There are just some things that we all have to do, even if they are "hard." So may I suggest that instead of complaining that passwords are too hard to remember, perhaps you could try using a couple of tools.
1. Use something like password safe for all those "useless" passwords. You know, the ones for Yahoo, Google, Slashdot, etc
Spoken like an ivory-tower admin with people skills worse than an angry badger. Some problems with that attitude:
1. While you think your system is special, it's not to us. Yours is one of many systems for which we have to remember passwords.
2. Systems that require such moronically complex passwords also require them to be changed. They also use slightly different rules so that passwords can't be exactly re-used. End result is that I've got about 40 passwords or their variants in recent use. No way I'm remembering that, and I'm smart. You can forget about the secretary.
3. Admins that set up such systems generally forbid the use of password keychains.
End result? At work, I have to remember passwords for about 8-10 systems, all with different rules and password expiration schedules. Naturally, each will lock you out after 3 tries. So what I generally have to do is, each time I've gone more than a week without using a particular system, I get the IT guy to reset the password. Only because I'm one of the good guys, I don't write them down. But I've been sorely tempted.
You can either learn to work with people, or you can keep making unusable edicts that make it impossible for people to follow them. Just know that once you cross the "sticky note" threshold - and you appear to be well over it - your system is far more easily compromised than if you had implemented a sensible security policy in the first place.
What admins usually forget is that security is inherently practical, not theoretical. Hackers will always focus on the weakest part of any secure system, not the strongest. Making it take 100 days instead of 10 to crack a password file doesn't accomplish anything, because they'll move on to another exploit. All you'll do is piss off your users and make it a lot more likely that passwords get written down. As Mitnick showed, the weakest link is usually human, and your approach makes that link far weaker.
Declaring revenue information proprietary would only make sense if their business model was based on lawsuits.
And that's just preposterous.;)
One caveat (in seriousness) - don't assume that they're trying to keep this information away from defendants. It's quite possible they would like to keep it away from the artists.
True, but with god mode and unlimitted ammo you could chose exactly how you wanted to complete the parts that were too difficult and you could have fun sandboxing around the game world unafraid of death. With this function, you're effectively skipping it. I'd much rather just be given cheat codes and left to my own devices than to just have the character run the course himself.
Totally agree - as I mentioned, I prefer the ineractive method of having it help me beat the game, rather than just watching the game. I guess my point is that this isn't anything new, and doesn't really justify the sweeping conclusions that some of the posters have claimed. Bottom line is, games have always been too hard for some of the people playing them, and people have always used other means of getting past obstacles if possible
This is no different than old-school games (ie, the ones I played growing up) like Wolfenstein or Doom, each of which had a "God mode" which everybody knew. Those codes would give you invulnerability and/or unlimited ammo.
Sometimes it was fun just to use them and just go berserk, but one of the main uses of them was to get through portions of the game that you simply couldn't beat. I used them occasionally when I was just unable to beat some monster. As such, those codes (which have been used in many games by many gamers) are no different than the current feature in Mario, except that it's more interactive.
I've favored games that automatically level the difficulty level so the user still does all the action rather than watching it. That's easier with combat style games than it is for platform-style games. Maybe they need ways of making the *physics* more forgiving as well - say make Mario jump farther/higher, have something rescue you if you fall, etc.
Nope. That's what they say, but I doubt it's ever been true. That "I" in there stands for "industry". In this case, the acronym is completely accurate. The association serves the industry, not the artists.
For some dumb reason University of Colorado at Boulder is called CU Boulder, not UC Boulder. I just moved to Boulder and get corrected all the time by people.
It's called Colorado University, not the University of Colorado, so it would be kind of dumb to flip the acronym. That and you'd create a bit of confusion with the massive University of California system, which goes by UC.
Still, accuser bears the burden of proof. Unless something change there as well when I wasn't looking.
Yes, but proof requires evidence, and evidence requires discovery. Otherwise if you require proof of culpability to simply discover evidence, you get circular.
If she is innocent until proven guilty - why does she have to give up her hard-drive and "prove" her innocence? Nobody is forced to prove innocence. The RIAA should be given the challenge, without her hard drive, of proving guilt./shrug (IE: external records, etc.)
First, this isn't a criminal trial. It's civil, so there's no concept of "innocence." So they only have to show that a preponderance of the evidence shows that she committed the acts in question. The burden of proof still lies with the plaintiff, but to show a preponderance of evidence, they still need *access* to the evidence.
RIAA shenanigans aside, this is how the justice system basically works: if you have some evidence, the judge will let you request other evidence that may be related to help make your case. Here, given the fact that an IP address linked to her was observed engaging in possibly illegal behavior, it's reasonable to request access to the hard drive to determine whether her computer was involved. Most people (and probably any judge) would see that as reasonable. On the other hand, if they requested a search of her car (for instance), that would probably get tossed because it's unlikely to be relevant.
What you're basically suggesting is that search warrants and discovery be made illegal. If that happened, lots of extremely illegal behavior would be impossible to prove. Enron comes to mind initially.
As always, I'm not a lawyer, I just play one in my mind.
To echo what Andy said, folks with CP may be one such example. My nephew has it - he can't speak pretty much at all, and his motor control isn't good either. But he's pretty danged smart. He has some sort of specialized computer, but I think it has dedicated software. I have tried looking for something to help him get into programming (his dream is to be a video games programmer), but I've turned up very little.
If you're playing with a real deck, at a real casino.
Who knows whats in the virtual deck you're playing with?
Doesn't matter. Your opponents are still other players. Someone always wins every hand - the house never "wins". The house just takes a rake out of every pot.
Now, you could theorize that the house occasionally might grab more rake than it is due, but that would be easy to determine. The only other means of obvious fraud would be for the house to create a 'shill' player.
Your real fear should be collusion between multiple accounts created by the same person or a group of people acting together. That happens all the time.
You are clueless and do not belong in a cockpit (not that I believe for a second that you actually are a pilot)
That 'whoosh' you hear is the failure of the parent poster's troll detection system. The troll detection system maintains level posting attitude for turbulent articles. CmdrTaco speculates that a similar troll sensor failure resulted in catastrophic Karma loss that may have contributed to the crash of Flight 447. Slashdot recommends that future posters be immediately retrofitted with properly functioning troll sensors.
So the issue is that a new model has been released and only people who are eligible for a new phone can get it at a discount? Apple never should have caved on the iphone price change retroactivity, now they can't improve anything without the existing users demanding free upgrades for life.
Yup. All you get by caving in to pressure is more pressure. I'd expound, but I'd fail at Godwin.;)
I know the iPhone crowd is somewhat enriched in whiny emos and self-entitled types (before anyone flames, I said *enriched*, not that it describes all of them), but still - what other community would react with such moral outrage that they have to actually live up to their contract? Under what scenario did they think they would be eligible for a *subsidized* upgrade for no reason?
The winning strategy for Apple/AT&T is to charge them $20 to switch phones, put their contract back to two years, and charge them the new subscriber price plus the pro-rated portion of the discount on their remaining contract. So if they've been under contract for a year out of the two, give them half the discount, add $20 to switch the service, and put them back at a year. The consumer gets a fair deal and AT&T and Apple make money.
More on topic though, it should be noted in Japan, 'rape' is considered a popular fetish (in fact I'd argue *most* hentai/doujinshi depict rape scenes), underaged school girls feature in the majority of them too, and lolicon (pre-pubescant girls) are fairly prevelant in hentai/doujinshi as well. It just isn't considered as 'bad' to have that kind of fetish. Hell, even in real life, I've read of problems with middle aged businessmen sustaining long term relationships with young underaged girls.
Yeah, all of the above is pretty fucked up. I kind of steer clear of any society in which rape is mainstream. That and the obsession with tentacles. Weird.
I really hate stereotyping an entire nation, but most of what I learn about Japan makes me think "man, those fuckers are *nuts*!". It's really the only country on earth where I could see Caligula fitting in. Somebody tell me that rape porn isn't totally mainstream over there, I'll feel better about our Japanese friends.
For extra points, do a "12 days of Christmas" thing with 6 people (or get 6 more and do it to 7 people). Send them variants on rickroll every day themed to the song. Each day after the first, the card should swear it's not a rickroll. But, of course, it is.
"...on the 11th day of christmas, this crazy guy gave to me, 11 pipers piping NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP!..."
Can you imagine a Rickroll on bagpipes? That would be one awesome 11th day of Christmas. And then, for the grand finale, a 20-minute rickroll drum solo on the 12th day.
Artists already have the ability to self distribute digital copies. So what is the big deal ?
Amazon. Now it's being sold through a site (Amazon) that people actually go to, as opposed to some no-name. Another difference is that Amazon has the money to possibly decide "You know what? We want to become the new music cartel, which we will do by actually treating musicians well." If bands get the idea that Amazon could actually market them, that might be more attractive than a label contract. What bands have to do is decide that long-term freedom and profitability are better than the lure of the advance they'll get from the label.
You're probably right that the CD itself is less important than the distribution, but if this works I expect they'll figure that out.
We'll see how it plays out, but if they start using their massive data mining capabilities to sell new bands to people the same way they sell new books...seriously, this could get interesting.
I could legitimately see this as being the beginning of the end for the RIAA, and I've never thought that before. It makes sense that it would take a big media vendor with a well-established user community, combining manufacturing with sales.
This would be fantastic if I were a musician. No inventory. No worrying about manufacturnig. And you get a percentage of revenue that you won't see anywhere else. The general Amazon community will make marketing a *lot* easier than it would be otherwise. All in all, it seems to make the RIAA meaningless.
I really think indie bands might be able to make this work. I'm looking forward to shopping for music on this and know the RIAA ain't getting a dime.
There's a case to be made that raising the CAFE won't save oil or reduce greenhouse gases.
The link is really light on the math. In most systems that obey similar behavior, demand does increase, but the increase in demand does not completely erase the benefit of the increase in efficiency. In this case it can't completely erase the benefit, because if it did the end result would be a net increase in the price - and that was the original basis for the argument, that the drop in price would spur consumption. So the increase in demand has to fall short of that point.
So in the end, demand will be somewhere higher than it is now, and the price somewhat lower, all else being equal. Where on the supply/demand curve things ultimately lie will depend on the relative elasticity of supply vs. elasticity of demand.
the people who would make good politicians - that is, the people who actually know things about relevant issues - are drawn to professions that would actually earn real money.
Completely agree. And consider those who actually can make money at a "real" profession but choose to slog their way up the political ladder - what kind of narcissistic SOB does it take to do that?
Slashdot Mirror
There are just some things that we all have to do, even if they are "hard." So may I suggest that instead of complaining that passwords are too hard to remember, perhaps you could try using a couple of tools. 1. Use something like password safe for all those "useless" passwords. You know, the ones for Yahoo, Google, Slashdot, etc
Spoken like an ivory-tower admin with people skills worse than an angry badger. Some problems with that attitude:
1. While you think your system is special, it's not to us. Yours is one of many systems for which we have to remember passwords.
2. Systems that require such moronically complex passwords also require them to be changed. They also use slightly different rules so that passwords can't be exactly re-used. End result is that I've got about 40 passwords or their variants in recent use. No way I'm remembering that, and I'm smart. You can forget about the secretary.
3. Admins that set up such systems generally forbid the use of password keychains.
End result? At work, I have to remember passwords for about 8-10 systems, all with different rules and password expiration schedules. Naturally, each will lock you out after 3 tries. So what I generally have to do is, each time I've gone more than a week without using a particular system, I get the IT guy to reset the password. Only because I'm one of the good guys, I don't write them down. But I've been sorely tempted.
You can either learn to work with people, or you can keep making unusable edicts that make it impossible for people to follow them. Just know that once you cross the "sticky note" threshold - and you appear to be well over it - your system is far more easily compromised than if you had implemented a sensible security policy in the first place.
What admins usually forget is that security is inherently practical, not theoretical. Hackers will always focus on the weakest part of any secure system, not the strongest. Making it take 100 days instead of 10 to crack a password file doesn't accomplish anything, because they'll move on to another exploit. All you'll do is piss off your users and make it a lot more likely that passwords get written down. As Mitnick showed, the weakest link is usually human, and your approach makes that link far weaker.
Declaring revenue information proprietary would only make sense if their business model was based on lawsuits.
And that's just preposterous. ;)
One caveat (in seriousness) - don't assume that they're trying to keep this information away from defendants. It's quite possible they would like to keep it away from the artists.
True, but with god mode and unlimitted ammo you could chose exactly how you wanted to complete the parts that were too difficult and you could have fun sandboxing around the game world unafraid of death. With this function, you're effectively skipping it. I'd much rather just be given cheat codes and left to my own devices than to just have the character run the course himself.
Totally agree - as I mentioned, I prefer the ineractive method of having it help me beat the game, rather than just watching the game. I guess my point is that this isn't anything new, and doesn't really justify the sweeping conclusions that some of the posters have claimed. Bottom line is, games have always been too hard for some of the people playing them, and people have always used other means of getting past obstacles if possible
This is no different than old-school games (ie, the ones I played growing up) like Wolfenstein or Doom, each of which had a "God mode" which everybody knew. Those codes would give you invulnerability and/or unlimited ammo.
Sometimes it was fun just to use them and just go berserk, but one of the main uses of them was to get through portions of the game that you simply couldn't beat. I used them occasionally when I was just unable to beat some monster. As such, those codes (which have been used in many games by many gamers) are no different than the current feature in Mario, except that it's more interactive.
I've favored games that automatically level the difficulty level so the user still does all the action rather than watching it. That's easier with combat style games than it is for platform-style games. Maybe they need ways of making the *physics* more forgiving as well - say make Mario jump farther/higher, have something rescue you if you fall, etc.
The RIAA purpose is to protect the artists.
Nope. That's what they say, but I doubt it's ever been true. That "I" in there stands for "industry". In this case, the acronym is completely accurate. The association serves the industry, not the artists.
For some dumb reason University of Colorado at Boulder is called CU Boulder, not UC Boulder. I just moved to Boulder and get corrected all the time by people.
It's called Colorado University, not the University of Colorado, so it would be kind of dumb to flip the acronym. That and you'd create a bit of confusion with the massive University of California system, which goes by UC.
Also, this isn't a big deal. Calm down.
Still, accuser bears the burden of proof. Unless something change there as well when I wasn't looking.
Yes, but proof requires evidence, and evidence requires discovery. Otherwise if you require proof of culpability to simply discover evidence, you get circular.
If she is innocent until proven guilty - why does she have to give up her hard-drive and "prove" her innocence? Nobody is forced to prove innocence. The RIAA should be given the challenge, without her hard drive, of proving guilt. /shrug (IE: external records, etc.)
First, this isn't a criminal trial. It's civil, so there's no concept of "innocence." So they only have to show that a preponderance of the evidence shows that she committed the acts in question. The burden of proof still lies with the plaintiff, but to show a preponderance of evidence, they still need *access* to the evidence.
RIAA shenanigans aside, this is how the justice system basically works: if you have some evidence, the judge will let you request other evidence that may be related to help make your case. Here, given the fact that an IP address linked to her was observed engaging in possibly illegal behavior, it's reasonable to request access to the hard drive to determine whether her computer was involved. Most people (and probably any judge) would see that as reasonable. On the other hand, if they requested a search of her car (for instance), that would probably get tossed because it's unlikely to be relevant.
What you're basically suggesting is that search warrants and discovery be made illegal. If that happened, lots of extremely illegal behavior would be impossible to prove. Enron comes to mind initially.
As always, I'm not a lawyer, I just play one in my mind.
What fraction of disabled geeks also can't speak?
To echo what Andy said, folks with CP may be one such example. My nephew has it - he can't speak pretty much at all, and his motor control isn't good either. But he's pretty danged smart. He has some sort of specialized computer, but I think it has dedicated software. I have tried looking for something to help him get into programming (his dream is to be a video games programmer), but I've turned up very little.
So yeah, there is a pretty sizeable need there.
If you're playing with a real deck, at a real casino. Who knows whats in the virtual deck you're playing with?
Doesn't matter. Your opponents are still other players. Someone always wins every hand - the house never "wins". The house just takes a rake out of every pot.
Now, you could theorize that the house occasionally might grab more rake than it is due, but that would be easy to determine. The only other means of obvious fraud would be for the house to create a 'shill' player.
Your real fear should be collusion between multiple accounts created by the same person or a group of people acting together. That happens all the time.
It's when you reply to a string of earlier messages and place your reply on top, so that whoever reads will have no idea of the context.
What's top posting?
Let's all go into comp.lang.c and start top posting to threads. They LOVE IT when you do that.
Should I do this instead?
What's top posting?
Let's all go into comp.lang.c and start top posting to threads. They LOVE IT when you do that.
You are clueless and do not belong in a cockpit (not that I believe for a second that you actually are a pilot)
That 'whoosh' you hear is the failure of the parent poster's troll detection system. The troll detection system maintains level posting attitude for turbulent articles. CmdrTaco speculates that a similar troll sensor failure resulted in catastrophic Karma loss that may have contributed to the crash of Flight 447. Slashdot recommends that future posters be immediately retrofitted with properly functioning troll sensors.
How fond Americans are of reductionist dualities that are unhelpful, misleading and frequently downright dangerous
I'm hoping that was an attempt at irony there, making the same sort of baseless generalizations that you're criticizing in the OP.
So the issue is that a new model has been released and only people who are eligible for a new phone can get it at a discount? Apple never should have caved on the iphone price change retroactivity, now they can't improve anything without the existing users demanding free upgrades for life.
Yup. All you get by caving in to pressure is more pressure. I'd expound, but I'd fail at Godwin. ;)
I know the iPhone crowd is somewhat enriched in whiny emos and self-entitled types (before anyone flames, I said *enriched*, not that it describes all of them), but still - what other community would react with such moral outrage that they have to actually live up to their contract? Under what scenario did they think they would be eligible for a *subsidized* upgrade for no reason?
The winning strategy for Apple/AT&T is to charge them $20 to switch phones, put their contract back to two years, and charge them the new subscriber price plus the pro-rated portion of the discount on their remaining contract. So if they've been under contract for a year out of the two, give them half the discount, add $20 to switch the service, and put them back at a year. The consumer gets a fair deal and AT&T and Apple make money.
More on topic though, it should be noted in Japan, 'rape' is considered a popular fetish (in fact I'd argue *most* hentai/doujinshi depict rape scenes), underaged school girls feature in the majority of them too, and lolicon (pre-pubescant girls) are fairly prevelant in hentai/doujinshi as well. It just isn't considered as 'bad' to have that kind of fetish. Hell, even in real life, I've read of problems with middle aged businessmen sustaining long term relationships with young underaged girls.
Yeah, all of the above is pretty fucked up. I kind of steer clear of any society in which rape is mainstream. That and the obsession with tentacles. Weird.
I really hate stereotyping an entire nation, but most of what I learn about Japan makes me think "man, those fuckers are *nuts*!". It's really the only country on earth where I could see Caligula fitting in. Somebody tell me that rape porn isn't totally mainstream over there, I'll feel better about our Japanese friends.
super-hippies
Would those be hippies who wear capes made out of hemp? Some henna body art, perhaps? Do they have powers, like creating a force-shield of stink?
Rick Roll on every one.
Winner winner chicken dinner!
For extra points, do a "12 days of Christmas" thing with 6 people (or get 6 more and do it to 7 people). Send them variants on rickroll every day themed to the song. Each day after the first, the card should swear it's not a rickroll. But, of course, it is.
"...on the 11th day of christmas, this crazy guy gave to me, 11 pipers piping NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP!..."
Can you imagine a Rickroll on bagpipes? That would be one awesome 11th day of Christmas. And then, for the grand finale, a 20-minute rickroll drum solo on the 12th day.
You might have no friends left, but damn. Funny.
'nuff said.
Artists already have the ability to self distribute digital copies. So what is the big deal ?
Amazon. Now it's being sold through a site (Amazon) that people actually go to, as opposed to some no-name. Another difference is that Amazon has the money to possibly decide "You know what? We want to become the new music cartel, which we will do by actually treating musicians well." If bands get the idea that Amazon could actually market them, that might be more attractive than a label contract. What bands have to do is decide that long-term freedom and profitability are better than the lure of the advance they'll get from the label.
You're probably right that the CD itself is less important than the distribution, but if this works I expect they'll figure that out.
We'll see how it plays out, but if they start using their massive data mining capabilities to sell new bands to people the same way they sell new books...seriously, this could get interesting.
I could legitimately see this as being the beginning of the end for the RIAA, and I've never thought that before. It makes sense that it would take a big media vendor with a well-established user community, combining manufacturing with sales.
This would be fantastic if I were a musician. No inventory. No worrying about manufacturnig. And you get a percentage of revenue that you won't see anywhere else. The general Amazon community will make marketing a *lot* easier than it would be otherwise. All in all, it seems to make the RIAA meaningless. I really think indie bands might be able to make this work. I'm looking forward to shopping for music on this and know the RIAA ain't getting a dime.
Just tell me which one to use for the salad, so my ignorance doesn't trip me up like it did with that bidet that one time.
Are you talking about those flavored water fountains they have in bathrooms in France?
There's a case to be made that raising the CAFE won't save oil or reduce greenhouse gases.
The link is really light on the math. In most systems that obey similar behavior, demand does increase, but the increase in demand does not completely erase the benefit of the increase in efficiency. In this case it can't completely erase the benefit, because if it did the end result would be a net increase in the price - and that was the original basis for the argument, that the drop in price would spur consumption. So the increase in demand has to fall short of that point.
So in the end, demand will be somewhere higher than it is now, and the price somewhat lower, all else being equal. Where on the supply/demand curve things ultimately lie will depend on the relative elasticity of supply vs. elasticity of demand.
Squeeze it too hard, and what you have is not so much a cow as a pile of hamburger...
That's OK, I'd trade my piece of shit Vista install for a good hamburger. In-N-Out would be great, or maybe Five Guys.
the people who would make good politicians - that is, the people who actually know things about relevant issues - are drawn to professions that would actually earn real money.
Completely agree. And consider those who actually can make money at a "real" profession but choose to slog their way up the political ladder - what kind of narcissistic SOB does it take to do that?