In windows, there is a nice app called Cookie Pal that does this. To use it, you have to enable the alert message boxes for cookies in your web browser (netscape and IE both do this). Cookie Pal intercepts these dialog boxes and accepts or rejects for you base on settings you choose. Very nice. I would recomend it.
No. Its not a great idea. In return for me giving information to anybody, I expect to get something in return. I also expect that there should be some reason I should have to give info to get what I get in return. I don't want to give everybody my information, and if I have the choice of whether I give or not, I don't want it to be an all or nothing proposition.
I usually browse the web with cookies turned off and only turn them on when I need to to look at a site, or if doing so would really make my life easier. I usually delete most of my cookies daily, except for a few sites which I use often and having cookies will save some state which I want saved.
I often sign up for something on the web using false information. Why should I let my free email service know anything about me other than my real name so they can tell people who I send mail to, who it is from? Maybe they want to know my income and marital status, but they won't get it just because they can target ads at me better. If I buy something, they get my address and credit card, but no more. Certainly not my real phone number.
I can't believe anybody would use a system where they say "here, take my info and share it. Shaft me for all I worth, please!!!"
If I remember correctly from my eigth grade bio, to be considered "alive", something must also have a well ordered molecular structure. Thats one reason why we are "alive" but cars are not.
As we get molecular computers, the net may become alive as defined by biologists today.:-)
Re:About mouse usage with keyboard
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 2
As I was reading this article, something similar occurred to me. I do spend a fair amount of time switching between my mouse and my keyboard, and it does suck. But there are several ways that you could keep your hands on the keyboard and use a pointing device.
I think the perfect thing would be to use your tongue! What if you had a little pointer or a touchpad on the roof of your mouth? Aside from the nastiness of using it at a public terminal, I could imagine I would really like it. Anybody know of anything like that?
A lot of people have posted that they don't know how javascript can pose a security risk to the server side, and I agree with them. However, on the client side, it is an entirely different matter.
A friend pointed me to a web site that had at least 30 pages each with a different evil javascript on it. Most of them were slightly annoying, but at the time, one of them could read files from your hard drive and display them in your browser window.
If you have ever gotten stuck in a porn site that you can't get out of you know what I mean. They have java script set to open a new browser window (or two of them) whenever you close one. This one is fairly easy to fix by disabling java script and then closing the window.
One of the evilest hacks on the this site was one that made your window jump around. Java script allows the webpage to some location. Somebody got the bright idea of calling moveWindow(currentX + random, currentY + random) where random was between like -5 and 5. This made the window jump around like nothing else. You couldn't close the window because it was just about impossible to click on the x in the corner, nor could you access the menus for the same reason. The only thing to do was to end the browser process (which took a while because the computer was busy moving the damn window around).
Too bad more sites don't use it, or everybody would disable javascript.
I have found that the above goes for Wintel platform as well. If you want a *very* good, stable, product, get the stand alone version of navigator. Under windoze, I have never had nescape crash on me. I'm using netscape 4.08 and I love it. Who needs all that extra crap anyway?
I don't think that embedded Linux stands to do much in terms of affecting the perception of Linux. I for one, don't care what OS my car uses, my Microwave uses, or my VCR uses. If i need to know or care, then obviously it wasn't implented correctly.
The same could be said of your computer. If you have to know what operating system its running, it wasn't implemented correctly. However, most of us power users out there would like to know. If only I could reprogram my VCR so that I could actually use it.... Then I would patent one click recording of my favorite shows.;-)
I don't think that information should be free. Information should be cheap.
Everybody I know who is worth their weight in dog doo doo, is willing to give away some amount of their knowledge and expertise for free. However, there are limits. How many times has some newbie asked a really obvious question to you? How many times have you said, "Read the damn FAQ!"? There aren't many of us who will continue to put up with it for that long.
Having free information makes the experts answer a few questions and move on. If I had $.50 for everytime I've pointed somebody to the FAQ, I think I would enjoy doing it a lot more.;-)
On the other hand, how many times have you tried to do something on your computer but not be able to do it because you couldn't figure it out. You then search the web and find nothing because you don't know the right keywords, you ask a few people you know but they don't know either, and you get frustrated. Sometimes I know that the answer is out there and 100s have done what I'm doing before me, but I can't get it. At such a point, it would definitly be worth a couple of bucks to stop wasting my time and pay somebody to help me out.
I think this site is a novel idea. If you want to answer questions for free go ahead. I'll bet that many people do that. But, I'll bet you stick around and answer a lot more questions if you get a little back from it. Lets face it, if somebody is willing to pay, then you know that they really want the answer and arn't just wasting your time.
It reminds me of when my grandfather got a computer. He didn't even hesitate to have somebody from the comuputer shop come to his house and show him around on his new toy for a fee. As far as he was concerned, it saved him a ton of time. My grandfather hates using search engines, he wants a real person to ask. There are lots of people out there like my grandfather.
It seems to me that this type of (can i say auctioning?) of info, is about the best way I can think of to get lots of info out there at a fair price. (And that means cheaply, but mostly not free!!)
There are solutions out there to help you manage your cookies. In windoze, I tried a program called Cookie Pal which I like very much that refuses cookies from places based on your preferences. (Can somebody write something like this for me in linux?) This type of functionality should be built into the browser IMHO.
I also run a proxy server in which it would be possible to embed cookie filtering stuff. Is this possible in say Squid? I can't connect directly to a remote proxy from behind my firewall.
Encryption only works if A) the encrytion is secure, and B) People use it.
I know that you have done a lot of work in the area of A. But what about B? Specifically, what do you think it will take, to get people to use cryptography with their email on a regular basis? Most of us here agree that it should be as standard as putting your letter in an envelope instead of using a postcard.
However, even I don't regularly use encryption. I have tried encryption packages and they are easy to use, but I can't seem to be able to convince my friends an family to go through the trouble. Because the people that I communicate with, don't use encryption, it seems that I can't either.
Because of its inclusion with web browsers, some level of encryption is now used for much of e-commerce. Most people just know that their transaction is somehow secured and know nothing of the details. But the same hasn't happened for other mediums.
What do you think it will take? An personal electronic Pearl Harbor in which many people have their secrets spread throughout the world? Inclusion of crypto with the most popular free email clients? Or maybe people just don't care and they will never encrypt their email?
Is it just me or is the whole classification system of the US Government, a system of security through obscurity. The less that people know, the more secure we will be...
Something that is Top Secret is pretty "obscure" where as something that is declassified is "open source". Given this real world example, does security through obscurity have its place and actually work sometimes?
10. A revolutionary 3-dimensional GUI takes the world by storm. It runs on Linux.
I know that some 3-D GUIs have already been developed. Bruce Land, a Cornell University proffessor, does a lot of 3-D visualization work. Until recently he taught the undergrad class on the subject. When I took it, he took the class to his lab to show us his research. It consisted mostly of 3-D worlds that you could interact with.
The 3-D setup was sweet, there were two rear projection screens at 90 degree angles to each other and you wore some special glasses. The projectors flipped images to the screens alternatly, one for the left eye and then one for the right. The glasses had lcds in the eyes that flipped on and off at the same rate that the projectors flipped the images. It was over 100 HZ. The upshot was a color, 3-D world that you could walk around in, although you always had to face the corner with the screens.
The other cool part of it was the controller. There was a sensor in the ceiling that figured out where you were and adjusted the world accordingly. So looking about, and moving around actually kept things in proper perspective. There was also a wand with a button that you moved around it acted sort of like a 3-D mouse.
To run programs on thing, the menus popped up in the air in front of you like big blocks, And you would select the correct block to run the program. The problem with it was that it was really ugly. He had had a grad student rewrite some of the Java interface stuff for 3-D.
If 3-D worlds like this ever catch on at home, we will definitly need some 3-D UIs and they will have to have some pretty radical ideas. Maybe throw a virtual ball at something rather than click on the button. Sounds like a project to me.;-)
I went to the ceremony last night. (I live in Cambridge and it was at Harvard.) Anyway, it was a lot of fun and if you missed it it will be broadcast on the radio (NPR) the day after Thanksgiving. Part of NPRs science Friday, so maybe other good stuff that day too.
The other neat thing was as I was walking to the bus stop on my way home, I passed through Harvard Square and bumped into Stephen Hawkings. He was in his wheelchair and wandering around Harvard square. Pretty neat. Didn't even know he was in town.
I went to the ceremony last night. (I live in Cambridge and it was at Harvard.) Anyway, it was a lot of fun and if you missed it it will be broadcast on the radio (NPR) the day after Thanksgiving. Part of NPRs science Friday, so maybe other good stuff that day too.
The other neat thing was as I was walking to the bus stop on my way home, I passed through Harvard Square and bumped into Stephen Hawkings. He was in his wheelchair and wandering around Harvard square. Pretty neat. Didn't even know he was in town.
Big deal. For it actually to be used against you, it would have to be actually transmitted to the commerce site, or what have you that wants it. It seems to me that its your web browser where this feature shauld be controlled. Given that web browsers allow you to turn cookies off, they should allow you to not transmit ID#s as well. Heck you can always back up to Netscape 2.0 if you want that won't know anything about the IDs.
Besides, if you have an ethernet card, you already have a unique ID in your computer hardware. Its called your MAC address. Microsoft uses it to uniquely stamp your word documents. (Thats how they traced down the mellissa virus author.) The misuse of it is all at the software level. I can't imagine anybody writing free software that will use IDs like this. I'll keep away from MS thank you.
My guess is that is about the odds they might give on an airline going down on any given day. If you went with 10,000 to 1 odds, that would mean that you expect one airplane to go down in 27 years. If the odds are even 300 to 1 I think that is saying a lot for how safe these people are betting the airlines will be on Jan 1.
Re:This guy is an idiot, and he's been recognised
on
Project Grizzly
·
· Score: 1
I was able to answer my own question.
You can find the info about tickets here. It has info about a free showing of a film about the bear suit at MIT tomorrow night (wednesday 9-22-99) and the ignoble award ceremony on the 30th at harvard. Plus some other related stuff.
See you all there.
Re:This guy is an idiot, and he's been recognised
on
Project Grizzly
·
· Score: 1
It mentioned in the article that he is coming to Harvard on the 30th and to MIT sometime afterwards. Does anybody have info for those of us in that live in cambridge (but are not students), telling us how we can get tickets?
Its not suprising at all to me that G4s would be manufactured for years to come. My company currently embeds powerPC chips in many of its products. (I have two that I'm working on sitting on my desk right now (403s actually)). If you have used a newer laser printer, a RAID array or any number of other devices today, chances are you have used a powerPC processor. If you buy one something like this today, chances are that the processer in it is faster than the processer of your computer was 5 years ago.
And in other news, computer experts are warning of the another date that is fast approaching: February First. Some computer programs may represent this date as FF which combined with a time such as Five Fifteen can be represented as FFFF. Such symbols are often used as "synching" signals in multimedia streams and it is feared that if such a date were stored in a multimedia file such as an "MP3" file, the sound would get distorted and ultimatly might make the computer speakers catch on fire.
Bob Byte, a computer expert for High Tech Technologies, says that that Fs are used because of an obscure way of representing numbers called "hexidecimal". In the opinion of this reporter it is a short form of an error message consisting of swear words: f**k f**k f**k f**k.
Slashdot Mirror
In windows, there is a nice app called Cookie Pal that does this. To use it, you have to enable the alert message boxes for cookies in your web browser (netscape and IE both do this). Cookie Pal intercepts these dialog boxes and accepts or rejects for you base on settings you choose. Very nice. I would recomend it.
In Eudora Pro you can tell it to stip html formatting from messages. I don't think in the light version though.
No. Its not a great idea. In return for me giving information to anybody, I expect to get something in return. I also expect that there should be some reason I should have to give info to get what I get in return. I don't want to give everybody my information, and if I have the choice of whether I give or not, I don't want it to be an all or nothing proposition.
I usually browse the web with cookies turned off and only turn them on when I need to to look at a site, or if doing so would really make my life easier. I usually delete most of my cookies daily, except for a few sites which I use often and having cookies will save some state which I want saved.
I often sign up for something on the web using false information. Why should I let my free email service know anything about me other than my real name so they can tell people who I send mail to, who it is from? Maybe they want to know my income and marital status, but they won't get it just because they can target ads at me better. If I buy something, they get my address and credit card, but no more. Certainly not my real phone number.
I can't believe anybody would use a system where they say "here, take my info and share it. Shaft me for all I worth, please!!!"
If I remember correctly from my eigth grade bio, to be considered "alive", something must also have a well ordered molecular structure. Thats one reason why we are "alive" but cars are not.
:-)
As we get molecular computers, the net may become alive as defined by biologists today.
I think the perfect thing would be to use your tongue! What if you had a little pointer or a touchpad on the roof of your mouth? Aside from the nastiness of using it at a public terminal, I could imagine I would really like it. Anybody know of anything like that?
A friend pointed me to a web site that had at least 30 pages each with a different evil javascript on it. Most of them were slightly annoying, but at the time, one of them could read files from your hard drive and display them in your browser window.
If you have ever gotten stuck in a porn site that you can't get out of you know what I mean. They have java script set to open a new browser window (or two of them) whenever you close one. This one is fairly easy to fix by disabling java script and then closing the window.
One of the evilest hacks on the this site was one that made your window jump around. Java script allows the webpage to some location. Somebody got the bright idea of calling moveWindow(currentX + random, currentY + random) where random was between like -5 and 5. This made the window jump around like nothing else. You couldn't close the window because it was just about impossible to click on the x in the corner, nor could you access the menus for the same reason. The only thing to do was to end the browser process (which took a while because the computer was busy moving the damn window around).
Too bad more sites don't use it, or everybody would disable javascript.
I have found that the above goes for Wintel platform as well. If you want a *very* good, stable, product, get the stand alone version of navigator. Under windoze, I have never had nescape crash on me. I'm using netscape 4.08 and I love it. Who needs all that extra crap anyway?
The same could be said of your computer. If you have to know what operating system its running, it wasn't implemented correctly. However, most of us power users out there would like to know. If only I could reprogram my VCR so that I could actually use it.... Then I would patent one click recording of my favorite shows.
And after 6 tries, I still can't remember how to swim to that stupid platform.
And slashdot needs to develop meta-meta-moderation and meta-meta-meta-moderation....
ok. Somebody hit me know.
*thump*
Much better.
Everybody I know who is worth their weight in dog doo doo, is willing to give away some amount of their knowledge and expertise for free. However, there are limits. How many times has some newbie asked a really obvious question to you? How many times have you said, "Read the damn FAQ!"? There aren't many of us who will continue to put up with it for that long.
Having free information makes the experts answer a few questions and move on. If I had $.50 for everytime I've pointed somebody to the FAQ, I think I would enjoy doing it a lot more. ;-)
On the other hand, how many times have you tried to do something on your computer but not be able to do it because you couldn't figure it out. You then search the web and find nothing because you don't know the right keywords, you ask a few people you know but they don't know either, and you get frustrated. Sometimes I know that the answer is out there and 100s have done what I'm doing before me, but I can't get it. At such a point, it would definitly be worth a couple of bucks to stop wasting my time and pay somebody to help me out.
I think this site is a novel idea. If you want to answer questions for free go ahead. I'll bet that many people do that. But, I'll bet you stick around and answer a lot more questions if you get a little back from it. Lets face it, if somebody is willing to pay, then you know that they really want the answer and arn't just wasting your time.
It reminds me of when my grandfather got a computer. He didn't even hesitate to have somebody from the comuputer shop come to his house and show him around on his new toy for a fee. As far as he was concerned, it saved him a ton of time. My grandfather hates using search engines, he wants a real person to ask. There are lots of people out there like my grandfather.
It seems to me that this type of (can i say auctioning?) of info, is about the best way I can think of to get lots of info out there at a fair price. (And that means cheaply, but mostly not free!!)
I also run a proxy server in which it would be possible to embed cookie filtering stuff. Is this possible in say Squid? I can't connect directly to a remote proxy from behind my firewall.
I know that you have done a lot of work in the area of A. But what about B? Specifically, what do you think it will take, to get people to use cryptography with their email on a regular basis? Most of us here agree that it should be as standard as putting your letter in an envelope instead of using a postcard.
However, even I don't regularly use encryption. I have tried encryption packages and they are easy to use, but I can't seem to be able to convince my friends an family to go through the trouble. Because the people that I communicate with, don't use encryption, it seems that I can't either.
Because of its inclusion with web browsers, some level of encryption is now used for much of e-commerce. Most people just know that their transaction is somehow secured and know nothing of the details. But the same hasn't happened for other mediums.
What do you think it will take? An personal electronic Pearl Harbor in which many people have their secrets spread throughout the world? Inclusion of crypto with the most popular free email clients? Or maybe people just don't care and they will never encrypt their email?
Something that is Top Secret is pretty "obscure" where as something that is declassified is "open source". Given this real world example, does security through obscurity have its place and actually work sometimes?
Don't flame me because I'm beautiful.
I think that any such organization would just have to say: themselves :-)
I know that some 3-D GUIs have already been developed. Bruce Land, a Cornell University proffessor, does a lot of 3-D visualization work. Until recently he taught the undergrad class on the subject. When I took it, he took the class to his lab to show us his research. It consisted mostly of 3-D worlds that you could interact with.
The 3-D setup was sweet, there were two rear projection screens at 90 degree angles to each other and you wore some special glasses. The projectors flipped images to the screens alternatly, one for the left eye and then one for the right. The glasses had lcds in the eyes that flipped on and off at the same rate that the projectors flipped the images. It was over 100 HZ. The upshot was a color, 3-D world that you could walk around in, although you always had to face the corner with the screens.
The other cool part of it was the controller. There was a sensor in the ceiling that figured out where you were and adjusted the world accordingly. So looking about, and moving around actually kept things in proper perspective. There was also a wand with a button that you moved around it acted sort of like a 3-D mouse.
To run programs on thing, the menus popped up in the air in front of you like big blocks, And you would select the correct block to run the program. The problem with it was that it was really ugly. He had had a grad student rewrite some of the Java interface stuff for 3-D.
If 3-D worlds like this ever catch on at home, we will definitly need some 3-D UIs and they will have to have some pretty radical ideas. Maybe throw a virtual ball at something rather than click on the button. Sounds like a project to me. ;-)
Do you have a time for this?
Don't want to spend my entire evening waiting outside.
Hmmm.....
The other neat thing was as I was walking to the bus stop on my way home, I passed through Harvard Square and bumped into Stephen Hawkings. He was in his wheelchair and wandering around Harvard square. Pretty neat. Didn't even know he was in town.
The other neat thing was as I was walking to the bus stop on my way home, I passed through Harvard Square and bumped into Stephen Hawkings. He was in his wheelchair and wandering around Harvard square. Pretty neat. Didn't even know he was in town.
Besides, if you have an ethernet card, you already have a unique ID in your computer hardware. Its called your MAC address. Microsoft uses it to uniquely stamp your word documents. (Thats how they traced down the mellissa virus author.) The misuse of it is all at the software level. I can't imagine anybody writing free software that will use IDs like this. I'll keep away from MS thank you.
My guess is that is about the odds they might give on an airline going down on any given day. If you went with 10,000 to 1 odds, that would mean that you expect one airplane to go down in 27 years. If the odds are even 300 to 1 I think that is saying a lot for how safe these people are betting the airlines will be on Jan 1.
You can find the info about tickets here. It has info about a free showing of a film about the bear suit at MIT tomorrow night (wednesday 9-22-99) and the ignoble award ceremony on the 30th at harvard. Plus some other related stuff.
See you all there.
It mentioned in the article that he is coming to Harvard on the 30th and to MIT sometime afterwards. Does anybody have info for those of us in that live in cambridge (but are not students), telling us how we can get tickets?
Its not suprising at all to me that G4s would be manufactured for years to come. My company currently embeds powerPC chips in many of its products. (I have two that I'm working on sitting on my desk right now (403s actually)). If you have used a newer laser printer, a RAID array or any number of other devices today, chances are you have used a powerPC processor. If you buy one something like this today, chances are that the processer in it is faster than the processer of your computer was 5 years ago.
And in other news, computer experts are warning of the another date that is fast approaching: February First. Some computer programs may represent this date as FF which combined with a time such as Five Fifteen can be represented as FFFF. Such symbols are often used as "synching" signals in multimedia streams and it is feared that if such a date were stored in a multimedia file such as an "MP3" file, the sound would get distorted and ultimatly might make the computer speakers catch on fire.
Bob Byte, a computer expert for High Tech Technologies, says that that Fs are used because of an obscure way of representing numbers called "hexidecimal". In the opinion of this reporter it is a short form of an error message consisting of swear words: f**k f**k f**k f**k.