The claim that "it is logically impossible to prove a negative" is either false or uninteresting.
I think people got confused by propositional vs predicate logic with quantifiers.
eg: For all x there exists some y such that P(x,y)
There does not exist an x such that for any y P(x,y) where y is a member of an infinite set.
Its easy to see that over an infinite set (or as good as infinite, for what its worth), its not possible to prove such a statement because you would have to take your x and go through each instance of y and check P(x,y).
Such a task would never be completed, therefore it *is* logically impossible to prove (within predicate logic). Propositional logic is another thing again.
Eg, Newton and Freud use exactly the same formula (under predicate logic) and neither are disprovable;
'all dreams are neurotic symptoms' 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction'.
Carl Sagan quotes aren't always great when it comes to extraterrestrials...
I'll never forget his "Its impossible that extraterrestrials might one day visit the Earth because of the amount of time that an interstellar journey would take".
I don't know how you got anthropomorphisation out of my post because my stance on extraterrestrials is that there is *ONE* single thing that we know for sure about them; that is the fact that we know *NOTHING* about them.
Its pointless speculation, save for the possible entertainment value.
Re:UFO vs. alien spacecraft
on
UFOs In the News
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You are anthropomorphising extraterrestrials.
Try to think outside the box.
When Carl Sagan stated that it was scientifically impossible for aliens to visit Earth due to how long it would take to cross the vast gulfs of interstellare space, I wish I'd been there to say "So there can't possibly be aliens with a lifespan measured in thousands of years?"
The average US household requires debt to operate daily (we have a negative savings rate) and millions of homeowners have no hope in hell of paying off their IO mortgages
An interesting parallel to what happened at the end of the feudal period in Japan.
The way that the shogunate operated was that the regional warlords had to maintain two complete households; one in their province and one in the capital (since a good part of their family was held hostage by the Shogun).
This meant that the warlords had a huge financial burden since it was very expensive to maintain the two households.
Japan used to operate on a caste system, from the untouchables (eta) who handled dead bodies and human waste to the god-emperor himself. By the way, you won't hear much about eta these days, they are practically erased from Japanese history books. (Interesting side note; technically the ninja were of the eta caste. Dead bodies and all that).
The warlords turned to borrowing money from the merchant caste.
For various reasons, the merchant caste in feudal Japan were the lowest of the low. I think that the only people lower in the caste system were the untouchables. Even peasants were higher up than merchants (the aristocracy would have said that at least peasants earned an honest living).
So long as the feudal system lasted, the aristocracy had no problem with having massive debt to the merchant caste since they were regarded as being so low and meaningless. From their perspective, the debt could easily be wiped out by having the merchants involved liquidated; noone would bat an eyelid.
When the feudal period came to an end and the system went through a reformation and the aristocracy was dissolved time came to do the books.
The members of the aristocracy were effectively rendered destitute and they had *no* assets, just massive debt and no means to pay it off.
The merchant classes, the lowest of the low, the scum of feudal society, suddenly found themselves owning just about the whole country.
The real solution is not getting rid of workplace drug testing, but instead just legalizing drugs.
I don't see why they can't solve the problem for drugs; they already did for homosexuality (in the UK at least).
Poor old Jeremy Thorpe would have been a lot better off these days. Its hard to imagine someone losing his job and being raked over the coals for turning out to be gay nowadays.
If you don't mind being limited to working within the confines of the imagination of the person who designed the GUI then the GUI is just fine for you.
But if you want to go beyond those limitations then its not very helpful unless you design and build your own GUI.
For example, you might get the false impression that there is very little bestiality going on if you were to go around asking people directly if they ever had sex with an animal.
The correct way to go about such a survey would be to get them really drunk then say: "I bet you never made it with a farm animal".
This 'small-time market' is huge in aggregate. There are thousands of small businesses, home businesses, stores, etc. that have need of some kind of server.
Theres an old salesmans adage that goes:
"Sell to the classes, live with the masses. Sell to the masses, live with the classes".
because in Linux, you have to go back to the 1980's, when you had to memorize esoteric commands in order to get your computer to do what any 4 year old can do now in Windows with a mouse
You are talking about the shell which is basically using a programming language to give the computer instructions in a structured, flexible and precise manner and being able to plug programs together even when those programs wern't specifically designed to be plugged together.
I defy you (or anyone over the age of 4) to do that sort of thing in Windows with a mouse.
But honestly, if the shell is something you complain about then you probably are better off with microsoft products. Small-minded software for small-minded users.
One of the things I remember Gates talking about excitedly for the past 10 years is his R&D in Speach Recognition. He's been dreaming about the seamless and natural interaction of computers and humans for a long time.
Stanley Tweedle: For example, if I was to say "Lexx, blow up that small planet..." Lexx: As you request, Stan. Stanley Tweedle: um, good shot, Lexx...
The purpose of requiring case sensitive keys with special characters and numbers is to add to the number of possible combinations.
Yes, in general it does.
But the specification which was outlined required very specific numbers of such characters and numbers.
Therefore, according to the GP post, the password *will* consist of:
3 caps, 3 lower, 3 numbers, 3 special char and 3 other characters from any of the previous 4 sets.
so, if I remember this right, the amount of distinct characters which could appear in the 15 character passphrase could be:
3x26 + 3x26 + 3x10 + 3x32 (if I got that right) + 3x(26+26+10+32)
Without those constraints, it would be 15x(26+26+10+32) which is a bigger number.
the "dictionary" ban is in a way a "less complex" ban, that is, password cracking can't be accomplished by going through a dictionary rather than all combinations.
Knowing that you can avoid names and dictionary words in your brute force attack and that there won't be "more than 3 letters or numbers in sequence ( back or forward )" surely reduces the search space considerably.
So when you set your "john the ripper" off you can exclude all dictionary words etc from your incremental search.
Like I said, my combinatorics are rusty, so if anyone else cares to do the math on this and prove me right or wrong, I'd be grateful!
a 15 char password consisting of 3 caps, 3 lower, 3 numbers, and 3 special char ( the rest is up to the user ), no proper names, dictionary words, more than 3 letters or numbers in sequence ( back or forward )
I'm no crypto expert and my combinatorics is a bit rusty, but don't those constraints actually *reduce* the complexity of the password?
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I mean like wouldn't it be like totally rad if I could like buy the same clothes from like the same store
Hey, I just want one of those cool orange shirts, like in There!
The claim that "it is logically impossible to prove a negative" is either false or uninteresting.
I think people got confused by propositional vs predicate logic with quantifiers.
eg: For all x there exists some y such that P(x,y)
There does not exist an x such that for any y P(x,y) where y is a member of an infinite set.
Its easy to see that over an infinite set (or as good as infinite, for what its worth), its not possible to prove such a statement because you would have to take your x and go through each instance of y and check P(x,y).
Such a task would never be completed, therefore it *is* logically impossible to prove (within predicate logic). Propositional logic is another thing again.
Eg, Newton and Freud use exactly the same formula (under predicate logic) and neither are disprovable;
'all dreams are neurotic symptoms'
'every action has an equal and opposite reaction'.
Carl Sagan quotes aren't always great when it comes to extraterrestrials...
I'll never forget his "Its impossible that extraterrestrials might one day visit the Earth because of the amount of time that an interstellar journey would take".
You are missing the point.
A GUI is to the commandline as the system of road signs is to the english language; it has its place but its not as expressive.
In order to get the most out of your computer you have to stop being commandline-phobic.
Don't say the q-word out loud or you'll invoke DJB.
Invoke DJB?
Well since you mention him, I'd have to add that *anything* by DJB is quirky, bizarre and hack-ish.
Except Maildir, which was a stroke of genius.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Maildir format came from the same person who gave us qmail and daemontools.
Madness surely works in mysterious ways.
Thats it, just qmail.
It doesn't get much more bizarre and hack-ish than that.
I don't know how you got anthropomorphisation out of my post because my stance on extraterrestrials is that there is *ONE* single thing that we know for sure about them; that is the fact that we know *NOTHING* about them.
Its pointless speculation, save for the possible entertainment value.
You are anthropomorphising extraterrestrials.
Try to think outside the box.
When Carl Sagan stated that it was scientifically impossible for aliens to visit Earth due to how long it would take to cross the vast gulfs of interstellare space, I wish I'd been there to say "So there can't possibly be aliens with a lifespan measured in thousands of years?"
Don't Anthropomorphise Aliens!!!!!
The average US household requires debt to operate daily (we have a negative savings rate) and millions of homeowners have no hope in hell of paying off their IO mortgages
:)
An interesting parallel to what happened at the end of the feudal period in Japan.
The way that the shogunate operated was that the regional warlords had to maintain two complete households; one in their province and one in the capital (since a good part of their family was held hostage by the Shogun).
This meant that the warlords had a huge financial burden since it was very expensive to maintain the two households.
Japan used to operate on a caste system, from the untouchables (eta) who handled dead bodies and human waste to the god-emperor himself. By the way, you won't hear much about eta these days, they are practically erased from Japanese history books. (Interesting side note; technically the ninja were of the eta caste. Dead bodies and all that).
The warlords turned to borrowing money from the merchant caste.
For various reasons, the merchant caste in feudal Japan were the lowest of the low. I think that the only people lower in the caste system were the untouchables. Even peasants were higher up than merchants (the aristocracy would have said that at least peasants earned an honest living).
So long as the feudal system lasted, the aristocracy had no problem with having massive debt to the merchant caste since they were regarded as being so low and meaningless. From their perspective, the debt could easily be wiped out by having the merchants involved liquidated; noone would bat an eyelid.
When the feudal period came to an end and the system went through a reformation and the aristocracy was dissolved time came to do the books.
The members of the aristocracy were effectively rendered destitute and they had *no* assets, just massive debt and no means to pay it off.
The merchant classes, the lowest of the low, the scum of feudal society, suddenly found themselves owning just about the whole country.
And that is how modern Japan came to be.
First, it weeds out a lot of the types of people that the employer doesn't want,
Was that an intentional pun?
such as drug users. Many people won't apply for the job if they think they will fail the polygraph.
Unless one of the drugs they use is valium, in which case the polygraph will show a nice, flat line for just about any question...
The real solution is not getting rid of workplace drug testing, but instead just legalizing drugs.
I don't see why they can't solve the problem for drugs; they already did for homosexuality (in the UK at least).
Poor old Jeremy Thorpe would have been a lot better off these days. Its hard to imagine someone losing his job and being raked over the coals for turning out to be gay nowadays.
Yes, perhaps some people react more to "shotgun", and some respond less.
You would also want to make sure that the person asking the questions did so consistently and didn't know that the murder weapon was a shotgun.
If you don't mind being limited to working within the confines of the imagination of the person who designed the GUI then the GUI is just fine for you.
But if you want to go beyond those limitations then its not very helpful unless you design and build your own GUI.
Its all down to how you ask the questions.
For example, you might get the false impression that there is very little bestiality going on if you were to go around asking people directly if they ever had sex with an animal.
The correct way to go about such a survey would be to get them really drunk then say: "I bet you never made it with a farm animal".
Surely the "R" doesn't stand for "Recording". Must be for "Racketeering"
The Racketeering Industry Association of America. Thats more like it.
This 'small-time market' is huge in aggregate. There are thousands of small businesses, home businesses, stores, etc. that have need of some kind of server.
Theres an old salesmans adage that goes:
"Sell to the classes, live with the masses. Sell to the masses, live with the classes".
Its just the inherent limitations of the GUI.
I remember when I was teaching comp sci back in the early 90s, we had a lab full of macs.
One student had a huge pile of text files which they wanted to put into one large text file.
The only way to do it on the mac at the time was to open each file one by one, copying and pasting.
On the commandline it would be just a few keystrokes.
Commandline *is* more flexible and powerful, theres no denying it.
because in Linux, you have to go back to the 1980's, when you had to memorize esoteric commands in order to get your computer to do what any 4 year old can do now in Windows with a mouse
You are talking about the shell which is basically using a programming language to give the computer instructions in a structured, flexible and precise manner and being able to plug programs together even when those programs wern't specifically designed to be plugged together.
I defy you (or anyone over the age of 4) to do that sort of thing in Windows with a mouse.
But honestly, if the shell is something you complain about then you probably are better off with microsoft products. Small-minded software for small-minded users.
One of the things I remember Gates talking about excitedly for the past 10 years is his R&D in Speach Recognition. He's been dreaming about the seamless and natural interaction of computers and humans for a long time.
Stanley Tweedle: For example, if I was to say "Lexx, blow up that small planet..."
Lexx: As you request, Stan.
Stanley Tweedle: um, good shot, Lexx...
The purpose of requiring case sensitive keys with special characters and numbers is to add to the number of possible combinations.
Yes, in general it does.
But the specification which was outlined required very specific numbers of such characters and numbers.
Therefore, according to the GP post, the password *will* consist of:
3 caps, 3 lower, 3 numbers, 3 special char and 3 other characters from any of the previous 4 sets.
so, if I remember this right, the amount of distinct characters which could appear in the 15 character passphrase could be:
3x26 + 3x26 + 3x10 + 3x32 (if I got that right) + 3x(26+26+10+32)
Without those constraints, it would be 15x(26+26+10+32) which is a bigger number.
the "dictionary" ban is in a way a "less complex" ban, that is, password cracking can't be accomplished by going through a dictionary rather than all combinations.
Knowing that you can avoid names and dictionary words in your brute force attack and that there won't be "more than 3 letters or numbers in sequence ( back or forward )" surely reduces the search space considerably.
So when you set your "john the ripper" off you can exclude all dictionary words etc from your incremental search.
Like I said, my combinatorics are rusty, so if anyone else cares to do the math on this and prove me right or wrong, I'd be grateful!
a 15 char password consisting of 3 caps, 3 lower, 3 numbers, and 3 special char ( the rest is up to the user ), no proper names, dictionary words, more than 3 letters or numbers in sequence ( back or forward )
I'm no crypto expert and my combinatorics is a bit rusty, but don't those constraints actually *reduce* the complexity of the password?
the only losers are the people who send those annoying Flash giftcards through email
Don't worry, they were already losers!
I'm angry enough not to use Redhat Linux, because of what they did to the free RedHat scene - turned it into a legion of beta testers.
Hey, the entire population of Linux users are beta testers!
Except those that run Debian Stable.
Then theres aliens... or rather, extraterrestrials (ie not Mexicans).
If there were any doubt about non-humans being accorded legal person status, surely the precedent of the corporation would be helpful.
On the other hand, I rather like the idea that we have a legal precedent for something other than homo sapiens being recognised as legally a person.
This should open the door for all kinds of other things being recognised as legal people.
For example, perhaps religions could try to get legal person status for various spiritual entities.