The best thing they could do to speed up both the boarding process and the disembarking process would be to remove the overhead bins. Probably not the most popular move with the paying passengers, but it would keep the aisle moving.
Hmm. This might even speed up security by 15% in a way that the TSA would accept. Where's my $500,000?
Be prepared for a long line when you want a smoke detector permit.
Wouldn't it just be easier to outlaw false alarms? At least the reason for the law would be obvious.
This would allow someone to prove how they voted to a third party. This is undesirable because it enables selling one's vote or forcing someone to vote a certain way. This is why anonymity is one of the tenants of a good election system.
The proposal will reduce the vulnerability to shoulder surfing (a problem in lab and public environments). However, it is still susceptible to keystroke logging (the more common problem in a home or office environment). Cadence is just another factor that needs to be recorded.
Cadence measurement is still susceptible to replay attacks, which is one of the biggest problems in authentication. To protect against replay attacks, the authentication needs to be different each time. Examples are one-time-passwords and challenge-response authentication mechanisms. I have never seen a biometric authentication factor which addresses the issue of replay attacks.
Tivo must make three groups happy: Stockholders, Customers and Broadcasters. It seems like collecting and selling statistical information can't help but to improve the mood for the least-happy group -- the broadcasters.
Having a way to easily survey 20,000 random households to determine which super bowl ads were the most liked (e.g. played more than once per Tivo), determining if people are skipping or watching opening credits to shows, and determining how many people "bail out" in the middle of a new show are all feedback that may help the broadcasters learn that Tivo is not all evil.
As a customer, my biggest privacy concerns are addressed by their Privacy Policy, which clearly states that nothing personally identifiable is collected and that they have an opt-out option for even the anonymous stuff.
To make me a really happy customer, I wish that they would return the life-time subscription (even if only available to broadband customers) and that they would figure out how to turn a profit, so that I can be sure that my current Tivo does not someday turn into a boat anchor.
There are many ways to sabotage such a complex system...
Complexity itself is likely the biggest cause of the problem. No sabotage needed. Although complexity (somewhat) needs to be part of the normal operation, there should be non-complex survival modes that kick in when things start to go wrong, such as:
A low battery could trigger a spring loaded mechanism that opened one solar panel. Then move the panel around semi-randomly until charging begins. Once there is enough charge, smarter (i.e. more complex) aiming circuitry could be turned on.
Loss of communications from mother earth for a few weeks could trigger a mechanism which points the antenna directly towards the strongest source of gravity, so that we could get a communication airplane under it.
There are likely these sorts of gizmos already, but one really needs to consider why they fail and how they could be made simpler to eliminate the failure cause.
Incidentally, this doesn't just apply to satellites. Lots of things have (or should have self-preservation built in). My camera, for example, retracts and covers its lens when the battery gets low, so that it does not get hurt when I throw it back in my pocket. All it requires is a bit of forethought and contingency planning on the part of the designers.
In all fairness, Apple iTunes gift cards have many of these same problems. Values are multiples of $1 (as opposed to $.99), Apple keeps the interest, they can offer different prices to different groups, etc.
The big advantages, however, are that the customer is not required to use gift cards with iTMS and that a gift card is a simple, familiar approach with few gotchas and no conversion rate issues for those of use with US$.
Of course, that has always been the iPod way.... simple and familiar... even if it is the first time you have seen one.
> More interesting is, if this is being run on the server side, then they are > scanning every single message that goes through their servers. > I wonder what else they are scanning for?
Unfortunately, we know that they are not scanning for viruses, spyware or phishing.
From a microsoft web page:... Support for Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Service Pack 1a (SP1a) ends on October 10, 2006.... This also includes security updates...
We have a teen that likes to fart around late into the night being distracted by various technology items instead of sleeping and/or doing homework, so we use technology to control technology:
1) The TV is plugged into an ordinary lamp timer (7-day programmable). It kicks in at 35 minutes after curfew, so that she can not watch TV late into the evening. If she finds the timer, my next step will be to lock the timer in a box.
2) I bought commputers for everyone in the house (that is old enough to use one). All computers have screensaver passwords and everyone uses only their own computer. This protects me and my wife against the crap that always seems to get on the kids PCs. It also gives the kids a feeling of ownership and control. However, I keep a ghost image of their computers on the network drive and they are required to disclose screensaver passwords to us. I periodically verify that the AV and patches up to date.
3) My firewall (ipcop with blockouttraffic) blocks all IP addresses in the house at curfew, except for the IP phone and my computer (I need to support work 24x7). We require the computer to be in a public location, with the screen facing the center of the room, so that we can keep an eye on things as we walk by.
4) Due to downloading "issues", I started by blacklisting ports used by p2p programs (see the sans-top-20 for a list of ports). Over time, I have switched to a whitelist approach, since it offers better defenses.
5) Mobile phone chargers live in the kitchen so that she can not sleep with the phone (at least not every night). If things start slipping out of control, we require her to turn in her mobile phone at curfew and the charger lives in our bedroom.
6) We have a number pad on the front door (weiser powerbolt), so that none of the kids can lose keys and none of us have to carry keys (which is really nice). This also helps prevent kids from sneaking in at night because the button beeps are loud enough to wake me.
7) A normal lock on the laundry room door that we use if kids decide to start her laundry too late (which wakes us up and we go down and lock the door).
Introducing a security issue in its latest set of patches undermines network administrators' confidence in Microsoft's software updates, said Johannes Ullrich, chief technology officer for the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center.
"The entire danger of this particular issue is that this is an important patch to apply, but if they cause your applications to not work, network administrator won't deploy patches," Ullrich said.
I, for one, am concerned that the fact that it caused grief for some of our users will cause my management to come down on the site of more testing and therefore more delays with installation of critical patches. This would be a terrible thing in a world where the lag-time before exploit continues to approach zero.
In addition to hunting down alternatives for the one person that is experiencing problems, you might want to also take a proactive approach with everyone else (including yourself and your superiors). There is much more to preventing RSI than simply using the "right" keyboard and mouse. This is a good area to consult with an expert.
A company I used to work for hired someone from the Physical Therapy department at the local hospital to give a group presentation on ergonomics and RSI. The presenter then visited each person at their desk to help get chairs, desk, computers, phones, headsets, etc. adjusted in the best way possible. Although no-one was complaining of RSI at the time, there were lots of desk and chair adjustments made and lots of headsets, footrests, wrist supports, etc. purchased.
We also had a box with a variety of alternative input devices that everyone was welcome to try (e.g. Microsoft "Natural" keyboard, a split keyboard, a trackball, a variety of mouse shapes, etc).
If you have troubles pushing this thorough your management, you might make headway by pointing out that proactive measures are useful in preventing and defending future claims.
On Wednesday, company officials issued a statement that noted the technology also enables the opposite: allowing viewers to watch television without advertising.
It sounds like they would be asking me to pay to watch a blank screen whenever there would have been a commercial. Either that, or they are thinking of embedding a Tivo-like device in my TV.
Such a settlement does not set any legal expectation to "weigh heavily on Apple," all it does is imply that Microsoft's lawyers thought that Burst.com had a strong case.
More likely, it implies that Microsoft's laywers thought that settling would be cheaper than proceeding with the case. Frequently, this can be accomplished simply by avoiding the cost of their own defense.
... I recently read that English is, or soon will be, the first language in the history of the world where more people speak it as a second language than speak it as their first language.
Esperanto has always had more "second language" speakers than "first language" speakers. It is supposedly easy to learn -- no noun genders, regular syntax, consistant formation of words, etc. It's major downfall is that few people are fluent in it.
The New York giant is seeing steep declines in its traditional telephone market, so it is spending an estimated $10 billion over seven years on new fiber lines to diversify into the TV business.
Seems to me that they need to get serious about competing in the POTS, ISP and VOIP markets:
My cable modem is about the same price that my DSL was -- but it runs about 10 times faster.
My IP Telephone costs me less than half of what my POTS line was, including lots of free services that were extra cost, such as caller-id, call waiting, voice mail and long-distance. Even its international rates are much cheaper.
My IP Telephone is about half the cost I would have paid had I selected Verizon Voicewing with similar features.
About the only thing Verizon seems to be really good at is wireless phones. I can walk into their office, order a phone and walk out with it working. Their coverage is better than their competitors (at least in my neck of the woods) and their prices and features are competitive.
Rather than spending $10 billion to try and break into another market, it seems like they ought to spend it trying to make the rest of their company as good as the wireless.
Re:Let's use AOL disk passwords
on
Name That Worm
·
· Score: 1
... use AOL disk passwords for viruses names...
But there are thousands of viruses discovered every year. Where would one come up with thousands of AOL CDs to extract names?
Trick # 1 with runaway printers is to remove the paper. Easy to explain; easy to understand and works on everyting (even macs:-). This would have saved you about 300 of the worthless pages.
I am not a "power gamer" (I have too many other ways to spend my precious evenings and weekends), so I probably have different needs than the author, but the one thing I can say for sure is that you can not tell someone else which mouse works best for them. Sure, you can give some basic advice, such as:
1) Optical mice are better because there is no ball to gum up. 2) Wheel mice are really nice. 3) If the mouse is too light, the cord tends to move the mouse when you are not otherwise touching it.
HOWEVER, the bottom line is that you need to try them out for comfort. My wife's hands are smaller than mine, so she prefers a smaller mouse. I ocassionally move my mouse to the other side of the keyboard, so symmetry is a big deal to me.
The only way to tell is to go to a store that has mice on a shelf and try them out.
In the parent poster's scenario (choose between hitting children, a brick wall or a hill), a reasonable legal defense might be "I attempted to steer my car into the brick wall, but it overrode my decision and plowed into the children presumably because it was the softer cushion".
If the car decides how to react in a given situation, a certain level of responsibility is taken away from the driver. It certainly seems that along with this responsibility would go a portion of the liability. Since Microsoft and Ford both have deeper pockets, I look forward to them paying the lion's share of the judgement.
Bad for the children; bad for Ford and bad for Microsoft, but I might legally be in a better situation.
Slashdot Mirror
The best thing they could do to speed up both the boarding process and the disembarking process would be to remove the overhead bins. Probably not the most popular move with the paying passengers, but it would keep the aisle moving.
Hmm. This might even speed up security by 15% in a way that the TSA would accept. Where's my $500,000?
Be prepared for a long line when you want a smoke detector permit. Wouldn't it just be easier to outlaw false alarms? At least the reason for the law would be obvious.
This would allow someone to prove how they voted to a third party. This is undesirable because it enables selling one's vote or forcing someone to vote a certain way. This is why anonymity is one of the tenants of a good election system.
I believe you are thinking of a quote attributed to Albert Einstein:
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/1349
The proposal will reduce the vulnerability to shoulder surfing (a problem in lab and public environments). However, it is still susceptible to keystroke logging (the more common problem in a home or office environment). Cadence is just another factor that needs to be recorded.
Cadence measurement is still susceptible to replay attacks, which is one of the biggest problems in authentication. To protect against replay attacks, the authentication needs to be different each time. Examples are one-time-passwords and challenge-response authentication mechanisms. I have never seen a biometric authentication factor which addresses the issue of replay attacks.
Tivo must make three groups happy: Stockholders, Customers and Broadcasters. It seems like collecting and selling statistical information can't help but to improve the mood for the least-happy group -- the broadcasters. Having a way to easily survey 20,000 random households to determine which super bowl ads were the most liked (e.g. played more than once per Tivo), determining if people are skipping or watching opening credits to shows, and determining how many people "bail out" in the middle of a new show are all feedback that may help the broadcasters learn that Tivo is not all evil. As a customer, my biggest privacy concerns are addressed by their Privacy Policy, which clearly states that nothing personally identifiable is collected and that they have an opt-out option for even the anonymous stuff. To make me a really happy customer, I wish that they would return the life-time subscription (even if only available to broadband customers) and that they would figure out how to turn a profit, so that I can be sure that my current Tivo does not someday turn into a boat anchor.
Complexity itself is likely the biggest cause of the problem. No sabotage needed. Although complexity (somewhat) needs to be part of the normal operation, there should be non-complex survival modes that kick in when things start to go wrong, such as:
- A low battery could trigger a spring loaded mechanism that opened one solar panel. Then move the panel around semi-randomly until charging begins. Once there is enough charge, smarter (i.e. more complex) aiming circuitry could be turned on.
- Loss of communications from mother earth for a few weeks could trigger a mechanism which points the antenna directly towards the strongest source of gravity, so that we could get a communication airplane under it.
There are likely these sorts of gizmos already, but one really needs to consider why they fail and how they could be made simpler to eliminate the failure cause.Incidentally, this doesn't just apply to satellites. Lots of things have (or should have self-preservation built in). My camera, for example, retracts and covers its lens when the battery gets low, so that it does not get hurt when I throw it back in my pocket. All it requires is a bit of forethought and contingency planning on the part of the designers.
Anti-Lock brakes, Electronic Stability Control and automatic headlights are all existing examples of taking control away from the driver.
Here is a source of dimmable compact flourescent bulbs.
e -Compact-Fluorescent-Light-Bulbs
http://www.1000bulbs.com/products.php?cat=Dimmabl
In all fairness, Apple iTunes gift cards have many of these same problems. Values are multiples of $1 (as opposed to $.99), Apple keeps the interest, they can offer different prices to different groups, etc.
The big advantages, however, are that the customer is not required to use gift cards with iTMS and that a gift card is a simple, familiar approach with few gotchas and no conversion rate issues for those of use with US$.
Of course, that has always been the iPod way.... simple and familiar ... even if it is the first time you have seen one.
> More interesting is, if this is being run on the server side, then they are
> scanning every single message that goes through their servers.
> I wonder what else they are scanning for?
Unfortunately, we know that they are not scanning for viruses, spyware or phishing.
From a microsoft web page: ... Support for Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Service Pack 1a (SP1a) ends on October 10, 2006. ... This also includes security updates ...
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifean19
We have a teen that likes to fart around late into the night being distracted by various technology items instead of sleeping and/or doing homework, so we use technology to control technology:
1) The TV is plugged into an ordinary lamp timer (7-day programmable). It kicks in at 35 minutes after curfew, so that she can not watch TV late into the evening. If she finds the timer, my next step will be to lock the timer in a box.
2) I bought commputers for everyone in the house (that is old enough to use one). All computers have screensaver passwords and everyone uses only their own computer. This protects me and my wife against the crap that always seems to get on the kids PCs. It also gives the kids a feeling of ownership and control. However, I keep a ghost image of their computers on the network drive and they are required to disclose screensaver passwords to us. I periodically verify that the AV and patches up to date.
3) My firewall (ipcop with blockouttraffic) blocks all IP addresses in the house at curfew, except for the IP phone and my computer (I need to support work 24x7). We require the computer to be in a public location, with the screen facing the center of the room, so that we can keep an eye on things as we walk by.
4) Due to downloading "issues", I started by blacklisting ports used by p2p programs (see the sans-top-20 for a list of ports). Over time, I have switched to a whitelist approach, since it offers better defenses.
5) Mobile phone chargers live in the kitchen so that she can not sleep with the phone (at least not every night). If things start slipping out of control, we require her to turn in her mobile phone at curfew and the charger lives in our bedroom.
6) We have a number pad on the front door (weiser powerbolt), so that none of the kids can lose keys and none of us have to carry keys (which is really nice). This also helps prevent kids from sneaking in at night because the button beeps are loud enough to wake me.
7) A normal lock on the laundry room door that we use if kids decide to start her laundry too late (which wakes us up and we go down and lock the door).
In addition to hunting down alternatives for the one person that is experiencing problems, you might want to also take a proactive approach with everyone else (including yourself and your superiors). There is much more to preventing RSI than simply using the "right" keyboard and mouse. This is a good area to consult with an expert.
A company I used to work for hired someone from the Physical Therapy department at the local hospital to give a group presentation on ergonomics and RSI. The presenter then visited each person at their desk to help get chairs, desk, computers, phones, headsets, etc. adjusted in the best way possible. Although no-one was complaining of RSI at the time, there were lots of desk and chair adjustments made and lots of headsets, footrests, wrist supports, etc. purchased.
We also had a box with a variety of alternative input devices that everyone was welcome to try (e.g. Microsoft "Natural" keyboard, a split keyboard, a trackball, a variety of mouse shapes, etc).
If you have troubles pushing this thorough your management, you might make headway by pointing out that proactive measures are useful in preventing and defending future claims.
It sounds like they would be asking me to pay to watch a blank screen whenever there would have been a commercial. Either that, or they are thinking of embedding a Tivo-like device in my TV.
About the only thing Verizon seems to be really good at is wireless phones. I can walk into their office, order a phone and walk out with it working. Their coverage is better than their competitors (at least in my neck of the woods) and their prices and features are competitive.
Rather than spending $10 billion to try and break into another market, it seems like they ought to spend it trying to make the rest of their company as good as the wireless.
But there are thousands of viruses discovered every year. Where would one come up with thousands of AOL CDs to extract names?
In June of this year, the second Wednesday preceeded the second Tuesday. Sort of scarry, huh.
Trick # 1 with runaway printers is to remove the paper. Easy to explain; easy to understand and works on everyting (even macs :-). This would have saved you about 300 of the worthless pages.
I am not a "power gamer" (I have too many other ways to spend my precious evenings and weekends), so I probably have different needs than the author, but the one thing I can say for sure is that you can not tell someone else which mouse works best for them. Sure, you can give some basic advice, such as:
1) Optical mice are better because there is no ball to gum up.
2) Wheel mice are really nice.
3) If the mouse is too light, the cord tends to move the mouse when you are not otherwise touching it.
HOWEVER, the bottom line is that you need to try them out for comfort. My wife's hands are smaller than mine, so she prefers a smaller mouse. I ocassionally move my mouse to the other side of the keyboard, so symmetry is a big deal to me.
The only way to tell is to go to a store that has mice on a shelf and try them out.
In the parent poster's scenario (choose between hitting children, a brick wall or a hill), a reasonable legal defense might be "I attempted to steer my car into the brick wall, but it overrode my decision and plowed into the children presumably because it was the softer cushion".
If the car decides how to react in a given situation, a certain level of responsibility is taken away from the driver. It certainly seems that along with this responsibility would go a portion of the liability. Since Microsoft and Ford both have deeper pockets, I look forward to them paying the lion's share of the judgement.
Bad for the children; bad for Ford and bad for Microsoft, but I might legally be in a better situation.