DRM and Encryption are both authorised act's. And... saying "you" don't authorise DRM on your PC isn't good enough, the UK laws allowing DRM override your own de-authorisation.
So I, as the owner of the computer system, am not authorized to determine what can and can't operate on my hardware? I am not qualified to say what constitutes "proper operation" of my own equipment and determine if some software is detrimental to that operation?
Sounds like a decent legal argument in the making. =Smidge= (Also not a lawyer...)
First problem is, sites like Yahoo! mail and Hotmail use a lot of Javascript to render the message. (Especially GMail which uses nothing but AJAX.) When you visit a site, your browser downloads the javascript code and base HTML and caches it. However any additional data the javascript downloads, and any modifications to the HTML the script makes, are NOT cached.
Second problem is: <META HTTP-EQUIV="CACHE-CONTROL" CONTENT="NO-CACHE">
In either case, the data never touches the hard drive except maybe as part of the memory pagefile, which is highly volatile. =Smidge=
Caller ID is almost as easy to spoof as the FROM: field in an e-mail. Not to say it wasn't some dumbass intern that left the machine on all night, but if you want to cry conspiracy well... they could spoof the number too.
Easy: It's phpBB. The file name and post data are public knowledge to anyone that bothers to look at the source. Once the index.php file is found the location of the register.php file is also known because of the standard file heirarchy.
That, or the spammer manually targetted the forum.
Either way, by making the post data NON-standard, the bot was effectively defeated. =Smidge=
Wrong type: These were registration/spam bots not crawling/harvesting bots - They would never even look for a robots.txt file let alone follow it. All it did was dump POST information to register.php (or whatever the file is) to register an account with bogus info.
I made a quick anti-bot hack for a forum along these lines.
When registering, you can fill out your *entire* profile (It was a phpBB forum - poor design to begin with but I was in no position to change that) - so the spam bots would fill in he homepage URL and e-mail fields. Even if their accounts were never activated/verified, their profile would still be viewable and be enough of an advert.
So I modified the registration code a bit and added a message telling anyone who registered to leave the homepage field EMPTY. If the homepage field was filled in during the registration process, the script would just fail with an empty reply. The note also recommended updating the profile after registering if the legit user wanted to add that info. This, plus simple e-mail verification, completely stopped the attacks.
It's been a little over a year since and the guy hasn't had another problem with spambots. =Smidge=
TFA does not give any details as to what Google and the CIA are doing, if anything. It could be that Google is helping them filter information (not necessarily providing it) or build a new IT infastructure. We simply don't know what's going on.
The article certainly seems to have it's own opinion on it, though. =Smidge=
I'd settle for less widgets and chrome for better usability.
I'm not exactly a novice when it comes to computers, but after deciding to try Kubuntu (Ubuntu didn't run well on the computer I was using) I decided it wasn't worth the hassle when I spent two days trying to mount a network drive hosted on a Windows machine and have it reconnect automatically whenever I log in.
IIRC, the "solution" involved editing at least two files and creating a third, and having the password as plaintext in at least two locations.
Mapping the same drive from another Windows box is as simple as "Map Network Drive", enter/browse for the share, and clicking "Reconnect on startup". (Optionally: "Connect as a different user" if the username/password used for local login does not have credentials to access the share). Takes all of 2 minutes.
It's shit like that which keeps Linux out of reach for the masses, IMHO. =Smidge=
You are assuming - incorrectly, I think - that Google actually has (currently) 2.77GB of storage space for every G-mail account in existance. Google is probably operating with the knowledge that almost nobody actually uses that much, and is overselling their disk capacity by some calculated amount.
Show me even "two sides" of genocide, or homophobically motivated violence, racial prejudice, or slavery, much less this circle plot you refer to.
I think we all agree that these are bad things - That's one side. But we are also both seeing these issues from a "here, now" perspective, and society has changed a great deal since these were really serious problems.
Since there were(and maybe still are) people that advocated and even executed all of these things, obviosuly their view contradicts yours. At some point, somebody must've thought genocide and slavery were good things and that prejudice and violence were acceptable or even necessary. So that's another side.
Possible grey areas would include even hypocritical scenarios: "I don't approve of X... unless it's done for Y" where X is something such as genocide and Y is some justification for that person for that particular scenario - perhaps their own prejudices come into play, or they were "just following orders" even though they might have objected to it at some level.
Nobody said a person's stance on an issue has to be logical, either. =Smidge=
People hav ebeen writing reports and letters to the machine manufacturers and politicians since BEFORE the 2004 election warning how unsecure the electronic voting system was. A totally new way to bypass what little "security" these machines have seem to show up on a monthly basis.
People have given sworn testimony in court about the security issues and how their concerns fell on deaf ears in upper management, or sometimes even met with legal threats and unemployment.
Quite simply, proper channels HAVE been exhausted. Either nobody gets it or they are deliberately trying not to hear it. =Smidge=
Sorry for going slightly offtopic but the whole "two tone vision" thing bugs the hell outta me. Nothing is ever as simple as "good or bad."
There are as many ways to look at a problem as there are people looking at it. If you find anyone who agrees 100% with another person on some issue, then that person has obviously not bothered to think about it for themselves.
There are never "two sides" to an issue. If you were to represent any social/political/economic issue as a 2D geometry, the best example would be a circle not a line. =Smidge=
Thanks to their recent recalls, they may not have Sony-made batteries in the near future.
If you want to add to the boycott, perhaps a letter writing campaign to these companies in an attempt to reduce the business they do with Sony may help as well. =Smidge=
I find it interesting that you rush to the defense of President Bush so quickly despite my comment being in no way political, and the fact that the ban on federal money for embryonic stem cell research was started in 1995 by Clinton... good job asshat. Back on track, shall we?
I guess an analogy would be if the Prez released federal money to research Solar power, where there was none before, but not wind because windmills kill birds. The Wind power people get all pissed off and say the Prez is responsible for ruining the environment because he blocked Wind power reseach, even though private organizations can research Wind, just as they always have.
No, a proper analogy would be if the government released federal money to research Solar power, where there was none before, but not wind because of completely non-scientific ideological reasons - then after a few years justified not funding wind power because "solar has become more advanced anyway and wind power shows little promise." My point is wind power might have advanced as well if it had been given equal funding opportunity. =Smidge=
Your arguments seem to be self serving - You seem to be against embryonic stem cell research because adult stem cell research is more advanced, but it's only more advanced because you've been blocking embryonic stem cell research. (Perhaps not you *personally*, but you get my drift)
If it's really an unsound fiscal policy then one would not expect it to be so popular outside the US where it isn't banned from public funding. Hmm... =Smidge=
In that case you should have no problem answering my question, rather than dismissing it with a snide comment.
If you are going to claim that he's using the wrong hardware then you obviously think there is better hardware, and in order to make that comparison you must know all about the project budget, operating environment, size and weight constraints, power availability etc. Please share because I don't see anything in the summary that tells us why he chose CF - even between the lines. =Smidge=
Immediately before that quote: Skeptics say that hydrogen promises to be a needlessly expensive solution for applications for which simpler, cheaper and cleaner alternatives already exist. (Emphasis mine)
In other words, for many applications Hydrogen is the Rube Goldberg machine of energy management. =Smidge=
I did think about this part of it after my post. I wondered how the system handles multiple people trying to edit the doc at the same time?
But more along these lines, it may be good for Google to clean up and repackage the software system for private business use. In other words, sell the software so companies can install it on their own networks. This almost brings us back to the mainframe-style business computing in the 70's, with the exception that the bulk of the processing is still done by the client.
The biggest benefit would be instant sync of everyone's software package. Update or modify the single copy of the software on the server and the changes propagate to all the clients on next use, transparently, and machines can be added without special software setup and removed with no critical data left on them*. It's also much less sensitive to the quirks of individual machines that would have to be set up individually.
I think that a lot of what irritates me is that the sort of things that are being made are largely things that already exist. I have Abiword and OpenOffice and KOffice installed, and they are better
Keyword: "installed"
No argument that there exists plenty of standalone, purpose-made applications that do a better job, but they need to be downloaded and installed.
If you happen to use a computer that isn't yours you can still access your documents in "native format" with a consistent interface as long as the computer has a javascript capable browser installed... and any computer with internet access is practically guaranteed to have a web browser installed. Consider things like editing your documents at a library if you're out of town, or any other public web access kiosk you might find. Borrow someone's laptop for a few minutes, etc.
Of course, if you don't encounter those situations you may as well use a dedicated application - it's all about the right tool to suit your particular needs. =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
So I, as the owner of the computer system, am not authorized to determine what can and can't operate on my hardware? I am not qualified to say what constitutes "proper operation" of my own equipment and determine if some software is detrimental to that operation?
Sounds like a decent legal argument in the making.
=Smidge= (Also not a lawyer...)
Just to point out: Those units in California are not photovoltaic. Those are solar-thermal Stirling generators.
Just a nitpick, really. I'm also quite excited about that project.
=Smidge=
Two problems:
First problem is, sites like Yahoo! mail and Hotmail use a lot of Javascript to render the message. (Especially GMail which uses nothing but AJAX.) When you visit a site, your browser downloads the javascript code and base HTML and caches it. However any additional data the javascript downloads, and any modifications to the HTML the script makes, are NOT cached.
Second problem is: <META HTTP-EQUIV="CACHE-CONTROL" CONTENT="NO-CACHE">
In either case, the data never touches the hard drive except maybe as part of the memory pagefile, which is highly volatile.
=Smidge=
Caller ID is almost as easy to spoof as the FROM: field in an e-mail. Not to say it wasn't some dumbass intern that left the machine on all night, but if you want to cry conspiracy well... they could spoof the number too.
=Smidge=
Easy: It's phpBB. The file name and post data are public knowledge to anyone that bothers to look at the source. Once the index.php file is found the location of the register.php file is also known because of the standard file heirarchy.
That, or the spammer manually targetted the forum.
Either way, by making the post data NON-standard, the bot was effectively defeated.
=Smidge=
Wrong type: These were registration/spam bots not crawling/harvesting bots - They would never even look for a robots.txt file let alone follow it. All it did was dump POST information to register.php (or whatever the file is) to register an account with bogus info.
=Smidge=
I made a quick anti-bot hack for a forum along these lines.
When registering, you can fill out your *entire* profile (It was a phpBB forum - poor design to begin with but I was in no position to change that) - so the spam bots would fill in he homepage URL and e-mail fields. Even if their accounts were never activated/verified, their profile would still be viewable and be enough of an advert.
So I modified the registration code a bit and added a message telling anyone who registered to leave the homepage field EMPTY. If the homepage field was filled in during the registration process, the script would just fail with an empty reply. The note also recommended updating the profile after registering if the legit user wanted to add that info. This, plus simple e-mail verification, completely stopped the attacks.
It's been a little over a year since and the guy hasn't had another problem with spambots.
=Smidge=
TFA does not give any details as to what Google and the CIA are doing, if anything. It could be that Google is helping them filter information (not necessarily providing it) or build a new IT infastructure. We simply don't know what's going on.
The article certainly seems to have it's own opinion on it, though.
=Smidge=
I'd settle for less widgets and chrome for better usability.
I'm not exactly a novice when it comes to computers, but after deciding to try Kubuntu (Ubuntu didn't run well on the computer I was using) I decided it wasn't worth the hassle when I spent two days trying to mount a network drive hosted on a Windows machine and have it reconnect automatically whenever I log in.
IIRC, the "solution" involved editing at least two files and creating a third, and having the password as plaintext in at least two locations.
Mapping the same drive from another Windows box is as simple as "Map Network Drive", enter/browse for the share, and clicking "Reconnect on startup". (Optionally: "Connect as a different user" if the username/password used for local login does not have credentials to access the share). Takes all of 2 minutes.
It's shit like that which keeps Linux out of reach for the masses, IMHO.
=Smidge=
A synthetic lawn is cheaper in the long run and doesn't need to be mowed. :)
=Smidge=
You are assuming - incorrectly, I think - that Google actually has (currently) 2.77GB of storage space for every G-mail account in existance. Google is probably operating with the knowledge that almost nobody actually uses that much, and is overselling their disk capacity by some calculated amount.
=Smidge=
I think we all agree that these are bad things - That's one side. But we are also both seeing these issues from a "here, now" perspective, and society has changed a great deal since these were really serious problems.
Since there were(and maybe still are) people that advocated and even executed all of these things, obviosuly their view contradicts yours. At some point, somebody must've thought genocide and slavery were good things and that prejudice and violence were acceptable or even necessary. So that's another side.
Possible grey areas would include even hypocritical scenarios: "I don't approve of X... unless it's done for Y" where X is something such as genocide and Y is some justification for that person for that particular scenario - perhaps their own prejudices come into play, or they were "just following orders" even though they might have objected to it at some level.
Nobody said a person's stance on an issue has to be logical, either.
=Smidge=
People hav ebeen writing reports and letters to the machine manufacturers and politicians since BEFORE the 2004 election warning how unsecure the electronic voting system was. A totally new way to bypass what little "security" these machines have seem to show up on a monthly basis.
People have given sworn testimony in court about the security issues and how their concerns fell on deaf ears in upper management, or sometimes even met with legal threats and unemployment.
Quite simply, proper channels HAVE been exhausted. Either nobody gets it or they are deliberately trying not to hear it.
=Smidge=
Sorry for going slightly offtopic but the whole "two tone vision" thing bugs the hell outta me. Nothing is ever as simple as "good or bad."
There are as many ways to look at a problem as there are people looking at it. If you find anyone who agrees 100% with another person on some issue, then that person has obviously not bothered to think about it for themselves.
There are never "two sides" to an issue. If you were to represent any social/political/economic issue as a 2D geometry, the best example would be a circle not a line.
=Smidge=
Thanks to their recent recalls, they may not have Sony-made batteries in the near future.
If you want to add to the boycott, perhaps a letter writing campaign to these companies in an attempt to reduce the business they do with Sony may help as well.
=Smidge=
Your arguments seem to be self serving - You seem to be against embryonic stem cell research because adult stem cell research is more advanced, but it's only more advanced because you've been blocking embryonic stem cell research. (Perhaps not you *personally*, but you get my drift)
If it's really an unsound fiscal policy then one would not expect it to be so popular outside the US where it isn't banned from public funding. Hmm...
=Smidge=
The competition was for building a vehicle to climb the ribbon, not making the ribbon itself.
There is a seperate competition for designing/making the actual ribbon.
Ref: http://www.elevator2010.org/site/competition.html
=Smidge=
In that case you should have no problem answering my question, rather than dismissing it with a snide comment.
If you are going to claim that he's using the wrong hardware then you obviously think there is better hardware, and in order to make that comparison you must know all about the project budget, operating environment, size and weight constraints, power availability etc. Please share because I don't see anything in the summary that tells us why he chose CF - even between the lines.
=Smidge=
So what do you know about this guy's project that the rest of us don't?
=Smidge=
Way to take a quote out of context!
Immediately before that quote: Skeptics say that hydrogen promises to be a needlessly expensive solution for applications for which simpler, cheaper and cleaner alternatives already exist. (Emphasis mine)
In other words, for many applications Hydrogen is the Rube Goldberg machine of energy management.
=Smidge=
(Of course, this sidesteps discussion of whether IQ tests measure anything significant at all.)
This also seems to sidestep discussion of whether BMI measures anything significant at all.
=Smidge=
I did think about this part of it after my post. I wondered how the system handles multiple people trying to edit the doc at the same time?
But more along these lines, it may be good for Google to clean up and repackage the software system for private business use. In other words, sell the software so companies can install it on their own networks. This almost brings us back to the mainframe-style business computing in the 70's, with the exception that the bulk of the processing is still done by the client.
The biggest benefit would be instant sync of everyone's software package. Update or modify the single copy of the software on the server and the changes propagate to all the clients on next use, transparently, and machines can be added without special software setup and removed with no critical data left on them*. It's also much less sensitive to the quirks of individual machines that would have to be set up individually.
(*at least in theory...)
=Smidge=
I think that a lot of what irritates me is that the sort of things that are being made are largely things that already exist. I have Abiword and OpenOffice and KOffice installed, and they are better
Keyword: "installed"
No argument that there exists plenty of standalone, purpose-made applications that do a better job, but they need to be downloaded and installed.
If you happen to use a computer that isn't yours you can still access your documents in "native format" with a consistent interface as long as the computer has a javascript capable browser installed... and any computer with internet access is practically guaranteed to have a web browser installed. Consider things like editing your documents at a library if you're out of town, or any other public web access kiosk you might find. Borrow someone's laptop for a few minutes, etc.
Of course, if you don't encounter those situations you may as well use a dedicated application - it's all about the right tool to suit your particular needs.
=Smidge=
If it was fixed at 0%, I'm pretty sure the success rate would be high enough that it wouldn't matter if it really did anything.
=Smidge=