I just Goggled the "cambridge coffee pot". Too funny. Only programmers would invent technology to remotely determine accurate caffeine levels to avoid exercise.:)
I guess I was more referring to software not hardware random generation. Like when you call a random function to generate a number for you to use.
I remember reading about two methods YEARS ago probably in some CS class or something. One involved weather patterns (i think), and another involved electrical current, and both involved slices of time, to produce values that were "seemingly" random. The point was, in both cases, you could over time figure out and model something to get most of the general weather phenomenon or the fluctuations of electrical current over whatever it was they were using. Never heard about the radioactive method. Presumably something not too exotic or hard to come by if it is to be used for anything reasonable.
Anyway it is all pretty interesting stuff. It is pretty amazing they were able to do what they did back in the day without the aid of computers.
That said, a OTP is pretty tough to beat no matter what. When I saw the headline, I smirked a bit. Ya, computers and the availability of electronic code *might* make it easier to crack. However that is more likely the fault of the implementation, not the actual code itself.
Case in point. The WWII carrier pigeon letter that was found in an excavated chimney in England last year. It had a short code sequence. The Internets (including slashdot) were all a buzz with trying to crack it to see what it actually said. This went on for months, and no one could do it. People were speculating that it was a OTP, and thus "Impossible" to crack. When all it took was some dude in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada who dragged out an old RAF recon code book they had in their attic and translated the whole mess in about 20 minutes.
Heck the fact that even in WWII the allies would parachute guys behind enemy lines with a bunch of CARRIER PIGEONS for recon and reporting still blows my mind. Gives signal interception a whole new ring (Hawks?)! Pretty soon you have an escalating Hawk war on your hands! LOL I read that manual even had references to signal redundancy, in that each message was sent twice, just in case it got eaten by a Hawk, or as in this case stuck in a chimney flu!
I can't remember which book it was, maybe Cryptonomicon, but more likely The Ultra Secret, but it had some interesting stories about both the allies and axis having a hard time at this.
They used various ideas to try and "make" randomness into their one time pads. However all of these things had to be done by a person, as this was more less before the advent of computers (well just before anyway). One such method had to do with using a deck of cards. However crackers were able to even find patterns among the people using (aka their tendencies in drawing cards or other such devices), so occasionally personnel would have to be "shuffled" themselves to different areas.
If you think about it, a computer is generating it from an algorithm, which may be complex, but is essentially a set of rules that can be determined. I have heard of some that try to utilize some sort of seemingly random event that is naturally occurring. However even these can be modeled over time.
The key really is to make it difficult enough so that the code breaker cannot really use the information obtained effectively. Unfortunately usually this involves additional overhead on the part of the cryptography as well, which of course reduces its usefulness as well.
Which is exactly why the allies took such great pains to prevent the axis from finding out that their unbeatable code had been broken. As it was they got complacent and lazy, and had they known, they would have changed their codes, and the allies would have to start all over again.
The part of Quebec that isn't Cree is just the tiny bit at the bottom.
About the only thing worth saving from Montreal is the strippers. Pave over the rest. Seriously, easily the most corrupt city in Canada, the most organized crime, and whoever decided that the trans-Canada highway should go through the middle of one of the largest cities in Canada, and cross a shitty bridge (that isn't maintained), and totally segregates the whole of the east coast from the rest of Canada, should be found, tared and feathered, paraded through the streets, then summarily shot. At least according to every motorist that has ever had to drive out east.
You are just looking at the other side of the coin. Is Harper Pro-Business? Well of course he his. He would also argue in the media that he is "pro-jobs". It just happens that a big chunk of the business he is so pro about has a bit of a twichy environmental record. Particularly the tar sands, err I mean the oil sands...:)
Anyway I am sure the way he sees it is making more jobs, and bring in corporate capital to Canada by giving the companies an "environment" that they like. Namely one that doesn't worry so much about the real environment. The difficulty here is that most of the environmental science that goes on is done nationally, and because a lot of that hogwash gets in the way of his primary objectives, and he has the power, and why should government be paying people to say things to other people that he doesn't want them to say as they would go against his ideology and his attempt to do what he clearly thinks is the thing to do (idealistically I sort of hope that he thinks it is best for Canada, which he probably does, rather than just corruption, favorites, cronyism, etc...).
Does that make him anti-environment? Sure, he is trying to diminish one to improve the other. He is hardly the first to do that. Does it make him anti-science. Indeed it does as in order to shut down the environmental back talk, he has to stamp down on how that comes about, which is science.
I get his angle. I mean I suppose if I thought that way (I don't), that might seem the most inexpedient way to get what I want. What kills me however, is that it is one thing to "muzzle" scientists. Again, not a new thing, not nice, but not new. They are paid by government, if they say shut yur mouth smarty, ya shut it. Of course you could leave also, but then again if your specialty is in environmental science, you may have some limited opportunities outside of government. No what kills me, is the dismantling of the means to do science. I mean let these guys go on collecting their data, keep the observation stations open, etc... That way in 25 years you don't have a huge black gaping gap in your data called the "Harper Years". That bugs me. It is like destroying history to me. The only excuse I can think of for doing so is either a feeble attempt so that years from now it can't be said that he was wrong, or that he actually knew it was wrong. Plausible Deniability as they say. Other than that, I guess it might make balancing budgets easier, I mean if all they do is collect data you do not want, then might as well save a few bucks I guess.
In case you are wondering who SNC-Lavalin is, Google them and see how many scandals they have been in the last few years, most of them to do with corruption and governments.
Ironically some of the scandals were in India, and guess where we sold most of our Candu reactors over the years.... India!
Anyway this isn't about Lavalin, its about Harper basically dumping our national atomic R&D. Remember Chalk River and the international shortage of radiological isotopes for medical use because it had to shut down? Yeah we kept the liability of that, but are not doing any research or design as to how to replace those 50+ year old facilities.
And on the tinfoil hat side of things: Despite what all the touchy feelies might think, we need atomic energy for our electric grids. Guess what the only replacement is for those things? Solar, wind, puppies, and positive thinking? Nope. Oil and Gas. Funny that. Alberta should like that.
We have those as well, but to a much much smaller extent. I am not sure why that is. I guess part of the problem is where to you draw the line for working for a party VS having the freedom to say or contribute to things you want to as an individual.
Most of the ones I have seen that are not directly produced by a specific political party are done by unions or associations but they seem more focused than simply promoting one party or trying to make another look bad. Usually they seem to be trying to polarize the population around a particular topic in an effort to make decisions easier/harder for whichever party and what campaign promises they might make. Some might be a bit more direct.
Two examples that I know will come up will be about cuts to health care and education salaries which have been out of control for a long time and are unsustainable. So the Collage of Physicians and the associated Unions will likely produce spots about how important they are, saving lives, aging population, caring for loved ones, etc... Likewise the teachers unions will come out with a whole bit on taking care of the children, think of the children! Neither will likely come out and say don't vote for X as they hate kids or your safety. Unless of course one political party actually speaks out directly, which will never happen as it would have predictable results.
Unfortunately, this means no one stands for anything, and they all just stand around agreeing with each other all the while making disparaging remarks about what the other parties did in the past. Which does make it hard for voters to try and guess exactly what it is anyone really plans to do.
Possibly one of the more insightful posts I have seen in awhile, but I guess some find it interesting.
This is totally what is going through their collective minds, bet on it. I wonder what companies like EB Games think of things like this. May be some monopoly court cases in the future for Microsoft yet again perhaps.
Anyway I will take the obvious step further and say not only will this be a market place transaction (whereby EVERY transaction Microsoft makes a substantial cut, which would further reduce the number of transactions increasing new game sales), but in addition these will not be monetary but rather "Microsoft Points". Which of course you can ONLY spend on more online Microsoft stuff. I believe that is what you call WIN-WIN. It will also likely increase the liquidity (to borrow an investment phrase) of "Points" making them more useful. More developers will see opportunistic and produce more for availability, and every single transaction MS will be making a percentage.
If they can get away with it, it is genius really (evil genius perhaps). Then again, if they offer up (at least initially to soften the blow) significant incentives to users they will accept it. Then when it becomes entrenched, it is just how things are done now, and you milk it for profits.
The problem is calling it a "Computer", which it is not really.
A better analogy might be to call it a like on some old school computers, a math co-processor. A math co-processor wasn't a "computer" but rather a processor that offloaded certain tasks that it could handle more efficiently.
I see this as a similar situation. It is really only good at solving very specific problems, outside of which a normal computer would be better served.
However half the time it isn't the contractors fault entirely, sometimes the local IT when setting up the contractors work screw up a script, or implement the DB incorrectly, or any number of things, causing the application to fail pretty fundamentally.
As someone that has been on the business area testing side of things, it can be vastly frustrating when finding flaws that are so big and so obvious that there is no way the developer even bothered to test (sometimes I wonder how they could even code it without even trying to run it at least once). Or when you point or said flaw, they report that it has been fixed, you go back and test it again, and nothing has changed. Turns out they forgot and just said they did something about it when nothing was actually done.
Much of this can be solved with contracts and good testing practices. DO NOT having testing as an after thought. Engage the users to exhaustively test. Have them sign off, but do not have the time truncated because the developer was slow or ran into problem. Have set scripted time for testing and build into contract. That way it is spelled out when the developer fails (and so does payment) or when the user client fails to spot bug and they have to take some responsibility also.
Any many have mentioned, bug free code pretty much doesn't exist for any systems of any size or complexity, or they don't stay that way for very long if they do exist. However you can try to keep it to a reasonable amount of non-core functionality. There can be those bugs that only happen when all the planets align on a prime number Tuesday. Even the most diligent development or user testing can miss it, and only find out much later. Thankfully usually these things are pretty low impact due to the rarity.
In any case hiring internally is fine, and will allow for more continuous updates to these applications. Find a rare bug a year afterwards, no problem, you have an in house guy that can fix it no problem. The only difficulty is that you better make sure who ever you hire does meticulous documenting, in code comments, and is very organized. An organization can become very dependent on these folks for obvious reasons. When they leave (for whatever reason), you could be quite screwed, and even going back to contractors may be difficult. Languages really don't matter, keep up their training if they have to deal with a lot. Hire someone that has a lot of experience in the primary languages you deal with (or the most immediate need), and let them develop the rest. In your situation, I wouldn't be looking for the "genius level hacker" type but rather the "OCD organized, meticulous, steady" type. Heh, neither are likely fun to be around...:) Someone who is a competent programmer to be sure, and shows some flexibility and range of ability/knowledge/experience but primary skill should be fastidiousness.
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Xbox to rule them all, One Xbox to find them, One Xbox to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Was going to post that in primary thread as it was first thought to come to mind about the name. Then I saw you preempted my LOTR, so I will post under you in deference to your Palantir Cloud of intrusiveness...
I did the same. However I found that new "editions" usually would just intentionally mess up the chapter and page numbers making it difficult to follow along.
Had nothing to do with content, and everything to do with primitive DRM.
Try buying a new phone and see how many other fees they have.
There are a ton, and even when they offer promotions to waive some, there are always others.
As part of the promotion to sign another 3 year contract as an existing customer, they waived the "administration fee".
However when you go to get your actual phone, you have to now go to a brink and mortar Bell Store, who will charge you an "upgrade fee", which apparently is something totally different than an administration fee.
If I didn't absolutely need a phone, and with complete certitude know that Rogers is just as bad, I would drop them like a bad habit.
Unfortunately we have little choice up here in Canuckistan.
How exactly is the time calculated? Does anyone know? I mean I have heard of several methods, from carbon dating to a few others, however this one is a bit exotic. It is not explained in either the article nor the paper, but only references another paper as which title seems to say potential method, which doesn't sound awfully conclusive.
They mention the encapsulating rock formations are billions of years old, and I can get behind that analysis, but it is my understanding that you can find billion year old rock in a lot of places. How does one date water? How do you know that it has been trapped all that time, and not captured at some point through various geological processes.
The paper references the African goldmine, but they used microbes, which I have to believe they haven't found yet. Something to do with levels of Xenon seems to be indicator, but what does that mean?
Anyway I remain skeptical until I see the details... however the only problem admittedly is the details might be beyond my level of comprehension... Still it would be nice to know and at least attempt to explain how this is possible.
A few years ago, we got a "new" data center. I was all excited to move our old and busted applications at least off of old an busted hardware!
However what we got was a new building.
Rather than getting new servers, what we actually got was a few days of downtime while they unplugged and loaded it all on a truck and drove our busted hardware to the new building! Progress!
When I was told, I had one of those laughs... Although all I could think of was what would happen if the semi truck carrying all our stuff crashed... sure it is all backed up, but man we would have been screwed.
One of the big reasons I dropped my iPhone in favor of a Galaxy S3 was iTunes.
1) It is slow, terribly slow. 2) It is a resource hog, how is it so bloated when Apple are supposedly these geniuses? 3) It has an update every 4h, and then tries to install and update every piece of software Apple makes... 4) It is broken in so many ways it is not funny, and has been for years, you can easily google the issues. 5) Apple will intentionally NOT address a bug or issue if it means it might make more money for them at the cost of user experience. Try fixing hundreds of broken links... 6) When a user community finally gets fed up and creates their own java solution to fix the errors Apple refuses to, Apple will release an update to intentional disable the fix. 7) In short, Apple would rather make a buck than improve your user experience, and are a bunch of asshats. iTunes is garbage, and you should stop using it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's that you can tell if a video is fake if a 13 year old says "FAKE!!111!" in the comments section.
Therefore I implore the owners prove the veracity of their video by posting it to YouTube.
You just need a box, some poison, and an E-Cat.... then maybe. :)
because it runs on sadness
1) Drink Coors
2) Drink more Coors to forget you are drinking Coors
3) PROFIT!!!
I just Goggled the "cambridge coffee pot". Too funny. Only programmers would invent technology to remotely determine accurate caffeine levels to avoid exercise. :)
I guess I was more referring to software not hardware random generation. Like when you call a random function to generate a number for you to use.
I remember reading about two methods YEARS ago probably in some CS class or something. One involved weather patterns (i think), and another involved electrical current, and both involved slices of time, to produce values that were "seemingly" random. The point was, in both cases, you could over time figure out and model something to get most of the general weather phenomenon or the fluctuations of electrical current over whatever it was they were using. Never heard about the radioactive method. Presumably something not too exotic or hard to come by if it is to be used for anything reasonable.
Anyway it is all pretty interesting stuff. It is pretty amazing they were able to do what they did back in the day without the aid of computers.
That said, a OTP is pretty tough to beat no matter what. When I saw the headline, I smirked a bit. Ya, computers and the availability of electronic code *might* make it easier to crack. However that is more likely the fault of the implementation, not the actual code itself.
Case in point. The WWII carrier pigeon letter that was found in an excavated chimney in England last year. It had a short code sequence. The Internets (including slashdot) were all a buzz with trying to crack it to see what it actually said. This went on for months, and no one could do it. People were speculating that it was a OTP, and thus "Impossible" to crack. When all it took was some dude in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada who dragged out an old RAF recon code book they had in their attic and translated the whole mess in about 20 minutes.
Heck the fact that even in WWII the allies would parachute guys behind enemy lines with a bunch of CARRIER PIGEONS for recon and reporting still blows my mind. Gives signal interception a whole new ring (Hawks?)! Pretty soon you have an escalating Hawk war on your hands! LOL I read that manual even had references to signal redundancy, in that each message was sent twice, just in case it got eaten by a Hawk, or as in this case stuck in a chimney flu!
I can't remember which book it was, maybe Cryptonomicon, but more likely The Ultra Secret, but it had some interesting stories about both the allies and axis having a hard time at this.
They used various ideas to try and "make" randomness into their one time pads. However all of these things had to be done by a person, as this was more less before the advent of computers (well just before anyway). One such method had to do with using a deck of cards. However crackers were able to even find patterns among the people using (aka their tendencies in drawing cards or other such devices), so occasionally personnel would have to be "shuffled" themselves to different areas.
If you think about it, a computer is generating it from an algorithm, which may be complex, but is essentially a set of rules that can be determined. I have heard of some that try to utilize some sort of seemingly random event that is naturally occurring. However even these can be modeled over time.
The key really is to make it difficult enough so that the code breaker cannot really use the information obtained effectively. Unfortunately usually this involves additional overhead on the part of the cryptography as well, which of course reduces its usefulness as well.
Which is exactly why the allies took such great pains to prevent the axis from finding out that their unbeatable code had been broken. As it was they got complacent and lazy, and had they known, they would have changed their codes, and the allies would have to start all over again.
The part of Quebec that isn't Cree is just the tiny bit at the bottom.
About the only thing worth saving from Montreal is the strippers. Pave over the rest. Seriously, easily the most corrupt city in Canada, the most organized crime, and whoever decided that the trans-Canada highway should go through the middle of one of the largest cities in Canada, and cross a shitty bridge (that isn't maintained), and totally segregates the whole of the east coast from the rest of Canada, should be found, tared and feathered, paraded through the streets, then summarily shot. At least according to every motorist that has ever had to drive out east.
You are just looking at the other side of the coin. Is Harper Pro-Business? Well of course he his. He would also argue in the media that he is "pro-jobs". It just happens that a big chunk of the business he is so pro about has a bit of a twichy environmental record. Particularly the tar sands, err I mean the oil sands... :)
Anyway I am sure the way he sees it is making more jobs, and bring in corporate capital to Canada by giving the companies an "environment" that they like. Namely one that doesn't worry so much about the real environment. The difficulty here is that most of the environmental science that goes on is done nationally, and because a lot of that hogwash gets in the way of his primary objectives, and he has the power, and why should government be paying people to say things to other people that he doesn't want them to say as they would go against his ideology and his attempt to do what he clearly thinks is the thing to do (idealistically I sort of hope that he thinks it is best for Canada, which he probably does, rather than just corruption, favorites, cronyism, etc...).
Does that make him anti-environment? Sure, he is trying to diminish one to improve the other. He is hardly the first to do that. Does it make him anti-science. Indeed it does as in order to shut down the environmental back talk, he has to stamp down on how that comes about, which is science.
I get his angle. I mean I suppose if I thought that way (I don't), that might seem the most inexpedient way to get what I want. What kills me however, is that it is one thing to "muzzle" scientists. Again, not a new thing, not nice, but not new. They are paid by government, if they say shut yur mouth smarty, ya shut it. Of course you could leave also, but then again if your specialty is in environmental science, you may have some limited opportunities outside of government. No what kills me, is the dismantling of the means to do science. I mean let these guys go on collecting their data, keep the observation stations open, etc... That way in 25 years you don't have a huge black gaping gap in your data called the "Harper Years". That bugs me. It is like destroying history to me. The only excuse I can think of for doing so is either a feeble attempt so that years from now it can't be said that he was wrong, or that he actually knew it was wrong. Plausible Deniability as they say. Other than that, I guess it might make balancing budgets easier, I mean if all they do is collect data you do not want, then might as well save a few bucks I guess.
A big one that is missing is AECL, or the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.
Back in 2011 they sold off most of it to SNC-Lavalin. For 15 Million. They might as well sold it for 1$ dollar.
Hundreds of engineers and nuclear scientists.
Official:
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/media-room/news-release/2011/57/2138
CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2011/06/29/aecl-sale.html
In case you are wondering who SNC-Lavalin is, Google them and see how many scandals they have been in the last few years, most of them to do with corruption and governments.
Ironically some of the scandals were in India, and guess where we sold most of our Candu reactors over the years.... India!
Anyway this isn't about Lavalin, its about Harper basically dumping our national atomic R&D. Remember Chalk River and the international shortage of radiological isotopes for medical use because it had to shut down? Yeah we kept the liability of that, but are not doing any research or design as to how to replace those 50+ year old facilities.
And on the tinfoil hat side of things: Despite what all the touchy feelies might think, we need atomic energy for our electric grids. Guess what the only replacement is for those things? Solar, wind, puppies, and positive thinking? Nope. Oil and Gas. Funny that. Alberta should like that.
We have those as well, but to a much much smaller extent. I am not sure why that is. I guess part of the problem is where to you draw the line for working for a party VS having the freedom to say or contribute to things you want to as an individual.
Most of the ones I have seen that are not directly produced by a specific political party are done by unions or associations but they seem more focused than simply promoting one party or trying to make another look bad. Usually they seem to be trying to polarize the population around a particular topic in an effort to make decisions easier/harder for whichever party and what campaign promises they might make. Some might be a bit more direct.
Two examples that I know will come up will be about cuts to health care and education salaries which have been out of control for a long time and are unsustainable. So the Collage of Physicians and the associated Unions will likely produce spots about how important they are, saving lives, aging population, caring for loved ones, etc... Likewise the teachers unions will come out with a whole bit on taking care of the children, think of the children! Neither will likely come out and say don't vote for X as they hate kids or your safety. Unless of course one political party actually speaks out directly, which will never happen as it would have predictable results.
Unfortunately, this means no one stands for anything, and they all just stand around agreeing with each other all the while making disparaging remarks about what the other parties did in the past. Which does make it hard for voters to try and guess exactly what it is anyone really plans to do.
Possibly one of the more insightful posts I have seen in awhile, but I guess some find it interesting.
This is totally what is going through their collective minds, bet on it. I wonder what companies like EB Games think of things like this. May be some monopoly court cases in the future for Microsoft yet again perhaps.
Anyway I will take the obvious step further and say not only will this be a market place transaction (whereby EVERY transaction Microsoft makes a substantial cut, which would further reduce the number of transactions increasing new game sales), but in addition these will not be monetary but rather "Microsoft Points". Which of course you can ONLY spend on more online Microsoft stuff. I believe that is what you call WIN-WIN. It will also likely increase the liquidity (to borrow an investment phrase) of "Points" making them more useful. More developers will see opportunistic and produce more for availability, and every single transaction MS will be making a percentage.
If they can get away with it, it is genius really (evil genius perhaps). Then again, if they offer up (at least initially to soften the blow) significant incentives to users they will accept it. Then when it becomes entrenched, it is just how things are done now, and you milk it for profits.
http://www.xkcd.com/1215/ :)
The problem is calling it a "Computer", which it is not really.
A better analogy might be to call it a like on some old school computers, a math co-processor. A math co-processor wasn't a "computer" but rather a processor that offloaded certain tasks that it could handle more efficiently.
I see this as a similar situation. It is really only good at solving very specific problems, outside of which a normal computer would be better served.
I have the same problem.
However half the time it isn't the contractors fault entirely, sometimes the local IT when setting up the contractors work screw up a script, or implement the DB incorrectly, or any number of things, causing the application to fail pretty fundamentally.
As someone that has been on the business area testing side of things, it can be vastly frustrating when finding flaws that are so big and so obvious that there is no way the developer even bothered to test (sometimes I wonder how they could even code it without even trying to run it at least once). Or when you point or said flaw, they report that it has been fixed, you go back and test it again, and nothing has changed. Turns out they forgot and just said they did something about it when nothing was actually done.
Much of this can be solved with contracts and good testing practices. DO NOT having testing as an after thought. Engage the users to exhaustively test. Have them sign off, but do not have the time truncated because the developer was slow or ran into problem. Have set scripted time for testing and build into contract. That way it is spelled out when the developer fails (and so does payment) or when the user client fails to spot bug and they have to take some responsibility also.
Any many have mentioned, bug free code pretty much doesn't exist for any systems of any size or complexity, or they don't stay that way for very long if they do exist. However you can try to keep it to a reasonable amount of non-core functionality. There can be those bugs that only happen when all the planets align on a prime number Tuesday. Even the most diligent development or user testing can miss it, and only find out much later. Thankfully usually these things are pretty low impact due to the rarity.
In any case hiring internally is fine, and will allow for more continuous updates to these applications. Find a rare bug a year afterwards, no problem, you have an in house guy that can fix it no problem. The only difficulty is that you better make sure who ever you hire does meticulous documenting, in code comments, and is very organized. An organization can become very dependent on these folks for obvious reasons. When they leave (for whatever reason), you could be quite screwed, and even going back to contractors may be difficult. Languages really don't matter, keep up their training if they have to deal with a lot. Hire someone that has a lot of experience in the primary languages you deal with (or the most immediate need), and let them develop the rest. In your situation, I wouldn't be looking for the "genius level hacker" type but rather the "OCD organized, meticulous, steady" type. Heh, neither are likely fun to be around... :) Someone who is a competent programmer to be sure, and shows some flexibility and range of ability/knowledge/experience but primary skill should be fastidiousness.
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Xbox to rule them all, One Xbox to find them,
One Xbox to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Was going to post that in primary thread as it was first thought to come to mind about the name. Then I saw you preempted my LOTR, so I will post under you in deference to your Palantir Cloud of intrusiveness...
I would postulate that hellholes might have a lot of effective government when these tax evaders eventually get to them...
I did the same. However I found that new "editions" usually would just intentionally mess up the chapter and page numbers making it difficult to follow along.
Had nothing to do with content, and everything to do with primitive DRM.
I smell sequel!
Try buying a new phone and see how many other fees they have.
There are a ton, and even when they offer promotions to waive some, there are always others.
As part of the promotion to sign another 3 year contract as an existing customer, they waived the "administration fee".
However when you go to get your actual phone, you have to now go to a brink and mortar Bell Store, who will charge you an "upgrade fee", which apparently is something totally different than an administration fee.
If I didn't absolutely need a phone, and with complete certitude know that Rogers is just as bad, I would drop them like a bad habit.
Unfortunately we have little choice up here in Canuckistan.
How exactly is the time calculated? Does anyone know? I mean I have heard of several methods, from carbon dating to a few others, however this one is a bit exotic. It is not explained in either the article nor the paper, but only references another paper as which title seems to say potential method, which doesn't sound awfully conclusive.
They mention the encapsulating rock formations are billions of years old, and I can get behind that analysis, but it is my understanding that you can find billion year old rock in a lot of places. How does one date water? How do you know that it has been trapped all that time, and not captured at some point through various geological processes.
The paper references the African goldmine, but they used microbes, which I have to believe they haven't found yet. Something to do with levels of Xenon seems to be indicator, but what does that mean?
Anyway I remain skeptical until I see the details... however the only problem admittedly is the details might be beyond my level of comprehension... Still it would be nice to know and at least attempt to explain how this is possible.
Well technically someone had to write the malware...
Unless of course we have malware writing more malware... at which point we know the end is neigh...
A few years ago, we got a "new" data center. I was all excited to move our old and busted applications at least off of old an busted hardware!
However what we got was a new building.
Rather than getting new servers, what we actually got was a few days of downtime while they unplugged and loaded it all on a truck and drove our busted hardware to the new building! Progress!
When I was told, I had one of those laughs... Although all I could think of was what would happen if the semi truck carrying all our stuff crashed... sure it is all backed up, but man we would have been screwed.
The 16,666 times increase is to deter other filthy criminals... Seems reasonable.
One of the big reasons I dropped my iPhone in favor of a Galaxy S3 was iTunes.
1) It is slow, terribly slow.
2) It is a resource hog, how is it so bloated when Apple are supposedly these geniuses?
3) It has an update every 4h, and then tries to install and update every piece of software Apple makes...
4) It is broken in so many ways it is not funny, and has been for years, you can easily google the issues.
5) Apple will intentionally NOT address a bug or issue if it means it might make more money for them at the cost of user experience. Try fixing hundreds of broken links...
6) When a user community finally gets fed up and creates their own java solution to fix the errors Apple refuses to, Apple will release an update to intentional disable the fix.
7) In short, Apple would rather make a buck than improve your user experience, and are a bunch of asshats. iTunes is garbage, and you should stop using it.