Posts by Steven Knox 860 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Feb 2007
"[Cuil]'s crack team...."
Excellent work, Cade. Can't add anything to that.
@Adrian Esdaile - I don't necessarily agree with "legion". Usually that implies large numbers with a common purpose or direction. "Myriad", however, has the connotation of large numbers with different goals/directions. The pedants' posts I read often seem to be going in separate directions. Come to think of it, my own post illustrates my point. Bonus!
After setting the stage for comparing flying cars to ground cars in rural areas, you then go on to say: "Often the ground cars sit in traffic jams..."
You don't drive much in rural areas, do you?
Of course if you compare fuel efficiency between a rural air car solution and an urban ground car solution, the air car will win mile-for-mile. For a rural-to-rural comparison, once you factor in the costs of building the road (which by the way, can be less than you think in rural areas -- they often use just the dirt that's already there), you might still come out ahead with an air car. But if you have to rely on rural "traffic jams" to make your case, then you've got no case.
@Commenters:
The US government DOES have to pay for software licenses, because they HAVE waived Sovereign Immunity re copyright infringement EXCEPT in cases (such as this one) where the rights owner has induced the infringement.
@Kevin:
"The lack of any kind of sovereign immunity waiver, however, also lets the government get away with non-essential circumventions. Government programmers, for example, could un-expire trial versions of software, thus avoiding having to pay for the full version and saving their departments money on pricey software license fees."
Not so. Although they could not be liable under DMCA, they would still be liable for copyright infringement, because using a trial version beyond the expiry date is a violation of the license, and there is a waiver of Sovereign Immunity for copyright infringement.
Oh, and AC, the US principle of Sovereign Immunity doesn't apply to foreign governments. Sorry.
>Placing secure login boxes on insecure pages, i.e. pages that aren't protected by secure sockets layer. That allows passwords to be intercepted through man-in-the-middle attacks.
Check. Our entire site requires SSL. Connect to us using HTTP and we'll redirect your ass-uming browser. We've been set up that way for years.
>Putting contact information and security notices on insecure pages. This makes it easy for scammers to change addresses and phone numbers listed on the page.
Check. See above.
>Not making it clear when the website is redirecting customers to a page outside the bank's domain. As a result, customers don't know whether to trust the site.
Check. Leaving Disclaimer. Also set up that way for two years.
>Allowing inadequate user IDs and passwords. Sites frequently allowed email addresses as user IDs and didn't require strong passwords.
Check. We don't allow e-mail addresses and we require strong passwords.
>Emailing sensitive information. This included passwords and statements.
Check. We don't do either. All statements and customer-related information can only be accessed after logging in to our secure online banking site.
The bank I work for is a small, local bank in southern Maine. We've had these security requirements for years. There's no excuse for any of these flaws, especially in a national bank.
"Intel asserts that because most internet application development today is done using the x86 instruction set..."
Which shows just how little Intel's marketeers understand about internet applications.
The best Intel can truthfully claim is that the compiled portions of internet applications (i.e, LAMP, IIS, .NET runtime, etc) are most often compiled to the x86 instruction set. However, that has little relevance to internet application development, as server applications are most often written in intermediary languages (Java/.NET) which compile to their own bytecode or scripting languages (PHP/VBScript) which are interpreted.
And it's completely irrelevant to the client side. The client side will be running HTML, Javascript, Flash, and/or Java, all of which have parsers/compilers/runtimes optimised for various CPUs.
Oh, we want to keep our old irrational measure. Please, please, Mr. Politician, stop nasty Europe from forcing a simple logical system down our throats!
Well, I live in a country where the politicians actually listened to that drivel, and because of that mistake (and the inability of some techs to actually *read* the unit of a measurement), we've lost more than one very expensive piece of equipment, and quite a bit of respect.
So go ahead. Cling to your "national identity" by any means necessary, even to the point of keeping measuring units which have outlived their usefulness. Keep disagreeing on the unimportant points, and soon you will join US in the new world governments' doghouse.
And I will be the first to greet you. Sigh.
Some basic math software we had in college ran on Windows 1.0. That version didn't even have any pretenses of being an OS -- it was strictly a "graphic" UI framework. I use quotes because it ran at the super high-resolution 640x400 (monochrome) or the low-res 320x200 with 4 stunning colors.
Can't remember the source, but I've heard that both prosecutors and defenders prefer to eliminate potential jurors who show signs of intelligence, because it's much easier to win a case when you can just appeal to emotion, and not have to resort to nasty things like logic.
Oh, and @AC Re: spelling. You're obviously new to El Reg, if you're shocked by some pedant complaining about spelling. 'Round these parts, that's considered witty social discourse.
">a number of perfectly good browsers which are quite capable of rendering a
>site have to imitate IE's headers purely because there are still idiots out
>there that insist on writing for specific browsers only and will lock out
>anything else.
A perfectly good browser would let you specify this on a per-site basis as needed."
The perfectly good browser DOES: http://www.opera.com/support/usingopera/operaini/index.dml#ua
Opera FTW (Again!)
"The proxy approach, for example, wouldn't work if the zero-day stuff happens to come before detectable stuff...The critical stuff would've been let through by the time AVG realizes there's a problem."
You clearly don't understand how a proxy works. A proxy doesn't have to forward anything to the browser until it's good and ready. It can wait until the entire page, all the linked CSS and Javascript, all the images, xkcd, the complete archives of PH's escapades, and anything else it'd like to look at is downloaded before one bit of information is sent to the browser.
"In other words, all those companies building all those clouds can't rely on the Microsofts of the world for their back-end software"
This implies that anyone CAN rely on the Microsofts of the world ; )
Seriously, though, is this actually news to anyone? The big cloud computing pushers, like Amazon and Google, are quite happy to admit that their systems are open-source-based, not Microsoft systems. Some even consider it a selling point.
Utility Computing's dirty little secret: it doesn't actually have one.
"Personally I value the known price because I think we know what the social cost of carbon is better than we know what the perfect level of emissions is, but everyone's free to disagree on that point."
The social cost of carbon is the degree to which it increases heat retention. The degree to which it increases heat retention is directly related to the level of emissions above that which Earth's ecosystem can naturally absorb (i.e, the "perfect level of emissions"). If we assign the variables thus:
s = social cost
r = heat retention increase per unit of emission
e = amount of emissions the ecosystem can absorb (perfect level)
A = level of actual emissions (observed)
then the equation is
s = r(A-e)
This is a simple, direct relationship. So if you know the factor R and the observed variable A, you can determine factor e from s:
e = A - s/r
So, if you know r, and you know s, then you MUST be able to know e.
Given that, your claim only works if you don't know r. But the problem with that is that s is the derived variable, while A is the observed variable. So to find s, you must have known the factors r and e to apply them to A, and therefore you must know e. So either we don't really know the social cost of carbon emissions, or we do know the perfect level of emissions.
I'm certain of it.
Is it rated for outdoor use?
Check local regulations (and preferably check with a vet) before putting any non-standard collar/leash on a pet. GOOD Cat 5 could probably work allright if the collar is loose enough, but wear and tear (especially on indoor-only, solid-core) could be a problem.
Really? 80-year-old mice?
@Elmer Phud:
"Constant production of nippers is usually due to people either dying young as part of 'normal' life or because some priest tells them to."
You forgot the most common reason in "civilized" society: because it feels good and contraceptives are a bother. That one, I'm afraid, is the hardest nut to crack. If we as a species can't attain near 0 population growth, we're not ready for these drugs.
Re: Anti-agathics:
You read my mind (and Blish, of course!)
<-- Will she be one of the New Immortals?
"(As an aside, in a development sure to enrage Douglas Adams fans, the average human appears to be between ten and a hundred times as intelligent as a mouse.)"
Any true DNA fan would know that in his works, the average human _appeared_ more intelligent that the mice -- even to the dolphins.
Enraged? No. I am a bit disappointed to be poster #43, though.
PS. I agree with the sentiment echoed above -- simply throwing more power at the AI problem is never going to solve it properly. We need to wake up to the fact that our models of thinking systems don't map well to computing systems.
'"Think about that amount. 1bn is 1000 million." Only in America[*]. Really, it's a million million.'
Not if you're following the UK gov standard since 1974:
"In 1974 the government of the UK abandoned the long scale, so that the UK now applies the short scale interpretation exclusively in mass media and official usage."
More to the point, is El Reg using short-scale (1 000-based) or long-scale (1 000 000-based) notation in the article? Which billion is being used here? 10^9 or 10^12?
[*] and the mainstream scientific community...
From an accounting perspective, cash and equity are completely different things. So a net loss may happen while cash reserves are increasing, and you can haemmorage cash whilst actually making money.
For anyone with a basic understanding of accounting, the term "haemorraghing cash" as used in the article is misleading.
Oh, and Solomon Grundy, you obviously have a very narrow view of line work, probably due to the fact that you've had no exposure to it since the 19th century. The vast majority of manufacturing jobs in the Western world actually are highly-skilled positions, because machines/robots have long replaced people for most of the menial tasks (and a lot of the highly-skilled ones as well).
"The researchers are very reluctant to describe how the data was obtained and who was involved,"
Then the research is by definition bad science. Any study without full disclosure of methodology is invalid. All of their conclusions are dependent on the methodology being sound, and without full disclosure that is not proveable.
"If you saddle some users with a 5GB monthly cap at 768kbps, you're targeting more than just extreme bandwidth lovers. Comcast is also mulling a bandwidth cap, but it's thinking 250GB."
Not fot 768kbps, they [Comcast] aren't. At 768kbps, the maximum you can download in a 30-day period is 237.3GB. The real news is that Time Warner is still selling cable internet access at 768kps! FOR $30!! 768kbps ADSL in these parts is priced around $10, FFS. For $30, you should be getting 3Mbps minimum.
My guess is they selected Beaumont by looking for the town where they thought the population was most gullible, so they could "prove" that All Merika must love their insane plans.
The joke? TW, of course.
From COPA, defining "cospicuously post":
" (5) In the case of an online service, any other reasonably
accessible means of making the privacy policy available for consumers
of the online service."
I'm sure Google would argue that their search box is reasonably accessible. I'm not so sure I agree.
@Chris C:
Isn't that like packaged products where the in-the-box license states "By opening this box, you agree to this license"? By performing a search for the privacy policy, you have no way to review it and determine if you want to accept the risks or not (aside from having your IP address logged).
If that's your definition, then EVERY website with an access log (i.e, 99.999999999% of all websites) is illegal, because they all log your IP address before you have the opportunity to opt out. If COPA was really intended to include IP address logging, I'm quite sure it will be struck down as impossible to implement.
"... in reality security is about in-depth defence. Each layer of the security onion needs to be as impenetrable as possible," Ken Munro, a director of SecureTest, explained.
So he would argue that cops should be required to wear bulletproof shirts under their bulletproof vests?
In reality, there are finite resources available, so security is about minimizing risk by focusing effort on pieces which best complement each other to cover as many holes as possible (starting with the most likely and/or most at risk.)
BIOS passwords essentially cover the "boot" option, which is also covered by HDD passwords. But HDD passwords cover many more holes, and do a better job overall. So the BIOS password at this point is redundant, and time would be better spent covering other holes.
Derek -- You clearly have not had the required minimum exposure to Monty Python. Please refrain from visiting tech sites until you have spent at least 96 hours (preferably in a row) absorbing their work. Their treatise on tigers in Africa is an absolute necessity in the modern world of IT. You may also find the BBC's seminal 4-volume treatise on the history of the Black Adder and the collected works of Dougals Adams greatly enrich your experience of the Register and sites like it.
"In any circumstances and in any organisation (including our University) discovery of such material -being held for non-academic purposes by a clerical member of staff - would prompt reasonable anxiety."
The press reports indicate that Yezza had the manual because he was printing it for a student -- surely that's an academic purpose? Surely that's something University officials could have easily determined BY TALKING TO THE MAN?
At any rate, you're making the exact mistake that Nottingham Uni made, and which is the subject of this article: you're prejudging the motive. How do you know why that individual had that document? Even "clerical members of staff" can study and learn, you know -- that's a key part of the "academic freedom" you claim your University embraces.
"It's amazing that they think anyone smart enough to both understand the power of multiplication and write the automated sign-up script would be stupid enough to do it from a location to which he would easily be tied. It'll be even more amazing if they turn out to be right."
Please stop confusing intelligence with wisdom. It's not at all surprising that someone intelligent enough to do that would be arrogant enough not to think that he should cover his tracks better. It happens all the time.
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