I don't mean to nitpick, but I was wondering which game-changing ideas you were referring to:
Remember, about 125 year ago, someone came up with ideas that where complete outside out understanding of the universe as we know it. If everyone just dismissed bohr, then where would we be?
Assuming you mean Niels Bohr, shouldn't that be about 100 years ago? Bohr's paper about subatomic structure was written in 1913.
Yeah well, apparently a Clarke/Kubrick reference on Slashdot is "overrated" at +1. I'm not complaining, just wondering what has happened to the sense of humor on this site.
True. Of course, I also remember Palestinians cheering in the streets after the attack. Almost everyone in the world could be better behaved and more humane.
Not a nice image, to be sure. But being nice and "well behaved" is comparatively low on the order of priorities in an oppressed country. The situation in Palestine is (and has been for well over 20 years) almost unbearable. Many of the Palestinians live in abject poverty - their land and their property have been confiscated, they live under constant pressure from the Israeli occupators. And they know (as we all do) that Israel could never keep it up without the flow of money and ammunition from the US. If I had to live like that, I might well be cheering, too, when big Goliath gets hit by a stone.
Morale of the story: if you want people to sympathize with you, don't fund oppressive regimes. Which most definitely includes Israel.
Yes, it is. As a European, and I have to admit that when I read the world news, it's sometimes hard not to think of the US as nation of cowboys, jingoists, and idiots. Then I open Slashdot, and I'm once again reminded that it's indeed "more complicated than that". This site, along with other IT-oriented websites, has often helped me to understand how diverse your country really is. I'm never going to say "typical American" again.
(which is one more reason why dropping bombs on the US just doesn't make sense)
Great advice, man. An acquaintance of mine did that: she ran an exit node, and after only a few months she had all the electronic equipment in her appartment confiscated. Including the laptop of an unrelated person who was only visiting for a few days. It took several weeks to get the boxes back, and that was only because she agreed to give up the encryption password. Another friend of mine was hired to administer two Tor exit nodes for a non-profit organization. He averaged about two complaints a week from foreign investigators and police; eventually the servers had to be shut down.
Lesson learned: if you want to stay out of trouble (see TFS), do NOT run Tor exit nodes. If you're an activist with time to spare, or a large organization, things may look different.
I wish this would have been made more clear. This story is reported all over the world as "Mozilla doesn't care about companies" (paraphrased). I had a two-hour meeting today with the CTO at one of my customers, to discuss alternatives to Firefox after this bombshell hit. NB, we're _not_ a Microsoft shop, we run Linux on about 80% of the workstations (yes, really) and 100% of the servers. This is a company with about 60 employees. The result was, let's wait and see for a couple of months, but if this goes on, consider switching to Opera.
I love Firefox to bits. For me, personally, it's like a huge toolbox with endless possibilities. I was one of the first to install the early pre-release, and I stuck with it since then. But if they insist on this bizarre release schedule, I can't with a clear conscience recommend it for my customers any longer.
There is a very good reason why we don't increment major product version numbers for fun - this number is an indicator for addon and plugin developers that the necessary APIs haven't changed too much. Security fixes? Fine, increment the patch number 1.2.NNN. New features that won't conflict with existing software? Increment the minor number 1.NNN.2. API-breaking changes? Increment the major version number NNN.1.2. What they're doing now is leading to widespread confusion and unnecessary incompatibility warnings.
You work at Mozilla. I implore you, please use your position to tell the powers that be that the loyal FF users are getting very nervous, and rightly so. If this was really only the opinion of one man, the Mozilla Foundation should issue a press release to that effect. Because, as of now, what everybody heard was "Mozilla doesn't care about companies" and a matching "Microsoft does" from a MS spokesman.
CJ
PS, in case you don't believe how this has been reported, this is the article which caused today's emergency meeting. It's in German, but you'll get the drift. The translated headline is "Mozilla: IE9 better suited for companies than Firefox". This is from one of the most respected newspapers in our region.
I wish I had a kid of my own... I would love to send him or her to this conference. When I was a kid, it was perfectly normal and accepted to go to judo or karate classes. What our parents expected was that we would learn how to _defend_ ourselves from attacks, if that ever became necessary. Quite unlikely in the place I grew up, but at the very least we'd learn how to take falls properly, and we'd get regular exercise. This DEFCON Kids conference is just like that. At the very least, the kids get to hear about what can happen on the net, and they learn how to deal with it in a safe environment (yes, safe - because, let's face it, this conference is going to be monitored from here to kingdom come). Instructors at kids' martial arts classes make it very clear that what you learn there is to be used for sports and self defense only. Kids naturally look up to the instructors, maybe even more so than to their parents, and they learn an important moral lesson at an early age. I think this conference is a great idea. Regular classes with mock intrusions would be even better. I live in a non-english speaking part of Europe, so I can't send my own offspring to DEFCON Kids (and I'd still have to get kids somehow, got to read up on that), but I'm tempted to set up something similar over here.
Additionally, it looks like they screwed up some of the previous doxes and had to retract them. Not saying that it means that it's fake or fraudulent, but it does tend to lend some lack of credibility to the site. Although, it looks like an honest mistake rather than a malicious smearing of somebody that's uninvolved.
I'm shocked. Is there no honor among thieves anymore?
I guess the situation might be different in Europe, where the universities' IT departments were often the driving force in bringing the Internet to the countries they're based in. I remember that when I first started using email (sometime around '95?), all the instructions were very Unix-centric. Every student had a shell account on their BSD server, and I used telnet+pine for email before I realized that they supported POP as well. Our university founded the local LUG, and to this day most of the infrastructure runs on Linux and BSD. These guys really know their stuff; they would never laugh at another Linux user who needs support. Or a Windows user, for that matter.
No. Not everybody does this. That's what Adblock Plus and NoScript are for (or the equivalent plugins/addons for other browsers). I run a webserver on localhost, and I can do without all the unnecessary 404 entries caused by those ubiquitous google-analytics.com requests. Misusing the hosts file for ad blocking is one of the worst ways of dealing with this annoyance. Google lives by its ad network revenue, that's no secret. But it seems to me that they almost go out of their way to keep ad blocking possible, even on sites like YouTube. They let people like you (and me) block them. Take advantage of this, and use the proper way to block ads, instead of filling your hosts file with meaningless entries like a21.tracker.com, a22.tracker.com, etc.
Re:Voice recognition has been around since years!
on
Talking To Computers?
·
· Score: 1
Linux and even Windows have had voice recognition for a long time, too. Only last week, I enabled it for my dear aunt let's set so double the killer delete select all.
Clearly, we need hash functions which take long amounts of time to compute.
You're being facetious, but this is basically what the apr1 algorithm used in the Apache webserver does. It's a modified variant of MD5, where the hashing step is repeated 1000 times in order to slow down the creation of dictionary hashes:
/*
* And now, just to make sure things don't run too fast..
* On a 60 Mhz Pentium this takes 34 msec, so you would
* need 30 seconds to build a 1000 entry dictionary...
*/ for (i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
apr_md5_init(&ctx1);....
I don't know whose bright idea that was... the comment about the speed of this routine on a 60 MHz CPU speaks for itself. But regardless of how effective such "improvements" are, we're now stuck with this algorithm if we want to support the password hashes used in conjunction with.htaccess files, for example.
Slashdot Mirror
Euh? What is this that this is that that?
(I've got four-twenty-ten-nine problems but my French ain't one)
I don't mean to nitpick, but I was wondering which game-changing ideas you were referring to:
Remember, about 125 year ago, someone came up with ideas that where complete outside out understanding of the universe as we know it. If everyone just dismissed bohr, then where would we be?
Assuming you mean Niels Bohr, shouldn't that be about 100 years ago? Bohr's paper about subatomic structure was written in 1913.
Yeah well, apparently a Clarke/Kubrick reference on Slashdot is "overrated" at +1.
I'm not complaining, just wondering what has happened to the sense of humor on this site.
CJ
All these worlds are yours, except Europa.
Attempt no landing there
Use them together
Use them in peace
True. Of course, I also remember Palestinians cheering in the streets after the attack. Almost everyone in the world could be better behaved and more humane.
Not a nice image, to be sure. But being nice and "well behaved" is comparatively low on the order of priorities in an oppressed country. The situation in Palestine is (and has been for well over 20 years) almost unbearable. Many of the Palestinians live in abject poverty - their land and their property have been confiscated, they live under constant pressure from the Israeli occupators. And they know (as we all do) that Israel could never keep it up without the flow of money and ammunition from the US. If I had to live like that, I might well be cheering, too, when big Goliath gets hit by a stone.
Morale of the story: if you want people to sympathize with you, don't fund oppressive regimes. Which most definitely includes Israel.
CJ
It's a little more complicated than that. [snip]
Yes, it is. As a European, and I have to admit that when I read the world news, it's sometimes hard not to think of the US as nation of cowboys, jingoists, and idiots. Then I open Slashdot, and I'm once again reminded that it's indeed "more complicated than that". This site, along with other IT-oriented websites, has often helped me to understand how diverse your country really is. I'm never going to say "typical American" again.
(which is one more reason why dropping bombs on the US just doesn't make sense)
CJ
1000F = 538C = 811 Kelvin.
Autoignition temperature of CO (according to Wikipedia) is 609C (882 Kelvin).
(just in case someone else was curious, like me, and isn't used to the Fahrenheit scale)
Run a Tor exit node [...]
Great advice, man. An acquaintance of mine did that: she ran an exit node, and after only a few months she had all the electronic equipment in her appartment confiscated. Including the laptop of an unrelated person who was only visiting for a few days. It took several weeks to get the boxes back, and that was only because she agreed to give up the encryption password. Another friend of mine was hired to administer two Tor exit nodes for a non-profit organization. He averaged about two complaints a week from foreign investigators and police; eventually the servers had to be shut down.
Lesson learned: if you want to stay out of trouble (see TFS), do NOT run Tor exit nodes. If you're an activist with time to spare, or a large organization, things may look different.
CJ
Well said.
Fukushima Daiichi could be found on the third last position in a world wide safety ranking of nuclear power plants in 2010.
Do you by any chance have a source available for that?
CJ
The Fins have been doing that since 2006. The don't even need a fancy grenade launcher.
I wish this would have been made more clear. This story is reported all over the world as "Mozilla doesn't care about companies" (paraphrased). I had a two-hour meeting today with the CTO at one of my customers, to discuss alternatives to Firefox after this bombshell hit. NB, we're _not_ a Microsoft shop, we run Linux on about 80% of the workstations (yes, really) and 100% of the servers. This is a company with about 60 employees. The result was, let's wait and see for a couple of months, but if this goes on, consider switching to Opera.
I love Firefox to bits. For me, personally, it's like a huge toolbox with endless possibilities. I was one of the first to install the early pre-release, and I stuck with it since then. But if they insist on this bizarre release schedule, I can't with a clear conscience recommend it for my customers any longer.
There is a very good reason why we don't increment major product version numbers for fun - this number is an indicator for addon and plugin developers that the necessary APIs haven't changed too much. Security fixes? Fine, increment the patch number 1.2.NNN. New features that won't conflict with existing software? Increment the minor number 1.NNN.2. API-breaking changes? Increment the major version number NNN.1.2. What they're doing now is leading to widespread confusion and unnecessary incompatibility warnings.
You work at Mozilla. I implore you, please use your position to tell the powers that be that the loyal FF users are getting very nervous, and rightly so. If this was really only the opinion of one man, the Mozilla Foundation should issue a press release to that effect. Because, as of now, what everybody heard was "Mozilla doesn't care about companies" and a matching "Microsoft does" from a MS spokesman.
CJ
PS, in case you don't believe how this has been reported, this is the article which caused today's emergency meeting. It's in German, but you'll get the drift. The translated headline is "Mozilla: IE9 better suited for companies than Firefox". This is from one of the most respected newspapers in our region.
I wish I had a kid of my own... I would love to send him or her to this conference. When I was a kid, it was perfectly normal and accepted to go to judo or karate classes. What our parents expected was that we would learn how to _defend_ ourselves from attacks, if that ever became necessary. Quite unlikely in the place I grew up, but at the very least we'd learn how to take falls properly, and we'd get regular exercise. This DEFCON Kids conference is just like that. At the very least, the kids get to hear about what can happen on the net, and they learn how to deal with it in a safe environment (yes, safe - because, let's face it, this conference is going to be monitored from here to kingdom come).
Instructors at kids' martial arts classes make it very clear that what you learn there is to be used for sports and self defense only. Kids naturally look up to the instructors, maybe even more so than to their parents, and they learn an important moral lesson at an early age. I think this conference is a great idea. Regular classes with mock intrusions would be even better. I live in a non-english speaking part of Europe, so I can't send my own offspring to DEFCON Kids (and I'd still have to get kids somehow, got to read up on that), but I'm tempted to set up something similar over here.
CJ
Most sites needed confirmation on e-mail, so you just can't make something up.
There's always Mailinator for quick disposable e-mail addresses.
Additionally, it looks like they screwed up some of the previous doxes and had to retract them. Not saying that it means that it's fake or fraudulent, but it does tend to lend some lack of credibility to the site. Although, it looks like an honest mistake rather than a malicious smearing of somebody that's uninvolved.
I'm shocked. Is there no honor among thieves anymore?
I guess the situation might be different in Europe, where the universities' IT departments were often the driving force in bringing the Internet to the countries they're based in. I remember that when I first started using email (sometime around '95?), all the instructions were very Unix-centric. Every student had a shell account on their BSD server, and I used telnet+pine for email before I realized that they supported POP as well. Our university founded the local LUG, and to this day most of the infrastructure runs on Linux and BSD. These guys really know their stuff; they would never laugh at another Linux user who needs support. Or a Windows user, for that matter.
Doesn't everyone do this?
No. Not everybody does this. That's what Adblock Plus and NoScript are for (or the equivalent plugins/addons for other browsers). I run a webserver on localhost, and I can do without all the unnecessary 404 entries caused by those ubiquitous google-analytics.com requests. Misusing the hosts file for ad blocking is one of the worst ways of dealing with this annoyance.
Google lives by its ad network revenue, that's no secret. But it seems to me that they almost go out of their way to keep ad blocking possible, even on sites like YouTube. They let people like you (and me) block them. Take advantage of this, and use the proper way to block ads, instead of filling your hosts file with meaningless entries like a21.tracker.com, a22.tracker.com, etc.
You professor? Me doctor!
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals (except the weasel).
Bingo!
Linux and even Windows have had voice recognition for a long time, too.
Only last week, I enabled it for my dear aunt let's set so double the killer delete select all.
Let's get this out of the way. Real programmers use butterflies.
CJ
As much as I hate the caps lock key (reassigned mine to be an extra Esc) [...]
Heh, I've one exactly the same thing. Vim user?
Even so, I'd say there are still billions and billions of them.
"We have always been space travelers." - Carl Sagan
He exploited the "is fast to calculate" weakness.
Clearly, we need hash functions which take long amounts of time to compute.
You're being facetious, but this is basically what the apr1 algorithm used in the Apache webserver does. It's a modified variant of MD5, where the hashing step is repeated 1000 times in order to slow down the creation of dictionary hashes:
* And now, just to make sure things don't run too fast..
* On a 60 Mhz Pentium this takes 34 msec, so you would
* need 30 seconds to build a 1000 entry dictionary...
*/
for (i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
apr_md5_init(&ctx1);
from apr_md5.c, line 608
I don't know whose bright idea that was... the comment about the speed of this routine on a 60 MHz CPU speaks for itself. But regardless of how effective such "improvements" are, we're now stuck with this algorithm if we want to support the password hashes used in conjunction with .htaccess files, for example.
CJ
I can't wait until a big fatso waddles up to one of these machines in America so I can see what the machine recommends.
Although I hesitate to mention slips in an article about Japanese vending machines, this looks like a nice Freudian one...