Why are critical systems on the 'net? They functioned perfectly 30 years ago without the internet...
First, your question is not rhetorical. It's a legitimate question. Those who say it's not seem to think that being boss means always being right, never needing to be told "NO". There are companies that work like that, but they are all doomed to fail if the boss can't ever be wrong. Power only grants a person power. Not wisdom, or vision, or intelligence. The powerful may surround themselves with Yes Men, but that doesn't make their ideas any better, wiser, or informed.
The answer to your question is "Because stupid, greedy, lazy, ignorant, and intellectually short-sighted people want to work from home, on vacation, or from the Food Court at the mall."
Yes. Critical Systems being on the internet IS NEVER A PROBLEM. Anywhere. Until someone high up in the company MAKES it a problem by INSISTING that those systems be made accessible from the internet. It is NOT a REAL problem. It does NOT have to exist. It is not an unhappy customer, or a broken machine. It's not caused by wear and tare, nor absence of sheen. (sorry dr suess) It's an artificial problem that was created by someone in power insisting on the impossible. No system created by man is, or can be, perfect. And destruction is ALWAYS easier than creation. Meaning that no matter how smart s/he is, anything a wo/man can build, another wo/man can destroy. So any security system built one can be defeated by another. It's a fact of life. Hell, it's a fact of the universe.
(After this point, my "You"s are all pointed at generic management, or maybe specific management, but not you personally.)
Hell, it wouldn't even BE a problem if they wouldn't demand the ability to OPERATE things from online. A webcam of some meters, and access to a telephone, VOIP, email, or even some SMS text messages to some actual people, would allow manage(rs)/(ment) to keep in touch with what's going on at work, and make any changes needed via a real person. And don't you whine about security. YOU wanted to put the whole operation on the 'net. But no, it's my solution that's the problem. "That's too many people, I got to cut down staff, otherwise we won't be able to make more money than we did last year, and THAT means that I get a smaller bonus than I could have. And I gotta do it from deep inside my easy chair, or poolside, at some tiny Guatemalan Internet cafe, or God knows where else, whether I've forgotten my phone, or tablet, or computer or not. Because money, don'tchaknow, is more important than my employees and the lives of the population that WILL be put at risk WHEN (not if) security is broken, and the whole thing goes down." (No water, No Power, another Chernobyl, or even a breached dam drowning hundreds of thousands because we couldn't send the excess water from a heavy rain through the overflow.)
A webcam, no matter how hacked, CANNOT make changes to systems, as long as the computer that it is hooked to or part of is not connected to any internal network. That is what caused the only known instance of a computer virus successfully infecting computers in a NUCLEAR POWER PLANT in North America. Some ID10T plugged his personal laptop into the network (a security violation in itself) then dialed up the internet (A MASSIVE SECURITY VIOLATION). A virus from the internet infected said idiot's computer, from which it reached out to infect the other computer systems on the network. Luckily for us all, the other computers were not running a Windows OS, but a system specifically designed to run on this specific hardware designed for work ONLY in THIS nuclear power plant, so the virus went nowhere after being introduced to the system. And why were there no other Windows computers running in the nuclear power plant? Because it was old. Designed and built before Windows was a thing.
Let me ask. Do you want YOUR personal safety left up to the chance that your local utilities are running on outdated computer sy
you cannot tell customer that s/he should not watch pr0n at work - after all it is their time and money and pay for maintenance not for advice on pr0n consumption.
Well, of course you CAN. The wisdom of such a course may be pretty low though.
But what you SHOULD do depends on your relationship with the ACTUAL customer: HIS employer.
1) It's never wrong, in these sorts of situations to tell the person himself: ---- "I know what the problem is, and I can fix it immediately if you like. I bet you didn't realize that there are a large number of non work-related image / music / video files on your computer that are taking up so much room that your computer has trouble finding the free-space in which to run. If you like I can delete them for you right now, and your problem will go away. Immediately." If he says OK, delete the files then defrag the machine. (But they won't say yes. They all know about the porn and want to keep it.) - Another solution would be to recommend that he move the files to a personal USB drive. If he doesn't know how to do that tell him that if he buys a thumb-drive large enough to fit the files, you will help him move them. - If he does not want to spend the money on a thumb drive, many corporations allow each department an IT, or even an office supplies allowance. If his has not been used yet, he can often times have the company buy him a thumb drive. (In my experience, engineers can be the cheapest people on earth.) - Whatever you do, a non-threatening, non-confrontational, and helpful attitude is safest for you. Be sure to document the situation, what you did, what you said, and what he told you. Maybe even get him to sign something stating that he's refused to allow you to fix the problem by removing the non-work related files taking up the space on his computer. But not right away, give him an opportunity to "save face" and clean it up himself. If you feel that you need to CYA though, have him sign something. Don't warn him that you'll do this, or he may refuse, or develop a tactic to turn it back around on you. Besides, people will do foolish things (and it would be foolish of him to sign it) when not given time to think about the repercussions of their actions. Just couch it like this: "Ok. I just need you to sign here stating that you have declined to allow me to fix the problem". And have a print-out ready for him to sign and date, with an empty line to specify the solution to the problem, where you can write in something like "delete 100Gb of non work-related files". That might not be exactly non-threatening, and non-confrontational, but it will prevent him from going over your head to say you've refused to fix the problem. Never say, "You know, you could get fired just for having all that porn on your computer." At best that sets YOU up as his enemy, and for revenge later on down the road. At worst it's insubordination and will get YOU terminated. Remember, just like a Police Officer is going to believe another Police Officer over you, a manager is going to believe another manager over you, if only to keep the peace between the two. What you need in both cases is evidence, ready at hand. (Oh, never turn over your original documents though. Just to CYA.)
2) If you are both employee's of the same company: ---- Tell YOUR supervisor. Yes, managers can be real d***s, and many seem to think that their position in the company means that they can punish others for doing their jobs when that job entails reminding them that they too are subject to the rules. But if anybody who matters is going to be on your side, that's most likely to be your supervisor. Besides, messages like these are often better received when they come from a business equal or superior. And your boss can always take it to his boss. I would not recommend going around your boss to the manager's boss, not at first anyway. That sort of thing often makes YOU look like the insubordinate bad-guy, and often managers will pull
Personally, I wish more places stayed with websites instead of apps. I don't want to download an app for every place I could just visit on the web.
Yes! Unless they can actually IMPROVE on the web experience, they should leave the App market alone. But try upgrading the website first, so that everybody can enjoy it.
BUT... having an app is all the rage and, "All the cool websites have one! Why can't I?!?" "Well, little man, if all the cool websites jumped off a bridge would you jump off too?" "... ???... But MOM!"
Why don't YOU create the product that your company wants, then market it to other companies with similar needs.
You could suggest it to your bosses as a new money-maker for your corporation, and when they turn you down (make sure it's in writing), get some people together and do it yourself.
Lot's of new businesses have been created by one business meeting it's own needs, then selling it's solution.
I don't want to read political stuff from technical people.......This is how you lose readership.
You are not the target audience for/then, because almost ALL/.ers are techies of one stripe or another. Did you miss the motto? "News for Nerds"? If you want political experts, go to some political website, not slashdot. The denisens of/. are not going to stop posting their opinions just because you can't seem to NOT click on stories you are NOT interested in reading.
So I've got a better idea for you, Troll, how about YOU stop reading the political postings on a TECH FOCUSED website? Political postings make up between 80 to 95% of/. anyway since most everything nowadays is somehow connected to or affected by politics.
But then you'd have nothing to complain and troll about, would you?
... it's been legal to tap anyone's phone, read their email, or seize and hold them for an unlimited amount of time, all without warrents, and with no obligation to inform ANYONE of what you are doing. You just have to say the magic word, "Terrorism", and all rights dissappear.
But the media hasn't even wispered any outrage. Not until it was used against them.
And in this situation the terrorism isn't immaginary, it dealt with a documented terrorist attack, and details that the Pentigon felt could assist future terrorist attacks.
I value MY privicy AND yours, but why should a corporation or business have MORE rights than a citizen and human-being?
Don't get on the wrong side of this, it's just another fight to give fictional entities more rights than real-people. And I don't care what Romney says, I say, "Corporations are NOT people, my friend."
I mean the publishers have to move all those bits, an e-book should cost slightly more than the paper version! They have to pay for all those business lunches somehow!
I lived in a medium sized Indiana town, and once jumped off of a high curb onto my heel to crush a HUGE cockroach, it was almost half the size of my palm. I came down on that thing from at least 1 foot with a hard soled shoe, and the thing gave me a dirty look, then skutteled off!
You don't have to be in a big city, or some jungle to find HUGE, Tough cockroaches.
You and your collegue are falling into the very "Microsoftien" thought process that brought about the "Recycle Bin". "Our users are too stupid to be expected to actually stop and THINK before they delete something, so we will take the decision out of their hands, and simply HIDE files when they say 'delete'. Besides, I too have deleted files, then regretted it."
The problem with this is that it actually encourages the users to NOT think before doing something destructive, and encourages misuse of the delete and recycle bin. This means that when someone goes in to the bin to actually delete a file, they are less likely to give THAT act the thought it needs, meaning you can STILL delete something you shouldn't have. Making your product no safer, while at the same time making it more of a pain to use.
So to me it seems stupid to have a recycle bin because it does not remove the danger of accidental or thoughtless deletio, it only postpones it, while encouraging sloppy deletion practice, and making both file and freespace fragmentation more of an issue to boot.
Crippeling your product makes it less usefull, while probably not really providing any real protection. Nothing teaches people to think before they act like a catistrophic loss or two. And hiding or obscuring the user's responsibility to THINK before doing will only make it easier for them to shift the blame onto YOU, or your product. And you can't make sloppy thinkers THINK, just bytelling them to, THEY have to come to that conclusion all by themselves, or else they won't do it at all.
Even a long string of "are you really really really sure?" questions just teaches your fingers the sequence of "yes, yes, of course" to type or click on. One or two chances to stop are enough. Any more than that just makes the user want to get through it as fast as possible.
There is definate "low-fidelity", so high-fidelity is a given. It relates to either the fidelity (accuracy) of a recording, or the ability of equipmen to re-produce high-fidelity (high accuracy) sounds from those high-fidelity recordings.
Also, your statement implies that you cannot hear a difference between mono, sterio, and/or other multi-track audio playback (Sterio+Subwoofer, Sterio+Center, Quadraphonic, or any combination thereof).
Sterio may be standard now, but it does not make the word meaningless.
It doesn't even have to do that, it could just ignore everything that returns 127.0.0.1 that isn't localhost, and only THEN query the DNS server. Or, it could keep it's own small file of Google's own ad serving addresses, and translate those into IP Addresses before the request even hits the hosts file. This would have the advantage of never allowing THEIR ads to be blocked, while allowing their competitors to be blocked.
And since most Google ads (AFAIK) are graphics and flash light, this might even be acceptable to most Chrome (and now Blink) users.
Since I actually like the free website model mostly in use today, I only ever block ads when they begin effecting my web browsing speed, browser stability, or my privacy. So, yeah, I block all flash advertising, always.
Google is just providing more value to it's customers.
Why is it that I find when a company says that it's providing me with "more value", that I find that they are in reality removing things that I actually value, and / or adding things I do not value, and are probably charging me more for the priviledge?
For example: I called a company complaining about a new juice bottle that, because the bottom was concave, held 1/2 an ounce less than the previous bottle, but they had not lowered their already high price. The person had the nerve to tell me that the change had been made because market research showed that their consumers wanted it. She didn't have much to say when I replied, "So you can show me surveys where people say that they either want to pay more for their juice, or get less of it, right?"
Oh, and keep in mind that the users of Google and Chrome are NOT Googles customers. Google sells targeted ads to advertisers. To be a customer really requires some kind of payment to be exchanged for a good or service.
The consumers of Google's free products are not customers, they are the product that Google sells to it's paying customers, it's advertisers.
Electroconvulsive therapy is the mental / medical equivilent of pounding on the TV to "fix" it, and is a last ditch treatment used when the simptoms cannot be treated any other way.
It, as the name implies, creates a seizure in the paitent by applying voltages across rather wide areas of the brain. Originally uncontrolled voltages (because it came through skin, bone, etc) into, nearly random brain tissues (because it was applied in ignorance, through multiple barriers, with no guarentee as to where the potentially (and often actually) damaging current went. Just as pounding on older electronics minutely shifted ALL components, sometimes cleaning a little bit of oxidation, or closing a curcit board crack, allowing current to flow where it had been blocked.
Today, the seisures are usually limited to purely electrical storms in the brain, and usually do not present themselves as convulsions, or uncontrolled muscle spasms.
I assume that the procedure has improved over the years, but I do know for a fact that ECT, to this very day, often destroys short and mid-term memory. Who knows what subtler damage it can cause?
On the other hand, Stimulating one, or a small group of cells, is nothing like ECT.
In fact brain surgeons will stimulate small pockets of brain cells before and during surgery (invoking memories, sights, sounds, tastes, sensations and smells) to minimise the chance of damaging or removing cells unrelated to the surgery. Something like that could never be done with ECT.
Ramping up the chemical rocket process to deal with containing and redirecting plasma is not the only way to take advantage of nuclear processes.
Fission could be used to produce what is basically a steam rocket. Water would be relitively cheap, since it is one of the most plentiful things on earth. Water is also one of the best shealds against radioactivity, so we could use water as fuel that had previously shielded our astronauts against cosmic and solar radiation in the second half of the trip out, to brake the ship for Mars orbit.
A more 'out there' option is to use nuclear bombs (either fission or fusion), to directly push the ship. The drawbacks to this is a probably jarring ride, and the probable resulting damages to ship, crew and cargo that would go with it. A 'continous' stream of micro-bombs that might be able to simulate a 'smooth' ride would present a whole new set of problems, starting with making bombs small enough, and reliable enough, with enough power to move the ship, all the way up to creating a system that could reliabily move enough of them continously for months without a single catistrophic break-down.
Accelleration is easy, depending on the technique you use to capture / redirect the energy.
1) Heat exchange: You use the heat of the process to vaporise a substance (like water), and that is released out the back of the vehicle.
2) Direct physical redirection. Small bombs are released behind the vehicle and a physical sheild that redirects the explosion, and protects the vehicle. The force of the explosion pushes the vehicle forward. Unless the people are stupid, the bombs will vary in size so that the initial explosion (or any others) will not kill the astronauts, but still allows for reaching enourmous speeds.
Decelleration / beaking / slowing down is simply a matter of spinning the the ship 180 degrees, and do the same things you did to accelerate. Start this early enough, and you will slow down in time to orbit mars.
There is little difference between an explosion and a rocket. Don't believe me? Cut the end off a firecracker or ladyfinger, lay it on the ground and light the fuse. A flame will shoot out the cut end, and push the explosive in the oppisite direction. What makes a loud, forcefull explosion is (usually) a restriction around the explosive. Remove the restriction in one direction and the force will all rush out that side. The resistance is what causes the pressure to build up to the point where it breaks it's enclosure. The "bang" is created because the pressure builds up to the point that the pressure wave moves faster than the speed of sound.
Lastly, there is little lingering radioactivity from anything other than a ground explosion because the amount of material that can pick up radioactivity is limited to the bomb and shell it'self and a little bit of atmosphere. In a ground explosion, dust and dirt (and whatever has been pulverised) can carry vast amounts of radioactivity, and carry leathal amounts for melinia.
Luckily, a burst in space could only irradiate it's own mass, and the little bit of fallout that is created will be pulled by the earth's magnetosphere tword the poles, to become aroras. That which falls into the atmosphere will travel through and be disperced by the various winds, like all the other radioactive particles from the sun and beyond that rain down from the heavens every second of every day since the earth first solidified.
... and old news (ancient in fact), will get you a free ticket to "No shit'sville".
The idea of using either fusion OR fission as a rocket "fuel" is nearly as old as the theiories of fusion and fission!
Some atomic rockets engines have even been tested. What's kept them out of space has been the attempt to proactively demilitarise space (to keep weapons out of space, especially nuclear weapons), and a fear of radioactive materials falling out of orbit for whatever reason, into your back yard.
You should remove ANY program that needlessly access's ANY network, whether you suspect DRM enforcement or not.
Why? It's spying on you, installing malware, rootkits, pop-ups, or advertising on your computer. I lock my doors and draw my drapes to keep people from easily spying on, stealing from, or setting up, me. Not that I'm paranoid (not that I'm not, either), but why should I assist anyone who wants to spy, etc, on me?
I'm old enough to have a sence of privacy, and to believe that nobody has any business checking up on anybody else without GOOD reason.
That you are paranoid, curious, or want to make money ARE NOT good reasons to violate my privacy. And certianlly not as part of some kind of systematic, wide-field snooping.
And if being a user of your products is sufficiant grounds to tag me as a theif, then what does that say about YOU?
It's DRM that they can plausibly convince dupes that it's not because it theoretically has some utility value.
Don't bee fooled, or be a fool.
It might not be DRM, maybe the new SimCity is simply collecting information about every user, every user's computer, it's use, and the users computer habits.
Spying on you does not have to be a function of DRM. It just makes enforcing DRM easier.
And if the spying is labled 'market research', then any boon to their efforts at enforcing DRM can be called an unintentional "side effect" of their "market research".
If it were copyrighted, then by default Google would need a license to read the notice. Which would have to be agreed to by Google and Google would have to have the right to refuse, else it is not a binding agreement.
Slashdot Mirror
What's wrong with the audio option that is offered by every CAPTCHA service *I* know of?
Including the one that /. uses for AC posts.
Why are critical systems on the 'net?
They functioned perfectly 30 years ago without the internet...
First, your question is not rhetorical. It's a legitimate question. Those who say it's not seem to think that being boss means always being right, never needing to be told "NO". There are companies that work like that, but they are all doomed to fail if the boss can't ever be wrong. Power only grants a person power. Not wisdom, or vision, or intelligence. The powerful may surround themselves with Yes Men, but that doesn't make their ideas any better, wiser, or informed.
The answer to your question is "Because stupid, greedy, lazy, ignorant, and intellectually short-sighted people want to work from home, on vacation, or from the Food Court at the mall."
Yes. Critical Systems being on the internet IS NEVER A PROBLEM. Anywhere. Until someone high up in the company MAKES it a problem by INSISTING that those systems be made accessible from the internet. It is NOT a REAL problem. It does NOT have to exist. It is not an unhappy customer, or a broken machine. It's not caused by wear and tare, nor absence of sheen. (sorry dr suess) It's an artificial problem that was created by someone in power insisting on the impossible. No system created by man is, or can be, perfect. And destruction is ALWAYS easier than creation. Meaning that no matter how smart s/he is, anything a wo/man can build, another wo/man can destroy. So any security system built one can be defeated by another. It's a fact of life. Hell, it's a fact of the universe.
(After this point, my "You"s are all pointed at generic management, or maybe specific management, but not you personally.)
Hell, it wouldn't even BE a problem if they wouldn't demand the ability to OPERATE things from online. A webcam of some meters, and access to a telephone, VOIP, email, or even some SMS text messages to some actual people, would allow manage(rs)/(ment) to keep in touch with what's going on at work, and make any changes needed via a real person. And don't you whine about security. YOU wanted to put the whole operation on the 'net. But no, it's my solution that's the problem. " That's too many people, I got to cut down staff, otherwise we won't be able to make more money than we did last year, and THAT means that I get a smaller bonus than I could have. And I gotta do it from deep inside my easy chair, or poolside, at some tiny Guatemalan Internet cafe, or God knows where else, whether I've forgotten my phone, or tablet, or computer or not. Because money, don'tchaknow, is more important than my employees and the lives of the population that WILL be put at risk WHEN (not if) security is broken, and the whole thing goes down. " (No water, No Power, another Chernobyl, or even a breached dam drowning hundreds of thousands because we couldn't send the excess water from a heavy rain through the overflow.)
A webcam, no matter how hacked, CANNOT make changes to systems, as long as the computer that it is hooked to or part of is not connected to any internal network. That is what caused the only known instance of a computer virus successfully infecting computers in a NUCLEAR POWER PLANT in North America. Some ID10T plugged his personal laptop into the network (a security violation in itself) then dialed up the internet (A MASSIVE SECURITY VIOLATION). A virus from the internet infected said idiot's computer, from which it reached out to infect the other computer systems on the network. Luckily for us all, the other computers were not running a Windows OS, but a system specifically designed to run on this specific hardware designed for work ONLY in THIS nuclear power plant, so the virus went nowhere after being introduced to the system. And why were there no other Windows computers running in the nuclear power plant? Because it was old. Designed and built before Windows was a thing.
Let me ask. Do you want YOUR personal safety left up to the chance that your local utilities are running on outdated computer sy
you cannot tell customer that s/he should not watch pr0n at work - after all it is their time and money and pay for maintenance not for advice on pr0n consumption.
Well, of course you CAN. The wisdom of such a course may be pretty low though.
But what you SHOULD do depends on your relationship with the ACTUAL customer: HIS employer.
1) It's never wrong, in these sorts of situations to tell the person himself:
---- " I know what the problem is, and I can fix it immediately if you like. I bet you didn't realize that there are a large number of non work-related image / music / video files on your computer that are taking up so much room that your computer has trouble finding the free-space in which to run. If you like I can delete them for you right now, and your problem will go away. Immediately. " If he says OK, delete the files then defrag the machine. (But they won't say yes. They all know about the porn and want to keep it.)
- Another solution would be to recommend that he move the files to a personal USB drive. If he doesn't know how to do that tell him that if he buys a thumb-drive large enough to fit the files, you will help him move them.
- If he does not want to spend the money on a thumb drive, many corporations allow each department an IT, or even an office supplies allowance. If his has not been used yet, he can often times have the company buy him a thumb drive. (In my experience, engineers can be the cheapest people on earth.)
- Whatever you do, a non-threatening, non-confrontational, and helpful attitude is safest for you. Be sure to document the situation, what you did, what you said, and what he told you. Maybe even get him to sign something stating that he's refused to allow you to fix the problem by removing the non-work related files taking up the space on his computer. But not right away, give him an opportunity to "save face" and clean it up himself. If you feel that you need to CYA though, have him sign something. Don't warn him that you'll do this, or he may refuse, or develop a tactic to turn it back around on you. Besides, people will do foolish things (and it would be foolish of him to sign it) when not given time to think about the repercussions of their actions. Just couch it like this: "Ok. I just need you to sign here stating that you have declined to allow me to fix the problem". And have a print-out ready for him to sign and date, with an empty line to specify the solution to the problem, where you can write in something like "delete 100Gb of non work-related files". That might not be exactly non-threatening, and non-confrontational, but it will prevent him from going over your head to say you've refused to fix the problem. Never say, "You know, you could get fired just for having all that porn on your computer." At best that sets YOU up as his enemy, and for revenge later on down the road. At worst it's insubordination and will get YOU terminated. Remember, just like a Police Officer is going to believe another Police Officer over you, a manager is going to believe another manager over you, if only to keep the peace between the two. What you need in both cases is evidence, ready at hand. (Oh, never turn over your original documents though. Just to CYA.)
2) If you are both employee's of the same company:
---- Tell YOUR supervisor. Yes, managers can be real d***s, and many seem to think that their position in the company means that they can punish others for doing their jobs when that job entails reminding them that they too are subject to the rules. But if anybody who matters is going to be on your side, that's most likely to be your supervisor. Besides, messages like these are often better received when they come from a business equal or superior. And your boss can always take it to his boss. I would not recommend going around your boss to the manager's boss, not at first anyway. That sort of thing often makes YOU look like the insubordinate bad-guy, and often managers will pull
Personally, I wish more places stayed with websites instead of apps. I don't want to download an app for every place I could just visit on the web.
Yes!
Unless they can actually IMPROVE on the web experience, they should leave the App market alone. But try upgrading the website first, so that everybody can enjoy it.
BUT... having an app is all the rage and, "All the cool websites have one! Why can't I?!?" ... But MOM!"
"Well, little man, if all the cool websites jumped off a bridge would you jump off too?"
"... ???
Why don't YOU create the product that your company wants, then market it to other companies with similar needs.
You could suggest it to your bosses as a new money-maker for your corporation, and when they turn you down (make sure it's in writing), get some people together and do it yourself.
Lot's of new businesses have been created by one business meeting it's own needs, then selling it's solution.
Unfortunately, it's not the dnmb@ss parents that pay the price for their dumbassery.
It's their children and their neighbors children that pay the price.
I don't want to read political stuff from technical people.......This is how you lose readership.
You are not the target audience for /then, because almost ALL /.ers are techies of one stripe or another. Did you miss the motto? "News for Nerds"? If you want political experts, go to some political website, not slashdot. The denisens of /. are not going to stop posting their opinions just because you can't seem to NOT click on stories you are NOT interested in reading.
So I've got a better idea for you, Troll, how about YOU stop reading the political postings on a TECH FOCUSED website? Political postings make up between 80 to 95% of /. anyway since most everything nowadays is somehow connected to or affected by politics.
But then you'd have nothing to complain and troll about, would you?
... it's been legal to tap anyone's phone, read their email, or seize and hold them for an unlimited amount of time, all without warrents, and with no obligation to inform ANYONE of what you are doing. You just have to say the magic word, "Terrorism", and all rights dissappear.
But the media hasn't even wispered any outrage. Not until it was used against them.
And in this situation the terrorism isn't immaginary, it dealt with a documented terrorist attack, and details that the Pentigon felt could assist future terrorist attacks.
I value MY privicy AND yours, but why should a corporation or business have MORE rights than a citizen and human-being?
Don't get on the wrong side of this, it's just another fight to give fictional entities more rights than real-people. And I don't care what Romney says, I say, "Corporations are NOT people, my friend."
IQ doesn't measure intelligence. I should know; I've got an incredibly high IQ. ;)
Are you sure that you're not just incredibly high?
E-book pricing is a sham.
No, it's legit!
I mean the publishers have to move all those bits, an e-book should cost slightly more than the paper version! They have to pay for all those business lunches somehow!
I lived in a medium sized Indiana town, and once jumped off of a high curb onto my heel to crush a HUGE cockroach, it was almost half the size of my palm. I came down on that thing from at least 1 foot with a hard soled shoe, and the thing gave me a dirty look, then skutteled off!
You don't have to be in a big city, or some jungle to find HUGE, Tough cockroaches.
You and your collegue are falling into the very "Microsoftien" thought process that brought about the "Recycle Bin". "Our users are too stupid to be expected to actually stop and THINK before they delete something, so we will take the decision out of their hands, and simply HIDE files when they say 'delete'. Besides, I too have deleted files, then regretted it."
The problem with this is that it actually encourages the users to NOT think before doing something destructive, and encourages misuse of the delete and recycle bin. This means that when someone goes in to the bin to actually delete a file, they are less likely to give THAT act the thought it needs, meaning you can STILL delete something you shouldn't have. Making your product no safer, while at the same time making it more of a pain to use.
So to me it seems stupid to have a recycle bin because it does not remove the danger of accidental or thoughtless deletio, it only postpones it, while encouraging sloppy deletion practice, and making both file and freespace fragmentation more of an issue to boot.
Crippeling your product makes it less usefull, while probably not really providing any real protection. Nothing teaches people to think before they act like a catistrophic loss or two. And hiding or obscuring the user's responsibility to THINK before doing will only make it easier for them to shift the blame onto YOU, or your product. And you can't make sloppy thinkers THINK, just bytelling them to, THEY have to come to that conclusion all by themselves, or else they won't do it at all.
Even a long string of "are you really really really sure?" questions just teaches your fingers the sequence of "yes, yes, of course" to type or click on. One or two chances to stop are enough. Any more than that just makes the user want to get through it as fast as possible.
There is definate "low-fidelity", so high-fidelity is a given. It relates to either the fidelity (accuracy) of a recording, or the ability of equipmen to re-produce high-fidelity (high accuracy) sounds from those high-fidelity recordings.
Also, your statement implies that you cannot hear a difference between mono, sterio, and/or other multi-track audio playback (Sterio+Subwoofer, Sterio+Center, Quadraphonic, or any combination thereof).
Sterio may be standard now, but it does not make the word meaningless.
That's cool.
It doesn't even have to do that, it could just ignore everything that returns 127.0.0.1 that isn't localhost, and only THEN query the DNS server. Or, it could keep it's own small file of Google's own ad serving addresses, and translate those into IP Addresses before the request even hits the hosts file. This would have the advantage of never allowing THEIR ads to be blocked, while allowing their competitors to be blocked.
And since most Google ads (AFAIK) are graphics and flash light, this might even be acceptable to most Chrome (and now Blink) users.
Since I actually like the free website model mostly in use today, I only ever block ads when they begin effecting my web browsing speed, browser stability, or my privacy. So, yeah, I block all flash advertising, always.
Google is just providing more value to it's customers.
Why is it that I find when a company says that it's providing me with "more value", that I find that they are in reality removing things that I actually value, and / or adding things I do not value, and are probably charging me more for the priviledge?
For example:
I called a company complaining about a new juice bottle that, because the bottom was concave, held 1/2 an ounce less than the previous bottle, but they had not lowered their already high price. The person had the nerve to tell me that the change had been made because market research showed that their consumers wanted it. She didn't have much to say when I replied, "So you can show me surveys where people say that they either want to pay more for their juice, or get less of it, right?"
Oh, and keep in mind that the users of Google and Chrome are NOT Googles customers. Google sells targeted ads to advertisers. To be a customer really requires some kind of payment to be exchanged for a good or service.
The consumers of Google's free products are not customers, they are the product that Google sells to it's paying customers, it's advertisers.
The easy answer is precision.
Electroconvulsive therapy is the mental / medical equivilent of pounding on the TV to "fix" it, and is a last ditch treatment used when the simptoms cannot be treated any other way.
It, as the name implies, creates a seizure in the paitent by applying voltages across rather wide areas of the brain. Originally uncontrolled voltages (because it came through skin, bone, etc) into, nearly random brain tissues (because it was applied in ignorance, through multiple barriers, with no guarentee as to where the potentially (and often actually) damaging current went. Just as pounding on older electronics minutely shifted ALL components, sometimes cleaning a little bit of oxidation, or closing a curcit board crack, allowing current to flow where it had been blocked.
Today, the seisures are usually limited to purely electrical storms in the brain, and usually do not present themselves as convulsions, or uncontrolled muscle spasms.
I assume that the procedure has improved over the years, but I do know for a fact that ECT, to this very day, often destroys short and mid-term memory. Who knows what subtler damage it can cause?
On the other hand, Stimulating one, or a small group of cells, is nothing like ECT.
In fact brain surgeons will stimulate small pockets of brain cells before and during surgery (invoking memories, sights, sounds, tastes, sensations and smells) to minimise the chance of damaging or removing cells unrelated to the surgery. Something like that could never be done with ECT.
I can see a whole new branch of science comming out of Answering this simple question:
"What things, when shot into the brain, do NOT eliminate addiction?"
Ramping up the chemical rocket process to deal with containing and redirecting plasma is not the only way to take advantage of nuclear processes.
Fission could be used to produce what is basically a steam rocket. Water would be relitively cheap, since it is one of the most plentiful things on earth. Water is also one of the best shealds against radioactivity, so we could use water as fuel that had previously shielded our astronauts against cosmic and solar radiation in the second half of the trip out, to brake the ship for Mars orbit.
A more 'out there' option is to use nuclear bombs (either fission or fusion), to directly push the ship. The drawbacks to this is a probably jarring ride, and the probable resulting damages to ship, crew and cargo that would go with it. A 'continous' stream of micro-bombs that might be able to simulate a 'smooth' ride would present a whole new set of problems, starting with making bombs small enough, and reliable enough, with enough power to move the ship, all the way up to creating a system that could reliabily move enough of them continously for months without a single catistrophic break-down.
I forgot plasma, but it's basically like the heat exchange version, only with more magnetic shealding.
Without reading the article:
Accelleration is easy, depending on the technique you use to capture / redirect the energy.
1) Heat exchange: You use the heat of the process to vaporise a substance (like water), and that is released out the back of the vehicle.
2) Direct physical redirection. Small bombs are released behind the vehicle and a physical sheild that redirects the explosion, and protects the vehicle. The force of the explosion pushes the vehicle forward. Unless the people are stupid, the bombs will vary in size so that the initial explosion (or any others) will not kill the astronauts, but still allows for reaching enourmous speeds.
Decelleration / beaking / slowing down is simply a matter of spinning the the ship 180 degrees, and do the same things you did to accelerate. Start this early enough, and you will slow down in time to orbit mars.
There is little difference between an explosion and a rocket. Don't believe me? Cut the end off a firecracker or ladyfinger, lay it on the ground and light the fuse. A flame will shoot out the cut end, and push the explosive in the oppisite direction. What makes a loud, forcefull explosion is (usually) a restriction around the explosive. Remove the restriction in one direction and the force will all rush out that side. The resistance is what causes the pressure to build up to the point where it breaks it's enclosure. The "bang" is created because the pressure builds up to the point that the pressure wave moves faster than the speed of sound.
Lastly, there is little lingering radioactivity from anything other than a ground explosion because the amount of material that can pick up radioactivity is limited to the bomb and shell it'self and a little bit of atmosphere. In a ground explosion, dust and dirt (and whatever has been pulverised) can carry vast amounts of radioactivity, and carry leathal amounts for melinia.
Luckily, a burst in space could only irradiate it's own mass, and the little bit of fallout that is created will be pulled by the earth's magnetosphere tword the poles, to become aroras. That which falls into the atmosphere will travel through and be disperced by the various winds, like all the other radioactive particles from the sun and beyond that rain down from the heavens every second of every day since the earth first solidified.
... and old news (ancient in fact), will get you a free ticket to "No shit'sville".
The idea of using either fusion OR fission as a rocket "fuel" is nearly as old as the theiories of fusion and fission!
Some atomic rockets engines have even been tested. What's kept them out of space has been the attempt to proactively demilitarise space (to keep weapons out of space, especially nuclear weapons), and a fear of radioactive materials falling out of orbit for whatever reason, into your back yard.
You should remove ANY program that needlessly access's ANY network, whether you suspect DRM enforcement or not.
Why? It's spying on you, installing malware, rootkits, pop-ups, or advertising on your computer. I lock my doors and draw my drapes to keep people from easily spying on, stealing from, or setting up, me. Not that I'm paranoid (not that I'm not, either), but why should I assist anyone who wants to spy, etc, on me?
I'm old enough to have a sence of privacy, and to believe that nobody has any business checking up on anybody else without GOOD reason.
That you are paranoid, curious, or want to make money ARE NOT good reasons to violate my privacy. And certianlly not as part of some kind of systematic, wide-field snooping.
And if being a user of your products is sufficiant grounds to tag me as a theif, then what does that say about YOU?
Yep, it's DRM.
It's DRM that they can plausibly convince dupes that it's not because it theoretically has some utility value.
Don't bee fooled, or be a fool.
It might not be DRM, maybe the new SimCity is simply collecting information about every user, every user's computer, it's use, and the users computer habits.
Spying on you does not have to be a function of DRM. It just makes enforcing DRM easier.
And if the spying is labled 'market research', then any boon to their efforts at enforcing DRM can be called an unintentional "side effect" of their "market research".
If it were copyrighted, then by default Google would need a license to read the notice. Which would have to be agreed to by Google and Google would have to have the right to refuse, else it is not a binding agreement.
Somebody +1 this insightful fast!