Unless this was a stripped-hown, hardened version with nothing but a custom kernel and custom-everything else with all unnecessary bits stripped out and hardening put on top of it, I wouln't trust it unless it had a voter-verified, human-manually-coutable paper ballot as part of the voting process for every vote.
Wait, what am I saying? Even if it was stripped and hardened, I wouldn't trust any voting system that didn't have a way to print a ballot that the voter actually saw which could be examined in a manual recount.
I'm imagining a job interview with this guy in 15-20 years.
"So, have you ever been arrested?" "Yes, once when I was 14" "So what did you do?" "I changed my teachers wallpaper on his computer to a couple of gay guys kissing." "LOL, good job. I see you have a sense of humor. You're hired, but if you ever do that to my computer I'll fire your ass, okay?"
Sadly, when they get to the "have you ever been convicted of a felony" question, a lot of employers are forced to say "sorry, we aren't allowed to hire you for this position due to legal/contractual/insurance-carrier requirements". But that's a discussion for another time.
1) How much of the available frequency does this chew up, and 2) if it is directional, how tight is the beam?
These are important considerations for things like mobile-service, which is typically not "narrow-beam."
If the weather issue can be worked out, I see this as being useful for "fixed-wireless" applications, such as broadcast-television (think "cable TV without the cable and without the dish") and point-to-point communications (think "wireless U-Verse").
Subject to downtime due to weather-related interference, a point-to-point/narrow-beam version of this could be used to bring very-high-bandwidth, reasonable-latency Internet- and "cable TV" to rural areas that are currently not wired and which it's not economical to put in traditional non-directional cell towers. It could also be used for wireless point-to-point backhaul connection for events that are in remote areas such as Burning Man (actually, that's a bad example as they already have their Internet connectivity solved, but if there were a "new" Burning-man-like festival out in the middle of nowhere...).
A few hundred dollars is not reasonable. Reasonable is at most the cost of a generic, not-in-demand domain name (i.e. under $5/year) and even that is high. The cost of the block should be high enough to cover the cost to the registrar for the paperwork involved plus a token profit (no more than, $1).
Anything more is tanamount to extortion: "Pay us $HUNDREDS or some other company will buy the domain and do who knows what with it. It will cost you $THOUSANDS in legal fees to get a court to enjoin that company from using the name, so pay us $HUNDREDS now or pay someone else $THOUSANDS later."
If you want to control this kind of thing, require that users turn over something that can be tied to their real-life identity, like a cell phone #. Then verify that what they give you is real.
Then make them swear that they have not received or been offered any compensation.
If you later discover that they probably lied, you can sue them.
As for people logging in from countries where suing the person individually is not an option, one thing you can do is limit the visibility of their comments, perhaps by limiting them to others who are from the same country.
Yes, there are ways to get around this (proxies, VPNs, disposable phones, etc.) but it will raise the cost of doing business for those companies who do "shill reviews."
For all future.TLD rollouts, allow trademark owners to put a "bar" on names they own and any similar spelling variants for no more than the cost of processing the paperwork - well under $5 plus a penny less for each additional name in the same request (companies typically have many trademarks, and each has many close spelling variants that typo-squatters would abuse). If a name is barred, anyone coming along later wanting to use the name would have to demonstrate that the entity holding the "bar" no longer has the trademark, or that the company wanting the name also holds a valid trademark. If two companies claim they want the name and both hold valid trademarks, then it would be handed out by lottery.
Likewise, all existing.TLDs should be required to offer the same "low-cost bar" courtesy to any legitimate trademark-owner who asks for it.
It's rare that a jury should exercise "jury nullification" but cases like these, where the punishment does not fit the crime, are one of them.
Acquitting a guilty person when the charge is over-the-top for the circumstances sends a loud message to prosecutors to dial-it-back to something sane the next time around.
If there wasn't a history of other students doing the same thing, filing misdemeanor criminal charges in juvenile court with a pre-arranged deal where they charges would be dismissed and the arrest expunged within 1-2 years would not be inappropriate.
Because there is such a history, even this is too much. This should have been handled as an internal disciplinary and/or re-training matter for the student and, in parallel, for the faculty so this kind of thing doesn't happen again.
More like 14 years - most things that are targeted for general adult audiences (other than things written in legalese) is written for an 8th-grade (age 14 or so) reading level.
Enough people (all it takes is a few) will scream in alarm if most consumer cell phones can see infra-red well enough to create "infrared-porn" by seeing through clothing that most cell phone makers won't touch it with a 10-foot pole.
"Is that a cell phone hidden in your pocket pointed directly at my mid-section or are you just checking to see if I'm happy to meet you?"
Okay this is last month's news and not a joke, but anything that reads like "BigName Telco Admits They Were Evil" has me waiting for someone to say "April Fools".
Take all work you've written and entrust it with someone who will publish it a few years after you die and after your estate is settled or a few years after the last company that would have any claim to it ceases to exist, or after any copyrights or patents other than yours that apply can reasonably be presumed to have expired (probably 95 years after you wrote the code), whichever comes later.
Some code is small enough that it's feasible to prove that the code is correct, assuming that the underlying hardware, libraries, operating system, etc.. don't fail. For example, in most languages you really don't need to put error-checking in code as trivial as this pseudo-code:
boolean isGreater(int a, int b) {return (a>b);}
Sometimes, particularly when running in "small/tight" or real-time environments or when security is more important than debuggability, you may want a failure to be nothing more than something basic like "return -1" or "turn on aralm and halt the CPU" or even "flush caches, destoy security keys, and power off."
But you are corrent, in most cases good souce code will have good, clear, easy-understand debugging code.
Tell your real estate agent to include a contingency stating that any deal is contingent on acceptable Internet service.
I'll leave the details of what "acceptable" up to you, but it should be something that's widely available in the neighborhood in which you are looking to buy. The intent is to let the seller know to not waste their time or yours if the KNOW their house doesn't qualify and to put them on notice that any offer is void if it turns out that you can't get Internet service similar to the those living in the same general area at a similar price.
You do have a small risk of "losing out" on a suitable home if the seller is summarily rejecting bids with "novel/unfamiliar/non-standard" contingencies, but you are much more likely to avoid wasting time and money on homes you wouldn't want anyway.
The results were poisoned by the presence of various caches affecting disk I/O and for that matter memory I/O. On some modern systems, either the disk lies to the computer or the OS lies to the application and the application thinks the data is actually stored on the bare metal before it is really stored (the data may or may not be stored in a "safe" place like a non-volatile cache - the point is that a small write operation returns "success" very quickly, much faster than if it had to wait for the bits to be written to the platter).
The only thing they can really say is "on this hardware, using this operating system, under this workload, these are the results of our experiments."
I'm not saying their results aren't useful - they are. Instead of presenting this as "memory writes are faster than disk writes" they should say "in some or many modern systems, under some circumstances, it may be more efficient for programs or operating systems to write to external storage devices in small bits rather than going to extra work to minimize the number of writes to such devices. Don't assume that what was true about the performance of an application calling an operating system to perform a disk-write operation or of an operating system asking a hard drive to perform a disk-write operation is the same now as it was a decade or two ago."
Just don't call them "disk writes." Call them what they are - "requests by the application or the OS to the OS or hardware to perform a disk write."
In security terms, "air gap" should be taken to mean "direct communications gap".
If two machines an "talk" to each other without involving a human or a third-party computer* to do your dirty work for you.
-- *If the third-party computer is being used "in real time" it doesn't count as a "direct communications gap." However, if the computer hijacks the local router in the stand-alone network so that the next time it is hooked to an external network, it does bad things on behalf of the evil computer, that would be an example of "jumping the direct communications gap".
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they should be hiring him to help consult on how to secure the systems instead of trying to intimidate him and silence the truth?
The 1970s called, they want their common sense back.
Unless this was a stripped-hown, hardened version with nothing but a custom kernel and custom-everything else with all unnecessary bits stripped out and hardening put on top of it, I wouln't trust it unless it had a voter-verified, human-manually-coutable paper ballot as part of the voting process for every vote.
Wait, what am I saying? Even if it was stripped and hardened, I wouldn't trust any voting system that didn't have a way to print a ballot that the voter actually saw which could be examined in a manual recount.
It's a bright shade of very pale peach/yellow. If I were any more pale, I would be almost like an albino but without the pink eyes.
Except when I get out in the sun, then it's a bright shade of red, almost like an albino with sunburn.
--
For the sarcasm impaired: We all have colored skin.
... as long as you need it to minus one second.
I'm imagining a job interview with this guy in 15-20 years.
"So, have you ever been arrested?"
"Yes, once when I was 14"
"So what did you do?"
"I changed my teachers wallpaper on his computer to a couple of gay guys kissing."
"LOL, good job. I see you have a sense of humor. You're hired, but if you ever do that to my computer I'll fire your ass, okay?"
Sadly, when they get to the "have you ever been convicted of a felony" question, a lot of employers are forced to say "sorry, we aren't allowed to hire you for this position due to legal/contractual/insurance-carrier requirements". But that's a discussion for another time.
1) How much of the available frequency does this chew up, and 2) if it is directional, how tight is the beam?
These are important considerations for things like mobile-service, which is typically not "narrow-beam."
If the weather issue can be worked out, I see this as being useful for "fixed-wireless" applications, such as broadcast-television (think "cable TV without the cable and without the dish") and point-to-point communications (think "wireless U-Verse").
Subject to downtime due to weather-related interference, a point-to-point/narrow-beam version of this could be used to bring very-high-bandwidth, reasonable-latency Internet- and "cable TV" to rural areas that are currently not wired and which it's not economical to put in traditional non-directional cell towers. It could also be used for wireless point-to-point backhaul connection for events that are in remote areas such as Burning Man (actually, that's a bad example as they already have their Internet connectivity solved, but if there were a "new" Burning-man-like festival out in the middle of nowhere...).
A few hundred dollars is not reasonable. Reasonable is at most the cost of a generic, not-in-demand domain name (i.e. under $5/year) and even that is high. The cost of the block should be high enough to cover the cost to the registrar for the paperwork involved plus a token profit (no more than, $1).
Anything more is tanamount to extortion: "Pay us $HUNDREDS or some other company will buy the domain and do who knows what with it. It will cost you $THOUSANDS in legal fees to get a court to enjoin that company from using the name, so pay us $HUNDREDS now or pay someone else $THOUSANDS later."
Jury nullification shouldn't be rare because of all the bogus laws that exist.
Or, "Jury nullification should be rare because the circumstances that would justify it should be rare."
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
First they pressed you. Then they re-pressed you. Now you are flat.
If you want to control this kind of thing, require that users turn over something that can be tied to their real-life identity, like a cell phone #. Then verify that what they give you is real.
Then make them swear that they have not received or been offered any compensation.
If you later discover that they probably lied, you can sue them.
As for people logging in from countries where suing the person individually is not an option, one thing you can do is limit the visibility of their comments, perhaps by limiting them to others who are from the same country.
Yes, there are ways to get around this (proxies, VPNs, disposable phones, etc.) but it will raise the cost of doing business for those companies who do "shill reviews."
For all future .TLD rollouts, allow trademark owners to put a "bar" on names they own and any similar spelling variants for no more than the cost of processing the paperwork - well under $5 plus a penny less for each additional name in the same request (companies typically have many trademarks, and each has many close spelling variants that typo-squatters would abuse). If a name is barred, anyone coming along later wanting to use the name would have to demonstrate that the entity holding the "bar" no longer has the trademark, or that the company wanting the name also holds a valid trademark. If two companies claim they want the name and both hold valid trademarks, then it would be handed out by lottery.
Likewise, all existing .TLDs should be required to offer the same "low-cost bar" courtesy to any legitimate trademark-owner who asks for it.
It's rare that a jury should exercise "jury nullification" but cases like these, where the punishment does not fit the crime, are one of them.
Acquitting a guilty person when the charge is over-the-top for the circumstances sends a loud message to prosecutors to dial-it-back to something sane the next time around.
If there wasn't a history of other students doing the same thing, filing misdemeanor criminal charges in juvenile court with a pre-arranged deal where they charges would be dismissed and the arrest expunged within 1-2 years would not be inappropriate.
Because there is such a history, even this is too much. This should have been handled as an internal disciplinary and/or re-training matter for the student and, in parallel, for the faculty so this kind of thing doesn't happen again.
More like 14 years - most things that are targeted for general adult audiences (other than things written in legalese) is written for an 8th-grade (age 14 or so) reading level.
This sign language developed by orphans in Nicaragua my be relevant.
... Find At Home"
Waiting for someone to filk this in 3...2...1....
Enough people (all it takes is a few) will scream in alarm if most consumer cell phones can see infra-red well enough to create "infrared-porn" by seeing through clothing that most cell phone makers won't touch it with a 10-foot pole.
"Is that a cell phone hidden in your pocket pointed directly at my mid-section or are you just checking to see if I'm happy to meet you?"
Memo to self: Don't post to /. with DEADPANLEVEL=MAXDEADPAN or people may think I'm serious.
Slashdot-Journaling Whiners???
Okay this is last month's news and not a joke, but anything that reads like "BigName Telco Admits They Were Evil" has me waiting for someone to say "April Fools".
Take all work you've written and entrust it with someone who will publish it a few years after you die and after your estate is settled or a few years after the last company that would have any claim to it ceases to exist, or after any copyrights or patents other than yours that apply can reasonably be presumed to have expired (probably 95 years after you wrote the code), whichever comes later.
Some code is small enough that it's feasible to prove that the code is correct, assuming that the underlying hardware, libraries, operating system, etc.. don't fail. For example, in most languages you really don't need to put error-checking in code as trivial as this pseudo-code:
boolean isGreater(int a, int b)
{return (a>b);}
Sometimes, particularly when running in "small/tight" or real-time environments or when security is more important than debuggability, you may want a failure to be nothing more than something basic like "return -1" or "turn on aralm and halt the CPU" or even "flush caches, destoy security keys, and power off."
But you are corrent, in most cases good souce code will have good, clear, easy-understand debugging code.
Not encumbered by patents, NDAs, or licensing restictions the keep me from making good use of it.
Tell your real estate agent to include a contingency stating that any deal is contingent on acceptable Internet service.
I'll leave the details of what "acceptable" up to you, but it should be something that's widely available in the neighborhood in which you are looking to buy. The intent is to let the seller know to not waste their time or yours if the KNOW their house doesn't qualify and to put them on notice that any offer is void if it turns out that you can't get Internet service similar to the those living in the same general area at a similar price.
You do have a small risk of "losing out" on a suitable home if the seller is summarily rejecting bids with "novel/unfamiliar/non-standard" contingencies, but you are much more likely to avoid wasting time and money on homes you wouldn't want anyway.
The results were poisoned by the presence of various caches affecting disk I/O and for that matter memory I/O. On some modern systems, either the disk lies to the computer or the OS lies to the application and the application thinks the data is actually stored on the bare metal before it is really stored (the data may or may not be stored in a "safe" place like a non-volatile cache - the point is that a small write operation returns "success" very quickly, much faster than if it had to wait for the bits to be written to the platter).
The only thing they can really say is "on this hardware, using this operating system, under this workload, these are the results of our experiments."
I'm not saying their results aren't useful - they are. Instead of presenting this as "memory writes are faster than disk writes" they should say "in some or many modern systems, under some circumstances, it may be more efficient for programs or operating systems to write to external storage devices in small bits rather than going to extra work to minimize the number of writes to such devices. Don't assume that what was true about the performance of an application calling an operating system to perform a disk-write operation or of an operating system asking a hard drive to perform a disk-write operation is the same now as it was a decade or two ago."
Just don't call them "disk writes." Call them what they are - "requests by the application or the OS to the OS or hardware to perform a disk write."
In security terms, "air gap" should be taken to mean "direct communications gap".
If two machines an "talk" to each other without involving a human or a third-party computer* to do your dirty work for you.
--
*If the third-party computer is being used "in real time" it doesn't count as a "direct communications gap." However, if the computer hijacks the local router in the stand-alone network so that the next time it is hooked to an external network, it does bad things on behalf of the evil computer, that would be an example of "jumping the direct communications gap".