Not bad, but were I your boss, I'd want proof that the password in the envelope would indeed decrypt the file, and that the file was indeed the correct passwords. Ideally, you should have given him the password, allowed him to decrypt the file, THEN insisted he seal the envelope in your presence and in the presence of a couple of witnesses.
If you are REALLY paranoid, you have him seal it, sign it, then send it registered mail return receipt requested to the company - and give you the receipt.
And even then, there is nothing that prevents you from having bogus passwords in the file before you do badness.
"Exactly how is this proverbial scanning software supposed to tell the difference between an illegal file and a legitimate one?"
Simple: All legal files SHALL be signed by a key issued by the MAFIAA. Any file not so signed is illegal.
And those family movies you captured and put on your PC? Unless they were created by an Approved MAFIAA program, and signed with an appropriate key saying the MAFIAA own them, they are illegal - surely you didn't think that YOU, an ordinary serf, have any RIGHTS or can OWN anything, did you?
Since you seem to have some understanding beyond "teh Slahsbot" level:
When one fine day we get to a point where we can do serious gengineering, would it make sense to finish what started a long time ago and move the genes for producing mitochondria into the nuclear DNA, and let the mitochondria become just another organelle?
To the folks over there, my advice is "Embrace and enjoy the experience".
I had a similar experience in the unhappy days immediately after 9-11: I had scheduled vacation time (fortunately, I was driving, not flying). It was an unusual experience seeing NO contrails in the sky (and being in Kansas I have a LOT of sky to look at!). While the cause of the event was horribly tragic, the result was interesting.
Moreover, there were several pieces of research on cloud formation and the effects of contrails on it that were conducted during those days.
So, to you in the UK fuming about your planes being grounded - take this time and marvel at the difference in your world (and be thankful the causative event has been relatively free from loss of life so far).
"I wasn't aware that NASA had an official designation for Keanu Reeves..."
I know many AIs that find your comment offensive and psychologically harmful. Do you perhaps live in Canada - if so, they would like the name of your legal representation....
He obviously has reading comprehension problems. For example, notice how convinced he is that "GOP" appeared in my post, whereas in fact I never mentioned them. Of course, being the typical Slashbot he cannot wrap his mind around the idea that there are more than two political parties in the United States, nor comprehend the concept that perhaps if he and his fellow Slashbots were to reject the programming they have received from the Two Parties That Are One and start voting for some real change, that we might indeed SEE some real change.
Instead, he accepts the blinders that have been put on him, and steadfastly refuses to accept that no matter whether you vote heads or tails, it's the same damn wooden nickel.
I have a solution to our energy crisis - connect a generator to George Orwell.
HE only imagined the telescreen being able to hear and see you - not smell you and determine you had committed foodcrime by examining your flatulence.
And of course, if you a) stand near somebody smoking (ANYTHING) b) stand near a barbecue c) stand downwind of somebody fertilizing their yard (OMFG NITROGEN COMPOUNDS! TERRRRRRORRRRRRISTS!) d) be in a room where somebody is using a non-approved substance You will be a suspect.
If these chips are so wonderful, why not make them into self-contained modules and locate them throughout our cities, right along with the cameras, microphones, gun-shot detectors, radar units, tire-pressure monitor transponders, and so on.
NASA cannot do anything long term because they have no long term funding - every year their funding is up for the chop in the name of political expediency. Since almost ANYTHING NASA can do is long term, this means they really cannot do anything.
So, here's my proposal as to how to fix this. This would require Congress passing a law, but once the law is passed, Congress is out of the loop.
1) Create a class of bonds - NASA bonds. 2) The money from selling these bond SHALL BY LAW only go to funding NASA. 3) Any technological spin-offs from NASA developments funded by these bonds SHALL be owned by NASA, SHALL be licensed to industry under reasonable and non-discriminatory rates, and those license fees SHALL be used to repay the bonds. 4) Interest rates on the bonds SHALL be based upon the license fees above - no fees, no payments. In this sense the "bonds" aren't "bonds" in that they can fail. 5) IF NASA can convince the market the bonds will be profitable, THEN the bonds will sell well and NASA will have a steady source of funds. If NASA cannot convince the market, then the bonds won't sell to the market. 6) However, if you are truly a star-struck geek, you can still buy the bonds, even if you don't think they will pay off, if you feel that the work is worth the risk of losing your money. 7) Since the funding is now voluntary, nobody can reasonably complain about "their money being wasted" (not that will stop them). 8) If NASA starts doing things that people don't want to fund, the bonds will dry up, and NASA will (hopefully) get the message. 9) For those who will claim this is just "NASA, Inc." - not quite. A company MUST make a profit, and failing to do so can be actionable by the shareholders. This setup purposefully allows NASA to NOT make a profit.
Unfortunately, there are several problems with this:
1) "We might use civil causes of action, class actions, and/or private atty general statutes. (But have to be careful to limit abuse.)"
result: Cop says "Not breaking the law, not my problem, go away."
So you have to make spamming truly against the law.
Result: Cop says "Yea, I'll get right on that, after I go after a bunch of more interesting (read: higher fines) crimes." Considering how little the cops enforce crimes that are threats to life and limb like tailgating, I don't think there would be much interest.
2) Jurisdiction: result: cop says "Nice, but not in my district, so not my problem. Go away." Cop in area where ISP is says "You willing to show up here to make a complaint? No? Not my problem. Go away."
3) Assuming you make the cops care - they go to ISP "Give us the info. We have a warrant." ISP says "here's the address of the shell corporation in East Elbonia." Cop says "Not my jurisdiction. Not my problem. There a good donut shop around here?"
The latter is what happens anyway - I used to try to go after the hundreds of IPs a day that try to infect my PC. ISPs don't care, and won't care unless you can change the law, and if you try to change the law, the ISPs will outspend you.
As I understand it, for a class action to happen, you have to have several preconditions: 1) there has to be an easily identifiable group of people to belong to the class. This would NOT be "the set of all people who bought PS3's that could run Linux" for reason #2 below, but rather "The set of people who bought PS2 to run Linux." 2) There has to be a harm to the class. Thus, just having bought a PS3 that could run Linux would not be enough - you would have to have bought the PS3 to run LInux. Moreover, the harm to you is in proportion to the time you run Linux on your PS3 vs. the time you use the GameOS - so if you only run Linux 10% of the time, you are at most going to get 10% of the price of the machine.
So the only folks who are going to be able to get ANYTHING are the people running Linux close to 100% of the time - folks running clusters, doing Cell research, etc.
And were I Sony's lawyers, I'd then ask "OK, so why are you applying the update? Unless you are playing games or accessing Sony's online network, you don't need to update. Thus, if you really ARE using this mostly to run Linux, you aren't harmed, since your machine will continue to run Linux. And since we aren't selling new machines with this ability, they don't fall under this class."
Thus, the whole "harm" aspect is shut down - thus no suit.
And even IF some set of users could show they both run Linux AND run the GameOS, then the argument would be "OK, so you run Linux 50% of the time, and so need to update. OK, we just cost you 50% of the amortized value of the box. When did you buy that? Two years ago? OK, GAAP says depreciation on that is 18 months, so it has depreciated to zero. 50% of zero is zero. Go away."
When the Cell was first announced, I was very excited about it - I do signal processing and protocol simulation for a living, and having something with 8 powerful signal processing engines plus a dual core CPU to run the protocol stacks was just about a perfect fit. So I got my boss to approve buying a PS3 to begin evaluation on, and we began trying to find a vendor for the Cell chip (we can do our own PCB design and fab if needed).
After many talks with IBM, we found that unless you were willing to buy millions of parts, they didn't want to talk to you, didn't want to sell you the chips, didn't want to support you, here's a nice mainframe blade, isn't that good enough (NO! I need something like microTCA, not a big ass blade!).
Add to that how the PS3's Linux had really crummy support for graphics (because rather than being SMART and making the PS3 have the best OpenGL implementation out there, Sony crippled the system with a dumb framebuffer).
Recently, IBM has announced they are end-of-lifing the Cell blades, and moving everybody over to the newest Power series CPUs. So, you can pretty much bank on the Cell only being in the PS3, and maybe one or two TV sets (and even there, I would not hold my breath - until those TVs are shipping the vendors can and likely will change their minds).
While I would still recommend anybody wanting a Blu-ray player buy a PS3, and they are a decent video game platform, I would NOT recommend anybody even think about trying to support the Cell outside that platform - it will not happen, IBM has moved on, Sony doesn't want to support it.
And while there is much typical slashbot dick-waving posturing about "I'm gonna SUE! CLASS ACTION BABY! I'm gonna DESTROY SONY!" - good luck with that. You are taking a minor feature that most PS3 buyers don't even know about, that is periphery to the main function of the device, and trying to say you are in some significant way harmed by this? You expect an attorney to take on a major class action like this, for what - lulz? Against a multinational with a large army of lawyers? At best, you will get US$10 off your next Sony purchase.
What needs to happen is all the companies that bought PS3s to explore Cell programming need to start pressuring IBM and their limited set of third-party vendors like Mercury Computers to release the next generation Cell (with double-precision SPUs) on something reasonably sized and priced.
Meanwhile, flood eBay with all the now-useless PS3s they had in their clusters - drive the price down and cost Sony money.
Typical/. summary - conflating the idea of "we can tell how old you are from your typing" with "we can tell if you are Wicked Uncle Ernie by your typing."
The idea of this would be that if you can tell that somebody is a 40 year old man, and they are on a forum saying they are a 12 year old girl, you can flag that as being suspicious.
Of course, the problem is that a web site or chat forum has relatively little visibility of the user's typing pattern, so unless you force all forums to be accessed by special software that can monitor typing (AND you prevent the use of cut-and-paste so that you type in one window, then paste into the chat window, or detect such matters and flag THAT) then this won't be very useful at all.
Of course, making THAT statement in the summary would be hard, and would require actually thinking about the story.
The big hosting providers ALL have the same attitude when you contact them about abuse:
"WE aren't doing this, that is one of the customers of one of our resellers, we won't do anything, talk to the reseller."
Of course, the reseller says "Screw you, they are paying us good money and you aren't."
Softlayer is a VERY good example of this: a Softlayer hosted site has repeatedly been spamming the Wine Developers mailing list for their crap. I have personally emailed Softlayer about it on more than 10 separate occasions, and have heard ZERO back from them. They don't care (even though their site claims they are aggressively anti-spam - BULLSHIT! words are cheap, actions are not, and Softlayer HASN'T ACTED!)
The spam problem isn't complicated to solve, it is actually pretty simple to solve (though not EASY to solve!) - just follow the "shit flows downstream" principle. If a host is doing bad things, look up who owns the network they are on, and MAKE IT THAT ENTITIE'S PROBLEM to solve it. However the problem is solved - be it "Hey, your server's infected" "OOPS fixed now sorry!", be it "We have blocked outgoing connections from your system until you fix it.", be it "Boss axed me an' Nunzio to has a talk wit ju about youses' server...." - doesn't matter as long as the problem gets solved. If it DOESN'T get solved, then the network owner becomes the problem entity, and you move to their hosts.
The only hard part is bringing some form of negative consequences to bear upon the network owners - you either need a law (and then you have a hard time dealing with systems outside your law's reach - all you can do is place the problem on the point of demarcation to your jurisdiction), or you need something with a wider reach, like publicity.
(and to all you morons about to copy and paste the "spam solutions form" - that meme is old enough to drink and vote, let it die already, OK?)
The "scaffolding" is sand that hasn't been sprayed with glue. Imagine making a simple dome. You lay down a layer of sand. You glue the perimeter. The center stays unglued. Let the glue set, lay down another layer of sand, glue the perimeter. Repeat, making the perimeter smaller each time. The walls are supported by the unglued sand in the middle. When you close the top, you open the side, remove the unglued sand, and you have a dome.
This is how most of the stereolitho machines work now, save they use a support material that can be removed with a solvent that doesn't dissolve the plastic used for the parts you want to keep.
It makes me wonder if the existing CGI movies (e.g. Shrek, Cars, etc.) will be re-rendered into 3D - I would *hope* they saved all the data that drove the render (motion scripts, audio tracks, etc.).
"Ask your doctor if umbridge is right for you. Side effects include elevated blood pressure, agitation, sweating, swearing, reddened vision, frothing at the mouth, and in some cases, death."
"Why wait around for the batteries to charge when you could have standard interchangeable battery packs?"
This comes up every time rechargeable cars comes up, and it is still just as wrong now as the first time.
First of all, not all batteries will be the same. Most of the battery chemistries in use for electric cars have a finite cycle life. So, you pull into the station with your brand-spanking-new, only one charge/discharge cycle battery, and you get it swapped out for the battery I left there with 10000 cycles on it, that has a quarter the capacity. True, you could have the pack record and report its charge cycle history, but that doesn't stop the fact that the only "charged" battery the station has right now is my hammered to death pack, and you are getting screwed on the deal.
Second of all, these packs are HEAVY. Not just the 40 kg your gas tank is, but more like several HUNDRED kilograms. They have to be an integral part of the car's frame, or else in a collision they are going to play Hulk and "HULK SMASH!" their way through the rest of the car (and likely you!). Making something that is BOTH well attached to the car's frame AND easily removable is like making a pocket sized 52" display.
Third of all is the machinery to pull that pack out of your car. It has to be automated, or it has to be operated by a trained operator. When was the last time you had somebody else pump your gas? OK, so skip the trained operator, it has to be automated such that a) BillyBob can "run" it, b) it can handle the car being parked at any number of weird angles to the system, c) it won't crush Little Billy who gets in the way, and d) it POSITIVELY CANNOT have ANY chance of scratching the paint, because BillyBob *WILL* accuse the station of just that, even when the "scratch" has doe fur and hoofprints!
Fourth of all is the issue of what happens if you run out of power out on the road. Right now it is no big deal for [AAA|The Highway Patrol|a passing motorist|A tow truck] to get you a gallon or two of gas so you can make it to a gas station. Good luck with swapping the battery pack in the road. OR you have to have a charging port + a special portable charging system to get you the equivalent of that "couple of gallons" of gas.
I see you are a fan of mine, and I hope my pointing this out won't change that, but - there are good reasons swapping batteries, while great for your phone, doesn't scale to your car.
The only mail that matters is the LETTER, written to YOUR CONGRESSCRITTERs, stating YOUR views in YOUR words, informing them that if they do not correct this hole in the law RIGHT NOW, in a clear and unequivocal fashion, that you WILL work tirelessly to remove them from office and place somebody there who WILL correct this, and that likewise, should they work toward correcting this, you will work tirelessly to keep them in office (so long as they continue to constrain the power of government within the intent of the Constitution).
(and even that mail won't matter a load of fetid dingo's kidneys if they don't see real consequences this November. If you continue to vote for one side or the other of this wooden nickel that is the Democrats/Republicans, you have contributed to the status quo - don't bitch about it.)
Slashdot Mirror
I would infer that one locus of expression is in the anus of politicians?
Not bad, but were I your boss, I'd want proof that the password in the envelope would indeed decrypt the file, and that the file was indeed the correct passwords. Ideally, you should have given him the password, allowed him to decrypt the file, THEN insisted he seal the envelope in your presence and in the presence of a couple of witnesses.
If you are REALLY paranoid, you have him seal it, sign it, then send it registered mail return receipt requested to the company - and give you the receipt.
And even then, there is nothing that prevents you from having bogus passwords in the file before you do badness.
Paranoia is hard....
Or Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, or Montana! Square states 4evar!
"Exactly how is this proverbial scanning software supposed to tell the difference between an illegal file and a legitimate one?"
Simple: All legal files SHALL be signed by a key issued by the MAFIAA. Any file not so signed is illegal.
And those family movies you captured and put on your PC? Unless they were created by an Approved MAFIAA program, and signed with an appropriate key saying the MAFIAA own them, they are illegal - surely you didn't think that YOU, an ordinary serf, have any RIGHTS or can OWN anything, did you?
Since you seem to have some understanding beyond "teh Slahsbot" level:
When one fine day we get to a point where we can do serious gengineering, would it make sense to finish what started a long time ago and move the genes for producing mitochondria into the nuclear DNA, and let the mitochondria become just another organelle?
To the folks over there, my advice is "Embrace and enjoy the experience".
I had a similar experience in the unhappy days immediately after 9-11: I had scheduled vacation time (fortunately, I was driving, not flying). It was an unusual experience seeing NO contrails in the sky (and being in Kansas I have a LOT of sky to look at!). While the cause of the event was horribly tragic, the result was interesting.
Moreover, there were several pieces of research on cloud formation and the effects of contrails on it that were conducted during those days.
So, to you in the UK fuming about your planes being grounded - take this time and marvel at the difference in your world (and be thankful the causative event has been relatively free from loss of life so far).
"I wasn't aware that NASA had an official designation for Keanu Reeves..."
I know many AIs that find your comment offensive and psychologically harmful. Do you perhaps live in Canada - if so, they would like the name of your legal representation....
Another important lesson is "Do NOT try to catch a falling soldering iron."
He obviously has reading comprehension problems. For example, notice how convinced he is that "GOP" appeared in my post, whereas in fact I never mentioned them. Of course, being the typical Slashbot he cannot wrap his mind around the idea that there are more than two political parties in the United States, nor comprehend the concept that perhaps if he and his fellow Slashbots were to reject the programming they have received from the Two Parties That Are One and start voting for some real change, that we might indeed SEE some real change.
Instead, he accepts the blinders that have been put on him, and steadfastly refuses to accept that no matter whether you vote heads or tails, it's the same damn wooden nickel.
Sad, really.
I Hope the Transparency of administration's insistence on this shows there has been no Change in the administration.
I Hope the Slashbots will Change their votes, but the Transparency of the moderators indicates otherwise.
I have a solution to our energy crisis - connect a generator to George Orwell.
HE only imagined the telescreen being able to hear and see you - not smell you and determine you had committed foodcrime by examining your flatulence.
And of course, if you
a) stand near somebody smoking (ANYTHING)
b) stand near a barbecue
c) stand downwind of somebody fertilizing their yard (OMFG NITROGEN COMPOUNDS! TERRRRRRORRRRRRISTS!)
d) be in a room where somebody is using a non-approved substance
You will be a suspect.
If these chips are so wonderful, why not make them into self-contained modules and locate them throughout our cities, right along with the cameras, microphones, gun-shot detectors, radar units, tire-pressure monitor transponders, and so on.
NASA cannot do anything long term because they have no long term funding - every year their funding is up for the chop in the name of political expediency. Since almost ANYTHING NASA can do is long term, this means they really cannot do anything.
So, here's my proposal as to how to fix this. This would require Congress passing a law, but once the law is passed, Congress is out of the loop.
1) Create a class of bonds - NASA bonds.
2) The money from selling these bond SHALL BY LAW only go to funding NASA.
3) Any technological spin-offs from NASA developments funded by these bonds SHALL be owned by NASA, SHALL be licensed to industry under reasonable and non-discriminatory rates, and those license fees SHALL be used to repay the bonds.
4) Interest rates on the bonds SHALL be based upon the license fees above - no fees, no payments. In this sense the "bonds" aren't "bonds" in that they can fail.
5) IF NASA can convince the market the bonds will be profitable, THEN the bonds will sell well and NASA will have a steady source of funds. If NASA cannot convince the market, then the bonds won't sell to the market.
6) However, if you are truly a star-struck geek, you can still buy the bonds, even if you don't think they will pay off, if you feel that the work is worth the risk of losing your money.
7) Since the funding is now voluntary, nobody can reasonably complain about "their money being wasted" (not that will stop them).
8) If NASA starts doing things that people don't want to fund, the bonds will dry up, and NASA will (hopefully) get the message.
9) For those who will claim this is just "NASA, Inc." - not quite. A company MUST make a profit, and failing to do so can be actionable by the shareholders. This setup purposefully allows NASA to NOT make a profit.
Unfortunately, there are several problems with this:
1) "We might use civil causes of action, class actions, and/or private atty general statutes. (But have to be careful to limit abuse.)"
result: Cop says "Not breaking the law, not my problem, go away."
So you have to make spamming truly against the law.
Result: Cop says "Yea, I'll get right on that, after I go after a bunch of more interesting (read: higher fines) crimes." Considering how little the cops enforce crimes that are threats to life and limb like tailgating, I don't think there would be much interest.
2) Jurisdiction: result: cop says "Nice, but not in my district, so not my problem. Go away." Cop in area where ISP is says "You willing to show up here to make a complaint? No? Not my problem. Go away."
3) Assuming you make the cops care - they go to ISP "Give us the info. We have a warrant." ISP says "here's the address of the shell corporation in East Elbonia." Cop says "Not my jurisdiction. Not my problem. There a good donut shop around here?"
The latter is what happens anyway - I used to try to go after the hundreds of IPs a day that try to infect my PC. ISPs don't care, and won't care unless you can change the law, and if you try to change the law, the ISPs will outspend you.
By Tri-Band, do you mean 2m/70cm/1.2GHz, or 6/2/70, or ???
For an all-band HF/144/440 rig, I've been pleased with my Icom 7000, but that's a US$2K radio.
The Yaesu VX-7 is a nice multiband HT, and that's what I'd get if I had to replace my current HT.
Just what we need - a bunch of slashbots on HF. FP over PSK, Goatse on 14.235... Dogs and Cats, living together, mass hysteria!
de N0YKG.
This bodes ill for any Martian Felines, for we all know about Felines and Curiosity....
As I understand it, for a class action to happen, you have to have several preconditions:
1) there has to be an easily identifiable group of people to belong to the class. This would NOT be "the set of all people who bought PS3's that could run Linux" for reason #2 below, but rather "The set of people who bought PS2 to run Linux."
2) There has to be a harm to the class. Thus, just having bought a PS3 that could run Linux would not be enough - you would have to have bought the PS3 to run LInux. Moreover, the harm to you is in proportion to the time you run Linux on your PS3 vs. the time you use the GameOS - so if you only run Linux 10% of the time, you are at most going to get 10% of the price of the machine.
So the only folks who are going to be able to get ANYTHING are the people running Linux close to 100% of the time - folks running clusters, doing Cell research, etc.
And were I Sony's lawyers, I'd then ask "OK, so why are you applying the update? Unless you are playing games or accessing Sony's online network, you don't need to update. Thus, if you really ARE using this mostly to run Linux, you aren't harmed, since your machine will continue to run Linux. And since we aren't selling new machines with this ability, they don't fall under this class."
Thus, the whole "harm" aspect is shut down - thus no suit.
And even IF some set of users could show they both run Linux AND run the GameOS, then the argument would be "OK, so you run Linux 50% of the time, and so need to update. OK, we just cost you 50% of the amortized value of the box. When did you buy that? Two years ago? OK, GAAP says depreciation on that is 18 months, so it has depreciated to zero. 50% of zero is zero. Go away."
When the Cell was first announced, I was very excited about it - I do signal processing and protocol simulation for a living, and having something with 8 powerful signal processing engines plus a dual core CPU to run the protocol stacks was just about a perfect fit. So I got my boss to approve buying a PS3 to begin evaluation on, and we began trying to find a vendor for the Cell chip (we can do our own PCB design and fab if needed).
After many talks with IBM, we found that unless you were willing to buy millions of parts, they didn't want to talk to you, didn't want to sell you the chips, didn't want to support you, here's a nice mainframe blade, isn't that good enough (NO! I need something like microTCA, not a big ass blade!).
Add to that how the PS3's Linux had really crummy support for graphics (because rather than being SMART and making the PS3 have the best OpenGL implementation out there, Sony crippled the system with a dumb framebuffer).
Recently, IBM has announced they are end-of-lifing the Cell blades, and moving everybody over to the newest Power series CPUs. So, you can pretty much bank on the Cell only being in the PS3, and maybe one or two TV sets (and even there, I would not hold my breath - until those TVs are shipping the vendors can and likely will change their minds).
While I would still recommend anybody wanting a Blu-ray player buy a PS3, and they are a decent video game platform, I would NOT recommend anybody even think about trying to support the Cell outside that platform - it will not happen, IBM has moved on, Sony doesn't want to support it.
And while there is much typical slashbot dick-waving posturing about "I'm gonna SUE! CLASS ACTION BABY! I'm gonna DESTROY SONY!" - good luck with that. You are taking a minor feature that most PS3 buyers don't even know about, that is periphery to the main function of the device, and trying to say you are in some significant way harmed by this? You expect an attorney to take on a major class action like this, for what - lulz? Against a multinational with a large army of lawyers? At best, you will get US$10 off your next Sony purchase.
What needs to happen is all the companies that bought PS3s to explore Cell programming need to start pressuring IBM and their limited set of third-party vendors like Mercury Computers to release the next generation Cell (with double-precision SPUs) on something reasonably sized and priced.
Meanwhile, flood eBay with all the now-useless PS3s they had in their clusters - drive the price down and cost Sony money.
Typical /. summary - conflating the idea of "we can tell how old you are from your typing" with "we can tell if you are Wicked Uncle Ernie by your typing."
The idea of this would be that if you can tell that somebody is a 40 year old man, and they are on a forum saying they are a 12 year old girl, you can flag that as being suspicious.
Of course, the problem is that a web site or chat forum has relatively little visibility of the user's typing pattern, so unless you force all forums to be accessed by special software that can monitor typing (AND you prevent the use of cut-and-paste so that you type in one window, then paste into the chat window, or detect such matters and flag THAT) then this won't be very useful at all.
Of course, making THAT statement in the summary would be hard, and would require actually thinking about the story.
As I said, typical /. summary.
The big hosting providers ALL have the same attitude when you contact them about abuse:
"WE aren't doing this, that is one of the customers of one of our resellers, we won't do anything, talk to the reseller."
Of course, the reseller says "Screw you, they are paying us good money and you aren't."
Softlayer is a VERY good example of this: a Softlayer hosted site has repeatedly been spamming the Wine Developers mailing list for their crap. I have personally emailed Softlayer about it on more than 10 separate occasions, and have heard ZERO back from them. They don't care (even though their site claims they are aggressively anti-spam - BULLSHIT! words are cheap, actions are not, and Softlayer HASN'T ACTED!)
The spam problem isn't complicated to solve, it is actually pretty simple to solve (though not EASY to solve!) - just follow the "shit flows downstream" principle. If a host is doing bad things, look up who owns the network they are on, and MAKE IT THAT ENTITIE'S PROBLEM to solve it. However the problem is solved - be it "Hey, your server's infected" "OOPS fixed now sorry!", be it "We have blocked outgoing connections from your system until you fix it.", be it "Boss axed me an' Nunzio to has a talk wit ju about youses' server...." - doesn't matter as long as the problem gets solved. If it DOESN'T get solved, then the network owner becomes the problem entity, and you move to their hosts.
The only hard part is bringing some form of negative consequences to bear upon the network owners - you either need a law (and then you have a hard time dealing with systems outside your law's reach - all you can do is place the problem on the point of demarcation to your jurisdiction), or you need something with a wider reach, like publicity.
(and to all you morons about to copy and paste the "spam solutions form" - that meme is old enough to drink and vote, let it die already, OK?)
The "scaffolding" is sand that hasn't been sprayed with glue. Imagine making a simple dome. You lay down a layer of sand. You glue the perimeter. The center stays unglued. Let the glue set, lay down another layer of sand, glue the perimeter. Repeat, making the perimeter smaller each time. The walls are supported by the unglued sand in the middle. When you close the top, you open the side, remove the unglued sand, and you have a dome.
This is how most of the stereolitho machines work now, save they use a support material that can be removed with a solvent that doesn't dissolve the plastic used for the parts you want to keep.
It makes me wonder if the existing CGI movies (e.g. Shrek, Cars, etc.) will be re-rendered into 3D - I would *hope* they saved all the data that drove the render (motion scripts, audio tracks, etc.).
Any insights?
"Ask your doctor if umbridge is right for you. Side effects include elevated blood pressure, agitation, sweating, swearing, reddened vision, frothing at the mouth, and in some cases, death."
"Why wait around for the batteries to charge when you could have standard interchangeable battery packs?"
This comes up every time rechargeable cars comes up, and it is still just as wrong now as the first time.
First of all, not all batteries will be the same. Most of the battery chemistries in use for electric cars have a finite cycle life. So, you pull into the station with your brand-spanking-new, only one charge/discharge cycle battery, and you get it swapped out for the battery I left there with 10000 cycles on it, that has a quarter the capacity. True, you could have the pack record and report its charge cycle history, but that doesn't stop the fact that the only "charged" battery the station has right now is my hammered to death pack, and you are getting screwed on the deal.
Second of all, these packs are HEAVY. Not just the 40 kg your gas tank is, but more like several HUNDRED kilograms. They have to be an integral part of the car's frame, or else in a collision they are going to play Hulk and "HULK SMASH!" their way through the rest of the car (and likely you!). Making something that is BOTH well attached to the car's frame AND easily removable is like making a pocket sized 52" display.
Third of all is the machinery to pull that pack out of your car. It has to be automated, or it has to be operated by a trained operator. When was the last time you had somebody else pump your gas? OK, so skip the trained operator, it has to be automated such that a) BillyBob can "run" it, b) it can handle the car being parked at any number of weird angles to the system, c) it won't crush Little Billy who gets in the way, and d) it POSITIVELY CANNOT have ANY chance of scratching the paint, because BillyBob *WILL* accuse the station of just that, even when the "scratch" has doe fur and hoofprints!
Fourth of all is the issue of what happens if you run out of power out on the road. Right now it is no big deal for [AAA|The Highway Patrol|a passing motorist|A tow truck] to get you a gallon or two of gas so you can make it to a gas station. Good luck with swapping the battery pack in the road. OR you have to have a charging port + a special portable charging system to get you the equivalent of that "couple of gallons" of gas.
I see you are a fan of mine, and I hope my pointing this out won't change that, but - there are good reasons swapping batteries, while great for your phone, doesn't scale to your car.
The only mail that matters is the LETTER, written to YOUR CONGRESSCRITTERs, stating YOUR views in YOUR words, informing them that if they do not correct this hole in the law RIGHT NOW, in a clear and unequivocal fashion, that you WILL work tirelessly to remove them from office and place somebody there who WILL correct this, and that likewise, should they work toward correcting this, you will work tirelessly to keep them in office (so long as they continue to constrain the power of government within the intent of the Constitution).
(and even that mail won't matter a load of fetid dingo's kidneys if they don't see real consequences this November. If you continue to vote for one side or the other of this wooden nickel that is the Democrats/Republicans, you have contributed to the status quo - don't bitch about it.)