A.) Paranoid, or
B.) Legitimately concerned 'they' are actually out to get him.
C.) Not tech-savvy enough to publish it anonymously himself/herself.
While you and I would have no problem publishing something anonymously, I know about --- hmm --- a lot of people that wouldn't know where to even start. Of course, I can't say that this is the case here, but it's a possibility, but yeah, you're right --- a little extra security never hurts.
Well, "they" didn't identify the Unabomber - his brother did, because he recognized his writing style in his published manifesto, which in turn resulted in the forensic investigation and comparison of his manifesto to some earlier stuff that he'd written. The method is called stylometry (or stylometrics) and is used widely in forensic linguistics, but it's still only an indicator of authorship - not proof.
In the Unabomber case, they had two sets of texts, the manifesto written by the Unabomber and the texts written by Ted Kaczynski, hence it was relatively easy to compare the two sets and see if there was reason to believe the author of both sets to be the same. In this case, you'll have a single text by an unknown author... What will you compare it to first when you have no suspect or suspected texts? Exactly... This document will have to mean the end of the world before they start trawling the web for random texts and comparing. Mind you, these stylometric comparisons must be verified by a human, even though a lot can be automated with principal component analysis.
I'd say that the author can feel pretty safe, as long as he/she isn't a well-known author and/or uses linguistic constructions specific for his/her dialect or regiolect. Remove all meta-data from the file (e.g. go with plain text or HTML as suggested (far) above) and publish to wikileaks through Tor from a public hotspot. At least, that's what I'd do. I don't know about Brian Boitano, Buddha, Muhammed or Jesus.
Haha, you got a point - but on the upside I can't miss a deadline no matter how much work they send my way.:-p
On the other hand, we are calculating coding_performance_level (CPL) and not amount_of_work_done (AWD), so I guess that means that when a deadline is reached, my CPL is infinitely high (and based on my caffeine and cigarette intake, so am I.);)
Make that: coding_performance_level = (vi + smokes + (coffee | mountain_dew)) * (100 / hours_to_deadline); and you got a deal.;-) And yes, the inverted division is on purpose. (Btw, you've got one too many opening brackets - or one too few closing brackets depending on how you look at it.)
Yeah, I was thinking Lasse Gjertsen too. This is little different from what he did with Amateur, except perhaps requiring even more patience when cutting/arranging.
Still, it's pretty funky stuff!
Linux is still nowhere near the point where a non-techie will consider adopting it.
Well, the problem here isn't really the techie-ness of the adopter... If Verizon would bother to make and ship instructions for Linux, there would be no problem at all. She loaded the Verizon CD-ROM, nothing happened, and then concluded it was probably this "Ubuntu"-thing, since the OS was the only variable in this case.
While I agree with you that it would be sinking to their level and hence a bad idea, I must say that "freedom of religion" is one of the worst ideas ever (and please read on before flaming me.)
It's not that anyone should not be able to belong to the religion of their choice, but that freedom of religion actually ought to be part of freedom of thought and freedom of opinion. To single out religion in this context is to recognize it as some special form of thought and opinion that is entitled to its very own "freedom", which makes it easier for religious groups (of any kind) to hide behind "freedom of religion". While I think everyone is entitled to think, say and believe what they want, I don't like religion being recognized as something special.
You may have a point, but then again I know nothing about this stuff, so I'm merely guessing. I don't know how much radiation a nuke gives off, and even less how much of it will be left in the meteor fragments, and how dangerous such a dose of radiation is. I just know I'd prefer to keep a safe distance to anything previously involved in a nuclear blast.
Anyways, I'd probably prefer not to get hit by meteors or asteroids at all.;-)
Hell, even if you just break it up into say 1,000 even sized pieces and don't manage a reduction in total mass, you could go from a civilization ruining even to something that is easier to recover from.
And that would be the radioactive fragments I was talking about... I'm not sure what I'd prefer, being killed instantaneous by one huge meteor or (possibly) slow and painful by a hailstorm of radioactive meteor debris.
Actually, I remember seeing some documentary on national Geographic (iirc), where they explored this exact topic.
The problems with nuking asteroids are (apparently) the inherent danger of radioactive fragments falling to earth and of course the fact that asteroids aren't actually solid --- they usually consist of a lot of small pieces of rock, hence making it hard to actually do anything to them with force. Of course, these weren't the only problems, but they're the ones I can remember. Might have been the same guy as the one from TFA pointing it out --- I'm not sure. Also, I'm a linguist, so my knowledge of astronomy and nukes is limited.
Yeah, maybe your machine... That SQL-error looks more like bad session handling on the server hosting your Drupal installation than Google trying to do an SQL-injection... Actually, it looks nothing like an SQL-injection at all. MySQL is merely being asked to insert a duplicate value in a column specified as unique (`sid`), which it refuses because it's not unique. Don't expect an answer, since it's most likely not an error on Google's end.
A little more on topic though, what exactly is Google looking for there? I mean, what content (of any interest to anyone) is hiding behind forms? Many sites that require registration (like NY Times (IIRC) and others) already check if the UserAgent string is that of a Google crawler and lets it index if so in order for people to be able to search eg. NY Times articles on Google but only read them if they register (or change their UserAgent string or use BugMeNot).
And how does Google make sure they don't end up accidently editing a crapload of wikies by filling out random forms on random sites and hitting submit?
How fortunate that apt/dpkg handles source packages so well then...
Punching in 'apt-get -b source <whatever>' is not a whole lot harder than 'port install <whatever>' or whatever you prefer, is it? I know, I know... Don't feed the troll... Sorry.
I don't think the GP thinks that the study is flawed, but merely that other conclusions can be drawn from it (or that some are left out).
I took a quick look through TFA and found myself wondering if this "change" was permanent or temporary. I'll bet you, that if someone walks up to you and, for no apparent reason, slaps you square in the face, then you probably won't need an fMRI scanner to spot a change in the part that controls the inhibition of violence in your brain... But will that incident make you a more violent person permanently or just temporarily?
fMRI scans are meant to register and locate reactions/actions in the brain - and I think that's what they mean by "change", mainly on the basis that I've been in a scanner myself as part of an experiment to figure out which parts of the brain were active when lying. The "changes" there were activity in the brain - not permanent changes.
It wouldn't surprise me the least that people's reaction to violence is measurable precisely in the part of the brain that controls the inhibition of violence. As others have pointed out - it makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective. Or would you rather have people not reacting to violence at all?
Yeah, I know, but that's not my point. There are several reasons to NOT store your CDs on a hard drive. First of all, I don't want to waste hard drive space on it. Second, I like my laptop to remain mobile - i.e. not tied down by an audio cable. Third, not everyone can afford an extra computer for audio - even an extra hard drive can be too much of a strain on a student's economy. I, myself, have an external hard drive, but it's rarely hooked up, since it also ties down my laptop. Besides, not everyone has a computer in the same room as the stereo.
I was merely trying to encourage a comparison based on the media themselves - i.e. imagine a home without anything but a stereo with a CD player and a record player. No computers, MiniDiscs, tape decks and what have you...
I'm not saying CDs are useless or anything, far from it, I'm just saying that I prefer LPs and why. I can imagine plenty of situations where CDs - or even tapes - would be the preferable medium.
Yeah, I tried that and the CD-ROM drive in my MacBook C2D could hardly read it - it managed to rip it after 1,5 hours, where it usually rips and encodes an entire CD in a matter of 5 or 6 minutes. However, that's somewhat besides the point, since that would be in the same ballpark as copying an LP to e.g. MiniDisc or whatever, and then say that the LP doesn't wear.
For me, the choice between LPs and CDs is made entirely on the basis of the medium itself and not backup strategies and what have you. I don't usually rip my CDs and store them on my computer, in my opinion that's a waste of HD space - also I don't usually record my LPs to MiniDiscs as that's a waste of resources too. Comparing CDs and LPs as they are is what I'd prefer to do, as that's actually what I do every time I buy a record and in that respect (in my experience) LPs are the most viable choice.
And for the record, I never intended my anecdote as any sort of "scientific evidence" as some have suggested in their replies - I just meant to show that the "CDs are forever, LPs wear out fast"-claim doesn't always hold.
And of course, it's a format that's easily damaged, and wears out just by listening to it [and yes, I know you can get very expensive record players that use laser's or some such thing instead of a needle].
I'm sorry, but there are just so many things wrong with that, that I have to reply.
Vinyl is not as easily damaged as one would think. I have a pretty big vinyl collection and a reasonably sized CD collection (about 180 of them) and guess which one's I'm having trouble listening to... I can't listen to my Deftones - Adrenaline CD, because it has a few minor scratches that mess up each and every track on the CD rendering it completely and utterly useless - and that CD is only about 10 years old. Now, I've got a vinyl in my collection that's about twice as old (an old Danish children's record) which I've "borrowed" from my dad. It has been handled a lot by myself and my 4 sisters back when we were kids but it plays fine. The jacket's all torn and I know for a fact that it's been treated really, really rough. Sure, there are the occasional pops and maybe a skip or two when it plays, but if I increase the weight of the needle just a little, it plays the record in its entirety without a single skip... Now, try to do that with my Deftones CD... (Though, I'm not really that keen on listening to it any longer.)
To reiterate:
Vinyl (+20 yrs old, handled/dropped a LOT by kids, plenty of visible scratches): Still plays fine.
CD (~10 yrs old, played mostly in an NAD CD player, treated nicely, very few visible scratches): Completely useless.
Re your wearing out issue... If you adjust the weight of the needle right (and no, it's really not that hard) and use a decent one, then you'll be able to play your records for at least as long as your CDs. Remember, CDs deteriorate as well - they don't even have to be played to get all messed up! As long as you treat your LPs reasonably, they'll last for a loooong time - at least, I have some records that are way older than myself (26 yrs) and they play just fine. Besides, CDs can't be treated all that bad either, without rendering them unplayable...
As for the laser-thingy. I can't say much, as I have never actually seen (or heard) one, but from what I've heard people say about it, the sound isn't all that good and definitely not worth it. But as I said, I have no experience with it myself. Try googling it if your interested, that's where I found some reviews back when I was checking it out.
Wow! Then at least both Wikipedia (started in 2001) and php.net (started doing searches instead of returning 404's back in 2001 or so, iirc) has been doing it prior to A9 filing for the patent - and I'm pretty sure that a crap-load of others have been doing it way before as well. Even I did it on a couple of sites back in 2002! How could this patent ever be granted to A9?
Actually, Google isn't really the active part here, the Firefox devs are -- they're the ones who have chosen to utilize Googles services for this feature. The end result is the same though, but for this kind of feature, you've got to check the URLs against something, so why choose some obscure blacklist provider, when Google is generally trusted among people? (Note: "generally"!) Personally, I'd rather Google get my browsing history than some random company that I haven't ever heard of.
Sure, they could download a list to the client and check urls against it, but that'd require updates all the time, which in turn would generate enormous amounts of trafic. Besides, who'd want to host such a blacklist, when millions of clients are updating every 30 minutes or so? Sending the URL to be checked against an updated blacklist on a server, thus spreading out the trafic, is the only sane solution IMO. I'm pretty sure Google didn't force the Firefox devs to use their service, but Google is reliable and has the capacity to support the millions of Firefox users, which makes it a sensible choice. I think maybe your attitude is a bit paranoid, but sure, I see why it can seem a tad frightening.
Slashdot Mirror
A.) Paranoid, or
B.) Legitimately concerned 'they' are actually out to get him.
C.) Not tech-savvy enough to publish it anonymously himself/herself.
While you and I would have no problem publishing something anonymously, I know about --- hmm --- a lot of people that wouldn't know where to even start. Of course, I can't say that this is the case here, but it's a possibility, but yeah, you're right --- a little extra security never hurts.
Well, "they" didn't identify the Unabomber - his brother did, because he recognized his writing style in his published manifesto, which in turn resulted in the forensic investigation and comparison of his manifesto to some earlier stuff that he'd written. The method is called stylometry (or stylometrics) and is used widely in forensic linguistics, but it's still only an indicator of authorship - not proof.
In the Unabomber case, they had two sets of texts, the manifesto written by the Unabomber and the texts written by Ted Kaczynski, hence it was relatively easy to compare the two sets and see if there was reason to believe the author of both sets to be the same. In this case, you'll have a single text by an unknown author... What will you compare it to first when you have no suspect or suspected texts? Exactly... This document will have to mean the end of the world before they start trawling the web for random texts and comparing. Mind you, these stylometric comparisons must be verified by a human, even though a lot can be automated with principal component analysis.
I'd say that the author can feel pretty safe, as long as he/she isn't a well-known author and/or uses linguistic constructions specific for his/her dialect or regiolect. Remove all meta-data from the file (e.g. go with plain text or HTML as suggested (far) above) and publish to wikileaks through Tor from a public hotspot. At least, that's what I'd do. I don't know about Brian Boitano, Buddha, Muhammed or Jesus.
Oh, and yes, I am a linguist. :)
I'm pretty sure that in base-2 with no zero-padding, 100% will start with 1. :-p
Haha, you got a point - but on the upside I can't miss a deadline no matter how much work they send my way. :-p
On the other hand, we are calculating coding_performance_level (CPL) and not amount_of_work_done (AWD), so I guess that means that when a deadline is reached, my CPL is infinitely high (and based on my caffeine and cigarette intake, so am I.) ;)
Make that: ;-) And yes, the inverted division is on purpose. (Btw, you've got one too many opening brackets - or one too few closing brackets depending on how you look at it.)
coding_performance_level = (vi + smokes + (coffee | mountain_dew)) * (100 / hours_to_deadline);
and you got a deal.
Yeah, I was thinking Lasse Gjertsen too. This is little different from what he did with Amateur, except perhaps requiring even more patience when cutting/arranging. Still, it's pretty funky stuff!
Well, the problem here isn't really the techie-ness of the adopter... If Verizon would bother to make and ship instructions for Linux, there would be no problem at all. She loaded the Verizon CD-ROM, nothing happened, and then concluded it was probably this "Ubuntu"-thing, since the OS was the only variable in this case.
[...] and leave root for those cases where sudo is impractical (in other words - when you have lots of stuff to do as root).
Or use sudo -s -H, which is great when there's no password set for root (eg. a default Ubuntu install).
While I agree with you that it would be sinking to their level and hence a bad idea, I must say that "freedom of religion" is one of the worst ideas ever (and please read on before flaming me.)
It's not that anyone should not be able to belong to the religion of their choice, but that freedom of religion actually ought to be part of freedom of thought and freedom of opinion. To single out religion in this context is to recognize it as some special form of thought and opinion that is entitled to its very own "freedom", which makes it easier for religious groups (of any kind) to hide behind "freedom of religion". While I think everyone is entitled to think, say and believe what they want, I don't like religion being recognized as something special.
Second! (Not that I nearly spit out your breakfast...)
Had I had mod points, I would have modded you +1, informative, but instead I'll just say thanks! :)
You may have a point, but then again I know nothing about this stuff, so I'm merely guessing. I don't know how much radiation a nuke gives off, and even less how much of it will be left in the meteor fragments, and how dangerous such a dose of radiation is. I just know I'd prefer to keep a safe distance to anything previously involved in a nuclear blast.
Anyways, I'd probably prefer not to get hit by meteors or asteroids at all. ;-)
Hell, even if you just break it up into say 1,000 even sized pieces and don't manage a reduction in total mass, you could go from a civilization ruining even to something that is easier to recover from.
And that would be the radioactive fragments I was talking about... I'm not sure what I'd prefer, being killed instantaneous by one huge meteor or (possibly) slow and painful by a hailstorm of radioactive meteor debris.
Actually, I remember seeing some documentary on national Geographic (iirc), where they explored this exact topic.
The problems with nuking asteroids are (apparently) the inherent danger of radioactive fragments falling to earth and of course the fact that asteroids aren't actually solid --- they usually consist of a lot of small pieces of rock, hence making it hard to actually do anything to them with force. Of course, these weren't the only problems, but they're the ones I can remember. Might have been the same guy as the one from TFA pointing it out --- I'm not sure. Also, I'm a linguist, so my knowledge of astronomy and nukes is limited.
Atlanta Falcons (especially the last couple of seasons).
MA Lobsters? :-p
Yeah, maybe your machine... That SQL-error looks more like bad session handling on the server hosting your Drupal installation than Google trying to do an SQL-injection... Actually, it looks nothing like an SQL-injection at all. MySQL is merely being asked to insert a duplicate value in a column specified as unique (`sid`), which it refuses because it's not unique. Don't expect an answer, since it's most likely not an error on Google's end.
A little more on topic though, what exactly is Google looking for there? I mean, what content (of any interest to anyone) is hiding behind forms? Many sites that require registration (like NY Times (IIRC) and others) already check if the UserAgent string is that of a Google crawler and lets it index if so in order for people to be able to search eg. NY Times articles on Google but only read them if they register (or change their UserAgent string or use BugMeNot).
And how does Google make sure they don't end up accidently editing a crapload of wikies by filling out random forms on random sites and hitting submit?
How fortunate that apt/dpkg handles source packages so well then... Punching in 'apt-get -b source <whatever>' is not a whole lot harder than 'port install <whatever>' or whatever you prefer, is it? I know, I know... Don't feed the troll... Sorry.
I don't think the GP thinks that the study is flawed, but merely that other conclusions can be drawn from it (or that some are left out).
I took a quick look through TFA and found myself wondering if this "change" was permanent or temporary. I'll bet you, that if someone walks up to you and, for no apparent reason, slaps you square in the face, then you probably won't need an fMRI scanner to spot a change in the part that controls the inhibition of violence in your brain... But will that incident make you a more violent person permanently or just temporarily?
fMRI scans are meant to register and locate reactions/actions in the brain - and I think that's what they mean by "change", mainly on the basis that I've been in a scanner myself as part of an experiment to figure out which parts of the brain were active when lying. The "changes" there were activity in the brain - not permanent changes.
It wouldn't surprise me the least that people's reaction to violence is measurable precisely in the part of the brain that controls the inhibition of violence. As others have pointed out - it makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective. Or would you rather have people not reacting to violence at all?
Yeah, I know, but that's not my point. There are several reasons to NOT store your CDs on a hard drive. First of all, I don't want to waste hard drive space on it. Second, I like my laptop to remain mobile - i.e. not tied down by an audio cable. Third, not everyone can afford an extra computer for audio - even an extra hard drive can be too much of a strain on a student's economy. I, myself, have an external hard drive, but it's rarely hooked up, since it also ties down my laptop. Besides, not everyone has a computer in the same room as the stereo.
I was merely trying to encourage a comparison based on the media themselves - i.e. imagine a home without anything but a stereo with a CD player and a record player. No computers, MiniDiscs, tape decks and what have you...
I'm not saying CDs are useless or anything, far from it, I'm just saying that I prefer LPs and why. I can imagine plenty of situations where CDs - or even tapes - would be the preferable medium.
Yeah, I tried that and the CD-ROM drive in my MacBook C2D could hardly read it - it managed to rip it after 1,5 hours, where it usually rips and encodes an entire CD in a matter of 5 or 6 minutes. However, that's somewhat besides the point, since that would be in the same ballpark as copying an LP to e.g. MiniDisc or whatever, and then say that the LP doesn't wear.
For me, the choice between LPs and CDs is made entirely on the basis of the medium itself and not backup strategies and what have you. I don't usually rip my CDs and store them on my computer, in my opinion that's a waste of HD space - also I don't usually record my LPs to MiniDiscs as that's a waste of resources too. Comparing CDs and LPs as they are is what I'd prefer to do, as that's actually what I do every time I buy a record and in that respect (in my experience) LPs are the most viable choice.
And for the record, I never intended my anecdote as any sort of "scientific evidence" as some have suggested in their replies - I just meant to show that the "CDs are forever, LPs wear out fast"-claim doesn't always hold.
And of course, it's a format that's easily damaged, and wears out just by listening to it [and yes, I know you can get very expensive record players that use laser's or some such thing instead of a needle].
I'm sorry, but there are just so many things wrong with that, that I have to reply.
Vinyl is not as easily damaged as one would think. I have a pretty big vinyl collection and a reasonably sized CD collection (about 180 of them) and guess which one's I'm having trouble listening to... I can't listen to my Deftones - Adrenaline CD, because it has a few minor scratches that mess up each and every track on the CD rendering it completely and utterly useless - and that CD is only about 10 years old. Now, I've got a vinyl in my collection that's about twice as old (an old Danish children's record) which I've "borrowed" from my dad. It has been handled a lot by myself and my 4 sisters back when we were kids but it plays fine. The jacket's all torn and I know for a fact that it's been treated really, really rough. Sure, there are the occasional pops and maybe a skip or two when it plays, but if I increase the weight of the needle just a little, it plays the record in its entirety without a single skip... Now, try to do that with my Deftones CD... (Though, I'm not really that keen on listening to it any longer.)
To reiterate:
Re your wearing out issue... If you adjust the weight of the needle right (and no, it's really not that hard) and use a decent one, then you'll be able to play your records for at least as long as your CDs. Remember, CDs deteriorate as well - they don't even have to be played to get all messed up! As long as you treat your LPs reasonably, they'll last for a loooong time - at least, I have some records that are way older than myself (26 yrs) and they play just fine. Besides, CDs can't be treated all that bad either, without rendering them unplayable...
As for the laser-thingy. I can't say much, as I have never actually seen (or heard) one, but from what I've heard people say about it, the sound isn't all that good and definitely not worth it. But as I said, I have no experience with it myself. Try googling it if your interested, that's where I found some reviews back when I was checking it out.
Wow! Then at least both Wikipedia (started in 2001) and php.net (started doing searches instead of returning 404's back in 2001 or so, iirc) has been doing it prior to A9 filing for the patent - and I'm pretty sure that a crap-load of others have been doing it way before as well. Even I did it on a couple of sites back in 2002! How could this patent ever be granted to A9?
Actually, Google isn't really the active part here, the Firefox devs are -- they're the ones who have chosen to utilize Googles services for this feature. The end result is the same though, but for this kind of feature, you've got to check the URLs against something, so why choose some obscure blacklist provider, when Google is generally trusted among people? (Note: "generally"!) Personally, I'd rather Google get my browsing history than some random company that I haven't ever heard of.
Sure, they could download a list to the client and check urls against it, but that'd require updates all the time, which in turn would generate enormous amounts of trafic. Besides, who'd want to host such a blacklist, when millions of clients are updating every 30 minutes or so? Sending the URL to be checked against an updated blacklist on a server, thus spreading out the trafic, is the only sane solution IMO. I'm pretty sure Google didn't force the Firefox devs to use their service, but Google is reliable and has the capacity to support the millions of Firefox users, which makes it a sensible choice. I think maybe your attitude is a bit paranoid, but sure, I see why it can seem a tad frightening.
Yeah, and in MSN Messenger as well, where they'll just censor out anything multiplication-related. :-p