I would assume that it is possible, but not practical to monitor the messages (since the server that handles it all is probably in the US). After all, telling family members things that one shouldn't (like mission details) probably doesn't happen very often, but if someone was suspected of doing so then I would guess that someone would listen in to make sure that they didn't.
Also, I would assume that this is similar to those java IRC clients you see on some websites. My guess is that they wanted to deploy this as soon as possible instead of adding features like file transfer and image uploading (which also reduces the bandwidth requirements). Most pictures that soldiers send home (that I've seen at least) are of them posing by tanks and things. It's not like Private Joe wants to send his mother a picture of someone that got hit with an RPG. Some people might want to see stuff like that, but most people don't. The only time I've ever seen that kind of picture is on anti-war propaganda pages. Sure, war might not be pretty, but it happens, and it's not like anyone (except a few wackos) wants war to happen (it's just a difference of opinion as to when it's necessary).
Probably because someone said that it couldn't be done. Also, it's not like the hacked bikes aren't providing "public, non-polluting transportation", they still work just fine. The company that owns them isn't loosing much money (10% of the bikes are affected, and they only give free rides to those who know how to use the hack), and that lose comes from someone making the mistake of not setting the intellectual property lock. It's certainly not the first time a company lost money because they made a mistake.
Finding the Nth word wouldn't have to be slow. Just label each data value with it's position in terms of N and have a protein find it (or several thousand identical protieins with markers scattered across the length of the molecule). It's not like RNA Transcriptase has to travel down the entire DNA strand before it can transcribe a gene.
I can see it now... some bacteria mistakes a computer virus for a plasmid and you have a bacterial version of AIDS. Of course, if it's an STD then it probably won't spread given the people exposed to it.
Or nucleotides... Peptides are what genes code for (after RNA splicing and everything). Although, it might be possible to have base-5. Perhaps Uracil could be used in artificial DNA (it's already in RNA). Of course, that'd probably make replication harder, since the DNA replication process would probably need to be modified to accommodate the extra base.
Perhaps they plan to do something to IE or Windows to combat spyware. After all, I doubt if they want network administrators to start requiring Firefox on all networked computers just to reduce the time removing spyware. A automated network tool that removed certain programs remotely would be much easier to deploy than installing Firefox on every machine and teaching users to use it instead.
I'd be really surprised if it were the ICBM were to fail instead. It's the intercept system that they're developing, not the ICBM. Also, it's a lot better if the dummy ICBM launched and the interceptor didn't. If it were the reverse then wtf would the interceptor be intercepting? The ocean? Some guy's model rocket?
Perhaps it was just checking something generic, like internal temperature, and shut itself down because it was outside of the allowed conditions. They may know something, like that the navigation system quit responding, but not know why. Hince, the thing could have shut itself off because something unexpected happened. If a program throws an exception then you don't know exactly what went wrong. That or it was an error with the error detector.
well, until we run out of helium that is. People, you should be concerned about He usage. It's a limited resource and there's not much of it.
Well, couldn't one just use hydrogen? It's not like there are any power lines up that high. Also, wouldn't the air density that high be low enough to hinder any combustion? The you'd just have to make sure that they were safe when they were launched (do it in a remote area).
almost certainly. On clear nights you can see satellite blinking by so you could certainly see these guy's.
AFAIK the only satellite you can see at night is the moon. Maybe you should look into that eyeglass prescription, I think someone might have added a couple extra zeros to it...
True, but a prerequisite of it being a new dialect is that it is understandable to those who speak it. Since the problem is miscommunication due to e-mails being written this way I'd call it poor writing, not an example of language evolving.
As one of the multitasking kids (well, sorta, I'm 19) I don't entirely agree. It just depends on the amount of concentration a task requires. Not concentrating on work isn't good even if your aren't doing anything else. If it's some mindless homework, though, it is quite easy to do other things at the same time and still do a good job on it. I regularly respond to message board posts while typing a paper (thanks to e-mail notification), and it doesn't waste much time or decrease the quality of my paper. Of course, I should be studying right now, but I'm on slashdot. That isn't a problem with my multitasking abilities, just my priorities.
Your research paper wouldn't happen to be about why humans tend to procrastinate on important tasks? Because if so, you could sort of justify posting on/. as important research.
Hence the reason my last research paper was on message boards.
No kidding, what if you accidently wiped out some evidence while copying the drive (like the last command in the log file)? I'd just turn off the system, remove the HD and replace it with another (imaged with the latest backup). Seems like that would be a lot easier and safer than trying to copy the data off the original drive, and you wouldn't have to worry about getting rid of a root kit or whatever was used to comprimise the system.
Well, they don't have to give out all the money in a single prize. They could make an overall design for the project, split it into, say, 20 parts, and offer 50 million for each's completion, like an engine that provides x amount of thrust, weights less than y, and can fit into a z-sized compartment. That way there is less risk involved for the corperation and NASA gets to control the overall design.
I doubt that most people could mentally handle living for a millenium or longer. The article say 1000 years because a teenager's chance of dieing is 1/1000. Most people that lived that long wouldn't take that many risks. To control overpopulation they'd have to add something to the pill to reduce fertility, and people would have to cope with the fact that the "love of their life" would probably move on after a while. People also tend to get set in their ways rather early in life, listening to the same music, doing the same job, keeping the same set of skills, retaining their view of the world, ect.. Old people seem stubborn now, I wonder what they'd be like if they were 10 or 20 times as old... The cultural changes would massive as well. Just imagine all the stuff that has happened in the last 1000 years. An average person probably wouldn't even have enough memory to remember it all. In fact, I doubt that someone that old could remember much at all, maybe just the most significant events or the most recent ones. But I guess the life expectancy isn't taking into account people's bad habits, like smoking or eating tons of unhealthy foods, but I would expect someone to come up with a way around that sometime in the next 100 years.
Instead of solving this with more laws, wouldn't it be easier to hire 601 Blackhats, give them immunity for cybercrimes (excluding spam and messing with finances), and a couple OC-192 connections to share. By the time Average Joe has to reinstall Windows 5 times in 3 days due to the steady release of new viruses and such, he might be a little more willing to learn what a firewall is.
I doubt that he can do it for any number, other wise that would make 128 bit RSA encryption useless. I'm guessing that he did something like figure out if it's divisible by 2 (look at the last digit), then 3, then 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and so on until he got to the thirteenth number that it was divisible by. Too bad they didn't pick a prime number and let everyone stand there mentally dividing.
Well, just have it prompt for a password in order to decrypt the contact list (and don't keep the password or list loaded in memory). Of course I would guess that a lot of windows users would just type in the password whenever they were asked (even if outlook wasn't open at the time), so encrypting the contact list would probably be more trouble than it's worth.
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I would assume that it is possible, but not practical to monitor the messages (since the server that handles it all is probably in the US). After all, telling family members things that one shouldn't (like mission details) probably doesn't happen very often, but if someone was suspected of doing so then I would guess that someone would listen in to make sure that they didn't. Also, I would assume that this is similar to those java IRC clients you see on some websites. My guess is that they wanted to deploy this as soon as possible instead of adding features like file transfer and image uploading (which also reduces the bandwidth requirements). Most pictures that soldiers send home (that I've seen at least) are of them posing by tanks and things. It's not like Private Joe wants to send his mother a picture of someone that got hit with an RPG. Some people might want to see stuff like that, but most people don't. The only time I've ever seen that kind of picture is on anti-war propaganda pages. Sure, war might not be pretty, but it happens, and it's not like anyone (except a few wackos) wants war to happen (it's just a difference of opinion as to when it's necessary).
If they use Java then I don't see why they couldn't. Heck, javascript probably could do 4096 bit RSA, if not for memory limitations.
Probably because someone said that it couldn't be done. Also, it's not like the hacked bikes aren't providing "public, non-polluting transportation", they still work just fine. The company that owns them isn't loosing much money (10% of the bikes are affected, and they only give free rides to those who know how to use the hack), and that lose comes from someone making the mistake of not setting the intellectual property lock. It's certainly not the first time a company lost money because they made a mistake.
Finding the Nth word wouldn't have to be slow. Just label each data value with it's position in terms of N and have a protein find it (or several thousand identical protieins with markers scattered across the length of the molecule). It's not like RNA Transcriptase has to travel down the entire DNA strand before it can transcribe a gene.
So your computer helps in a DDOS attack against www.whitehouse.gov while you drive there and start pounding on the doors?
I can see it now... some bacteria mistakes a computer virus for a plasmid and you have a bacterial version of AIDS. Of course, if it's an STD then it probably won't spread given the people exposed to it.
Or nucleotides... Peptides are what genes code for (after RNA splicing and everything). Although, it might be possible to have base-5. Perhaps Uracil could be used in artificial DNA (it's already in RNA). Of course, that'd probably make replication harder, since the DNA replication process would probably need to be modified to accommodate the extra base.
Perhaps they plan to do something to IE or Windows to combat spyware. After all, I doubt if they want network administrators to start requiring Firefox on all networked computers just to reduce the time removing spyware. A automated network tool that removed certain programs remotely would be much easier to deploy than installing Firefox on every machine and teaching users to use it instead.
I'd be really surprised if it were the ICBM were to fail instead. It's the intercept system that they're developing, not the ICBM. Also, it's a lot better if the dummy ICBM launched and the interceptor didn't. If it were the reverse then wtf would the interceptor be intercepting? The ocean? Some guy's model rocket?
Perhaps it was just checking something generic, like internal temperature, and shut itself down because it was outside of the allowed conditions. They may know something, like that the navigation system quit responding, but not know why. Hince, the thing could have shut itself off because something unexpected happened. If a program throws an exception then you don't know exactly what went wrong. That or it was an error with the error detector.
well, until we run out of helium that is. People, you should be concerned about He usage. It's a limited resource and there's not much of it.
Well, couldn't one just use hydrogen? It's not like there are any power lines up that high. Also, wouldn't the air density that high be low enough to hinder any combustion? The you'd just have to make sure that they were safe when they were launched (do it in a remote area).
almost certainly. On clear nights you can see satellite blinking by so you could certainly see these guy's.
AFAIK the only satellite you can see at night is the moon. Maybe you should look into that eyeglass prescription, I think someone might have added a couple extra zeros to it...
Most of the non-geek friends I know would only be interesting in hacking if it involved the following:
How to fileshare without getting caught
How to bypass porn-blocking school filters
How to change grades
How to own someone on instant messanger that is pissing me off
How to read my girl/boyfriend's email
At least that is all they ever ask me to do.
True, but a prerequisite of it being a new dialect is that it is understandable to those who speak it. Since the problem is miscommunication due to e-mails being written this way I'd call it poor writing, not an example of language evolving.
As one of the multitasking kids (well, sorta, I'm 19) I don't entirely agree. It just depends on the amount of concentration a task requires. Not concentrating on work isn't good even if your aren't doing anything else. If it's some mindless homework, though, it is quite easy to do other things at the same time and still do a good job on it. I regularly respond to message board posts while typing a paper (thanks to e-mail notification), and it doesn't waste much time or decrease the quality of my paper. Of course, I should be studying right now, but I'm on slashdot. That isn't a problem with my multitasking abilities, just my priorities.
Your research paper wouldn't happen to be about why humans tend to procrastinate on important tasks? Because if so, you could sort of justify posting on /. as important research.
Hence the reason my last research paper was on message boards.
No kidding, what if you accidently wiped out some evidence while copying the drive (like the last command in the log file)? I'd just turn off the system, remove the HD and replace it with another (imaged with the latest backup). Seems like that would be a lot easier and safer than trying to copy the data off the original drive, and you wouldn't have to worry about getting rid of a root kit or whatever was used to comprimise the system.
Well, they don't have to give out all the money in a single prize. They could make an overall design for the project, split it into, say, 20 parts, and offer 50 million for each's completion, like an engine that provides x amount of thrust, weights less than y, and can fit into a z-sized compartment. That way there is less risk involved for the corperation and NASA gets to control the overall design.
I doubt that most people could mentally handle living for a millenium or longer. The article say 1000 years because a teenager's chance of dieing is 1/1000. Most people that lived that long wouldn't take that many risks. To control overpopulation they'd have to add something to the pill to reduce fertility, and people would have to cope with the fact that the "love of their life" would probably move on after a while. People also tend to get set in their ways rather early in life, listening to the same music, doing the same job, keeping the same set of skills, retaining their view of the world, ect.. Old people seem stubborn now, I wonder what they'd be like if they were 10 or 20 times as old... The cultural changes would massive as well. Just imagine all the stuff that has happened in the last 1000 years. An average person probably wouldn't even have enough memory to remember it all. In fact, I doubt that someone that old could remember much at all, maybe just the most significant events or the most recent ones. But I guess the life expectancy isn't taking into account people's bad habits, like smoking or eating tons of unhealthy foods, but I would expect someone to come up with a way around that sometime in the next 100 years.
Instead of solving this with more laws, wouldn't it be easier to hire 601 Blackhats, give them immunity for cybercrimes (excluding spam and messing with finances), and a couple OC-192 connections to share. By the time Average Joe has to reinstall Windows 5 times in 3 days due to the steady release of new viruses and such, he might be a little more willing to learn what a firewall is.
Oops, guess I read it wrong. Wow, calculating roots is impressive.
I doubt that he can do it for any number, other wise that would make 128 bit RSA encryption useless. I'm guessing that he did something like figure out if it's divisible by 2 (look at the last digit), then 3, then 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and so on until he got to the thirteenth number that it was divisible by. Too bad they didn't pick a prime number and let everyone stand there mentally dividing.
Yeah, but but what do you do when your computer complains that your "password" isn't long enough? Ask this guy for help?
Well, just have it prompt for a password in order to decrypt the contact list (and don't keep the password or list loaded in memory). Of course I would guess that a lot of windows users would just type in the password whenever they were asked (even if outlook wasn't open at the time), so encrypting the contact list would probably be more trouble than it's worth.
2 rounds? That's weak. I ALWAYS use 4096 rounds of ROT13 encryption when sending a message.