Dammit, "I don't like this" is not a sufficient reason for violating classification.
Err, yes it is.
Should she have been fired for breaking security? Yes.
Should she have done it anyway? Yes.
This is a classic case for civil disobedience. There come times when following the law violates your own integrity as a person, and the dual virtues of loyalty and compassion conflict. At that point, you must showcase you humanity and be willing to take the punishment for it.
The people who criticise Richard Stallman are those who are afraid of his message.
Ooh, me, me! I criticise Stallman, and I'm not scared of his message.
Know why? 'Cause he's a creep. He is the worst stereotype of geeks, and gives real fans of FLOSS a bad name.
Don't believe me? Spend some time with him at a sci-fi con sometime. He spend an evening at my room party at Arisia once. He was smelly and unkempt. He kept hitting on all the college-age girls, to the point where people where running out of the room. When he was offered goldfish crackers, he refused because eating fish was bad.
He's unsocialized and crazy. I'm not going to listen to political philosophy from crazy people.
Sure, and I'm not saying he doesn't have a right to reprint it.
However, it's awkward to have to click through twice to get to the article you were trying to read in the first place. It's especially obnoxious when you don't realize you aren't reading the full article until a paragraph stops mid-thought and there's nothing left to read.
Perhaps he will next go in and create new patterns and quilting for all of the bedding in the game.:::yikes::: Glad I'm not stuck next to him during a long flight.
She, actually.
And she's really quite cool about it. She didn't think she had the talent to come up with some huge level quest mod, so she picked a small thing that bugged her and is going to fix it. Here are pictures of the books so far.
Also, she's got a couple guys to help her incorporate grammer and spelling fixes for the books. If only the original designers would put so much thought into the little details...
I get that. And I don't know enough physics say that it's definitely impossble for magic molecules to do this. However, the analogy they make is blatantly incorrect, so it doesn't lend confidence to their theory.
We all know about the state of science reporting, though, so it's entirely possible the scientists are on the right track, and just the journalism was bad.
I actually think something like invisibility can be done someday, but it will involve electronics and computation. Instead of letting light pass through a wall, put a sensor (camera) on one side and a screen (projector) on the other.
Heck, we might even be able to recreate some 3d shapes from the images. Then, we could use matrix and modem game graphics techniques to adjust the distance appropriately, so that *any* size object would be hidden.
They claim that certain "metamolecules" have the power to make light behave like water, and flow rather than scatter. I quote:
"A little way downstream, you'd never know that you'd put a pencil in the water - it's flowing smoothly again.
"Light doesn't do that of course, it hits the pencil and scatters. So you want to put a coating around the pencil that allows light to flow around it like water, in a nice, curved way."
The truth is, water scatters when hitting something, too. It just doesn't *matter*, because all particles of water look the same to us. So, if the water particle that would have been in the middle without the disruption ends up on the far right, it doesn't matter!
However, we are very, very good at telling different pieces of light apart. At best, this will provide very good camo, where pieces of color from the environment behind you show up on you instead. At worst, the disruption from light working in unexpected ways will make this "invisibility" be a very noticeable beacon. You know how your eyes always flick to something that moves (animated ads, anyone?) This would be like that.
They are calling him in for what they call a "deposition" so they can fuck with him, cost him thousands of dollars in travel and wasted time and then cancel the second day of deposition.
I don't even *get* this argument. The lawyers called him in to testify on April 20 and April 21, 2006. After six hours of testimony on April 20th, they cancel the remaining deposition on the 21st.
Honestly, if I were the one getting grilled like that, I would be thrilled to let free a day early. Would he have been happier if they had scheduled a one-day deposition, and decided that they needed a second day at the last minute?
It's entirely possible that they cancelled it because they weren't getting anything from him that helped their case. In which case, double w00t!
Also, how can a day of cancelled travel cost him thousands of dollars? Did he decide to purchase a brand-new, first-class, last-minute plane ticket or something? Just stay in Los Angelos for a day, and enjoy your vacation, man.
I don't know anything other than what's been posted here, but it's pretty clear that he filed a lawsuit. Here, you can read the letter reposted in this comment:
A SLAPP In The Face On May 1, 2006, David P. Meyer & Associates and Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro defense lawyers filed Motions to Strike the entirety of my case against the two firms despite evidence that I had unwillingly and unknowingly been made Lead Plaintiff in the iPod Nano Class Action suit. In their Motions to Strike my case against them, they also requested of the Court that I be held financially responsible for their attorneys' fees and costs.
IANAL, but a Motion to Strike seems like a pretty routine request. ("Hi, Judge! I did nothing wrong, and this lawsuit is obviously ridiculous. Can you send it away please?") As a previous poster indicates, he probably does have a reasonable libel lawsuit, so I imagine the motion would fail. However, that's hardly cause for any kind of indignation from the Slashdot community.
I don't know how common it is to request attorney's fees, but I know that in the UK, for example, it is common practice to make the loser pay the legal fees for both sides. So, if you think you are in the right, it does not seem crazy to ask for them.
Note that they do *not* seem to be requesting lawyer's fees for if the iPod Nano Class Action law suit fails. They're asking for reimbursing if the case the Jason Tomczak is bring fails. (Much more rational.)
The iPod lawsuit lawyers are not suint their own plaintiff. I realize that the page is slashdotted, but plenty of people on this page have reposted it. In it, he:
1.) Complains that the law firm contacted him for advice 2.) Complans that they ignored his desire for privacy, and slapped his name on the class-action suit 3.) He then claims that he received harassment and hateful treatment from third parties, because of his perceived attack on the Nano. 4.) Then, he sued the lawyers for Step 2):
Call For Help Given the gravity of the situation I was facing, I had to hire a law firm to protect myself, clear my name and set the record straight. David P. Meyer & Associates and Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, when contacted by my lawyers, did not even offer to correct any of their press releases. Not even an official apology was offered
Now, he is complaining, and loudly, in this "Open Letter to the Mac Community", that the law firm is defending themselves. They're even *gasp* making him come to court to give a deposition for his prosecution. He is also furious that the law firm dared to file a Motion to Strike against his lawsuit, since he believes it is obvious that he has been abused.
I don't know the merits of Mr. Tomczak's case, but it is clear that he is suing the iPod Lawsuit Lawyers, not the other way around.
... abandoning a console is something that is going to make people angry, no matter how it's handled.
Who gets angry that their console is outgrown? Of course, plenty of people might choose not to buy the newer system immediately. Most who make that choice are happy with the amount of games they already have to play, and are willing to wait for the newer generation to come down in price.
The article has a table of future game release dates. Apparently, the Xbox has 31 new games scheduled to come out, compared to 85 for the 360. Given that the 360 has been out for half a year, I'm surprised to hear that many new titles in the works for an older system.
CERIAS Weblogs Reporting Vulnerabilities is for the Brave
I was involved in disclosing a vulnerability found by a student to a production web site using custom software (i.e., we didn't have access to the source code or configuration information). As luck would have it, the web site got hacked. I had to talk to a detective in the resulting police investigation. Nothing bad happened to me, but it could have, for two reasons.
The first reason is that whenever you do something "unnecessary", such as reporting a vulnerability, police wonder why, and how you found out. Police also wonders if you found one vulnerability, could you have found more and not reported them? Who did you disclose that information to? Did you get into the web site, and do anything there that you shouldn't have? It's normal for the police to think that way. They have to. Unfortunately, it makes it very uninteresting to report any problems.
A typical difficulty encountered by vulnerability researchers is that administrators or programmers often deny that a problem is exploitable or is of any consequence, and request a proof. This got Eric McCarty in trouble -- the proof is automatically a proof that you breached the law, and can be used to prosecute you! Thankfully, the administrators of the web site believed our report without trapping us by requesting a proof in the form of an exploit and fixed it in record time. We could have been in trouble if we had believed that a request for a proof was an authorization to perform penetration testing. I believe that I would have requested a signed authorization before doing it, but it is easy to imagine a well-meaning student being not as cautious (or I could have forgotten to request the written authorization, or they could have refused to provide it...). Because the vulnerability was fixed in record time, it also protected us from being accused of the subsequent break-in, which happened after the vulnerability was fixed, and therefore had to use some other means. If there had been an overlap in time, we could have become suspects.
The second reason that bad things could have happened to me is that I'm stubborn and believe that in a university setting, it should be acceptable for students who stumble across a problem to report vulnerabilities anonymously through an approved person (e.g., a staff member or faculty) and mechanism. Why anonymously? Because student vulnerability reporters are akin to whistleblowers. They are quite vulnerable to retaliation from the administrators of web sites (especially if it's a faculty web site that is used for grading). In addition, student vulnerability reporters need to be protected from the previously described situation, where they can become suspects and possibly unjustly accused simply because someone else exploited the web site around the same time that they reported the problem. Unlike security professionals, they do not understand the risks they take by reporting vulnerabilities (several security professionals don't yet either). They may try to confirm that a web site is actually vulnerable by creating an exploit, without ill intentions. Students can be guided to avoid those mistakes by having a resource person to help them report vulnerabilities.
So, as a stubborn idealist I clashed with the detective by refusing to identify the student who had originally found the problem. I knew the student enough to vouch for him, and I knew that the vulnerability we found could not have been the one that was exploited. I was quickly threatened with the possibility of court orders, and the number of felony counts in the incident was brandished as justification for revealing the name of the student. My superiors also requested that I cooperate with the detective. Was this worth losing my job? Was this worth the hassle of responding to court orders, subpoenas, and possibly having my computers (work and personal) seized? Thankfully, the student bravely decided to step forward and defused the situation.
[My son] was afraid of the Undercity. And that's just from the imagery... as his father, my only defense in this frightening choice would have to be that I am just trying out evil, just getting to know it, just using evil instrumentally for some greater purpose. He abviously can't grasp that now, but even if he could, these are the only possible justifications for me to inhabit such a wicked being.
The author is confusing ugly with evil. Perhaps he should be teaching his son not to judge people on appearances?
Not that undead isn't somewhat evil, but a 3-year olds fear at unfamiliar faces is not a spectacular judge of this. And, I certainly don't know anything evil about trolls! They are downtrodden, and ugly, for the most part, but not evil. The author seems to be reading his own preconceptions into this a lot more than Blizzard is.
Why? Do you know the people at MBNA or Citibank? Do they make lending decisions based on anything but objective factors, anyway? Most Americans (and I'd expect the British are no different) need their "consumer debts financed multiple times by strangers". Whether they are doing something wrong or not is somewhat beside the point, its a fact of life.
Well, no, I suppose I don't. I try to only borrow money for 30 days, but I get your point. Hmm.
It still feels different. Like, all credit card debt combined is just one giant loan. The example they used was borrowing money from a neighbor to start a business. That is a reasonable use of credit, which a person on the internet will help you out with. But, if you ask to borrow money from a neighbor to buy a laptop (as one of these groups was financing), the neighbor would certainly turn you down if you asked for yet more money to buy an iPod next month.
A village could built that community, by having repeated transactions of all different varieties. Sure, a guy would lend you money, because he ate dinner at your house last week, and he talks to you as pick up your mail, and his kids play with yours. In that case, trust is earned on small transactions, not necessarily economic. I don't know how these companies can build that.
I can't imagine how this is able to compete with existing financial providers.
Yay, venture capitalists!
First of all, how many bad debts can these peers handle? Large corporations have enough cash to handle bad or delayed debts.
They are trying to spread risks around. They also are assuming a 4% default rate. I don't know if that is a feasible goal, but they are claiming that the "community" they are building, combined with off-line credit inquiries, will get them to that number.
Unlike other successful P2P services, this model is entering a market where existing businesses are making a living out of it.
In theory, they could take away a lot of bureaucracry, and do it cheaper. In practice, it looks like they are attracting crazy investors, who don't trust banks. (I suppose this is better than putting money under the mattress?) Here's a fun quote from the article:
"I am fascinated by the concept, [and] hate big corporate banks..." writes one user. Such sentiment baffles the more commerce-minded forum participants, who have posted complaints about Zopa's "uncompetitive" returns to lenders.
Hey, if you can find the people who prefer more risk for less return, why not take advantage of them?
The article discusses two different lending assocations. Only one of them actually claim to use credit reports!
From the article: Prosper says it conducts anti-fraud and identity checks using data from credit reporting agencies and other sources. Users must provide their name, date of birth, Social Security number, address, telephone number, and a U.S. bank account number.
Both are aiming to hit default rates of 3%, which seems low to me given that, well, this is the internet. They think they can make a real community on the internet, and are using as an analogy the way villages once functioned. Let us ignore the fact that people are much nicer in person than on the internet (you can't be cruel to a person you can't see, right?). Having a community relies on repeat transactions! If you need your consumer debts financed multiple times by strangers, I gotta think you're doing something wrong. But the online communities growing at both Prosper and Zopa, at least in theory, should function as a sort of immune system against such risks. Because the personal identifying information required for financial transactions isn't infinitely changeable like an E-mail address, scammers can't conceal themselves as easily as they can elsewhere.
Because, you know, it's really hard for those scammers to use other people's identities.
Re: Boothbabes comparison
on
The E3 of 1995
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The internet has everything. You think it would not have a comparison of E3 Booth Babes?
But, first I have to ask: why on earth is this data on a laptop?
I mean, really! This is health-care data for top military officials! Who needs to take that data on the road with them? Encrypt, stick it in a secure database, on a server in some closet in HQ. At least make it take effort to get at, no?
The idea of this is pretty old. There are actually pumped storage reservoirs in production that will pump water up a hill during non-peak hours, and generated electricity during peak hours by letting the water flow back down.
This article is just talking about making that kind of technology accessible on a smaller scale. I'm skeptical of being able to do this at good enough efficiency for small-scale use. If it does, though, that would be fantastic!
Power plants can't generally speed up or slow down production quickly enough to handle electrical use variations. Thus, plants burn more energy than they need to, to account for the maximum possible demand. If this kind of research can make this technology more accessible, that we can get more energy-efficient electricity.
Yes, people still speak Latin, although none, I think, as first language. The biggest such community, of course, is the vatican, which has published a 2-volume reference work for modern words, called the "Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis."
Slashdot Mirror
Dammit, "I don't like this" is not a sufficient reason for violating classification.
Err, yes it is.
Should she have been fired for breaking security? Yes.
Should she have done it anyway? Yes.
This is a classic case for civil disobedience. There come times when following the law violates your own integrity as a person, and the dual virtues of loyalty and compassion conflict. At that point, you must showcase you humanity and be willing to take the punishment for it.
Might I have the strength to choose as wisely.
The people who criticise Richard Stallman are those who are afraid of his message.
Ooh, me, me! I criticise Stallman, and I'm not scared of his message.
Know why? 'Cause he's a creep. He is the worst stereotype of geeks, and gives real fans of FLOSS a bad name.
Don't believe me? Spend some time with him at a sci-fi con sometime. He spend an evening at my room party at Arisia once. He was smelly and unkempt. He kept hitting on all the college-age girls, to the point where people where running out of the room. When he was offered goldfish crackers, he refused because eating fish was bad.
He's unsocialized and crazy. I'm not going to listen to political philosophy from crazy people.
Sure, and I'm not saying he doesn't have a right to reprint it.
However, it's awkward to have to click through twice to get to the article you were trying to read in the first place. It's especially obnoxious when you don't realize you aren't reading the full article until a paragraph stops mid-thought and there's nothing left to read.
Ick -- Slashdot is linking a blog post with the first two paragraphs of the real article. Go here instead:
c les/000/000/012/348yjwfo.asp
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Arti
Perhaps he will next go in and create new patterns and quilting for all of the bedding in the game. :::yikes::: Glad I'm not stuck next to him during a long flight.
She, actually.
And she's really quite cool about it. She didn't think she had the talent to come up with some huge level quest mod, so she picked a small thing that bugged her and is going to fix it. Here are pictures of the books so far.
Also, she's got a couple guys to help her incorporate grammer and spelling fixes for the books. If only the original designers would put so much thought into the little details...
I get that. And I don't know enough physics say that it's definitely impossble for magic molecules to do this. However, the analogy they make is blatantly incorrect, so it doesn't lend confidence to their theory.
We all know about the state of science reporting, though, so it's entirely possible the scientists are on the right track, and just the journalism was bad.
I actually think something like invisibility can be done someday, but it will involve electronics and computation. Instead of letting light pass through a wall, put a sensor (camera) on one side and a screen (projector) on the other.
Heck, we might even be able to recreate some 3d shapes from the images. Then, we could use matrix and modem game graphics techniques to adjust the distance appropriately, so that *any* size object would be hidden.
They claim that certain "metamolecules" have the power to make light behave like water, and flow rather than scatter. I quote:
"A little way downstream, you'd never know that you'd put a pencil in the water - it's flowing smoothly again.
"Light doesn't do that of course, it hits the pencil and scatters. So you want to put a coating around the pencil that allows light to flow around it like water, in a nice, curved way."
The truth is, water scatters when hitting something, too. It just doesn't *matter*, because all particles of water look the same to us. So, if the water particle that would have been in the middle without the disruption ends up on the far right, it doesn't matter!
However, we are very, very good at telling different pieces of light apart. At best, this will provide very good camo, where pieces of color from the environment behind you show up on you instead. At worst, the disruption from light working in unexpected ways will make this "invisibility" be a very noticeable beacon. You know how your eyes always flick to something that moves (animated ads, anyone?) This would be like that.
They are calling him in for what they call a "deposition" so they can fuck with him, cost him thousands of dollars in travel and wasted time and then cancel the second day of deposition.
I don't even *get* this argument. The lawyers called him in to testify on April 20 and April 21, 2006. After six hours of testimony on April 20th, they cancel the remaining deposition on the 21st.
Honestly, if I were the one getting grilled like that, I would be thrilled to let free a day early. Would he have been happier if they had scheduled a one-day deposition, and decided that they needed a second day at the last minute?
It's entirely possible that they cancelled it because they weren't getting anything from him that helped their case. In which case, double w00t!
Also, how can a day of cancelled travel cost him thousands of dollars? Did he decide to purchase a brand-new, first-class, last-minute plane ticket or something? Just stay in Los Angelos for a day, and enjoy your vacation, man.
The lawyers win, we get screwed.
Also, the company that produces and markets defective products get screwed, and consumers win when honest, reliable companies take their place.
It's complicated.
(Not saying the Nano is defective, or that the lawsuit has value, but class action lawsuits are a critical consumer protection.)
I don't know anything other than what's been posted here, but it's pretty clear that he filed a lawsuit. Here, you can read the letter reposted in this comment:
c id=15397568
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=186589&
A SLAPP In The Face
On May 1, 2006, David P. Meyer & Associates and Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro defense lawyers filed Motions to Strike the entirety of my case against the two firms despite evidence that I had unwillingly and unknowingly been made Lead Plaintiff in the iPod Nano Class Action suit. In their Motions to Strike my case against them, they also requested of the Court that I be held financially responsible for their attorneys' fees and costs.
IANAL, but a Motion to Strike seems like a pretty routine request. ("Hi, Judge! I did nothing wrong, and this lawsuit is obviously ridiculous. Can you send it away please?") As a previous poster indicates, he probably does have a reasonable libel lawsuit, so I imagine the motion would fail. However, that's hardly cause for any kind of indignation from the Slashdot community.
I don't know how common it is to request attorney's fees, but I know that in the UK, for example, it is common practice to make the loser pay the legal fees for both sides. So, if you think you are in the right, it does not seem crazy to ask for them.
Note that they do *not* seem to be requesting lawyer's fees for if the iPod Nano Class Action law suit fails. They're asking for reimbursing if the case the Jason Tomczak is bring fails. (Much more rational.)
The iPod lawsuit lawyers are not suint their own plaintiff. I realize that the page is slashdotted, but plenty of people on this page have reposted it. In it, he:
1.) Complains that the law firm contacted him for advice
2.) Complans that they ignored his desire for privacy, and slapped his name on the class-action suit
3.) He then claims that he received harassment and hateful treatment from third parties, because of his perceived attack on the Nano.
4.) Then, he sued the lawyers for Step 2):
Call For Help
Given the gravity of the situation I was facing, I had to hire a law firm to protect myself, clear my name and set the record straight. David P. Meyer & Associates and Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, when contacted by my lawyers, did not even offer to correct any of their press releases. Not even an official apology was offered
Now, he is complaining, and loudly, in this "Open Letter to the Mac Community", that the law firm is defending themselves. They're even *gasp* making him come to court to give a deposition for his prosecution. He is also furious that the law firm dared to file a Motion to Strike against his lawsuit, since he believes it is obvious that he has been abused.
I don't know the merits of Mr. Tomczak's case, but it is clear that he is suing the iPod Lawsuit Lawyers, not the other way around.
Who gets angry that their console is outgrown? Of course, plenty of people might choose not to buy the newer system immediately. Most who make that choice are happy with the amount of games they already have to play, and are willing to wait for the newer generation to come down in price.
The article has a table of future game release dates. Apparently, the Xbox has 31 new games scheduled to come out, compared to 85 for the 360. Given that the 360 has been out for half a year, I'm surprised to hear that many new titles in the works for an older system.
CERIAS Weblogs Reporting Vulnerabilities is for the Brave
I was involved in disclosing a vulnerability found by a student to a production web site using custom software (i.e., we didn't have access to the source code or configuration information). As luck would have it, the web site got hacked. I had to talk to a detective in the resulting police investigation. Nothing bad happened to me, but it could have, for two reasons.
The first reason is that whenever you do something "unnecessary", such as reporting a vulnerability, police wonder why, and how you found out. Police also wonders if you found one vulnerability, could you have found more and not reported them? Who did you disclose that information to? Did you get into the web site, and do anything there that you shouldn't have? It's normal for the police to think that way. They have to. Unfortunately, it makes it very uninteresting to report any problems.
A typical difficulty encountered by vulnerability researchers is that administrators or programmers often deny that a problem is exploitable or is of any consequence, and request a proof. This got Eric McCarty in trouble -- the proof is automatically a proof that you breached the law, and can be used to prosecute you! Thankfully, the administrators of the web site believed our report without trapping us by requesting a proof in the form of an exploit and fixed it in record time. We could have been in trouble if we had believed that a request for a proof was an authorization to perform penetration testing. I believe that I would have requested a signed authorization before doing it, but it is easy to imagine a well-meaning student being not as cautious (or I could have forgotten to request the written authorization, or they could have refused to provide it...). Because the vulnerability was fixed in record time, it also protected us from being accused of the subsequent break-in, which happened after the vulnerability was fixed, and therefore had to use some other means. If there had been an overlap in time, we could have become suspects.
The second reason that bad things could have happened to me is that I'm stubborn and believe that in a university setting, it should be acceptable for students who stumble across a problem to report vulnerabilities anonymously through an approved person (e.g., a staff member or faculty) and mechanism. Why anonymously? Because student vulnerability reporters are akin to whistleblowers. They are quite vulnerable to retaliation from the administrators of web sites (especially if it's a faculty web site that is used for grading). In addition, student vulnerability reporters need to be protected from the previously described situation, where they can become suspects and possibly unjustly accused simply because someone else exploited the web site around the same time that they reported the problem. Unlike security professionals, they do not understand the risks they take by reporting vulnerabilities (several security professionals don't yet either). They may try to confirm that a web site is actually vulnerable by creating an exploit, without ill intentions. Students can be guided to avoid those mistakes by having a resource person to help them report vulnerabilities.
So, as a stubborn idealist I clashed with the detective by refusing to identify the student who had originally found the problem. I knew the student enough to vouch for him, and I knew that the vulnerability we found could not have been the one that was exploited. I was quickly threatened with the possibility of court orders, and the number of felony counts in the incident was brandished as justification for revealing the name of the student. My superiors also requested that I cooperate with the detective. Was this worth losing my job? Was this worth the hassle of responding to court orders, subpoenas, and possibly having my computers (work and personal) seized? Thankfully, the student bravely decided to step forward and defused the situation.
As a consequence of that experience, I in
[My son] was afraid of the Undercity. And that's just from the imagery ... as his father, my only defense in this frightening choice would have to be that I am just trying out evil, just getting to know it, just using evil instrumentally for some greater purpose. He abviously can't grasp that now, but even if he could, these are the only possible justifications for me to inhabit such a wicked being.
The author is confusing ugly with evil. Perhaps he should be teaching his son not to judge people on appearances?
Not that undead isn't somewhat evil, but a 3-year olds fear at unfamiliar faces is not a spectacular judge of this. And, I certainly don't know anything evil about trolls! They are downtrodden, and ugly, for the most part, but not evil. The author seems to be reading his own preconceptions into this a lot more than Blizzard is.
Why? Do you know the people at MBNA or Citibank? Do they make lending decisions based on anything but objective factors, anyway? Most Americans (and I'd expect the British are no different) need their "consumer debts financed multiple times by strangers". Whether they are doing something wrong or not is somewhat beside the point, its a fact of life.
Well, no, I suppose I don't. I try to only borrow money for 30 days, but I get your point. Hmm.
It still feels different. Like, all credit card debt combined is just one giant loan. The example they used was borrowing money from a neighbor to start a business. That is a reasonable use of credit, which a person on the internet will help you out with. But, if you ask to borrow money from a neighbor to buy a laptop (as one of these groups was financing), the neighbor would certainly turn you down if you asked for yet more money to buy an iPod next month.
A village could built that community, by having repeated transactions of all different varieties. Sure, a guy would lend you money, because he ate dinner at your house last week, and he talks to you as pick up your mail, and his kids play with yours. In that case, trust is earned on small transactions, not necessarily economic. I don't know how these companies can build that.
Yay, venture capitalists!
First of all, how many bad debts can these peers handle? Large corporations have enough cash to handle bad or delayed debts.
They are trying to spread risks around. They also are assuming a 4% default rate. I don't know if that is a feasible goal, but they are claiming that the "community" they are building, combined with off-line credit inquiries, will get them to that number.
Unlike other successful P2P services, this model is entering a market where existing businesses are making a living out of it.
In theory, they could take away a lot of bureaucracry, and do it cheaper. In practice, it looks like they are attracting crazy investors, who don't trust banks. (I suppose this is better than putting money under the mattress?) Here's a fun quote from the article:
Hey, if you can find the people who prefer more risk for less return, why not take advantage of them?
The article discusses two different lending assocations. Only one of them actually claim to use credit reports!
From the article:
Prosper says it conducts anti-fraud and identity checks using data from credit reporting agencies and other sources. Users must provide their name, date of birth, Social Security number, address, telephone number, and a U.S. bank account number.
Both are aiming to hit default rates of 3%, which seems low to me given that, well, this is the internet. They think they can make a real community on the internet, and are using as an analogy the way villages once functioned. Let us ignore the fact that people are much nicer in person than on the internet (you can't be cruel to a person you can't see, right?). Having a community relies on repeat transactions! If you need your consumer debts financed multiple times by strangers, I gotta think you're doing something wrong.
But the online communities growing at both Prosper and Zopa, at least in theory, should function as a sort of immune system against such risks. Because the personal identifying information required for financial transactions isn't infinitely changeable like an E-mail address, scammers can't conceal themselves as easily as they can elsewhere.
Because, you know, it's really hard for those scammers to use other people's identities.
The internet has everything. You think it would not have a comparison of E3 Booth Babes?
http://news.com.com/2300-1043_3-6070849-1.html
Because when the controller contained force feedback technology, the battery life in the wireless controller was far too short.
That the current PS2 wireless controller lasts 40 hours with rumble on.
This seems like a respectable amount of gameplay.
Sure, encryption would help.
But, first I have to ask: why on earth is this data on a laptop?
I mean, really! This is health-care data for top military officials! Who needs to take that data on the road with them? Encrypt, stick it in a secure database, on a server in some closet in HQ. At least make it take effort to get at, no?
I finally decided to give vim a serious try. The key was finding _this_ cheat sheet.
Even better, try this cheat sheet:
http://www.viemu.com/vi-vim-cheat-sheet.gif
It overlays different vi[m] commands on an actual keyboard.
I've printed a copy to pin up right next to my desk, and it's a super informative reference.
The idea of this is pretty old. There are actually pumped storage reservoirs in production that will pump water up a hill during non-peak hours, and generated electricity during peak hours by letting the water flow back down.
Here's an example:
http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/pumped.htm
This article is just talking about making that kind of technology accessible on a smaller scale. I'm skeptical of being able to do this at good enough efficiency for small-scale use. If it does, though, that would be fantastic!
Power plants can't generally speed up or slow down production quickly enough to handle electrical use variations. Thus, plants burn more energy than they need to, to account for the maximum possible demand. If this kind of research can make this technology more accessible, that we can get more energy-efficient electricity.
...why one would use a list traversal over a binary search for finding sorted information.
Eerrr. I don't get this one at all. Do you mind explaining it to me?
My intuition says list traversal is average n/2, and binary search is log (n).
Cinnamon
FTA:
So, presumably 38% went past the first page...
Anyone know how to say "downloader" in Latin?
l
download vt. extrahere (aliquid ex rete); prehendere
Here is a dictionary of contemporary latin, for future reference. http://www.obta.uw.edu.pl/~draco/docs/voccomp.htm
Yes, people still speak Latin, although none, I think, as first language. The biggest such community, of course, is the vatican, which has published a 2-volume reference work for modern words, called the "Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis."