If you held a lottery where the odds of winning were 1 in a billion billion billion, but someone won, would you call the shenanigans?
Living to 143 or even 153 would be an extreme outlier, but to imply it is an actual impossibility by calling it a "statistical impossibility" isn't helpful.
Now, it may actually be the case that there is an upper limit on the human lifespan (personally, I think there is, but we don't have the science to prove it yet), and it may be the case that this upper limit is under 143 years (personally, I doubt this is the case). If we eventually prove that man cannot live more than 142 years, then - and only then - can we say that this claim is actually impossible on its face. Until then, we can - and should - say that it is extremely improbably and the claimant has a very high burden of proof.
An identity card whose date has only recently been confirmed isn't enough.
You still need to confirm that the card-holder is the person who matches the genuine records.
You also have to assess the credibility of those in the records office and answer questions like "why wasn't this confirmed long ago, like when he applied for a penson (no pension? okay, I'll accept that) or when he hit age 100 (not important enough? okay, I'll accept that), age 110 (you better have a darn good answer) or when he got to be the oldest man in his country (every month of delay in searching for accurate records from this point on makes his claim less and less credible).
It's been 30+ years since he would've been the oldest person in the world. If there haven't been serious, continuous, diligent, credible efforts to find and authenticate his age since the mid-to-late 1980s, then it will take something extra-ordinary, such as confirmation that he fathered someone known to be born more than, say, 120 years ago, for his claim to be accepted. Even if there has been a serious, continuous, diligent, credible effort to find proof of his age for the last 30 years, the fact that it took so long to find it hurts his claim.
Topic-specific printed non-professionally-run newsletters did much the same as USENET groups did in bringing together people from around the globe who had similar interests. Granted, they weren't as fast (USENET typically circulated the globe in 24-48 hours in the early days, with some "high-cost-to-deliver" sites taking days or a week or more to get updates).
Amateur radio also had (and still has) similar communities-of-interest but, due to the way radio works, it's difficult to have a true "world-wide" community over amateur radio alone (these days, "hams" take advantage of the Internet so distance isn't as much of limitation). I'm not saying it isn't happening, it's just much harder than having a community where everyone is within a few thousand miles of each other.
The invention of the telegraph and the wide-scale availability to the paying masses through commercial telegraph operators was arguably the first real breakthrough in electronic digital communications, assuming you consider the "on/off" of Morse-code-type telegraphy to be digital, which I do.
Smoke signals, semaphore signals, and other forms of non-electronic long-distance communication are also typically digital. As to whether they were "available to the masses" or not, that varies.
Writing, whether using alphabets or pictographs, is arguably a form of digital communications. Speaking in words or groups of sub-word sounds (phonemes and syllables) that have distinct meanings is arguably digital (as opposed to analog), as long as the dictionary size is, for all practical purposes limited. This is the case for all conventional spoken and written human languages that I am aware of.
So, in that sense, we humans have been using digital forms of communication since, well, ever since we started talking to each other, which likely pre-dates humanity itself.
The Internet was arguably invented either in 1969 or when IPv4 rolled out in the early 1980s, depending on whether you "count" the pre-IPv4 Internet as "the Internet" or not.
Heck, it can be even better because with postal voting, every mail-carrier can be a man-in-the-middle DOS attacker. "Sorry Mr. Voter, your ballot never arrived, and since the election is over, too bad for you."
At least with online voting you can be assured your unopened ballot actually arrived.
Now, as for all of the OTHER weaknesses of mail-in balloting, including vote-counter fraud, voter-location (spouse/caretaker) fraud, coerced-voting fraud, etc., yes, those are still problems.
Internet voting makes the most sense for people in outer space and others with unreliable or slow paper-mail. It makes some sense for people who can't get to polling places who would use vulnerable vote-by-mail systems anyways. It also makes some sense in states like Oregon which use vote-by-mail exclusively for some elections (but it has the downside risk that it can weaken public support for a return to poll-based voting under the illusion that internet-based voting is as secure as poll-based voting).
We should've reached this level years ago and should've been well past 90% already, assuming you limit yourselves to people with IPv6-capable phones trying to connect to IPv6-capable destinations.
Any phone newer than 3-4 years old should be IPv6-capable.
That's true as far as it goes, but we should not forget:
* Some came for other reasons, such as religious freedom or to flee persecution.
* A very sizable minority was forcibly dragged here in chains or were born into slavery.
* Some were brought her by their parents before they were old enough to say "no, I'll stay behind, thank-you" or were forcibly dragged here by husbands (back then, a wife didn't really have much of an option but to obey her husband).
Which is a better use of taxpayer money for something that won't get re-used a lot and which might have a short shelf life?
1) Expensive, good, and late, possibly too-late-to-be-useful?
2) Slightly less expensive, crappy-but-functional, and on time
Sometimes the answer is #1, sometimes it is #2. Sometimes you just don't know and you (or your bean-counting managers) have to make a call that might be wrong.
Bottom line:
I'd much rather the hacking tools be crappy than the code that runs something that directly affects tens of millions of people, like, oh, I don't know, the software that makes sure Social Security checks go out on time and in the right amounts?
Correcting grammar in the post above is left as an exercise to the reader, or, more likely, as an exercise for the offshore person who will be trained by the HB-1 visa-holder that you are training now.
If your job was going to go to India or some other country, it was probably going to go anyway, HB-1 visa program or no HB-1 visa program.
With HB-1 visa-holders coming her to "learn the trade" at least there are a few man-years of work being done here, with those people buying lunch and paying rent and the associated taxes in this country for those man-years.
I know my skills are "portable" and that if I plan on having a halfway-decently-paying job until retirement I need to either: * be someone who can't be cheaply replaced, anywhere in the world, OR * do work that can only be done locally (in-person sales, on-premise hardware-installation, etc.) * do work that can't be outsourced for legal reasons (government contracts, certain national infrastructure work) * work for a company or industry which can't easily outsource abroad due to financial, regulatory, or other reasons * change careers
There is another alternative, but one that has a very high emotional cost as well as other costs (learning a new language, etc.): Emigrate to a low-cost-of-living country and live off of my accumulated life savings plus whatever meager earnings I can get there. Not every country would want me but many would be happy to have me.
Yes, I'm being pessimistic, but I'm also being realistic. Most of my technical skill set - programming, troubleshooting, remote-tech-support skills, technical writing, etc. can be found in many other countries where the labor costs for people with similar skills are much lower than they are in countries with "highly developed economies."
People bought Windows 7/8/8.1 with certain expectations, including the ability to opt out of a given update.
Having a monthly roll-up is generally a good idea for most customers, at least in those months with no "bad patches" (grrr). After all, that's how Apple has been doing things for its iOS and MacOS (formerly MacOXS) updates for years. If I recall, that's how they handled updates for the original MacOS (1980s-1990s) as well, except that it wasn't on a monthly cycle.
However, to suddenly change the rules mid-stream is bad PR when it comes to business customers.
At the very least, they should have a registry-key or group-policy that you can put in to "go back to doing things the old way," at least for "Enterprise," "Pro," and "Ultimate" editions.
Oh, to make things worse, they didn't announce this until AFTER the free Windows 10 upgrade period is over. Users who kept Windows 7/8/8.1 specifically so they could manage updates individually are going to be calling "foul" over this.
It's fine to use a relatively-weak password for an "I don't care if this gets compromised" task.
An example would be a web site that let you upload a file but it would automatically be deleted an hour later, BUT you could delete it sooner if you created a password. Does it really matter if your password is relatively weak (but not something trivial, like "password")? As long as it's a one-off password that you don't use elsewhere, it's still "suitable" for the task.
Tr0ub4d0r&3 passed with flying colors at http://www.passwordmeter.com/. That (and its close variants) really should be in the "common passwords/automatic fail" bin for all password checkers.
On the other hand, the same site gave correctâhorseâbatteryâstaple a score of only 25%, which means "this is a weak password."
How many years before* I have to pay extra for a "plain old just-the-OS-and-bare-bones applications"* phone?
*Or has this date already passed?
**At a minimum, a phone-dialing app (without a phone, it's a pocket-sized tablet) and an app to install other apps (probably a "store" app or a web browser)?
If you are air-gapped for security reasons, you are also aware of other ways to exfiltrate information through the environment and through personnel and are taking precautions appropriate for your situation.
It's "technically" trivial to use the analog hole for video at any commonly-used-in-TV resolution.
It's just very expensive. But you only have to do it once. Or, more precisely, someone has to do it once, then distribute the results.
A very expensive way that is all but guaranteed to work is to put the video through a very large display (projection-TV anyone?) then sample every pixel with a good-enough, fast-enough (and small-enough) sampler.
Now, "good-enough, fast-enough, and small-enough" translates into very expensive, at least right now. But the principle of the thing is so simple that even the DRM-industry executives should be able to understand it.
Now, this method won't work for copying non-video data, but if they are worried about lost sales of movies and songs (vs. books, games and other software) then it's probably the video and audio that they are worried about protecting the most.
Slashdot Mirror
If you held a lottery where the odds of winning were 1 in a billion billion billion, but someone won, would you call the shenanigans?
Living to 143 or even 153 would be an extreme outlier, but to imply it is an actual impossibility by calling it a "statistical impossibility" isn't helpful.
Now, it may actually be the case that there is an upper limit on the human lifespan (personally, I think there is, but we don't have the science to prove it yet), and it may be the case that this upper limit is under 143 years (personally, I doubt this is the case). If we eventually prove that man cannot live more than 142 years, then - and only then - can we say that this claim is actually impossible on its face. Until then, we can - and should - say that it is extremely improbably and the claimant has a very high burden of proof.
Don't worry, I heard that a UFO took dental records when it abducted him in 1923.
The extraordinary claim the guy is 145 years old makes your claim about the UFO almost ordinary by comparison.
... extraordinary evidence.
An identity card whose date has only recently been confirmed isn't enough.
You still need to confirm that the card-holder is the person who matches the genuine records.
You also have to assess the credibility of those in the records office and answer questions like "why wasn't this confirmed long ago, like when he applied for a penson (no pension? okay, I'll accept that) or when he hit age 100 (not important enough? okay, I'll accept that), age 110 (you better have a darn good answer) or when he got to be the oldest man in his country (every month of delay in searching for accurate records from this point on makes his claim less and less credible).
It's been 30+ years since he would've been the oldest person in the world. If there haven't been serious, continuous, diligent, credible efforts to find and authenticate his age since the mid-to-late 1980s, then it will take something extra-ordinary, such as confirmation that he fathered someone known to be born more than, say, 120 years ago, for his claim to be accepted. Even if there has been a serious, continuous, diligent, credible effort to find proof of his age for the last 30 years, the fact that it took so long to find it hurts his claim.
the boating spaghetti monster party will promise new pool noodles for all new memebers
Sure, summer's almost over on the top half of the globe, but it's still warm enough for a good pool party, even if it does get political.
They don't even recognise the spaghetti monster as a political party
I thought it was a religion.
Unless you mean the non-flying one.
Topic-specific printed non-professionally-run newsletters did much the same as USENET groups did in bringing together people from around the globe who had similar interests. Granted, they weren't as fast (USENET typically circulated the globe in 24-48 hours in the early days, with some "high-cost-to-deliver" sites taking days or a week or more to get updates).
Amateur radio also had (and still has) similar communities-of-interest but, due to the way radio works, it's difficult to have a true "world-wide" community over amateur radio alone (these days, "hams" take advantage of the Internet so distance isn't as much of limitation). I'm not saying it isn't happening, it's just much harder than having a community where everyone is within a few thousand miles of each other.
Question 1: Who the hell reuses passwords, and why? Anyone left not using password managers?
I don't trust my password manager to not be broken into without me knowing about it.
If someone breaks into my brain, I'll probably know about it ("Hey, put the rubber hose down! I give, just tell me what password you need!").
The invention of the telegraph and the wide-scale availability to the paying masses through commercial telegraph operators was arguably the first real breakthrough in electronic digital communications, assuming you consider the "on/off" of Morse-code-type telegraphy to be digital, which I do.
Smoke signals, semaphore signals, and other forms of non-electronic long-distance communication are also typically digital. As to whether they were "available to the masses" or not, that varies.
Writing, whether using alphabets or pictographs, is arguably a form of digital communications. Speaking in words or groups of sub-word sounds (phonemes and syllables) that have distinct meanings is arguably digital (as opposed to analog), as long as the dictionary size is, for all practical purposes limited. This is the case for all conventional spoken and written human languages that I am aware of.
So, in that sense, we humans have been using digital forms of communication since, well, ever since we started talking to each other, which likely pre-dates humanity itself.
Interwebinaut Day would be more fitting.
The Internet was arguably invented either in 1969 or when IPv4 rolled out in the early 1980s, depending on whether you "count" the pre-IPv4 Internet as "the Internet" or not.
Heck, it can be even better because with postal voting, every mail-carrier can be a man-in-the-middle DOS attacker. "Sorry Mr. Voter, your ballot never arrived, and since the election is over, too bad for you."
At least with online voting you can be assured your unopened ballot actually arrived.
Now, as for all of the OTHER weaknesses of mail-in balloting, including vote-counter fraud, voter-location (spouse/caretaker) fraud, coerced-voting fraud, etc., yes, those are still problems.
Internet voting makes the most sense for people in outer space and others with unreliable or slow paper-mail. It makes some sense for people who can't get to polling places who would use vulnerable vote-by-mail systems anyways. It also makes some sense in states like Oregon which use vote-by-mail exclusively for some elections (but it has the downside risk that it can weaken public support for a return to poll-based voting under the illusion that internet-based voting is as secure as poll-based voting).
Don't trust any device inside or outside of your network until you can verify it is trustworthy. Even then, don't trust it any more than you have to.
Okay, that's the ideal world.
In the real world such a policy would cripple most enterprises, so we have to compromise somewhere.
What that compromise should look like will be on a case-by-case basis.
it is also about destinations being v6 as well.
From the way I read it, they are only counting traffic to destinations that are IPv6-capable.
We should've reached this level years ago and should've been well past 90% already, assuming you limit yourselves to people with IPv6-capable phones trying to connect to IPv6-capable destinations.
Any phone newer than 3-4 years old should be IPv6-capable.
Oh well, better late than never.
Our ancestors came to America looking for work.
That's true as far as it goes, but we should not forget:
* Some came for other reasons, such as religious freedom or to flee persecution.
* A very sizable minority was forcibly dragged here in chains or were born into slavery.
* Some were brought her by their parents before they were old enough to say "no, I'll stay behind, thank-you" or were forcibly dragged here by husbands (back then, a wife didn't really have much of an option but to obey her husband).
* Others came for other reasons.
Which is a better use of taxpayer money for something that won't get re-used a lot and which might have a short shelf life?
1) Expensive, good, and late, possibly too-late-to-be-useful?
2) Slightly less expensive, crappy-but-functional, and on time
Sometimes the answer is #1, sometimes it is #2. Sometimes you just don't know and you (or your bean-counting managers) have to make a call that might be wrong.
Bottom line:
I'd much rather the hacking tools be crappy than the code that runs something that directly affects tens of millions of people, like, oh, I don't know, the software that makes sure Social Security checks go out on time and in the right amounts?
Correcting grammar in the post above is left as an exercise to the reader, or, more likely, as an exercise for the offshore person who will be trained by the HB-1 visa-holder that you are training now.
If your job was going to go to India or some other country, it was probably going to go anyway, HB-1 visa program or no HB-1 visa program.
With HB-1 visa-holders coming her to "learn the trade" at least there are a few man-years of work being done here, with those people buying lunch and paying rent and the associated taxes in this country for those man-years.
I know my skills are "portable" and that if I plan on having a halfway-decently-paying job until retirement I need to either:
* be someone who can't be cheaply replaced, anywhere in the world, OR
* do work that can only be done locally (in-person sales, on-premise hardware-installation, etc.)
* do work that can't be outsourced for legal reasons (government contracts, certain national infrastructure work)
* work for a company or industry which can't easily outsource abroad due to financial, regulatory, or other reasons
* change careers
There is another alternative, but one that has a very high emotional cost as well as other costs (learning a new language, etc.): Emigrate to a low-cost-of-living country and live off of my accumulated life savings plus whatever meager earnings I can get there. Not every country would want me but many would be happy to have me.
Yes, I'm being pessimistic, but I'm also being realistic. Most of my technical skill set - programming, troubleshooting, remote-tech-support skills, technical writing, etc. can be found in many other countries where the labor costs for people with similar skills are much lower than they are in countries with "highly developed economies."
People bought Windows 7/8/8.1 with certain expectations, including the ability to opt out of a given update.
Having a monthly roll-up is generally a good idea for most customers, at least in those months with no "bad patches" (grrr). After all, that's how Apple has been doing things for its iOS and MacOS (formerly MacOXS) updates for years. If I recall, that's how they handled updates for the original MacOS (1980s-1990s) as well, except that it wasn't on a monthly cycle.
However, to suddenly change the rules mid-stream is bad PR when it comes to business customers.
At the very least, they should have a registry-key or group-policy that you can put in to "go back to doing things the old way," at least for "Enterprise," "Pro," and "Ultimate" editions.
Oh, to make things worse, they didn't announce this until AFTER the free Windows 10 upgrade period is over. Users who kept Windows 7/8/8.1 specifically so they could manage updates individually are going to be calling "foul" over this.
It's fine to use a relatively-weak password for an "I don't care if this gets compromised" task.
An example would be a web site that let you upload a file but it would automatically be deleted an hour later, BUT you could delete it sooner if you created a password. Does it really matter if your password is relatively weak (but not something trivial, like "password")? As long as it's a one-off password that you don't use elsewhere, it's still "suitable" for the task.
Tr0ub4d0r&3 passed with flying colors at http://www.passwordmeter.com/. That (and its close variants) really should be in the "common passwords/automatic fail" bin for all password checkers.
On the other hand, the same site gave correctâhorseâbatteryâstaple a score of only 25%, which means "this is a weak password."
I can't even imagine how much change would be required to feed a meter like that. One would think that would take the bulk of the payload.
Solution: Pay-by-phone.
New problem: No cell signal.
How many years before* I have to pay extra for a "plain old just-the-OS-and-bare-bones applications"* phone?
*Or has this date already passed?
**At a minimum, a phone-dialing app (without a phone, it's a pocket-sized tablet) and an app to install other apps (probably a "store" app or a web browser)?
Within the realm of military research, this doesn't seem far-fetched.
If you are air-gapped for security reasons, you are also aware of other ways to exfiltrate information through the environment and through personnel and are taking precautions appropriate for your situation.
If you aren't, you are doing it wrong.
It's "technically" trivial to use the analog hole for video at any commonly-used-in-TV resolution.
It's just very expensive. But you only have to do it once. Or, more precisely, someone has to do it once, then distribute the results.
A very expensive way that is all but guaranteed to work is to put the video through a very large display (projection-TV anyone?) then sample every pixel with a good-enough, fast-enough (and small-enough) sampler.
Now, "good-enough, fast-enough, and small-enough" translates into very expensive, at least right now. But the principle of the thing is so simple that even the DRM-industry executives should be able to understand it.
Now, this method won't work for copying non-video data, but if they are worried about lost sales of movies and songs (vs. books, games and other software) then it's probably the video and audio that they are worried about protecting the most.