Not to mention that ego races and greed are some of the best ways to motivate people to accomplish great things. I doubt we'd ever have gone to the moon had it not been for the ego race between the US and the USSR and those trips are one of the main reasons that space still holds any appeal to people back here on Earth.
Science for science sake is a great idea, just like socialism. In practice, however, most implementations leave something to be desired...
Exactly. Password security is not simply dependent on how many and what type of characters are used, but also on what the person using the password does with it. Even the most secure password could be easily determined if the user tried to use it to register on a non-legitimate site. It really depends on the user, as well as the password. A semi-weak password used by a security conscious person is far better at protecting something than an extremely strong password used by someone who doesn't know, or care, about security.
"Someone with a bomb in his backpack that he wants to explode in a mass of people, taking himself to heaven in the process, behaves very much different from someone who has a fake bomb in their back trying to get one over the security guards."
That's the same rational used to explain why lie detectors should be admissible in court, and the same one that was shot down by the supreme court. Oh sure, your average person will act in an odd manor if they have a bomb on them (though honestly I'm not sure how you could tell with how uncomfortable airports and airport security is for most people. If you're not acting a little funny then you're the odd one out most of the time) but you can easily train someone to act perfectly calm, reasonable, and normal with anything on their person. Same goes for lying, for a normal, untrained, undetermined individual a lie detector works pretty well. For someone trained and determined to evade it there's nothing you can do to stop them really.
"The problem is that Microsoft ensured that there will never again be competitors in either space."
Except, you know, Firefox and iTunes. And Opera, Safari, the upcoming Songbird, and about a hundred other media playing programs.
All MS did was make that area free to the user. That's really it, IE's existence didn't stop Mozilla from making FF and Media Player didn't stop Apple from moving iTunes over to the PC. All it did was wipe out the ability for people to charge for these products, which was really a net benefit to the consumer as their computers can now do more that they could, and do so without spending a penny. Is it really a bad thing that Realplayer and Netscape's cost based system for media playback and internet viewing (respectively, of course) was eliminated?
I'm getting a 49/100 in my FF:(. I wonder what that last point is since the only extensions I have running that should interfere are security related ones (as in, don't abuse my security ones which shouldn't be used by Acid3). Perhaps it's a user-setting somewhere in the about:config or something...
"then perhaps we can all reasonably expect to be safe regardless of the type of public street we walk down."
Impossible. The darkest and hardest to see area will always be the most dangerous, it's not a matter of pitch-black = muggings but rather a 'darker and less watched than the other place' = muggings.
"Now if you'd say we can't reasonably expect to be perfectly safe walking through an abandoned building, that'd be another matter."
Not really, I'd feel safer in an abandon building than a dark alley. Of course I'd feel pretty safe anywhere near where I live, with the crime rate as low as it is. The point is that wherever is least monitored is most likely to be used for crimes, whether or not it's pitch black or not, and that there have to be such places unless you monitor every place (in which case every place becomes equally likely as the monitoring isn't likely to be that great).
"That doesn't mean I'd want somebody to be peering inside 24/7 watching my every move."
Fair enough. Google street view is so far from this, however, that is a completely fallacious slippery slope argument to claim it's even remotely Orwellian in nature. Now then, I for one do think that google should give some warning that they're taking the pictures, but even if they don't it's still a large leap from 'Single static picture taken from street-level and of fairly low quality' to 24/7 video of you in your house.
It would seem to be quite unlikely for any object to be directly in line with the axis of they system, even the Earth. Given the distance that would be, what, a couple milli-arcs off being a clean miss?
Speed is as good an excuse as any. On a Windows machine I can swing my mouse from one part of the screen to another and end up on the close button with 90% accuracy, primarily because of its size. On macs (and the distro of linux my school uses) I have to swing the mouse over, then spend a few extra seconds lining it up because of how small the close button is. Sure, it's only a few seconds, but convienience is a factor in OS choice, and Window's close buttons got that part right a lot more than Mac (if you can avoid the ever present 'there's no space between the restore to default and close buttons, be careful' problem, which is usually irrelevant if you don't use non-maximized windows much).
"But if I did have it on my laptop, I'd sure as hell change my passwords the first chance I get."
This seems like a bit of an illogical statement, along the lines of calling to cancel a lost credit card. You seem to be making the claim that a laptop with those saved credentials can be lost, which is a good enough reason to not make use of it, and yet people have been losing and canceling credit cards for years, a laptop is much easier to notice missing than a piece of plastic, and the problem wouldn't be hard at all to fix.
Personally I commit my passwords to memory and let my computer auto-fill them, the auto-fill for convenience (and because the chances of me losing my laptop, my primary computer which is pretty much on my person at all times and has a high strength login password among other security measures are slim to none) and the memory so that I can get into them without my computer, whether it be to change them or simply to get to them from another computer.
There's plenty of stuff that goes on on Wall Street that's not immediate profit making. Just look at Apple, they announce something that won't make any profit for a long time, and their stock goes up. Microsoft (or was it sony?) announces that their next gen console will start making a profit in 2010, and their stock goes up.
Very few products make a profit the day they come out. For the most part the first month or so (on average) is just spent remaking the production costs, and then everything past that is pure profit.
Right, because corporate competitions in which two big companies do their best to ensure that their format wins the battle, with the individuals being frightened that their purchases will become obsolete is soo much fun.
Standards should be decided on BEFORE the material comes out. In this case it's not such a big deal, as the only people who are going to want terabit ethernet are huge enough geeks (or companies) to support whatever standard they choose but for the most part a lack of standards hurts everyone (just look at IE/Office, those are 'competing' standards...would you call them a good thing?)
"They should watch it as the people who created intended it, first and foremost."
Are you using firefox? Just a question, you know a lot of those sites you visit were created with the intent of being viewed on Internet Explorer. Use any alternate OS? Your hardware was created with the intent of running Windows (or Mac).
Content creators don't have any power over their content once they release it. Oh sure, they can stop people from stealing it, but if I want to watch it some other way then you know what, I'm going to. Whether the creator wants it or not. The moment you start saying that the content creator has the right to force people to view their content ONLY how they created it is the moment you kill creativity and innovation.
I've never watched the Matrix Trilogy, only the first one. I have no doubt that they're great movies, and I've read the plots and a lot of the discussion, but I really don't want to see some purely gratuitous sex scenes in my movie. If that offends you then you, fair sir, are an idiot, it's my eyes, my mind. Why in the world should the Wa-whosit brothers be able to dictate to me what I see? What kind of philosophy makes you think in pure black in white terms, you can only watch the whole thing, as the creator intended it, or not watch it at all? I cannot honestly understand at all how someone could believe that, period.
Even something as simple as verbal instructions would qualify, and I know for a fact that many restaurants in my area (that friends have worked at) tell their waiters the procedure for determining if someone should get a free meal. Even if they didn't every restaurant manager knows about when a free meal should be given out. Computerizing that is not something patentworthy any more than taking a student's methodology for determining if homework is worth it is patent-worthy.
If it's already being done commonly and easily adding the words 'on a computer' should not earn you a patent. I'm one of the few/.ers who actually do believe software patents can be done well but this is so far in the absurd that it should merit a fine of some kind for wasting the patent office's time. Just because you took the egg timer and computerized it doesn't mean you should get a patent.
Actually all three of those shows have high viewer numbers because they do try for factual correctness. CSI does speed things up, and Numb3rs does take some liberties with the math, but for the most part they're pretty accurate.
Eh, I actually like verbose method and object names (guess I'm crazy:P). Means I don't have to read/write comments, because the code itself is the comments:P.
Unless he was trying to imply that it was previously assigned the value 'PS3 = Sucks' and now is being changed to 'PS3 = Still Sucks'. And if he was going to be == he would need to be comparing something, otherwise it would be a worthless piece of code...maybe something like
Millions? In the US there were 1.4 million violent crimes in 2005. Divide that up among all the different types of violent crime and you lose the statistical significance real quick. The UK's figures are probably even smaller, it's hard to know since they don't seem to public them like the US does (or at least it's not on the first 2 pages of a google search, whereas the US data was the first item).
Not to say your point is moot, but neither is it a good point. The GP said the law should be re-analyzed, not thrown out the window. I highly doubt that the majority, or even a small group, say the senators or parliment of either country, would even consider making rape or murder legal.
Re-evaluating old laws to see if they fit in modern society is a vital part of any dynamic government. It is exemplified (and a bit abused, but that's another story) in the US system of judicial review. Without the ability to alter or remove old laws wrongs could not be righted. Slavery would still be happening, after all it wasn't the majority of people who were breaking the law or opposing the system, it was a vocal majority of former slaves, free men, and northerners who thought the law was unjust. In this case it's a vocal minority of downloaders, internet users, privacy advocates, and people who are fed up with the current copyright system who are opposing the law and a lot of people (not necessarily the parent) seem to be saying that because it's law it can't be changed, which is flat out false.
Not quite, he does raise the valid question of why spacetime curves, something which I've never seen answered anywhere. It can't be gravity causing the curve, as gravity is the curve, so what causes it is a good question. Obviously the answer is mass, but why and how that mass curves spacetime is still a good question...
You're horribly misrepresenting Windows by acting as though every Windows user is a complete idiot. Let me ask you something, how is the average joe going to find out what in the heck Synaptic is if they don't know enough about computer to know the difference between downloading and installing? I have no idea what Synaptic is, but I could download and install FF in 30 seconds on a windows box.
There are 2 main problems with Linux right now that stop the average joe from wanting it. Installation issue (Windows has them as well but since it normally comes pre-loaded the average joe has never seen them. And, while is seems like heresy, Windows has far less installation issues, if only because the hardware is made for it) and fanboys who don't understand how someone can't figure out how to use a command line tool with the proper switch options in order to enable their 'insert absolutely necessary component of a computer here' so they can use Linux, I mean a child could do this!
Windows is far simpler to use than Linux right now, sorry but that's the facts. Linux is far more useful than Windows but it's still not easy enough for primetime.
"Get it through your pee brains that the fundementals of stock valuation don't change or go away simply because the numbers are "really big" or "bigger than something impressive"."
Mind saying what are the fundementals then? Last time I having good quarterly growth and revenue = valuable stock. What exactly is the magical element that Microsoft is missing when it comes to their stock valuation? Before you answer it should be noted that the total value of MSFT (volume*price) is pretty close to GOOG, so while MSFT is trading at $28 and GOOG at $500 there's a lot more MSFT.
"I'm glad to hear that it was likely this, rather than a virus, although concerned that someone other than me (with that amount of technical knowledge, my gf is non-technical) was using my computer."
In the google age a solution for a problem like that can be found and used by a non-technical person easily. It's entirely possible that your girlfriend saw the ad, was annoyed, googled it, and found a step-by-step to get rid of it.
Now get off slashdot! You're not allowed to have a girlfriend here! Can you imagine the damage it would do to our stereotypes if it got around that people on slashdot were in relationships!?
Slashdot Mirror
Gah! Why can't I ever have mod points when I need them! Mod parent up :P.
Not to mention that ego races and greed are some of the best ways to motivate people to accomplish great things. I doubt we'd ever have gone to the moon had it not been for the ego race between the US and the USSR and those trips are one of the main reasons that space still holds any appeal to people back here on Earth.
Science for science sake is a great idea, just like socialism. In practice, however, most implementations leave something to be desired...
Exactly. Password security is not simply dependent on how many and what type of characters are used, but also on what the person using the password does with it. Even the most secure password could be easily determined if the user tried to use it to register on a non-legitimate site. It really depends on the user, as well as the password. A semi-weak password used by a security conscious person is far better at protecting something than an extremely strong password used by someone who doesn't know, or care, about security.
"Someone with a bomb in his backpack that he wants to explode in a mass of people, taking himself to heaven in the process, behaves very much different from someone who has a fake bomb in their back trying to get one over the security guards."
That's the same rational used to explain why lie detectors should be admissible in court, and the same one that was shot down by the supreme court. Oh sure, your average person will act in an odd manor if they have a bomb on them (though honestly I'm not sure how you could tell with how uncomfortable airports and airport security is for most people. If you're not acting a little funny then you're the odd one out most of the time) but you can easily train someone to act perfectly calm, reasonable, and normal with anything on their person. Same goes for lying, for a normal, untrained, undetermined individual a lie detector works pretty well. For someone trained and determined to evade it there's nothing you can do to stop them really.
"The problem is that Microsoft ensured that there will never again be competitors in either space."
Except, you know, Firefox and iTunes. And Opera, Safari, the upcoming Songbird, and about a hundred other media playing programs.
All MS did was make that area free to the user. That's really it, IE's existence didn't stop Mozilla from making FF and Media Player didn't stop Apple from moving iTunes over to the PC. All it did was wipe out the ability for people to charge for these products, which was really a net benefit to the consumer as their computers can now do more that they could, and do so without spending a penny. Is it really a bad thing that Realplayer and Netscape's cost based system for media playback and internet viewing (respectively, of course) was eliminated?
CURSE YOU!
:(. I wonder what that last point is since the only extensions I have running that should interfere are security related ones (as in, don't abuse my security ones which shouldn't be used by Acid3). Perhaps it's a user-setting somewhere in the about:config or something...
I'm getting a 49/100 in my FF
"then perhaps we can all reasonably expect to be safe regardless of the type of public street we walk down."
Impossible. The darkest and hardest to see area will always be the most dangerous, it's not a matter of pitch-black = muggings but rather a 'darker and less watched than the other place' = muggings.
"Now if you'd say we can't reasonably expect to be perfectly safe walking through an abandoned building, that'd be another matter."
Not really, I'd feel safer in an abandon building than a dark alley. Of course I'd feel pretty safe anywhere near where I live, with the crime rate as low as it is. The point is that wherever is least monitored is most likely to be used for crimes, whether or not it's pitch black or not, and that there have to be such places unless you monitor every place (in which case every place becomes equally likely as the monitoring isn't likely to be that great).
"That doesn't mean I'd want somebody to be peering inside 24/7 watching my every move."
Fair enough. Google street view is so far from this, however, that is a completely fallacious slippery slope argument to claim it's even remotely Orwellian in nature. Now then, I for one do think that google should give some warning that they're taking the pictures, but even if they don't it's still a large leap from 'Single static picture taken from street-level and of fairly low quality' to 24/7 video of you in your house.
It would seem to be quite unlikely for any object to be directly in line with the axis of they system, even the Earth. Given the distance that would be, what, a couple milli-arcs off being a clean miss?
People still use ActiveX outside of Microsoft's sites? I haven't seen a single ActiveX control since I swapped to Firefox, 3 or 4 years ago...
Speed is as good an excuse as any. On a Windows machine I can swing my mouse from one part of the screen to another and end up on the close button with 90% accuracy, primarily because of its size. On macs (and the distro of linux my school uses) I have to swing the mouse over, then spend a few extra seconds lining it up because of how small the close button is. Sure, it's only a few seconds, but convienience is a factor in OS choice, and Window's close buttons got that part right a lot more than Mac (if you can avoid the ever present 'there's no space between the restore to default and close buttons, be careful' problem, which is usually irrelevant if you don't use non-maximized windows much).
"I wouldn't trust it on my laptop, either."
"But if I did have it on my laptop, I'd sure as hell change my passwords the first chance I get."
This seems like a bit of an illogical statement, along the lines of calling to cancel a lost credit card. You seem to be making the claim that a laptop with those saved credentials can be lost, which is a good enough reason to not make use of it, and yet people have been losing and canceling credit cards for years, a laptop is much easier to notice missing than a piece of plastic, and the problem wouldn't be hard at all to fix.
Personally I commit my passwords to memory and let my computer auto-fill them, the auto-fill for convenience (and because the chances of me losing my laptop, my primary computer which is pretty much on my person at all times and has a high strength login password among other security measures are slim to none) and the memory so that I can get into them without my computer, whether it be to change them or simply to get to them from another computer.
Macguyver wouldn't need the other stuff...just some gum. And you call yourself a nerd...shameful
There's plenty of stuff that goes on on Wall Street that's not immediate profit making. Just look at Apple, they announce something that won't make any profit for a long time, and their stock goes up. Microsoft (or was it sony?) announces that their next gen console will start making a profit in 2010, and their stock goes up.
Very few products make a profit the day they come out. For the most part the first month or so (on average) is just spent remaking the production costs, and then everything past that is pure profit.
Right, because corporate competitions in which two big companies do their best to ensure that their format wins the battle, with the individuals being frightened that their purchases will become obsolete is soo much fun.
Standards should be decided on BEFORE the material comes out. In this case it's not such a big deal, as the only people who are going to want terabit ethernet are huge enough geeks (or companies) to support whatever standard they choose but for the most part a lack of standards hurts everyone (just look at IE/Office, those are 'competing' standards...would you call them a good thing?)
"They should watch it as the people who created intended it, first and foremost."
Are you using firefox? Just a question, you know a lot of those sites you visit were created with the intent of being viewed on Internet Explorer. Use any alternate OS? Your hardware was created with the intent of running Windows (or Mac).
Content creators don't have any power over their content once they release it. Oh sure, they can stop people from stealing it, but if I want to watch it some other way then you know what, I'm going to. Whether the creator wants it or not. The moment you start saying that the content creator has the right to force people to view their content ONLY how they created it is the moment you kill creativity and innovation.
I've never watched the Matrix Trilogy, only the first one. I have no doubt that they're great movies, and I've read the plots and a lot of the discussion, but I really don't want to see some purely gratuitous sex scenes in my movie. If that offends you then you, fair sir, are an idiot, it's my eyes, my mind. Why in the world should the Wa-whosit brothers be able to dictate to me what I see? What kind of philosophy makes you think in pure black in white terms, you can only watch the whole thing, as the creator intended it, or not watch it at all? I cannot honestly understand at all how someone could believe that, period.
Even something as simple as verbal instructions would qualify, and I know for a fact that many restaurants in my area (that friends have worked at) tell their waiters the procedure for determining if someone should get a free meal. Even if they didn't every restaurant manager knows about when a free meal should be given out. Computerizing that is not something patentworthy any more than taking a student's methodology for determining if homework is worth it is patent-worthy.
/.ers who actually do believe software patents can be done well but this is so far in the absurd that it should merit a fine of some kind for wasting the patent office's time. Just because you took the egg timer and computerized it doesn't mean you should get a patent.
If it's already being done commonly and easily adding the words 'on a computer' should not earn you a patent. I'm one of the few
Actually all three of those shows have high viewer numbers because they do try for factual correctness. CSI does speed things up, and Numb3rs does take some liberties with the math, but for the most part they're pretty accurate.
Eh, I actually like verbose method and object names (guess I'm crazy :P). Means I don't have to read/write comments, because the code itself is the comments :P.
Unless he was trying to imply that it was previously assigned the value 'PS3 = Sucks' and now is being changed to 'PS3 = Still Sucks'. And if he was going to be == he would need to be comparing something, otherwise it would be a worthless piece of code...maybe something like
(PS3 == 'Still Sucks') ? Sony.VideoGameDepartment.Management.doWhateverYouNeedToMakeThePS3PopularVsOtherTitles(XBox360, Wii, PS2) : System PS4 = Sony.VideoGameDepartment.Management.congradulateYourselvesAndStartWorkOnMessingEverythingYouveAchievedUp(Playstation, PS1, PS2, PS3);
Millions? In the US there were 1.4 million violent crimes in 2005. Divide that up among all the different types of violent crime and you lose the statistical significance real quick. The UK's figures are probably even smaller, it's hard to know since they don't seem to public them like the US does (or at least it's not on the first 2 pages of a google search, whereas the US data was the first item).
Not to say your point is moot, but neither is it a good point. The GP said the law should be re-analyzed, not thrown out the window. I highly doubt that the majority, or even a small group, say the senators or parliment of either country, would even consider making rape or murder legal.
Re-evaluating old laws to see if they fit in modern society is a vital part of any dynamic government. It is exemplified (and a bit abused, but that's another story) in the US system of judicial review. Without the ability to alter or remove old laws wrongs could not be righted. Slavery would still be happening, after all it wasn't the majority of people who were breaking the law or opposing the system, it was a vocal majority of former slaves, free men, and northerners who thought the law was unjust. In this case it's a vocal minority of downloaders, internet users, privacy advocates, and people who are fed up with the current copyright system who are opposing the law and a lot of people (not necessarily the parent) seem to be saying that because it's law it can't be changed, which is flat out false.
Not quite, he does raise the valid question of why spacetime curves, something which I've never seen answered anywhere. It can't be gravity causing the curve, as gravity is the curve, so what causes it is a good question. Obviously the answer is mass, but why and how that mass curves spacetime is still a good question...
You're horribly misrepresenting Windows by acting as though every Windows user is a complete idiot. Let me ask you something, how is the average joe going to find out what in the heck Synaptic is if they don't know enough about computer to know the difference between downloading and installing? I have no idea what Synaptic is, but I could download and install FF in 30 seconds on a windows box.
There are 2 main problems with Linux right now that stop the average joe from wanting it. Installation issue (Windows has them as well but since it normally comes pre-loaded the average joe has never seen them. And, while is seems like heresy, Windows has far less installation issues, if only because the hardware is made for it) and fanboys who don't understand how someone can't figure out how to use a command line tool with the proper switch options in order to enable their 'insert absolutely necessary component of a computer here' so they can use Linux, I mean a child could do this!
Windows is far simpler to use than Linux right now, sorry but that's the facts. Linux is far more useful than Windows but it's still not easy enough for primetime.
The fact that DRM is circumventable means that the companies aren't really trying to stop copying.
Your argument fails...
"Get it through your pee brains that the fundementals of stock valuation don't change or go away simply because the numbers are "really big" or "bigger than something impressive"."
Mind saying what are the fundementals then? Last time I having good quarterly growth and revenue = valuable stock. What exactly is the magical element that Microsoft is missing when it comes to their stock valuation? Before you answer it should be noted that the total value of MSFT (volume*price) is pretty close to GOOG, so while MSFT is trading at $28 and GOOG at $500 there's a lot more MSFT.
"I'm glad to hear that it was likely this, rather than a virus, although concerned that someone other than me (with that amount of technical knowledge, my gf is non-technical) was using my computer."
In the google age a solution for a problem like that can be found and used by a non-technical person easily. It's entirely possible that your girlfriend saw the ad, was annoyed, googled it, and found a step-by-step to get rid of it.
Now get off slashdot! You're not allowed to have a girlfriend here! Can you imagine the damage it would do to our stereotypes if it got around that people on slashdot were in relationships!?