a) no driver for your hardware b) binary blob kernel patch created by hardware munfacturuers c) binary blob in kernel tree created under NDA by the kernel team (who have private access to the source) d) obfuscated code in the kernel tree (with original kept private to those kernel devs that have signed the NDA) e) uncommented code in the kernel tree (with commented code kept private to those kernel devs that have signed the NDA) f) fully open source driver
Personally I'll accept anything b or above - I'd prefer d or above, would settles for c but would really like f!!
I wonder where the compromises will be made? How far will kernel devs go? How far will companies go?
Not to mention expose! Ok linux has similar but I've never had time to mess around with it enough - the mac just works - and it is a full blown unix under the GUI.
The hardware also just works! Its just a shame you pay a premium for it.
I've used pretty much everything out there (bar VMS), I've installed linux on $1m IBM servers, I've built kernels from source for my desktop, I've worked as a tester on several open source projects.
Right now, on the balance of all things, I would honestly say OSX is the superior desktop purely because you have almost every benefit that linux has (for the user - not the FOSS evangelist) without any of the configuration/maintenance pain.
I would really like to see linux desktops follow OSX in this, rather than trying to model on windows - to a certain extent they are doing, but there is definitely still ground to be made up.
FYI my current desktop? dual boot laptop, windows (OEM with the system and used for games when I can't be bothered to get winex working) and ubuntu. The laptop was 500 quid less than a apple that would meet my requirements (256Mb descrete graphics card)
Nothing wrong with ethanol.... that figuring out all the problems it has might solve;)
Like the fact that transporting it more than a few miles to where it is produced removes most of the benefits
Corn is definitely a bad idea for this - the useful output is just far too small - about 5-10% of the biomass. Some interesting research has been done with certain kinds of bateria and soy plants (the whole plants stalk, roots leaves and all) managing to use 90-95% of the biomass as usable energy.
Your point is right though - if the total impact (carbon, polution, use of fossil fuels) to produce is more than the same impact it saves then doing it is worse environmentally than not doing it.
A lot of the advantages of things like ethanol don't deliver large sale benefits - need localised micro production (used sucessfully on farms for methane burning power generation) which in a lot of cases doesn't translate to real world uses.
Persoanlly my hopes are on a combination of tidal (the only non intermittant green energy source), solar where it makes sense (portugal yes, england no), hydro where possible, fision where we have to and fusion as soon as we can - the abington research looked quite promising - I just hope ITER manages to make the technology a net producer.
Look at the distance selling act for the uk - if you bid on an item, but then choose not to buy it... well you just excercise your rights under the distance selling act - say you don't want it and dont pay. You can even ask for yout money back up to 7 days after the day it arrives - and unless their ts&cs have said otherwise its up to them to arrange to pick it up. (exceptions if its custom work)
No admittedly getting a refund is going to be hard work if they dont want to give it - but saying you wish to cancel your purchase - they could try to fight it in court but I doubt they would have a chance in hell of winning - especially since they can't even claim costs of the auctions as ebay offers them a refund of sellers fees and a free relisting if a buyer backs out (mutual withrawal agreement is the prefered way of doing this)
People will often say that the distance selling act (and the sale of goods act) don't apply to auctions... technically thats true, but both acts specify auctions with an auctionier (where the auctionier is assumed to be a human not a computer)
I don't exactly trust that article personally - its the times which as I said in the reply below is as much of a rag as the mail these days.
Whether the terms of that act can be allied to shill bidding on ebay? I'll wait and see what happens personal. Alas I don't really see it being much help.
Not to mention the fact that that act applies within the uk only and ebay is an international company.
The times is alas as much of a rag these days as the mail so I rarely take any of its statements on face value.
As for shill bidding on ebay, especially if you are just a private individual and it was your friend that did the being, being prosecutable under that act... well I'll wait till I hear something a little more authorative that posts on/. or an article on the times. eg the result of a court case prosecuting this!
I'm not saying I agree with it, I don't. I also know for a fact it goes on all the time. But its not likely to stop any time soon, so when I bid on items I plan accordingly.
Shill bidding isn't illegal, its just against ebay's terms and conditions.
The same goes for the cure against shill bidding - bid sniping - which if done with software is against ebay's terms and conditions.
Either way though - pick the amount that you are willing to pay fo the item and bid it. Don't bid more than that.
If everyone did that then the system would work perfectly, alas the problems start when you add humans to the equation.
Now if you'll excuse me I have a mobile phone to ship to a guy in nigeria - what a sucker he was too!! I forced the bidding up with my friends account and got 3 times what the phone is worth and I already have an email from paypal saying he has paid!
You mean there is such a thing as a good American beer???? You must be kidding me;) sex in a canoe all the way!
Just joking, I freely admit the micro breweries there are rather good actualy - it was just the main stream lables that were dire.
Rock Bottom in cleveland ohio was my usual haunt, there or Fado's which had a rather good Guinness on tap (imported from dublin iirc rather than the canadian brewery)
I'm in Amsterdam right now - they really do their strong beers well here - mostly belgien, several of them trappist beers, but I'm more of an ale/bitter/stout person than a lager/pilsner drinker - but then I'm also a home brewer so its not much of an issue:)
Speaking as someone who was an exchange student in the US (from the UK) the average american student gets to university, goes to a party, has large (for them) amounts of beer for the first time and cann't handle it.
The average brit on the other hand has probably been drinking beer since about the age of 12 (younger if you count shandy) the amounts will have increased over the years, they have probably been really ill once on holiday and after enduring their parents laughing at them and talking very loudly the next morning they tend to have a much better idea when to stop.
I remember one party where I drank 4 frat boys under the table - what was scarey was it was sequential not parallel!! But then the beer there is in 330ml cans and only 3 or 4 percent!! Me I'm a real ale person - 6-8% and in pints (yes it comes in pints) or yards...
No seriously... I couldn't see it in the article as spec'ed on board and I certainly couldn't see a socket for it?? So where is it?? Did I miss something obvious? (I will admit its only 9am and I am running low on coffee today)
Not everyone is in the position to just up and leave. If you have a family, wife, kids, morgage, bills, commitments then you can't risk not being in work for a few months. There is also potential damage to your career, jumping ship too often does not look good on a CV
In your position I would go back to the agent and tell them the full story, they may be able to get it sorted out for you, though it is unlikely, but otherwise tell them you are back on the market looking for another job - tell the other agencies the same.
The one reason the agent may be inclined to help is not any altruism on their part, but purely self interest. You quiting doesn't look good on that agency, and agencies are very competative. Also depending how they negotiated the contract the agency may only get their commision (or all of the commision) based upon a certain retention period.
not to mention the number of programs that while they usually need to run setuid root to start up, usually insist on switching to another user after initialising.
kismet springs to mind, iirc apache does the same (I know it prefers to, cant remember if it insists upon it)
old old argument, that has been fairly well debunked
windows can be secure, linux and osx can be insecure.
The difference is you turn on a mac and its pretty much secure out of the box - one of the main reasons being you are not running as an admin.
Windows you have to be damn good to get it secure, and it takes a fair amount of effort to make it a usuable experiance as a home PC for somoene not running as an admin - it can be done - but its a bitch to do. In theory vista is "better" at this, though you can hardly award kudos for doing something that every other OS has had right for years.
Windows wins on one thing only - games compatability - and really for that just go buy an xbox/ps2/wii - everything else either is ported or runs fine in wine or parallels (games will run in wine, but its usually non trivial to get it to work)
The security is down to user attitude, default install/shipping modes and developer priority (including that of old code and designs kept for legacy compatability)
and get the new starter to expand on the wiki anything they found the wiki did not explain well enough for them, after they have learnt it the hard way
I did the same after starting here - added a wiki page of all those things I wished I had known during the first few weeks here (new company, new country) so jotted them down to try and save the same pains for anyone who joined after me. A few other brit contractors have already sent me an email thanking me for putting it together
2000 times quicker than brute force (where brute force is average time 2^159 attempts) means the algorithm is not as secure as it used to be thought.
This has demonstrated a cryptographic weakness, there could quite well be more, look at the research over the years on weakening md5, therefore moving to different algorithm would be advisable.
Its doesn't mean that you are going to be able to find a collision in non trivial time, but it did lower the bar. Lowering it enough that people wanting high grade protection should switch to a more secure algorithm.
Context specific data has no place in a hash, it would only weaken it.
No you can't very easily modify it - thats the point.
You can exhaustively search for a collision, but the time requirement is very much non trivial.
Feel free to prove me wrong - unless you have a huge botnet or a supercomputer available I dont give you much chance of finding a collision that way for md5 let alone SHA-1
A hash is a signature of the file, its designed to give a good confidence that a given file that you have been supplied matches the one that you think has been supplied.
The theory being that being able to create a file that is of the same length as the orignal, is not corrupt (eg a zip file still unzips, an executable still runs, a pdf still displays) and is different from the original but still hash should be infeasable (not impossible, most cryptography doesn't look for impossible, not practical within a given time frame is sufficient for most needs)
Another use of hashes is on data storage systems, especailly with backup systems, where two files with the same hash and length are treated as the same file (so no need to write it to tape twice) this way you only have to sort the list of hashs and look for matches, rathering than having to diff every file against every other one.
Personally I think I'd rather binary diff matches hashes just to be safe - but thats time intensive. The chances of two files each having the same size and SHA-256 hash and being different is less than the chance of your sotrage device being destoryed (meteroite, fire, flood, plane) before you are able to back up either file
Even tiny rural villages have a pub within staggering distance (this is similar to walking distance but assumes that it willnot be in a direct line, that you may not be sober enough to avoid oncoming cars if there is no footpath and that routes going via a late night takewaway are always preferable, even if twice as long).
I lived in the burbs in ohio for a while and really found it a pain trying to walk anywhere (if I can walk the distance inside an hour, and I have a fairly fast pace, then I consider it walking distance)
Thankyou - my own fault for vanity - I had decided after the fact that the ott looked better in uppercase for the well known acronym - forgot to fix the regex in the process
Everquest (the original) did an experiment for a while on their PvP servers - you could log in and become one of the low level NPCs randomly in any of the newbie dungeons.
Its was great fun to do and added another dimension to the game - my only regret was that they didn't take it to higher levels!!
The industry wanted higher prices however. If they came in selling mp3s at double the price on apple, it would be very interesting to see which way customers went...
On the other hand apple might decide to ditch DRM at that point also - I don't think its ever been completely decided if DRM helps ipod sales and loyalty or not (I dont have a single ITMS store track on my ipod and its full) - its certainly possible that apple would use mp3 instead if they had the option - first and foremost DRM was used to appease the record companies and persuade them to let their music be downloaded legally.
IANAL but I think this revolves around it being the computers belonging to the goverment - this would mean the home office has the authority over any data on it. Since it is in charge of the overall investigation it is allowed to go after any data the goverment has.
Systems belonging to private individuals or companies would still be safe unless a court order were issued (atleast I would really hope so!!)
Slashdot Mirror
Ranked in order of preference:
a) no driver for your hardware
b) binary blob kernel patch created by hardware munfacturuers
c) binary blob in kernel tree created under NDA by the kernel team (who have private access to the source)
d) obfuscated code in the kernel tree (with original kept private to those kernel devs that have signed the NDA)
e) uncommented code in the kernel tree (with commented code kept private to those kernel devs that have signed the NDA)
f) fully open source driver
Personally I'll accept anything b or above - I'd prefer d or above, would settles for c but would really like f!!
I wonder where the compromises will be made? How far will kernel devs go? How far will companies go?
Not to mention expose! Ok linux has similar but I've never had time to mess around with it enough - the mac just works - and it is a full blown unix under the GUI.
The hardware also just works! Its just a shame you pay a premium for it.
I've used pretty much everything out there (bar VMS), I've installed linux on $1m IBM servers, I've built kernels from source for my desktop, I've worked as a tester on several open source projects.
Right now, on the balance of all things, I would honestly say OSX is the superior desktop purely because you have almost every benefit that linux has (for the user - not the FOSS evangelist) without any of the configuration/maintenance pain.
I would really like to see linux desktops follow OSX in this, rather than trying to model on windows - to a certain extent they are doing, but there is definitely still ground to be made up.
FYI my current desktop? dual boot laptop, windows (OEM with the system and used for games when I can't be bothered to get winex working) and ubuntu. The laptop was 500 quid less than a apple that would meet my requirements (256Mb descrete graphics card)
Nothing wrong with ethanol.... that figuring out all the problems it has might solve ;)
Like the fact that transporting it more than a few miles to where it is produced removes most of the benefits
Corn is definitely a bad idea for this - the useful output is just far too small - about 5-10% of the biomass. Some interesting research has been done with certain kinds of bateria and soy plants (the whole plants stalk, roots leaves and all) managing to use 90-95% of the biomass as usable energy.
Your point is right though - if the total impact (carbon, polution, use of fossil fuels) to produce is more than the same impact it saves then doing it is worse environmentally than not doing it.
A lot of the advantages of things like ethanol don't deliver large sale benefits - need localised micro production (used sucessfully on farms for methane burning power generation) which in a lot of cases doesn't translate to real world uses.
Persoanlly my hopes are on a combination of tidal (the only non intermittant green energy source), solar where it makes sense (portugal yes, england no), hydro where possible, fision where we have to and fusion as soon as we can - the abington research looked quite promising - I just hope ITER manages to make the technology a net producer.
Look at the distance selling act for the uk - if you bid on an item, but then choose not to buy it... well you just excercise your rights under the distance selling act - say you don't want it and dont pay. You can even ask for yout money back up to 7 days after the day it arrives - and unless their ts&cs have said otherwise its up to them to arrange to pick it up. (exceptions if its custom work)
No admittedly getting a refund is going to be hard work if they dont want to give it - but saying you wish to cancel your purchase - they could try to fight it in court but I doubt they would have a chance in hell of winning - especially since they can't even claim costs of the auctions as ebay offers them a refund of sellers fees and a free relisting if a buyer backs out (mutual withrawal agreement is the prefered way of doing this)
People will often say that the distance selling act (and the sale of goods act) don't apply to auctions... technically thats true, but both acts specify auctions with an auctionier (where the auctionier is assumed to be a human not a computer)
I don't exactly trust that article personally - its the times which as I said in the reply below is as much of a rag as the mail these days.
Whether the terms of that act can be allied to shill bidding on ebay? I'll wait and see what happens personal. Alas I don't really see it being much help.
Not to mention the fact that that act applies within the uk only and ebay is an international company.
IANAL but given the text of this act: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/60035--a.htm I can imagine laywers having a field day in any court case involving shill bidding on ebay.
/. or an article on the times. eg the result of a court case prosecuting this!
The times is alas as much of a rag these days as the mail so I rarely take any of its statements on face value.
As for shill bidding on ebay, especially if you are just a private individual and it was your friend that did the being, being prosecutable under that act... well I'll wait till I hear something a little more authorative that posts on
I'm not saying I agree with it, I don't. I also know for a fact it goes on all the time. But its not likely to stop any time soon, so when I bid on items I plan accordingly.
sniping tends to lower the final sale price hence their commision - thats it
Shill bidding isn't illegal, its just against ebay's terms and conditions.
The same goes for the cure against shill bidding - bid sniping - which if done with software is against ebay's terms and conditions.
Either way though - pick the amount that you are willing to pay fo the item and bid it. Don't bid more than that.
If everyone did that then the system would work perfectly, alas the problems start when you add humans to the equation.
Now if you'll excuse me I have a mobile phone to ship to a guy in nigeria - what a sucker he was too!! I forced the bidding up with my friends account and got 3 times what the phone is worth and I already have an email from paypal saying he has paid!
You mean there is such a thing as a good American beer???? You must be kidding me ;) sex in a canoe all the way!
:)
Just joking, I freely admit the micro breweries there are rather good actualy - it was just the main stream lables that were dire.
Rock Bottom in cleveland ohio was my usual haunt, there or Fado's which had a rather good Guinness on tap (imported from dublin iirc rather than the canadian brewery)
I'm in Amsterdam right now - they really do their strong beers well here - mostly belgien, several of them trappist beers, but I'm more of an ale/bitter/stout person than a lager/pilsner drinker - but then I'm also a home brewer so its not much of an issue
Speaking as someone who was an exchange student in the US (from the UK) the average american student gets to university, goes to a party, has large (for them) amounts of beer for the first time and cann't handle it.
The average brit on the other hand has probably been drinking beer since about the age of 12 (younger if you count shandy) the amounts will have increased over the years, they have probably been really ill once on holiday and after enduring their parents laughing at them and talking very loudly the next morning they tend to have a much better idea when to stop.
I remember one party where I drank 4 frat boys under the table - what was scarey was it was sequential not parallel!! But then the beer there is in 330ml cans and only 3 or 4 percent!! Me I'm a real ale person - 6-8% and in pints (yes it comes in pints) or yards...
No seriously... I couldn't see it in the article as spec'ed on board and I certainly couldn't see a socket for it?? So where is it?? Did I miss something obvious? (I will admit its only 9am and I am running low on coffee today)
Not everyone is in the position to just up and leave. If you have a family, wife, kids, morgage, bills, commitments then you can't risk not being in work for a few months. There is also potential damage to your career, jumping ship too often does not look good on a CV
In your position I would go back to the agent and tell them the full story, they may be able to get it sorted out for you, though it is unlikely, but otherwise tell them you are back on the market looking for another job - tell the other agencies the same.
The one reason the agent may be inclined to help is not any altruism on their part, but purely self interest. You quiting doesn't look good on that agency, and agencies are very competative. Also depending how they negotiated the contract the agency may only get their commision (or all of the commision) based upon a certain retention period.
I wish you the best of luck either way!
not to mention the number of programs that while they usually need to run setuid root to start up, usually insist on switching to another user after initialising.
kismet springs to mind, iirc apache does the same (I know it prefers to, cant remember if it insists upon it)
yay go FUD!!!
old old argument, that has been fairly well debunked
windows can be secure, linux and osx can be insecure.
The difference is you turn on a mac and its pretty much secure out of the box - one of the main reasons being you are not running as an admin.
Windows you have to be damn good to get it secure, and it takes a fair amount of effort to make it a usuable experiance as a home PC for somoene not running as an admin - it can be done - but its a bitch to do. In theory vista is "better" at this, though you can hardly award kudos for doing something that every other OS has had right for years.
Windows wins on one thing only - games compatability - and really for that just go buy an xbox/ps2/wii - everything else either is ported or runs fine in wine or parallels (games will run in wine, but its usually non trivial to get it to work)
The security is down to user attitude, default install/shipping modes and developer priority (including that of old code and designs kept for legacy compatability)
and get the new starter to expand on the wiki anything they found the wiki did not explain well enough for them, after they have learnt it the hard way
I did the same after starting here - added a wiki page of all those things I wished I had known during the first few weeks here (new company, new country) so jotted them down to try and save the same pains for anyone who joined after me. A few other brit contractors have already sent me an email thanking me for putting it together
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that a just binomial expansion approximation?
2000 times quicker than brute force (where brute force is average time 2^159 attempts) means the algorithm is not as secure as it used to be thought.
This has demonstrated a cryptographic weakness, there could quite well be more, look at the research over the years on weakening md5, therefore moving to different algorithm would be advisable.
Its doesn't mean that you are going to be able to find a collision in non trivial time, but it did lower the bar. Lowering it enough that people wanting high grade protection should switch to a more secure algorithm.
Context specific data has no place in a hash, it would only weaken it.
No you can't very easily modify it - thats the point.
You can exhaustively search for a collision, but the time requirement is very much non trivial.
Feel free to prove me wrong - unless you have a huge botnet or a supercomputer available I dont give you much chance of finding a collision that way for md5 let alone SHA-1
I think that you are missing the point of a hash.
A hash is a signature of the file, its designed to give a good confidence that a given file that you have been supplied matches the one that you think has been supplied.
The theory being that being able to create a file that is of the same length as the orignal, is not corrupt (eg a zip file still unzips, an executable still runs, a pdf still displays) and is different from the original but still hash should be infeasable (not impossible, most cryptography doesn't look for impossible, not practical within a given time frame is sufficient for most needs)
Another use of hashes is on data storage systems, especailly with backup systems, where two files with the same hash and length are treated as the same file (so no need to write it to tape twice) this way you only have to sort the list of hashs and look for matches, rathering than having to diff every file against every other one.
Personally I think I'd rather binary diff matches hashes just to be safe - but thats time intensive. The chances of two files each having the same size and SHA-256 hash and being different is less than the chance of your sotrage device being destoryed (meteroite, fire, flood, plane) before you are able to back up either file
This is why I prefer England.
Even tiny rural villages have a pub within staggering distance (this is similar to walking distance but assumes that it willnot be in a direct line, that you may not be sober enough to avoid oncoming cars if there is no footpath and that routes going via a late night takewaway are always preferable, even if twice as long).
I lived in the burbs in ohio for a while and really found it a pain trying to walk anywhere (if I can walk the distance inside an hour, and I have a fairly fast pace, then I consider it walking distance)
Thankyou - my own fault for vanity - I had decided after the fact that the ott looked better in uppercase for the well known acronym - forgot to fix the regex in the process
Everquest (the original) did an experiment for a while on their PvP servers - you could log in and become one of the low level NPCs randomly in any of the newbie dungeons.
Its was great fun to do and added another dimension to the game - my only regret was that they didn't take it to higher levels!!
apparantly the bionic ear replacement that comes complete with DRM is too far off in the future for the music companies to want to wait.
I certainly hope DRM is dead and buried before such technology is feasable - I'd dread to think of the lobbying that would occur then!!
The industry wanted higher prices however. If they came in selling mp3s at double the price on apple, it would be very interesting to see which way customers went...
On the other hand apple might decide to ditch DRM at that point also - I don't think its ever been completely decided if DRM helps ipod sales and loyalty or not (I dont have a single ITMS store track on my ipod and its full) - its certainly possible that apple would use mp3 instead if they had the option - first and foremost DRM was used to appease the record companies and persuade them to let their music be downloaded legally.
IANAL but I think this revolves around it being the computers belonging to the goverment - this would mean the home office has the authority over any data on it. Since it is in charge of the overall investigation it is allowed to go after any data the goverment has.
Systems belonging to private individuals or companies would still be safe unless a court order were issued (atleast I would really hope so!!)