I see a big difference between a company that sets some ethical standards but doesn't always live up to it and a company that doesn't have any.
Yeah, the difference is your perception, claiming to have some sort of standards or not doing so has nothing to do with actual conduct. If anything, corporations tend to publish ethical standards as a form of damage control after getting caught. Go look at any other large evil corporation, it'll have a neat claim of that sort: Microsoft, Monsanto...
Last time I checked, Google was a big corporation determined to increase its revenue by all possible means, just like Facebook. If they have turned into a charity recently, I must have missed it.
WoW? I heard it's pretty "social" (the way he means it) and it's full of micro-rewards that aren't really worth much. Even more "social" games nowdays apparently tend to offer the player virtual extremities bought with real money as "rewards"... Perhaps the players have changed more than the games on the market.
I can already see this tech being (ab)used by divorce attorneys and private investigators.
And burglars, employers (dude called in sick? check out his favourite bar...)... Of course it will also enable them to gather statistics regarding how much time you spent at which bar, send alerts to interested people if your face is recognized somewhere etc. etc....
EVE has been plagued by rampant RMT for many years, it's full of botters and rich fools investing thousands of dollars in ingame items. It's not a big surprise that CCP wanted to make it more official, but apparently this was too much for the players who wanted their illusion of fair play on equal terms (hah!).
Needless to say, the threat to cancel one's account as a sign of disapproval for CCP's ideas has been a running gag for years as well...
Don't try to use Latin if you fail so pathetically at it.
...that Google has become
Ad Homium #2...
Oh, hello Google!
Do you think google is somehow using mind control to keep you and everyone else from understanding the source?
Chromium "calling home" is a well-known fact, I don't even have to look at the source code to understand that the tracking is done server-side, not in the client.
Let me know when one exists. As far as I know, the only other open option is made by Apple
Hello Anonymous Cowardly Google Fanboy, another option is Opera, it has just replaced the crappy bloatware with "let the user wait till I'm done with something unimportant" mechanics that is Thunderbird for me.
Yes, Opera is a corporation too, but it's not the evil "if you don't want us to know better don't do it" nightmare that Google has become.
As long as the EU can still spend 500 million € every year to destroy surplus food, I'm not worried about overpopulation. What we may have reached is the maximum sustainable imbalance between first and third world. How much longer do we think the third world will tolerate it?
I know, thanks... But it requires 2 things to be handled by your web pages which CF could do more elegantly: a) put the Analytics JS on all pages, b) decide which version (A or B) to show a visitor and why (i.e. set a cookie so he still sees the same version when he comes back and all that) and modify the Analytics code accordingly. Putting that on the CF end would mean that even inexperienced people could set up 2 versions of their web site easily and benefit from Analytics A/B testing features (think wordpress blogs => instead of figuring out how to switch between layouts/designs on the same blog and insert appropriate A/B-code for Analytics, the author could just set up 2 blogs with the same content and let CF handle the A/B-switching).
While they can certainly protect a site from various threats better than the average programmer (XSS etc.), the downside is that all login and personal information also goes through their site, enabling them (or a rogue government) to collect it. Also, their concept is great for launching targeted attacks at specific users, i.e. sending them tailored content like trojans (of course such attacks by rogue governments are feasible without CF, but harder). The question is: should they be trusted more than your own employees and your ISP? Right now, here in Europe, I'd say: for important stuff, no.
That said, here's an idea for a useful "app": automated A/B-testing for your site (build 2 versions of your website and let them decide who sees what, combine with Google Analytics or other stats => see which version works better for your users).
Nowdays, once your hashed password is exposed (e.g. someone posts a database dump of your favourite forum somewhere), it is unlikely that the system where it was stored was not completely compromised. It is unlikely that the attacker could not grab or modify all personal data / other information that was stored on the system. He can gain entry to the system using your account by modifying your password, so 0 security left there to compromise by recovering the plaintext password.
The only benefit he or someone else could gain from cracking your password would be to try it elsewhere in case you are stupid enough to still use the same password for several different accounts... So: don't do that, use long random passwords stored in a safe place (in your password-protected browser if you must) and you might as well stop worrying about the next generation of rainbow tables or 100 times faster GPUs etc....
That sites calls passwords comprised of 6 characters with digits "low risk" due to 8 months brute forcing time, while the program mentioned in the OP checks that range in about 2 seconds on my GPU...
I wouldn't, but then again I wouldn't even buy it. I am just wondering what kind of target audience the vendors had in mind when they designed that junk. 15.6" is not portable like a Netbook, the screen resolution and format is insufficient for comfortable web browsing or the classic Thunderbird layout. It seems to be for people who would find a tablet perfectly sufficient for their everyday tasks (youtube and gmail?), but for some reason want something 4-5 times as heavy and extremely noisy just because it can run Windows.
Something like 720p is probably more than adequate for a monitor that is a mere 15 inches.
You must be kidding. My iPhone 4 has 960x640 pixels nowdays on a 3,5" screen and it makes a huge difference compared to the older 3G. My 27" desktop display has 2560x1440 pixels (0.233mm dot pitch), it still seems blocky sometimes. Those crappy 15.6" laptop displays have 0.28mm dots, that's worse than a 15 years old CRT monitor. Heck, even the handheld gaming consoles for kids have 0.24mm dot pitch nowdays.
They also use mostly crappy 1366x768 pixel displays on 13-15" laptops where decent 1920x1200 pixel displays have been available for years. Apparently it makes laptops $300+ cheaper, but is the sub-$500 (i.e. throw away after 1 year) laptop business really even profitable when people pay more than that for an iPad 2? What's next, a low-resolution touchscreen display instead of a real keyboard (Nintendo DS style)?
I don't understand why the IT world is going down the drain like that. Ten years ago there was Dejanews...
My generalized $0.02 on this: this resulted from "commoditization" of the Internet. Where technical prowess, cooperation and hacking ethos used to rule, nowdays you see marketability and revenues, competition and legal issues dominate the field. Spamming is highly profitable and does not involve a lot effort, so it has to win. Projects with limited resources cannot concentrate on their main task, they have to deal with SEO, PR, possibly revenue (when was the last time you saw a highly successful open source project being hosted at no cost by a university?), even patent research and copyright issues.
If anyone knows of a technical field where the general spirit is closer to those "old values" and making a quick buck isn't the most important thing, I'm interested (robotics? perhaps).
plentyoffish.com (although I don't believe all the owner's claims)
MySpace (OK not really a startup)
Orkut used ASP.NET at some point (I don't know if it still does)
But the point with stackoverflow is that it was a small company that did it (obviously not on a big budget) and it worked out fine. If you were most familiar with Windows stuff, would you really feel better going with Linux for your web project?
Slashdot Mirror
Google have shown themselves to be better than that.
Oh, that ... Amazing strategic decision to sell breaking laws in China in order to have a competitive advantage over Baidu as "doing good".
I see a big difference between a company that sets some ethical standards but doesn't always live up to it and a company that doesn't have any.
Yeah, the difference is your perception, claiming to have some sort of standards or not doing so has nothing to do with actual conduct. If anything, corporations tend to publish ethical standards as a form of damage control after getting caught. Go look at any other large evil corporation, it'll have a neat claim of that sort: Microsoft, Monsanto ...
Wait, we are talking about the same Google whose former CEO said "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" and who have, among other things, been caught pulling all kinds of dirty tricks on competitors, trademark owners, CSEs, unsuspecting WLAN owners? The guys who have been tracking your every movement on the web through Analytics and their search engine for years and have departments full of people just working on novel ways of using all that data to their advantage and in particular not public (or your own) benefit?
Twitter is and Google I hope will fix this.
Last time I checked, Google was a big corporation determined to increase its revenue by all possible means, just like Facebook. If they have turned into a charity recently, I must have missed it.
Are there any useful alternatives?
Not at this time I suppose, but I wish projects like YaCy would make some progress / gain more attention.
WoW? I heard it's pretty "social" (the way he means it) and it's full of micro-rewards that aren't really worth much. Even more "social" games nowdays apparently tend to offer the player virtual extremities bought with real money as "rewards" ... Perhaps the players have changed more than the games on the market.
I can already see this tech being (ab)used by divorce attorneys and private investigators.
And burglars, employers (dude called in sick? check out his favourite bar...) ... Of course it will also enable them to gather statistics regarding how much time you spent at which bar, send alerts to interested people if your face is recognized somewhere etc. etc. ...
Needless to say, the threat to cancel one's account as a sign of disapproval for CCP's ideas has been a running gag for years as well ...
... Linux on servers has been screwed since the terrible ext3 regression around 2.6.25 ... ;-)
looks like a parachute might work, as there's no rotors or anything else that could interfere.
... was the reviewer even born when DNF was originally announced?
Ad Homium #1...
Don't try to use Latin if you fail so pathetically at it.
...that Google has become
Ad Homium #2...
Oh, hello Google!
Do you think google is somehow using mind control to keep you and everyone else from understanding the source?
Chromium "calling home" is a well-known fact, I don't even have to look at the source code to understand that the tracking is done server-side, not in the client.
Let me know when one exists. As far as I know, the only other open option is made by Apple
Hello Anonymous Cowardly Google Fanboy, another option is Opera, it has just replaced the crappy bloatware with "let the user wait till I'm done with something unimportant" mechanics that is Thunderbird for me.
Yes, Opera is a corporation too, but it's not the evil "if you don't want us to know better don't do it" nightmare that Google has become.
I'd rather take this one, because it isn't vaporware...
As long as the EU can still spend 500 million € every year to destroy surplus food, I'm not worried about overpopulation. What we may have reached is the maximum sustainable imbalance between first and third world. How much longer do we think the third world will tolerate it?
I know, thanks ... But it requires 2 things to be handled by your web pages which CF could do more elegantly: a) put the Analytics JS on all pages, b) decide which version (A or B) to show a visitor and why (i.e. set a cookie so he still sees the same version when he comes back and all that) and modify the Analytics code accordingly. Putting that on the CF end would mean that even inexperienced people could set up 2 versions of their web site easily and benefit from Analytics A/B testing features (think wordpress blogs => instead of figuring out how to switch between layouts/designs on the same blog and insert appropriate A/B-code for Analytics, the author could just set up 2 blogs with the same content and let CF handle the A/B-switching).
While they can certainly protect a site from various threats better than the average programmer (XSS etc.), the downside is that all login and personal information also goes through their site, enabling them (or a rogue government) to collect it. Also, their concept is great for launching targeted attacks at specific users, i.e. sending them tailored content like trojans (of course such attacks by rogue governments are feasible without CF, but harder). The question is: should they be trusted more than your own employees and your ISP? Right now, here in Europe, I'd say: for important stuff, no.
That said, here's an idea for a useful "app": automated A/B-testing for your site (build 2 versions of your website and let them decide who sees what, combine with Google Analytics or other stats => see which version works better for your users).
Nowdays, once your hashed password is exposed (e.g. someone posts a database dump of your favourite forum somewhere), it is unlikely that the system where it was stored was not completely compromised. It is unlikely that the attacker could not grab or modify all personal data / other information that was stored on the system. He can gain entry to the system using your account by modifying your password, so 0 security left there to compromise by recovering the plaintext password.
...
The only benefit he or someone else could gain from cracking your password would be to try it elsewhere in case you are stupid enough to still use the same password for several different accounts... So: don't do that, use long random passwords stored in a safe place (in your password-protected browser if you must) and you might as well stop worrying about the next generation of rainbow tables or 100 times faster GPUs etc.
That sites calls passwords comprised of 6 characters with digits "low risk" due to 8 months brute forcing time, while the program mentioned in the OP checks that range in about 2 seconds on my GPU ...
If Mozilla.org still get 85% of their revenues from Google, this looks like a good gamble .... NOT.
Why would you throw it away after a year?
I wouldn't, but then again I wouldn't even buy it. I am just wondering what kind of target audience the vendors had in mind when they designed that junk. 15.6" is not portable like a Netbook, the screen resolution and format is insufficient for comfortable web browsing or the classic Thunderbird layout. It seems to be for people who would find a tablet perfectly sufficient for their everyday tasks (youtube and gmail?), but for some reason want something 4-5 times as heavy and extremely noisy just because it can run Windows.
Something like 720p is probably more than adequate for a monitor that is a mere 15 inches.
You must be kidding. My iPhone 4 has 960x640 pixels nowdays on a 3,5" screen and it makes a huge difference compared to the older 3G. My 27" desktop display has 2560x1440 pixels (0.233mm dot pitch), it still seems blocky sometimes. Those crappy 15.6" laptop displays have 0.28mm dots, that's worse than a 15 years old CRT monitor. Heck, even the handheld gaming consoles for kids have 0.24mm dot pitch nowdays.
They also use mostly crappy 1366x768 pixel displays on 13-15" laptops where decent 1920x1200 pixel displays have been available for years. Apparently it makes laptops $300+ cheaper, but is the sub-$500 (i.e. throw away after 1 year) laptop business really even profitable when people pay more than that for an iPad 2? What's next, a low-resolution touchscreen display instead of a real keyboard (Nintendo DS style)?
I don't understand why the IT world is going down the drain like that. Ten years ago there was Dejanews...
My generalized $0.02 on this: this resulted from "commoditization" of the Internet. Where technical prowess, cooperation and hacking ethos used to rule, nowdays you see marketability and revenues, competition and legal issues dominate the field. Spamming is highly profitable and does not involve a lot effort, so it has to win. Projects with limited resources cannot concentrate on their main task, they have to deal with SEO, PR, possibly revenue (when was the last time you saw a highly successful open source project being hosted at no cost by a university?), even patent research and copyright issues.
If anyone knows of a technical field where the general spirit is closer to those "old values" and making a quick buck isn't the most important thing, I'm interested (robotics? perhaps).
But the point with stackoverflow is that it was a small company that did it (obviously not on a big budget) and it worked out fine. If you were most familiar with Windows stuff, would you really feel better going with Linux for your web project?