Mark Stephens and InfoWorld parted ways acrimoniously, and one of the results of that is that they both still use the Robert X. Cringely name. The InfoWorld Cringely is NOT the same author as this one.
5-10 years ago, the concept of putting Windows in products that are conventionally designed to actually work reliably was just a big joke to me, something that a few cranks were doing. Now it's just depressing to see how many different places it has weaseled its way into.
Volatile memory is already vulnerable to reboot attacks, because the data takes a long enough time to rot. Paradoxically, non-volatility could increase security in these cases by making it more obvious that it's not OK to leave sensitive info sitting around in memory.
Yeah, it's been like that since Vista, and I also find it annoying and objectionable. I was told by a fellow student last fall that they had some success buying laptops without Windows by calling the OEM's sales line and demanding it as a condition of sale. I haven't had a chance to try this yet, and I don't know whether this works for machines in e.g. the bi-weekly specials that Dell likes to rotate, but I'm definitely going to try it on the next laptop I get, and so should any non-Windows-user who is buying direct from an OEM. The path to a company's heart is through their sales department.
I'm not sure which facts you think I'm disregarding, but you can't seem to explain why a bunch of scientists would have a vested interest in promoting the idea of climate change. If James Hansen has crazy views, it doesn't say anything about everyone else who thinks that global warming is a serious risk. Meanwhile, on the other side there is a huge industry that benefits from continued dependence on fossil fuels, which has a big interest in politicizing the issue and trying to discredit any evidence or opinions that may discourage people from further oil usage.
This stuff was politicized when Reagan came to power, long before the issues you cite in your second link. Never mind also that the link is from an organization whose sole focus is to argue against climate change via a name that sounds innocuous and is misleading at best.
The words progressive and environmentalist don't indicate any underlying motive, they're just labels. If there were no reason to be concerned about environmental damage, the environmentalists wouldn't care. You could argue that they're being overly cautious, but it's hard to define too much caution when the consequences could be so dire.
Your argument about Greenpeace and others would be plausible, except that there's plenty of other environmental abuses they can rally a cause around for their continued existence.
To be fair, that's pretty much what my point is. The earlier we see ahead and develop alternatives though, the less of a price increase for energy there will be.
It's not like you can take the grant funding and buy yourself a sports car. A scientist smart enough to pass off fraud as genuine science could be making a lot more money committing fraud outside of academia. To suggest that scientists are doing this en masse also implies an elaborate conspiracy, for which the motivation is even more unclear.
So you're saying that James Hansen exaggerates the threat of global warming because he's crazy? What about all of the other scientists who also think it's a problem? Why would any of them want to fraudulently exaggerate the global warming problem?
So, assuming that you're accusing James Hansen of fraudulently exaggerating the risk of climate change, what do you say was his motivation to be fraudulent?
As an aside, debating about whether carbon dioxide contributes to global warming is partially irrelevant: the excess carbon comes from burning fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are a limited resource. Even if there's no associated environmental damage, we should be looking for sustainable alternatives anyway. Sunlight is the only thing that isn't going to run out in the long term (for some definition of long term).
Climate change wasn't political until it got recognized and lumped in with other environmental issues by people with vested interests, such as the oil industry, who are harmed by attempts to rein in practices that harm the environment. What do you suppose is the vested interest that would cause someone to fraudulently support the idea that global warming is a problem?
If only that were true. The amount we globally spend on defense is probably much, much more, and may even actually be on the order of magnitude required to feed and clothe Africa. Irrespective of global warming, our prosperity is completely based on cheap energy, so it's obviously prudent to look for alternative sources for it. Coincidentally, this happens to also be the issue at the heart of the global warming problem. A plan to simply extract and burn oil until it runs out isn't a sustainable plan by any stretch, whether or not you care about global warming.
Mod parent up - the rest of the paragraph that the GP's quote was lifted from shows a very acceptable understanding of what random means. The GP is just looking for some excuse to discredit scientists who mention anything even peripherally related to global warming.
I don't know if this is really true. After an exploit of e.g. Firefox or Flash player, an attacker can just put a keylogger into my session. If they also want root, they only need to wait for me to type my password into a terminal emulator. It's not exactly what I would call secure.
There's a (somewhat costly) countermeasure to this, which is to route tracker queries through either https or tor to prevent eavesdropping, and scrape trackers instead of adding your IP address to the swarm (i.e. don't advertise a listen port), to prevent passive monitoring of swarm participants. The cost is that now your client no longer accepts incoming connections, so it can only make outgoing connections. For small torrents or initial seeding, this can be a problem, but for torrents with many peers, there's always enough that accept incoming connections to support everyone else.
Everything you said made sense except for the very cynical last sentence. Wouldn't it be so much easier for the state to balance its budget if their employees at least volunteered to save them money on things that aren't even wanted?
No, my point was that if they cloned a "tablet PC" and then tried to market it to a wide audience, it wouldn't work, but the iPad is a very different product.
Slashdot Mirror
Mark Stephens and InfoWorld parted ways acrimoniously, and one of the results of that is that they both still use the Robert X. Cringely name. The InfoWorld Cringely is NOT the same author as this one.
5-10 years ago, the concept of putting Windows in products that are conventionally designed to actually work reliably was just a big joke to me, something that a few cranks were doing. Now it's just depressing to see how many different places it has weaseled its way into.
Volatile memory is already vulnerable to reboot attacks, because the data takes a long enough time to rot. Paradoxically, non-volatility could increase security in these cases by making it more obvious that it's not OK to leave sensitive info sitting around in memory.
Yeah, it's been like that since Vista, and I also find it annoying and objectionable. I was told by a fellow student last fall that they had some success buying laptops without Windows by calling the OEM's sales line and demanding it as a condition of sale. I haven't had a chance to try this yet, and I don't know whether this works for machines in e.g. the bi-weekly specials that Dell likes to rotate, but I'm definitely going to try it on the next laptop I get, and so should any non-Windows-user who is buying direct from an OEM. The path to a company's heart is through their sales department.
I'm not sure which facts you think I'm disregarding, but you can't seem to explain why a bunch of scientists would have a vested interest in promoting the idea of climate change. If James Hansen has crazy views, it doesn't say anything about everyone else who thinks that global warming is a serious risk. Meanwhile, on the other side there is a huge industry that benefits from continued dependence on fossil fuels, which has a big interest in politicizing the issue and trying to discredit any evidence or opinions that may discourage people from further oil usage.
This stuff was politicized when Reagan came to power, long before the issues you cite in your second link. Never mind also that the link is from an organization whose sole focus is to argue against climate change via a name that sounds innocuous and is misleading at best.
The words progressive and environmentalist don't indicate any underlying motive, they're just labels. If there were no reason to be concerned about environmental damage, the environmentalists wouldn't care. You could argue that they're being overly cautious, but it's hard to define too much caution when the consequences could be so dire.
Your argument about Greenpeace and others would be plausible, except that there's plenty of other environmental abuses they can rally a cause around for their continued existence.
To be fair, that's pretty much what my point is. The earlier we see ahead and develop alternatives though, the less of a price increase for energy there will be.
It's not like you can take the grant funding and buy yourself a sports car. A scientist smart enough to pass off fraud as genuine science could be making a lot more money committing fraud outside of academia. To suggest that scientists are doing this en masse also implies an elaborate conspiracy, for which the motivation is even more unclear.
So you're saying that James Hansen exaggerates the threat of global warming because he's crazy? What about all of the other scientists who also think it's a problem? Why would any of them want to fraudulently exaggerate the global warming problem?
The laser spreads out with distance. By the time it hits the helicopter it's wider than just a tiny dot. Also, green lasers can set stuff on fire up close (any slashdot reader should have seen articles about this), so of course it's dangerous to take that in the eye even far away. Finally, here are some links to show that even freehand, people can aim successfully: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0ttcyIJPm4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTGynLQz-s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUpmLbkzyEI
So, assuming that you're accusing James Hansen of fraudulently exaggerating the risk of climate change, what do you say was his motivation to be fraudulent?
As an aside, debating about whether carbon dioxide contributes to global warming is partially irrelevant: the excess carbon comes from burning fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are a limited resource. Even if there's no associated environmental damage, we should be looking for sustainable alternatives anyway. Sunlight is the only thing that isn't going to run out in the long term (for some definition of long term).
Climate change wasn't political until it got recognized and lumped in with other environmental issues by people with vested interests, such as the oil industry, who are harmed by attempts to rein in practices that harm the environment. What do you suppose is the vested interest that would cause someone to fraudulently support the idea that global warming is a problem?
If only that were true. The amount we globally spend on defense is probably much, much more, and may even actually be on the order of magnitude required to feed and clothe Africa. Irrespective of global warming, our prosperity is completely based on cheap energy, so it's obviously prudent to look for alternative sources for it. Coincidentally, this happens to also be the issue at the heart of the global warming problem. A plan to simply extract and burn oil until it runs out isn't a sustainable plan by any stretch, whether or not you care about global warming.
Mod parent up - the rest of the paragraph that the GP's quote was lifted from shows a very acceptable understanding of what random means. The GP is just looking for some excuse to discredit scientists who mention anything even peripherally related to global warming.
Perhaps because that is actually a plausible combination of inputs for the production of hydrocarbons.
I don't know if this is really true. After an exploit of e.g. Firefox or Flash player, an attacker can just put a keylogger into my session. If they also want root, they only need to wait for me to type my password into a terminal emulator. It's not exactly what I would call secure.
There's a (somewhat costly) countermeasure to this, which is to route tracker queries through either https or tor to prevent eavesdropping, and scrape trackers instead of adding your IP address to the swarm (i.e. don't advertise a listen port), to prevent passive monitoring of swarm participants. The cost is that now your client no longer accepts incoming connections, so it can only make outgoing connections. For small torrents or initial seeding, this can be a problem, but for torrents with many peers, there's always enough that accept incoming connections to support everyone else.
ThunarVFS isn't new, it's one of the things they've replaced and removed.
http://meetings.icann.org/remote-participation
To be fair, in the second picture, he has a keyboard off to the side that he may have temporarily replace with the gadget he was reviewing.
Everything you said made sense except for the very cynical last sentence. Wouldn't it be so much easier for the state to balance its budget if their employees at least volunteered to save them money on things that aren't even wanted?
I've been saying this repeatedly now: if the iPad isn't different, link me to a product from the past that is similar.
No, my point was that if they cloned a "tablet PC" and then tried to market it to a wide audience, it wouldn't work, but the iPad is a very different product.
Also, here's a citation for Rogers that I should have included in the last reply.