The average joe doesn't understand how Microsoft's ownership of the browser market was a serious setback for technology, for user experience, for productivity. For five years MS had nothing better to offer than IE6 because they owned the market. They didn't need to rev their browser because they weren't competing. Five years, from 2001 to 2006. The Great Languish. Or maybe The Great Rot. How many Windows systems did you have to clean up for friends and family? How fun was it coping with all the standards noncompliance? Thanks a lot, Microsoft. I don't ever want that again.
So, for one thing, I will fight Microsoft's domination of the market by being against them so long as they're over, say, 1/3 the market. (I don't think the platform (OS/browser) is really a commodity until it shows greater signs of market variance.) And for another, I will push for the best and most standards compliant alternatives to cover whatever ground MS loses.
We're not quite there yet. The browser wars aren't over.
If the people who in effect vote by their choice of browser don't know what kind of effect they're having, it's my responsibility as a technology aware friend and netizen to encourage their better choices.
Arguably, self-confidence -- however extreme, so long as it's commensurate with ability -- is not bad per se. Contempt for others less able is the real problem.
My understanding of a troll does not include them being earnest about their position. A "political / religious hater" troll is not a true troll, just a jerk, rather attached to their position and honest about it.
IE6 at 17% of market and plummeting. Time to drop it from dev efforts.
If you're inclined to think "hey, that's still 1 in 6 people!", consider they're probably not a segment that'll be buying anything from you anyway. Except maybe denture cream.
Extra credit: Reconsider giving newer versions of IE special dev effort, too. They're made by the same company that brought you IE6, who didn't mind stalling web tech for over half a decade.
Okay, how about this... One pass of zeroes, which on my system takes 1/300th the time urandom takes, then start in an a urandom pass.
Better yet, since the article is suggesting that the SSDs understand NTFS and are using filesystem structure to delete unneeded SSD blocks, wipe your drive in this order:
1. quick format 2. complete overwrite with zeroes 3. complete overwrite with urandom
The quick format happens near instantly and starts the drive erasing itself, so if you're interrupted after formatting, the data is in the process of disappearing.
The zeroes overwrite happens really fast and assures the data is munged block by block. No recovery using the drive unmolested as a device to read its own chips. An extreme gimping of the data done fast.
The randomish overwrite, which takes a while, presumably makes the data on the chips harder to... read with a microscope or something? Oscilloscope?
I set up anti-spam measures back in 2003 and they lasted fairly well, but the system was hinged almost exclusively on DNSRBLs, of which 2/3 disappeared. Poor choices on my part.
Then I did a lot of research and reconfigured my anti-spam system. It's now very efficient, very cautious, and with "defense in depth" among other things, more robust and durable. It continues to work extremely well 3 years later, without adjustments.
Did the stats just now and I'm catching 99.7% spam (failing to handle 27 spam out of 8252 total spam attempts for the past month).
With the order I have my measures implemented, 30% of rejects are for broken HELOs, 40% are by DNSBL (Spamhaus XBL primarily, and SpamCop SCBL), 15% are for bogus recipient addresses, and 15% are greylisted. (Counting stats on greylisted rejections is a bit hard -- consider this a fuzzy factor. So my actual spam catch rate may be theoretically as low as 99.4%.)
I use no content-based filtering. Which saves on resources. But if I had less faith in these DNSBLs I'd probably add that into the mix.
If Spamhaus XBL failed, SpamCop SCBL and greylisting would pick up the slack very well. If XBL and SCBL failed, greylisting would probably pick up the slack well enough.
Or you could probably just set up SpamAssassin. But I'm a sysadmin by vocation, so I wanted to understand and have control.
The articles linked in the summary? The PoF blog says stuff like
On January 18th, after days of countless and unsuccessful attempts, a hacker gained access to Plentyoffish.com database. We are aware from our logs that 345 accounts were successfully exported. Hackers attempted to negotiate with Plentyoffish to âoehireâ them as a security team. If Plentyoffish failed to cooperate, hackers threatened to release hacked accounts to the press.
[Emphasis mine.]
It may be a while before a more objective view is sorted out.
And note that Intention is affected by Perspective. Some people would think they're doing everyone good using plans that most everyone would view as evil.
Certainly's there's some benefit in "sending a message" with your vote. But we still need to consider the benefit to be gained by helping the not-as-bad candidate win over the quite-horrible candidate.
A = value of a symbolic vote B = impact of a horrible candidate C = impact of a not-as-bad candidate
Is A greater than B - C?
You could have put a capuchin monkey up against the Bush and his administration and the benefit of having Bush defeated either time would have still been worlds more valuable than any incremental message.
To everyone who's in support of "message" voting: People are not going to stop strategic voting in our FPP system. I can understand your frustration, but your wanting people to "do the right thing" is not going to amount to them doing the right thing. Take note: Just because there exists a "right way" or "logical way" doesn't mean people can be convinced to act that way. Thinking so gets you points on the Autism scale.
By not encouraging a form of preference voting, you are supporting a continued two-party system. Thankfully, you can boost preference voting in parallel with any other activism. Do so. Getting forms of preference voting enacted is a kind of reform that stands a chance, and has been making inroads.
I think the fact that the direct mechanism for peptic ulcers is bacteria does not preclude stress's being a cause.
It's like thinking "I was not the cause of your concussion, it was the baseball bat".
An expert panel convened by the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research concluded that ulcers are not purely an infectious disease and that psychological factors do play a significant role. Researchers are examining how stress might promote H. pylori infection. For example, Helicobacter pylori thrives in an acidic environment, and stress has been demonstrated to cause the production of excess stomach acid. This was supported by a study on mice showing that both long-term water-immersion-restraint stress and H. pylori infection were independently associated with the development of peptic ulcers.
My suggestion is that we grant them this personhood when they ask for it. When they're able to ask for it, then it's obvious they deserve it. Until then, there's a huge gap between what humans are capable of and what various smart animals are capable of.
The flip side to this is "When it's not obvious that someone is a person, don't grant personhood." Why does it have to be obvious rather than just something that can be discovered, perhaps with light study? A subject's being able to ask is an easy and convenient measure, sure. But quite different from how one ought to decide important ethical matters. I would not recommend being cruel out of laziness.
What is personhood? What does it mean to be deserving of it?
It's not about language ability.
Simply put, if a creature can feel pain it should not be subject to unnecessary suffering. Whether a creature can feel is the true measure of its value. Not how much cleverness it has. Is it okay to torture profoundly retarded children? Even if they're not as smart as your border collie? Is it okay to torture border collies? Even if they're not as smart as a normal preschooler?
A description of the auditing process. It's not as awesome as your average "they're among the best" proclaimers would think, but it's healthy. This is no way substantiates the claim, though.
You're right to question. And it makes the OpenBSD fans look bad that you got modded flamebait.
If you want to find out what's going on with people creating 3D works that are meant for 3D printing/replication, and what the implications of copyability are, check Bathsheba Grossman's work:
Maybe we can get her to make a comment on cheap duplication. I think she's already getting some effects from service bureau-level duplication (Shapeways).
Slashdot Mirror
The average joe doesn't understand how Microsoft's ownership of the browser market was a serious setback for technology, for user experience, for productivity. For five years MS had nothing better to offer than IE6 because they owned the market. They didn't need to rev their browser because they weren't competing. Five years, from 2001 to 2006. The Great Languish. Or maybe The Great Rot. How many Windows systems did you have to clean up for friends and family? How fun was it coping with all the standards noncompliance? Thanks a lot, Microsoft. I don't ever want that again.
So, for one thing, I will fight Microsoft's domination of the market by being against them so long as they're over, say, 1/3 the market. (I don't think the platform (OS/browser) is really a commodity until it shows greater signs of market variance.) And for another, I will push for the best and most standards compliant alternatives to cover whatever ground MS loses.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Internet-explorer-usage-data.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Web_browser_usage_share.svg
We're not quite there yet. The browser wars aren't over.
If the people who in effect vote by their choice of browser don't know what kind of effect they're having, it's my responsibility as a technology aware friend and netizen to encourage their better choices.
Arguably, self-confidence -- however extreme, so long as it's commensurate with ability -- is not bad per se. Contempt for others less able is the real problem.
My understanding of a troll does not include them being earnest about their position. A "political / religious hater" troll is not a true troll, just a jerk, rather attached to their position and honest about it.
Yep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_explorer#Market_share_history_overview_by_year_and_version
IE6 at 17% of market and plummeting. Time to drop it from dev efforts.
If you're inclined to think "hey, that's still 1 in 6 people!", consider they're probably not a segment that'll be buying anything from you anyway. Except maybe denture cream.
Extra credit: Reconsider giving newer versions of IE special dev effort, too. They're made by the same company that brought you IE6, who didn't mind stalling web tech for over half a decade.
Okay, how about this... One pass of zeroes, which on my system takes 1/300th the time urandom takes, then start in an a urandom pass.
Better yet, since the article is suggesting that the SSDs understand NTFS and are using filesystem structure to delete unneeded SSD blocks, wipe your drive in this order:
1. quick format
2. complete overwrite with zeroes
3. complete overwrite with urandom
The quick format happens near instantly and starts the drive erasing itself, so if you're interrupted after formatting, the data is in the process of disappearing.
The zeroes overwrite happens really fast and assures the data is munged block by block. No recovery using the drive unmolested as a device to read its own chips. An extreme gimping of the data done fast.
The randomish overwrite, which takes a while, presumably makes the data on the chips harder to ... read with a microscope or something? Oscilloscope?
Why randomish data? Why not just zeroes?
I set up anti-spam measures back in 2003 and they lasted fairly well, but the system was hinged almost exclusively on DNSRBLs, of which 2/3 disappeared. Poor choices on my part.
Then I did a lot of research and reconfigured my anti-spam system. It's now very efficient, very cautious, and with "defense in depth" among other things, more robust and durable. It continues to work extremely well 3 years later, without adjustments.
Did the stats just now and I'm catching 99.7% spam (failing to handle 27 spam out of 8252 total spam attempts for the past month).
With the order I have my measures implemented, 30% of rejects are for broken HELOs, 40% are by DNSBL (Spamhaus XBL primarily, and SpamCop SCBL), 15% are for bogus recipient addresses, and 15% are greylisted. (Counting stats on greylisted rejections is a bit hard -- consider this a fuzzy factor. So my actual spam catch rate may be theoretically as low as 99.4%.)
I use no content-based filtering. Which saves on resources. But if I had less faith in these DNSBLs I'd probably add that into the mix.
If Spamhaus XBL failed, SpamCop SCBL and greylisting would pick up the slack very well. If XBL and SCBL failed, greylisting would probably pick up the slack well enough.
Or you could probably just set up SpamAssassin. But I'm a sysadmin by vocation, so I wanted to understand and have control.
Why are you so mad at DJB or djbdns?
djbdns comes with AXFR tools, maybe you hadn't heard? And really, using rsync and SSH aren't that hard?
Anyway, I think a lot of people are happy with "uninteresting" DNS. It's functional enough, it seems: http://mydns.bboy.net./survey/
Then there's green tea.
The articles linked in the summary? The PoF blog says stuff like
On January 18th, after days of countless and unsuccessful attempts, a hacker gained access to Plentyoffish.com database. We are aware from our logs that 345 accounts were successfully exported. Hackers attempted to negotiate with Plentyoffish to âoehireâ them as a security team. If Plentyoffish failed to cooperate, hackers threatened to release hacked accounts to the press.
[Emphasis mine.]
It may be a while before a more objective view is sorted out.
Intention is one thing.
Competence is another.
And note that Intention is affected by Perspective. Some people would think they're doing everyone good using plans that most everyone would view as evil.
Certainly's there's some benefit in "sending a message" with your vote. But we still need to consider the benefit to be gained by helping the not-as-bad candidate win over the quite-horrible candidate.
A = value of a symbolic vote
B = impact of a horrible candidate
C = impact of a not-as-bad candidate
Is A greater than B - C?
You could have put a capuchin monkey up against the Bush and his administration and the benefit of having Bush defeated either time would have still been worlds more valuable than any incremental message.
To everyone who's in support of "message" voting: People are not going to stop strategic voting in our FPP system. I can understand your frustration, but your wanting people to "do the right thing" is not going to amount to them doing the right thing. Take note: Just because there exists a "right way" or "logical way" doesn't mean people can be convinced to act that way. Thinking so gets you points on the Autism scale.
By not encouraging a form of preference voting, you are supporting a continued two-party system. Thankfully, you can boost preference voting in parallel with any other activism. Do so. Getting forms of preference voting enacted is a kind of reform that stands a chance, and has been making inroads.
Describe them as "Islamic", and you profile about 99.99% of them.
And you drag in about 1,490,000,000 people who are not terrorists.
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is a great scan of the visible universe.
You can view it in Google Sky, NASA makes the raw data available, and you can even get a 3D crystal etching of it.
Sh! (Meaning, be quiet!)
I think the fact that the direct mechanism for peptic ulcers is bacteria does not preclude stress's being a cause.
It's like thinking "I was not the cause of your concussion, it was the baseball bat ".
An expert panel convened by the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research concluded that ulcers are not purely an infectious disease and that psychological factors do play a significant role. Researchers are examining how stress might promote H. pylori infection. For example, Helicobacter pylori thrives in an acidic environment, and stress has been demonstrated to cause the production of excess stomach acid. This was supported by a study on mice showing that both long-term water-immersion-restraint stress and H. pylori infection were independently associated with the development of peptic ulcers.
WP
Vernacular uses "light" to mean "visible light". Please move along.
IT: Spam Volume Spikes After Holiday Respite on 06:11 PM January 11th, 2011
http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/01/11/2132211/Spam-Volume-Spikes-After-Holiday-Respite
Funny, that.
Speaking of a spam dry spell, my mail's spam is down dramatically since the new year.
I haven't parsed logs to find out of my antispam measures are more effective or if the total rate is just down. Anyone else noticing similar?
This is the kind of advertising I don't find offensive. Well done.
Simplistic rules are comforting.
My suggestion is that we grant them this personhood when they ask for it. When they're able to ask for it, then it's obvious they deserve it. Until then, there's a huge gap between what humans are capable of and what various smart animals are capable of.
The flip side to this is "When it's not obvious that someone is a person, don't grant personhood." Why does it have to be obvious rather than just something that can be discovered, perhaps with light study? A subject's being able to ask is an easy and convenient measure, sure. But quite different from how one ought to decide important ethical matters. I would not recommend being cruel out of laziness.
What is personhood? What does it mean to be deserving of it?
It's not about language ability.
Simply put, if a creature can feel pain it should not be subject to unnecessary suffering. Whether a creature can feel is the true measure of its value. Not how much cleverness it has. Is it okay to torture profoundly retarded children? Even if they're not as smart as your border collie? Is it okay to torture border collies? Even if they're not as smart as a normal preschooler?
Flamebait indeed. It doesn't take much baiting for OpenBSD fans to fire up the torches.
But here: http://www.openbsd.org/security.html#process
A description of the auditing process. It's not as awesome as your average "they're among the best" proclaimers would think, but it's healthy. This is no way substantiates the claim, though.
You're right to question. And it makes the OpenBSD fans look bad that you got modded flamebait.
Why do you assume they generate a pass using a simple hash? The phrase "based on the serial number" doesn't say anything about the transform used.
For all we know "based on the serial number" means they're using public key cryptography on an extremely secure system...
If you want to find out what's going on with people creating 3D works that are meant for 3D printing/replication, and what the implications of copyability are, check Bathsheba Grossman's work:
http://www.bathsheba.com/
Maybe we can get her to make a comment on cheap duplication. I think she's already getting some effects from service bureau-level duplication (Shapeways).
Very interesting. Thanks for your work on this. I'll read it.
Meanwhile, for everyone else, here's a sci-fi primer on the idea of Burger-G and how you can expect to lose your job:
Manna