any plans on training these resurrected giant tortoises in the art of Ninjitsu.
Dude, those giant turtles are scary enough without Ninjitsu. In fact, one of them is so huge and powerful that four elephants couldn't manage to keep it down, unless they in turn were weighed down by a huge disk-shaped rock.
1. Don't make your security question anything that can be found online or don't discuss anything about it online (hers was where she and her husband met).
Unfortunately, Yahoo doesn't give you a lot of choice there. These are the possible recovery questions:
Where did you meet your spouse?
What was the name of your first school?
Who was your childhood hero?
What is your favorite pastime?
What is your favorite sports team?
What is your father's middle name?
What was your high school mascot?
What make was your first car or bike?
What is your pet's name?
Most of these answers are pretty easy to find out if you know the target, even if she's not currently running for vice president and having her past picked apart and published every day. For Palin, most of these answers are likely to appear in interviews, or are even on the public record (her school, her father's name).
What's so hard about letting users enter their own questions? I wouldn't feel safe with any of the questions in their list, but I could easily make one up that only I could answer. Sure, you could lie, but will you remember that lie in 5 years when you need to recover your password?
I agree. In an ideal world, you own the volume knob, and you decide what's loud enough. But there are many situations when you can't / don't want to adjust the volume for every single track. Party playlists, jogging, and radio are a few examples. Or even when I listen to a my MP3 collection in random order. This wasn't an issue with vinyl, because 1) there was a natural compression/limit when you transferred the sound to the plastic medium, and 2) vinyl was a lot more forgiving about sounds that were "too loud", like the single snare drum beat I mentioned. Digital can't forgive, and can't expand just a little further than normal. If a sound is louder than 0db, it will cause hard distortion (clipping).
With CDs and other digital media, like MP3s, that's where Replay Gain could really shine. Unfortunately, as long as producers think that louder equals more sales, we're SOL.
This is such a sad topic. On the one hand, I think that there's nothing wrong at all with raising the average volume of an album when you're remastering. The early CD releases were often lacking in volume, because the mastering engineers were doing the exact opposite of what they're forced do these days. Back then, a single very loud snare hit would automatically lower the maximum volume of the whole album, because the engineers didn't want to introduce artificial compression. That's the reason why old CDs sound a little muted. Thank god, that changed, and they soon started to use moderate compression by default when mastering to CD.
But what we have today is just bizarre. Nobody can tell me with a straight face that the newest Red Hot Chili Peppers CDs sound good (ignoring the music here). There's more clipping than music on those discs. I really *really* hope they're keeping all those original recordings safe, because there *will* come a time when quality will trump loudness again. Maybe we'll even get lucky soon, and Replay Gain will go mainstream. Here's hoping...
They did test it, but they couldn't test every single hardware/software permutation that exists which is not realistic.
They're not even tying! They're so used to being in command over all of the hardware and software, that the PC situation is simply overwhelming them.
This is hardly the first time that Apple has released buggy software, or broken patches. For example, I'm still waiting for a fixed version of their Bootcamp update. It will download (over 100MB, I forgot how much exactly, I'm running Linux at the moment), but it won't install. Want to know what the problem is? I'm using a German keyboard layout!
For fuck's sake! They couldn't even be bothered to check if their update installed on computers with a different locale. And what is their response to this problem (which is hitting many thousands of users, btw)? Uninstall Bootcamp. Reboot. Set Windows to use the English keyboard mapping. Reboot. Re-install Bootcamp. Reboot. Install the Bootcamp upgrade. Reboot. Then set your keyboard back to your preferred setting. AND REBOOT. Are they fucking serious? How about just fixing their broken upgrade?
But no, this is the Mac. Where things "just work". Right. Microsoft-bashing is fun and all, but I've never seen anything as bad as this with a MS patch. Or with Linux, for that matter.
I'm seriously disappointed with Apple. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if the current mess with iTunes was their fault.
In epic quest stories, the quest is about what the journey makes the person on it. In a game it's about phat loot.
I know it's not the best MMORPG out there, and it's more targeted towards younger players, but I rather liked the quests in Runescape. They are more like little adventures, complete with puzzles and (more or less) humorous conversations with NPCs, and some of them advance the story line. All of the 100+ quests (except for the very early, intro-type quests) have a story that requires problem solving skills; some involve fighting, some don't. There is even a murder mystery quest, where you have to solve a classical whodunnit just by talking to various NPCs.
The rewards are different for each one: experience, gold, quest items, abilities, access to new areas, pieces of clothing, access to new ways of transport, new shops, new pets, new emotes, etc.
Too bad that Jagex ruined much of the game when they took out PvP and free trading in their grand war against gold farmers. I haven't been playing for a long time now, but when I see the simplistic go-there, collect-x-items, kill-y-creatures type of quests in other MMOs, I think RS actually got part of the game right.
Riiight... Kinda like car that starts on a empty tank but after a couple of hours of driving around the tank gets filled up.
A solar powered vehicle can do exactly that. Why shouldn't a ship that uses the wind as an energy source be able to do the same? Sunlight and wind are both available for free in the ocean, and the ships wouldn't be cruisers; they only need to hold their position once they're in place.
A different (and IMO interesting) question is what sucking and spraying seawater would do to the marine ecosystem. Sounds like a fleet of meat grinders to me...
Apart from the fact "+" is a perfectly valid character in an email address, if you're using Gmail, you can insert random dots in your address, and your mail will still get delivered.
So, unless I misread TFA, we now know that Mr. Steve Jetley from Shrewsbury has a phone banking account with Lloyds, and is unable to change his password to anything else than "no it's not". Mr Jetley said he was still trying to find a suitable password which met the conditions.
The wiki suggests that he left anything of value to the Nazi party, but doesn't say what became of the assets of the party after the end of the war. Whoever got the party's assets probably (at least in theory) holds the copyright to the diary.
"At the time of his death, Hitler's official place of residence was in Munich, which led to his entire estate, including all rights to Mein Kampf, changing to the ownership of the state of Bavaria. As per German copyright law the entire text is scheduled to enter the public domain on December 31, 2015, 70 years after the author's death. The copyright has been relinquished for the English, Dutch and Swedish editions."
I for one am glad that the EFF isn't using my donations for this award, beautiful mathematics or not. When I donate my hard-earned money to the EFF, I expect them to use it for something worthwhile. From TFA:
Prize money comes from a special donation provided by an individual EFF supporter, earmarked specifically for this project. Prize money does NOT come from EFF membership dues, corporate or foundation grants, or other general EFF funds.
Careful with the lime please! If you put a lot of lime into the ocean, in places where coconuts might fall into the water, you'll end up poisoning the whole area. This is a dangerous game.
To wit:
Brother bought a coconut, he bought it for a dime His sister had another one, she paid it for the lime
She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up Put the lime in the coconut, she called the doctor, woke him up, and said
Doctor, ain't there nothin' I can take, I said Doctor, to relieve this bellyache, I said Doctor, ain't there nothin' I can take, I said Doctor, to relieve this bellyache
Now let me get this straight Put the lime in the coconut, you drank 'em both up Put the lime in the coconut, you drank 'em both up Put the lime in the coconut, you drank 'em both up Put the lime in the coconut...
REAL science, is never about "right" or "wrong". It's about "can I use what you just told me in a predictable manner?". If it's BS and it doesn't work, then leave me alone I have stuff to do.
What you're describing sounds more like engineering than science, you know. As an engineer, I don't care too much about why nature acts the way it does - as long as I can find a usable method to get things working the way I need them to work. I take the pragmatic approach, because I have a real-life goal.
Science, on the other hand, is not per se concerned about "using what you just told me", it's about discovering the whys and hows. Mathematics is "REAL science", as you put it, and they are most definitely concerned about "right" and "wrong". Engineers use the model that works best for them, while scientists are coming up with the new models (or trying to consolidate them into grand unifying theories, as usual).
Someone above says the a CA adds nothing. I don't agree with that. They add identity verification *to the extent* that site visitors actually *read* the certificates What's worse, they would have to do that *every single time* they visit an SSL protected site. The vast majority of users will not be bothered to do that, and I include myself here.
There are tools to make checking certificates easier. I'm currently using a Firefox add-on called "Petname", which lets you assign "pet names" for certificates that you've seen and checked once. When the same certificate is encountered again later, the name you assigned is displayed next to the URL (with green highlighting). The UI is very very simple and easy to use, and the cert key is stored with your bookmarks, so it will even sync with Foxmarks. It's not the solution for everything, but it gives you the ability to spot a changed certificate at a glance.
Of course, this implies that you trust your browser, and the Petname tool. Well, it's either that, or no netbanking for you. Security isn't. You have to decide who to trust (open source browsers and extensions help a hell of a lot), and put in a "best effort" to be secure.
and evaluate their level of trust in the CA. This is harder, and I don't have a ready solution for it, other than the "many eyes" method of open source software like browsers and distributions.
Slashdot Mirror
any plans on training these resurrected giant tortoises in the art of Ninjitsu.
Dude, those giant turtles are scary enough without Ninjitsu.
In fact, one of them is so huge and powerful that four elephants couldn't manage to keep it down, unless they in turn were weighed down by a huge disk-shaped rock.
CJ
1. Don't make your security question anything that can be found online or don't discuss anything about it online (hers was where she and her husband met).
Unfortunately, Yahoo doesn't give you a lot of choice there. These are the possible recovery questions:
Most of these answers are pretty easy to find out if you know the target, even if she's not currently running for vice president and having her past picked apart and published every day. For Palin, most of these answers are likely to appear in interviews, or are even on the public record (her school, her father's name).
What's so hard about letting users enter their own questions? I wouldn't feel safe with any of the questions in their list, but I could easily make one up that only I could answer. Sure, you could lie, but will you remember that lie in 5 years when you need to recover your password?
CJ
We always should have had a volume knob, and a compression knob.
You mean, something like this? :)
Ah, here I am, replying to myself. I'm sorry, but just in case there's somebody out there who isn't conviced yet, here are a few prime examples:
one of the most cited examples
The Smiths - How Soon Is Now
The Wikipedia has a great article about it, too, as usual.
I agree. In an ideal world, you own the volume knob, and you decide what's loud enough. But there are many situations when you can't / don't want to adjust the volume for every single track. Party playlists, jogging, and radio are a few examples. Or even when I listen to a my MP3 collection in random order. This wasn't an issue with vinyl, because 1) there was a natural compression/limit when you transferred the sound to the plastic medium, and 2) vinyl was a lot more forgiving about sounds that were "too loud", like the single snare drum beat I mentioned. Digital can't forgive, and can't expand just a little further than normal. If a sound is louder than 0db, it will cause hard distortion (clipping).
With CDs and other digital media, like MP3s, that's where Replay Gain could really shine.
Unfortunately, as long as producers think that louder equals more sales, we're SOL.
This is such a sad topic. On the one hand, I think that there's nothing wrong at all with raising the average volume of an album when you're remastering. The early CD releases were often lacking in volume, because the mastering engineers were doing the exact opposite of what they're forced do these days. Back then, a single very loud snare hit would automatically lower the maximum volume of the whole album, because the engineers didn't want to introduce artificial compression. That's the reason why old CDs sound a little muted. Thank god, that changed, and they soon started to use moderate compression by default when mastering to CD.
But what we have today is just bizarre. Nobody can tell me with a straight face that the newest Red Hot Chili Peppers CDs sound good (ignoring the music here). There's more clipping than music on those discs. I really *really* hope they're keeping all those original recordings safe, because there *will* come a time when quality will trump loudness again. Maybe we'll even get lucky soon, and Replay Gain will go mainstream. Here's hoping...
in other words, Republicans are cowards.
No, they only act on other people's fears.
But let's not put this into a political debate and get back on topic. Wait a minute...
They did test it, but they couldn't test every single hardware/software permutation that exists which is not realistic.
They're not even tying! They're so used to being in command over all of the hardware and software, that the PC situation is simply overwhelming them.
This is hardly the first time that Apple has released buggy software, or broken patches. For example, I'm still waiting for a fixed version of their Bootcamp update. It will download (over 100MB, I forgot how much exactly, I'm running Linux at the moment), but it won't install. Want to know what the problem is? I'm using a German keyboard layout!
For fuck's sake! They couldn't even be bothered to check if their update installed on computers with a different locale. And what is their response to this problem (which is hitting many thousands of users, btw)? Uninstall Bootcamp. Reboot. Set Windows to use the English keyboard mapping. Reboot. Re-install Bootcamp. Reboot. Install the Bootcamp upgrade. Reboot. Then set your keyboard back to your preferred setting. AND REBOOT. Are they fucking serious? How about just fixing their broken upgrade?
But no, this is the Mac. Where things "just work".
Right. Microsoft-bashing is fun and all, but I've never seen anything as bad as this with a MS patch. Or with Linux, for that matter.
I'm seriously disappointed with Apple.
And I wouldn't be at all surprised if the current mess with iTunes was their fault.
CJ
In epic quest stories, the quest is about what the journey makes the person on it.
In a game it's about phat loot.
I know it's not the best MMORPG out there, and it's more targeted towards younger players, but I rather liked the quests in Runescape. They are more like little adventures, complete with puzzles and (more or less) humorous conversations with NPCs, and some of them advance the story line. All of the 100+ quests (except for the very early, intro-type quests) have a story that requires problem solving skills; some involve fighting, some don't. There is even a murder mystery quest, where you have to solve a classical whodunnit just by talking to various NPCs.
The rewards are different for each one: experience, gold, quest items, abilities, access to new areas, pieces of clothing, access to new ways of transport, new shops, new pets, new emotes, etc.
Too bad that Jagex ruined much of the game when they took out PvP and free trading in their grand war against gold farmers. I haven't been playing for a long time now, but when I see the simplistic go-there, collect-x-items, kill-y-creatures type of quests in other MMOs, I think RS actually got part of the game right.
CJ
Average time before battery goes flat watching DVD: length of film - 10 minutes
Oh, that would be a blessing for Steven Spielberg movies... I want!
CJ
Riiight...
Kinda like car that starts on a empty tank but after a couple of hours of driving around the tank gets filled up.
A solar powered vehicle can do exactly that. Why shouldn't a ship that uses the wind as an energy source be able to do the same?
Sunlight and wind are both available for free in the ocean, and the ships wouldn't be cruisers; they only need to hold their position once they're in place.
A different (and IMO interesting) question is what sucking and spraying seawater would do to the marine ecosystem. Sounds like a fleet of meat grinders to me...
CJ
This is a lot of fun, thank you!
BTW, I sure hope you're not logging all those embarrassing newbie mistakes :-)
It's an integral part of the geek culture to be 6-10 hours out of sync with your timezone.
The relevant XKCD panel is #448.
Or this one: 28-Hour Day
Assume you are going to have to pony up $10,000 (USD) to solve this problem.
Oh come on. A fishbowl and a portable AC would cost $505.50.
For the "priceless" picture, click here.
Apart from the fact "+" is a perfectly valid character in an email address, if you're using Gmail, you can insert random dots in your address, and your mail will still get delivered.
my.name@gmail.com
is equivalent to
my.na.me@gmail.com
my....name@gmail.com
m.y.n.a.m.e@gmail.com
etc
RTFA, its a phone banking password
So, unless I misread TFA, we now know that Mr. Steve Jetley from Shrewsbury has a phone banking account with Lloyds, and is unable to change his password to anything else than "no it's not". Mr Jetley said he was still trying to find a suitable password which met the conditions.
Excuse me, I have to make a phone call...
The wiki suggests that he left anything of value to the Nazi party, but doesn't say what became of the assets of the party after the end of the war. Whoever got the party's assets probably (at least in theory) holds the copyright to the diary.
"At the time of his death, Hitler's official place of residence was in Munich, which led to his entire estate, including all rights to Mein Kampf, changing to the ownership of the state of Bavaria. As per German copyright law the entire text is scheduled to enter the public domain on December 31, 2015, 70 years after the author's death. The copyright has been relinquished for the English, Dutch and Swedish editions."
quoted from this page.
I for one am glad that the EFF isn't using my donations for this award, beautiful mathematics or not. When I donate my hard-earned money to the EFF, I expect them to use it for something worthwhile. From TFA:
Prize money comes from a special donation provided by an individual EFF supporter, earmarked specifically for this project. Prize money does NOT come from EFF membership dues, corporate or foundation grants, or other general EFF funds.
Yeah, if you want to look scary, don't settle for anything less than a Hans Reiser tattoo.
£30 a year for immunity to prosecution. [...] that does does seem about the right price to me, perhaps even a little low - around $1.25 a month.
Assuming the £30 figure is the correct one, it's actually $4.99 a month.
(30 / 2 = 2.5, and 1 GBP = 1.995 USD)
Careful with the lime please!
If you put a lot of lime into the ocean, in places where coconuts might fall into the water, you'll end up poisoning the whole area.
This is a dangerous game.
To wit:
Brother bought a coconut, he bought it for a dime
His sister had another one, she paid it for the lime
She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up
She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up
She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up
Put the lime in the coconut, she called the doctor, woke him up, and said
Doctor, ain't there nothin' I can take, I said
Doctor, to relieve this bellyache, I said
Doctor, ain't there nothin' I can take, I said
Doctor, to relieve this bellyache
Now let me get this straight
Put the lime in the coconut, you drank 'em both up
Put the lime in the coconut, you drank 'em both up
Put the lime in the coconut, you drank 'em both up
Put the lime in the coconut...
(repeat until you're out of CO2)
Has anyone ever noticed how Penn & Tell look like Rebo & Zooty?
:)
Uncanny.
Mod up, please. Some joker gave the AC "-1, Overrated", but he's right on topic (and didn't have any points before the unjustified "overrated" mod).
Slashdot really shouldn't allow "overrated" mods on posts without a single moderation record.
REAL science, is never about "right" or "wrong". It's about "can I use what you just told me in a predictable manner?". If it's BS and it doesn't work, then leave me alone I have stuff to do.
What you're describing sounds more like engineering than science, you know. As an engineer, I don't care too much about why nature acts the way it does - as long as I can find a usable method to get things working the way I need them to work. I take the pragmatic approach, because I have a real-life goal.
Science, on the other hand, is not per se concerned about "using what you just told me", it's about discovering the whys and hows. Mathematics is "REAL science", as you put it, and they are most definitely concerned about "right" and "wrong". Engineers use the model that works best for them, while scientists are coming up with the new models (or trying to consolidate them into grand unifying theories, as usual).
CJ
PS: yeah, I noticed the smiley.
There are tools to make checking certificates easier. I'm currently using a Firefox add-on called "Petname", which lets you assign "pet names" for certificates that you've seen and checked once. When the same certificate is encountered again later, the name you assigned is displayed next to the URL (with green highlighting). The UI is very very simple and easy to use, and the cert key is stored with your bookmarks, so it will even sync with Foxmarks. It's not the solution for everything, but it gives you the ability to spot a changed certificate at a glance.
and evaluate their level of trust in the CA. This is harder, and I don't have a ready solution for it, other than the "many eyes" method of open source software like browsers and distributions.Of course, this implies that you trust your browser, and the Petname tool. Well, it's either that, or no netbanking for you. Security isn't. You have to decide who to trust (open source browsers and extensions help a hell of a lot), and put in a "best effort" to be secure.