He verified the home address, phone number, and social security number of his daughter so I reset the password for him.
What happend to you is called "social engineering". Don't feel bad, it happens to a lot of people. Hopefully all this flaming has taught you something about why the "bullshit policy" exists.
This guy shows a little bit of insensitivity (to put it mildly). How does one calculate "the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox" under his scheme?
Were your keywords relevant to the product, or just a trademark that gets searched a lot?
I can see the validity of insurance companies using GEICO as an ad keyword, but if you key your random widget ad to "Pamela Anderson video" I wouldn't be surprised if Google rejects it.
Most of these bugs were found in sourceforge projects (typical directions: "download this.sourceforge.net, compile it, run it with the supplied input file").
Simple strategy: create your own bugs, then report them.
"Professor DJB, sir, I found ten root-level bugs in the SlashDotFirstPostSubmitter program! Gimme my A!"
This was covered in the Technology section of today's New York Times (here).
Before you start flaming the guy about "gigapixels", understand that Clifford Ross has built a film camera that records astonishing amounts of detail, including the Mt. Sopris picture. He's an artist, but also has done innovative things with optics and film.
Also, you gotta like a guy who owns the IP rights to both Tom Swift and Babar the elephant!
That reminds me of a comment somebody made about DRM-in-everything schemes: would your cellphone stop working if music was playing in the background. Likewise, would your mouse stop moving if you had a copyrighted song stuck in your head? The horror, the horror...
I like the "peer-to-peer" idea. That sounds worth pursuing. As always, the porn industry would lead the way.
OK, change that to "Mexico". A quick scan of the (475-page) document shows that they attempt to do a statistically-significant sampling of the 15-year-olds that are still in school and have comparable amounts of education. The problem is that, in Mexico, the bottom 10% of students may have dropped out of school by age 15, whereas in the US only the bottom 5% are out.
Note also that I said poor countries. I fully expect that e.g. Scandanavian countries will be better than the US in these tests, as they have generally better education systems, plus a prosperous economy that allows virtually everybody to be educated.
I always wonder, when I hear that East Slobovia has better math scores than the US, whether they are really testing all their schoolkids, or only reporting the average of the top 5%. The US is pretty egalitarian in our education system, compared to your typical poor country.
Spin-offs are great and all that, but it's too bad that Hubble will die while they're working the bugs out of the robotic technologies. One stuck screw and it's curtains for HST if a robot is trying to do the repair. A human would be able to improvise better in an emergency.
Oh, yeah, and the other problem is that, since a big R&D effort will be required for the robotic solution, it won't be ready to fly until HST has already burned up and crashed into the ocean. This type of project never runs on schedule.
I'm of the opinion that the robot-repair option wouldn't work, so I'm happy to hear that they're not going to waste a billion or so on it. It seems likely that a new telescope could be constructed more cheaply than repairing the current one; after all, one shuttle launch costs a few hundred million dollars, and many of the current interplanetary craft are being built on a budget of about that size.
One of the problems with the Hubble has been that there's only one of them, thus it's difficult to get to use it. When it was first launched it was pointed out that for its cost about 50 decent-sized ground-based observatories could be built.
Also, in the intervening years the ground-based telescopes have gotten big boosts from adaptive optics and segmented mirrors; perhaps these gains can be transferred to a (better, cheaper) space telescope, and we can build and launch more than one of them this time.
Personally I believe I'd be just as useful to put several billion dollars in a garbage can and set it on fire
Burning the money could help keep inflation down, by decreasing the number of dollars in circulation. And we could probably heat a few city blocks for the winter with the fire.
the next president will appoint 3, possibly 4, supreme court justices.
Funny, that's what they were saying in the last five presidential elections also. This election is no different than the past ones, everybody's just all wired up because 2000 was so close.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly, you're an above-average driver!
(sorry, off-topic, I couldn't resist...)
Whoa, I really didn't need to hear that. Time to panic....
On the bright side, this does solve the 2038 rollover of the 32-bit time_t.
Sure enough, April 13, 2029 is a Friday.
Maybe that old superstition was a premonition instead...
What happend to you is called "social engineering". Don't feel bad, it happens to a lot of people. Hopefully all this flaming has taught you something about why the "bullshit policy" exists.
This guy shows a little bit of insensitivity (to put it mildly). How does one calculate "the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox" under his scheme?
Something to think about, before you reject it out of hand...
I can see the validity of insurance companies using GEICO as an ad keyword, but if you key your random widget ad to "Pamela Anderson video" I wouldn't be surprised if Google rejects it.
Most of these bugs were found in sourceforge projects (typical directions: "download this.sourceforge.net, compile it, run it with the supplied input file"). Simple strategy: create your own bugs, then report them. "Professor DJB, sir, I found ten root-level bugs in the SlashDotFirstPostSubmitter program! Gimme my A!"
UI-Chicago - training the next generation of buffer-overrun-exploiters!
Before you start flaming the guy about "gigapixels", understand that Clifford Ross has built a film camera that records astonishing amounts of detail, including the Mt. Sopris picture. He's an artist, but also has done innovative things with optics and film.
Also, you gotta like a guy who owns the IP rights to both Tom Swift and Babar the elephant!
I like the "peer-to-peer" idea. That sounds worth pursuing. As always, the porn industry would lead the way.
Does it move left when you think of Kerry, and right when you think of Bush?
You're not seeing a representative sample. The un-ambitious ones stay home.
What he means is that in the US, everybody goes to school. Precisely my point. Thank you.
Note also that I said poor countries. I fully expect that e.g. Scandanavian countries will be better than the US in these tests, as they have generally better education systems, plus a prosperous economy that allows virtually everybody to be educated.
I always wonder, when I hear that East Slobovia has better math scores than the US, whether they are really testing all their schoolkids, or only reporting the average of the top 5%. The US is pretty egalitarian in our education system, compared to your typical poor country.
Offensive language has been infrequent and confined to words such as "hell," and "damn," with one instance of "ass."
It's good to know that they're counting every mildly dirty word. I wonder if that "ass" lead to one of their FTC complaints this year.
Oh, yeah, and the other problem is that, since a big R&D effort will be required for the robotic solution, it won't be ready to fly until HST has already burned up and crashed into the ocean. This type of project never runs on schedule.
One of the problems with the Hubble has been that there's only one of them, thus it's difficult to get to use it. When it was first launched it was pointed out that for its cost about 50 decent-sized ground-based observatories could be built.
Also, in the intervening years the ground-based telescopes have gotten big boosts from adaptive optics and segmented mirrors; perhaps these gains can be transferred to a (better, cheaper) space telescope, and we can build and launch more than one of them this time.
Burning the money could help keep inflation down, by decreasing the number of dollars in circulation. And we could probably heat a few city blocks for the winter with the fire.
It would be nice if they'd find a way to repair or replace the Hubble Space Telescope, though.
I can understand why he did this. Steam power is so 19th-century; I prefer battery-powered cell phones myself.
That's probably just their temporary Slashdot site.
Funny, that's what they were saying in the last five presidential elections also. This election is no different than the past ones, everybody's just all wired up because 2000 was so close.