The disturbing thing -- not because it is CNET that is doing it (they aren't all that reputable, or accurate) but this does seem to be a more wide reaching trend -- is that a news organization is apologizing for a hard hitting, pull-no-punches, relatively interesting and valuable investigative journalism report... AND PROMISING NOT TO DO IT AGAIN in the interests of not-pissing-off big faceless corporation A (in this case, Google.)
Isn't this what we've seen news organizations doing for the past X (insert a number that jives with your own observations) years? Whether it's reporting on some big corporation, or congress, or whatever administration is currently controlling the federal branch... they cowtow to the big groups that can cut off their access to "inside information" and as a result have stopped serving the people's interest.
This is what I've been seeing, anyway. Am I crazy or have others noticed similar trends? Or do you at least see them now that I've pointed it out?
By extension, you should have a separate computer that is connected to the internet with no hooks whatsoever to the computer you use to run your tax form preparation program, write your letters, balance your checkbook, etc. Oh, what's that? You want to e-file? You want to send e-mail? You want to bank online?
Integration may be scary, but it isn't something you should intellectially shy away from. Convenience and security have always been at odds, and I don't see that changing any time soon. The balance beteween them isn't a zero-sum-game, however, and the solution, IMO, isn't to discard all notions of integrated solutions, even if they are less secure in the short term. We need to keep moving forward, not idolize some rose-colored past that never existed.
Vandalism of Wikipedia pages is hardly rare. It is usually spotted very quickly (< 5min) and then delt with. So yeah, they've got a pretty amazing system for dealing with it.
In any case, vandalism happens, but it's not a problem for this DVD project. The purpose of putting Wikipedia on a static medium isn't to just make a random copy of the current state of the project. The point of publishing a DVD is to have a frozen version containing (relatively) verified content. As other commenters have mentioned, this has many benefits, including ability to cite a specific frozen version of Wikipedia as a reference, as well as being able to place certain level of trust in the accuracy of the information contained therein.
I've been consistently impressed with the quality of your comments in this thead, so I just wanted to start by saying thank you for that.
DJB reevaluated the grading scheme for the class, in the end putting a greater emphasis on the exams. This resulted in all the people I know in the class passing. I believe the grade distribution was still rather low, but I'm not certain what the actual grades recieved were. I took the class with the credit/no-credit option so I only get to see a CR and don't know (nor does it really matter) what the actual grade reported by the professor was for me.
It was a very enjoyable class, and this has been a rather enjoyable slashdot thread.
You are missing that the last day to add a course is the end of the second week:
September 3, Friday, same source as above.
For some people the financial repercussions to dropping below full time are worse than a (potential) failing grade in one course.
On a relatively unrelated note, the end of the second week is also our deadline to adopt the Credit/No-Credit option on a course, which I know at least one of us did for this particular class.
In the current realm of discussion, where the binary choice seems to be "local" or "remote" I would much sooner term a trojan horse attack (which is, basically, what we're talking about) to be remote. The originator of the attack ("the attacker") is not a local user of the machine but is instead has no user privileges on the machine at all.
As a system administrator, my primary interest in whether an attack is local or remote is my exposure. If I trust all the local users then I put a lower priority on bugs deemed to be local exploits. Not only is the potential attacking audience smaller than the entire world, I have placed a level of trust (be that good, or bad, is irrelevant) in the potential attacking audience. Something termed a remote vulnerability I patch or workaround immediately.
This isn't an uncommon scenerio. I think, then, that "remote" was a perfectly valid term for this particular exploit.
Hrm. I'm not sure you've picked up the right impression of DJB. He's brilliant, but I would hardly call him popular. The fact is that this is the first class he has taught since 2002. We talked about this class a lot this semester because it took up a TON of our time and mental energy. It was tough to stop thinking about it.
He does not teach any class regularly -- he is a research professor. This was a special topics class and the class he is scheduled to teach next semester is a very focused 500 level course in high-speed cryptographic algorithms.
Nothing written by James Longstreet is patently misleading in any way. Some previous commenters have managed to read things that weren't there, but hey, this is Slashdot -- it's to be expected.
Know my name? Shit, I had lunch with him, several times. He's an interesting guy. I'm still going to fail (I assume.)
I certainly have disagrements with the assignment's weight in the final grade, but I DID know it going in. It wasn't a surprise. I expected it to be difficult. In the end, I didn't finish, at least in part, because my priority was on some of my other classes which I actually need in order to graduate. I definitely put in a lot of time on this class, but not the insane amount some of the other students did.
End result, pass or fail, I got out of the course what I wanted: I learned a LOT, met one of the leaders in the field of cryptography and security, and generally enjoyed myself.
I'm going to use that as a template for randomly insulting people when I don't want to put any effort into it. I'll just replace [atheists] with whatever group I want to insult, and [christian] with whatever thing I'm presently supporting that could be in any way construed to be the antithesis of the thing placed into the first [].
Public figures have practically no protection from either libel or slander. It's part of the gig -- they open themselves up to whatever the public wants to throw at them. They do have some grounds, but it's a far cry from the protection granted to individuals.
Basically, it's a stupid argument. Anyone who has taken the time and bothered to actually look up what he really said will realize, immediately, that what he said made sense in context, was true, and that all the hoopla in the media was propagandist rubbish. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- that's politics. What is irritating is all the morons who don't know what they're talking about and yet still insist on sharing their uninformed opinion with the rest of us as if it was worth anything.
You didn't subtract one. And the original poster misunderstood what he was replying to anyway, so it doesn't matter. A Mersenne prime number is defined as every prime number that is also 2^n - 1 for some integer n. Obviously not every number matching that pattern is prime. In fact the incredible majority of them are not prime.
So far we have found 40 Mersenne prime numbers, the 40th being 2^(20996011)-1
They consume much less power than current devices and have faster response times.
This seems like a much more interesting fact about them than that they can be viewed from both sides. I suppose one could take advantage of the dual-viewable nature, but it seems like something we already have an adaquate solution for: place a screen on each surface you want to have a screen on. Duh!;-)
On the other hand, I suppose the 2 sided viewability could be potentially beneficial to hybrid tablet PCs, which until now have had to rely on fragile-looking swivel mechanisms to rotate the screen between laptop and tablet functionality.
Any indication as to whether or not the images on each side are identical (i.e. the back is a mirror image of the front) or if they can be controlled independantly?
Allow me to debunk this rediculous conjecture that the water molecule splits and then burns. Anyone proposing this obviously doesn't remember (or never took) high school chemistry. When Hydrogen (H2) burns, it combines with oxygen (O2) to form water, thus releasing energy. It goes like this:
2xH2 + O2 => 2xH2O
Reversing that process takes at least as much energy, if not moreso, due to energy conservation. You would not gain any energy by splitting water molecules and then reforming them, you would loose it.
No idea what to do with the money?!? There's a problem I'd love to have. Sheesh.
I can't say this is a bad use of the money, but I'm sure they could come up with more productive uses. Like revitalizing their energy infrastructure and making a market for all the energy they are generating with those damns.
First of all, a windows install disk won't help you if the default security settings are left alone. AFAIK, by default it still requires the admin password to use the recovery console. Anything to the contrary was just a very popular (but false) rumor.
And, yeah, it does if Google is blocked.:-P
Slashdot Mirror
The disturbing thing -- not because it is CNET that is doing it (they aren't all that reputable, or accurate) but this does seem to be a more wide reaching trend -- is that a news organization is apologizing for a hard hitting, pull-no-punches, relatively interesting and valuable investigative journalism report... AND PROMISING NOT TO DO IT AGAIN in the interests of not-pissing-off big faceless corporation A (in this case, Google.)
Isn't this what we've seen news organizations doing for the past X (insert a number that jives with your own observations) years? Whether it's reporting on some big corporation, or congress, or whatever administration is currently controlling the federal branch... they cowtow to the big groups that can cut off their access to "inside information" and as a result have stopped serving the people's interest.
This is what I've been seeing, anyway. Am I crazy or have others noticed similar trends? Or do you at least see them now that I've pointed it out?
You lost me there -- I thought you were talking about companies that 'do no evil'.
It's nice to see that NASA has moved from "clean slates" to the much more modern and recent technological innovation of "clean paper."
By extension, you should have a separate computer that is connected to the internet with no hooks whatsoever to the computer you use to run your tax form preparation program, write your letters, balance your checkbook, etc. Oh, what's that? You want to e-file? You want to send e-mail? You want to bank online?
Integration may be scary, but it isn't something you should intellectially shy away from. Convenience and security have always been at odds, and I don't see that changing any time soon. The balance beteween them isn't a zero-sum-game, however, and the solution, IMO, isn't to discard all notions of integrated solutions, even if they are less secure in the short term. We need to keep moving forward, not idolize some rose-colored past that never existed.
In any case, vandalism happens, but it's not a problem for this DVD project. The purpose of putting Wikipedia on a static medium isn't to just make a random copy of the current state of the project. The point of publishing a DVD is to have a frozen version containing (relatively) verified content. As other commenters have mentioned, this has many benefits, including ability to cite a specific frozen version of Wikipedia as a reference, as well as being able to place certain level of trust in the accuracy of the information contained therein.
Anybody knows who to complain or what to do to take this idiot down?
Well, as far as taking them down, posting a link to them on Slashdot was probably a good first step...
Well, I don't need your karma, but congratulations on the achievement. ;-)
I like how there was a reference to one of my classes in one of the above comments, the link is "DJB's students" or something like that.
Hope graduate school is treating you well.
Bruce,
I've been consistently impressed with the quality of your comments in this thead, so I just wanted to start by saying thank you for that.
DJB reevaluated the grading scheme for the class, in the end putting a greater emphasis on the exams. This resulted in all the people I know in the class passing. I believe the grade distribution was still rather low, but I'm not certain what the actual grades recieved were. I took the class with the credit/no-credit option so I only get to see a CR and don't know (nor does it really matter) what the actual grade reported by the professor was for me.
It was a very enjoyable class, and this has been a rather enjoyable slashdot thread.
Keep on keeping on.
You are missing that the last day to add a course is the end of the second week:
September 3, Friday, same source as above.
For some people the financial repercussions to dropping below full time are worse than a (potential) failing grade in one course.
On a relatively unrelated note, the end of the second week is also our deadline to adopt the Credit/No-Credit option on a course, which I know at least one of us did for this particular class.
In the current realm of discussion, where the binary choice seems to be "local" or "remote" I would much sooner term a trojan horse attack (which is, basically, what we're talking about) to be remote. The originator of the attack ("the attacker") is not a local user of the machine but is instead has no user privileges on the machine at all.
As a system administrator, my primary interest in whether an attack is local or remote is my exposure. If I trust all the local users then I put a lower priority on bugs deemed to be local exploits. Not only is the potential attacking audience smaller than the entire world, I have placed a level of trust (be that good, or bad, is irrelevant) in the potential attacking audience. Something termed a remote vulnerability I patch or workaround immediately.
This isn't an uncommon scenerio. I think, then, that "remote" was a perfectly valid term for this particular exploit.
He does not teach any class regularly -- he is a research professor. This was a special topics class and the class he is scheduled to teach next semester is a very focused 500 level course in high-speed cryptographic algorithms.
Nothing written by James Longstreet is patently misleading in any way. Some previous commenters have managed to read things that weren't there, but hey, this is Slashdot -- it's to be expected.
Know my name? Shit, I had lunch with him, several times. He's an interesting guy. I'm still going to fail (I assume.)
I certainly have disagrements with the assignment's weight in the final grade, but I DID know it going in. It wasn't a surprise. I expected it to be difficult. In the end, I didn't finish, at least in part, because my priority was on some of my other classes which I actually need in order to graduate. I definitely put in a lot of time on this class, but not the insane amount some of the other students did.
End result, pass or fail, I got out of the course what I wanted: I learned a LOT, met one of the leaders in the field of cryptography and security, and generally enjoyed myself.
tslsia
That's funny. I trust president@whitehouse.com much more than I trust president@whitehouse.gov.
Ahaha, that's great!
I'm going to use that as a template for randomly insulting people when I don't want to put any effort into it. I'll just replace [atheists] with whatever group I want to insult, and [christian] with whatever thing I'm presently supporting that could be in any way construed to be the antithesis of the thing placed into the first [].
Find any divisors. If you find a divisor (other than 1 and the number) stop. Not prime.
isPrime(int n) {
int bound = n / 2;
for (int i=2; i < bound; i++) {
if (n % i == 0)
return 0;
}
return 1;
}
I think an argument could be made for your Powerbook being a "greater" machine than any Windows computer. ;-)
Public figures have practically no protection from either libel or slander. It's part of the gig -- they open themselves up to whatever the public wants to throw at them. They do have some grounds, but it's a far cry from the protection granted to individuals.
Basically, it's a stupid argument. Anyone who has taken the time and bothered to actually look up what he really said will realize, immediately, that what he said made sense in context, was true, and that all the hoopla in the media was propagandist rubbish. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- that's politics. What is irritating is all the morons who don't know what they're talking about and yet still insist on sharing their uninformed opinion with the rest of us as if it was worth anything.
You didn't subtract one. And the original poster misunderstood what he was replying to anyway, so it doesn't matter. A Mersenne prime number is defined as every prime number that is also 2^n - 1 for some integer n. Obviously not every number matching that pattern is prime. In fact the incredible majority of them are not prime.
So far we have found 40 Mersenne prime numbers, the 40th being 2^(20996011)-1
Read more at ArsTechnica or try a Google search.
They consume much less power than current devices and have faster response times.
;-)
This seems like a much more interesting fact about them than that they can be viewed from both sides. I suppose one could take advantage of the dual-viewable nature, but it seems like something we already have an adaquate solution for: place a screen on each surface you want to have a screen on. Duh!
On the other hand, I suppose the 2 sided viewability could be potentially beneficial to hybrid tablet PCs, which until now have had to rely on fragile-looking swivel mechanisms to rotate the screen between laptop and tablet functionality.
Any indication as to whether or not the images on each side are identical (i.e. the back is a mirror image of the front) or if they can be controlled independantly?
Don't you sometimes wish there was an option for -1 Stupid? ;-)
Yeah, and then back to thermal energy? Did you even read what I was replying to? Didn't think so.
Allow me to debunk this rediculous conjecture that the water molecule splits and then burns. Anyone proposing this obviously doesn't remember (or never took) high school chemistry. When Hydrogen (H2) burns, it combines with oxygen (O2) to form water, thus releasing energy. It goes like this:
2xH2 + O2 => 2xH2O
Reversing that process takes at least as much energy, if not moreso, due to energy conservation. You would not gain any energy by splitting water molecules and then reforming them, you would loose it.
No idea what to do with the money?!? There's a problem I'd love to have. Sheesh.
I can't say this is a bad use of the money, but I'm sure they could come up with more productive uses. Like revitalizing their energy infrastructure and making a market for all the energy they are generating with those damns.
First of all, a windows install disk won't help you if the default security settings are left alone. AFAIK, by default it still requires the admin password to use the recovery console. Anything to the contrary was just a very popular (but false) rumor. And, yeah, it does if Google is blocked. :-P