Investing $250M per square mile in American solar production would have actually secured America, especially from the oil terrorists, at home and abroad.
Oil has much less to do with energy - we can already get much cheaper energy from atomic, hydroelectric and even coal plants. Oil means high energy in a small mass, gasoline, and no amount of solar energy research could replace gasoline, unless you make all your driving in the sun.
because without a verifiable paper trail... you can never be certain when duplicate events can occur.
You are wrong. You can never be certain of anything. Your paper trail can be counterfeited or destroyed. Repressive governments used to steal elections long before e-voting came along. There's nothing inherently secure about paper voting, except that's been around for long, and people are used to it. When a single programmer can steal the elections, it's because the electronic voting system is poorly designed.
My personal take on the "cash is king" issue is this: If the thing you are buying on credit does not make you more productive, and help you at least recoup the interest, then your finances are poorly managed; you spend more than you make, and end up paying more for the same quality of life. If however, you buy something that helps you make more money, then credit is a good idea: it helps you grow faster than a strict cash-only strategy. Note that the line between productive and unproductive investments is rather hard to draw: you should not buy a car on credit if you plan to use it only to impress your friends. On the other hand, a video console might be a good investment if you can relax using it and be more productive at work.
If you could print and recognise all 2^24 colours (very unlikely) and print and scan reliably at 10,000 dots per inch (no way!) - then this would be possible.
No, it would not. That's still just 300 MB / square inch. He would need 30,000 dpi to reach 2.7GB / inch^2. As for 16 million unique colors per dot... just forget about it.
There is no alternative. As soon as any method becomes popular enough to be useful, spammers will move in. Sure, you could use IM, but spammers are there already. You could set your IM client to only accept messages from known users, but you might as well go back to email and set up a whitelist.
Yeah, but you can at least try to design a system that is spam resistant, as opposed to a 30 years old design that is extremely spam friendly. I use IM for 4 years now (Yahoo) and I've never received a single piece of spim. And I don't think it's because spammers haven't tried, or because Yahoo messenger is not popular enough.
I think Spamhaus is trolling after making an ass out of itself in court. Although IMO e360 had practically no case, Spamhaus accepted the default judgement. All the judge could do was grant the requested 12 million $ to e360. Spamhaus refuses to pay, and they are threatened with suspending their domain. And now they come out bitching "oh no, the Internet will melt without us!" I hate spam just like the next guy, but when you make a profitable business from spam fighting, you need at least some clue about how the legal system works.
If both these are observed, it puts a little more strain on those trying to harvest services. The amount they can harvest is limited to the number of IPs they have per requests the server will allow. The client must also understand Javascript and be willing to spend the CPU cycles to work out the math problem hurdle.
As soon as you put this JavaScript "computational expensive" challenge on a major website or product, the spamer will write optimized C code that will be about 1000 times faster than the JavaScript solution. Maybe you could send a Java applet, or maybe you could make your Javascript challenge use a few iterations of a slow browser function (that is already optimized in C - some crypto stuff). But this is not a solution - cycles are cheap for spamers, they have bot-nets of hundreds or thousands of computers. You can only limit the number of logins/IP at a level that still allows clients of major ISP proxies to register, i.e. not very effective.
I have to say, trusting SHA-1 to do what it says on the tin, is not incompetent. Naive, sure, but not incompetent.
Let's not forget this attack is against a reduced 64 round version of SHA-1. SHA-1 still does what it says on the tin: the best attack known against the 80-round version is 2^63, which is still not practical.
Simply import it into your own code base, and then review it as if it was written internally.
I think that's exactly what he's trying to avoid: it is probably cheaper to build your own from scratch, than to integrate, adapt, understand, test and review foreign code. After all, actual coding takes negligible resources (20% ?) when writing mission critical software. I think what he wants, is to import open source code directly, without extra testing and reviewing, under the premise that it's popularity is a good enough guarantee of quality. For example, if I need a kernel in my ISO9000 application, it's obvious that the Linux kernel has infinitely better quality than anything I could develop in-house. In fact, it's better than anything all the "certified" software developers in the world, staked together, could produce. And that just goes to show you the real value of certification.
The IM wars You can see very nicely how each region has chosen a favorite IM network. Being a Romanian myself, I can testify that Yahoo messenger is used much more than anything else.
I'd rather have private hackers do it than the government.
You don't mind if the government finds that your computer has been compromised by a hacker, who plants child porn on it, and you are convicted and have your life destroyed based on this "evidence" ? How can any conviction be made against the victims of the "hacker" when the chain of evidence is clearly broken? Are we just supposed to trust he is an "honest" hacker? How can you get beyond any reasonable doubt under this premises: Your Honor, my computer was hacked; I have no idea who planted that crap into my computer. Case closed. If any convictions are made with the help of this "hacker", it`s only because his victims had bad, bad lawyers.
(c) Statutory Damages.-- (1) Except as provided by clause (2) of this subsection, the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just. For the purposes of this subsection, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work.
(emphasis mine) So, in the best case, we are talking about $750 per album. If he had 200 songs that were released on albums (and not singles) it could mean about 20 albums, or $15.000. Bad, but acceptable.
How much are they going to be making off this? Is this kind of thing really necessary?
Yes, it really is necessary. That domain name has a real market value, the only question is, who is making the money: ICANN who can hopefully use them to enhance the infrastructure of the Internet, or some domain squatter who can use them to buy himself a new Ferrari. To late for the biz TLD tho, it's so infested with spammers and scammers that you don't miss anything by blocking it completely.
I personally feel that certain sites should be restricted because you are going to have that jackass that is going to surf porn at work. If they get into one and it is obvious that they were surfing and not just an oops this link took me here and I immediately closed out that window, then fire them, for unprofessional behavior, or for violation of internet usage policy or whatever code of conduct that you hold your employees to. It really is that simple.
What are you, some kind of religious kook? What's the problem with porn? Are you afraid somebody might start jerking off in his cubicle? Do you really think you can look at porn more than 5 minutes in a busy office without being ridiculed to death by your coworkers? At my old place of employment, not only we had the right to surf as many porn sites as we wanted, but we also had a dedicated email list called DirtyJokes teeming with porn, and managers were the top contributors. BTW, the CEO was female and she always kept her eyes closed. We were a software company, made up of mostly boys, and well, boys will be boys, so you gotta keep them happy. And fire them when they make crappy software.
So you trust anonymous ISP employees and unknown website owners, but you don't trust your neighbors?
For the unknown owner of the animal-porn website I've visited yesterday, I'm just a face in the crowd. For Jimmy, the 16 y/o hacker who lives in my building, I'm just the right person to blackmail.
More and more I see computers being used to harvest and cultivate data for market analysts and investors. Even Thomson has built software to deliver market news.
Folks who suggest replacing human investors with computer algorithms don't understand the basic workings of the stock market. You cannot predict the next value of a stock simply using past and current information from within the stock exchange. You cannot find a `pattern` in the stock price no matter how much computing power you use: there is no pattern, except for the well know economic cycles that influence all stocks. Besides, even if an algorithm could be devised, it would be useful only if it could be kept secret, otherwise using it on a large scale will deny any speculative gain. The price of a stock is determined by external factors, and the key into being a good investor is access to information: who sued who, what is the union planing, what product is the competition developing etc. So to replace humans with algorithms, you must make them as intelligent as humans in the basic task of finding and understanding information. AI is ages away from this stage, and when/if we will finally have such powerful AI, the stock exchange will be our last concern.
That, and who thinks they are fooling anyone by doing this? If you have a Google account for other services like Gmail, then you must allow Google to set a cookie, and you are still identifying yourself. You're also giving up the ability to customize your searches (safesearch, number of results, languages, etc).
This can be circumvented as follows: It's true that if you don't accept a cookie from google.com, you can't login into Gmail. I've solved the issue by allowing google.com's cookie, but using google.ro for searching (with cookies turned off, you can block them for any domain you want both in IE and Firefox). So Google cannot associate my searches with my Gmail account. In fact, all my searches are only connected with my IP address, and this can be circumvented as described in TFA. Of course, when Google has all your mail, any search data is superfluous, so I only use Gmail for non-incriminating stuff. The method for saving preferences (disabling safe search) comes from paranoid Daniel "tinfoil hat" Brandt. Basicaly, you need to append a few parameters like "safe=off" to your search page (home page, in my case).
Having said that, it's a catch-22. If Windows implements an approved kernel hook for the antivirus companies, it will get exploited. If they don't, then no antivirus software, but just as many virus writers.
The solution should be obvious: Only allow hooks to be installed when the binary file providing them is digitally signed. And I don't mean the normal, $100 SSL certificate, that any phisher can get these days. Microsoft should require a large setup fee, something like $50.000 to digitally sign these kernel extensions. This should stop all virus writers, without being important to security vendors with millions of dollars income. Sure, since the blackhats have administrative privileges, they can always subvert the security checks using undocumented hacks, but at least, the upgrade of the system will only break the viruses, not the antivirus software.
(Idiot's yearly salary) - (Hours IT works to correct problem) × (Avg IT hourly salary) - (Productive hours lost) × (Avg hourly production in dollars) < 0? ==> Fire that asshole.
Or increase his salary?
Your equation is wrong. It should be:
(Idiot's gross productivity) - (Idiot's yearly salary) - (Hours IT works to correct problem) × (Avg IT hourly salary) - (Productive hours lost) × (Avg hourly production in dollars) < 0 ? --> Fire the idiot.
With Lunix Torvald's increasingly tyrannical stance regarding GPLv3, maybe it's time for a switch to a BSD.That's a strange thing to say. If you want GPL v3, and want your work protected against some forms of commercial use, then you certainly don't want BSD, which allows all types of commercial use.
Re:Flash as an application development platform
on
The Future of Flash
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· Score: 1
No, I'm sorry -- I need to be able to go to a web site and find the information I'm looking for, not watch inane animations and pointless fluff.
You are implying that you have some sort of intrinsic right to have information delivered to you in the format you prefer by all sites on the Internet. Sorry, your only right is to press the "Back" button when you hit some pile of flashturbation. The fact that web-designers use Flash gratuitously is besides the point, they have the right to make their sites as crappy as they want.
Slashdot Mirror
Oil means high energy in a small mass, gasoline, and no amount of solar energy research could replace gasoline, unless you make all your driving in the sun.
I've already passed this subject.
When a single programmer can steal the elections, it's because the electronic voting system is poorly designed.
My personal take on the "cash is king" issue is this:
If the thing you are buying on credit does not make you more productive, and help you at least recoup the interest, then your finances are poorly managed; you spend more than you make, and end up paying more for the same quality of life.
If however, you buy something that helps you make more money, then credit is a good idea: it helps you grow faster than a strict cash-only strategy.
Note that the line between productive and unproductive investments is rather hard to draw: you should not buy a car on credit if you plan to use it only to impress your friends. On the other hand, a video console might be a good investment if you can relax using it and be more productive at work.
No patents on tax increases?
I use IM for 4 years now (Yahoo) and I've never received a single piece of spim. And I don't think it's because spammers haven't tried, or because Yahoo messenger is not popular enough.
I think Spamhaus is trolling after making an ass out of itself in court. Although IMO e360 had practically no case, Spamhaus accepted the default judgement. All the judge could do was grant the requested 12 million $ to e360. Spamhaus refuses to pay, and they are threatened with suspending their domain. And now they come out bitching "oh no, the Internet will melt without us!"
I hate spam just like the next guy, but when you make a profitable business from spam fighting, you need at least some clue about how the legal system works.
You can only limit the number of logins/IP at a level that still allows clients of major ISP proxies to register, i.e. not very effective.
Let's not forget this attack is against a reduced 64 round version of SHA-1.
SHA-1 still does what it says on the tin: the best attack known against the 80-round version is 2^63, which is still not practical.
I think what he wants, is to import open source code directly, without extra testing and reviewing, under the premise that it's popularity is a good enough guarantee of quality.
For example, if I need a kernel in my ISO9000 application, it's obvious that the Linux kernel has infinitely better quality than anything I could develop in-house. In fact, it's better than anything all the "certified" software developers in the world, staked together, could produce. And that just goes to show you the real value of certification.
The IM wars
You can see very nicely how each region has chosen a favorite IM network. Being a Romanian myself, I can testify that Yahoo messenger is used much more than anything else.
How can any conviction be made against the victims of the "hacker" when the chain of evidence is clearly broken? Are we just supposed to trust he is an "honest" hacker? How can you get beyond any reasonable doubt under this premises: Your Honor, my computer was hacked; I have no idea who planted that crap into my computer. Case closed.
If any convictions are made with the help of this "hacker", it`s only because his victims had bad, bad lawyers.
(emphasis mine)
So, in the best case, we are talking about $750 per album. If he had 200 songs that were released on albums (and not singles) it could mean about 20 albums, or $15.000. Bad, but acceptable.
To late for the biz TLD tho, it's so infested with spammers and scammers that you don't miss anything by blocking it completely.
We're playing that game again?
OK, I think 666$ was a great price point for a 4KB computer!
At my old place of employment, not only we had the right to surf as many porn sites as we wanted, but we also had a dedicated email list called DirtyJokes teeming with porn, and managers were the top contributors. BTW, the CEO was female and she always kept her eyes closed. We were a software company, made up of mostly boys, and well, boys will be boys, so you gotta keep them happy. And fire them when they make crappy software.
The price of a stock is determined by external factors, and the key into being a good investor is access to information: who sued who, what is the union planing, what product is the competition developing etc. So to replace humans with algorithms, you must make them as intelligent as humans in the basic task of finding and understanding information. AI is ages away from this stage, and when/if we will finally have such powerful AI, the stock exchange will be our last concern.
It's true that if you don't accept a cookie from google.com, you can't login into Gmail. I've solved the issue by allowing google.com's cookie, but using google.ro for searching (with cookies turned off, you can block them for any domain you want both in IE and Firefox). So Google cannot associate my searches with my Gmail account. In fact, all my searches are only connected with my IP address, and this can be circumvented as described in TFA. Of course, when Google has all your mail, any search data is superfluous, so I only use Gmail for non-incriminating stuff.
The method for saving preferences (disabling safe search) comes from paranoid Daniel "tinfoil hat" Brandt. Basicaly, you need to append a few parameters like "safe=off" to your search page (home page, in my case).
Only allow hooks to be installed when the binary file providing them is digitally signed. And I don't mean the normal, $100 SSL certificate, that any phisher can get these days. Microsoft should require a large setup fee, something like $50.000 to digitally sign these kernel extensions. This should stop all virus writers, without being important to security vendors with millions of dollars income.
Sure, since the blackhats have administrative privileges, they can always subvert the security checks using undocumented hacks, but at least, the upgrade of the system will only break the viruses, not the antivirus software.
Your equation is wrong. It should be:
(Idiot's gross productivity) - (Idiot's yearly salary) - (Hours IT works to correct problem) × (Avg IT hourly salary) - (Productive hours lost) × (Avg hourly production in dollars) < 0 ? --> Fire the idiot.
With Lunix Torvald's increasingly tyrannical stance regarding GPLv3, maybe it's time for a switch to a BSD.That's a strange thing to say. If you want GPL v3, and want your work protected against some forms of commercial use, then you certainly don't want BSD, which allows all types of commercial use.
The fact that web-designers use Flash gratuitously is besides the point, they have the right to make their sites as crappy as they want.