You've all got it wrong. These are state-of-the-art modern quantum microphones. They work rather excellently -- as long as you don't try to count 'em. That's why the figures in the specs are all over the place -- if they'd just state *one* figure, the darn thing wouldn't be able to hear anything at all! How do you expect to sell something like that?
In some parts of the world, cars cost $50k already (for, say, a regular VW station wagon), and we do expect those to be used by nobody else.
Having said that, I would welcome a *functional* car sharing service, because I do recognise the wastage in the above model. Sadly, existing car sharing services can't get your ("a") car to you by whistling, they usually require you to pick up/deposit the car at some designated area. A significant drawback is of course that, much like my desk at work, I like to personalise it, which makes it awkward to share such a space. One could make compromises, but only up to a point. For instance, I'm using Dvorak and a very specific monitor layout that I wouldn't expect anyone else to be particularly happy about -- same with a car: should I have to take all my favourite driving-music cd's with me, and what about the dangly bits for the rear-view mirror, and the cushion for my lower back, and my sunglasses? This, in my opinion, would be a very reasonable case against non-personal cars.
Another aspect is that there will always be folks who will insist on owning/driving their own car. I know people without computers who insist on doing all their business the old-fashioned way, and I can imagine many a person who would insist on having his own car to decorate, modify, and drive as he damn well pleases.
allow a 2 second gap and you'll have a good chance of avoid all but the most extreme scenarios. Always maintain the 2 sec gap (4 sec when wet, 10 sec in snow).
You know, that's a very good rule, except in reality, during rush-hour (and also not-so-rush-hour) traffic, other drivers will just flow in to fill the space that is your 2 (or 4, or 10) second safe zone. So in practice, near big cities, you keep just enough space that your fellow drivers will feel that space uncomfortably small, and leave it be -- but that space is usually no-where near 2 seconds long.
I'm actually a big proponent of automated automobiles (the "auto" part, you know) precisely because I am convinced that all these safety margins can be made much smaller as reaction times (and inter-car communications!!) improve, and so increasing not only the overall safety but also the capacity of the existing roadways.
It's just that building a TCP/IP stack for cars is a little tricky, what with physical constrains on velocity, acceleration and buffer sizes.
Yeah, I probably meant to say spark plugs anyway, didn't intend to be Diesel-specific.
So by "work like you say", you mean that modern American cars *do* use a secondary lock and interior lever? That's comforting.
Whether or not it's absolutely break-in-proof is arguable, but it certainly does promote the act in point (placing a device within the engine compartment) from a "plant" to a real "break-in" into the car proper, assuming that lever can't be operated from outside (underneath?) the car. *That* was the point I was trying to make, but obviously didn't state outright.
Why? Are the hoods of modern American cars still not secured?
In all [European, Asian] car brands [that I've ever come across], you need to operate a lever inside the car in order to pop the hood an inch or so; only then can you fully de-latch the hood from outside and really open it.
I used to wonder about how, in the movies, they always ripped out the glow plug wires or whatever, until I started taking an interest in classic cars -- and discovered the discussions on how to install locks on the hood of your car.
Brilliant! Also, that makes good business sense, as they would have to use the email service that you, as an ISP, kindly provide... for a fee. We really can't allow those lusers to manage their own mail, oh no sirree.
I would think it was fine if ISP's set up new accounts with most ports closed *and then provided a good, efficient interface for users to open what they want to be open*... but most (most! there are some good ones out there) ISP staff get that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look when you start to ask questions about outgoing ports. Seriously; I've had the privilege of being told that yes, I would certainly be able to surf the web, when I asked about accessing my own file/media server from the WAN side. Sigh.
I guess what I'm saying is, one should probably take the forget-it-coloured pill *unless* one has the stamina to go and change all that's wrong in the world. Otherwise, misery.
from the basic ability to provide useful information, I don't see why one should have an advantage over the other. After all, the information is just text; if that text is shown on the console or in a window with "OK" button doesn't matter.
It also matters if it's graspable for the users. I've seen too many times cases where an error report contains a zip file of a word file of a full-screen screenshot. On linux, at least you can select and copy-paste the text of the dialog (...not that I'd expect users to be aware of that feature). In a CLI environment, it's pretty obvious that the text is accessible.
But it doesn't really matter what the message is; in the user's perspective it's all just "sorry, but you're not getting what you wanted" anyway -- so you might as well come right out and say that "foo threw a 2203 in line 42 because blech" -- that's valuable to the user *because* it conveys solid information back to support and development and "should" result in a better product faster.
Yeah well. I'm on the Android platform myself, but have a more resigned approach because at some point the whole exercise becomes absurd. But then, I'm not really the target audience: I just wanted a modern pda, not a googlephone; sadly pda's don't exist any more. And even more sadly, the OpenMoko and similar truly open initiatives failed to produce a device that's workable in practice (the OM is awesome, but not exactly stable or long-lived).
I'm happy that my daughter is too young to understand what's going on in the world. I guess ignorance is bliss but once you become aware of reality it's hard to go back to ignorance again.
Ignorance is bliss, regardless of age. Just last year I explained all this Internet privacy concern to my father. I don't think he liked what he learned. Sometimes I really do wish I were just another one of the happy-go-lucky sheeple, because, given the state of the world, "being aware" is just so damn depressing.
There's this choice... "if you had to choose, would you rather be smart or happy?" After having given that some thought, I'm convinced smarts has a negative impact on happiness.:-(
I think it's hilarious that if you use Street View, there actually are a number of photos mapped in that area.
Not stupid; but maybe for a different problem?
on
Map Based Passwords
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· Score: 1
Maybe it's not so stupid; remember that the pixel you have to hit isn't necessarily in the same spot every day, if you have to scroll&zoom the globe to find your spot.
Or, it would make a very good solution to a slighly different problem: It seems a little bit tricky to machine-translate the password hint "the third flamingo on the left on the lawn of Aunt Bessie's house" to a particular coordinate. Unless the hint is something entirely obvious ("Aunt Bessie's house" is more cryptic than "Lincoln Memorial"), it could be used as a very good captcha system... or, as a variant of that "ESP game", a good way to crowd-source mapping of textual descriptions to map coords.
I agree completely -- online name registration cannot be guaranteed unless there was something similar to the domain-registration system, which would in turn obliterate anonymity. I'm not sure how to read your "dickish move", though: are you saying it's dickish to "hog" your desired user name (akin to a domain shark), or to create lookalikes for spoofing (akin to a domain spoofs (which, BTW, can also be hogged, see http://gogle.com?
Also, you remind me of an earlier discussion regarding online names. Actually, we're a small army of KlaymenDKs, all of us preserving each other's privacy by pretending to be the same online persona.:-) It works quite well, even without it having to be a secret (which is why I can spill the beans here) because even with this knowledge, the who-is-who mapping doesn't get any easier.
it's probably a good idea to create accounts in social media/networking sites even if you'll never use them just to "reserve" your identity
That's exactly what I've done in various places. The trouble is that there are so many slight variations that will fool all but the technically savvy and critical friends and contacts. And, you're still not safe, with all the news stories about hacked accounts and leaked password lists.
This, and http://mazemod.org/ -- chip tunes offer a surprisingly non-annoying background for focused work.
Otherwise I listen to pretty much everything from the 80s, be it White Snake, Eagles, Level 42, Laid Back or Desireless... yah I realise this dates me. Or classical music. Or Ibiza-style chill music. Or old-school indy-trance. Or old-school house. Or... okay, I'll stop.
Therefore, I believe your statement that "most people [are] pirates" is false...
Have you ever forwarded an email? If the email contains a poem, then it is unarguably a copyright violation. Forwarding a general email message is most likely a copyright violation, but it hasn't yet been tested in court.
True, all content is automatically under the copyright of the author, be it a beautiful poem or a daft corporate memo. However, I would argue that such use (especially, but not only, in the case where it does not contain a poem) would fall under the fair use doctrine. For that matter, what is "fair use" if not a formal (viz. legal) affordance to "circumvent arrangements that clearly punish the wrong people"? (Note: As a legal fine point, even if it's not fair use, that does not necessarily make it a copyright infringement; there are more sides to it than that.)
I would be very hard-pressed to name even one person that I personally know who has never done anything criminal. It is arguably part of growing up.
Personally, I have never shoplifted or stolen a bike, but I'm absolutely positive that I have, during the years, done a number of things that weren't exactly legal. Now, however, I am (in the view of my friends) almost painfully legit. I can say that I do not own a single piece of software, prose, film, or music that I did not obtain legally. That means free software, public domain e-books and store-bought paperbacks, tv-recorded shows or store-bought dvd's, and store-bought cd's (I like to have the covers, even if I rip them to flac first thing).
I would think that the majority of the media of the majority of the population is legal. Further, I concede that I also expect the majority of the population to possess a minor amount of illegally obtained media.
Therefore, I believe your statement that "most people [are] pirates" is false, and that it is fair to circumvent arrangements that clearly punish the wrong people (a perfect example being the (otherwise) unskippable "do not copy this dvd" message).
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps it is a losing battle. Then again, in the spirit of "you miss all the shots you *don't* make", please bear with us as we keep repeating this.
Cost of insurance >>> (cost of all you own * risk of total burn-down)
Still sucks to be the one whose house is on fire. Expect, in this case, "one" is really "six billion" and "house" is "planet".
But other than that, yeah, you're right.
You've all got it wrong. These are state-of-the-art modern quantum microphones. They work rather excellently -- as long as you don't try to count 'em. That's why the figures in the specs are all over the place -- if they'd just state *one* figure, the darn thing wouldn't be able to hear anything at all! How do you expect to sell something like that?
In some parts of the world, cars cost $50k already (for, say, a regular VW station wagon), and we do expect those to be used by nobody else.
Having said that, I would welcome a *functional* car sharing service, because I do recognise the wastage in the above model. Sadly, existing car sharing services can't get your ("a") car to you by whistling, they usually require you to pick up/deposit the car at some designated area.
A significant drawback is of course that, much like my desk at work, I like to personalise it, which makes it awkward to share such a space. One could make compromises, but only up to a point. For instance, I'm using Dvorak and a very specific monitor layout that I wouldn't expect anyone else to be particularly happy about -- same with a car: should I have to take all my favourite driving-music cd's with me, and what about the dangly bits for the rear-view mirror, and the cushion for my lower back, and my sunglasses? This, in my opinion, would be a very reasonable case against non-personal cars.
Another aspect is that there will always be folks who will insist on owning/driving their own car. I know people without computers who insist on doing all their business the old-fashioned way, and I can imagine many a person who would insist on having his own car to decorate, modify, and drive as he damn well pleases.
allow a 2 second gap and you'll have a good chance of avoid all but the most extreme scenarios. Always maintain the 2 sec gap (4 sec when wet, 10 sec in snow).
You know, that's a very good rule, except in reality, during rush-hour (and also not-so-rush-hour) traffic, other drivers will just flow in to fill the space that is your 2 (or 4, or 10) second safe zone. So in practice, near big cities, you keep just enough space that your fellow drivers will feel that space uncomfortably small, and leave it be -- but that space is usually no-where near 2 seconds long.
I'm actually a big proponent of automated automobiles (the "auto" part, you know) precisely because I am convinced that all these safety margins can be made much smaller as reaction times (and inter-car communications!!) improve, and so increasing not only the overall safety but also the capacity of the existing roadways.
It's just that building a TCP/IP stack for cars is a little tricky, what with physical constrains on velocity, acceleration and buffer sizes.
Yeah, I probably meant to say spark plugs anyway, didn't intend to be Diesel-specific.
So by "work like you say", you mean that modern American cars *do* use a secondary lock and interior lever? That's comforting.
Whether or not it's absolutely break-in-proof is arguable, but it certainly does promote the act in point (placing a device within the engine compartment) from a "plant" to a real "break-in" into the car proper, assuming that lever can't be operated from outside (underneath?) the car. *That* was the point I was trying to make, but obviously didn't state outright.
Why? Are the hoods of modern American cars still not secured?
In all [European, Asian] car brands [that I've ever come across], you need to operate a lever inside the car in order to pop the hood an inch or so; only then can you fully de-latch the hood from outside and really open it.
I used to wonder about how, in the movies, they always ripped out the glow plug wires or whatever, until I started taking an interest in classic cars -- and discovered the discussions on how to install locks on the hood of your car.
So, once isolated, how will the patient go about curing himself, and prove that he's ready to be let back out? (Reminds me of Eastern Standard Tribe.)
Brilliant! Also, that makes good business sense, as they would have to use the email service that you, as an ISP, kindly provide ... for a fee. We really can't allow those lusers to manage their own mail, oh no sirree.
I would think it was fine if ISP's set up new accounts with most ports closed *and then provided a good, efficient interface for users to open what they want to be open* ... but most (most! there are some good ones out there) ISP staff get that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look when you start to ask questions about outgoing ports. Seriously; I've had the privilege of being told that yes, I would certainly be able to surf the web, when I asked about accessing my own file/media server from the WAN side. Sigh.
I guess what I'm saying is, one should probably take the forget-it-coloured pill *unless* one has the stamina to go and change all that's wrong in the world. Otherwise, misery.
from the basic ability to provide useful information, I don't see why one should have an advantage over the other. After all, the information is just text; if that text is shown on the console or in a window with "OK" button doesn't matter.
It also matters if it's graspable for the users. I've seen too many times cases where an error report contains a zip file of a word file of a full-screen screenshot. On linux, at least you can select and copy-paste the text of the dialog (...not that I'd expect users to be aware of that feature). In a CLI environment, it's pretty obvious that the text is accessible.
But it doesn't really matter what the message is; in the user's perspective it's all just "sorry, but you're not getting what you wanted" anyway -- so you might as well come right out and say that "foo threw a 2203 in line 42 because blech" -- that's valuable to the user *because* it conveys solid information back to support and development and "should" result in a better product faster.
Yeah well. I'm on the Android platform myself, but have a more resigned approach because at some point the whole exercise becomes absurd. But then, I'm not really the target audience: I just wanted a modern pda, not a googlephone; sadly pda's don't exist any more. And even more sadly, the OpenMoko and similar truly open initiatives failed to produce a device that's workable in practice (the OM is awesome, but not exactly stable or long-lived).
I'm happy that my daughter is too young to understand what's going on in the world. I guess ignorance is bliss but once you become aware of reality it's hard to go back to ignorance again.
Ignorance is bliss, regardless of age.
Just last year I explained all this Internet privacy concern to my father. I don't think he liked what he learned. Sometimes I really do wish I were just another one of the happy-go-lucky sheeple, because, given the state of the world, "being aware" is just so damn depressing.
There's this choice ... "if you had to choose, would you rather be smart or happy?" After having given that some thought, I'm convinced smarts has a negative impact on happiness. :-(
Very high above mean sea level, and #DEFINE moon_landing = TRUE?
I'd rather have tower-cap, quarry bush, pigtail, dwarf, elephant, corpse, corpse, corpse
Here's a patent idea: icon themes for the Lotus Notes password prompt!
I think it's hilarious that if you use Street View, there actually are a number of photos mapped in that area.
Maybe it's not so stupid; remember that the pixel you have to hit isn't necessarily in the same spot every day, if you have to scroll&zoom the globe to find your spot.
Or, it would make a very good solution to a slighly different problem: It seems a little bit tricky to machine-translate the password hint "the third flamingo on the left on the lawn of Aunt Bessie's house" to a particular coordinate. Unless the hint is something entirely obvious ("Aunt Bessie's house" is more cryptic than "Lincoln Memorial"), it could be used as a very good captcha system ... or, as a variant of that "ESP game", a good way to crowd-source mapping of textual descriptions to map coords.
"What does not kill me, makes me stronger.
What does kill me, I'll deal with when I respawn."
My favourite signature back when I was playing team-based war games.
I agree completely -- online name registration cannot be guaranteed unless there was something similar to the domain-registration system, which would in turn obliterate anonymity.
I'm not sure how to read your "dickish move", though: are you saying it's dickish to "hog" your desired user name (akin to a domain shark), or to create lookalikes for spoofing (akin to a domain spoofs (which, BTW, can also be hogged, see http://gogle.com?
Also, you remind me of an earlier discussion regarding online names. Actually, we're a small army of KlaymenDKs, all of us preserving each other's privacy by pretending to be the same online persona. :-) It works quite well, even without it having to be a secret (which is why I can spill the beans here) because even with this knowledge, the who-is-who mapping doesn't get any easier.
it's probably a good idea to create accounts in social media/networking sites even if you'll never use them just to "reserve" your identity
That's exactly what I've done in various places. The trouble is that there are so many slight variations that will fool all but the technically savvy and critical friends and contacts. And, you're still not safe, with all the news stories about hacked accounts and leaked password lists.
Nice dress. :-) That would certainly impress me, at a party...
This, and http://mazemod.org/ -- chip tunes offer a surprisingly non-annoying background for focused work.
Otherwise I listen to pretty much everything from the 80s, be it White Snake, Eagles, Level 42, Laid Back or Desireless ... yah I realise this dates me. Or classical music. Or Ibiza-style chill music. Or old-school indy-trance. Or old-school house. Or ... okay, I'll stop.
Therefore, I believe your statement that "most people [are] pirates" is false...
Have you ever forwarded an email? If the email contains a poem, then it is unarguably a copyright violation. Forwarding a general email message is most likely a copyright violation, but it hasn't yet been tested in court.
True, all content is automatically under the copyright of the author, be it a beautiful poem or a daft corporate memo. However, I would argue that such use (especially, but not only, in the case where it does not contain a poem) would fall under the fair use doctrine. For that matter, what is "fair use" if not a formal (viz. legal) affordance to "circumvent arrangements that clearly punish the wrong people"? (Note: As a legal fine point, even if it's not fair use, that does not necessarily make it a copyright infringement; there are more sides to it than that.)
I would be very hard-pressed to name even one person that I personally know who has never done anything criminal. It is arguably part of growing up.
Personally, I have never shoplifted or stolen a bike, but I'm absolutely positive that I have, during the years, done a number of things that weren't exactly legal. Now, however, I am (in the view of my friends) almost painfully legit. I can say that I do not own a single piece of software, prose, film, or music that I did not obtain legally. That means free software, public domain e-books and store-bought paperbacks, tv-recorded shows or store-bought dvd's, and store-bought cd's (I like to have the covers, even if I rip them to flac first thing).
I would think that the majority of the media of the majority of the population is legal. Further, I concede that I also expect the majority of the population to possess a minor amount of illegally obtained media.
Therefore, I believe your statement that "most people [are] pirates" is false, and that it is fair to circumvent arrangements that clearly punish the wrong people (a perfect example being the (otherwise) unskippable "do not copy this dvd" message).
Ah, got it. Thanks.