* Posts by Steven Knox

860 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Feb 2007

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Pennsylvania woman in legal doo-doo for lav profanities

Steven Knox
Stop

unfettered rights

The general idea is that you can say what you want, but that there can be restrictions on where and when (and sometimes how) you can say it. In that sense, freedom of speech is a right, but it is fettered with the responsibility of making the statements at the proper time and place, and with consideration for your audience. Also, like in most countries, defamation is not protected speech.

Oh, and Mitch, I think you meant "vetted by the government" -- and still your statement makes precious little sense. If the US government locked up anyone who said something they didn't like, the entire country would be in prison.

The human eye can perceive over 16 million colors -- it only goes into black-and-white mode when it's in the dark -- and even then it can see shades of gray. The same should be said of the human mind.

Allen telescope array begins alien hunt

Steven Knox
Coat

Another MS-related Attemt to Co-Opt TLAs?

First they take try DNS, and now ATA? I'm sure there are other examples, but I'm too lazy to research,,,

Future of computing safe, thanks to Excel patch

Steven Knox
Dead Vulture

@Chris C

Given the tone of post 1, I'm guessing you think I'm a "Softie"? Yet nothing in my post was pro-Microsoft. I suppose because I didn't call them "Micro$haft Bastards" I must be in cahoots with them, right?

As for the ROUND() issue, I can see a shortcut for such a function which would rely on code used in the display function, leading to the same issue, and still leaving the bug invisible to most automated testing.

Nowhere did I say that this was not a serious issue -- I merely pointed out that I believe the bug should have been caught at QA -- before the product even went beta -- and that the QA failure is what we should be raking MS over the coals for.

As for parroting MS, the only source I've read on this issue is El Reg. I don't regularly use Excel 2007 so I didn't particularly feel a need to research the issue in depth. My guess was based on the description of the issue and Occam's Razor.

FYI I consider myself a tech realist: I use various closed and open source solutions depending on which best fits my needs. (If Apple actually made an affordable product that did what I want, I'd even use that*)

*Cue the fanbois claiming that Apple's products are affordable (!) and functional (!!!!!)

Steven Knox

How the bug came to be...

really doesn't matter to me,

except as a curiosity.

What is much more vexing

is the unanswered question

of how it passed QA testing.

My personal guess is that it wasn't a bug in the calcuation of fp numbers but a bug in the display of them. This would explain why further calculations worked, and why automated testing could easily have missed it.

Microsoft revamps Zune with Flash

Steven Knox

Surely you mean "flash-based"

I seriously doubt Microsoft would tout a Flash-based player, what with their push for Silverlight.

Opportunity goes panoramic on Victoria

Steven Knox

Corrected last paragraph

Here's that last paragraph rewritten using proper Reg standards:

"The prominence on the right hand side, known as Cape Verde, is 43.54lg high and about the length of 5.42 double-decker buses from the rover's current position. A similarly rugged, but much taller (1.65 double-decker buses high) area of rocks on the right is known as Cabo Frio."

So, what's the first rule of Reg Club?

Steven Knox

Title

Proposed Rule:

Thou shalt not type a "Title" line for your comment*

*Exception -- if "Title" is a relevant title to your comment, you MUST replace it with something completely irrelevant.

Post-Bush US preparing stemcell brain drain

Steven Knox

@Merkin

The basic ethical argument is something like:

The fetus is given no choice over its future, whereas the criminal knows that death is the consequence for her* choice.

BTW, I don't believe Western civilization could implement a death penalty effectively, and I don't believe I have the right to tell someone how to deal with her** pregnancy. But it seems everyone I talk to about abortion brings up this same "contradiction" when the ethical considerations are truly very different.

* [equal opportunity/politically correct pronoun]

** [correct pronoun at least until the Governator's research pays off...]

Windows XP repair disk kills automatic updates

Steven Knox

Inconsistency

"But it's inconsistent for critics to take Microsoft to task for pushing an update that was necessary for the continued smooth running of Windows Update and then gripe when the update gets undone by a repair disk."

No it's not. The first gripe is about MS's unwillingness to recognize its responsibility to notify users of its software's activity on their PCs, and to accept users' decisions about what software is installed on their PCs. The second is about MS's failure to test their update against a very common scenario.

In fact, it would be only be inconsistent if users didn't recognize that the two issues were related, and that the practical problem could only have been avoided by Microsoft behaving differently in both cases (i.e, if Microsoft had tested a repair scenario AND notified users about the update, it could have included information about fixing auto updates after a repair within the original KB article for the update.) But since MS did neither (and in fact even if it had done one or the other but not both) the result was yet more erosion of users' confidence in the company.

The silent update isn't the red herring. The red herring is the false impression that this is about Automatic Updates, when it's really about Microsoft listening to its customers.

Acer plans renewed effort to drag up PC prices

Steven Knox

Offset

Clearly they're just trying to offset the cost of doing business in France:

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/09/26/acer_laptop_microsoft_windows_french_ruling/

Feds tell (other) feds to kill net neutrality

Steven Knox

LOL

*BING*

This discussion has been brought to you by WHAMCO Internet Services, now with the Personal Internet Speedup System.

You see, by flagging all of your data (even the boring e-mails to your Aunt Sally) as High-Priority Emergency Streaming Multimedia, we ensure that your packets get to their destinations much faster than those of the worthless peons who can't afford our services.

Remember, only WHAMCO Internet Services gives you the PISS!

(With apologies to the late Steven B. Williams and the late Dan Hawkins. For those who don't know about WHAMCO, see: http://www.swerbach.com/serbach/whamco/index02.htm)

Renewing the mythology of the London ricin cell

Steven Knox

Logic and Reading Comprehension skills

are clearly lacking here -- which is a pity, because we otherwise have the basis for a really good discussion, with some very good points.

For example, Chris, Tony said "There is virtually no reason for anyone to even possess castor beans" not "no reason at all" as you imply. "Virtually no reasn" is not "no reason" anymore than "virtual reality" is "reality". Tony is right here, as the only people who really need to possess castor beans are those who are processing them to produce castor oil, pest control products, etc.

On the other hand, Tony, Chris is right that the article has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the suspect, and that the writer has no obligation to respond to you. This is a COMMENTS PAGE, not a FORUM. The main purpose is to allow readers to provide insightful comments, not to provide an immediate back-and-forth dialogue.

Finally, George, I have to fault you somewhat in that the tone of your article implies that your evidence proves that this was not a "WMD cell". It does nothing of the sort. It does show that the prosecution did not have or provide enough evidence to prove that this was a WMD cell. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. While no link was found, that does not mean that there was no link. You also imply that the fact that Bourgass' recipe didn't work means that he wasn't part of a terrorist network. It doesn't; it only means he wasn't part of a competent network. I understand that you feel you are fighting people who seem to mangle the evidence at every turn, but the correct response to that is to provide the evidence a safe haven, not t mangle it in the other way.

NBC to Apple: 'You're fired!'

Steven Knox

Double?

So a doubling of the wholesale price would "force" Apple to increase their price to 250% of what it was? Where's that extra dollar coming from?

Windows Server 2008 'brisket' release delayed

Steven Knox

Please refrain...

from posting articles about the dates of MS software releases unless they are on-time or early. It will save all of us a lot of time.

So, what's the velocity of a sheep in a vacuum?

Steven Knox

DNA would be proud.

'nuff said.

Enceladus' icy threat to Cassini

Steven Knox

Pendantry

"The craft is due to pass the Moon next March..."

Unless there's a classified experimental engine on that thing, surely it's due to pass the _m_oon next March...

But hey, who named our moon "the Moon" anyway? You'd think they didn't know there were other ones...Oh.

Gunplay fingered for internet slowdown

Steven Knox

RE; bury those cables

> Why on earth don't they bury those cables ?

I believe their last wishes were to be cremated. Besides, have you priced 1'x1'x3600' coffins recently?

IGMC.

Earth will feel the heat from 2009: climate boffins

Steven Knox

"there is an even chance that global temperatures will be hotter than [in] 1998"

Yeah -- either they will or they won't. I could have told you that. Now where's my government grant?

Dell to stuff hypervisors in flash memory

Steven Knox

Free virtualization* software

"(Microsoft's virtualization* software and Xen are already available for free today.)"

So is VMWare Server (at least the OS-dependent version which compares to MS's Virtual Server.) In my experience, even that version is still much better than MS Virtual Server.

I freely admit I don't have the experience with Xen to comment on it.

* virtualisation? English/American spelling pedants, have at it!

Steven Knox

RE: DRM?

No, because Virtuali[sz]ation* doesn't restrict your options like DRM (quite the opposite in fact). In this case, the only potential restriction is the Virtuali[sz]ation software in the flash, and that has to be opted for by the buyer.

For DRM in hardware, Google^H^H^H^H^H^H look up "Trusted Computing".**

* [sz] Multi-nationality Inclusive Regular Expression (MIRE) copyright 2007. All Rights Reversed. See also ".*ou*?r".

** see also: irony.

Mega-planet spotted orbiting fading star

Steven Knox

@TeeCee: Close, but no cigar.

Sorry, but it's not a proper Dyson sphere. A proper Dyson sphere is built around the star it orbits, so we wouldn't see it at all.* The whole point is to encapsulate the star to collect all of the energy it generates.

* Okay, we may be able to detect it in specific bands of radiation or by gravitational effects.**

** Speaking of which, anyone think this may be an explanation for at least some small portion of the dark matter out there?***

*** Pedantic and/or better-informed corrections welcome.****

**** Sorry for all the footnotes. I have to stop reading Terry Pratchett books...

Beeb exterminates Tomorrow's World rumours

Steven Knox

Re: MythBusters

Surely Brainiac is a better* British analogue to Mythbusters.

* in every sense of the word.

Microsoft sees $1.5bn verdict chucked out

Steven Knox

@amanfromMars

You're slipping -- I actually understood that one!

eBay 'Buy It Now' button survives latest attack

Steven Knox

Pedantry

@Steve Brown:

"Message to Americans, dont you think you are all made to look stupid for this sort of behaviour?"

Only to stupid people who don't understand that when A is a member of C and B is a member of C, A is not necessarily equal (or even remotely similar) to B.

@"Intellectual": She must be a little more intellectual than you, if she understood that the verb "effect" AS YOU DESCRIBED IT is perfectly appropriate. Read: "... where a single technology can [bring about] hundreds if not thousands of patents..." Of course "affect" is appropriate as well, which leads to the real question you failed to ask: Did Sarah King actually "say" this, in which case it was possibly transcribed incorrectly, or did she write this, in which case it was possibly spelled incorrectly? Without more background information, the true meaning of her statement is debatable, and application of the descriptive "moronic" is premature.

PS. If you want to get into a pedant fight, we could discuss your punctuation or the logical inconsistency of those last two sentences...

@everyone else: The real problem is that the US Patent and Trademark Office is understaffed with undertrained examiners who are overpressured to clear their backlog of patent applications. There are efforts in this country to increase staffing and training levels as well as to reduce the number of patents filed. (Personally I would like to see severe criminal penalties for the filing of stupid patents like this one -- or just a requirement that a patented techology be used in a real product within 2 years or be automatically voided -- with the onus on the patent-holder to prove that it has been used.) E-bay is contesting the patent, but that goes back to the same understaffed USPTO.

@theregister: can we get rid of the stupid "Post anonymously" option? I like to take credit for my crazy rantings, and would prefer if everyone else were held to the same standard. A system designed to protect idoits who just want to badmouth every other bod is ludicras.

Brit spooks: Yanks are frightful cowboys

Steven Knox

Grain of Salt

'MI5 said the Americans had completely disregarded their request that no "overt, covert or executive" action be taken. They said it "was a surprise to us that the Americans were operating in this way."'

SIS, like any intelligence operation, has to be able to obfuscate its own activities. So why, in this case, should we take it as read that they are completely innocent? Because they say so? Because they produced documents that say so? Witnesses? I'd lose all respect for any intelligence organization which could not produce whatever evidence they need these days (which is why I'm quit disenchanted with the CIA...)

I cannot speak to what SIS has or hasn't done. But I can say that it's very important to their credibility and the British ego for SIS to be able to claim that they're morally superior to the US intelligence services -- when in fact they may just be better at hiding their skeletons.

Oh, and by the way, there are plenty of Americans who think "cowboy" is an insult. And some of us think the same of "naive."

Jesus Phone needs an exorcist

Steven Knox

@Matthew Sinclair

"If people are so obsessed in ruining an apple product..they shouldn't rely on total idiots to cause the infection to be possible."

Tell that to the phishers, spammers, 419ers, scammers, con-men, etc. who collectively earn billions solely by exploiting stupid people. Human stupidity is still the largest and most easily exploited security hole, and the developer still refuses to release a patch for it.

Far out Yuzoz gambles on the stars

Steven Knox

True randomness

Proving the concept will indeed be difficult -- in fact it will be impossible. Randomness is inherently unproveable.

A true random number generator could, in theory, put out the first 100 digits of pi at the time of observation*, and still be truly random; pseudorandom number generators are generally designed to never produce such a pattern (and hence are designed to be specifically not random.)

* "Extremely unlikely!" you cry. Yet it's as likely as 100 1's in a row, or any other 100-digit sequence. The odds of a truly random number generator producing any such sequence is exactly 1/10^100. You wouldn't be too suprised to see a random number generator generate 3 1 4, yet you'd suspect it if it generated 1 1 1. The point is, we observe finite phenomena, and randomness is an infinite property. One school of thought holds that a true random number generator, left to run for an infinite period of time, would produce every numeric pattern there is, including all of the digits of pi, an infinite number of 1's in a row, etc. Of course, that's not necessarily the case (see random.)

Steven Knox

True randomness

Proving the concept will indeed be difficult -- in fact it will be impossible. Randomness is inherently unproveable.

A true random number generator could, in theory, put out the first 100 digits of pi at the time of observation*, and still be truly random; pseudorandom number generators are generally designed to never produce such a pattern (and hence are designed to be specifically not random.)

* "Extremely unlikely!" you cry. Yet it's as likely as 100 1's in a row, or any other 100-digit sequence. The odds of a truly random number generator producing any such sequence is exactly 1/10^100. You wouldn't be too suprised to see a random number generator generate 3 1 4, yet you'd suspect it if it generated 1 1 1. The point is, we observe finite phenomena, and randomness is an infinite property. One school of thought holds that a true random number generator, left to run for an infinite period of time, would produce every numeric pattern there is, including all of the digits of pi, an infinite number of 1's in a row, etc. Of course, that's not necessarily the case (see random.)

Sprint boots 200 American patriots for using their phones

Steven Knox

Pattern?

Perhaps Sprint just has too many customers?

http://www.theregister.com/2007/07/11/sprint_boots_annoying_phone_customers/

Bush to gong top US boffins of 2006

Steven Knox

National Medal of _Technology_

Climate change isn't technology; it's science. This medal is for leaders in technology.

Water found on extrasolar planet

Steven Knox

Re: lordy

'"God"'s followers were the ones preventing us from seeing any of the kind of stuff which science now allows us to see.'

Such a statement pre-supposes the existence of God (you can't follow something which doesn't exist), yet you then say that the existence of a god is "unlikely". Furthermore, there are many different groups who claim to follow God and yet have completely different ideals and attitudes. Lumping all of these groups into a single category is an incredibly simplistic and small-minded approach.

"Scientists assume nothing and always approach a subject with an open mind. That's why I listen to them and not the bible."

Then you're clearly not approaching theology (or other sciences) with an open mind. Modern scientific method is based on a very skeptical framework -- one of the requirements of it is that you take any data source not based on direct observation -- including the claims of other scientists -- as suspect until you can observe the same data under the same conditions. Such an approach is designed to minimize the possibility of incorrect conclusions, but it also specifically precludes the determination of information which cannot be determined and/or controlled by physical means. Therefore, limiting your view of existence to the scientific view assumes a purely physical existence. If you believe that, fine, but you must at least recognize that it is an assumption, and therefore suspect under the terms of the scientific method.

Myself, I'm an agnostic, and I welcome all perspectives on this issue as a means to enrich my understanding (I particularly like Richard's perspective -- and to answer Joe Cooper, the maidens would drink the lager/bitter/ale, thus facilitating their attraction to fat, hairy, flatulent men.)

Apple emasculates the iPhone

Steven Knox

Simple solution

It's clear what the problem is, regardless of whether it's with MS or Apple: they implement the features they want to implement, leaving us lusers to whine and moan about what we want. We complain and complain, but we'll defend the OS we chose to the death, because they've given us 51% of what we want when their competiton only gave us 49%.

We shouldn't have to settle. That's why everyone should switch to OSS -- if there's a feature you want, write it! If you can't write it, learn to. If you don't want to learn, that's your problem. That way we can boil down all "missing" features to user indifference.

Hyperion harbours building blocks of life, says NASA

Steven Knox

RE: density, mass, impact velocity, escape velocity

Dave, the flaw in your reasoning is here:

"So, surely, the velocity of any impacting body will be correspondingly low (From force=G*m1*m2/R_squared)"

This is incorrect because an impacting body does not get all of its impact velocity from the gravitational force between the two objects (if it did, it would always hit head-on). Some of the velocity will come from the body's inital trajectory. In the case of an initially high-velocity object (like most impacting bodies) and a low-gravity target, most of the velocitiy comes from the initial trajectory.

NASA snaps mysterious night-shining clouds

Steven Knox

LINK!

A paranoid cynic* might assume that El Reg is trying to control us by controlling our access to information. I'm not a paranoid cynic**, so I'll assume that Ms. Sherriff simply forgot to include the following link:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/aim/multimedia/first_view.html

I myself had to dig through 1 link buried well below at least two other articles on NASA's home page to find this information. Clearly a cover-up.

* or anyone credulous enough to believe the tongue-in-cheek bluster of their editorial staff

** or I am, but I've already been compromised. If this comment doesn't get posted, you know which it is...

US court says just viewing child porn is not a crime

Steven Knox

RE: Cache Files

"If its in the Cache file then it was downloaded from the Net by the browser."

That is most likely true*. However, it does not mean that it was ever displayed by the browser. There are numerous ways to link an image or other file to a web page so that it is downloaded into the cache without ever being displayed.

* It could also have been placed there by the user, or by any application running on the machine which can gain write access to the cache folder. The mere existence of a file anywhere on a user's PC is not a reliable indication that the user either knew of the file or intended to download it.

I agree with Klaus -- it is the intentional act of seeking out such images which is the real crime, and a much more reliable piece of evidence would be a history of searches and URLS typed into the address bar; particularly because these are less likely (although still possible) to be forged. Unfortunately, these are also in many cases much easier to erase.

Russian trouble makers find Quicken backdoor

Steven Knox

Generalities are ALWAYS wrong.

"Administrative-placed backdoors are nothing but bad." Tell that to the fella who has his past 10 years' financial data in Quicken, has forgotten his password, and is now being audited. Data management is always a compromise between convenience and security. I think Intuit did a pretty good job; the only failure I see is that they underestimated the speed with which cracking technology has advanced. But it also looks as if they're willing to admit that and work to improve their products.

"...biometrics will make our data LESS secure." Certainly biometrics-only solutions will; but several solutions I've seen allow you require the biometric AND a password. I don't know a lot about the internal workings, but I'd guess that an ideal would be to encrypt the biometric data with a long secure hash based on the password, so that everytime you change your password the biometric data is re-encrypted, making old copies useless.

Rivals torture consumers via Microsoft

Steven Knox

Article and Comments Prove Benefit to Consumer

To sum up your article: you prefer Vista search to Google search, therefore allowing Google search to take the place of Vista search (at the choice of the consumer) is bad.

To sum up the comments: some people prefer Google search; some prefer a different option altogether; some don't even use desktop search. Therefore they should be able to chose.

This is exactly what antitrust law was created for. It's not about mandating specific choices; it's about preserving the ability of the consumer to choose (and ensuring that their choice actually means something.)

Need hard facts? Try Conservapedia

Steven Knox

Huh?

"objective...from a conservative perspective"

Definition of objectivity from Conservapedia: "The basing of knowledge on empirical data."

Since empirical data precludes subjective perspective, by their own definition* the above quote is contradictory.

* To be fair (and to underscore the irony), I must admit that Conservapedia does mark their definition of objectivity as "disputed". Perhaps once they finish debating it, they'll have replaced "empirical data" with "conservative dogma" to maintain consistency.

Beyond the valley of the drolls

Steven Knox

Does quoting you in a comment to your article count?

"Using OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office is like eating organic food instead of conventional. It is not the experience, or the expense, or the convenience that matters. It is the knowledge that you are a better person for so doing."

I like this one -- you can make it either pro- or anti- Open Office just by changing the tone of your voice.

(Although I daresay the analogy would work better if organic farmers required you to come to their farm to get your food, but then didn't charge you anything, while conventional farmers sent someone round to your dinner table and charged you $300 a chair regardless of whether or not a) someone would actually be sitting in it or b) said someone would even want some of your famous green bean casserole.)

Keep up the good work, Verity!

Oz boffins to polish perfect pair of balls

Steven Knox

Defined inaccuracy?

So "changes of as much as 50 parts per billion" are a problem, but "We are trying for an accuracy of two parts in 100 million."

That would be 2,000 parts per billion, or 40 times the granularity of the aforementioned problem.

What am I missing from the story which would resolve this increased margin of error?

Experts testify in Congress on behalf of internet gambling industry

Steven Knox

Potential

"As Lawrence Lessig has made clear, the internet provides potentially a more, rather than a less, regulated environment, since the digital information packets that constitute the internet can be tracked indefinitely."

...and HTML had the potential to allow for honest, scientific sharing of data, and blogging had the potential to revolutionize political discussion and reporting, and Wikipedia had the potential to become a vastly more useful tool than any encyclopedia, and DNA has the potential to free as many innocents as it convicts criminals and e-voting has the potential to eliminate election fraud...

There's a lot of potential in this world, but technology never lives up to its potential; there are too many ways we can screw it up. I agree that opponents of online gambling exaggerate the negative aspects of it, but the correct response is not to exaggerate the positive aspects: that just makes you look as stupid as they are. Worse, you're validating their misperceptions by addressing them as serious issues.

The fact of the matter is that online gambling will in the long run turn out as reputable and no more reputable than brick-and-mortar gambling -- because intelligent regulators can create physical analogues of any digital controls and vice versa (and intelligent crooks can find digital chinks as easily as physical ones.) Your sentence "After all, what makes age verification for gambling different than age verification for pornography?" brings up an excellent illustration. Currently physical age verification can work much better than online age verification (Most physical vendors at least ask for an ID from people who don't appear old enough; how many "adult-only" sites can you get into just by saying "Yes, I am old enough"?) However, current technology could be used to create digital identity services and link them to official databases (there's the potential) but to be effective, there would have to be a universal (or at least world-wide) system, and legal, economic, and political barriers won't let that happen any time soon.

So don't pretend that online gambling is anything more that a digital extension of the current gambling environment. It's not; and it doesn't have to be.

So what's in a URL? The Reg URL?

Steven Knox

Why do you currently need duplication?

"Technically however this means we're already having to deal with an element of duplication in development and underlying machinery, and the duplication will tend to increase in the future with the introduction of more sites and services."

Why? Why not have one set of servers answer to both base URLs with the same base content? I do it on Apache machines at home and IIS machines at work with no problems. As long as you setup the configuration properly, no redirection or duplication is necessary.

Asus pitches wee Eee PC companion

Steven Knox

2GB Model?

"The 2GB model's expected to retail for around $200"

What 2GB model?

"Asus said the sub-notebook will contain ... 4, 8 or 16GB of Flash..."

Ask.com rolls out new algorithms, skins

Steven Knox

Two thumbs up.

It's definitely much better than Google for contextual searching!

I wanted to look up historical population estimates for many different countries. I typed in "historical population by country" and the left bar links helped narrow down my search to exactly what I was looking for. Google just returned a seemingly random list of population sites usually specific to one country or another.

Plus, I'm using Opera, and the interface is clean and effective, without any noticeable bugs -- inidicating that Ask appears to get standards compliance.

Gone phishing with eBay

Steven Knox

Nice report -- almost

"Thirdly, it took eBay at least two hours to respond to this after it was reported."

Not true. According to your timeline, you reported it at 21:54 and the listings were gone at 00:15. That's 2:19 to COMPLETE a response, not to begin responding.

"Do you consider this to be moving “quickly”?" That depends. How many fraudulent listings were there? If there were only the dozen or so you showed, that's one thing. But if there were thousands or millions*, the picture looks different.

I remember when I was in college, and our primary T1 went down. We had a backup 56k line, so the connection didn't die, but everything slowed down. I did a traceroute and the numbers were in the 2000 to 3000 range. That really pissed me off until I recalled that those figures were milliseconds. Perspective restored, I sat back and waited the 2-3 seconds.

I'd take 2-3 hours response time over the days it takes credit card companies to verify fraud or the months it takes some companies to even admit they had a breach of any kind.

Crypto boffin: writing is on the wall for 1024-bit RSA

Steven Knox

Orders of Magnitude

John Stag: An order of magnitude is generally defined as a power of 10 (although technically you can use any scale as long as you're consistent and your audience understands which scale your using.) The largest proper RSA-style number factored was 200 decimal digits, and 1024-bit numbers are 308-309 decimal digits (i.e, 2^1024 ~= 10^308). Since each digit equates to another power of ten, or another order of magnitude, the numbers in use today are 108-109 orders of magnitude larger.

Since we're talking computer stuff, we could (should?) use binary orders of magnitude. A 200-digit decimal number takes 664-668 binary digits, so from that reckoning we oculd say that the RSA numbers used today are (1024-668) = 356 orders of magnitude larger.

JavaScript in web browsers is new security weak spot

Steven Knox

Missing the point

"It is really hard to see the difference between what Ajax is supposed to do and what is an attack from hijacking JavaScript,"

Really? Because what typifies a well-formed AJAX request is that it is an individual request with parameters that match the schema offered by the server. For an attack to actually work as an attack, it would have to be either a significant number of requests, or have specifically malformed parameters, or both. I wouldn't hire a programmer who couldn't craft a server app to check for well-formedness, and I wouldn't pay a security pro who couldn't identify a significant increase in traffic as a problem.

"Potentially it provides a bridge between external internet applications and internal intranet applications behind the firewall."

Only when implemented by a moron who doesn't understand what AJAX is or what it's for. AJAX is simply the use of Javascript code to request information through web protocols. As such, it runs on the client (read: any machine connected to the internet). So to use AJAX as a bridge to your intranet, you'd have to open said intranet up to everyone and everything.

Also, Javascript code must at some point be readable to the client, which means that hackers can and will get at the source code. So putting anything you want to keep private in Javascript is a mistake.

EVERY system is insecure when implemented unwisely.

Vista goes gangbusters

Steven Knox

...40 million copies hitting the streets...

From what height...?

Seriously, though, is that 40m copies shipped by MS, or 40m purchased and installed? Important difference!

How Google translates without understanding

Steven Knox

Sheer presumption

'the automatic-translation engines they constructed triumphed by sheer brute-force statistical extrapolation rather than "understanding".'

This assumes that human "understanding" is anything more than brute-force statistical extrapolation. I'll grant that what we do naturally may be an order of magnitude more complex that what we're currently able to program computers to do, but we don't know enough about how our own brains work to say that we don't work on similar principles.

In fact, Google's translation success could be seen as supporting this possibility...but then again, what does that say about my understanding of this stuff?

Honda to debut hydrogen fuel-cell car in 2008

Steven Knox

Prius vs Civic

I don't think the Prius's success over the Civic Hybrid is due soley to its styling. The article fails to mention the major engineering differences between the vehicles.

Toyota hybrids' primary motor is the electric, with the gas engine used to recharge the batteries or provide additional oomph when necessary. Honda's hybrids, on the other hand, use the gas engine primarily, with the electric used to provide quick start (allowing the gas engine to shut off at lights) or extra oomph.

Also, as mentioned, the Civic hybrid is essentially a Civic with the hybrid technology, whereas the Prius has been Toyota's showcase for new ideas, with things like more flexible cargo arrangements, Bluetooth support, and navigational tools designed in rather than tacked on as an afterthought.

The Civic hybrid is a production vehicle with one concept added; the Prius is a concept vehicle in mass production.

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