Yes, and there's another very good reason to read e-mail as plain text, not HTML:
If you open HTML mail, stuff like pictures embedded in the HTML gets loaded, and that is one way spammers know that a) they've stumbled upon a valid e-mail address, and b) the user read the mail. I can imagine that with a spam run, a sudden surge in image loads from a target site might be used to calculate payments for the spammer, identify valid e-mail addresses used, use the latest browser exploit to install spy/addware, etc. etc. So in a way, just opening that HTML mail helps the spammer with his business.
Read plain text only, and if it's spam: delete, never reply (don't attempt to 'unsubscribe' either!). That way the spammer gets 0 info, or rewards for his effort. If everybody would do this, there wouldn't be any spam. The problem is only kept alive by those 0.1% STUPIDS that do click on links, and proceed to order the penis-enlargement crap.
From the article: "McKool Smith is financing their major litigation against the 12 publishers by threatening smaller companies and then getting them to settle"
So they threaten some smaller companies, some of those could give in, and settlements provide the ammo for going after bigger fish (sounds very much SCO tactics to me).
Maybe some of those big boys should step in and help with legal support for the small guys (eg. in a legal defense fund), so that this McKool firm has a hard time getting any settlements. That could also decrease the funds available to McKool to battle those big boys later on.
"Well, a very cool (?) implication of this technology would be that chip performance would be depending of the, well, performance of the die used and the enviroment. So increasing voltage and decreasing die-temperature would make the chip faster automatically..."
AFAIK, that is already the case with all IC's (including analog) that I have ever come across.. nothing new here. A fixed clock just limits operating speeds to 'known reliable' over specified voltage/temperature ranges.
And for including voltage/temperature values in benchmark setups, that is no more than normal if you want reproducable results. Environmental settings are often implied, it's simply understood that benchmarked hardware is run with adequate power supply and cooling. I mean, who would think bad of a lousy benchmark result, when you know that an Athlon or P4 was tested with heatsink removed?
And you all know overclocking stories, where half of an article is spent on describing voltage settings & cooling measures, colourful pics included.
Agree with you partially. Let me take an example: for electric grids, I've heard a figure once of 4% for average losses due to power distribution. That means, central production of electricity doesn't profit from economy of scale right away: it would have to be at least 4% more efficient to make it worthwile, and any advantage is decreased with 4% due to the distribution losses. Al things being equal, local production would be 4% more efficient, because it avoids the distribution losses.
With networked computing, there is a similar burden, and I suspect this burden is a lot more significant in the case of computing power. Network bandwidth is always a relatively limited, expensive resource, compared to computing power that you can install locally (and Moore's law is still going strong).
Grid computing would only be useful for applications involving relatively small amounts of data, that require large amounts of computation. Stuff like 3D gaming will never profit from remote computing power; just moving the data involved, is almost half the work and better done locally inside your videocard. Many scientific applications are the same, much shared data & very intensive communication between processses.
But some applications fit this 'little data, much work' model well, and there will always be situations where it's easier to tap into a computing grid than to install the needed hardware locally.
"In a few words: grid computing is the use of many connected computers for one task. Or, you might want to think about it as multithreading, but spread out over multiple machines."
In a way it's a matter of taste, but I'd define it this way: "parallel" -> many CPU's, but quite close in 1 place, like in a SMP desktop. "distributed" -> with network in between, as in Beowulf cluster (possibly over the internet).
What would make "distributed" a Grid? The fact that it's 'everywhere', always working/available somewhere, like P2P networks. You can take your equipment off the network, but the network (ehh, grid) goes happily on doing its thing.
This becomes really useful when it's a easy to use and commonplace as the internet today. Send out some software, it grabs a piece of data here, grabs a program there, finds a server to do the computation, and reports back to you with the result. Got some cycles to spare? Put some in the Grid, earn money. Just wait and see, some day computing power will be supplied and consumed the way electric power is today.
"Jeremijenko picks up what looks like a large silver metal bowl from amidst some other materials, and holds it up in different positions around her torso."
That's a tin foil hat, you stupid! Put it on your head!
This means that if the ice melted, we'd have more water, but since the ice that was floating in the water was displacing a lot more water than it actually contained, the sea level would probably drop.
Correction: the ice replaces exactly the amount of water it occupies when floating (=law of Archimedes). Proof: take a glass of water, put in ice cube, fill up glass to the edge (but not overflowing!). Ice melts, and water is still exactly up to the edge.
Secondly: the bigger part of ice masses aren't floating, but piled hundreds or thousands or metres thick on top of land masses. And a glacier isn't usually found in an ocean or lake either. So if these ice masses melt, you get more water -> sea level up -> less land for people to live on.
My next comment will be ready soon, but subscribers can't beat the rush or see it early!
Aren't libertarian (or even anarchist) and control freaks mutually exclusive?
No, the freedom you have is directly related to how much you are in control of your own affairs. The more you are, makes you more of a free person. Give others more chance to manipulate your affairs, and you are less free (read: screwed).
So it just depends on who is in control, and the freedom comes with that. Less power to the government = more power to the people = free people. I'm not promoting anarchism here, but generally I prefer authorities to have just enough power/money/means to do what needs to be done, and wouldn't be done otherwise (like building roads), but no more. The less, the better.
Where's the Slack in here? Does a home-built Linux system count?
BTW. real control freaks are no fun...
Can anyone explain me why that is necessary in the 1st place?
I assume this would be fairly common practice for some uses of that data, but basically: if you want to do anything with data, why not do it on-site? If some off-shore company was hired to process millions of government-held records, wouldn't the safest way be to let that company only produce software for that purpose, and 'apply' that software locally?
Can anyone give some compelling reasons why you would move that data itself (knowing that it's privacy-sensitive)? BTW: With 'off-shore' I mean any third party relative to the data involved.
I would rather have faster processors than multiple cores
The way I see it, every CPU package has essentially a 'thermal envelope' that you can't go beyond without drastically changing case designs or cooling methods. For passively cooled CPU's this would be in the order of 10W, for actively cooled CPU's the ~100W figures for some desktop Pentium 4's are pushing the limit.
Instead of pushing things like BTX cases or watercooling, I'd rather see chipmakers use new technology to improve thermal/power ratio of their chips. I don't need a CPU that's 3 times as fast, upping power consumption once again. Give me a CPU that does twice the work using a smaller amount of energy.
There's lots of room for improvement here. Examples: when a CPU sits idle, does that mean a drastic drop in power consumption? In many cases: no. Win9x systems drop into a full power no-op running loop, and 'halt' state power consumption only works well with newer CPU's when chipsets are configured to enable a low-power state. Often, this isn't the case, for whatever reason.
Then take mobile CPU's (in same physical package), and features like varying core voltage with CPU load (Speedstep, PowerNow! or whatever). Nice, but many desktop motherboards or BIOS'es don't support it, or have it disabled. IMHO, chipmakers like AMD or Intel would better focus on improved motherboard/chipset/BIOS support for these things (through co-operation with mobo makers), than just making their CPU's faster.
And yes, I do know AMD is on the right track here with their x86-64 chips ('Cool 'n Quiet'). Maybe one reason their desktop market share is doing so well lately? I'd go for it, anyway.
Treat mod points like diseases - get rid of them as quick as you can.
Among other things,/. posts articles about interesting applications of existing tech. That may include things that aren't new, or shameless plugs for the latest iPod. As long as it's/. editors that decide and not advertisers, that's okay.
Just check the FAQ to see what's meant with "the Omelette".
Now, about that bike... thanks, but I've already got one of these.
Many vulnerabilities in Windows aren't so much in Windows itself, but in IE (or Outlook, or...). Some of those flaws can be avoided by not using IE, but some more may be avoided if you have IE not installed at all.
By default Windows doesn't allow IE to be uninstalled, and MS once claimed it would render Windows unusable. Tools found on above website prove otherwise. You can also use these to remove other unneeded Windows components.
Fully removing IE may have some drawbacks, but usuallly you can do fine without. If you have doubts, just try the preview version on a couple of boxes. There's a free utility for just removing IE from Windows 98 systems.
For best results, consider removing Windows as well...
...there is no indication that protected files were actually read.
That's still an information leak, and thus a security breach. If a user can see filenames of other user's files, or inspect URL's that other users typed in, then they accessed that other user's private data. Just knowing what files are accessed or what webpages were visited, can be as serious a security breach as any, depending on the context.
The very fact that they still haven't told us the reason behind the raid is censorship.
Suppose a country is in the middle of a war (a real one, not that terrorist crap). You want all information currently being processed to be available to the public under a freedom of information act? No you don't, the bad guys would win.
Law enforcement is no different. There are valid reasons not to tell 'victims' of an investigation, what's being investigated.
What is important, is that procedures used for such investigations are under public scrutiny, and that actions must be checked against those procedures. If any investigator could decide for themselves where/what to investigate, that would be wrong. So that's why we have judges in place, that have to be asked for search warrants before police can bust in a home somewhere. That police should explain to a judge why they need to do that, and if they can't make a case, don't get a warrant to do so. That doesn't mean all specifics of each case need to be public.
The other thing is that the intrusion should be proportional to the nature of the crime, and be kept limited where possible. Like seize only harddrives instead of entire servers, and return them asap. Also, details should be made public, when investigation is over and no wrongdoing found.
Well, so much for the theory anyway. Details and practices may vary...
First Google was cool and independent. Now with e-mail account, "G" searchbox included in your favourite browser, maybe a browser of their own, instant messaging, shareholders onboard, and... a desktop?
What's next? The Google operating system? Are we looking at the beginnings of a next-generation Microsoft-like empire?
Well, part of the interest is that these programmers found a way, within the rules, to get more information, by means of their "secret handshake"
So in the beginning, it was essentially 'everyone for himself'. Then innovation: devise a way team members can recognise each other, and work in groups to defeat opponents.
Next logical step: cheating. How about behaving like a member of such a team, but then double-cross them later? It would be interesting to see how such a strategy would work out.
Slashdot Mirror
The plan was dropped after Nixon tried the test himself, and flunked.
No problem there for law enforcement, as the bulk of spam is coming from the US anyway...
If you open HTML mail, stuff like pictures embedded in the HTML gets loaded, and that is one way spammers know that a) they've stumbled upon a valid e-mail address, and b) the user read the mail. I can imagine that with a spam run, a sudden surge in image loads from a target site might be used to calculate payments for the spammer, identify valid e-mail addresses used, use the latest browser exploit to install spy/addware, etc. etc. So in a way, just opening that HTML mail helps the spammer with his business.
Read plain text only, and if it's spam: delete, never reply (don't attempt to 'unsubscribe' either!). That way the spammer gets 0 info, or rewards for his effort. If everybody would do this, there wouldn't be any spam. The problem is only kept alive by those 0.1% STUPIDS that do click on links, and proceed to order the penis-enlargement crap.
So they threaten some smaller companies, some of those could give in, and settlements provide the ammo for going after bigger fish (sounds very much SCO tactics to me).
Maybe some of those big boys should step in and help with legal support for the small guys (eg. in a legal defense fund), so that this McKool firm has a hard time getting any settlements. That could also decrease the funds available to McKool to battle those big boys later on.
AFAIK, that is already the case with all IC's (including analog) that I have ever come across.. nothing new here. A fixed clock just limits operating speeds to 'known reliable' over specified voltage/temperature ranges.
And for including voltage/temperature values in benchmark setups, that is no more than normal if you want reproducable results. Environmental settings are often implied, it's simply understood that benchmarked hardware is run with adequate power supply and cooling. I mean, who would think bad of a lousy benchmark result, when you know that an Athlon or P4 was tested with heatsink removed?
And you all know overclocking stories, where half of an article is spent on describing voltage settings & cooling measures, colourful pics included.
With networked computing, there is a similar burden, and I suspect this burden is a lot more significant in the case of computing power. Network bandwidth is always a relatively limited, expensive resource, compared to computing power that you can install locally (and Moore's law is still going strong).
Grid computing would only be useful for applications involving relatively small amounts of data, that require large amounts of computation. Stuff like 3D gaming will never profit from remote computing power; just moving the data involved, is almost half the work and better done locally inside your videocard. Many scientific applications are the same, much shared data & very intensive communication between processses.
But some applications fit this 'little data, much work' model well, and there will always be situations where it's easier to tap into a computing grid than to install the needed hardware locally.
In a way it's a matter of taste, but I'd define it this way: "parallel" -> many CPU's, but quite close in 1 place, like in a SMP desktop. "distributed" -> with network in between, as in Beowulf cluster (possibly over the internet).
What would make "distributed" a Grid? The fact that it's 'everywhere', always working/available somewhere, like P2P networks. You can take your equipment off the network, but the network (ehh, grid) goes happily on doing its thing.
This becomes really useful when it's a easy to use and commonplace as the internet today. Send out some software, it grabs a piece of data here, grabs a program there, finds a server to do the computation, and reports back to you with the result. Got some cycles to spare? Put some in the Grid, earn money. Just wait and see, some day computing power will be supplied and consumed the way electric power is today.
That's a tin foil hat, you stupid! Put it on your head!
Correction: the ice replaces exactly the amount of water it occupies when floating (=law of Archimedes). Proof: take a glass of water, put in ice cube, fill up glass to the edge (but not overflowing!). Ice melts, and water is still exactly up to the edge.
Secondly: the bigger part of ice masses aren't floating, but piled hundreds or thousands or metres thick on top of land masses. And a glacier isn't usually found in an ocean or lake either. So if these ice masses melt, you get more water -> sea level up -> less land for people to live on.
My next comment will be ready soon, but subscribers can't beat the rush or see it early!
No, the freedom you have is directly related to how much you are in control of your own affairs. The more you are, makes you more of a free person. Give others more chance to manipulate your affairs, and you are less free (read: screwed).
So it just depends on who is in control, and the freedom comes with that. Less power to the government = more power to the people = free people. I'm not promoting anarchism here, but generally I prefer authorities to have just enough power/money/means to do what needs to be done, and wouldn't be done otherwise (like building roads), but no more. The less, the better.
Where's the Slack in here? Does a home-built Linux system count?
BTW. real control freaks are no fun...
I see, and it is if you are a US citizen?
Freedom starts with saying "no".
I assume this would be fairly common practice for some uses of that data, but basically: if you want to do anything with data, why not do it on-site? If some off-shore company was hired to process millions of government-held records, wouldn't the safest way be to let that company only produce software for that purpose, and 'apply' that software locally?
Can anyone give some compelling reasons why you would move that data itself (knowing that it's privacy-sensitive)? BTW: With 'off-shore' I mean any third party relative to the data involved.
The way I see it, every CPU package has essentially a 'thermal envelope' that you can't go beyond without drastically changing case designs or cooling methods. For passively cooled CPU's this would be in the order of 10W, for actively cooled CPU's the ~100W figures for some desktop Pentium 4's are pushing the limit.
Instead of pushing things like BTX cases or watercooling, I'd rather see chipmakers use new technology to improve thermal/power ratio of their chips. I don't need a CPU that's 3 times as fast, upping power consumption once again. Give me a CPU that does twice the work using a smaller amount of energy.
There's lots of room for improvement here. Examples: when a CPU sits idle, does that mean a drastic drop in power consumption? In many cases: no. Win9x systems drop into a full power no-op running loop, and 'halt' state power consumption only works well with newer CPU's when chipsets are configured to enable a low-power state. Often, this isn't the case, for whatever reason.
Then take mobile CPU's (in same physical package), and features like varying core voltage with CPU load (Speedstep, PowerNow! or whatever). Nice, but many desktop motherboards or BIOS'es don't support it, or have it disabled. IMHO, chipmakers like AMD or Intel would better focus on improved motherboard/chipset/BIOS support for these things (through co-operation with mobo makers), than just making their CPU's faster.
And yes, I do know AMD is on the right track here with their x86-64 chips ('Cool 'n Quiet'). Maybe one reason their desktop market share is doing so well lately? I'd go for it, anyway.
Treat mod points like diseases - get rid of them as quick as you can.
BTW. How's that Doom clone on the Speccy doing?
In contrast to human laws, which just 'become' without any evidence in their favor (and then presented as absolute truths).
Yes, I've always known that mother nature is far better at creating sensible & logical constructs (and enforcing them)...
Just check the FAQ to see what's meant with "the Omelette".
Now, about that bike... thanks, but I've already got one of these.
Many vulnerabilities in Windows aren't so much in Windows itself, but in IE (or Outlook, or ...). Some of those flaws can be avoided by not using IE, but some more may be avoided if you have IE not installed at all.
By default Windows doesn't allow IE to be uninstalled, and MS once claimed it would render Windows unusable. Tools found on above website prove otherwise. You can also use these to remove other unneeded Windows components.
Fully removing IE may have some drawbacks, but usuallly you can do fine without. If you have doubts, just try the preview version on a couple of boxes. There's a free utility for just removing IE from Windows 98 systems.
For best results, consider removing Windows as well...
1) "There, your brandnew PC, spyware & multimedia addons pre-installed, all for free! There ya go!"
2) Set up expensive hotline
3) ??? Profit!
All the other sigs say that this sig isn't a real sig, but this sig says all the other sigs are lying bastards.
That's still an information leak, and thus a security breach. If a user can see filenames of other user's files, or inspect URL's that other users typed in, then they accessed that other user's private data. Just knowing what files are accessed or what webpages were visited, can be as serious a security breach as any, depending on the context.
These drives aren't performance laptop drives, they are meant to run 24/7 and get lots of work to do.
Suppose a country is in the middle of a war (a real one, not that terrorist crap). You want all information currently being processed to be available to the public under a freedom of information act? No you don't, the bad guys would win.
Law enforcement is no different. There are valid reasons not to tell 'victims' of an investigation, what's being investigated.
What is important, is that procedures used for such investigations are under public scrutiny, and that actions must be checked against those procedures. If any investigator could decide for themselves where/what to investigate, that would be wrong. So that's why we have judges in place, that have to be asked for search warrants before police can bust in a home somewhere. That police should explain to a judge why they need to do that, and if they can't make a case, don't get a warrant to do so. That doesn't mean all specifics of each case need to be public.
The other thing is that the intrusion should be proportional to the nature of the crime, and be kept limited where possible. Like seize only harddrives instead of entire servers, and return them asap. Also, details should be made public, when investigation is over and no wrongdoing found.
Well, so much for the theory anyway. Details and practices may vary...
Just another term to add to your IT vocabulary.
What's next? The Google operating system? Are we looking at the beginnings of a next-generation Microsoft-like empire?
So in the beginning, it was essentially 'everyone for himself'. Then innovation: devise a way team members can recognise each other, and work in groups to defeat opponents.
Next logical step: cheating. How about behaving like a member of such a team, but then double-cross them later? It would be interesting to see how such a strategy would work out.