Isnt salting and hashing a standard practice for passwords even for low security stuff?
It is.
I have worked for 4 companies where I was involved with a database that contained user passwords. Before I arrived, none of those companies used salts, and only one even hashed the passwords. When I explained it to my fellow programmers, it was the first time they had ever heard of the concept.
Security and best practices are an academic concepts that are not taught in school. Most people don't really care about security until it affects them. Slashdot is an unusual cross-section of people who tend to be security-minded so what appears to be common knowledge here is not representative of the software industry.
After reading your clarification I understand: You want everyone and everything to be equal, even if that equality means everyone is worse off - so long as it is equal. All people, all cultures, all walks of life. That's a wonderful vision. That's the essence of extreme socialism, and it does not work.
That assumes parents know what is best for their children.
No such assumption was made. My premise is that parents have the right to teach their children.
If they fall into the category of 'no evolution and no climate change' they do not.
So If they don't agree with you, they are wrong.
It's not that I'm right and texas is wrong,
But you just said that "no evolution and no climate change" means they are wrong. So you do believe that Texas is wrong. And that is what you don't like: that someone else's taught their child something that you deem inferior. That is the essence of the arrogant socialist: everyone should be equal, so long as they think the way you do.
it's that the role of government is to make sure you aren't being fucked over because you made the mistake of being born in the wrong place
That is definitely not the role of government. The role of government is to preserve individual rights and freedoms. Sometimes, people are willing to give up those rights for a better society. But I'm not willing to let you force your idea of education onto my child. But fear not: I promise not to do the same to you. That's fair. Remember - that it might be that society decides that your ideas are the wrong ones, and that evolution will be forced upon you.
If everyone gets the same bad education then at least everyone is in the same boat,
That's frightening. You say if it hurts everyone in the country, it's okay, so long as we are equal.
I'm canadian, at a canadian university, when I get a US student I have no idea...
How about just treating them equally then? Judge them on what they know, not where they came from. Consider about students from Iran, or China: do you think that they should be given the same education as a Canadian? Perhaps you are thinking this way because maybe Canada doesn't have the diversity the US has. Perhaps the diversity shocks you? Here, my university classes had something like 50% Americans, 20% Chinese, 15% Russian, etc. (Fun note: UMBC won national chess championships because the Russian students were taught chess in school - they kicked ass). We never judged their education based on where they came from.
Philosophically the difference here is that I want "fairness" and you want "equality." Fairness means individuality, while equality means averaging over some area. I'm okay with a compromise here, because averaging minimizes the effect of wackos. But you want equality over a huuuuuuuge area. It is reasonable to have someone 2 miles from me having a say in our local school. I'm okay with someone 20 miles from me having a say in our county school board. I'm leery with someone 200 miles from me having a say in my state school board. That's where we start having lots of politics and mess and stupid decision making. I am not okay with someone in Texas deciding the curriculum for a school in Maine. Imagine someone in Saudi Arabia having a say in the curriculum for a school in the US?
You only got a refund because the store decided not to fight the chargeback.
That's probably true.
Visa, MC, Discover, and Amex rules say a store can have a "no returns" policy as long as a sign is clearly posted. You were supposed to return the item to the manufacturer.
They can have the policy, they just can't enforce it in this case, in my state. The item was not what they advertised it to be. So I believe it failed the implied warranty of merchantability, at which point the store must take it back. MD Code Comm. Law 2-314
As they say "posession is 9/10ths of the law." I too can attest this works, but I did it differently: - Try to return the item nicely - If that fails, leave the item on their return counter along with a copy of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. - Take a picture of them both on the counter. - Record a video of you leaving. - File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. - Issue a chargeback. (I did this via mail I think.) In the chargeback letter, include the pictures, the letter, why you returned it, and a copy of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.
Perhaps I was overdoing it a tad. In my case, it was a small vendor with a "NO RETURNS" sign (also took a picture of that). Like the other poster, it took 30 days but they sided with me. It was a small vendor, so maybe a larger vendor would fight it?
Just like the PS2 Move and the Wii, the Kinect is for casual gaming. If you don't like dancing, or petting furry animals, then it isn't for you. It isn't fast enough or accurate enough for fast hardcore gaming. Hardcore gamers don't want to spend 14 hours straight doing excercise: they want to zone out into the virtual world by pushing buttons. If you want to capture the Call of Duty market, do the opposite of the Kinect: make a direct brain interface.
The Kinect is a casual gaming success. It allowed Microsoft to enter the niche market that Nintendo controlled.
Your entire argument assumes that the federal government can make better decisions than states. Your rationale is that everyone else is doing it wrong and you know better. That actually proves exactly why it should be at the state level: because if it is done federally then someone from another state will decide how your local school operates. If it is done locally, you at least can move if you disagree with the local rules.
Given how people feel about No Child Left Behind, I really don't think people are on board with the idea of the federal government overriding local schools. But, if you do like that idea, I suggest you propose a constitutional amendment granting it that power.
Agreed. They don't use the test results properly. Penalizing those in need is silly. And some of the tests aren't done well and you can (and have to) teach to the test. Fortunately, this one looks pretty good!
In this case, based on the limited knowledge we can glean from the article, it looks like this test was done properly. We don't have all the information here, but the fact that someone even ran the statistics on this test question and could give the author an intelligent response indicates that someone was thinking. With big standardized tests, they actually test the test! That means they can prove that you cannot teach to the test, and that the results of the test correlate with what they were trying to measure. It's really is just science.
But of course, everyone just assumes that the people making standardized tests are idiots and don't know what they are talking about because the layman always knows better.
Yet another article about how all standardized tests are evil, written by someone who knows nothing about testing. He saw a test question he didn't like and now he is an expert on tests. Furthermore he exaggerates by acting as though every day is spent on tests and they never get any hands-on learning.
The fact that the guy couldn't get the example test answer shows he doesn't have the reading comprehension to write for a major magazine like Slate. The correct answer (C) is almost *word-for-word* part of the instructions for the test question! Furthermore, if you have ever used a microscope, you should already know the answer.
Now, with that said, let me grant him this one point: the example question actually doesn't belong on a science test. It is a reading comprehension question, not a science question. It gives someone instructions, then asks them a question about the instructions in order to tell if they can comprehend what they read. These are good questions, but not science questions. If it was a science question, then they shouldn't even include the microscope instructions - this is something you should just know before using one. Don't let someone use your microscope unless they know this. They either learn it the hard way by breaking a slide, or the easy way by following the instructions. They probably added the instructions because people like him complained it was impossible to answer the question without them.
The author doesn't know anything about testing:
Nearly 60 percent of kids do not give the correct response. This is what test designers want. As an educator once told me, if the question was such that everyone got the right answer, then it wouldn’t be a good question
That educator knows what he is talking about. Would the author prefer questions that everyone gets right? Or questions that everyone gets wrong? Neither is useful in a test. One of the key attributes of a test question is the discrimination. A question with high discrimination is one where people who know the material tend to get it right, and people who do not know the material tend to get it wrong. That means the question is not easily guessable, and is not confusing. A question with low discrimination is one that is easily guessable, and everyone gets it right. You don't want those.
Kids should be learning and building. That's great, no one disagrees. Once they are done their learning, how will you know which ones actually learned the principals of rocketry and which ones didn't? Who learned how to use a microscope and who didn't? You have to give them a test. A subjective judgement of their rocket project is not sufficient.
Standardized tests tell you which students are learning, which teachers are doing well, which schools, which districts. This information is what determines if a student needs help, or if a school needs help, or if a teacher is cheating. Some standardized tests are better than others. I wish I could go to work and just build fun things. But sometimes I need to write a document, and sometimes I have to make a project schedule, and sometimes I need to attend a review. Those things are a necessary part of life. I wonder if the author has children. If so, I hope he pays attention to his children's tests and report cards. Home buyers who have children look at the local standardized test scores when buying a house.
Petapixel is reporting on her copyright infringement. As such they have a thumbnail screen shot of her site as proof. That thumbnail includes her logo, just barely readable. This woman needs to go back to law school and look up "fair use" and the difference between copyrights and trademarks. Next thing you know, she will be claiming copyright infringement for publishing her DMCA letter. If she really is practicing law then she ought to be disbarred for her behavior.
More information here: GoDaddy took down the entire account because she was a repeat offender, and this is their policy. Evidenced by the comment by Troy Heagy in the petapixel discussion.
There is an easy reliable technological solution to this that has been around for 10 years, but no one uses it. There is a W3C standard for labeling pages as containing porn, violence, etc. Internet Explorer had support for blocking pages based on this as far back as IE5. But no one put the meta tags in and so the filters never worked. All Wikipedia should do is have contributors properly label the media, and allow the browsers to handle it based on the user's preferences.
The weight of the people around you is:: drum roll:: none of your business!
That doesn't work if there is socialized medicine. It becomes part of your business because you are paying a portion of their health care. The problem is that we have some people who want social safety nets like socialized medicine or an uninsured driver fund, or free public hospitals; and some people who want individual rights. The two systems collide. So long as we have social safety nets, we will have "nanny state" regulation to go with it.
Since we now have a national health-care program, this type of legislation is just beginning. Maybe we just need an "opt-out" option.
No, that isn't dithering. LCDs can vary the brightness of those individual pixels. So the red pixel can be at 50% power for example. Whereas a printer cannot vary the intensity of a drop of ink - it is either there, or not there. So to get 50% intensity it must use at least two pixels, which is dithering.
Today, radiation is a scary mystical thing, partially because people don't realize how common it is. Perhaps by having these detectors everywhere people will learn that radiation isn't the frighteningly scary thing that the media tells them it is. They will start measuring radiation everywhere: their friends, them selves, their electronics, the air, the soil, the rain, their mom's Fiestaware, their Grandma's Depression Glass. And they will start to see statistics and patterns. When they don't suddenly combust they might start looking at the numbers their detector gives them and start thinking: "Okay, the phone made lots of beeps and displayed a frowny-face: so what does that *really mean*?"
I imagine lots of people were scared by A/C power when Thomas Edison was electrocuting animals with it. But today it is all around us, and people are not scared of walking under power lines or going into their own homes. This may have the same effect.
Actually, printers are 1200 dpi because they need to dither. You can print a perfect photo at 150 - 300 dpi if you don't dither. (Like dye-sub printers do).
but the holiday was postponed for a week to coincide with the Queen's diamond jubilee
In their defense, I must point out that the Queen of England writes terrible VBScript code. It probably is still being reviewed. If she wants to postpone a national holiday, she needs to get her changes committed at least 2 weeks prior to the hotfix release date.
Affirmative Action exists for a reason. If you think we don't need it, kindly explain to me why women working the same jobs as men make less money.
Be careful with that line of thinking. Shorter people also make less money for the same work. But affirmative action doesn't protect short people. Don't oversimplify the issue: affirmative action does not exist to make sure that everyone gets the same pay no matter what.
The whole system of "veteran-owned" and "women-owned" businesses getting special privileges is a farce. I know of some companies that appoint veterans to certain positions just so they can be veteran owned. Or the veteran may have nothing to do with the company any longer. I know a company that is "woman-owned" because the owner put his wife on the board so he could get special privileges when bidding on government contracts.
Re:True AI would dominate the world
on
Where's HAL 9000?
·
· Score: 1
This is exactly the kind of hyperbole that diminishes meaningful contributions to the field of AI.
The focus has been on the crazy woman, but GoDaddy has a big part of the blame here:
And, as it turned out, all of these sites are linked together as far as GoDaddy is concerned which resulted in all 14 of them going down after I filed my complaint.
A photographer filed a DMCA request asserting that a single image was infringing. GoDaddy took down 14 web sites in response. GoDaddy should be liable for damages for taking down 13 of those sites, and potentially for all 14. Now in this case, little harm was done. But imagine the real-world equivalent: A poster is on a wall and so the entire building is leveled. Does that make sense? If a single phone bill is late, does the entire neighborhood lose their phone service? If an electric bill is late does the entire city block lose power? GoDaddy's response makes no sense, and the DMCA should not protect them from such stupidity.
Student: "For my project, I built a scale model of the solar system. Here is the Sun." (hands the teacher a Baseball) Judge: "That's good, but where is the Earth?" Student: "This is a *SCALE* model, so I left it at home."
Slashdot Mirror
Isnt salting and hashing a standard practice for passwords even for low security stuff?
It is.
I have worked for 4 companies where I was involved with a database that contained user passwords. Before I arrived, none of those companies used salts, and only one even hashed the passwords. When I explained it to my fellow programmers, it was the first time they had ever heard of the concept.
Security and best practices are an academic concepts that are not taught in school. Most people don't really care about security until it affects them. Slashdot is an unusual cross-section of people who tend to be security-minded so what appears to be common knowledge here is not representative of the software industry.
After reading your clarification I understand: You want everyone and everything to be equal, even if that equality means everyone is worse off - so long as it is equal. All people, all cultures, all walks of life. That's a wonderful vision. That's the essence of extreme socialism, and it does not work.
That assumes parents know what is best for their children.
No such assumption was made. My premise is that parents have the right to teach their children.
If they fall into the category of 'no evolution and no climate change' they do not.
So If they don't agree with you, they are wrong.
It's not that I'm right and texas is wrong,
But you just said that "no evolution and no climate change" means they are wrong. So you do believe that Texas is wrong. And that is what you don't like: that someone else's taught their child something that you deem inferior. That is the essence of the arrogant socialist: everyone should be equal, so long as they think the way you do.
it's that the role of government is to make sure you aren't being fucked over because you made the mistake of being born in the wrong place
That is definitely not the role of government. The role of government is to preserve individual rights and freedoms. Sometimes, people are willing to give up those rights for a better society. But I'm not willing to let you force your idea of education onto my child. But fear not: I promise not to do the same to you. That's fair. Remember - that it might be that society decides that your ideas are the wrong ones, and that evolution will be forced upon you.
If everyone gets the same bad education then at least everyone is in the same boat,
That's frightening. You say if it hurts everyone in the country, it's okay, so long as we are equal.
I'm canadian, at a canadian university, when I get a US student I have no idea...
How about just treating them equally then? Judge them on what they know, not where they came from. Consider about students from Iran, or China: do you think that they should be given the same education as a Canadian? Perhaps you are thinking this way because maybe Canada doesn't have the diversity the US has. Perhaps the diversity shocks you? Here, my university classes had something like 50% Americans, 20% Chinese, 15% Russian, etc. (Fun note: UMBC won national chess championships because the Russian students were taught chess in school - they kicked ass). We never judged their education based on where they came from.
Philosophically the difference here is that I want "fairness" and you want "equality." Fairness means individuality, while equality means averaging over some area. I'm okay with a compromise here, because averaging minimizes the effect of wackos. But you want equality over a huuuuuuuge area. It is reasonable to have someone 2 miles from me having a say in our local school. I'm okay with someone 20 miles from me having a say in our county school board. I'm leery with someone 200 miles from me having a say in my state school board. That's where we start having lots of politics and mess and stupid decision making. I am not okay with someone in Texas deciding the curriculum for a school in Maine. Imagine someone in Saudi Arabia having a say in the curriculum for a school in the US?
You only got a refund because the store decided not to fight the chargeback.
That's probably true.
Visa, MC, Discover, and Amex rules say a store can have a "no returns" policy as long as a sign is clearly posted. You were supposed to return the item to the manufacturer.
They can have the policy, they just can't enforce it in this case, in my state. The item was not what they advertised it to be. So I believe it failed the implied warranty of merchantability, at which point the store must take it back. MD Code Comm. Law 2-314
As they say "posession is 9/10ths of the law." I too can attest this works, but I did it differently:
- Try to return the item nicely
- If that fails, leave the item on their return counter along with a copy of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.
- Take a picture of them both on the counter.
- Record a video of you leaving.
- File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.
- Issue a chargeback. (I did this via mail I think.) In the chargeback letter, include the pictures, the letter, why you returned it, and a copy of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.
Perhaps I was overdoing it a tad. In my case, it was a small vendor with a "NO RETURNS" sign (also took a picture of that). Like the other poster, it took 30 days but they sided with me. It was a small vendor, so maybe a larger vendor would fight it?
Just like the PS2 Move and the Wii, the Kinect is for casual gaming. If you don't like dancing, or petting furry animals, then it isn't for you. It isn't fast enough or accurate enough for fast hardcore gaming. Hardcore gamers don't want to spend 14 hours straight doing excercise: they want to zone out into the virtual world by pushing buttons. If you want to capture the Call of Duty market, do the opposite of the Kinect: make a direct brain interface.
The Kinect is a casual gaming success. It allowed Microsoft to enter the niche market that Nintendo controlled.
Your entire argument assumes that the federal government can make better decisions than states. Your rationale is that everyone else is doing it wrong and you know better. That actually proves exactly why it should be at the state level: because if it is done federally then someone from another state will decide how your local school operates. If it is done locally, you at least can move if you disagree with the local rules.
Given how people feel about No Child Left Behind, I really don't think people are on board with the idea of the federal government overriding local schools. But, if you do like that idea, I suggest you propose a constitutional amendment granting it that power.
Agreed. They don't use the test results properly. Penalizing those in need is silly. And some of the tests aren't done well and you can (and have to) teach to the test. Fortunately, this one looks pretty good!
No, they tell you which ones are good at tests.
Not if the test is done properly.
In this case, based on the limited knowledge we can glean from the article, it looks like this test was done properly. We don't have all the information here, but the fact that someone even ran the statistics on this test question and could give the author an intelligent response indicates that someone was thinking. With big standardized tests, they actually test the test! That means they can prove that you cannot teach to the test, and that the results of the test correlate with what they were trying to measure. It's really is just science.
But of course, everyone just assumes that the people making standardized tests are idiots and don't know what they are talking about because the layman always knows better.
Yet another article about how all standardized tests are evil, written by someone who knows nothing about testing. He saw a test question he didn't like and now he is an expert on tests. Furthermore he exaggerates by acting as though every day is spent on tests and they never get any hands-on learning.
The fact that the guy couldn't get the example test answer shows he doesn't have the reading comprehension to write for a major magazine like Slate. The correct answer (C) is almost *word-for-word* part of the instructions for the test question! Furthermore, if you have ever used a microscope, you should already know the answer.
Now, with that said, let me grant him this one point: the example question actually doesn't belong on a science test. It is a reading comprehension question, not a science question. It gives someone instructions, then asks them a question about the instructions in order to tell if they can comprehend what they read. These are good questions, but not science questions. If it was a science question, then they shouldn't even include the microscope instructions - this is something you should just know before using one. Don't let someone use your microscope unless they know this. They either learn it the hard way by breaking a slide, or the easy way by following the instructions. They probably added the instructions because people like him complained it was impossible to answer the question without them.
The author doesn't know anything about testing:
Nearly 60 percent of kids do not give the correct response. This is what test designers want. As an educator once told me, if the question was such that everyone got the right answer, then it wouldn’t be a good question
That educator knows what he is talking about. Would the author prefer questions that everyone gets right? Or questions that everyone gets wrong? Neither is useful in a test. One of the key attributes of a test question is the discrimination. A question with high discrimination is one where people who know the material tend to get it right, and people who do not know the material tend to get it wrong. That means the question is not easily guessable, and is not confusing. A question with low discrimination is one that is easily guessable, and everyone gets it right. You don't want those.
Kids should be learning and building. That's great, no one disagrees. Once they are done their learning, how will you know which ones actually learned the principals of rocketry and which ones didn't? Who learned how to use a microscope and who didn't? You have to give them a test. A subjective judgement of their rocket project is not sufficient.
Standardized tests tell you which students are learning, which teachers are doing well, which schools, which districts. This information is what determines if a student needs help, or if a school needs help, or if a teacher is cheating. Some standardized tests are better than others. I wish I could go to work and just build fun things. But sometimes I need to write a document, and sometimes I have to make a project schedule, and sometimes I need to attend a review. Those things are a necessary part of life. I wonder if the author has children. If so, I hope he pays attention to his children's tests and report cards. Home buyers who have children look at the local standardized test scores when buying a house.
Petapixel is reporting on her copyright infringement. As such they have a thumbnail screen shot of her site as proof. That thumbnail includes her logo, just barely readable. This woman needs to go back to law school and look up "fair use" and the difference between copyrights and trademarks. Next thing you know, she will be claiming copyright infringement for publishing her DMCA letter. If she really is practicing law then she ought to be disbarred for her behavior.
More information here: GoDaddy took down the entire account because she was a repeat offender, and this is their policy. Evidenced by the comment by Troy Heagy in the petapixel discussion.
There is an easy reliable technological solution to this that has been around for 10 years, but no one uses it. There is a W3C standard for labeling pages as containing porn, violence, etc. Internet Explorer had support for blocking pages based on this as far back as IE5. But no one put the meta tags in and so the filters never worked. All Wikipedia should do is have contributors properly label the media, and allow the browsers to handle it based on the user's preferences.
The weight of the people around you is :: drum roll :: none of your business!
That doesn't work if there is socialized medicine. It becomes part of your business because you are paying a portion of their health care. The problem is that we have some people who want social safety nets like socialized medicine or an uninsured driver fund, or free public hospitals; and some people who want individual rights. The two systems collide. So long as we have social safety nets, we will have "nanny state" regulation to go with it.
Since we now have a national health-care program, this type of legislation is just beginning. Maybe we just need an "opt-out" option.
and so are dithered?
No, that isn't dithering. LCDs can vary the brightness of those individual pixels. So the red pixel can be at 50% power for example. Whereas a printer cannot vary the intensity of a drop of ink - it is either there, or not there. So to get 50% intensity it must use at least two pixels, which is dithering.
Today, radiation is a scary mystical thing, partially because people don't realize how common it is. Perhaps by having these detectors everywhere people will learn that radiation isn't the frighteningly scary thing that the media tells them it is. They will start measuring radiation everywhere: their friends, them selves, their electronics, the air, the soil, the rain, their mom's Fiestaware, their Grandma's Depression Glass. And they will start to see statistics and patterns. When they don't suddenly combust they might start looking at the numbers their detector gives them and start thinking: "Okay, the phone made lots of beeps and displayed a frowny-face: so what does that *really mean*?"
I imagine lots of people were scared by A/C power when Thomas Edison was electrocuting animals with it. But today it is all around us, and people are not scared of walking under power lines or going into their own homes. This may have the same effect.
That's why decent printers are 1200 dpi or more.
Actually, printers are 1200 dpi because they need to dither. You can print a perfect photo at 150 - 300 dpi if you don't dither. (Like dye-sub printers do).
but the holiday was postponed for a week to coincide with the Queen's diamond jubilee
In their defense, I must point out that the Queen of England writes terrible VBScript code. It probably is still being reviewed. If she wants to postpone a national holiday, she needs to get her changes committed at least 2 weeks prior to the hotfix release date.
Affirmative Action exists for a reason. If you think we don't need it, kindly explain to me why women working the same jobs as men make less money.
Be careful with that line of thinking. Shorter people also make less money for the same work. But affirmative action doesn't protect short people. Don't oversimplify the issue: affirmative action does not exist to make sure that everyone gets the same pay no matter what.
The whole system of "veteran-owned" and "women-owned" businesses getting special privileges is a farce. I know of some companies that appoint veterans to certain positions just so they can be veteran owned. Or the veteran may have nothing to do with the company any longer. I know a company that is "woman-owned" because the owner put his wife on the board so he could get special privileges when bidding on government contracts.
This is exactly the kind of hyperbole that diminishes meaningful contributions to the field of AI.
The focus has been on the crazy woman, but GoDaddy has a big part of the blame here:
And, as it turned out, all of these sites are linked together as far as GoDaddy is concerned which resulted in all 14 of them going down after I filed my complaint.
A photographer filed a DMCA request asserting that a single image was infringing. GoDaddy took down 14 web sites in response. GoDaddy should be liable for damages for taking down 13 of those sites, and potentially for all 14. Now in this case, little harm was done. But imagine the real-world equivalent: A poster is on a wall and so the entire building is leveled. Does that make sense? If a single phone bill is late, does the entire neighborhood lose their phone service? If an electric bill is late does the entire city block lose power? GoDaddy's response makes no sense, and the DMCA should not protect them from such stupidity.
*whoosh*
He was looking to avoid censorship, so I was pointing out that it could be much worse...
google.cn?
Maybe they should just paint it a gaudy orange or pink or give it a mustache, not tell NASA until next time they get there.
Student: "For my project, I built a scale model of the solar system. Here is the Sun." (hands the teacher a Baseball)
Judge: "That's good, but where is the Earth?"
Student: "This is a *SCALE* model, so I left it at home."