It was years ago, so I don't know if it would even be pertinent. IIRC, it was on DragonMount. Work blocks pretty much everything though so I can't verify if that was where I read it.
The gist of it was a whole "Is Taim Demandred?" thread.
The evidence was pretty profound:
Taim never smiles throughout Lord of Chaos, which is described repeatedly as a character trait of Demandred.
Demandred's whereabouts are unknown, nor revealed. But at the end of LoC, he's standing at the Bore and the Dark Lord's laughter echoes, claiming "well done".
Taim's knowledge of the Age of Legends is pretty wacky. How/why does he know this?
Taim hadn't succumbed to the taint of saidin in any way/shape/form - and he'd been using the power a long time as a false Dragon, if he was who he said he was.
The biggest (and most damning) piece of evidence was when Lews takes over Rand with the Seal, and begins gibbering to break it. Taim's look of horror is a pretty profound indicator that he knew what it was and that it would be Bad News to break.
If you're a fan of the series, I'd definitely do some digging for the archived stuff on this. The evidence was pretty extensive, and I reread LoC for the 4th time just to see it from this perspective.
The change, to me, seemed very kludgy after getting busted on a plot twist.
I wish I'd stopped after Lord of Chaos. That one was absolutely fantastic (perhaps Jordan's "masterwork") but since then. . . meh. Booooooring.
Potential spoilers below.
I personally believe that Jordan got called out on the Demandred/Taim thread, and wrenched the wheel around because of the forums "getting it right". As such, he lost control and the muses now punish him.
Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is far superior epic fantasy anyway. 3 more weeks till Feast For Crows!!!! *drools*
Rational Recovery meetings can be substituted for AA. IANAL but when I was on probation back in the day, RR was an acceptable substitute.
The catch, of course, is the meetings are fewer and further in between and any sort of excessive demands (such as a 90 in 90, or 3x a week) may be impossible to do w/o AA.
Heck, ppl who have to go to NA (narcotics anon) meetings with high frequency often pick up the slack via AA.
Certainly.
My ignorance shows through here. . . I'm not sure how easy/difficult it would be to crack a hash that provides the last 4 numbers of the CC#.
Does that make the hash trivial to crack (assuming 16-20 numbers, the last 4 known)?
I honestly don't know, but I suspect that's exactly what the vendor I was referring to did.
(an aside - I'd really like to know how trivial/non-trivial exposing the last 4 would make a decryption/rev-eng of the hash)
We just had this debate.
The one time transaction is nifty, but you lose the efficiency most sites now offer: the ability to store those numbers for later use.
It's a trade-off.
It's a tough call for the end-user oriented sites; if you're selling books and it takes a bunch of hoops to make a purchase. . . chances are they'll shift to a more user-friendly site such as Amazon. (the security minded, perhaps not. But that's probably not your customer base except in niche markets).
Isn't it considered best practice at this point to obfuscate credit cards in a one-way hash? I know for a fact that a certain vendor (rhymes with Storacle) had serious complaints regarding the storage of credit card numbers unencrypted.
They have since changed that practice, I believe. (there was an enhancement request logged almost 5 years ago to take care of it)
The more robust CRM/Order Management systems that have serialization tracking would allow you to associate a customer number (and consequently all customer data) with a product serial, but the CC# should be next to impossible to retrieve.
as a Republican thing. After all, the Repubs really didn't embrace the Religious Right until the 70s, and the fringe Repubs really didn't take control (shifting their party further right) until the 90s and Contract With America.
I'd agree 100% on the Republican core value shift, if you consider the current administration and those of the same mindset as "Republican". Which is hard to do. McCain and his ilk strike me more as the Republican party than Bush and his cronies.
And I don't know if I'd say the Dems were against control; perhaps that's just my ignorance of their historical relevance but they've never struck me as. . . non-invasive.;) After all, the term "tax and spend" was coined to describe the Democratic party. And taxation is very much Government control in your private life. Some would contend the only control that matters;)
But yes, times have changed. After all, I'm SOBER right now!
Pornography laws (specifically the new crop of "indecency" laws banning devices and the like)
FCC rulings
gay marriage
Many of the above are bipartisan, as well. I'd bet money you can find a lot of decency laws encapsulated in common law as well. It's nothing new, nor is it strictly a Democrat thing.
She was also the leader of the Young Republicans on her college campus.
So she hasn't strayed too far, politically.;)
Interesting - historians' concerns
on
The Digital Dark Age
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I read an article about 10 months ago about the "death of history" due to the electronic age.
In a nutshell, as we've moved to more digital forms of communication (phone and email), one of the primary methods historians use to piece together older eras is going extinct - the written correspondence from one person to the next.
It was an excellent article; my google-fu sucks apparently because I can't find hide nor hair of it. Curses. No +5 Informative for me.
I think you're wrong, but don't want to go into a huge link-laden fest to show how. I'll do it sort of shorthand/cribbed but you can find all the info on the 'net.
Drug-related incarcerations are increasing dramatically, and the percentage (and raw numbers) of drug offenders is enormous and has been steadily increasing for the last 2 decades.
Violent crime, on the other hand (and violent criminals) has remained at a relatively constant rate over the same period of time.
So we've had an enormous increase in prison population, and the corresponding numbers indicate it has been drug offenders, not violent offenders.
I've been in so many TAR battles like that it's ridiculous. The worst is when a problem hits two modules, say, Order Management and Inventory. Then it becomes this awful hot potato that you need to call and escalate to a Duty Manager just to get some semblance of support.
I've taken to answering questions/file uploads in consecutive posts to ding them all the way to Immediate Response Required and fuck up their metrics. If they're pissing me off, that is; sometimes you get one of the excellent tech support guys and life is hunky dory.
Slashdot Mirror
As the right hand has NO IDEA what the left hand is doing. Or saying, for that matter.
if you hadn't been a jerk about it, you probably wouldn't have gotten down modded.
(ducks and covers, while the mods hover)
just give him some heroin and a guitar. He'll mutter something about Driveshaft and head for the hills. Or the jungle. Whichever.
The gist of it was a whole "Is Taim Demandred?" thread.
The evidence was pretty profound:
- Taim never smiles throughout Lord of Chaos, which is described repeatedly as a character trait of Demandred.
- Demandred's whereabouts are unknown, nor revealed. But at the end of LoC, he's standing at the Bore and the Dark Lord's laughter echoes, claiming "well done".
- Taim's knowledge of the Age of Legends is pretty wacky. How/why does he know this?
- Taim hadn't succumbed to the taint of saidin in any way/shape/form - and he'd been using the power a long time as a false Dragon, if he was who he said he was.
- The biggest (and most damning) piece of evidence was when Lews takes over Rand with the Seal, and begins gibbering to break it. Taim's look of horror is a pretty profound indicator that he knew what it was and that it would be Bad News to break.
If you're a fan of the series, I'd definitely do some digging for the archived stuff on this. The evidence was pretty extensive, and I reread LoC for the 4th time just to see it from this perspective.The change, to me, seemed very kludgy after getting busted on a plot twist.
Potential spoilers below.
I personally believe that Jordan got called out on the Demandred/Taim thread, and wrenched the wheel around because of the forums "getting it right". As such, he lost control and the muses now punish him.
Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is far superior epic fantasy anyway. 3 more weeks till Feast For Crows!!!! *drools*
The catch, of course, is the meetings are fewer and further in between and any sort of excessive demands (such as a 90 in 90, or 3x a week) may be impossible to do w/o AA.
Heck, ppl who have to go to NA (narcotics anon) meetings with high frequency often pick up the slack via AA.
I'm calling the Police.
My ignorance shows through here. . . I'm not sure how easy/difficult it would be to crack a hash that provides the last 4 numbers of the CC#.
Does that make the hash trivial to crack (assuming 16-20 numbers, the last 4 known)?
I honestly don't know, but I suspect that's exactly what the vendor I was referring to did. (an aside - I'd really like to know how trivial/non-trivial exposing the last 4 would make a decryption/rev-eng of the hash)
It's a trade-off.
It's a tough call for the end-user oriented sites; if you're selling books and it takes a bunch of hoops to make a purchase. . . chances are they'll shift to a more user-friendly site such as Amazon. (the security minded, perhaps not. But that's probably not your customer base except in niche markets).
Big trade-off to make.
They have since changed that practice, I believe. (there was an enhancement request logged almost 5 years ago to take care of it)
The more robust CRM/Order Management systems that have serialization tracking would allow you to associate a customer number (and consequently all customer data) with a product serial, but the CC# should be next to impossible to retrieve.
Best practices, and all that.
I'd agree 100% on the Republican core value shift, if you consider the current administration and those of the same mindset as "Republican". Which is hard to do. McCain and his ilk strike me more as the Republican party than Bush and his cronies.
And I don't know if I'd say the Dems were against control; perhaps that's just my ignorance of their historical relevance but they've never struck me as. . . non-invasive. ;) After all, the term "tax and spend" was coined to describe the Democratic party. And taxation is very much Government control in your private life. Some would contend the only control that matters ;)
But yes, times have changed. After all, I'm SOBER right now!
Many of the above are bipartisan, as well. I'd bet money you can find a lot of decency laws encapsulated in common law as well. It's nothing new, nor is it strictly a Democrat thing.
Ahh you might be right, and I'm misremembering. In fact, there's a very good chance of it. Mods, knock my GP post down. I'm stupid.
The gay flight attendant who knew he was infected led a lot of people on a merry (Mary?) chase.
Sounds like bukkake, if you ask me!
Oh wait, no it isn't.
So she hasn't strayed too far, politically. ;)
I read an article about 10 months ago about the "death of history" due to the electronic age.
In a nutshell, as we've moved to more digital forms of communication (phone and email), one of the primary methods historians use to piece together older eras is going extinct - the written correspondence from one person to the next.
It was an excellent article; my google-fu sucks apparently because I can't find hide nor hair of it. Curses. No +5 Informative for me.
Drug-related incarcerations are increasing dramatically, and the percentage (and raw numbers) of drug offenders is enormous and has been steadily increasing for the last 2 decades.
Violent crime, on the other hand (and violent criminals) has remained at a relatively constant rate over the same period of time.
So we've had an enormous increase in prison population, and the corresponding numbers indicate it has been drug offenders, not violent offenders.
Primarily non-violent drug offenders.
Perhaps you should look at some prison numbers. We're the most incarcerated nation in the world at this point.
I never got to play it as a kid, just watch others play it. . . and now I can experience some radical gameplay
I've taken to answering questions/file uploads in consecutive posts to ding them all the way to Immediate Response Required and fuck up their metrics. If they're pissing me off, that is; sometimes you get one of the excellent tech support guys and life is hunky dory.
I kid, I kid. I'd settle for public floggings.
No, I kid again. I just hope Rapture comes soon so we can be rid of them.