About 999 times out of 1000, I'm sitting in an environment (either at home or in the office) where I really don't care if anyone sees my password. For that one time where I do care, maybe we can have a checkbox for making the password invisible while we type.
The problem with security is really that once you start down that path, nothing is ever enough - at least not to the security gestapo (motto: "our work ain't done until you can't do yours"). Stellar example: the FTP at work is configured to have a ~10s delay after logging in, "to stop the evil h4x0rz". It's driving me nuts, so I suggested accepting the first connection without any delay, and then introducing a delay for each following connection if it occurs within 10s. That way hardly anyone will be bothered by the delay, but the h4x0rz will still be unable to flood the server with their evil password-attempting ways. But nooo, that was completely unacceptable! Because it would be INSECURE! Only a long delay guarantees security!
Why would it have anything to do with clustering? It's called CLUTTER. It should be making a mess. And really, I can mess up my desktop enough on my own.
Right, I see. In my defense, I have been sitting home with a fever for the last two days and I did go to bed right after posting that. I do feel better now though, thanks;-)
I still think a screenshot, even if it is just a proof of concept, would have been nice. Cairo is a lower-level API as well, and it certainly has screenshots on its website...
Would it really kill them to stick a screenshot in there, or even better, a movie? Especially since this is, you know, a graphical application?
This really is a common failing of too many open source applications. Not only are we supposed to guess that "cluster" has nothing to do with clustering in any shape or form, but its graphical prowess, its entire reason for being, must be guessed at by nothing more than a wall of text.
Well, maybe I shouldn't complain. They do actually tell us what it is supposed to do, right there on the front page...
Taxing ISPs specifically, seems ass-backwards. If you're going to subsidize an outdated industry (which, hey, is done all over the place) why not fund it out of tax revenue generally, rather than putting a brake specifically on the internet? How about a new tax on cigarettes?:-)
I have two more questions:
1. Every day, 3 or 4 completely free newspapers are being spread in every trainstation (and many other places) here in the Netherlands. If "news cannot be free", as the commission claims, does this mean we need to raise an extra public transportation tax to compensate for this free news as well?
2. If the newspapers are being hurt so badly by free news available on the internet, why do they put their own content on the internet? And given that this pain is apparently self-inflicted, why would everybody need to pay for it?
The claim that "news cannot be free" is bogus: news on the internet is paid for by advertising. It is hard to believe that a website such as nu.nl would exist for so long without any revenue. The existence of free newspapers furthermore proves that paid subscriptions are not a necessity for running a newspaper.
Also, the claim that quality journalism is a necessity for democracy is laughable. Well, actually it isn't - it's just that I see too many cut'n'paste jobs of ANP news in too many newspapers every day. This quality investigative journalism of which they speak seems to be a mythological ideal, rather than reality.
..there is such a thing as personal responsibility and we don't need a nanny to babysit us all the time.
Life is like Unix and you are the superuser. With that comes the power to 'rm -rf' the system.. intentionally or not.
--iamnotayam
Nobody really cares if the driver kills himself while being terminally stupid. The problem is that they tend to take other people with them, people who did not have any part in their idiot choices. Your right to watch TV while driving does not override other people's right to live.
I've been having a tough time finding a reasonably qualified programmer from straight out of college. I'm not looking for senior database developers, just people who can solve basic logic skills and... write software!
So how does one "solve basic logic skills" then? What's "solving a skill" supposed to mean anyway?
How *does* one get a Masters Degree in Information Science without being able to answer basic questions like this? Supposedly, the job I'm offering is why they went to school, but they aren't even qualified to begin. So what did they do for 6 years?
If you are hiring a welder, he'd better know how to weld. If you hire a doctor, he'd better have a good working knowledge of medicine.
Why can't we expect to hire fresh programmers who know how to... program?
While I agree that anyone with a university title for computer science should at least have some basic ability in actually writing code, I think you misunderstand what computer science is all about. It is simply not intended as vocational training for programmers. Of course, a student with any sense at all would make sure he is at least employable outside academia, but the point of a computer science study is not to become a programmer.
The problem with a state run insurance plan is that that the state has never made anything more efficient. Ever. It's really astounding to me that people continually propose government takeovers of things.
Companies want to offer minimalist service for the highest price they can get away with. Eliminating waste is not on their agenda; maximising profit is. And the profit does not flow back to the people that pay for the healthcare, it disappears into the pockets of the owners of the company.
Besides, your argument is disingenious in other ways as well: how often does the state take over an industry? The answer is "hardly ever": the state steps in as an enabler (to start a service when private industry cannot do it, such as space travel in the sixties, or to stop industries from falling over entirely, such as the banks recently). Efficiency has nothing to do with it, it is about getting the service at all. And for many people in the US, that's the choice being discussed: should they have access to health care at all? I take it you are one of the lucky ones who can afford to pay for healthcare. Do you also feel that less lucky people should just die on the side of the road simply for being poor?
The way to reduce health care costs is to find waste in the system and eliminate them through process improvement. Everything else is a shell game.
Private companies taking as much as they can and making massive profits isn't a form of waste to you?
When you realise that the minimum statutory penalty for copying a CD is higher than the maximum penalty for stealing the CD, you see quite how messed up copyright law has become.
You steal a CD from WalMart.
Retail value $20.
You upload the rip to 15 million of your closest friends on the P2P nets.
The day you received the subpoena it was still being read out of your shared files folder.
Retail value $1 per track at iTunes.
Plus whatever punitive damages seem appropriate for the unlicensed wholesale distribution.
Did she personally manage to get a share ratio of 15000000 : 1? Or did other people in fact help achieving the distribution? If so, why is she taking the fall for this alone? And does that mean that the songs really are free for distribution now, since they have been fully paid for by her? (i.e. how can anyone else ever be convicted of distributing these songs, considering that it is already legally established that she is the party that was guilty of distributing it to every single downloader out there?)
But, hey, you paid for the game, I say you should be able to access all of its content, regardless of your playing skill.
If you think of content as just the graphics, or the levels, then I suppose this lets you access all the content. But if you think of content as the gameplay, then rather than letting you access it, this is taking it away from you (if you let it of course).
I certainly understand the sentiment though. I've seen enough games with ridiculous difficulty spikes (usually when a boss appears) where I used cheats as well - or simply gave up.
What if you're an artist but only want to create art and not tour all over the place just to make money? I realise that most musicians seem to like doing concerts, but what if that's not what you want to do and just want to record albums?
What if you are a programmer but only want to work on things that actually interest you? I realize that most programmers enjoy sitting in cubicles all day long... Wait, there's something wrong here.
Being an artist doesn't exempt you from having to work for your money. And if your chosen line of work provides too little income, you will have to do something else to supplement it.
I've lost my smell to nasal polyps and chronic sinusitis years ago, it's a little disappointing sometimes but sometimes it's nice not having to smell awful things.
I've heard that when you can't smell you can't taste, which is bullshit. I can't tell the difference between some things but I do very much have a vivid sense of taste still.
And you know that "You lose one sense you gain another" thing? It doesn't work with smell.
Same here. I had an operation two years ago, and it certainly helped unblock my nose, but my sense of smell hasn't returned. The weird thing is that I do have occasional flashes where I can suddenly smell perfectly fine, but it never lasts more than a few seconds. And like you, I don't believe my sense of taste is affected in any way.
Homeopathic quackery is infamous and justly ridiculed for the fact that its 'remedies' contain exactly no active ingredients and - unsurprisingly - also have exactly no biological effects. This zinc based stuff is obviously not homeopathic.
The thing I don't get is this: why doesn't it count as a "homeopathic remedy" when you drink a glass of normal water? I mean, sure, nobody went out of his way to put half a zinc molecule in my glass of water, but surely my water molecules were at least in the neighbourhood of a zinc molecule at some point during their long existance? In other words, what makes that little bottle with homeopathic water so special over plain tap water?
The EU spends way more than that on agricultural subsidies every single year. I'm probably a cultural barbarian, but I happen to think that developing fusion, even if it will take a while, is more important than subsidising French wine.
As for all those "fusion will always be 50 years away" remarks: that's what happens if you never start. ITER could have started a decade ago, if everyone hadn't been fighting over where to build it. Fusion would be ten years closer if we had somehow managed to select a piece of ground somewhere in a reasonable amount of time.
Your argument is certainly supported very strongly by the low number of subscribers that iTunes has. Ever after they sold that 49th song, they haven't been able to sell anything else because of all those concerns you listed. Really, I think you are onto something here with your complaints...
The state banked put all their eggs in the auto industry basked and can't figure out where they went wrong.
Don't you see? On those gravel roads you will *need* a big 4x4 to be able to drive. By reducing road quality she intends to stimulate the car industry, thus solving two financial problems in one go. It's a masterstroke!
In other news, inability to maintain their network of roads (in the less important provinces, of course) was one of the signs of the roman empire falling...
Before Iran had an Islamic theocracy, Iran had a brutal (but pro-US) right-wing dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Iran had 2,500 years of monarchy before the Islamic revolution in 1979. Iran has never had anything like a democracy.
Commonly established history has it that Iran was a democracy from 1951 to 1953, when the first democratically elected leader in ***9000 years*** was overthrown by the americans because he nationalized the oil industry. source. In case you guys are wondering where the current tension between Iran and the US comes from, this is at least part of the answer...
As to the matter at hand: would it be possible to make a torrent-like point to point system for exchanging small messages? It would have to feature some sort of encryption, and be able to hide as something else (illegal downloads of movies would be a good candidate). Making it is not really a big problem, but is there enough "internet" left working that something like this might work?
And people wonder why geeks are reputed to have bad communication skills.
If you are also suffering from such a reputation, here's an idea on how to improve things: when someone asks a serious question don't just say "no" without stating any reasons or even looking up from your keyboard. Instead, look up from your keyboard (*and* stop typing!), look thoughtfully to the person asking the question, and begin with "that's a pretty interesting question. But in my opinion, that's not the case, because..." And then you provide a list of reasons.
Sure, you waste time when talking to "idiots" like this. But you will find that people will like you a lot more, and start to accept you as a human being as well. And who knows, maybe one day it will lead to an encounter with the opposite sex.
See? You really *can* learn useful things on slashdot!
Moonlight supports Silverlight 1. Support for Silverlight 2 is in "preview".
Thus far the Moonlight project is "compatible" enough to tell you your version of Silverlight is out of date, and please upgrade.
Silverlight 1 and 2 are much more different than 2 and 3. The Mono development team has explain that implementing the full CLR for Moonlight 2 is one of the largest stages of the development process. For instance, Moonlight 2 Preview already has many Silverlight 3 features implemented. So, once Moonlight 2 is out, it will not be long before Moonlight 3.
Furthermore, I consider this the best pro-developer free software rant explaining the pros of mono in general:
And as soon as Moonlight catches up with Silverlight 2, Microsoft will have Silverlight 4 out. Let's face it, this is _exactly_ what everybody was predicting back when Moonlight started: endlessly running after Microsoft but never catching up, a perpetual existence as a "nice, but not useful for anything current" piece of software.
Slashdot Mirror
So? You just leave the checkbox on "hide", no worries.
About 999 times out of 1000, I'm sitting in an environment (either at home or in the office) where I really don't care if anyone sees my password. For that one time where I do care, maybe we can have a checkbox for making the password invisible while we type.
The problem with security is really that once you start down that path, nothing is ever enough - at least not to the security gestapo (motto: "our work ain't done until you can't do yours"). Stellar example: the FTP at work is configured to have a ~10s delay after logging in, "to stop the evil h4x0rz". It's driving me nuts, so I suggested accepting the first connection without any delay, and then introducing a delay for each following connection if it occurs within 10s. That way hardly anyone will be bothered by the delay, but the h4x0rz will still be unable to flood the server with their evil password-attempting ways. But nooo, that was completely unacceptable! Because it would be INSECURE! Only a long delay guarantees security!
Why would it have anything to do with clustering? It's called CLUTTER. It should be making a mess. And really, I can mess up my desktop enough on my own.
Right, I see. In my defense, I have been sitting home with a fever for the last two days and I did go to bed right after posting that. I do feel better now though, thanks ;-)
I still think a screenshot, even if it is just a proof of concept, would have been nice. Cairo is a lower-level API as well, and it certainly has screenshots on its website...
Would it really kill them to stick a screenshot in there, or even better, a movie? Especially since this is, you know, a graphical application?
This really is a common failing of too many open source applications. Not only are we supposed to guess that "cluster" has nothing to do with clustering in any shape or form, but its graphical prowess, its entire reason for being, must be guessed at by nothing more than a wall of text.
Well, maybe I shouldn't complain. They do actually tell us what it is supposed to do, right there on the front page...
Taxing ISPs specifically, seems ass-backwards. If you're going to subsidize an outdated industry (which, hey, is done all over the place) why not fund it out of tax revenue generally, rather than putting a brake specifically on the internet? How about a new tax on cigarettes? :-)
I have two more questions:
1. Every day, 3 or 4 completely free newspapers are being spread in every trainstation (and many other places) here in the Netherlands. If "news cannot be free", as the commission claims, does this mean we need to raise an extra public transportation tax to compensate for this free news as well?
2. If the newspapers are being hurt so badly by free news available on the internet, why do they put their own content on the internet? And given that this pain is apparently self-inflicted, why would everybody need to pay for it?
The claim that "news cannot be free" is bogus: news on the internet is paid for by advertising. It is hard to believe that a website such as nu.nl would exist for so long without any revenue. The existence of free newspapers furthermore proves that paid subscriptions are not a necessity for running a newspaper.
Also, the claim that quality journalism is a necessity for democracy is laughable. Well, actually it isn't - it's just that I see too many cut'n'paste jobs of ANP news in too many newspapers every day. This quality investigative journalism of which they speak seems to be a mythological ideal, rather than reality.
Hopefully, these bastards will kill themselves without killing others, making the road safer for everyone else.
Would be nice, but what if they're driving SUVs? Then they kill others with little harm to themselves.
Summary executions on the side of the road. It is the only way to be sure...
Life is like Unix and you are the superuser. With that comes the power to 'rm -rf' the system.. intentionally or not.
--iamnotayam
Nobody really cares if the driver kills himself while being terminally stupid. The problem is that they tend to take other people with them, people who did not have any part in their idiot choices. Your right to watch TV while driving does not override other people's right to live.
Next time you are in Europe look at how many Disney characters are used all over the place..
Err... Pretty much none? Do you have a specific country in mind for this? Because it certainly isn't happening where I live...
Besides, aren't the disney characters protected by trademark?
I've been having a tough time finding a reasonably qualified programmer from straight out of college. I'm not looking for senior database developers, just people who can solve basic logic skills and... write software!
So how does one "solve basic logic skills" then? What's "solving a skill" supposed to mean anyway?
How *does* one get a Masters Degree in Information Science without being able to answer basic questions like this? Supposedly, the job I'm offering is why they went to school, but they aren't even qualified to begin. So what did they do for 6 years?
If you are hiring a welder, he'd better know how to weld. If you hire a doctor, he'd better have a good working knowledge of medicine.
Why can't we expect to hire fresh programmers who know how to... program?
While I agree that anyone with a university title for computer science should at least have some basic ability in actually writing code, I think you misunderstand what computer science is all about. It is simply not intended as vocational training for programmers. Of course, a student with any sense at all would make sure he is at least employable outside academia, but the point of a computer science study is not to become a programmer.
The problem with a state run insurance plan is that that the state has never made anything more efficient. Ever. It's really astounding to me that people continually propose government takeovers of things.
Companies want to offer minimalist service for the highest price they can get away with. Eliminating waste is not on their agenda; maximising profit is. And the profit does not flow back to the people that pay for the healthcare, it disappears into the pockets of the owners of the company.
Besides, your argument is disingenious in other ways as well: how often does the state take over an industry? The answer is "hardly ever": the state steps in as an enabler (to start a service when private industry cannot do it, such as space travel in the sixties, or to stop industries from falling over entirely, such as the banks recently). Efficiency has nothing to do with it, it is about getting the service at all. And for many people in the US, that's the choice being discussed: should they have access to health care at all? I take it you are one of the lucky ones who can afford to pay for healthcare. Do you also feel that less lucky people should just die on the side of the road simply for being poor?
The way to reduce health care costs is to find waste in the system and eliminate them through process improvement. Everything else is a shell game.
Private companies taking as much as they can and making massive profits isn't a form of waste to you?
When you realise that the minimum statutory penalty for copying a CD is higher than the maximum penalty for stealing the CD, you see quite how messed up copyright law has become.
You steal a CD from WalMart.
Retail value $20.
You upload the rip to 15 million of your closest friends on the P2P nets.
The day you received the subpoena it was still being read out of your shared files folder.
Retail value $1 per track at iTunes.
Plus whatever punitive damages seem appropriate for the unlicensed wholesale distribution.
Did she personally manage to get a share ratio of 15000000 : 1? Or did other people in fact help achieving the distribution? If so, why is she taking the fall for this alone? And does that mean that the songs really are free for distribution now, since they have been fully paid for by her? (i.e. how can anyone else ever be convicted of distributing these songs, considering that it is already legally established that she is the party that was guilty of distributing it to every single downloader out there?)
But, hey, you paid for the game, I say you should be able to access all of its content, regardless of your playing skill.
If you think of content as just the graphics, or the levels, then I suppose this lets you access all the content. But if you think of content as the gameplay, then rather than letting you access it, this is taking it away from you (if you let it of course).
I certainly understand the sentiment though. I've seen enough games with ridiculous difficulty spikes (usually when a boss appears) where I used cheats as well - or simply gave up.
The thing I don't get is this: why doesn't it count as a "homeopathic remedy" when you drink a glass of normal water?
Duh, because the uncontrolled mixing disrupted the natural vibration flow and depolarized the energy matrix. That's elementary, really.
(Funny how similar technobabble and homeobabble are).
I wish I knew if you were kidding or not... ;-)
What if you're an artist but only want to create art and not tour all over the place just to make money? I realise that most musicians seem to like doing concerts, but what if that's not what you want to do and just want to record albums?
What if you are a programmer but only want to work on things that actually interest you? I realize that most programmers enjoy sitting in cubicles all day long... Wait, there's something wrong here.
Being an artist doesn't exempt you from having to work for your money. And if your chosen line of work provides too little income, you will have to do something else to supplement it.
I've lost my smell to nasal polyps and chronic sinusitis years ago, it's a little disappointing sometimes but sometimes it's nice not having to smell awful things.
I've heard that when you can't smell you can't taste, which is bullshit. I can't tell the difference between some things but I do very much have a vivid sense of taste still.
And you know that "You lose one sense you gain another" thing? It doesn't work with smell.
Same here. I had an operation two years ago, and it certainly helped unblock my nose, but my sense of smell hasn't returned. The weird thing is that I do have occasional flashes where I can suddenly smell perfectly fine, but it never lasts more than a few seconds. And like you, I don't believe my sense of taste is affected in any way.
Homeopathic quackery is infamous and justly ridiculed for the fact that its 'remedies' contain exactly no active ingredients and - unsurprisingly - also have exactly no biological effects. This zinc based stuff is obviously not homeopathic.
The thing I don't get is this: why doesn't it count as a "homeopathic remedy" when you drink a glass of normal water? I mean, sure, nobody went out of his way to put half a zinc molecule in my glass of water, but surely my water molecules were at least in the neighbourhood of a zinc molecule at some point during their long existance? In other words, what makes that little bottle with homeopathic water so special over plain tap water?
The EU spends way more than that on agricultural subsidies every single year. I'm probably a cultural barbarian, but I happen to think that developing fusion, even if it will take a while, is more important than subsidising French wine.
As for all those "fusion will always be 50 years away" remarks: that's what happens if you never start. ITER could have started a decade ago, if everyone hadn't been fighting over where to build it. Fusion would be ten years closer if we had somehow managed to select a piece of ground somewhere in a reasonable amount of time.
What's with the weird
layout
of the article?
How do they store so much data into PostgreSQL? I thought it had a limit of 32TB per table, so are they using some sort of table partitioning scheme?
Your argument is certainly supported very strongly by the low number of subscribers that iTunes has. Ever after they sold that 49th song, they haven't been able to sell anything else because of all those concerns you listed. Really, I think you are onto something here with your complaints...
The state banked put all their eggs in the auto industry basked and can't figure out where they went wrong.
Don't you see? On those gravel roads you will *need* a big 4x4 to be able to drive. By reducing road quality she intends to stimulate the car industry, thus solving two financial problems in one go. It's a masterstroke!
In other news, inability to maintain their network of roads (in the less important provinces, of course) was one of the signs of the roman empire falling...
Before Iran had an Islamic theocracy, Iran had a brutal (but pro-US) right-wing dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Iran had 2,500 years of monarchy before the Islamic revolution in 1979. Iran has never had anything like a democracy.
Commonly established history has it that Iran was a democracy from 1951 to 1953, when the first democratically elected leader in ***9000 years*** was overthrown by the americans because he nationalized the oil industry. source. In case you guys are wondering where the current tension between Iran and the US comes from, this is at least part of the answer...
As to the matter at hand: would it be possible to make a torrent-like point to point system for exchanging small messages? It would have to feature some sort of encryption, and be able to hide as something else (illegal downloads of movies would be a good candidate). Making it is not really a big problem, but is there enough "internet" left working that something like this might work?
Amazing! Isn't there anything the Playstation 3 cannot do? ;-)
No.
Discussion over, everyone go home.
And people wonder why geeks are reputed to have bad communication skills.
If you are also suffering from such a reputation, here's an idea on how to improve things: when someone asks a serious question don't just say "no" without stating any reasons or even looking up from your keyboard. Instead, look up from your keyboard (*and* stop typing!), look thoughtfully to the person asking the question, and begin with "that's a pretty interesting question. But in my opinion, that's not the case, because ..." And then you provide a list of reasons.
Sure, you waste time when talking to "idiots" like this. But you will find that people will like you a lot more, and start to accept you as a human being as well. And who knows, maybe one day it will lead to an encounter with the opposite sex.
See? You really *can* learn useful things on slashdot!
Moonlight supports Silverlight 1. Support for Silverlight 2 is in "preview".
Thus far the Moonlight project is "compatible" enough to tell you your version of Silverlight is out of date, and please upgrade.
Silverlight 1 and 2 are much more different than 2 and 3. The Mono development team has explain that implementing the full CLR for Moonlight 2 is one of the largest stages of the development process. For instance, Moonlight 2 Preview already has many Silverlight 3 features implemented. So, once Moonlight 2 is out, it will not be long before Moonlight 3.
Furthermore, I consider this the best pro-developer free software rant explaining the pros of mono in general:
http://www2.apebox.org/wordpress/rants/124/
And as soon as Moonlight catches up with Silverlight 2, Microsoft will have Silverlight 4 out. Let's face it, this is _exactly_ what everybody was predicting back when Moonlight started: endlessly running after Microsoft but never catching up, a perpetual existence as a "nice, but not useful for anything current" piece of software.