The team adds that the efforts of a cracker attempting to influence the array will be wholly obvious to a simple statistical analysis as -- depending on the type of attack -- either the whole array or single elements will be disturbed, whereas these are again selected randomly. So this true random number generator can protect systems against third-party snooping, potentially making private and sensitive transactions on the Internet more secure.
Now I'm really skeptical. A cracker who is able to "influence" the array might be able to influence it with a pseudorandom number generator that he/she can predict.
I think that hardware based RNGs, such as those detecting radioactive isotope decay, have been around for a while. I'm not sure how this one can provide more security, especially if the attacker has access to the hardware. I think that most gate transition thresholds can be influence by simple things like temperature anyway.
What exactly does "more random" mean in the summary? I think something is either random or it isn't. Perhaps this claim should just make us "more skeptical".
I setup a similar system for our Linux machines in under a day.
I presume that your Linux machines were using LDAP and Kerberos.
Mac OS X uses Open Directory, which is really just... (wait for it)... LDAP and Kerberos.
So you are saying that you could get LDAP and Kerberos on Linux to "handle some user information but forward password authentication to [...] ActiveDirectory"; but that you could not get LDAP and Kerberos on Mac OS X to "handle some user information but forward password authentication to [...] ActiveDirectory".
What's wrong with this picture?
What's wrong is that I'm not a professional system administrator. It's not my job to dig into the internals of LDAP or Kerberos. That's why we purchase support.
The reason I was able to solve the problem so quickly with Linux is that I spent some time with Google and found someone else who had solved the problem. I copied their files, customized them, and it worked. I don't have the time to figure out exactly what is going on under the hood because it's not my job. The whole reason I bought an Apple server is because with Apple it's supposed to just work.
By the way, Linux uses PAM for its authentication, OS X doesn't. So, even though Open Directory is "just LDAP and Kerberos," configuring an equivalent setup on OS X is not identical to the Linux configuration.
If you ignore the products that they market to businesses, then it probably does look like they don't market to businesses.
I'm a university professor and a heavy Mac user. I like having my unix tools together with the sexy interface. (Having wifi working without having to hunt for driver patches and recompile a kernel is nice, too.)
Last year, I bought an XServe so that I could manage a bunch of iMacs in labs. But, to make everything really work right, I needed the OpenDirectory on the XServer to handle some user information but forward password authentication to the University's existing ActiveDirectory setup. I don't have the time to twiddle with LDAP configuration, so I asked our Apple support representative to deal with it. After all, we pay for university-wide support from Apple, so we might as well get something for it. Well, one month later the "support" arrived... they sent me links to the on-line manuals (which I had already read). I never did get it working.
I setup a similar system for our Linux machines in under a day.
So, I don't think Apple is ready for the enterprise, even with their "enterprise products."
I'm a math professor at a U.S. university, and I must sadly agree with you. I regularly have students in first year calculus classes who can't add fractions even though they received high marks on their standardized high school math tests.
On the issue of language, however, I would encourage the pedantically minded to remember that grammar and spelling are artificial constructions which serve only to model the natural language. Therefore, if the majority of English speakers choose to: split infinitives, end sentences with prepositions, spell phonetically, add symbols to the alphabet to compress textual communication, abandon the subjunctive, etc., then those users are--by definition--correct. Academic grammarians must adapt and keep pace with the ever changing nature of language.
I believe it sets dx to the MSb of ax and ends up leaving ax unchanged.
oops! I guess I'm getting my AT&T syntax and my Intel syntax confused. If it's Intel syntax, then:
cdw;; copy MSb of ax to all bits of dx xor ax, dx;; if MSb of ax was 1 then flip bits of ax, otherwise, no effect sub ax, dx;; if MSb was originally 1, this will add 1 to the flipped bits. otherwise, no effect
So, assuming Intel syntax, this computes to absolute value of ax and sets all the bits of dx to be the sign bit
I'm also a big YASM fan. YASM can generate object files for Windows, OS X, and Linux. That, combined with its macro features, let you write a single x86 file that can be used on all three platforms.
Your point is correct. You have to have additional information about the traffic. Often this comes in the form of frequency analysis of the trial decryption, or a known block of plaintext that is part of the formatting or protocol of the message (the standard example is the date of the message that the Nazi's often placed in their Enigma encrypted messages; if you know the date of the intercept, then you've got a pretty good guess for the plaintext for the first half dozen letter, so it's easier to test if a key is correct.)
If you are an open source coder (as I am), and you are involved with a project on sourceforge (as I was until a couple minutes ago), just ask the principal maintainer to move it to a different site. If they don't, stop contributing. Or, if you really don't care, then just go on with business as usual.
"But we cannot have free and open dissemination of information and literature unless the use of written material continues to be controlled by those who write it or own legitimate right in it. We urge our government and our courts to allow no corporation to circumvent copyright law or dictate the terms of that control."
So, which corporation is more evil when it comes to copyright: Disney or Google? Seems to me that Le Guin is in effect supporting the Disney model.
Wow, I must be getting old. I still use emacs for all my coding and memory dumps for my debugging. When I started using emacs, the vi guys in the group would mock me for being a wimp.
When I travel, I want to be able to go into a coffee shop, get my espresso, and sit down and use my laptop on the internet without having to hand out credit card information or any other sort of credentials. I make a point of only frequenting businesses with open access points because I want to reward their community service. I recommend that others do the same!
Those two surfaces are fundamentally different, topologically speaking. Would a spherical torus would look something like a 4-sided triangle? Or sound like one hand clapping?
Cosmic.
Hahaha.... and when you mod out by the commutators, they're still---oops! Sorry, I was math-geeking out there.
I dropped my land line last year - haven't missed it. I did go with VOIP because I have young kids and I want them to be able to pick up a phone in the house and quickly dial 911 in an emergency. As soon as they are old enough to use a cell phone reliably, even if under duress, I'll be dropping the VOIP. In the past I might hesitate to go strictly mobile but with Google Voice available now, it's a no brainer.
We also dropped our land line and have cellular only. We also have have young children, so our solution to the 911 was to put an old cell phone in a dedicated location and keep it plugged in to the charger (which shuts off when fully charged, so no flames about power wasting or battery memory please). We taught the kids how to use the old phone. Even though it isn't on any network, it will work to make 911 calls.
Except that it wouldn't be obscure for long... it only takes a single blogger getting run through the security process while trying to board for the whole "secret new screening procedure" to become completely known.
To paraphrase Bruce Schneier, it seems like the DHS/TSA is now engaging in security meta-theater so that they can demonstrate how oh-so-very-important the security theater is.
Re:numb driving experience
on
A Requiem For Saab
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Have you examined the typical American diet? It's very bland; flavored only with fat, sugar, and salt.
Re:Let's just be clear on what they mean here
on
A Requiem For Saab
·
· Score: 1
Please mod parent up.
(The post provides informative rationale for design decisions.)
I mostly agree with an open review system, but there are a few issues. Reviews probably need to remain anonymous in some fields to prevent the scientific equivalent of "log rolling" : providing good review to people who gave you favourable reviews. Some fields are small enough that the pool of available reviewers is tiny.
My point is, something could be totally right inside the little confines of a model, while the premises of the model become a matter of opinion and philosophy. So I don't see how you can actually separate the two; what's opinion and what's objective, so cleanly like that.
Yes, these are certainly valid objections. Perhaps the review system needs multiple mechanisms for assessing articles.
An open refereeing system could establish correctness (or, in less rigorous disciplines, could judge how likely it is that the presented data and arguments support conclusions). This part would not impart value judgments (such as how significant the results are).
A "significance" mechanism for determining the value of a work could begin with a slashdot/digg style rating scheme that raises worthwhile results above the inevitable noise of crank submissions. Those works could then be evaluated for significance (within a field) openly by experts in that field. Significance evaluations would need to be cumulative, so it would take many experts agreeing that a work is important within a field before it gets elevated to the equivalent position of a top-level journal paper. Much like slashdot, the experts might even have a limited number of (randomly and secretly assigned) mod-points that they can use for significance. This provides a polite exit from a complicated quid-pro-quo political situation:
"Hey John, I was just looking at your article on homeomorphic fig-tree inversions, and it seems pretty significant. I've got a related result on peach-trees that I recently submitted, could you take a look at it?"
"Sure Dave, but I'm all out of mod points this year, so all I can do is check the correctness for you."
The significance measure could also be fluid over time and incorporate measures like how often the work is cited, etc. Certainly the system would have many wrinkles to be worked out in its initial years. Perhaps, though, in the long run we would have a superior system to the current mess.
You'd need to implement something like that in a hierarchical manner, not unlike slashdot. The number of submissions would dramatically increase due to its free nature while the quality would surely decline, and nobody wants to sit there and read a large percentage of questionable work to determine if it's valid and if so if the results are correct. New submissions could be subject to quick reviews for validity testing (with moderation of course, people who troll by negatively reviewing and voting down new papers without actually reading them or considering their results, or for any bias should be barred from such reviews), and once a paper has been verified it can move on to a stage where people who don't want to sift through garbage to find the gold can really scrutinize them and see if they stand up.
Why not make such a website?:)
Yes, the description you're providing is very similar to what I have in mind. I would love to create such a website, but it will have to wait until after I have tenure... and I'll need some sizable grants to get it up and running to begin with. I wonder if NSF would fund the development of such a system:-)
As a professor myself, I hope that the unintended consequence will be that we move away from the restrictive, expensive, academic journal publishers like Elsevier and toward an open model of academic publication where your recognition and peer review come from broad, open, dissemination.
I, for one, would like to see a peer review system where articles are posted on-line and evaluations (i.e. referee reports) are also posted in an open, strongly authenticated, way. I don't know about you, but one thing that really annoys me is to receive a referee report on a paper where it is obvious that the referee hasn't even read past the introduction. I believe that forcing the evaluations to be open, and strongly-authenticated (so that everyone knows exactly who is writing it) would improve the quality and credibility of research.
I suspect that some people would claim that if referee reports aren't anonymous, then they won't be honest. But, a referee report should not be about opinions, it should be a straight forward analysis of the results reported in the paper. If it's really science, then it should be completely objective, thus opinion and personality should have nothing to do with it. Hence, there should be no need for anonymity. When I grade my students' papers, it certainly isn't anonymous, but it doesn't need to be because I am giving them objective feedback (e.g. "this is wrong because you said cos(x+h) = cos(x) + cos(h) which is not true.").
Using an open system would allow articles to receive recognition and ranking based upon the open discussion of their merits. Individuals doing the ranking could also receive recognition for the quality of their work, which is important because it can sometimes take weeks of work to thoroughly understand a new result. That work should receive more acknowledgment in the academic system than it currently does. (I suspect it's the current lack of acknowledgment for refereeing which makes many people into lazy referees. After all, why bother putting much effort into that referee report when it won't count toward promotion. You are better off spending that time writing your own papers.)
Finally, using an open system gives the public greater credibility in the system. When people want to know why paper A is considered correct and paper B isn't, the analysis and discussion will be available, too.
Hell, charge money for it as a value-added service to route the search requests through their anonymizing server, which they promise not to log, for the paranoid user. I'd feel a lot better doing that than using some dubious Tor node.
The problem with a pay-based anonymizing server is that they have to get money from you somehow. That alone leaves a bit-trail which can be traced by the government, and in many countries the governments are actually mandating that commercial service providers keep logs. So, for the truly paranoid, I don't see how a fee-based anonymizer is superior to Tor. With Tor, if you're willing to use multiple nodes (and accept the resulting huge performance hit) then it seems to me you get better security than using a single commercial anonymizer.
a: A good enough topic to convince the boss to pay...
b: Cheap enough to convince the boss to pay...
c: In a nice enough location that you want to go...
So a $100/person conference in Hawaii sounds about right to me.
Yep, that all sounds about right to me, but one more thing to add is a good schedule. The conference needs to have built-in breaks for both formal and informal peer networking/socializing. Formal networking can be small-group break-out sessions or very small panel talks on technical topics. Some of the best conferences I've been to for this have "coding sprints" on open source projects in the afternoons.
Informal socializing doesn't necessarily require booze. Some of the best I've attended have included hiking trips, museum tours, or even theater presentations. Don't get me wrong, I like alcohol as much as the next guy, but I think that there are plenty of self-identified geeks who are uncomfortable with the whole booze+mingling thing, so give everyone some options.
Is pumping boiling water through pipes the most efficient way to heat houses? Isn't there a pretty massive heat loss in the pipes?
Having said that, if they are already using this system for heat, the introduction of waste heat from a datacenter seems to make a lot of sense. Acts as a heat sink for the data center, reduces the amount of energy needed to heat the water.
Actually, it's a reasonable system for heating large building complexes where a central facility can heat the water. Many Universities and large corporate complexes already use similar methods for heating their campuses. Insulation on the pipes keeps the water warm in transit. These complexes can also cool their buildings in the summer by pumping chilled water through the system.
Maybe, just maybe, consumers who value actual news over sensationalized claptrap are finding that the opinion pieces and "human interest" stories which dominate Murdoch's offerings are fungible commodities.
Good bye Wall Street Journal. You were a reputable publication at one time.
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA:
The team adds that the efforts of a cracker attempting to influence the array will be wholly obvious to a simple statistical analysis as -- depending on the type of attack -- either the whole array or single elements will be disturbed, whereas these are again selected randomly. So this true random number generator can protect systems against third-party snooping, potentially making private and sensitive transactions on the Internet more secure.
Now I'm really skeptical. A cracker who is able to "influence" the array might be able to influence it with a pseudorandom number generator that he/she can predict.
I think that hardware based RNGs, such as those detecting radioactive isotope decay, have been around for a while. I'm not sure how this one can provide more security, especially if the attacker has access to the hardware. I think that most gate transition thresholds can be influence by simple things like temperature anyway.
What exactly does "more random" mean in the summary? I think something is either random or it isn't. Perhaps this claim should just make us "more skeptical".
I setup a similar system for our Linux machines in under a day.
I presume that your Linux machines were using LDAP and Kerberos.
Mac OS X uses Open Directory, which is really just ... (wait for it) ... LDAP and Kerberos.
So you are saying that you could get LDAP and Kerberos on Linux to "handle some user information but forward password authentication to [...] ActiveDirectory"; but that you could not get LDAP and Kerberos on Mac OS X to "handle some user information but forward password authentication to [...] ActiveDirectory".
What's wrong with this picture?
What's wrong is that I'm not a professional system administrator. It's not my job to dig into the internals of LDAP or Kerberos. That's why we purchase support.
The reason I was able to solve the problem so quickly with Linux is that I spent some time with Google and found someone else who had solved the problem. I copied their files, customized them, and it worked. I don't have the time to figure out exactly what is going on under the hood because it's not my job. The whole reason I bought an Apple server is because with Apple it's supposed to just work.
By the way, Linux uses PAM for its authentication, OS X doesn't. So, even though Open Directory is "just LDAP and Kerberos," configuring an equivalent setup on OS X is not identical to the Linux configuration.
If you ignore the products that they market to businesses, then it probably does look like they don't market to businesses.
I'm a university professor and a heavy Mac user. I like having my unix tools together with the sexy interface. (Having wifi working without having to hunt for driver patches and recompile a kernel is nice, too.)
Last year, I bought an XServe so that I could manage a bunch of iMacs in labs. But, to make everything really work right, I needed the OpenDirectory on the XServer to handle some user information but forward password authentication to the University's existing ActiveDirectory setup. I don't have the time to twiddle with LDAP configuration, so I asked our Apple support representative to deal with it. After all, we pay for university-wide support from Apple, so we might as well get something for it. Well, one month later the "support" arrived... they sent me links to the on-line manuals (which I had already read). I never did get it working.
I setup a similar system for our Linux machines in under a day.
So, I don't think Apple is ready for the enterprise, even with their "enterprise products."
I'm a math professor at a U.S. university, and I must sadly agree with you. I regularly have students in first year calculus classes who can't add fractions even though they received high marks on their standardized high school math tests.
On the issue of language, however, I would encourage the pedantically minded to remember that grammar and spelling are artificial constructions which serve only to model the natural language. Therefore, if the majority of English speakers choose to: split infinitives, end sentences with prepositions, spell phonetically, add symbols to the alphabet to compress textual communication, abandon the subjunctive, etc., then those users are--by definition--correct. Academic grammarians must adapt and keep pace with the ever changing nature of language.
I believe it sets dx to the MSb of ax and ends up leaving ax unchanged.
oops! I guess I'm getting my AT&T syntax and my Intel syntax confused. If it's Intel syntax, then:
cdw ;; copy MSb of ax to all bits of dx ;; if MSb of ax was 1 then flip bits of ax, otherwise, no effect ;; if MSb was originally 1, this will add 1 to the flipped bits. otherwise, no effect
xor ax, dx
sub ax, dx
So, assuming Intel syntax, this computes to absolute value of ax and sets all the bits of dx to be the sign bit
I believe it sets dx to the MSb of ax and ends up leaving ax unchanged.
I'm also a big YASM fan. YASM can generate object files for Windows, OS X, and Linux. That, combined with its macro features, let you write a single x86 file that can be used on all three platforms.
I'll certainly take a look at JWASM, though!
Your point is correct. You have to have additional information about the traffic. Often this comes in the form of frequency analysis of the trial decryption, or a known block of plaintext that is part of the formatting or protocol of the message (the standard example is the date of the message that the Nazi's often placed in their Enigma encrypted messages; if you know the date of the intercept, then you've got a pretty good guess for the plaintext for the first half dozen letter, so it's easier to test if a key is correct.)
If you are an open source coder (as I am), and you are involved with a project on sourceforge (as I was until a couple minutes ago), just ask the principal maintainer to move it to a different site. If they don't, stop contributing. Or, if you really don't care, then just go on with business as usual.
"But we cannot have free and open dissemination of information and literature unless the use of written material continues to be controlled by those who write it or own legitimate right in it. We urge our government and our courts to allow no corporation to circumvent copyright law or dictate the terms of that control."
So, which corporation is more evil when it comes to copyright: Disney or Google? Seems to me that Le Guin is in effect supporting the Disney model.
Wow, I must be getting old. I still use emacs for all my coding and memory dumps for my debugging. When I started using emacs, the vi guys in the group would mock me for being a wimp.
Great!!
When I travel, I want to be able to go into a coffee shop, get my espresso, and sit down and use my laptop on the internet without having to hand out credit card information or any other sort of credentials. I make a point of only frequenting businesses with open access points because I want to reward their community service. I recommend that others do the same!
Those two surfaces are fundamentally different, topologically speaking. Would a spherical torus would look something like a 4-sided triangle? Or sound like one hand clapping?
Cosmic.
Hahaha.... and when you mod out by the commutators, they're still---oops! Sorry, I was math-geeking out there.
Agreed. I don't think that CyberSquatter is going to have much luck, even in U.S. courts, on collecting from the Chinese government.
I dropped my land line last year - haven't missed it. I did go with VOIP because I have young kids and I want them to be able to pick up a phone in the house and quickly dial 911 in an emergency. As soon as they are old enough to use a cell phone reliably, even if under duress, I'll be dropping the VOIP. In the past I might hesitate to go strictly mobile but with Google Voice available now, it's a no brainer.
We also dropped our land line and have cellular only. We also have have young children, so our solution to the 911 was to put an old cell phone in a dedicated location and keep it plugged in to the charger (which shuts off when fully charged, so no flames about power wasting or battery memory please). We taught the kids how to use the old phone. Even though it isn't on any network, it will work to make 911 calls.
Except that it wouldn't be obscure for long... it only takes a single blogger getting run through the security process while trying to board for the whole "secret new screening procedure" to become completely known.
To paraphrase Bruce Schneier, it seems like the DHS/TSA is now engaging in security meta-theater so that they can demonstrate how oh-so-very-important the security theater is.
Have you examined the typical American diet? It's very bland; flavored only with fat, sugar, and salt.
Please mod parent up.
(The post provides informative rationale for design decisions.)
I mostly agree with an open review system, but there are a few issues. Reviews probably need to remain anonymous in some fields to prevent the scientific equivalent of "log rolling" : providing good review to people who gave you favourable reviews. Some fields are small enough that the pool of available reviewers is tiny.
My point is, something could be totally right inside the little confines of a model, while the premises of the model become a matter of opinion and philosophy. So I don't see how you can actually separate the two; what's opinion and what's objective, so cleanly like that.
Yes, these are certainly valid objections. Perhaps the review system needs multiple mechanisms for assessing articles.
An open refereeing system could establish correctness (or, in less rigorous disciplines, could judge how likely it is that the presented data and arguments support conclusions). This part would not impart value judgments (such as how significant the results are).
A "significance" mechanism for determining the value of a work could begin with a slashdot/digg style rating scheme that raises worthwhile results above the inevitable noise of crank submissions. Those works could then be evaluated for significance (within a field) openly by experts in that field. Significance evaluations would need to be cumulative, so it would take many experts agreeing that a work is important within a field before it gets elevated to the equivalent position of a top-level journal paper. Much like slashdot, the experts might even have a limited number of (randomly and secretly assigned) mod-points that they can use for significance. This provides a polite exit from a complicated quid-pro-quo political situation:
"Hey John, I was just looking at your article on homeomorphic fig-tree inversions, and it seems pretty significant. I've got a related result on peach-trees that I recently submitted, could you take a look at it?"
"Sure Dave, but I'm all out of mod points this year, so all I can do is check the correctness for you."
The significance measure could also be fluid over time and incorporate measures like how often the work is cited, etc. Certainly the system would have many wrinkles to be worked out in its initial years. Perhaps, though, in the long run we would have a superior system to the current mess.
You'd need to implement something like that in a hierarchical manner, not unlike slashdot. The number of submissions would dramatically increase due to its free nature while the quality would surely decline, and nobody wants to sit there and read a large percentage of questionable work to determine if it's valid and if so if the results are correct. New submissions could be subject to quick reviews for validity testing (with moderation of course, people who troll by negatively reviewing and voting down new papers without actually reading them or considering their results, or for any bias should be barred from such reviews), and once a paper has been verified it can move on to a stage where people who don't want to sift through garbage to find the gold can really scrutinize them and see if they stand up.
Why not make such a website? :)
Yes, the description you're providing is very similar to what I have in mind. I would love to create such a website, but it will have to wait until after I have tenure... and I'll need some sizable grants to get it up and running to begin with. I wonder if NSF would fund the development of such a system:-)
As a professor myself, I hope that the unintended consequence will be that we move away from the restrictive, expensive, academic journal publishers like Elsevier and toward an open model of academic publication where your recognition and peer review come from broad, open, dissemination.
I, for one, would like to see a peer review system where articles are posted on-line and evaluations (i.e. referee reports) are also posted in an open, strongly authenticated, way. I don't know about you, but one thing that really annoys me is to receive a referee report on a paper where it is obvious that the referee hasn't even read past the introduction. I believe that forcing the evaluations to be open, and strongly-authenticated (so that everyone knows exactly who is writing it) would improve the quality and credibility of research.
I suspect that some people would claim that if referee reports aren't anonymous, then they won't be honest. But, a referee report should not be about opinions, it should be a straight forward analysis of the results reported in the paper. If it's really science, then it should be completely objective, thus opinion and personality should have nothing to do with it. Hence, there should be no need for anonymity. When I grade my students' papers, it certainly isn't anonymous, but it doesn't need to be because I am giving them objective feedback (e.g. "this is wrong because you said cos(x+h) = cos(x) + cos(h) which is not true.").
Using an open system would allow articles to receive recognition and ranking based upon the open discussion of their merits. Individuals doing the ranking could also receive recognition for the quality of their work, which is important because it can sometimes take weeks of work to thoroughly understand a new result. That work should receive more acknowledgment in the academic system than it currently does. (I suspect it's the current lack of acknowledgment for refereeing which makes many people into lazy referees. After all, why bother putting much effort into that referee report when it won't count toward promotion. You are better off spending that time writing your own papers.)
Finally, using an open system gives the public greater credibility in the system. When people want to know why paper A is considered correct and paper B isn't, the analysis and discussion will be available, too.
Hell, charge money for it as a value-added service to route the search requests through their anonymizing server, which they promise not to log, for the paranoid user. I'd feel a lot better doing that than using some dubious Tor node.
The problem with a pay-based anonymizing server is that they have to get money from you somehow. That alone leaves a bit-trail which can be traced by the government, and in many countries the governments are actually mandating that commercial service providers keep logs. So, for the truly paranoid, I don't see how a fee-based anonymizer is superior to Tor. With Tor, if you're willing to use multiple nodes (and accept the resulting huge performance hit) then it seems to me you get better security than using a single commercial anonymizer.
For a non-academic conference, it needs to be
a: A good enough topic to convince the boss to pay...
b: Cheap enough to convince the boss to pay...
c: In a nice enough location that you want to go...
So a $100/person conference in Hawaii sounds about right to me.
Yep, that all sounds about right to me, but one more thing to add is a good schedule. The conference needs to have built-in breaks for both formal and informal peer networking/socializing. Formal networking can be small-group break-out sessions or very small panel talks on technical topics. Some of the best conferences I've been to for this have "coding sprints" on open source projects in the afternoons.
Informal socializing doesn't necessarily require booze. Some of the best I've attended have included hiking trips, museum tours, or even theater presentations. Don't get me wrong, I like alcohol as much as the next guy, but I think that there are plenty of self-identified geeks who are uncomfortable with the whole booze+mingling thing, so give everyone some options.
Is pumping boiling water through pipes the most efficient way to heat houses? Isn't there a pretty massive heat loss in the pipes?
Having said that, if they are already using this system for heat, the introduction of waste heat from a datacenter seems to make a lot of sense. Acts as a heat sink for the data center, reduces the amount of energy needed to heat the water.
Actually, it's a reasonable system for heating large building complexes where a central facility can heat the water. Many Universities and large corporate complexes already use similar methods for heating their campuses. Insulation on the pipes keeps the water warm in transit. These complexes can also cool their buildings in the summer by pumping chilled water through the system.
Maybe, just maybe, consumers who value actual news over sensationalized claptrap are finding that the opinion pieces and "human interest" stories which dominate Murdoch's offerings are fungible commodities.
Good bye Wall Street Journal. You were a reputable publication at one time.