically when he's out. Or he can say "this week I need air conditioning more than that new camera I wanted".
At the end of the year, the power company publishes its data, and if the power company has charged more than the regulatory agency has previously allowed, it gives consumers some sort of refund.
So nothing in the consumer's house is under the direct control of the power company or anybody except the consumer, and no information about his usage leaks out except the level of usage. And the power company has much better options in brownout season.
BadAnalogyGuy:
It makes sense to me. Here's another analogy: have you heard of the recent case where a Moslem woman was suing some guy in a German court, the guy starts stabbing her, her husband wades in to stop him, then a guard shows up and shoots the husband? Don't you think the husband deserves more of an apology than the usual innocent bystander gets?
And trust me, I believe persecuted gay guys and shot innocent bystanders both deserve *big* apologies.
The book (Flat Earth News) linked to by the parent is indeed worth reading. It argues that media owners have tried to drive down costs by eliminating actual journalism, and that they have been largely successful in driving more principled competitors out of business.
I think it is too late to reverse this trend.
We will wind up with "news" sites which simply make available press releases. This is essentially what almost every media outlet is doing now, except that it also reproduces AP and Reuters. AP and Reuters, and France-Presse, and all the others, will vanish as their revenue stream dries up (assuming it doesn't come mostly from intelligence agencies).
The only "value add" which such news sites can offer is selecting interesting press releases and indexing them, which Google News can do now.
Of course, with today's perspective we might wonder exactly how much real journalism was *ever* done.
The OP mentioned that "we are primarily a Linux shop, there are a handful of Windows systems that will be on a Windows Active Directory domain".
Does every machine that authenticates to an AD server need a Windows client licence? Or every user? Does the AD server need an additional client or user licence?
I haven't bought client licences for years -- it was back in NT4 days -- but as I recall they were pricey and hard to get. And nobody was prepared to go on the record about how to calculate how many I needed. (Although several people said things that were vague and inconsistent and then stopped returning calls.) Maybe that has changed.
pipinguy:
Gosh, the sheepdog looks an *awful lot* like the wolf these days. And sometimes you see him chatting to the wolf, and they both look at you and laugh. Can't quite make out what they're saying, though. Can't quite.
This issue has come up before. My conclusion was that a single pass might indeed be insufficent and it was hard to say how many would be enough.
Why would an attack method which would recover very small fractions of the data from the disk be valuable to the attacker? One suggestion I thought was plausible was this: with sufficiently advanced techniques some good data may be retrieved (for instance, a drive may mark a failing sector as bad and never allow it to be accessed again by normal means, but it may occasionally be readable by drive-specific utilities).
This acts as known plaintext and may reduce the time needed to break encryption (of a separate data source which was fully available to the attackers because it was believed to be safe) from several universes to a few days.
Btw, this known-plaintext idea makes me think it's probably a bad idea to encrypt a system disk which also contains data.
Why is there no "irresponsible speculation" about this? Do we really believe that there was any notification whatsoever of this incredibly threatening operation in advance? Isn't it much more likely that something extremely weird happened -- let's say, the pilot who realized he'd carried cartons of weaponized virus to Mexico in the President's diplomatic baggage was trying to escape a team of US Army assassins and was trying desperately to attract attention after his radio was jammed -- and the PTB are just lying about it?
We keep hearing of scenarios like you've captured a terrorist who's planted a nuke in Manhattan, but you can't torture him because of some stupid rules.
I think if something like that ever *did* happen, someone who really wanted to go ahead and torture the guy would take the risk of a few years in prison. And if he *wasn't* prepared to take that risk, then maybe he wasn't really so sure the victim had really planted a nuke, either.
If a human receives that order, he has the option of disobeying it. Indeed, I believe that US forces are still taught that it is their *duty* to do so under some circumstances.
I'd like not just a GPS display, but a printout. Ideally showing the route on the map, a text list of streets and turns, date and time of start and stop, itemized charges including tip and change, driver full name and car plate number, name and address of cab company.
It would cut out a lot of scams. Or maybe, when you're in your hotel room and you're looking at the printout and comparing it to the map, you say "Oh... huh. That's why it looked like he was taking a long route".
"Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence."
That's the kind of rule which people who don't want to be seen as malicious really like to promote.
Adding a note to my previous comment:
I happened to notice a story in the London Independent today which refers to this process, whereby antagonists evolve to live together:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/new-bird-flu-cases-suggest-the-danger-of-pandemic-is-rising-1667526.html/
Skynet noticed this and developed the Cameron model to look cute instead of scary. (Similarly Dick's "Second Variety".)
However, as this process continues -- assuming both sides survive -- the newer models start liking the *human* environment more and more, because that's what they've evolved for. Eventually their loyalties become compromised. Human loyalties too.
The same process happens with human infections. Syphilis arrived in Europe as a ghastly fast-burning killer like E-Bola. Within a few centuries it has adapted to having only a marginal effect on human reproduction. A few centuries from now, assuming it hasn't been eliminated or filtered out on upload or whatever, syphilis will be just another of the thousands of nondescript bugs which live on peaceably in humans which we pay no attention to.
I'd like to see a cellphone that you could plug into a wired jack.
That would often let you make calls more cheaply and reliably. It would presumably use a lot less battery power, and you might be able to charge the phone off the phoneline. And you would have all your stored contacts, messages and whatnot in the phone, so you wouldn't have to rekey anything.
It would probably need some sort of "locale" support, so that you could use different prefixes when dialling via the cell network or via the landline network, but that's doable.
I don't know if the wired network supports SMS, but it would be very handy.
Conceivably 3-way calling would be possible too.
tixxit:
That would restrict my choice of weapons to a fleshlight.
JoeBuck:
On the other hand, cosmic rays arrive now and then, not in fiercely concentrated streams. Have you never heard of resonance cascade phenomena?
Also, have you ever looked at Adblock's *whitelist*, and wondered why things like "@@/flash.pcworld.com/video/pcw/ads/*.flv|" were on there? And checked what happens when you allow Adblock to update?
TubeSteak:
Unfortunately, a lot of *other* people *also* think that your wallet is much more valuable than your work password.
Rick:
I love the movie Liquid Sky (although quite a few people hated it). One of the characters is a tiny lesbian who is sneeringly aggressive towards men. Her preferred term of abuse is "big cock". Every time she tries to use it as a putdown, the intended victim gets this bemused look on his face. You can see that he's wondering whether to explain the details of her misconception to her, but the moment passes.
In other words, it would be nice if "u r teh gheyness!" and suchlike phrases could be perceived differently.
Incidentally, I met the actress at a party in a lesbian's apartment a few years later, and managed to make her think I was an utter dweeb, when I was just trying to say I loved the atmosphere in the movie. Heigh-ho, suck air.
JesseL said:
One can conclude the Federal Government does not consider Jack Thompson to be an enemy.
Assuming one cosmic ray hit per m2 per year from all directions; one hole per hit; the surface of the Earth is about 500 M m2; resulting black holes do not have escape velocity; black holes do not evaporate; age of Earth is 5 B years; then the number of black holes inside Earth is 2.5 e18.
Apparently the risk of any individual black hole actually colliding with another particle is quite slight, but how slight can it be?
Maybe black holes are in *very* low Earth orbit and powering the Earth's magnetic field.
CmdrGravy:
According to indymedia, their hosting service handed over the server in question without seeing a warrant.
The action of seizing the server was highly unlikely to serve the ostensible purpose of protecting the judge, as explained by previous posters. But it has been quite effective in harrassing indymedia, which was a third party.
Wait until the secret police seize your server -- or your car, or your daughter -- on some pretext. Maybe then you'll see the point.
kmac06:
Even if people support the principle that governments should attempt to influence personal decisions, there is a *much* simpler way to achieve the ostensible goals of the proposal: to increase the tax on gasoline. However, that would not reward any special interests.
Micah:
All hail The Hypnotoad!
unassimilatible:
What's the actual problem with that phrase? Google returns "about 11,800" hits for it. Since you use the word "arse" you presumably use British English, so maybe it's an American expression with which you are not familiar.