OK, there's a crap-ton of people making this same observation, so I'll reply to the first:
Current solar cells absorb light in the visible spectrum. Commercially available solar cells range from 5%-19% efficiency. The best research cells are running at about 40% efficiency, again with only visible light.
This kid's solar cell adds UV light to the mix. The UV spectrum is much broader and more energetic than the visible spectrum, so a 500x gain over current commercially available PV cells (note, they don't claim 500x better than the *best* commercially available PV cells) is plausible.
I think the kid is more likely to have attended the Tesla School than Hogwarts.
I apologize for feeding the troll, folks, but here's the facts according to Bloomberg as of 2007.06.25:
Nintendo has so far sold about 2.37 million Wii consoles in the U.S., 2 million in Japan and 1.47 million in other regions, including Europe, since the November debut
Trying to combine the two (creation of a simple state that eventually evolved into a complex state) only places limits on God based on our human perceptions and expectations.
How do you figure that? Look around at the rest of nature. Everything changes, constantly - everything from a copse of trees to the Sahara Desert will change size, shape and local climate, albeit quite slowly. When an organism's environment changes, the organism must change with it, leave, or die out.
I don't understand why so many people insist that creationism and evolution are mutually exclusive. Who's to say that Deity didn't create everything in such a way that it would change over time? That doesn't mean that creation is imperfect (which appears to be creationists' biggest problem with evolution). It just means that everything is functioning as intended by the creator. I would think that in a system where the environment is able to change, an intelligent designer would in fact make it so the organisms within that system are able to adapt with those changes.
Just a shot in the dark here, but perhaps the account was initially set up on October 15th, and Paypal by 'policy' holds all funds in non-profit/charity accounts for 180 days from the time of account creation.
WARNING: Do not look at the day-star with your remaining eye.
Specifically, do not use binoculars or a telescope.
Ya know, people joke about this, but it's no lie. When I got my 8" Celestron Starhopper, one of the first things I did after collimating (which I did in the daytime) was check to see what happens when you point a telescope at the sun. I wasn't dumb enough to use my eye to line it up, fortunately; I placed my hand about 6" from the eyepiece and adjusted the tube until I had a circle of (hot!) light in my palm. I then pulled out a cigarette and was able to light it at the focal point of the light coming through the eyepiece in about 3 seconds. That focal point is right about where your retina would be when looking through the eyepiece. Bad news, for sure.
You mean like Gizmo? Skype lets you call US and Canadian landlines for free, at least through the end of this year. Gizmo lets you call landlines and mobiles in 60 countries for free, forever, as long as you both are Gizmo users and use the software a few times a week.
If Linux wanted to be really fancy, and user fiendly in the Linux mind set you mount the blank CD copy files to the mount point and unmounting the drive will burn the CD.
I'm sure you meant user friendly, but that's beside the point. You actually have a pretty good idea there...but it would only be friendly to users who are already comfortable with the way Linux works. Saying the words 'mount' or 'unmount' to a Windows user gets you nothing but a blank stare, and maybe a childish giggle. (heheh, heheheh, he said mount the drive)
As far as K3b being a default CD burning app, I'm not sure when it was first included in a distro as the default. I do know that currently, on my openSuSE 10.1 box, K3b is not only the default burning app (in KDE), but is listed under the CD/DVD Burning menu. Makes it fairly obvious what it's for.
Way to FUD there, jellomizer. Mac OS X 10.1 Puma was released in September 2001. Linux users have had K3b for optical disc burning since late 1999, removing the need to make an iso first long before your comparison timeframe. Nice try though.
Come on, Dude. These are basic simple blatantly obvious facts that a half second of thought would have enabled you to prove to yourself.
Not at all, actually. If you were to say that it costs less in infrastructure expenditure to support city-dwelling people versus country-dwelling people, I would agree with you. When you go out of your way to say it's four times more expensive, I want to see numbers.
I just bought a condo in Chicago. To deliver electrical service to my place, the power company strings a wire from the line to my building (40 feet from the power line tops.) By stringing this one line they have provided service to *4* households...Now compare that to what is involved with getting power to you and the closest 3 households to you. Pretty freaking simple, isn't it? Substitute, Phone lines, cell phone service, etc. etc. etc. and you get the exact same qualitative results.
Do you really think that all of the cost of delivering power lies in the cable run from the line to the house? That's what it sounds like to me. Plus, I don't think there's a whole lot of money being put into running a cable to my house for cell phone service.
By the way, the word you were looking for there was 'quantitative'
If you were to pay what it costs to deliver your power, then most likely *you wouldn't even have power because you couldn't afford it*. Now, the federal government has mandated that you shall get power and phone service and it shall be paid for by taxes, which people in rural areas don't even pay since they almost always get more back in tax dollars than they put out.
I see where you're trying to go there, but your quoted source doesn't exactly support your argument. The chart supplied basically says that many states receive more than or less than their fair share of federal spending in relation to the amount of tax money they pay in. For example, the map shows that Wisconsin (my home state, very rural) only received $0.82 in spending for every dollar of tax its residents paid. On the other hand, Hawaii was nearly opposite with $1.60 received per dollar spent. Population density of these two states is 72.83/sq.km. for HI versus 38.13/sq.km. Virginia also has a lower tax burden($1.66), but higher population density(69.03/sq.km.). So, at this point, I can't say that I see causality between population density and tax burden. Sorry.
Just so you're aware, I wasn't defending farm subsidies - just pointing out that they don't fit into your argument.
Our country is going bankrupt largely due to these leaches and their completely retarded voting choices, so we can't really afford to coddle them and pretend that what they do isn't already done far more efficiently without them.
Here you make the mistaken assumption that peoples' votes actually count for something today.
To close this up, you'll find the kind of people you are complaining about, the 'rabid, self-important whiny bitches,' in both rural and urban settings. Of course, in my experience - having lived in both settings - you'll find many many more of them living in cities than out in the country. Living out in the sticks teaches you to relax and enjoy things. This is something you would probably do well to learn.
I find your ideas intriguing, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Actually, what I would really like to see is where you get your numbers from? I personally live in SE Wisconsin - about 40 miles from Milwaukee, and about 70 miles from Chicago. My backyard butts up to a field of feed corn, and I have to drive a little over 6 miles to the nearest convenience store - definitely full-on rural. You claim then, that the folks in Milwaukee and Chicago are subsidizing my utilities? Give me an unbiased source - not a vitriolic rant like you've just shown us, but something with real, unspun facts.
By the way - farming subsidies? How does that factor into your argument (regarding the cost of people living away from cities) at all? Are the farmers supposed to move to the big city and grow the food in the middle of your concrete jungle? Or are we all just supposed to eat pigeons and wall mold?
Just in case you missed the title of said graph, it was, "Nonfatal firearm-related violent crimes, 1993-2003." His point, apparently, was that either gun-related crime on the whole is dropping, or criminals are getting to be better marksmen. According to another chart on that same website, it seems his point was actually that crime on the whole has been dropping drastically in recent years.
To dig further into the numbers, in 2004, 11,344 people were murdered with a firearm in 2004. On the other hand, according to the NHTSA website, there were 38,253 fatal car crashes in 2004, killing 42,636 people, or well over 3 times as many people killed by automobiles as by firearms. According to your logic, we shouldn't be allowed to own cars, either, because if we didn't own cars, there wouldn't be so many of them in the country, and thus far fewer people killed, right?
That doesn't seem to be totally accurate. Remember, literacy is pretty much a baseline - if one is "literate" in the standard definition of the term, it means one can pick up any book written in their native language and read it. They may not grasp all the concepts therein, but they can at least read the words. In the same vein, if one is "computer literate," one should be able to sit down in front of a computer running their "native language" OS and software and use it. Unfortunately, in this day and age in the US, that pretty much means MS software.
Literacy != proficiency. For example, take two kids in public school. They can both read (surprisingly enough), but while one reads voraciously every day, the other only reads the bare minimum he must to get by in class. Both would be considered "literate," but while one scores an 800 on the verbal portion of his SAT, the other only scores a 400. The high scorer is a proficient reader, the low scorer is merely literate.
In most cases, when a job opening is posted, the level of computer skill is listed in the job description. If they merely specify "computer literacy," odds are good you'll be using Windows and MS Office, and if you know which side of the mouse is up and where the Start button is, you'll be fine. If they ask for specific computer-related skills, then they don't want just "literacy," they want proficiency in the specified fields.
That said - if I was applying for a tech job, and the interviewer looked at my resume and said that I was "computer literate," I'd probably punch him in the neck and leave. I hate interviewers.
Actually, that's a bit redundant with Avast! Home - it includes an on-access scanner, which scans every file that the OS touches in real time. All downloads *will* be automatically scanned, with no need for any FF extensions.
You have that backwards. A zero-day exploit is an exploit for a vulnerability that was *previously unknown.*
This does not mean only an exploit for an unpatched vulnerability - for example, if exploit code was found today for an unpatched vulnerability that was discovered and announced by white-hat researchers six weeks or six months ago, that exploit would not be "zero-day."
Sorry, man, you've got your features crossed. Like you said, SSH is a secure communications protocol. It does not secure the host from the commands sent over SSH, it only encrypts the data being transmitted over the wire. Your claim is similar to arguing that a virus is harmless if it's sent in encrypted form.
This actually brings up a point - being compromised over SSH is no different from being compromised over telnet or any other protocol, be it remote shell or otherwise. SSH is more akin to a driveway than to a door.
Here's something that may help you understand more fully, from the SSH Basics by Thomas König:
----------
2.1 What is ssh?
To quote the README file:
Ssh (Secure Shell) is a program to log into another computer over a network, to execute commands in a remote machine, and to move files from one machine to another. It provides strong authentication and secure communications over unsecure channels. It is intended as a replacement for rlogin, rsh, and rcp.
Additionally, ssh provides secure X connections and secure forwarding of arbitrary TCP connections.
2.3 What kinds of attacks does ssh protect against?
Ssh protects against:
IP spoofing, where a remote host sends out packets which pretend to come from another, trusted host. Ssh even protects against a spoofer on the local network, who can pretend he is your router to the outside.
IP source routing, where a host can pretend that an IP packet comes from another, trusted host.
DNS spoofing, where an attacker forges name server records
Interception of cleartext passwords and other data by intermediate hosts.
Manipulation of data by people in control of intermediate hosts
Attacks based on listening to X authentication data and spoofed connection to the X11 server.
In other words, ssh never trusts the net; somebody hostile who has taken over the network can only force ssh to disconnect, but cannot decrypted or play back the traffic, or hijack the connection.
The above only holds if you actually use encryption. Ssh does have an option to use encryption of type "none" this is only for debugging purposes, and should not be used.
2.4 What kind of attacks does ssh not protect against?
Ssh will not help you with anything that compromises your host's security in some other way. Once an attacker has gained root access to a machine, he can then subvert ssh, too.
If somebody malevolent has access to your home directory, then security is nonexistent. This is very much the case if your home directory is exported via NFS.
All communications are encrypted using IDEA or one of several other ciphers (three-key triple-DES, DES, RC4-128, TSS, Blowfish). Encryption keys are exchanged using RSA, and data used in the key exchange is destroyed every hour (keys are not saved anywhere). Every host has an RSA key which is used to authenticate the host when RSA host authentication is used. Encryption is used to protect against IP-spoofing; public key authentication is used to protect against DNS and routing spoofing.
That is absolutely false. There will always be a tradeoff between functionality and security. It's like this - if I build a house with external doors and several windows in every room, and keep those doors and windows wide open, it would be very functional; I could instantly get to my yard from anywhere. However, it's not secure. OTOH, I could build my house out of 2 foot thick reinforced concrete with autotargeting frickin' laser beams on every corner and a 10 foot moat filled with hot grits, and no windows or doors. It's very secure, but not functional at all.
In an externally-facing server environment, the only software and services that should be running are the ones needed by that server. You don't play HL2 on your webserver, you don't host a website on your fileserver, and so on. Servers should be single function boxes. That way, they have one door, and access to that door can be much more easily controlled.
OSes are frequently built in several different configurations. Desktop, workstation, server variant builds are common, especially among the *nixes. If you've ever installed Linux before, you've probably seen the option in the package selection phase to set up as a basic workstation, basic server, and so on. The reason for this is because even with the same base OS kernel, the optimal configuration varies according to the purpose of the box. That's why we have configuration options. According to your logic, configuration should be done away with, because everything on by default is the only way to go. That's what got Windows its reputation as an insecure OS in the first place.
Having a system compromised because you set it up to be compromised is not a surprise - it's an obvious eventuality.
...implying that when they do violence, it's bad, but when we do it, it's ok (after all, if we do violence to them, doesn't that make us animals?
Not at all - violence, like many other aspects of human behavior, has many shades of gray. Some violence is necessary to preserve life, limb and liberty; this has been the case since the first of us picked up rocks and/or clubs. Violence in self-defense is not animalistic. Violent reaction to perceived (nonviolent) offense is.
Is it possible that they are doing violence because WE won't listen to reason?
Again - violence, when done for defense of life, limb, and/or liberty, is acceptable. Rioting and killing because 'we won't listen' is not.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right! I can't wait for 14 June 1933!
OK, there's a crap-ton of people making this same observation, so I'll reply to the first: Current solar cells absorb light in the visible spectrum. Commercially available solar cells range from 5%-19% efficiency. The best research cells are running at about 40% efficiency, again with only visible light. This kid's solar cell adds UV light to the mix. The UV spectrum is much broader and more energetic than the visible spectrum, so a 500x gain over current commercially available PV cells (note, they don't claim 500x better than the *best* commercially available PV cells) is plausible. I think the kid is more likely to have attended the Tesla School than Hogwarts.
~5.8 million > 13.
The More You Know.
How do you figure that? Look around at the rest of nature. Everything changes, constantly - everything from a copse of trees to the Sahara Desert will change size, shape and local climate, albeit quite slowly. When an organism's environment changes, the organism must change with it, leave, or die out.
I don't understand why so many people insist that creationism and evolution are mutually exclusive. Who's to say that Deity didn't create everything in such a way that it would change over time? That doesn't mean that creation is imperfect (which appears to be creationists' biggest problem with evolution). It just means that everything is functioning as intended by the creator. I would think that in a system where the environment is able to change, an intelligent designer would in fact make it so the organisms within that system are able to adapt with those changes.
Gee, that was tough.
Just a shot in the dark here, but perhaps the account was initially set up on October 15th, and Paypal by 'policy' holds all funds in non-profit/charity accounts for 180 days from the time of account creation.
You mean like Gizmo? Skype lets you call US and Canadian landlines for free, at least through the end of this year. Gizmo lets you call landlines and mobiles in 60 countries for free, forever, as long as you both are Gizmo users and use the software a few times a week.
Ha'shak, kree! Lo tak meta satak Oz! To'na a'kel no'tar. Zoya noc shom!
I'm sure you meant user friendly, but that's beside the point. You actually have a pretty good idea there...but it would only be friendly to users who are already comfortable with the way Linux works. Saying the words 'mount' or 'unmount' to a Windows user gets you nothing but a blank stare, and maybe a childish giggle. (heheh, heheheh, he said mount the drive)
As far as K3b being a default CD burning app, I'm not sure when it was first included in a distro as the default. I do know that currently, on my openSuSE 10.1 box, K3b is not only the default burning app (in KDE), but is listed under the CD/DVD Burning menu. Makes it fairly obvious what it's for.
Way to FUD there, jellomizer. Mac OS X 10.1 Puma was released in September 2001. Linux users have had K3b for optical disc burning since late 1999, removing the need to make an iso first long before your comparison timeframe. Nice try though.
Do you really think that all of the cost of delivering power lies in the cable run from the line to the house? That's what it sounds like to me. Plus, I don't think there's a whole lot of money being put into running a cable to my house for cell phone service.
By the way, the word you were looking for there was 'quantitative'
I see where you're trying to go there, but your quoted source doesn't exactly support your argument. The chart supplied basically says that many states receive more than or less than their fair share of federal spending in relation to the amount of tax money they pay in. For example, the map shows that Wisconsin (my home state, very rural) only received $0.82 in spending for every dollar of tax its residents paid. On the other hand, Hawaii was nearly opposite with $1.60 received per dollar spent. Population density of these two states is 72.83/sq.km. for HI versus 38.13/sq.km. Virginia also has a lower tax burden($1.66), but higher population density(69.03/sq.km.). So, at this point, I can't say that I see causality between population density and tax burden. Sorry.
Just so you're aware, I wasn't defending farm subsidies - just pointing out that they don't fit into your argument.
Here you make the mistaken assumption that peoples' votes actually count for something today.
To close this up, you'll find the kind of people you are complaining about, the 'rabid, self-important whiny bitches,' in both rural and urban settings. Of course, in my experience - having lived in both settings - you'll find many many more of them living in cities than out in the country. Living out in the sticks teaches you to relax and enjoy things. This is something you would probably do well to learn.
I find your ideas intriguing, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Actually, what I would really like to see is where you get your numbers from? I personally live in SE Wisconsin - about 40 miles from Milwaukee, and about 70 miles from Chicago. My backyard butts up to a field of feed corn, and I have to drive a little over 6 miles to the nearest convenience store - definitely full-on rural. You claim then, that the folks in Milwaukee and Chicago are subsidizing my utilities? Give me an unbiased source - not a vitriolic rant like you've just shown us, but something with real, unspun facts.
By the way - farming subsidies? How does that factor into your argument (regarding the cost of people living away from cities) at all? Are the farmers supposed to move to the big city and grow the food in the middle of your concrete jungle? Or are we all just supposed to eat pigeons and wall mold?
That's not a knife...
I find it hilarious that you say this about an ad depicting two women. Freudian much?
To dig further into the numbers, in 2004, 11,344 people were murdered with a firearm in 2004. On the other hand, according to the NHTSA website, there were 38,253 fatal car crashes in 2004, killing 42,636 people, or well over 3 times as many people killed by automobiles as by firearms. According to your logic, we shouldn't be allowed to own cars, either, because if we didn't own cars, there wouldn't be so many of them in the country, and thus far fewer people killed, right?
Sounds more like you're the no brainer.
And I went and wasted all my mod points already! Well said, sir!
That doesn't seem to be totally accurate. Remember, literacy is pretty much a baseline - if one is "literate" in the standard definition of the term, it means one can pick up any book written in their native language and read it. They may not grasp all the concepts therein, but they can at least read the words. In the same vein, if one is "computer literate," one should be able to sit down in front of a computer running their "native language" OS and software and use it. Unfortunately, in this day and age in the US, that pretty much means MS software.
Literacy != proficiency. For example, take two kids in public school. They can both read (surprisingly enough), but while one reads voraciously every day, the other only reads the bare minimum he must to get by in class. Both would be considered "literate," but while one scores an 800 on the verbal portion of his SAT, the other only scores a 400. The high scorer is a proficient reader, the low scorer is merely literate.
In most cases, when a job opening is posted, the level of computer skill is listed in the job description. If they merely specify "computer literacy," odds are good you'll be using Windows and MS Office, and if you know which side of the mouse is up and where the Start button is, you'll be fine. If they ask for specific computer-related skills, then they don't want just "literacy," they want proficiency in the specified fields.
That said - if I was applying for a tech job, and the interviewer looked at my resume and said that I was "computer literate," I'd probably punch him in the neck and leave. I hate interviewers.
Actually, that's a bit redundant with Avast! Home - it includes an on-access scanner, which scans every file that the OS touches in real time. All downloads *will* be automatically scanned, with no need for any FF extensions.
You have that backwards. A zero-day exploit is an exploit for a vulnerability that was *previously unknown.*
This does not mean only an exploit for an unpatched vulnerability - for example, if exploit code was found today for an unpatched vulnerability that was discovered and announced by white-hat researchers six weeks or six months ago, that exploit would not be "zero-day."
All your internet traffic are belong to NSA!
That's absolutely correct. What is best in life is to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!
That and pudding. Mmmm....pudding.
This actually brings up a point - being compromised over SSH is no different from being compromised over telnet or any other protocol, be it remote shell or otherwise. SSH is more akin to a driveway than to a door.
Here's something that may help you understand more fully, from the SSH Basics by Thomas König:
----------
That is absolutely false. There will always be a tradeoff between functionality and security. It's like this - if I build a house with external doors and several windows in every room, and keep those doors and windows wide open, it would be very functional; I could instantly get to my yard from anywhere. However, it's not secure. OTOH, I could build my house out of 2 foot thick reinforced concrete with autotargeting frickin' laser beams on every corner and a 10 foot moat filled with hot grits, and no windows or doors. It's very secure, but not functional at all.
In an externally-facing server environment, the only software and services that should be running are the ones needed by that server. You don't play HL2 on your webserver, you don't host a website on your fileserver, and so on. Servers should be single function boxes. That way, they have one door, and access to that door can be much more easily controlled.
OSes are frequently built in several different configurations. Desktop, workstation, server variant builds are common, especially among the *nixes. If you've ever installed Linux before, you've probably seen the option in the package selection phase to set up as a basic workstation, basic server, and so on. The reason for this is because even with the same base OS kernel, the optimal configuration varies according to the purpose of the box. That's why we have configuration options. According to your logic, configuration should be done away with, because everything on by default is the only way to go. That's what got Windows its reputation as an insecure OS in the first place.
Having a system compromised because you set it up to be compromised is not a surprise - it's an obvious eventuality.
Who's going pay the Spacing Guild to go all the way to Arrakis to sue a sandworm over IP violations?
Aside from the RIAA?