I've never heard of anyone being able to successfully "sniff-proof" drugs. I've heard stories/seen movies/documentaries where the drugs are packed in coffee beans, boxed, and sealed airtight with special airproof material, and well-trained dogs were able to pick out the boxes from the other side of the room/warehouse/car. Dunno if this is all true or not, but I for one certainly wouldn't want to risk that.;)
They don't use everyday jet engines on the shuttle because jet engines are less efficient than brute-force rockets. Also jet fuel is heavy and expensive.
First of all I want to point out that this is PROPOSED legislation. It doesn't mean it's law, yet, and it doesn't even mean the Michigan legislators are likely to consider it. It's just a crackpot idea somebody came up with.
Also, the proposal only applies to free providers -- so your local dialup won't be affected by this.
And lastly, this would never work. They're asking providers to keep valid credit card numbers or phone numbers on every one of their subscribers. First of all, what is to stop someone from using a fake phone or credit card number? The provider would have to physically call every single number, or trace every single credit card number, to verify them. Most free providers I can think of are not going to be too happy about needing to put so many resources to such a useless task.
And while Michigan has made some stupid decisions in the past, I have faith in its legislature that this idea will not go through; at least, not in its current form.
Imagine what might happen if the government decided to make some extra money on the side by selling the database to companies... or worse yet, if somebody managed to hack into the database and retrieve your "source code":
Dear John Doe,
According to our records, your genes indicate that you're left-handed! We're happy to offer you this one-time-only offer on left-handed stationery and other supplies... etc. etc...
But I don't think the original poster was giving tips on how to make a marketable website. He was giving tips on how to make a quality site with good, clear, easy to find content. Unfortunately there's a huge difference.:-(
We're supposedly moving towards the one world government. We can't even deal with a simple little international network!
Simple? I can't speak for everyone, and I'm certainly no historian, but I'd say the Internet is one of, if not THE most complicated political, social and scientific phenomenon ever to arise in human history.
I wish the article had given some more specific details. I've never encountered a problem like this, and don't really know anyone who has, either. So I have trouble swallowing all the article has to dish out solely on the grounds that the Gartner Group says that some laptops fail, sometimes.
How would a keyboard cipher be any more susceptible to any specific kind of attack than a regular stream cipher, or any other cipher for that matter? Unless you know exactly what the person's doing at any given time, you have as much idea what he's typing as you would what's in a message encrypted using, say, PGP.
Where I grew up, one almost always used only the last 4 digits for their telephone number. Back in those days, each town (I lived in an area in SW Michigan where about 6 or 7 smallish towns were in very close proximity, within about 5-10 miles, forming a larger community) had its own exchange prefix. So as long as you knew where someone lived, you only needed to remember the last 4 digits of their number, and then fill in the first part with 983- for St. Joseph, 429- for Stevensville, 422- for Baroda, 925- for Benton Harbor, etc. etc.
Man, those were the days... I fear when IPv6 takes over and we won't even be able to [easily] memorize IP addresses anymore!
From the article:
Capable of kicking Aibo the dog...
Uh-oh... watch out for PETA...
Anyway, it's good to see they've already got our fledgling artificial intelligence machines started out on the right track -- going after their electronic comrades rather than their human owners!
This was, in my opinion, one of the coolest gadgets to be found back in my high school physics class. The device was simply two parabolic mirrors set on top of each other (one opening up and the other opening down on top of it). The light from the actual object, placed at the bottom of the device in the center of the bottom mirror, was reflected once off the top mirror and once again off the bottom mirror. This happened to align the light rays exiting the small hole at the top of the device so that your eye saw the rays to converge several inches above where the actual image was (causing it to appear to 'hover' in space.)
The points of view where you see fuzziness are results of imperfections. Perfect parabolic mirrors are extraordinarily hard and expensive to manufacture, so these things usually use not-so-perfect flattened spherical mirrors.
I suspect this is all their technology is doing -- they have some sort of system of mirrors that operates with a normal projector to cause the exiting light rays to appear to 'converge' from a different point in space. Still very cool, and I can't wait to try one out...!
Well, this is (in my mind) where our electoral system breaks down. On the one hand, like you said, it's becoming more and more common for third party candidates to "steal votes" from one of the major candidates. In the case of this election, many people want to vote for Nader, but wouldn't mind if Gore won. But they do NOT want Bush to win. So by voting for their first choice (Nader), they split the votes between Gore and Nader and cause Bush to win. (We'll see if this actually happens, but I wouldn't be surprised; it happened with Perot!)
On the other hand, voting for the major candidate (your second choice) because you don't want to split the vote is also bad. How can a third party candidate ever break into the system (which is an eventual necessity in my opinion) with this?
I think the entire electoral system needs to undergo some major changes to solve these kinds of problems in the future. Perhaps being able to cast a half-vote for "second choice" or something along those lines.
I don't have all the answers, but something needs to be done.
A few problems with that... first of all, if you try to "jump" from "orbit," you're not going to get very far, because you're already in orbit. You will come down, but it could take you an extraordinarily long time (days? weeks?) because your body is already at nearly the right altitude and velocity to orbit.
Also, geosynchronous orbit is incredibly high (don't know the exact figure, but it dwarfs 31 miles.)
Finally there's the issue of you burning up as you enter the Earth's atmosphere. As the article mentioned, the only reason she won't burn up during her 31 mile dive is that she's jumping from a balloon which isn't at the orbital speeds that a person jumping from orbit would experience.
QuickTime in Linux? (off topic)
on
D&D Trailer
·
· Score: 2
Although this has nothing to do with D&D, I figured it to be the time to ask:
Has anyone managed to get a QuickTime viewer working under Linux? Apple unfortunately didn't have any Linux support on their website last time I checked (I wonder why), and the few Linux QuickTime articles I found on the web were no help. Any slashdotters out there who have gotten this to work, please let me know!
The article is funny, but it raises a serious question. What kind of impression WOULD we give an alien inhabitant?
Put this in perspective. You're sitting out in your back yard, tossing back a Rolling Rock, when all of a sudden a grotesque looking alien object crashes into your pool. What would you think? How would you have any way of deciding whether the aliens were trying to destroy our civilization, or merely were sending out probes to investigate our odd little planet?
I wonder how much thought NASA actually has put into this sort of scenario. Do we need to take precautions to make sure that if, as unlikely as it may be, one of our spacecraft comes in contact with alien life, that it won't be interpreted as hostile or invasive? Hollywood has thrived on our fear of a hostile alien race invading Earth, while we at the same time run the (admittedly very, VERY small) of becoming the embodiment of an alien Hollywood staple.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never heard of anyone being able to successfully "sniff-proof" drugs. I've heard stories/seen movies/documentaries where the drugs are packed in coffee beans, boxed, and sealed airtight with special airproof material, and well-trained dogs were able to pick out the boxes from the other side of the room/warehouse/car. Dunno if this is all true or not, but I for one certainly wouldn't want to risk that. ;)
... or the marketing people at Taco Ball will have pulled off one of the greatest, most successful advertising stunts of all time.
So true, so very true...
They don't use everyday jet engines on the shuttle because jet engines are less efficient than brute-force rockets. Also jet fuel is heavy and expensive.
You stupid??
All other ISP's have allways been able to trace you anyway!
Yeah, but they haven't had to (and won't have to) divulge this information freely to law enforcement (without a subpoena, warrant, etc.)
Some of my picks for some good space-station viewing:
1. Apollo 13
2. Alien
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey
4. Event Horizon
First of all I want to point out that this is PROPOSED legislation. It doesn't mean it's law, yet, and it doesn't even mean the Michigan legislators are likely to consider it. It's just a crackpot idea somebody came up with.
Also, the proposal only applies to free providers -- so your local dialup won't be affected by this.
And lastly, this would never work. They're asking providers to keep valid credit card numbers or phone numbers on every one of their subscribers. First of all, what is to stop someone from using a fake phone or credit card number? The provider would have to physically call every single number, or trace every single credit card number, to verify them. Most free providers I can think of are not going to be too happy about needing to put so many resources to such a useless task.
And while Michigan has made some stupid decisions in the past, I have faith in its legislature that this idea will not go through; at least, not in its current form.
Imagine what might happen if the government decided to make some extra money on the side by selling the database to companies... or worse yet, if somebody managed to hack into the database and retrieve your "source code":
Dear John Doe,
According to our records, your genes indicate that you're left-handed! We're happy to offer you this one-time-only offer on left-handed stationery and other supplies... etc. etc...
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
But I don't think the original poster was giving tips on how to make a marketable website. He was giving tips on how to make a quality site with good, clear, easy to find content. Unfortunately there's a huge difference. :-(
At least they're not whining about how Linux "isn't backed by enough applications" anymore... phew!
We're supposedly moving towards the one world government. We can't even deal with a simple little international network!
Simple? I can't speak for everyone, and I'm certainly no historian, but I'd say the Internet is one of, if not THE most complicated political, social and scientific phenomenon ever to arise in human history.
Mr. President, we must NOT ALLOW A PS/2-CONSOLE-GAP!
I want a Beowulf cluster of these!
In retrospect I probably should've realized there were two more pages to the article before I posted that. :-)
I wish the article had given some more specific details. I've never encountered a problem like this, and don't really know anyone who has, either. So I have trouble swallowing all the article has to dish out solely on the grounds that the Gartner Group says that some laptops fail, sometimes.
How would a keyboard cipher be any more susceptible to any specific kind of attack than a regular stream cipher, or any other cipher for that matter? Unless you know exactly what the person's doing at any given time, you have as much idea what he's typing as you would what's in a message encrypted using, say, PGP.
Where I grew up, one almost always used only the last 4 digits for their telephone number. Back in those days, each town (I lived in an area in SW Michigan where about 6 or 7 smallish towns were in very close proximity, within about 5-10 miles, forming a larger community) had its own exchange prefix. So as long as you knew where someone lived, you only needed to remember the last 4 digits of their number, and then fill in the first part with 983- for St. Joseph, 429- for Stevensville, 422- for Baroda, 925- for Benton Harbor, etc. etc.
Man, those were the days... I fear when IPv6 takes over and we won't even be able to [easily] memorize IP addresses anymore!
From the article:
Capable of kicking Aibo the dog...
Uh-oh... watch out for PETA...
Anyway, it's good to see they've already got our fledgling artificial intelligence machines started out on the right track -- going after their electronic comrades rather than their human owners!
This was, in my opinion, one of the coolest gadgets to be found back in my high school physics class. The device was simply two parabolic mirrors set on top of each other (one opening up and the other opening down on top of it). The light from the actual object, placed at the bottom of the device in the center of the bottom mirror, was reflected once off the top mirror and once again off the bottom mirror. This happened to align the light rays exiting the small hole at the top of the device so that your eye saw the rays to converge several inches above where the actual image was (causing it to appear to 'hover' in space.)
The points of view where you see fuzziness are results of imperfections. Perfect parabolic mirrors are extraordinarily hard and expensive to manufacture, so these things usually use not-so-perfect flattened spherical mirrors.
I suspect this is all their technology is doing -- they have some sort of system of mirrors that operates with a normal projector to cause the exiting light rays to appear to 'converge' from a different point in space. Still very cool, and I can't wait to try one out...!
Well, this is (in my mind) where our electoral system breaks down. On the one hand, like you said, it's becoming more and more common for third party candidates to "steal votes" from one of the major candidates. In the case of this election, many people want to vote for Nader, but wouldn't mind if Gore won. But they do NOT want Bush to win. So by voting for their first choice (Nader), they split the votes between Gore and Nader and cause Bush to win. (We'll see if this actually happens, but I wouldn't be surprised; it happened with Perot!)
On the other hand, voting for the major candidate (your second choice) because you don't want to split the vote is also bad. How can a third party candidate ever break into the system (which is an eventual necessity in my opinion) with this?
I think the entire electoral system needs to undergo some major changes to solve these kinds of problems in the future. Perhaps being able to cast a half-vote for "second choice" or something along those lines.
I don't have all the answers, but something needs to be done.
Maybe I interpreted it wrong, but by "avid Quaker" I assumed the original poster meant "an avid player of the game Quake by Id software."
The official web page of PiHex, the group that originally made this shocking announcement (incidentally it was in early September), is here:
http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/projects/pihex/
A few problems with that... first of all, if you try to "jump" from "orbit," you're not going to get very far, because you're already in orbit. You will come down, but it could take you an extraordinarily long time (days? weeks?) because your body is already at nearly the right altitude and velocity to orbit.
Also, geosynchronous orbit is incredibly high (don't know the exact figure, but it dwarfs 31 miles.)
Finally there's the issue of you burning up as you enter the Earth's atmosphere. As the article mentioned, the only reason she won't burn up during her 31 mile dive is that she's jumping from a balloon which isn't at the orbital speeds that a person jumping from orbit would experience.
Although this has nothing to do with D&D, I figured it to be the time to ask:
Has anyone managed to get a QuickTime viewer working under Linux? Apple unfortunately didn't have any Linux support on their website last time I checked (I wonder why), and the few Linux QuickTime articles I found on the web were no help. Any slashdotters out there who have gotten this to work, please let me know!
The article is funny, but it raises a serious question. What kind of impression WOULD we give an alien inhabitant?
:-)
Put this in perspective. You're sitting out in your back yard, tossing back a Rolling Rock, when all of a sudden a grotesque looking alien object crashes into your pool. What would you think? How would you have any way of deciding whether the aliens were trying to destroy our civilization, or merely were sending out probes to investigate our odd little planet?
I wonder how much thought NASA actually has put into this sort of scenario. Do we need to take precautions to make sure that if, as unlikely as it may be, one of our spacecraft comes in contact with alien life, that it won't be interpreted as hostile or invasive? Hollywood has thrived on our fear of a hostile alien race invading Earth, while we at the same time run the (admittedly very, VERY small) of becoming the embodiment of an alien Hollywood staple.
My odd thought for the day.