In other words, how do you intend to stop me from installing something (a porn dialer, screensaver, shareware app, or whatever) that, as well as its legitimate function, makes my PC part of a botnet, without preventing me from installing software at all?
True, 100% prevention is probably impossible, but ISPs do monitor their customer's net usage. It shouldn't be too difficult to detect zombie machines. They should then cut the machine off the net, call the owner, tell them that starting N hours ago their machine became a zombie, and help them fix it. Do that often enough, and publicize it, and perhaps the average user will be more careful in the future.
All of these discoveries are the harshest possible environments on Earth - but they're more like the best conditions on Mars. In fact each new discovery makes the odds of finding life on Mars less
Good point, but if life evolved when Mars was warmer and wetter, frozen in the seas might be Martian extremophiles who were the last to succumb to their climate change.
You're looking to George Lucas for better scripts? Isn't that like looking to Windows Internet Explorer for a secure websurfing experience?
I hate to say it, but the best thing Lucas could do would be to turn the whole Star Wars universe over to some decent science fiction writers and film directors, then stand back. We'd end up with more and better films and he'd end up with more piles of cash.
I always roll my eyes when they find an unknown body and they say they'll "identify it through dental records." Sure, if you think you've found Joe Schmoe's body, you can get Joe Schmoe's dental records and see if they match the unknown body. But if all you have is an unknown body, it's not like you can enter its dental info into some giant dental database and come up with an ID.
Combine satellite radio reception with an iPod and you'd really have something! Much cooler and more useful than the much-rumored "video iPod". Of course, there might be licensing issues with this idea as well: will satellite radio services be upset if their broadcasts are recorded and saved?
..is that it doesn't address the most common type of vote fraud in the U.S., which might be termed voter registration fraud. As long as people showing up at the polls get in and get their votes counted, an outside observer is likely to conclude that all is well. Will an outside observer even notice that there are more voters registered in St. Louis or Philadelphia than the census says there are adults in those cities?
Ben Barnes, then Lt. Governor of Texas, admitted he got Bush into the National Guard
Ummm, except Bush joined the National Guard in May 1968, and Barnes wasn't Lt. Governor until 1969. Perhaps the fact that Barnes is a disgraced Democratic politician and major Kerry fundraiser has something to do with his confusion about dates?
If Moyers really believes what he writes, then shouldn't he be calling for Dan Rather's head on a platter? It seems to me that trying to influence a presidential election with forged documents is not exactly quality journalism.
Honestly, I'm not trolling or flamebaiting, just saying that Moyers isn't really Mr. Objectivity when it comes to journalism and politics. I found his laudatory reference to I.F. Stone a bit much, considering that we now know Stone was in the pay of the KGB. And Moyers, for those of you who don't know, produced LBJ's infamous "Daisy" TV ad of 1964, certainly a landmark of American political campaigning, but hardly a positive one.
A good book can not always be shot page by page for a movie.
Indeed, and you'd probably be safe to say "never." The Hollywood rule of thumb is that one page of screenplay equals one minute of screen time. (Oddly, this rule holds regardless of whether it's for dialog, action, or description.) Add this to the fact that screenplays have far fewer words on a page than the average novel, and it's easy to see that all but the shortest novels are too long for page-by-page adaptation. With Lord of the Rings, we're talking about roughly 1,200 pages, and even if those were less-dense screenplay pages, that translates to 20 hours of screen time!
There's also a V-2 at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C. One thing that struck me about it was how lousy the "fit and finish" was: the body panels were wavy and uneven. Then I realized that it might be hard to get high-quality workmanship from slave labor....
I classify maybe half the movies up there as sci-fi.
They certainly missed one excellent s.f. film: Brainstorm. It depicts realistic scientists doing realistic leading-edge science, and then focuses on the personal and social consequences of their invention.
An interesting bit of movie rating history: when the MPAA brought out the original system (G/M/R/X), they trademarked the first three but not "X." Pornographers were thus free to use it, and it came to be associated with "pornography" instead of "adult content," requiring the creation of the "NC-17" rating years later.
Oh my, a 'new economy' based on 'unconscious cooperation'. My, that sounds like Capitalism
Indeed. Howard is a nice guy and has some interesting ideas, but like a lot of lefties he keeps hoping that there is some workable, "non-oppressive" alternative to the free market. Unfortunately, Churchill's statement about democracy as a political system applies here as well: capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.
So "near" means "within two kilometers"? Given the inverse square law, isn't that close to meaningless? Someone two kilometers from a tower would get a small fraction of the exposure of someone 1/4 kilometer from it.
There might be something going on, but the cause might be something else entirely: for instance, the best neighborhoods with the best health care tend not to be near radio towers.
The regulatory costs of forcing spectrum to emulate property are enormous
I'm not a fan of regulation, and the article makes good points, and it's true that the budget of the FCC is about $280 million/year. However, compared to the total annual income of the radio, television, and other industries that use spectrum, is the FCC's budget really that large a percentage?
This is largely true: yes, the original bill is flawed and compromised (not exactly unusual for a controversial new law). However, I think you are missing an important point: now that this bill has failed, and constituent's mailboxes are still filled with spam, there will be more demand for a tougher national law, similar to what California's was.
And here's an idea: a rule that says legislators cannot use a.gov address (which are avoided by spammers), but must use one from a regular ISP on.com or.net. I suspect they'll see the problem much more clearly.
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, how do you intend to stop me from installing something (a porn dialer, screensaver, shareware app, or whatever) that, as well as its legitimate function, makes my PC part of a botnet, without preventing me from installing software at all?
True, 100% prevention is probably impossible, but ISPs do monitor their customer's net usage. It shouldn't be too difficult to detect zombie machines. They should then cut the machine off the net, call the owner, tell them that starting N hours ago their machine became a zombie, and help them fix it. Do that often enough, and publicize it, and perhaps the average user will be more careful in the future.
What, do you think it takes over 7 GHz to load a page on a website?
Safe prediction: by the time we're using photon processors, yes, it will take 7 gHz to load a website....
All of these discoveries are the harshest possible environments on Earth - but they're more like the best conditions on Mars. In fact each new discovery makes the odds of finding life on Mars less
Good point, but if life evolved when Mars was warmer and wetter, frozen in the seas might be Martian extremophiles who were the last to succumb to their climate change.
You're looking to George Lucas for better scripts? Isn't that like looking to Windows Internet Explorer for a secure websurfing experience?
I hate to say it, but the best thing Lucas could do would be to turn the whole Star Wars universe over to some decent science fiction writers and film directors, then stand back. We'd end up with more and better films and he'd end up with more piles of cash.
Offer packages with the mini along with a [. . .] 128mb thumbdrive
Better yet, an iPod Shuffle. They can be used as thumbdrives.
I always roll my eyes when they find an unknown body and they say they'll "identify it through dental records." Sure, if you think you've found Joe Schmoe's body, you can get Joe Schmoe's dental records and see if they match the unknown body. But if all you have is an unknown body, it's not like you can enter its dental info into some giant dental database and come up with an ID.
Or a truly active windshield display in the car.
Now that could be a true "blue screen of death"!
Combine satellite radio reception with an iPod and you'd really have something! Much cooler and more useful than the much-rumored "video iPod". Of course, there might be licensing issues with this idea as well: will satellite radio services be upset if their broadcasts are recorded and saved?
It's one of the laws of web publishing: If an article mentions an interesting object, chances are there won't be a picture of it in the article.
I'd much rather they spent their time and money on building faster rockets, and avoid the long-travel-time problem altogether.
"On your left is new, improved, Scratch-No-More cream! Try it on that mysterious rash, instead of that off-brand cream you've been buying recently!"
..is that it doesn't address the most common type of vote fraud in the U.S., which might be termed voter registration fraud. As long as people showing up at the polls get in and get their votes counted, an outside observer is likely to conclude that all is well. Will an outside observer even notice that there are more voters registered in St. Louis or Philadelphia than the census says there are adults in those cities?
Ben Barnes, then Lt. Governor of Texas, admitted he got Bush into the National Guard
Ummm, except Bush joined the National Guard in May 1968, and Barnes wasn't Lt. Governor until 1969. Perhaps the fact that Barnes is a disgraced Democratic politician and major Kerry fundraiser has something to do with his confusion about dates?
If Moyers really believes what he writes, then shouldn't he be calling for Dan Rather's head on a platter? It seems to me that trying to influence a presidential election with forged documents is not exactly quality journalism.
Honestly, I'm not trolling or flamebaiting, just saying that Moyers isn't really Mr. Objectivity when it comes to journalism and politics. I found his laudatory reference to I.F. Stone a bit much, considering that we now know Stone was in the pay of the KGB. And Moyers, for those of you who don't know, produced LBJ's infamous "Daisy" TV ad of 1964, certainly a landmark of American political campaigning, but hardly a positive one.
A good book can not always be shot page by page for a movie.
Indeed, and you'd probably be safe to say "never." The Hollywood rule of thumb is that one page of screenplay equals one minute of screen time. (Oddly, this rule holds regardless of whether it's for dialog, action, or description.) Add this to the fact that screenplays have far fewer words on a page than the average novel, and it's easy to see that all but the shortest novels are too long for page-by-page adaptation. With Lord of the Rings, we're talking about roughly 1,200 pages, and even if those were less-dense screenplay pages, that translates to 20 hours of screen time!
There's also a V-2 at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C. One thing that struck me about it was how lousy the "fit and finish" was: the body panels were wavy and uneven. Then I realized that it might be hard to get high-quality workmanship from slave labor....
Look, Ive used macs since the orignal - that just had 1Mb of ram!
g e=gallery&model=128k
The first Mac had 128K of RAM:
http://www.apple-history.com/noframes/body.php?pa
I classify maybe half the movies up there as sci-fi.
They certainly missed one excellent s.f. film: Brainstorm. It depicts realistic scientists doing realistic leading-edge science, and then focuses on the personal and social consequences of their invention.
An interesting bit of movie rating history: when the MPAA brought out the original system (G/M/R/X), they trademarked the first three but not "X." Pornographers were thus free to use it, and it came to be associated with "pornography" instead of "adult content," requiring the creation of the "NC-17" rating years later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-rated
Oh my, a 'new economy' based on 'unconscious cooperation'. My, that sounds like Capitalism
Indeed. Howard is a nice guy and has some interesting ideas, but like a lot of lefties he keeps hoping that there is some workable, "non-oppressive" alternative to the free market. Unfortunately, Churchill's statement about democracy as a political system applies here as well: capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.
So "near" means "within two kilometers"? Given the inverse square law, isn't that close to meaningless? Someone two kilometers from a tower would get a small fraction of the exposure of someone 1/4 kilometer from it.
There might be something going on, but the cause might be something else entirely: for instance, the best neighborhoods with the best health care tend not to be near radio towers.
The regulatory costs of forcing spectrum to emulate property are enormous
I'm not a fan of regulation, and the article makes good points, and it's true that the budget of the FCC is about $280 million/year. However, compared to the total annual income of the radio, television, and other industries that use spectrum, is the FCC's budget really that large a percentage?
...it feels like I've been reading Beowulf cluster jokes on Slashdot for longer than that....
This is largely true: yes, the original bill is flawed and compromised (not exactly unusual for a controversial new law). However, I think you are missing an important point: now that this bill has failed, and constituent's mailboxes are still filled with spam, there will be more demand for a tougher national law, similar to what California's was.
.gov address (which are avoided by spammers), but must use one from a regular ISP on .com or .net. I suspect they'll see the problem much more clearly.
And here's an idea: a rule that says legislators cannot use a
Indeed. Most of the house brand or generic products in supermarkets are also made in the same plants that make the brand name products.