Well, not exactly applicable but interesting to the discussion.
I think the point is that consideration must be made for the "location" of the access portal. That is, if anyone with an internet connection can try their key in your lock, you probably want a pretty good lock.
But for access to things that have additional security, the lock quality may be reduced in favor of a key that is easy to remember.
1. Keep a good, long, easy-to-remember passphrase for access to your TrueCrypt partition that sits on a private computer inside your house.
2. Store passwords inside this partition in something like KeePass. The KeePass password doesn't need to be industrial. It should be easy to remember, but non-obvious. You type this password a lot.
3. Keep all internet passwords at maximum strength for the site and make them random from your password generator.
Thank you. Now we know you use a private machine at your home, with a TrueCrypt volume on it and a KeePass directory of your passwords. We'll be watching your social network accounts to see when you're on vacation. lol
First of all, you're setting yourself up with a massive fail should anything in this chain go wrong as all your eggs are in one basket. I could go on, but it's pointless. You haven't thought this scheme all the way through. What if the hard drive goes bad? What if just one or two sectors on this hard drive go bad? What if you get hit by a bus, have a heart attack, get caught in an act of terrorism or act of God? (just realized there isn't much difference between these, hmmmm) Not only is that bad password security, it's just bad IT practice all around.
I have passwords that look like that (minus the spaces). Break that with a dictionary!:p
Seriously folks, if you use real words in a password in this day and age, you're a little bit more than naive or completely out of touch with what computers of the current generation are capable of. IMHO, you CANNOT use straight dictionary words (regardless of language, and yes, I do mean Klingon and Sindarin!) in your passwords without some sort of numeric or symbolic character replacement pattern. Then you can use easy to remember song lyrics, movie quotes, and other colloquial sayings as pass phrases. Use them "au naturelle" and you will get pwnd!
P.S. I don't always use the same replacement pattern or characters, either. The above is just an example. I wouldn't use that one as someone has it in their dictionary by now, btw.
Insightful? Dude was a computer scientist, not a xenobiologist. Should they fire the rest of us for every tin foil consiracy theory we believe? ID is no less rational than aliens at Wright Pat, but neither should be fireable offenses.
Again, you are allowed to believe whatever you want, but you are not allowed to promote personal beliefs (in anything) in the workplace. Inappropriate. Pretty much everywhere in the U.S.
... is demoted for rejecting the whole basis, or showing that he has a severely flawed understanding?
Who would have thought.
Actually, the real beef here is promoting personal beliefs in the workplace. It would be like pushing a religion on others where you work. Inappropriate. You as an American citizen are allowed to believe whatever you want, but you are not allowed to impress those beliefs on others in the workplace. I have known several people who have been reprimanded and let go from the place I worked for 11 years due to trying to openly promote Christianity in the office. In this case I would have to imagine it was something similar and the suit has little chance of success, but will generate a ton of political fodder for the coming months. [sigh]
Yeah I don't know anyone either, probably because thousands of people sued out of over three-hundred-million U.S. citizens doesn't make for a very high probability that you will personally meet someone who has been sued. The original submitter is a joke, and should never have been approved on this site.
Yeah, but everyone is six degrees or less from Kevin Mother Fucking Bacon!
That is exactly the issue. Happens all the time, especially in the medical field. You get a payout and are barred from saying anything to anyone. This leaves everyone else in the dark as to how bad things really are.
Except, the settlement in this case would be the person paying the corporation, not vice versa. Why on Earth would the corporation NOT want to make that information public? The effect of suing in the first place is to strike fear of financial ruin into the hearts of all who would share anything. There would be no gag order, and speculating anyone ducking as an AC would be most likely doing so because they are still engaged in illegal activity, as far as the members of the RIAA are concerned, and don't want to get caught again. Maybe? I have not personally been "served" with any nasty-grams, but worked for many years in IT at a university where cease and desist letters were almost a daily occurrence for a while. Have never known anyone personally to have been served or sued.
The same way a course in "Star Trek" makes its way into Georgetown University. Or "Art History" or "Golf Management" or dozens of other courses at dozens of other universities. Because higher education stopped being about actual education and more about a) making money and b) making the students feel good about themselves.
Probably started around the time Philosophy classes stopped reading and teaching Neitzsche, Bacon, Aristotle, and Kant, and started being about... well, slacking off, wondering randomly about whatever, and getting high. Biggest contributing factor, IMO, was when people started to feel they need college degrees, but weren't smart enough or dedicated enough to actually study seriously. So, colleges started making up stupid courses people could take, without requiring them to actually do any work. This allows everyone to get a degree, but makes half of them worthless. But hey, now most people at least have a college degree, right?
First, since when is art history a made up course to only make money? Just because it might have been filler for your course of study doesn't mean it's insignificant to others who are in creative/arts side of the university and need to understand the history and driving forces in their field. Second, when was the last time you looked at a current Philosophy course catalog? Still digging away at everyone from Plato to L. Ron Hubbard. Not sure what you would classify as a university, but there aren't a lot of slack courses at the one I attended and taught at. Insightful my fanny!
I am also in university IT. The students are NOT paying for a free unlimited Internet connection. They are paying for their degree, and can expect Internet access relevant to their degree, nothing more. Since a large amount of University funding comes from tax payers, why should they/we foot the bill for students to waste terabytes of data on Youtube and torrents?
Umm, not sure what state or country you are in but most universities I know get no more than about 33% of their money from the state (most of that is used for salaries). The rest comes from tuition ( more than 50%) and donations/gifts to the university. So, OP not only could be paying for his/her connection, they are most likely supporting the entire university connection to the Internet. The university has a right to protect its systems and data, but not the right to restrict what people do with their own on their own time. There are very easy ways to cordon off dorm and other student networks (campus wireless) from the rest of campus while allowing general access to university systems and the Internet. Draconian access policies do not make better students nor more secure systems. In fact the exact opposite is almost assured in this case as students will be working from inside your network to breach whatever they can for the access they want. You will have more problems to deal with not less. I know, I have seen it happen. Unless the IT department is running on the bad metric of more tickets is good, you're creating more problems than you solve.
1. There's one thing universities hate more than budget cuts and that's bad publicity. Make a noise and get this issue in the local press and higher if you can do it.
2. For your best results to Item 1 stage a protest to get your point across and get the media there. Social networking and flyers posted around campus will be very helpful with getting other wronged folks out in force. Give folks at least a few days notice and let them know time and place. You may or may not want to inform the administration, depends on their assemblage policies and attitudes toward non-violent protest. You need to also come up with a viable solution (or at least some evidence to contradict their draconian stance), so research some other universities with open networks, Virginia Tech is one. Make sure your student government and whatever governing body of the university are aware of the issue as well. Letter's to those bodies may be sufficient to get the ball rolling.
I have worked both as a student and as an administrative faculty member to change backwards policies. It's difficult and takes time, but I have used the techniques above for success. The most important thing to remember is you are dealing with academic minded folks, so the more information and evidence you can bring forward to support change, and the more eyes you can get watching are critical for success in changing policy. Good luck! You certainly have a large community of support behind you..
Remove the HDs
Boot from a CD (live CD distro), allow user-owned USB drives for persistent storage.
Optionally, customize the live CD to your needs, installing and removing packages to suit the task.
Red
Honestly, for the situation OP's in (obviously a relative noob to true sysadmin if he has to ask) this is the easiest and best solution. Only issues he might have are dhcp and dns, given we know nothing about his network environment. This and similar posts should be modded up. Ye ole Keep It Simple Stupid Rule applies here for sure! Oh, and be explicit as LiveCD also applies to DVD, i.e., a DVD has more space (dual layer at 8.5 GB) and can hold a larger live image.
Ok, this isn't a part and parcel thing. Increased global temperatures (and this is fact, not theory) will have a massive negative impact on humanity, AND the other millions of species that are all a part of the ecosystem we depend on to survive. Humans have, through our actions over the last 150 years or so, increased global carbon emissions at a rate that our ecosystem cannot handle through evolution. We are creating a disaster on a scale that will extinct thousands of species and take millions of years to correct if we don't do something about it quickly. Lose one or a few key species due to extinction because they cannot survive the warmer climate and humans are in big trouble (this includes flora as well as fauna). The only questions remaining there, if we continue on our current path, are which species and when, no ifs involved. The political nonsense is just that, political nonsense being used by people to get elected or re-elected. Those bastards will say anything to get elected including feed the ignorance of the masses to meet their own ends. What we need to do about it is as clear as the evidence. We need to stop burning stuff for energy! Any sane, rational, logical person can see that once they know enough about the systems and materials involved. It's a very complex set of interactions, and not something that can be explained in detail needed for comprehension in a/. post, an email, a single 100 minute movie, nor an impassioned speech on a legislative floor.
Another good example, the sound barrier. Before Chuck Yeager became the man to break the speed of sound the prevailing scientific consensus was that it was impossible to travel at or faster than the speed of sound. It was the crazy, fringe crackpots that shirked common wisdom and said, "Yes, we can." But, this is not always going to work, and with climate change there is clear evidence that human industrialization and the rapid increase in the burning of stuff for heat to make energy is directly affecting global temperatures and the climate in general. The probability that this information is wrong, or not scientifically sound are more than a bit remote and the crackpots in this case will remain cracked pots. Now, where's that guy from a week or so ago that said burning stuff was ok...
Exactly what I said, here http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2680545&cid=39095997 But, with the included caveat that you may be able to keep the job as the policy may violate labor laws (or privacy laws, now that I think of it) in your state. This is a non-issue as unless OP lives in a country with no labor or privacy laws, and a totalitarian regime that tells you where to work, you don't have to work for them, or you can fight back legally and keep the job.
Despite what Fox News might say, we're not a fascist, socialist country here in the United States and you still have the right to tell your employer to go fuck themselves and get another job. There's no monarch/dictator/cabal/regime telling you where you can and cannot work. An employer in the United States CANNOT force you to do anything that you don't want to do, because you can leave the company and get another job. The whole issue is ridiculous. Even if you did not want to quit, the state in which you live may have labor laws to protect you from such abuse of personal privacy making it impossible for them to enforce such an offensive policy. So, no, a company cannot force you to do anything you don't want to, and you can possibly defend yourself and keep that job if you want.
The first thing a defendant's lawyer is going to do is subpoena a true copy of the originals. Then the cat will be out of the BAG for sure.
Why were you the first one to post on this, so low in the chain?!! That was the FIRST thought in my head, "A subpoena ought to clear that up in about a week!" I wish we could mod up thread as well as points!
Do you think I would talk about it when I hack the CIA? Uh... I mean IF I hacked the CIA!
If these guys in Anonymous have a tenth of common sense as they have hacking skills, they'll keep their mouths shut about specifics.
First of all, the CIA's website is inconsequential to their secret data, or their day to day business operations beyond PR. The CIA does not keep anything terribly interesting accessible to the Internet. Never have, never will. The best you might do is external email servers, and probably not advisable either. Whomever this is, they are basically barking at one of the largest honey pots on Earth, and only generating data that could be used against them. I would hope that Anonymous members would be more aware.
"Most steel engines have a thermodynamic limit of 37%. Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18%-20%.[11] Rocket engine efficiencies are better still, up to 70%, because they operate at very high temperatures and pressures and can have very high expansion ratios.[12]"
"Typical thermal efficiency for electrical generators in the industry is around 33% for coal and oil-fired plants, and up to 50% for combined-cycle gas-fired plants. Plants designed to achieve peak efficiency while operating at capacity will be less efficient when operating off-design (i.e. temperatures too low.)[3]"
"GE H series power generation gas turbine: in combined cycle configuration, this 480-megawatt unit has a rated thermal efficiency of 60%."
"A large single cycle gas turbine typically produces 100 to 400 megawatts of power and have 35â"40% thermal efficiency.[15]"
"Typical microturbine efficiencies are 25 to 35%. When in a combined heat and power cogeneration system, efficiencies of greater than 80% are commonly achieved." [80% or better is great, but limited applications]
And all these methods of combustion produce carbon emissions, even the gas turbines. Granted, smaller amounts, but not zero.
"Single p-n junction crystalline silicon devices are now approaching the theoretical limiting efficiency of 37.7%, noted as the Shockleyâ"Queisser limit in 1961. However multiple layer solar cells have a theoretical limit of 86%"
"Tidal power is actually incredibly efficient (85% efficiency) when compared to things like coal power plants (30% efficiency) which is where the majority of electricity currently comes from."
"Mr. Betz pointed this out and then proceeded to prove, with solid physics and math, that the best that could be achieved by a wind turbine is around 59%. In other words, a perfect best-possible wind turbine would be able to convert almost 59% of the power in the wind into mechanical rotating power."
Looks to me like efficiencies aren't that far off from burned stuff alternatives, and at least solar has some head room to get a lot better. Wind and tidal are mechanical-to-electrical processes so you would expect them to be lower efficiencies, but still within acceptable ranges given the zero emissions.
So, my point? We need to bring up the efficiencies of non-combustible means of power generation for work and stop burning stuff! Burning stuff does us no good and, is not overall more efficient than wind, solar and tidal when combined in similar usage patterns. To use the "but-it's-the-most-efficient-way-we-have" argument is ridiculous because that's true only due to the oil, coal and LNG industries stifling research budgets and buying up (and then dumping in a closet somewhere) technologies that might change their dominance. The tidal, solar and wind technologies would be farther along if research budgets hadn't been cut in the past 30 years. Advances are coming quickly now that renewed funding has been
Ummm, maybe because biofuels, although renewable as a source of combustion still produce carbon byproducts that are harmful to our environment? Lower emissions, sure, but not zero and still being burned in engines that are at best 50% efficient at turning that burned fuel into useful work. So, yeah, still bad. Still wrong direction.
Ok, you seemed to argue against my point in the first paragraph then you seemed to get my point and come to some agreement in the second. I didn't say this was going to be an immediate transition, but it does need to happen faster on the scale of "as fast as we can".
How large a class size are we talking about for you to be able to track and maintain "meta-grades" for students? This instructor is at a "polytechnic" school (like I was) most likely teaching very large sections (i.e., 100+ students per section, usually two to three sections per instructor, per course) and is most likely using some sort of course management system to boot. Yes, with class sizes of no more than 30 per section and teaching two or three sections you can do things like "meta-grades" for students because you are most likely the only person grading the papers. This instructor probably has one or two grad students that help grade, or-heaven forbid-he/she has to hand grade all the tests, quizzes and assignments alone for 300+ students. No time for meta-grades. If there is a course management system involved, most won't handle meta-grades so the instructor would have to keep track of the meta-grades externally, adding another layer of tasks to grading.
Yours is a good idea, but doesn't scale well to a polytechnic school where class sizes are three to five times as big as what you may be used to dealing with. Polytechnics also add the layer of needing to do research, scholarly papers, conferences, master's and ph.d student advising, and they may have another one or two classes they may want to or are required to teach. It's A LOT tougher to defeat cheating in 100+ person classes, unless you aim to not regurgitate things verbatim. Giving complex problems where multiple things have to be applied to solve them is probably the best tool for large class sizes. As others have said, the hardest tests are open book because good ones evaluate the application of knowledge, not just the regurgitation of said knowledge. So, to the OP, how do you prevent cheating? Make a better test!
Why?!?! Why are we still burning things to make things go!?!?! This is the epiphany that hit me the other day. We, as a species have been burning stuff for heat for MILLENNIA! It is so bad now that we are affecting our climate. I don't care how "clean" it is we have to stop burning stuff to get energy. PERIOD! We have to stop supporting research to produce more "burning stuff" alternatives. It's the WRONG DAMN DIRECTION! Tidal, wind, solar that's where we need to go. We have a 4 billion year supply of energy coming from our sun (the heating from which also drives our winds)...USE IT! We have tidal forces driven by the sun and our moon that are just as limitless...USE IT! For crying out loud, we need to pull our collective heads out of our arses and wake up and smell the coffee! We can't keep burning stuff for energy, it's gonna kill us as a species if we don't quit soon, i.e., within a few more generations.
Slashdot Mirror
Is Vogon poetry available in common attack-dictionaries?
No, but Klingon Shakespeare is!
Well, not exactly applicable but interesting to the discussion.
I think the point is that consideration must be made for the "location" of the access portal. That is, if anyone with an internet connection can try their key in your lock, you probably want a pretty good lock.
But for access to things that have additional security, the lock quality may be reduced in favor of a key that is easy to remember.
1. Keep a good, long, easy-to-remember passphrase for access to your TrueCrypt partition that sits on a private computer inside your house.
2. Store passwords inside this partition in something like KeePass. The KeePass password doesn't need to be industrial. It should be easy to remember, but non-obvious. You type this password a lot.
3. Keep all internet passwords at maximum strength for the site and make them random from your password generator.
Thank you. Now we know you use a private machine at your home, with a TrueCrypt volume on it and a KeePass directory of your passwords. We'll be watching your social network accounts to see when you're on vacation. lol
First of all, you're setting yourself up with a massive fail should anything in this chain go wrong as all your eggs are in one basket. I could go on, but it's pointless. You haven't thought this scheme all the way through. What if the hard drive goes bad? What if just one or two sectors on this hard drive go bad? What if you get hit by a bus, have a heart attack, get caught in an act of terrorism or act of God? (just realized there isn't much difference between these, hmmmm) Not only is that bad password security, it's just bad IT practice all around.
@lw@y$ U$3 Ch@r@ct3r R3pl@c3m3nt 1f Y0u U$3 R3@l W0rd$ 1n Y0ur P@$$phr@$3$ !!!
I have passwords that look like that (minus the spaces). Break that with a dictionary! :p
Seriously folks, if you use real words in a password in this day and age, you're a little bit more than naive or completely out of touch with what computers of the current generation are capable of. IMHO, you CANNOT use straight dictionary words (regardless of language, and yes, I do mean Klingon and Sindarin!) in your passwords without some sort of numeric or symbolic character replacement pattern. Then you can use easy to remember song lyrics, movie quotes, and other colloquial sayings as pass phrases. Use them "au naturelle" and you will get pwnd!
P.S. I don't always use the same replacement pattern or characters, either. The above is just an example. I wouldn't use that one as someone has it in their dictionary by now, btw.
Insightful? Dude was a computer scientist, not a xenobiologist. Should they fire the rest of us for every tin foil consiracy theory we believe? ID is no less rational than aliens at Wright Pat, but neither should be fireable offenses.
Again, you are allowed to believe whatever you want, but you are not allowed to promote personal beliefs (in anything) in the workplace. Inappropriate. Pretty much everywhere in the U.S.
... is demoted for rejecting the whole basis, or showing that he has a severely flawed understanding?
Who would have thought.
Actually, the real beef here is promoting personal beliefs in the workplace. It would be like pushing a religion on others where you work. Inappropriate. You as an American citizen are allowed to believe whatever you want, but you are not allowed to impress those beliefs on others in the workplace. I have known several people who have been reprimanded and let go from the place I worked for 11 years due to trying to openly promote Christianity in the office. In this case I would have to imagine it was something similar and the suit has little chance of success, but will generate a ton of political fodder for the coming months. [sigh]
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
- Han Solo
Yeah I don't know anyone either, probably because thousands of people sued out of over three-hundred-million U.S. citizens doesn't make for a very high probability that you will personally meet someone who has been sued. The original submitter is a joke, and should never have been approved on this site.
Yeah, but everyone is six degrees or less from Kevin Mother Fucking Bacon!
That is exactly the issue. Happens all the time, especially in the medical field. You get a payout and are barred from saying anything to anyone. This leaves everyone else in the dark as to how bad things really are.
Except, the settlement in this case would be the person paying the corporation, not vice versa. Why on Earth would the corporation NOT want to make that information public? The effect of suing in the first place is to strike fear of financial ruin into the hearts of all who would share anything. There would be no gag order, and speculating anyone ducking as an AC would be most likely doing so because they are still engaged in illegal activity, as far as the members of the RIAA are concerned, and don't want to get caught again. Maybe? I have not personally been "served" with any nasty-grams, but worked for many years in IT at a university where cease and desist letters were almost a daily occurrence for a while. Have never known anyone personally to have been served or sued.
The same way a course in "Star Trek" makes its way into Georgetown University. Or "Art History" or "Golf Management" or dozens of other courses at dozens of other universities. Because higher education stopped being about actual education and more about a) making money and b) making the students feel good about themselves.
Probably started around the time Philosophy classes stopped reading and teaching Neitzsche, Bacon, Aristotle, and Kant, and started being about... well, slacking off, wondering randomly about whatever, and getting high. Biggest contributing factor, IMO, was when people started to feel they need college degrees, but weren't smart enough or dedicated enough to actually study seriously. So, colleges started making up stupid courses people could take, without requiring them to actually do any work. This allows everyone to get a degree, but makes half of them worthless. But hey, now most people at least have a college degree, right?
First, since when is art history a made up course to only make money? Just because it might have been filler for your course of study doesn't mean it's insignificant to others who are in creative/arts side of the university and need to understand the history and driving forces in their field. Second, when was the last time you looked at a current Philosophy course catalog? Still digging away at everyone from Plato to L. Ron Hubbard. Not sure what you would classify as a university, but there aren't a lot of slack courses at the one I attended and taught at. Insightful my fanny!
I am also in university IT. The students are NOT paying for a free unlimited Internet connection. They are paying for their degree, and can expect Internet access relevant to their degree, nothing more. Since a large amount of University funding comes from tax payers, why should they/we foot the bill for students to waste terabytes of data on Youtube and torrents?
Umm, not sure what state or country you are in but most universities I know get no more than about 33% of their money from the state (most of that is used for salaries). The rest comes from tuition ( more than 50%) and donations/gifts to the university. So, OP not only could be paying for his/her connection, they are most likely supporting the entire university connection to the Internet. The university has a right to protect its systems and data, but not the right to restrict what people do with their own on their own time. There are very easy ways to cordon off dorm and other student networks (campus wireless) from the rest of campus while allowing general access to university systems and the Internet. Draconian access policies do not make better students nor more secure systems. In fact the exact opposite is almost assured in this case as students will be working from inside your network to breach whatever they can for the access they want. You will have more problems to deal with not less. I know, I have seen it happen. Unless the IT department is running on the bad metric of more tickets is good, you're creating more problems than you solve.
1. There's one thing universities hate more than budget cuts and that's bad publicity. Make a noise and get this issue in the local press and higher if you can do it. 2. For your best results to Item 1 stage a protest to get your point across and get the media there. Social networking and flyers posted around campus will be very helpful with getting other wronged folks out in force. Give folks at least a few days notice and let them know time and place. You may or may not want to inform the administration, depends on their assemblage policies and attitudes toward non-violent protest. You need to also come up with a viable solution (or at least some evidence to contradict their draconian stance), so research some other universities with open networks, Virginia Tech is one. Make sure your student government and whatever governing body of the university are aware of the issue as well. Letter's to those bodies may be sufficient to get the ball rolling. I have worked both as a student and as an administrative faculty member to change backwards policies. It's difficult and takes time, but I have used the techniques above for success. The most important thing to remember is you are dealing with academic minded folks, so the more information and evidence you can bring forward to support change, and the more eyes you can get watching are critical for success in changing policy. Good luck! You certainly have a large community of support behind you..
Remove the HDs Boot from a CD (live CD distro), allow user-owned USB drives for persistent storage. Optionally, customize the live CD to your needs, installing and removing packages to suit the task. Red
Honestly, for the situation OP's in (obviously a relative noob to true sysadmin if he has to ask) this is the easiest and best solution. Only issues he might have are dhcp and dns, given we know nothing about his network environment. This and similar posts should be modded up. Ye ole Keep It Simple Stupid Rule applies here for sure! Oh, and be explicit as LiveCD also applies to DVD, i.e., a DVD has more space (dual layer at 8.5 GB) and can hold a larger live image.
Yeah, it could have been from the coal burning power plant in Michigan. Who knows, right?
Ok, this isn't a part and parcel thing. Increased global temperatures (and this is fact, not theory) will have a massive negative impact on humanity, AND the other millions of species that are all a part of the ecosystem we depend on to survive. Humans have, through our actions over the last 150 years or so, increased global carbon emissions at a rate that our ecosystem cannot handle through evolution. We are creating a disaster on a scale that will extinct thousands of species and take millions of years to correct if we don't do something about it quickly. Lose one or a few key species due to extinction because they cannot survive the warmer climate and humans are in big trouble (this includes flora as well as fauna). The only questions remaining there, if we continue on our current path, are which species and when, no ifs involved. The political nonsense is just that, political nonsense being used by people to get elected or re-elected. Those bastards will say anything to get elected including feed the ignorance of the masses to meet their own ends. What we need to do about it is as clear as the evidence. We need to stop burning stuff for energy! Any sane, rational, logical person can see that once they know enough about the systems and materials involved. It's a very complex set of interactions, and not something that can be explained in detail needed for comprehension in a /. post, an email, a single 100 minute movie, nor an impassioned speech on a legislative floor.
Another good example, the sound barrier. Before Chuck Yeager became the man to break the speed of sound the prevailing scientific consensus was that it was impossible to travel at or faster than the speed of sound. It was the crazy, fringe crackpots that shirked common wisdom and said, "Yes, we can." But, this is not always going to work, and with climate change there is clear evidence that human industrialization and the rapid increase in the burning of stuff for heat to make energy is directly affecting global temperatures and the climate in general. The probability that this information is wrong, or not scientifically sound are more than a bit remote and the crackpots in this case will remain cracked pots. Now, where's that guy from a week or so ago that said burning stuff was ok...
Put your head near my butt after a few pints of Guiness and I'll show you...
Exactly what I said, here http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2680545&cid=39095997 But, with the included caveat that you may be able to keep the job as the policy may violate labor laws (or privacy laws, now that I think of it) in your state. This is a non-issue as unless OP lives in a country with no labor or privacy laws, and a totalitarian regime that tells you where to work, you don't have to work for them, or you can fight back legally and keep the job.
Despite what Fox News might say, we're not a fascist, socialist country here in the United States and you still have the right to tell your employer to go fuck themselves and get another job. There's no monarch/dictator/cabal/regime telling you where you can and cannot work. An employer in the United States CANNOT force you to do anything that you don't want to do, because you can leave the company and get another job. The whole issue is ridiculous. Even if you did not want to quit, the state in which you live may have labor laws to protect you from such abuse of personal privacy making it impossible for them to enforce such an offensive policy. So, no, a company cannot force you to do anything you don't want to, and you can possibly defend yourself and keep that job if you want.
The first thing a defendant's lawyer is going to do is subpoena a true copy of the originals. Then the cat will be out of the BAG for sure.
Why were you the first one to post on this, so low in the chain?!! That was the FIRST thought in my head, "A subpoena ought to clear that up in about a week!" I wish we could mod up thread as well as points!
Do you think I would talk about it when I hack the CIA? Uh... I mean IF I hacked the CIA!
If these guys in Anonymous have a tenth of common sense as they have hacking skills, they'll keep their mouths shut about specifics.
First of all, the CIA's website is inconsequential to their secret data, or their day to day business operations beyond PR. The CIA does not keep anything terribly interesting accessible to the Internet. Never have, never will. The best you might do is external email servers, and probably not advisable either. Whomever this is, they are basically barking at one of the largest honey pots on Earth, and only generating data that could be used against them. I would hope that Anonymous members would be more aware.
Burning stuff produces most energy at least cost, huh? Me thinks someone needs to go back to school:
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#Measures_of_engine_performance
"Most steel engines have a thermodynamic limit of 37%. Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18%-20%.[11] Rocket engine efficiencies are better still, up to 70%, because they operate at very high temperatures and pressures and can have very high expansion ratios.[12]"
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil-fuel_power_station
"Typical thermal efficiency for electrical generators in the industry is around 33% for coal and oil-fired plants, and up to 50% for combined-cycle gas-fired plants. Plants designed to achieve peak efficiency while operating at capacity will be less efficient when operating off-design (i.e. temperatures too low.)[3]"
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_turbine
"GE H series power generation gas turbine: in combined cycle configuration, this 480-megawatt unit has a rated thermal efficiency of 60%."
"A large single cycle gas turbine typically produces 100 to 400 megawatts of power and have 35â"40% thermal efficiency.[15]"
"Typical microturbine efficiencies are 25 to 35%. When in a combined heat and power cogeneration system, efficiencies of greater than 80% are commonly achieved." [80% or better is great, but limited applications]
And all these methods of combustion produce carbon emissions, even the gas turbines. Granted, smaller amounts, but not zero.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#Efficiency
"Single p-n junction crystalline silicon devices are now approaching the theoretical limiting efficiency of 37.7%, noted as the Shockleyâ"Queisser limit in 1961. However multiple layer solar cells have a theoretical limit of 86%"
From: http://renewableenergyindex.com/renewable-energy-questions/how-efficient-is-tidal-power
"Tidal power is actually incredibly efficient (85% efficiency) when compared to things like coal power plants (30% efficiency) which is where the majority of electricity currently comes from."
From: http://www.ftexploring.com/energy/wind-enrgy.html
"Mr. Betz pointed this out and then proceeded to prove, with solid physics and math, that the best that could be achieved by a wind turbine is around 59%. In other words, a perfect best-possible wind turbine would be able to convert almost 59% of the power in the wind into mechanical rotating power."
Looks to me like efficiencies aren't that far off from burned stuff alternatives, and at least solar has some head room to get a lot better. Wind and tidal are mechanical-to-electrical processes so you would expect them to be lower efficiencies, but still within acceptable ranges given the zero emissions.
So, my point? We need to bring up the efficiencies of non-combustible means of power generation for work and stop burning stuff! Burning stuff does us no good and, is not overall more efficient than wind, solar and tidal when combined in similar usage patterns. To use the "but-it's-the-most-efficient-way-we-have" argument is ridiculous because that's true only due to the oil, coal and LNG industries stifling research budgets and buying up (and then dumping in a closet somewhere) technologies that might change their dominance. The tidal, solar and wind technologies would be farther along if research budgets hadn't been cut in the past 30 years. Advances are coming quickly now that renewed funding has been
Ummm, maybe because biofuels, although renewable as a source of combustion still produce carbon byproducts that are harmful to our environment? Lower emissions, sure, but not zero and still being burned in engines that are at best 50% efficient at turning that burned fuel into useful work. So, yeah, still bad. Still wrong direction.
Ok, you seemed to argue against my point in the first paragraph then you seemed to get my point and come to some agreement in the second. I didn't say this was going to be an immediate transition, but it does need to happen faster on the scale of "as fast as we can".
How large a class size are we talking about for you to be able to track and maintain "meta-grades" for students? This instructor is at a "polytechnic" school (like I was) most likely teaching very large sections (i.e., 100+ students per section, usually two to three sections per instructor, per course) and is most likely using some sort of course management system to boot. Yes, with class sizes of no more than 30 per section and teaching two or three sections you can do things like "meta-grades" for students because you are most likely the only person grading the papers. This instructor probably has one or two grad students that help grade, or-heaven forbid-he/she has to hand grade all the tests, quizzes and assignments alone for 300+ students. No time for meta-grades. If there is a course management system involved, most won't handle meta-grades so the instructor would have to keep track of the meta-grades externally, adding another layer of tasks to grading.
Yours is a good idea, but doesn't scale well to a polytechnic school where class sizes are three to five times as big as what you may be used to dealing with. Polytechnics also add the layer of needing to do research, scholarly papers, conferences, master's and ph.d student advising, and they may have another one or two classes they may want to or are required to teach. It's A LOT tougher to defeat cheating in 100+ person classes, unless you aim to not regurgitate things verbatim. Giving complex problems where multiple things have to be applied to solve them is probably the best tool for large class sizes. As others have said, the hardest tests are open book because good ones evaluate the application of knowledge, not just the regurgitation of said knowledge. So, to the OP, how do you prevent cheating? Make a better test!
Why?!?! Why are we still burning things to make things go!?!?! This is the epiphany that hit me the other day. We, as a species have been burning stuff for heat for MILLENNIA! It is so bad now that we are affecting our climate. I don't care how "clean" it is we have to stop burning stuff to get energy. PERIOD! We have to stop supporting research to produce more "burning stuff" alternatives. It's the WRONG DAMN DIRECTION! Tidal, wind, solar that's where we need to go. We have a 4 billion year supply of energy coming from our sun (the heating from which also drives our winds)...USE IT! We have tidal forces driven by the sun and our moon that are just as limitless...USE IT! For crying out loud, we need to pull our collective heads out of our arses and wake up and smell the coffee! We can't keep burning stuff for energy, it's gonna kill us as a species if we don't quit soon, i.e., within a few more generations.