I put "sex offender" in quotes for that exact reason. There are many things that can get someone on that list, many of them completely petty. I think very few people want to be lenient on child predators or offenders, on the contrary, they need serious help from the government.
There is one awesome case in Florida. I can't find the links at the moment, but it was a high school couple, one over 18, one slightly under. They someone got caught swapping naked pics of themselves through their cell phone. Neither wanted to charge the other, but both got charged with possessing/distributing child pornography. So two lives are in effect ruined because they were horny and stupid.
False charges like your example are devestating not only emotionally and financially, but they ruin lives. Our country has long abandoned the innocent-until-proven-guilty. Sure, you can be found innocent (different than not guilty!) at trial but still be held as guilty in the realm of public opinion.
Here in Florida, most communities are enacting completely unconstitutional laws barring exactly where "sex offenders" can live. In one community in the Tampa Bay area, they set the distance limit to something like 2,500 feet from *any* bus stop, church, school, library, etc. There were a few small areas in the town left over, which the city promptly added school bus stops despite there being no demand for them, effectively chasing out every sex offender, regardless of actual offense.
It is a scarlet letter. It isn't like the Puritan punishments meant to shame someone in front of their community to deter crime. In fact it does the opposite by creating lists of names, addresses, and photos of free offenders (as in, not in prison). It's a political tool, plain and simple, and it's only a matter of time before it is struck as unconstitutional and, hopefully, some "offenders" will have a free shot at the governments that put them on the list.
And before you mod me as a troll or other nonsense, I'm not advocating any sort of behavior. Child molesters, for instance, are in a separate class as mere sex offenders.
Maybe if we freed the ridiculous number of jailings of petty criminals we'd have room for those that actually deserve--and need--the confinement of prison.
Small banks and/or credit unions couldn't afford it.
Small banks are not currently the ones losing the most money. It's the big banks. Yet it would instantly be turned into a "Citi.bank offers a guaranteed secure URL -- does your credit union?" advertisement, further diminishing the marketshare of smaller, independent banks and credit unions. Remember, competition is GOOD, especially in the financial arena.
In the long term, it still solves absolutely nothing, but makes a pile of money for whoever controls.bank.
Probably with a similar technique as some PC-based games use, e.g., replacing wall textures with transparent textures, altering colors to make characters stand out more, etc.
What new theories, exactly? Sure, the models do shift as we learn more, but the fact that humans are putting out more and more greenhouse gases every year doesn't change. That's the simple fact behind it all: pollution is bad, and needs to stop.
Why do we need all the rhetoric and debate behind "pollution is bad and needs to stop"? Do you enjoy breathing problems? Do you want your kids to eat healthy? Do you LIKE asthma?
The bullshit behind the "economic impact" is bunk, by the way. Sure, a few companies will lose some money, and a CEO might only get a silver plated personal jet instead of gold, but the overall picture is that the first country to market on mass clean, renewable energy will experience a wide GDP expansion for a long time after it's developed.
I try this with every new company we utilize through work. I call from a variety of numbers, including the one registered, my cell phone, and my home phone. I call, giving them only the company name and claim to be "new". If they get suspicious, I tell them the entire IT staff was fired and I'm their replacement and the old staff wouldn't give anyone details about accounts. The social engineering aspects are insanely easy. A few want a fax sent on company letterhead. Any idea how easy it is to fake letterhead through fax? Even a postal letter is easily faked. I remove our liability, or at least reduce it, with companies like this. It takes maybe 10-15 minutes for each company -- give a try sometime.
For more fun, forge your from: and reply-to: headers. Attach an empty file called signature.asc. Or make it appear to have been sent from a Blackberry, with a fake tag line "Sent via BlackBerry(r)" at the end. You could even go so far as to forge a "conversation" between 2 people which you are forwarding to make it look like the officers of the company authorized you dealing with the company.
I think part of the failure is that many IT workers have faced a similar situation: new job duties include trying to recover accounts/information from a disgruntled former employee.
What I've done with a few companies that we work with is given them a secret key to store in the account notes. I am the only one that knows the key. The other members of the board know the location to get the key, but not the key itself. Major account changes require the key. Along with the stored key there are detailed instructions about each and every external IT account in case something happens to me, or they wish to fire me. It's not flawless, but it's better than nothing.
Worse yet, the more you piss off the thousands of companies that use FOSS, the more likely it is that they will start lobbying for sweeping copyright and patent reform. Does Microsoft want to retain their patents, as lame and invalid as they are? Or do they want to lose the entire idea of software patentability altogether?
As a follow up, PBS has an internal, independent ombudsman. You can contact the current ombudsman, Michael Getler, at pbs.org or call him at 703-739-5290. You can also find and contact your local PBS member station as they control your local content schedule. The less stations that maintain Cringley programming, the less likely it is that PBS will retain him, and the less relevant he becomes.
Is this evidence enough that Cringley's stuff can never appear on Slashdot ever again? He's a complete hack of a "journalist". I'd rather see blogs written by 12-year-olds than "articles" by Cringley.
I'm ashamed that he is funded in part by non-profit funds from US taxpayers and makes a bad name for PBS in general.
I've already canceled my TiVo service due to their rapidly-decaying "rights" issues. For the obscene price lately on TiVos, plus service, it's cheaper to buy a few components and build a MythTV or similar box.
I read the headline as "Cambridge's Steam-Powered Wireless Network". It was far more interesting with a wrong title. Maybe they should change the focus of their research.
It's also a problem with the way our legal system is managed. If a law says "ABC", and is later changed to read "ABCD", it is written like, "ABC is hereby amended with D". It's a revision control system run amok.
I've said it before, but the real thing we need is "cvs blame" for every single keystroke in our legal code. I want to know precisely what assistant, legislator, and lobbyist vied for every single character. This eliminates the need for writing "ABS is hereby amended with D" as the revision system would handle that exactly.
Also in this way, it would be easy for lawyers and everyone else to have a current copy of the laws they are interested in. Running "cvs up" would then show them precisely what changed and by who.
Of course, politicians would never agree to such a system where they would be held accountable for every word they put into law. Of course it would be great for voters -- like smaller government? Vote for the guy that deleted the most lines. A host of public services (non profits, etc) could provide extra outside features like tagging and categorization.
Everyone knows magicians operate with slight of hand and plays on the human senses. Sure, they may claim otherwise as part of their act, but that's all it is: a well-done act for entertainment.
Uri Geller, on the other hand, claims his abilities are true. He is partly responsible for the wasting of tens of millions of dollars in research around the world from governments doing research on him and people like him, particularly during the cold war. Some people base their lives off of these frauds. They do not benefit society at all.
We can equate them to one another when magicians start ruining lives when they pick the correct card out of a deck.
I was told to fix an invalid credit card number in the database. I didn't design it, I just worked there, so don't knock me for storing credit card numbers. Although what I did "fixed" that security problem...
update customer_cc set card_number = '1234567890123456'; Woops. Backups were corrupt, too (not my task). Needless to say, it suddenly became a "security feature" that we stopped storing credit card numbers.
For an easier reading about human exposure in space, check out Damn Interesting's article. It's the same facts as the NASA link but written with the idea that you don't need everything phrased in the form of a question and answer.
Goodbye, Photobucket. We had some good times, shared some good pictures, but we're moving in two separate directions. You, to a mega corporation with draconian views on privacy in pursuit of only the next dollar, and me, to hell in a handbasket for the photos we shared. You can keep the ring. It's not real, it's just some piece of glass I found on the sidewalk.
I petitioned my credit union to force SSL on the entire bank website, complete with a few dozen signers (several of them with very large accounts). Shortly after the entire website is accessible via SSL only, with any HTTP page redirecting you to the homepage (SSL). Sometimes banking with a small credit union has its advantages.
As someone who worked in Florida local media (WTSP-TV in St. Pete), I can tell you that Florida media completely ignores stories of magnitude and focuses on the retarded, weird shit. Supposedly this didn't happen much before the 2000 election when Florida became such a laughing stock.
Want to know how shit like this is passed? Read this. I realize it is written horribly, but the video speaks for itself: the Florida legislature votes largely by proxy. Most legislators do not attend the full sessions, when they attend at all.
What do you expect from a state that fields Rhonda Storms? (For a kick, read the first result description.)
You can get around the third party "in the middle" attacks easily. How? Hand your secret correspondence a DVD filled with high-quality random data. You maintain an identical, secure copy and you use it as a one-time pad. As long as both pads remain secure, no amount of computing power between you and the recipient will reveal the data. Sure, you have to physically meet with your party every 9GB of data, but that's not very often if you use low-grade voice quality.
Of course, no amount of encryption will stop the Feds from bugging your house, phone, computer, etc.
My major beef with Oblivion was the leveling of mobs. The gameplay was excellent, the graphics were awesome... but reaching the upper levels made mere brigands start carrying a king's ransom worth of armor and reduced monster diversity. I liked Morrowind where some areas were impossible until you reached higher levels, and beginning areas always remained easy by comparison.
How is this newsworthy yet? I mean, sure, it'll be interesting when they actually tell us WHAT they are designing, but "Look at how many cool names we have working for us! What are we working on, you ask? We can't tell, neener neener neener!' just pisses me off. I hope it wasn't as big of a disappointment as Oblivion (sans user mods).
Obviously my attempt to line it up in the element above didn't turn out as planned.
To answer your question, though, Python doesn't "like" mixing tabs and spaces. It's also nice that almost all Python code follows "PEP 8". When interviewing for Python-heavy positions, for instance, I can ask if they know what PEP 8 syntax is. If they've never even heard of it, they aren't really interested in the language as far as I'm concerned. I wasn't a fan of spaces, either, until I switched into Python as my language of choice.
The reason Python recommends spaces is because of line continuations, not because it makes things readable. If you follow the well-thought out coding guide, columns never go more tan 79 characters, so generally you'll find things like this:
some_call(arg1, arg2,
arg3, arg4)
but moved over, obviously. If you used tabs in there instead of spaces, and someone changes their tab size, your code instantly becomes completely unreadable.
Slashdot Mirror
I put "sex offender" in quotes for that exact reason. There are many things that can get someone on that list, many of them completely petty. I think very few people want to be lenient on child predators or offenders, on the contrary, they need serious help from the government.
There is one awesome case in Florida. I can't find the links at the moment, but it was a high school couple, one over 18, one slightly under. They someone got caught swapping naked pics of themselves through their cell phone. Neither wanted to charge the other, but both got charged with possessing/distributing child pornography. So two lives are in effect ruined because they were horny and stupid.
False charges like your example are devestating not only emotionally and financially, but they ruin lives. Our country has long abandoned the innocent-until-proven-guilty. Sure, you can be found innocent (different than not guilty!) at trial but still be held as guilty in the realm of public opinion.
Here in Florida, most communities are enacting completely unconstitutional laws barring exactly where "sex offenders" can live. In one community in the Tampa Bay area, they set the distance limit to something like 2,500 feet from *any* bus stop, church, school, library, etc. There were a few small areas in the town left over, which the city promptly added school bus stops despite there being no demand for them, effectively chasing out every sex offender, regardless of actual offense.
It is a scarlet letter. It isn't like the Puritan punishments meant to shame someone in front of their community to deter crime. In fact it does the opposite by creating lists of names, addresses, and photos of free offenders (as in, not in prison). It's a political tool, plain and simple, and it's only a matter of time before it is struck as unconstitutional and, hopefully, some "offenders" will have a free shot at the governments that put them on the list.
And before you mod me as a troll or other nonsense, I'm not advocating any sort of behavior. Child molesters, for instance, are in a separate class as mere sex offenders.
Maybe if we freed the ridiculous number of jailings of petty criminals we'd have room for those that actually deserve--and need--the confinement of prison.
Small banks are not currently the ones losing the most money. It's the big banks. Yet it would instantly be turned into a "Citi.bank offers a guaranteed secure URL -- does your credit union?" advertisement, further diminishing the marketshare of smaller, independent banks and credit unions. Remember, competition is GOOD, especially in the financial arena.
In the long term, it still solves absolutely nothing, but makes a pile of money for whoever controls
Probably with a similar technique as some PC-based games use, e.g., replacing wall textures with transparent textures, altering colors to make characters stand out more, etc.
What new theories, exactly? Sure, the models do shift as we learn more, but the fact that humans are putting out more and more greenhouse gases every year doesn't change. That's the simple fact behind it all: pollution is bad, and needs to stop.
Why do we need all the rhetoric and debate behind "pollution is bad and needs to stop"? Do you enjoy breathing problems? Do you want your kids to eat healthy? Do you LIKE asthma?
The bullshit behind the "economic impact" is bunk, by the way. Sure, a few companies will lose some money, and a CEO might only get a silver plated personal jet instead of gold, but the overall picture is that the first country to market on mass clean, renewable energy will experience a wide GDP expansion for a long time after it's developed.
I try this with every new company we utilize through work. I call from a variety of numbers, including the one registered, my cell phone, and my home phone. I call, giving them only the company name and claim to be "new". If they get suspicious, I tell them the entire IT staff was fired and I'm their replacement and the old staff wouldn't give anyone details about accounts. The social engineering aspects are insanely easy. A few want a fax sent on company letterhead. Any idea how easy it is to fake letterhead through fax? Even a postal letter is easily faked. I remove our liability, or at least reduce it, with companies like this. It takes maybe 10-15 minutes for each company -- give a try sometime.
For more fun, forge your from: and reply-to: headers. Attach an empty file called signature.asc. Or make it appear to have been sent from a Blackberry, with a fake tag line "Sent via BlackBerry(r)" at the end. You could even go so far as to forge a "conversation" between 2 people which you are forwarding to make it look like the officers of the company authorized you dealing with the company.
I think part of the failure is that many IT workers have faced a similar situation: new job duties include trying to recover accounts/information from a disgruntled former employee.
What I've done with a few companies that we work with is given them a secret key to store in the account notes. I am the only one that knows the key. The other members of the board know the location to get the key, but not the key itself. Major account changes require the key. Along with the stored key there are detailed instructions about each and every external IT account in case something happens to me, or they wish to fire me. It's not flawless, but it's better than nothing.
"Nu ar det slut."
He'd tell you, but he doesn't recall.
Worse yet, the more you piss off the thousands of companies that use FOSS, the more likely it is that they will start lobbying for sweeping copyright and patent reform. Does Microsoft want to retain their patents, as lame and invalid as they are? Or do they want to lose the entire idea of software patentability altogether?
As a follow up, PBS has an internal, independent ombudsman. You can contact the current ombudsman, Michael Getler, at pbs.org or call him at 703-739-5290. You can also find and contact your local PBS member station as they control your local content schedule. The less stations that maintain Cringley programming, the less likely it is that PBS will retain him, and the less relevant he becomes.
Is this evidence enough that Cringley's stuff can never appear on Slashdot ever again? He's a complete hack of a "journalist". I'd rather see blogs written by 12-year-olds than "articles" by Cringley.
I'm ashamed that he is funded in part by non-profit funds from US taxpayers and makes a bad name for PBS in general.
I've already canceled my TiVo service due to their rapidly-decaying "rights" issues. For the obscene price lately on TiVos, plus service, it's cheaper to buy a few components and build a MythTV or similar box.
I read the headline as "Cambridge's Steam-Powered Wireless Network". It was far more interesting with a wrong title. Maybe they should change the focus of their research.
It's also a problem with the way our legal system is managed. If a law says "ABC", and is later changed to read "ABCD", it is written like, "ABC is hereby amended with D". It's a revision control system run amok.
I've said it before, but the real thing we need is "cvs blame" for every single keystroke in our legal code. I want to know precisely what assistant, legislator, and lobbyist vied for every single character. This eliminates the need for writing "ABS is hereby amended with D" as the revision system would handle that exactly.
Also in this way, it would be easy for lawyers and everyone else to have a current copy of the laws they are interested in. Running "cvs up" would then show them precisely what changed and by who.
Of course, politicians would never agree to such a system where they would be held accountable for every word they put into law. Of course it would be great for voters -- like smaller government? Vote for the guy that deleted the most lines. A host of public services (non profits, etc) could provide extra outside features like tagging and categorization.
We can dream.
Everyone knows magicians operate with slight of hand and plays on the human senses. Sure, they may claim otherwise as part of their act, but that's all it is: a well-done act for entertainment.
Uri Geller, on the other hand, claims his abilities are true. He is partly responsible for the wasting of tens of millions of dollars in research around the world from governments doing research on him and people like him, particularly during the cold war. Some people base their lives off of these frauds. They do not benefit society at all.
We can equate them to one another when magicians start ruining lives when they pick the correct card out of a deck.
For an easier reading about human exposure in space, check out Damn Interesting's article. It's the same facts as the NASA link but written with the idea that you don't need everything phrased in the form of a question and answer.
Goodbye, Photobucket. We had some good times, shared some good pictures, but we're moving in two separate directions. You, to a mega corporation with draconian views on privacy in pursuit of only the next dollar, and me, to hell in a handbasket for the photos we shared. You can keep the ring. It's not real, it's just some piece of glass I found on the sidewalk.
I petitioned my credit union to force SSL on the entire bank website, complete with a few dozen signers (several of them with very large accounts). Shortly after the entire website is accessible via SSL only, with any HTTP page redirecting you to the homepage (SSL). Sometimes banking with a small credit union has its advantages.
I suggest everyone do the same.
As someone who worked in Florida local media (WTSP-TV in St. Pete), I can tell you that Florida media completely ignores stories of magnitude and focuses on the retarded, weird shit. Supposedly this didn't happen much before the 2000 election when Florida became such a laughing stock.
Want to know how shit like this is passed? Read this. I realize it is written horribly, but the video speaks for itself: the Florida legislature votes largely by proxy. Most legislators do not attend the full sessions, when they attend at all.
What do you expect from a state that fields Rhonda Storms? (For a kick, read the first result description.)
You can get around the third party "in the middle" attacks easily. How? Hand your secret correspondence a DVD filled with high-quality random data. You maintain an identical, secure copy and you use it as a one-time pad. As long as both pads remain secure, no amount of computing power between you and the recipient will reveal the data. Sure, you have to physically meet with your party every 9GB of data, but that's not very often if you use low-grade voice quality.
Of course, no amount of encryption will stop the Feds from bugging your house, phone, computer, etc.
My major beef with Oblivion was the leveling of mobs. The gameplay was excellent, the graphics were awesome... but reaching the upper levels made mere brigands start carrying a king's ransom worth of armor and reduced monster diversity. I liked Morrowind where some areas were impossible until you reached higher levels, and beginning areas always remained easy by comparison.
How is this newsworthy yet? I mean, sure, it'll be interesting when they actually tell us WHAT they are designing, but "Look at how many cool names we have working for us! What are we working on, you ask? We can't tell, neener neener neener!' just pisses me off. I hope it wasn't as big of a disappointment as Oblivion (sans user mods).
Obviously my attempt to line it up in the element above didn't turn out as planned.
To answer your question, though, Python doesn't "like" mixing tabs and spaces. It's also nice that almost all Python code follows "PEP 8". When interviewing for Python-heavy positions, for instance, I can ask if they know what PEP 8 syntax is. If they've never even heard of it, they aren't really interested in the language as far as I'm concerned. I wasn't a fan of spaces, either, until I switched into Python as my language of choice.
The reason Python recommends spaces is because of line continuations, not because it makes things readable. If you follow the well-thought out coding guide, columns never go more tan 79 characters, so generally you'll find things like this:
some_call(arg1, arg2,
arg3, arg4)
but moved over, obviously. If you used tabs in there instead of spaces, and someone changes their tab size, your code instantly becomes completely unreadable.