I've had disgruntled ex-tenants threaten to pay their judgments off in pennies before. No one's actually done it yet. I doubt they even got so far as researching just how much it would cost to ship that many pennies to the PO box.
It prevents guessing, and it forces the student to consider whether they actually know the answer, or just think they do.
It would seem that it would really only prevent wild-arsed guessing.
Under your system, if I am over 33% confident in my answer, it is still to my advantage to make a guess. Maybe that's the effect that you're going for, but being 34% confident in myself is not enough for me to claim to "know" something.
Imagine the consequences. If I were taking your test, any time I can eliminate just one choice, my expected value (or penalty) for guessing is 0, assuming I don't have clue #1 about the other choices. But if I actually took your class, I would hope that I would at least have clue #1, so any time I could eliminate one choice with confidence, I would take a stab at answering the question.
Looking at it a different way, let's say I'm a slacker and I only know 50% of the material on your test. What score would I get if I took your test? You are hoping that I'll get 50%, typically a failing grade (if I only learned half of what I was supposed to, I'd say failing is appropriate). But in reality, I would expect to pass your test.
Why? Well, I know 50% of the material, so I'm going to get 50% on your test based on that alone. But the story doesn't end there. If I know 50% of the material, I should be able to eliminate two of the four choices on the questions for which I do not know the answer. That means that I will expect to get half of the remaining questions correct (and half incorrect, of course).
On a 100 question test, I will get: 50*2=100 points for my 50% mastery of the material 25*2=50 points for my "good" guesses 25*(-1)=-25 points for my "bad" guesses
That gives me 125 out of 200 points, or 63%. Nothing to post on the refrigerator, for sure, but I passed, eh?
Heh, yeah I see, as usual, the slashdot blurb is a little short on details.
But I think the point still remains, that sometimes the requirements are that you accept markup from an untrusted source. Unfortunately, I don't think that there is a good way to fix this, as evidenced by all of the high-profile attacks.
Just look at all of the comments to this article: "You must filter all inputs for tags!" "No, stupid, you must filter all outputs!" "XML-Parse all inputs and whitelist any acceptable tags!" "Don't forget the attributes! Javascript can be hidden in there!"
This issue is a real nasty one because there is no silver bullet. And, no, I don't consider replacing all "<"s with a < is the right answer, either, since sometimes you really do need to accept markup from the user.
A silver bullet would be like the silver bullet to stop all SQL Injection attacks: Use substitution variables, and the SQL library will always defend you. When a new attack comes along, upgrade your library and sleep well at night. It works in every language and with every database.
That's a great way for a browser-based email client to display HTML email. Oh, I'm sure that will pass user acceptance testing. Instead of rendering the email, just show a sea of unintelligible HTML markup.
Are there any rules of thumb that can be used to stop XSS hacks for those of use who just want to write secure code but don't really feel like becoming experts in XSS?
For instance, it is trivial to protect yourself from SQL Injection hacks. Just use substitution variables:
SELECT first_name, last_name FROM users WHERE userid=$in_userid
would become
SELECT first_name, last_name FROM users WHERE userid=?
And then just set that variable. Magic, no SQL Injection possible (as long as you trust your DB libraries!).
Is there a similar way to insulate yourself against XSS so we can just go back to writing code that doesn't suck?
huh? I think you'll find that USB is many times faster than WiFi.
I won't dispute that USB is way faster than wi-fi, but I will assert that it doesn't matter in the slightest.
First of all, USB is not the bottleneck, the read rate of your SD card will be the bottleneck. Most consumer SD cards have a read speed of about 5MBps, which is a little slower, but still comparable to wi-fi speeds.
Secondly, none of that matters, because the wi-fi card will be transferring those photos to your PC while you are still shooting. By the time you are ready to start organizing and retouching, if you used wi-fi, the photos are already on your PC. If you use USB, you have to transfer those photos, which I guarantee will be slower than "the photos are already on the PC".
In other words, your comment was technically correct, but utterly irrelevant. HTH. HAND.
I think you missed part of my response, so let me be more direct: I do not believe your statement, that you can pick up $6,000.00 at WU with no ID. Please substantiate.
The only link that I found at WU that mentioned ID requirements implied that ID would require to pick up money in any amount.
Do you know that Western Union doesn't require you to legitimate yourself when withdrawing money if it's not more than (IIRC) 6k bucks?
I was not able to substantiate that claim at Western Union's website. Care to provide a link?
Anyhow, perhaps you can do that trick once. But if you want to make more than $6,000.00 (assuming your claim turns out to be correct), you'll have to repeat the process again and again.
Then, it has become a game of Russian roulette on which of your subsequent visits the friendly Western Union teller turns out to be an FBI agent.
The article didn't have alot of details, but despite what everyone is talking about here, it doesn't sound like the card has the capability of uploading content without initializing the transfer via software on a laptop or other computer.
Well, this beta tester made it sound like the photos could be automatically uploaded to a PC, Flickr, Phanfare, etc.
Unless cameras start being manufactured with support for wifi
Already been done. But most wi-fi add-ons cost way more than $100, and if your camera doesn't have wi-fi at all, well, now you don't need to buy a new camera.
Another consideration is the speed. 802.11g isn't particularly fast.
The fastest SD cards max out at 8MB-10MB/sec write speed. 802.11g has a theoretical max of 6.75 MB/sec. So if we figure 4MB/sec (typical write speed of a consumer-level SD card, by the way), is shooting RAW (~15MB file size for 10MP on my Pentax K10D), and shoots 30 shots per minute.
It would take about 4 seconds to write each photo over the wi-fi network, and the photographer is backed by a 2GB buffer. Will the photog be able to sustain his shooting rate of 30 frames per minute? Well, for a 4 hour wedding, he will generate 7200 photos at that point, and surely be fired by his client for taking so many goddamn pictures that they have to sort through.
A typical number of wedding photos would be in the 750 range. So, can the wi-fi network handle 750*15=11250MB of traffic in 4 hours? It could handle that traffic in 2812 seconds=47 minutes.
Looks like the smart money is on the network keeping up.
I've never heard anybody complain of wear and tear on a USB cable before. I guess there is a first time for everything.
As for wear and tear on the shutter release button, I would think that your shutter itself would fail before the release button, but what do I know?
Anyhow, if this card is ever released, I will buy one for sure. If anything, to solve the "I don't feel like waiting for 2 GB of images to download over USB" problem. With this, there would be no waiting. The images would already just be there.
For pros, this would be a godsend. Totally eliminates the issue of taking 150 photos to a corrupt card.
Funny, people are usually more impressed by my SD card than my new Nikon DSLR.
Well, can you blame them? Sorry, I had to slip that in there. Nikon makes great cameras.
But imagine this. You are a pro, and you take 150 shots on a corrupt SD card. I'm pretty sure at that point you'll be kicking yourself for not shelling out for a $100 wi-fi SD card that would have given you instant backup to a notebook sitting in a corner somewhere.
I can't see this card being much more than a novelty to your casual point and shooter, but the value of something like this to a pro is enormous.
Let's say you're a pro shooting on assignment (event, wedding, on-location, whatever). Do you know how much money it would cost you if your memory card gets corrupted, lost, damaged, etc.? If it happened at a wedding, your career might be over (most wedding photogs shoot on many small memory cards in case one card gets corrupted. It happens more than you think).
But with a wi-fi SD card, you have instant backup. This is huge! Many pros have an on-site workflow that includes backing up the card the instant it's full. With a wi-fi setup, you can be backed up instantly to a notebook with RAID-1 or something. This insurance policy is worth way more than $100.
I'd even argue for you this would be a great investment. You say that you are prone to losing SD cards. Imagine if the card never left your camera. How many $15-$34 SD cards do you need to lose before you wish you had just bought the wi-fi card?
My point was that based on the original post, a used laptop would work just fine to meet the requirements.
Perhaps you are right that a used laptop would meet the requirements. But do you really think that is the correct decision? For the same price, which would you purchase?
iBook G4:
PPC-based, older generation processor (when the future of Macs is Intel)
512MB RAM
40GB HDD
basically, non-upgradeable... unless you've got some serious time to kill
Dell (Windows):
Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB RAM
160GB HDD
easy to upgrade, likely to meet her requirements for the next 5-10 years.
The name of the game is not "How can I get a mac at any cost?" Rather, it's "How can I get the most value for my hard-earned money?"
I cannot see how a previous-generation mac that can't be upgraded without a PhD in electrical engineering provides the most value here.
I have had in my possession at various times over the last five years about ten Apple laptops
I have in my possession, and am currently typing this reply on, the same Dell notebook that I purchased approximately 5 years ago.
If you were intending with your comment to persuade me of the reliability of Apple notebooks, please allow me assure you that you have done the exact opposite.
I think we're going to see a couple big names get killed off as prices fall. It seems inevitable. to me.
I think that's a little wishful thinking on your part.
I've built whitebox machines before. It's a pain, even when you know what you're doing. When something goes wrong, it's a pain to figure out what. It's a hobbyist's game, not a mass-market movement.
I agree that a smart consumer could build a high-end desktop machine less expensively than purchasing it new, but the same is not true for notebooks, and with no support or know-how in the general population, you're not going to see it happening in any significant numbers.
At best, maybe some new player will come in and undercut the dell's of the world, and maybe that's what you were implying. But I don't see whitebox as the wave of the future.
Why does apple care about your $650 dollar sale? Does it generate the 20% profit?
That is totally beside the point. The $650 laptop was not a low-end machine. It was a core 2 duo with 2GB of ram.
My point was merely that mac is ceding more than just the low-end market. Never in the article, nor in the discussion was profit margin discussed. Whether apple cares about that sale or not is beside the point.
I am not criticizing apple. Merely pointing out that you pay a price premium for purchasing one. Nothing wrong with that.
Between the end of November and the beginning of December 2006, 9 people at my office bought new laptops. Every single one of them bought a macbook pro.
I'm very happy for them, but that wasn't my point at all.
I was responding to someone who said that PCs only ruled the low-end market. I countered that I was able to put together a respectable (not low-end) Dell business system for $650, yet the cheapest MacBook still weighs in at $1100.
The keywords there were "not low-end". PCs are still way cheaper that macs, even for decent configurations. The system I spec'ed for my wife far exceeds her requirements, but for $650, why not?
I wasn't responding to the article, I was responding to another poster. That other poster said
When I say "Macs cost more than PCs" what I actually mean to say is that "Apple isn't in the low end market". Of course, everyone I say the former to understands that I mean the later, except the Apple advocates.
My response to him was that even PC-based notebooks with decent configurations (Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM), are way cheaper than the cheapest MacBook.
And I disagree with his premise. He dismisses the "in between" SKUs as "niches". From my point of view, the truth is exactly the opposite: the Mac SKUs themselves are the niches.
I think most people would agree with me.
His premise is that the mac SKUs are the baseline machines, but the whole cornucopia of customized machines at Dell is some type of niche market. I think you both would be well-served to look up the definition of the word "niche".
In fact, I'd be willing to bet that for all configurations except for the niche Mac models, you'd get a significantly better deal customizing a notebook at dell.com.
If we can, from this, draw the conclusion that "Everybody knows PCs are cheaper than Macs, right? Wrong!", then I am Cindy Lauper.
In fact, the only conclusion that we can draw from this guy's analysis is that Dell does not offer a direct feature-by-feature competitor to the MacBook Pro 17. Perhaps Lenovo, HP, Toshiba, Compaq, etc. offer one? I don't know or care enough to look, but what I do know is that with all of those options and all that competition out there, you are bound to get a better deal on a Windows notebook than a MacBook the overwhelming majority of the time.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had disgruntled ex-tenants threaten to pay their judgments off in pennies before. No one's actually done it yet. I doubt they even got so far as researching just how much it would cost to ship that many pennies to the PO box.
Under your system, if I am over 33% confident in my answer, it is still to my advantage to make a guess. Maybe that's the effect that you're going for, but being 34% confident in myself is not enough for me to claim to "know" something.
Imagine the consequences. If I were taking your test, any time I can eliminate just one choice, my expected value (or penalty) for guessing is 0, assuming I don't have clue #1 about the other choices. But if I actually took your class, I would hope that I would at least have clue #1, so any time I could eliminate one choice with confidence, I would take a stab at answering the question.
Looking at it a different way, let's say I'm a slacker and I only know 50% of the material on your test. What score would I get if I took your test? You are hoping that I'll get 50%, typically a failing grade (if I only learned half of what I was supposed to, I'd say failing is appropriate). But in reality, I would expect to pass your test.
Why? Well, I know 50% of the material, so I'm going to get 50% on your test based on that alone. But the story doesn't end there. If I know 50% of the material, I should be able to eliminate two of the four choices on the questions for which I do not know the answer. That means that I will expect to get half of the remaining questions correct (and half incorrect, of course).
On a 100 question test, I will get:
50*2=100 points for my 50% mastery of the material
25*2=50 points for my "good" guesses
25*(-1)=-25 points for my "bad" guesses
That gives me 125 out of 200 points, or 63%. Nothing to post on the refrigerator, for sure, but I passed, eh?
Heh, yeah I see, as usual, the slashdot blurb is a little short on details.
But I think the point still remains, that sometimes the requirements are that you accept markup from an untrusted source. Unfortunately, I don't think that there is a good way to fix this, as evidenced by all of the high-profile attacks.
Just look at all of the comments to this article:
"You must filter all inputs for tags!"
"No, stupid, you must filter all outputs!"
"XML-Parse all inputs and whitelist any acceptable tags!"
"Don't forget the attributes! Javascript can be hidden in there!"
This issue is a real nasty one because there is no silver bullet. And, no, I don't consider replacing all "<"s with a < is the right answer, either, since sometimes you really do need to accept markup from the user.
A silver bullet would be like the silver bullet to stop all SQL Injection attacks: Use substitution variables, and the SQL library will always defend you. When a new attack comes along, upgrade your library and sleep well at night. It works in every language and with every database.
But XSS. That's a real hairball of a problem.
That's a great way for a browser-based email client to display HTML email. Oh, I'm sure that will pass user acceptance testing. Instead of rendering the email, just show a sea of unintelligible HTML markup.
You, sir, are a Pure Man of Genius.
For instance, it is trivial to protect yourself from SQL Injection hacks. Just use substitution variables: would become And then just set that variable. Magic, no SQL Injection possible (as long as you trust your DB libraries!).
Is there a similar way to insulate yourself against XSS so we can just go back to writing code that doesn't suck?
First of all, USB is not the bottleneck, the read rate of your SD card will be the bottleneck. Most consumer SD cards have a read speed of about 5MBps, which is a little slower, but still comparable to wi-fi speeds.
Secondly, none of that matters, because the wi-fi card will be transferring those photos to your PC while you are still shooting. By the time you are ready to start organizing and retouching, if you used wi-fi, the photos are already on your PC. If you use USB, you have to transfer those photos, which I guarantee will be slower than "the photos are already on the PC".
In other words, your comment was technically correct, but utterly irrelevant. HTH. HAND.
What was the maximum amount you could have sent, if you remember? Was it $6000, as a previous poster claimed?
Ok, good deal. Thanks for clarifying.
I think you missed part of my response, so let me be more direct: I do not believe your statement, that you can pick up $6,000.00 at WU with no ID. Please substantiate.
The only link that I found at WU that mentioned ID requirements implied that ID would require to pick up money in any amount.
Anyhow, perhaps you can do that trick once. But if you want to make more than $6,000.00 (assuming your claim turns out to be correct), you'll have to repeat the process again and again.
Then, it has become a game of Russian roulette on which of your subsequent visits the friendly Western Union teller turns out to be an FBI agent.
Well, this beta tester made it sound like the photos could be automatically uploaded to a PC, Flickr, Phanfare, etc.Already been done. But most wi-fi add-ons cost way more than $100, and if your camera doesn't have wi-fi at all, well, now you don't need to buy a new camera.The fastest SD cards max out at 8MB-10MB/sec write speed. 802.11g has a theoretical max of 6.75 MB/sec. So if we figure 4MB/sec (typical write speed of a consumer-level SD card, by the way), is shooting RAW (~15MB file size for 10MP on my Pentax K10D), and shoots 30 shots per minute.
It would take about 4 seconds to write each photo over the wi-fi network, and the photographer is backed by a 2GB buffer. Will the photog be able to sustain his shooting rate of 30 frames per minute? Well, for a 4 hour wedding, he will generate 7200 photos at that point, and surely be fired by his client for taking so many goddamn pictures that they have to sort through.
A typical number of wedding photos would be in the 750 range. So, can the wi-fi network handle 750*15=11250MB of traffic in 4 hours? It could handle that traffic in 2812 seconds=47 minutes.
Looks like the smart money is on the network keeping up.
Online crimes all tend to face the same obstacle: payment.
At some point, you'll want to spend your ill-gotten gains. Don't be surprised if there is an FBI agent waiting for you at the bank.
Nah. For a pro, the photos are always worth way more than the hardware. Otherwise, you wouldn't be pro now, would you?
You can always buy a new card. But if you missed The Shot, then you have big problems.
Wear and tear?
I've never heard anybody complain of wear and tear on a USB cable before. I guess there is a first time for everything.
As for wear and tear on the shutter release button, I would think that your shutter itself would fail before the release button, but what do I know?
Anyhow, if this card is ever released, I will buy one for sure. If anything, to solve the "I don't feel like waiting for 2 GB of images to download over USB" problem. With this, there would be no waiting. The images would already just be there.
For pros, this would be a godsend. Totally eliminates the issue of taking 150 photos to a corrupt card.
But imagine this. You are a pro, and you take 150 shots on a corrupt SD card. I'm pretty sure at that point you'll be kicking yourself for not shelling out for a $100 wi-fi SD card that would have given you instant backup to a notebook sitting in a corner somewhere.
I can't see this card being much more than a novelty to your casual point and shooter, but the value of something like this to a pro is enormous.
Let's say you're a pro shooting on assignment (event, wedding, on-location, whatever). Do you know how much money it would cost you if your memory card gets corrupted, lost, damaged, etc.? If it happened at a wedding, your career might be over (most wedding photogs shoot on many small memory cards in case one card gets corrupted. It happens more than you think).
But with a wi-fi SD card, you have instant backup. This is huge! Many pros have an on-site workflow that includes backing up the card the instant it's full. With a wi-fi setup, you can be backed up instantly to a notebook with RAID-1 or something. This insurance policy is worth way more than $100.
I'd even argue for you this would be a great investment. You say that you are prone to losing SD cards. Imagine if the card never left your camera. How many $15-$34 SD cards do you need to lose before you wish you had just bought the wi-fi card?
iBook G4:
Dell (Windows):
- Intel Core 2 Duo
- 2GB RAM
- 160GB HDD
- easy to upgrade, likely to meet her requirements for the next 5-10 years.
The name of the game is not "How can I get a mac at any cost?" Rather, it's "How can I get the most value for my hard-earned money?"I cannot see how a previous-generation mac that can't be upgraded without a PhD in electrical engineering provides the most value here.
If you were intending with your comment to persuade me of the reliability of Apple notebooks, please allow me assure you that you have done the exact opposite.
I've built whitebox machines before. It's a pain, even when you know what you're doing. When something goes wrong, it's a pain to figure out what. It's a hobbyist's game, not a mass-market movement.
I agree that a smart consumer could build a high-end desktop machine less expensively than purchasing it new, but the same is not true for notebooks, and with no support or know-how in the general population, you're not going to see it happening in any significant numbers.
At best, maybe some new player will come in and undercut the dell's of the world, and maybe that's what you were implying. But I don't see whitebox as the wave of the future.
-- no warranty
-- no support
-- some previous user's ketchup stains on the 's' key
-- 142 dead pixels
-- etc.
My point was merely that mac is ceding more than just the low-end market. Never in the article, nor in the discussion was profit margin discussed. Whether apple cares about that sale or not is beside the point.
I am not criticizing apple. Merely pointing out that you pay a price premium for purchasing one. Nothing wrong with that.
I was responding to someone who said that PCs only ruled the low-end market. I countered that I was able to put together a respectable (not low-end) Dell business system for $650, yet the cheapest MacBook still weighs in at $1100.
The keywords there were "not low-end". PCs are still way cheaper that macs, even for decent configurations. The system I spec'ed for my wife far exceeds her requirements, but for $650, why not?
And I disagree with his premise. He dismisses the "in between" SKUs as "niches". From my point of view, the truth is exactly the opposite: the Mac SKUs themselves are the niches.
I think most people would agree with me.
His premise is that the mac SKUs are the baseline machines, but the whole cornucopia of customized machines at Dell is some type of niche market. I think you both would be well-served to look up the definition of the word "niche".
In fact, I'd be willing to bet that for all configurations except for the niche Mac models, you'd get a significantly better deal customizing a notebook at dell.com.
If we can, from this, draw the conclusion that "Everybody knows PCs are cheaper than Macs, right? Wrong!", then I am Cindy Lauper.
In fact, the only conclusion that we can draw from this guy's analysis is that Dell does not offer a direct feature-by-feature competitor to the MacBook Pro 17. Perhaps Lenovo, HP, Toshiba, Compaq, etc. offer one? I don't know or care enough to look, but what I do know is that with all of those options and all that competition out there, you are bound to get a better deal on a Windows notebook than a MacBook the overwhelming majority of the time.