So I'm the Luser and type "pink ponies " for my new password.
Your software silently changes it to "pink ponies"
That's an okay idea, but there's one problem that I see here. Imagine your GUI says to the user, "Your password must be at least 8 characters." So, they proceed to type "my pass ", and your software silently changes it to "my pass". The software then complains that the password isn't 8 characters long. The user is now understandably confused.
Wasting money protecting source code after the event. I'm a taxpayer [...] If someone releases a game based on it, follow the money.
Yeah, as a taxpayer, I'm really upset too when the police waste money trying to arrest a murderer after the event. I mean, the victim's already dead, so they're wasting money trying to protect him. If someone releases a book about the murder, then follow the money. Otherwise, big deal.
In case the previous paragraph didn't drip enough sarcasm in your direction, let's try this another way. It's the job of the police to investigate crimes that have occurred and to arrest those that they have reasonable grounds to believe are guilty. In this case, police have reasonable grounds to arrest him on suspicion of having committed a crime (some variant of breaking into a computer). What does it matter how much or how little he profited from the crime? That's for the judge to take into account, not the police.
To be absolutely fair, the Ayn Rand Institute gives tens of thousands of dollars to students each year in essay contests where you write about Ayn Rand's books. I don't know about you, but for $10,000 I'd absolutely LOVE Atlas Shrugged.
Yeah, but that assumes that you actually have something to say that the Ayn Rand Institute would want to hear. I thought of entering the contest one year when The Fountainhead was the novel of choice. After making it about half way through that book, with its paper-thin, straw-men characters, I realized that I would not fall into that category.
What we call "liberals" (meaning Left-wingers) in this country are wrong ALL of the time.
A party that's wrong all of the time? That's pretty cool. You'd think that, at least by random chance, they'd make a good decision every one in a while. Or, you know, they probably wouldn't have any support...
I'm Canadian, and I know things are done a little different up here. Sometimes, American politics seems very strange. Even though rhetoric has an unsightly place in Canadian politics, it blows my mind how it dominates American politics.
Yet, here's the neat thing: even though there were five major parties running in our last federal election (four were running candidates in the part of the country in which I live), I never thought that any one of those parties was always wrong. I agreed with some parties more than others overall, and I agreed with certain parties on certain specific policy points.
In the end, deciding which vote to cast was actually a difficult decision that involved a lot of reading, watching debates in two languages, and writing questions to the various political parties to clarify points on their policy. At one point, I was even pondering running as an independent in my riding, campaigning under a few of my own beliefs, and a "best-of" mix of some of the other parties' platforms. In the end, though, I made my choice from the available parties.
Yet never once did I rule out any of the four parties for some philosophical reason. Why are people so closed-minded and prejudiced when it comes to politics, instead of taking the time to read and ask questions, and make a choice from all available candidates?
With regards to the US: does this have something to do with how you "register" as a voter for a particular party? Why does the US even use such a system? Aren't votes supposed to be secret?
Why should a computer science major study operating systems, when scant few of them will actually work on an operating system?
I think that your analogy is off slightly. The justification for teaching organic chemistry to MDs (aside from weeding out) is that it's a fundamental science upon which many aspects of modern medicine are built. Understanding drug interaction, for example. But organic chemistry isn't really a branch of medicine (like, e.g., oncology).
I think a better analogy would be: why teach computer science majors advanced mathematics, when so few will ever need group theory? It's taught to provide a foundation for many branches of computer science (e.g., cryptography).
Let me see if I can fix up a couple more of those analogies:
Why should engineering majors study physics, when so few will work in a physics lab?
Why should English majors study Latin, when so few will ever be in a situation where they really need to speak Latin?
You seem to misunderstand the meaning of prime. Either that, or you're a horrible comedian. In either case, 77 isn't prime, and neither is 77777777.
However, even if a string of 7's were prime, that may not be enough. As stated previously, if n = 2^x - 1 is prime, then x must be prime. However, the converse is not true. That is, x being prime does not guarantee that n is prime. E.g., if x = 11, then n = 2^{11} - 1 = 2047 = 23 x 89.
If a site has a HTTPS form on an HTTP page, just click "submit" with bogus information (or no info). They "error" please enter your info again" page will be HTTPS, which you can then verify the cert, etc.
Wrong. If the http form is MitM'ed, the adversary could easily insert some malicious code into the form that would do the following: post the data to the proper https site, so everything works perfectly for the user, but also "cc" some malicious site on all the data (using http).
If the form is compromised, you're screwed. Period.
It does not matter when you fill the form. As long as when you clicked submit and it went to a https page you are safe.
Now if only you had some assurance that the http-based form hadn't been MitM'ed, such that the "Submit" button no longer submits where you want it to. E.g., if the form were sent over https.
Didn't you hear?, everything is linked to cancer or at least if you listen to the news thats what it seems like.
There was a very interesting editorial piece in my local newspaper today on pretty much this topic that deserves to be read by anyone working in health / safety / threat / etc. research.
The short point is that when every preliminary study, or even hypothesis, is presented by the news media in the same fashion as something that has stood up to rigourous testing (e.g., smoking causes cancer), people begin to filter out everything.
That being said, my short summary doesn't do the editorial piece justice.
I've found a similar solution that works wonders for me. I have an elliptical (a treadmill would work equally well, but my knees prefer the elliptical) set up in front of a wall-mounted TV with a cable box and a DVD player.
I love watching CFL football, so I'll run for at least one quarter of each game I watch (HD cheerleaders!). It lasts, give or take, 50 minutes if you do it during a 2nd or 4th quarter. That alone makes a good workout.
The DVD player is useful for weekday mornings. I buy TV series on DVD that I want to watch (either for the first time or for nostalgia). One-hour-long shows amount to about a 42 minute workout. Shows like 24 are great to get you moving (good action). Shows like Battlestar Galactica are similar, and have better geek cred:)
This rig (flat panel TV, elliptical, cable box, DVD player) costs quite a bit to set up, but I certainly found that it motivates me to get up 45 minutes earlier each weekday morning to work out (what happens to Jack Bauer next...?). If you're the kind of person who would be motivated to watch shows while working out, I highly recommend it.
If you do go for this rig, buy a high-quality elliptical. More money up front, but I cannot stress how much of a difference to the quality of your workout it makes. Anything made by Precor is excellent (the movement is so much smoother than other brands -- your knees will thank you a million times over for spending the little extra).
I'm looking at you, Final Fantasy, where you need NOT to get 4 crates to get the best weapon in the game
Thank you for pointing out FF XII as a horrific example of what is not a puzzle. Forcing you not to explore the world you are in marks bad game design.
I went on a rant earlier about this topic. I'm still looking for a good RPG which doesn't commit this idiotic sin, among others listed here. Any thoughts?
INSERT INTO Votes SHA1HASH( X || Now() ), WhatEverIWantToInsert
INSERT INTO PublicDatabase SHA1HASH( X || Now() ), V
"Here is a printout summarising your vote. The long number may be used at a later date to confirm that your vote was correctly recorded"
Now, realizing the Easter Egg in this system requires a large number of people recording how they voted and combining their votes in some centralized location to compare their sum to the recorded sum (i.e., it requires a random group of concerned citizens to conduct an election).
Unfortunately, the problem with even the best-designed e-voting systems can be the verification stage: how can anyone reasonably verify the results of the election? This is a simpler problem to solve when there are a whole bunch of paper ballots in a box that a bunch of competing parties can all count and come to the same conclusion.
I forgot to buy the super hard core magic spells while in the town. Later on in the game this town gets locked and you can no longer enter it. My mages were pretty much crippled from then on to the end of the game.
Thank you -- another huge mistake committed in some games: things that you cannot go back and do later! The idea that I should catch everything the first time through a dungeon / level / area / etc. is ridiculous. I should be able to go back and complete things that I missed. Perhaps FF VIII and IX were the worst of all the FF games for this issue? Last disc, pretty much everything is locked. Stupid and lazy game design.
It's interesting that you call FF a console mover, because I certainly felt the same way. However, perhaps I'm just getting too old as well, because I'm finding that there are a lot of things that are pissing me off about FF games -- especially the newer ones, but the older ones as well, as I replay them.
Doing something early in the game can ruin something later in the game. Here, I'm not talking about a choice that you make, where if you choose to do thing A early in the game, you get to do quest X later in the game, but if you chose to do thing B you do quest Y. I'm talking about retarded things. In FF XII, if you open a certain chest very early in the game, you can't get a certain very good weapon later in the game. There is no indication whatsoever not to open this chest. FF XII lost me when I realized I absolutely needed a guidebook to play the game. I never needed a guidebook for FF IV-VI.
On a related note, exploring more early in the game is punished later in the game. Sounds stupid? FF I, the very first game: if you level up too much before class change, you get weak little characters in the end. As much as I loved FF VI, it too made this mistake: fighting too much before you get your espers for level-up bonuses has the same effect.
Which brings me to the whole idiotic idea of random level ups in a console game. This idea almost encourages me (though I don't care enough) to reset the console if I get a "bad" level-up, then try again. How about fixed level-ups, or points that I can distribute at each level-up as I see fit.
As far as I'm concerned, these "game design" ideas just punish the gamer, not make the game more fun.
That said, I really enjoy the FF-style RPG as a genre. Would anyone be able to recommend any good games in that style which don't commit any of the stupid sins listed above (DS or Gameboy Advance are best, Wii or PS3 also good)?
But it sounds like in order for [subsection (2)(a)] to take effect, congestion must first occur.
Exactly. Further, according to subsection (4):
Network operators shall make available [...] information about the user's access to the Internet, including the speed, limitations, and network management practices [...]
So, in other words, if there is some abuse of subsection (2)(a), the details of it would have to be public, and it could be more easily challenged.
That being said, it's just a first reading, and hopefully subsection (2)(a) does get clarified.
Ebay should only send notices simply saying one has new messages in their Ebay message center, and require the user to actually visit Ebay to view the message contents - not fool-proof, but would substantially reduce the effectiveness of email spoofs.
One very important thing they would have to do is include some sort of identifying information, otherwise this would open the door to some very easy phishing attacks (as per Nushio's sibling comment).
Perhaps in your eBay account, you could choose one from several thousand little pictures (e.g., as you do with video games and video game systems to choose an avatar picture). Then, the messages could read something like:
Dear SpottedKuh: [picture of a little cow that I chose]... check your eBay message centre, etc.
Then again, I think things like this have been tried before (don't some banks do something similar to this when you log in?) I guess if the users don't care to pay attention, they won't notice the difference between what I wrote above and:
Safari sucks. The web is a jungle. Tame it by not using Safari on your Mac.
Not trolling -- this is an honest question:
Which browser would you recommend on a Mac? I don't know how to objectively and meaningfully compare the security records of the various browser choices, and any input would be appreciated.
If a human foot print is found next to a fossilized dinosaur bone, would that not prove that Evolution is wrong?
No, it would provide evidence that our theory that humans and dinosaurs did not co-exist is wrong.
If you can show that selective forces over many generations do not result in phenotypic changes, then that would show that the theory of evolution is wrong. Have fun trying to explain antibiotic resistance, now.
Slashdot Mirror
Next time, try "Post Anonymously"
...ah, hell, it's New Year's Eve. Go ahead and try your best friend's wife instead ;)
...or, you know, some midgets. Your call...
That's an okay idea, but there's one problem that I see here. Imagine your GUI says to the user, "Your password must be at least 8 characters." So, they proceed to type "my pass ", and your software silently changes it to "my pass". The software then complains that the password isn't 8 characters long. The user is now understandably confused.
"There isn't a hidden volume."
Yeah, as a taxpayer, I'm really upset too when the police waste money trying to arrest a murderer after the event. I mean, the victim's already dead, so they're wasting money trying to protect him. If someone releases a book about the murder, then follow the money. Otherwise, big deal.
In case the previous paragraph didn't drip enough sarcasm in your direction, let's try this another way. It's the job of the police to investigate crimes that have occurred and to arrest those that they have reasonable grounds to believe are guilty. In this case, police have reasonable grounds to arrest him on suspicion of having committed a crime (some variant of breaking into a computer). What does it matter how much or how little he profited from the crime? That's for the judge to take into account, not the police.
Yeah, but that assumes that you actually have something to say that the Ayn Rand Institute would want to hear. I thought of entering the contest one year when The Fountainhead was the novel of choice. After making it about half way through that book, with its paper-thin, straw-men characters, I realized that I would not fall into that category.
Yet I imagine that mistake is still preferable to calling her generic and genderless.
A party that's wrong all of the time? That's pretty cool. You'd think that, at least by random chance, they'd make a good decision every one in a while. Or, you know, they probably wouldn't have any support...
I'm Canadian, and I know things are done a little different up here. Sometimes, American politics seems very strange. Even though rhetoric has an unsightly place in Canadian politics, it blows my mind how it dominates American politics.
Yet, here's the neat thing: even though there were five major parties running in our last federal election (four were running candidates in the part of the country in which I live), I never thought that any one of those parties was always wrong. I agreed with some parties more than others overall, and I agreed with certain parties on certain specific policy points.
In the end, deciding which vote to cast was actually a difficult decision that involved a lot of reading, watching debates in two languages, and writing questions to the various political parties to clarify points on their policy. At one point, I was even pondering running as an independent in my riding, campaigning under a few of my own beliefs, and a "best-of" mix of some of the other parties' platforms. In the end, though, I made my choice from the available parties.
Yet never once did I rule out any of the four parties for some philosophical reason. Why are people so closed-minded and prejudiced when it comes to politics, instead of taking the time to read and ask questions, and make a choice from all available candidates?
With regards to the US: does this have something to do with how you "register" as a voter for a particular party? Why does the US even use such a system? Aren't votes supposed to be secret?
I think that your analogy is off slightly. The justification for teaching organic chemistry to MDs (aside from weeding out) is that it's a fundamental science upon which many aspects of modern medicine are built. Understanding drug interaction, for example. But organic chemistry isn't really a branch of medicine (like, e.g., oncology).
I think a better analogy would be: why teach computer science majors advanced mathematics, when so few will ever need group theory? It's taught to provide a foundation for many branches of computer science (e.g., cryptography).
Let me see if I can fix up a couple more of those analogies:
Depends. Is your day job working as a mathematician? :)
You seem to misunderstand the meaning of prime. Either that, or you're a horrible comedian. In either case, 77 isn't prime, and neither is 77777777.
However, even if a string of 7's were prime, that may not be enough. As stated previously, if n = 2^x - 1 is prime, then x must be prime. However, the converse is not true. That is, x being prime does not guarantee that n is prime. E.g., if x = 11, then n = 2^{11} - 1 = 2047 = 23 x 89.
Wrong. If the http form is MitM'ed, the adversary could easily insert some malicious code into the form that would do the following: post the data to the proper https site, so everything works perfectly for the user, but also "cc" some malicious site on all the data (using http).
If the form is compromised, you're screwed. Period.
Now if only you had some assurance that the http-based form hadn't been MitM'ed, such that the "Submit" button no longer submits where you want it to. E.g., if the form were sent over https.
There was a very interesting editorial piece in my local newspaper today on pretty much this topic that deserves to be read by anyone working in health / safety / threat / etc. research.
The short point is that when every preliminary study, or even hypothesis, is presented by the news media in the same fashion as something that has stood up to rigourous testing (e.g., smoking causes cancer), people begin to filter out everything.
That being said, my short summary doesn't do the editorial piece justice.
Obligatory link to an old paper: Eugene H. Spafford. Computer viruses as artificial life. Artificial Life, 1(3):249-265, 1994.
The short answer is "no," but it makes for an interesting read if you have some whiskey to drink while you're reading it.
I've found a similar solution that works wonders for me. I have an elliptical (a treadmill would work equally well, but my knees prefer the elliptical) set up in front of a wall-mounted TV with a cable box and a DVD player.
I love watching CFL football, so I'll run for at least one quarter of each game I watch (HD cheerleaders!). It lasts, give or take, 50 minutes if you do it during a 2nd or 4th quarter. That alone makes a good workout.
The DVD player is useful for weekday mornings. I buy TV series on DVD that I want to watch (either for the first time or for nostalgia). One-hour-long shows amount to about a 42 minute workout. Shows like 24 are great to get you moving (good action). Shows like Battlestar Galactica are similar, and have better geek cred :)
This rig (flat panel TV, elliptical, cable box, DVD player) costs quite a bit to set up, but I certainly found that it motivates me to get up 45 minutes earlier each weekday morning to work out (what happens to Jack Bauer next...?). If you're the kind of person who would be motivated to watch shows while working out, I highly recommend it.
If you do go for this rig, buy a high-quality elliptical. More money up front, but I cannot stress how much of a difference to the quality of your workout it makes. Anything made by Precor is excellent (the movement is so much smoother than other brands -- your knees will thank you a million times over for spending the little extra).
Thank you for pointing out FF XII as a horrific example of what is not a puzzle. Forcing you not to explore the world you are in marks bad game design. I went on a rant earlier about this topic. I'm still looking for a good RPG which doesn't commit this idiotic sin, among others listed here. Any thoughts?
Now, realizing the Easter Egg in this system requires a large number of people recording how they voted and combining their votes in some centralized location to compare their sum to the recorded sum (i.e., it requires a random group of concerned citizens to conduct an election).
Unfortunately, the problem with even the best-designed e-voting systems can be the verification stage: how can anyone reasonably verify the results of the election? This is a simpler problem to solve when there are a whole bunch of paper ballots in a box that a bunch of competing parties can all count and come to the same conclusion.
Thank you -- another huge mistake committed in some games: things that you cannot go back and do later! The idea that I should catch everything the first time through a dungeon / level / area / etc. is ridiculous. I should be able to go back and complete things that I missed. Perhaps FF VIII and IX were the worst of all the FF games for this issue? Last disc, pretty much everything is locked. Stupid and lazy game design.
It's interesting that you call FF a console mover, because I certainly felt the same way. However, perhaps I'm just getting too old as well, because I'm finding that there are a lot of things that are pissing me off about FF games -- especially the newer ones, but the older ones as well, as I replay them.
As far as I'm concerned, these "game design" ideas just punish the gamer, not make the game more fun.
That said, I really enjoy the FF-style RPG as a genre. Would anyone be able to recommend any good games in that style which don't commit any of the stupid sins listed above (DS or Gameboy Advance are best, Wii or PS3 also good)?
Exactly. Further, according to subsection (4):
So, in other words, if there is some abuse of subsection (2)(a), the details of it would have to be public, and it could be more easily challenged.
That being said, it's just a first reading, and hopefully subsection (2)(a) does get clarified.
One very important thing they would have to do is include some sort of identifying information, otherwise this would open the door to some very easy phishing attacks (as per Nushio's sibling comment).
Perhaps in your eBay account, you could choose one from several thousand little pictures (e.g., as you do with video games and video game systems to choose an avatar picture). Then, the messages could read something like:
Then again, I think things like this have been tried before (don't some banks do something similar to this when you log in?) I guess if the users don't care to pay attention, they won't notice the difference between what I wrote above and:
Not trolling -- this is an honest question:
Which browser would you recommend on a Mac? I don't know how to objectively and meaningfully compare the security records of the various browser choices, and any input would be appreciated.
There are five-year-olds who don't act out?
No, it would provide evidence that our theory that humans and dinosaurs did not co-exist is wrong.
If you can show that selective forces over many generations do not result in phenotypic changes, then that would show that the theory of evolution is wrong. Have fun trying to explain antibiotic resistance, now.
Anonymous Coward?