Bingo. Given that the next "big one" could've been the next day, the next year, or never, what exactly would've been different? You can't very well evacuate a town indefinitely on the basis of "there might be an increased risk of earthquakes, we're not sure". The town is in an earthquake zone, and has been leveled by quakes in the past. You'd think that people would've already taken the proper precautions.
Please provide the quote where they explicitly stated that there would *not* be a quake.
The closest it gets is:
In one now-infamous interview included in the prosecutors' case, commission member Bernardo De Bernardis of the national civil protection department responded to a question about whether residents should just sit back and relax with a glass of wine.
"Absolutely, absolutely a Montepulciano doc," he responded, referring to a high-end red. "This seems important."
The odds of an earthquake, and the timing thereof, can't be predicted with any degree of accuracy. I interpret this as the guy telling people "Just go on with your lives as usual". What else are you supposed to do, when you don't know whether it will happen tomorrow, in 6 months, or in 5 years? If you were going to take precautions against earthquakes (e.g. making sure your home was structurally sound), you should've already done so, since you live in a f**king earthquake zone! (The place was apparently leveled by earthquakes *twice* in the 1700s, and had a pretty strong one in the 1950s as well.)
People really need to take a little more personal responsibility, and not react to anything bad with "Who can we sue?"
Terrible analogy. The situation was more like telling someone "If you run this red light today, you're in no more danger than you would've been if you'd run it yesterday".
Bad analogy. Camping personally profited, from people donating money to his cause. As much as I dislike the litigious nature of our society here in the US, I figure he's a valid target.
For a while Newegg was selling the Rosewill RK-9000 (clicky Cherry MX blue switches and n-key rollover) for under $100. I bought two (one for home and one for work). The touch of the Cherry MX blue switches is lighter than the IBM-style buckling spring mechanism, but they still provide good tactile feedback. The RK-9000 has been out of stock for a few months now, but if they ever get them back in they're definitely worth a look for anyone who wants a decent mechanical 'board.
Posting nonsense like this diminishes the credibility of/., especially when it comes to MS-related topics. If this site is to be taken seriously when it posts valid criticisms of MS -- and I agree that there are many! -- BS stories like this need to stop.
I *did* RTFA before posting. Nowhere does it state what the source of the legislation is; it just says that TW has contributed a lot of money to local candidates. Highly suspicious? You bet. But it doesn't *prove* anything.
What is the lifetime value to MS of a person who is biased (even if only subtly) towards their products? Even if they've had to "pony up" some hardware, it is probably still a net win. A few of those students will even go on to become people who have influence over large purchasing decisions in the corporate world -- that's *huge*. If college graduates are more likely to land in those sort of positions, then they've just gained a lot of leverage over the long term.
Note: I'm not *endorsing* the practice, I'm just pointing out that it isn't necessarily a desperation move. It may in fact be quite smart, from a long-term perspective.
Not desperation IMO... it is a plan that has worked for them in the past. Look at the pricing of the MS Office suite -- the Student/Educational version has historically been much cheaper than the normal one. Guess what... MS Office dominates the market, because everyone uses it in school. They're just extending their existing strategy.
Actually, if you are talking *local* government, they would probably be *more* answerable to their customers than the huge telecom conglomerates.
I certainly wouldn't want to get my Internet service from my state gov't or -- God forbid -- the Feds, but if you're talking about a technically savvy municipality, why *shouldn't* they be allowed to do this? Especially if they are under-served by the existing providers? IMO by prohibiting this sort of thing, you are potentially trampling on the rights of individual municipalities to provide their citizens with the services they want.
The rounding error from the "normal" leap year correction is much more than that. You neglected to note that we also skip the leap day on years divisible by 100, as long as they are not also a multiple of 400. It takes a *lot* more than a one-day-every-four-years correction to achieve 20 bits of precision (which is what 1 day out of 3,000 years is roughly equivalent to)!
You'll get the same sort of thing if you run a SSH server. I typically see multiple attacks/day.
Just make sure you use strong passwords (no dictionary words, include special characters, yadda yadda). If practical consider using a non-standard port number, and (for SSH) consider disabling password-based authentication entirely (use key based authentication only).
Per their own "How Bitcoin Works" web page, it takes a typical PC "years" to produce 50 Bitcoin. Something doesn't add up here; unless their FAQ is flat-out wrong, the effective cost of producing these things is at least an order of magnitude greater than what people seem to be claiming on various web forums.
The key difference is that -- unless you're a third-world country -- there are enough other people willing to trade actual goods and services for your currency for it to have practical value. If your only method for turning it into negotiable currency is to engage in a transaction which results in a net loss versus what you paid to create it, there's no point.
The value of money comes from the expectation of others accepting it. Why do you accept dollars, anyway?
The probability that anyone I wish to to business with will accept Bitcoin as payment is within epsilon of zero. For dollars, it is within epsilon of 1.0. So your point is...?
So Bitcoin is basically a mechanism for converting electricity into an asset which is worth less than the cost of the electricity used to produce it, and which can only be used in trade with other people who are stupid enough to have not thought this through? I think I'll pass.
As long as the digital bits are getting to the other end of the cable unmolested, there should be no perceivable difference. And any cable that meets spec, when used with equipment that also meets spec, should get the bits there intact. That $3 cable from Monoprice will get the job done just as well as the $100 (or more!) high-end cable.
By most accounts, Geek Squad used to be a class outfit until Best Buy took 'em over; after that, they went downhill fast.
They quoted my father $200 to do a malware cleanup. Unbelievable! (Not sure why he even went there, I've warned him about them before. And yes, he declined the $200 Geek Squad cleanup -- at least he got that right!)
I was a Mozilla/Firefox (and Netscape before that) user for many, many years... going all the way back to Netscape 3.01. I finally jumped to Chrome about a year ago, when the sluggishness of Firefox on Linux really started to piss me off. I've found that I really like Chrome's streamlined, minimalist approach; and IMO the recent addition of native PDF rendering capability is another feather in Chrome's cap. Even if Firefox manages to match Chrome's speed, that's not likely to get me to switch back...
I think it will apply to the older distros as well, in the sense that they are so infrequently used that they are unlikely to be targeted. Malware authors aren't going to bother with something that represents only a fraction of a percent of the installed base.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this mean we can reclaim their IPv4 address space? Forget their oil, we want their IP addresses!
Bingo. Given that the next "big one" could've been the next day, the next year, or never, what exactly would've been different? You can't very well evacuate a town indefinitely on the basis of "there might be an increased risk of earthquakes, we're not sure". The town is in an earthquake zone, and has been leveled by quakes in the past. You'd think that people would've already taken the proper precautions.
Please provide the quote where they explicitly stated that there would *not* be a quake.
The closest it gets is:
In one now-infamous interview included in the prosecutors' case, commission member Bernardo De Bernardis of the national civil protection department responded to a question about whether residents should just sit back and relax with a glass of wine. "Absolutely, absolutely a Montepulciano doc," he responded, referring to a high-end red. "This seems important."
The odds of an earthquake, and the timing thereof, can't be predicted with any degree of accuracy. I interpret this as the guy telling people "Just go on with your lives as usual". What else are you supposed to do, when you don't know whether it will happen tomorrow, in 6 months, or in 5 years? If you were going to take precautions against earthquakes (e.g. making sure your home was structurally sound), you should've already done so, since you live in a f**king earthquake zone! (The place was apparently leveled by earthquakes *twice* in the 1700s, and had a pretty strong one in the 1950s as well.)
People really need to take a little more personal responsibility, and not react to anything bad with "Who can we sue?"
Terrible analogy. The situation was more like telling someone "If you run this red light today, you're in no more danger than you would've been if you'd run it yesterday".
Bad analogy. Camping personally profited, from people donating money to his cause. As much as I dislike the litigious nature of our society here in the US, I figure he's a valid target.
For a while Newegg was selling the Rosewill RK-9000 (clicky Cherry MX blue switches and n-key rollover) for under $100. I bought two (one for home and one for work). The touch of the Cherry MX blue switches is lighter than the IBM-style buckling spring mechanism, but they still provide good tactile feedback. The RK-9000 has been out of stock for a few months now, but if they ever get them back in they're definitely worth a look for anyone who wants a decent mechanical 'board.
"Slashdot Crashes and Burns in Worldwide Brain Fart"? It would be about as accurate as the original headline.
...but the mindless MS bashing really gets old.
Posting nonsense like this diminishes the credibility of /., especially when it comes to MS-related topics. If this site is to be taken seriously when it posts valid criticisms of MS -- and I agree that there are many! -- BS stories like this need to stop.
I *did* RTFA before posting. Nowhere does it state what the source of the legislation is; it just says that TW has contributed a lot of money to local candidates. Highly suspicious? You bet. But it doesn't *prove* anything.
What is the lifetime value to MS of a person who is biased (even if only subtly) towards their products? Even if they've had to "pony up" some hardware, it is probably still a net win. A few of those students will even go on to become people who have influence over large purchasing decisions in the corporate world -- that's *huge*. If college graduates are more likely to land in those sort of positions, then they've just gained a lot of leverage over the long term.
Note: I'm not *endorsing* the practice, I'm just pointing out that it isn't necessarily a desperation move. It may in fact be quite smart, from a long-term perspective.
Not desperation IMO... it is a plan that has worked for them in the past. Look at the pricing of the MS Office suite -- the Student/Educational version has historically been much cheaper than the normal one. Guess what... MS Office dominates the market, because everyone uses it in school. They're just extending their existing strategy.
Actually, if you are talking *local* government, they would probably be *more* answerable to their customers than the huge telecom conglomerates.
I certainly wouldn't want to get my Internet service from my state gov't or -- God forbid -- the Feds, but if you're talking about a technically savvy municipality, why *shouldn't* they be allowed to do this? Especially if they are under-served by the existing providers? IMO by prohibiting this sort of thing, you are potentially trampling on the rights of individual municipalities to provide their citizens with the services they want.
We have reached a point where Internet service should be considered a utility, much like electricity, gas, water, sewer, etc.
Municipalities are allowed to provide these other services to their citizens; why not Internet service? Doesn't make sense to me.
They don't observe DST; do they get a 1 hour reprieve? Or does "local time" mean Standard Time across the board?
Probably having dinner and a couple of beers.
The rounding error from the "normal" leap year correction is much more than that. You neglected to note that we also skip the leap day on years divisible by 100, as long as they are not also a multiple of 400. It takes a *lot* more than a one-day-every-four-years correction to achieve 20 bits of precision (which is what 1 day out of 3,000 years is roughly equivalent to)!
You'll get the same sort of thing if you run a SSH server. I typically see multiple attacks/day.
Just make sure you use strong passwords (no dictionary words, include special characters, yadda yadda). If practical consider using a non-standard port number, and (for SSH) consider disabling password-based authentication entirely (use key based authentication only).
Per their own "How Bitcoin Works" web page, it takes a typical PC "years" to produce 50 Bitcoin. Something doesn't add up here; unless their FAQ is flat-out wrong, the effective cost of producing these things is at least an order of magnitude greater than what people seem to be claiming on various web forums.
The key difference is that -- unless you're a third-world country -- there are enough other people willing to trade actual goods and services for your currency for it to have practical value. If your only method for turning it into negotiable currency is to engage in a transaction which results in a net loss versus what you paid to create it, there's no point.
The value of money comes from the expectation of others accepting it. Why do you accept dollars, anyway?
The probability that anyone I wish to to business with will accept Bitcoin as payment is within epsilon of zero. For dollars, it is within epsilon of 1.0. So your point is...?
So Bitcoin is basically a mechanism for converting electricity into an asset which is worth less than the cost of the electricity used to produce it, and which can only be used in trade with other people who are stupid enough to have not thought this through? I think I'll pass.
As long as the digital bits are getting to the other end of the cable unmolested, there should be no perceivable difference. And any cable that meets spec, when used with equipment that also meets spec, should get the bits there intact. That $3 cable from Monoprice will get the job done just as well as the $100 (or more!) high-end cable.
By most accounts, Geek Squad used to be a class outfit until Best Buy took 'em over; after that, they went downhill fast.
They quoted my father $200 to do a malware cleanup. Unbelievable! (Not sure why he even went there, I've warned him about them before. And yes, he declined the $200 Geek Squad cleanup -- at least he got that right!)
I was a Mozilla/Firefox (and Netscape before that) user for many, many years... going all the way back to Netscape 3.01. I finally jumped to Chrome about a year ago, when the sluggishness of Firefox on Linux really started to piss me off. I've found that I really like Chrome's streamlined, minimalist approach; and IMO the recent addition of native PDF rendering capability is another feather in Chrome's cap. Even if Firefox manages to match Chrome's speed, that's not likely to get me to switch back...
I think it will apply to the older distros as well, in the sense that they are so infrequently used that they are unlikely to be targeted. Malware authors aren't going to bother with something that represents only a fraction of a percent of the installed base.