alister

39 ms·

361.
by alister 12y ago
Having tried the new virginamerica.com site just now, I don't really see a big difference between their site and anyone else's. Having booked through a lot of different airline sites over the last 15 years, I want to say that the
362.
Inside the US government’s war on tech support scammers(arstechnica.com)
83 points by alister 12y ago|30 comments
363.
by alister 12y ago
> parents jump on the bandwagon, only to peak and decline as everyone on the playground starts answering to the same name Is the USA more individualistic when choosing names than, say, China or Brazil? Brazilians regularly give their d
364.
by alister 12y ago
I'm sure you realize this, but to clarify a bit for the parent commenter: Although the URL is encrypted, anyone watching the connections on the network can still tell what IP address you're connecting to and usually be able to inf
365.
by alister 12y ago
More fun facts: - We went from 128 ASCII characters to 110,187 currently-assigned Unicode characters (or Encoded Character code points , to use precise language)[1]. That's a thousand-fold increase. Who would have thought we'd ne
366.
by alister 12y ago
Lots of nice juicy history and interesting detail, but someone who doesn't understand Unicode at all should probably start with this classic article first: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html (Th
367.
New tricks to get users to click on pages, and effects of AI(cringely.com)
1 points by alister 13y ago|0 comments
368.
by alister 13y ago
65,000 tonnes of chemical sounds humongous, but picturing the volume makes it look a lot smaller (not trying to diminish the potential gravity of the problem). Assume the chemicals have a density of 1 g/cm^3, the same as water, which s
369.
Being able to track MH370 would not have changed outcome, a contrary opinion(flightglobal.com)
2 points by alister 13y ago|0 comments
370.
by alister 13y ago
Brazil has an interesting variation on tipping: Restaurants add a 10% service fee, but which is still optional. Therefore, servers don't have to engage in the "parasitic side-business" of generating tips since the service fee
371.
by alister 13y ago
Exploring geometric puzzles made Professor Ernő Rubik the richest and most famous man in communist Hungary [1]. At least that's a concrete answer you can give to the "man in street" who's going to scoff at explanations a
372.
by alister 13y ago
You jest, but your comment made me think of what an impressive Enigma machine [1] such an arrangement of rotors could make. The tubes are slipping in contact, so it'd have to be electrical linkage rather than mechanical to conduct the
373.
Cloud hosting of Google Earth is now technically feasible(cringely.com)
1 points by alister 13y ago|0 comments
374.
by alister 13y ago
This list is the basis of a book by the same author: http://www.amazon.com/In-Pursuit-Unknown-Equations-Changed/d... It's extremely easy to find a free PDF download of the book. I'm assuming the free PDF has
375.
by alister 13y ago
I got the GP's point immediately: He means that system administrators already get an enormous volume of email. Send them another email and it'll get ignored, deleted, or put at the bottom of a gigantic to-do list. For airline pilo
376.
by alister 13y ago
Can you please also explain the motivation for anyone to do all the phony bidding. They don't intend to buy it, they risk getting their account closed, there's no side-channel profit (like ads) from the shill bidding, no one&#x2
377.
Cryptography Breakthrough Could Make Software Unhackable(wired.com)
10 points by alister 13y ago|0 comments
378.
by alister 13y ago
A naive person googling about TrueCrypt and stumbling on this article (well written with an authoritative tone) will think that TrueCrypt is completely cracked, and not bother to use it. This research is interesting and useful, but do we re
379.
by alister 13y ago
As another (minor) clarification to the article, where it says: If your finger was the size of the Earth, you could feel the difference between houses from cars I think it would be easier to visualize this way: If the Earth was the size
380.
by alister 13y ago
The license is abundantly generous -- it essentially says, "do whatever you want, but don't hold Cisco responsible". But this isn't the whole story. There are also patents involved, and these are not mentioned in the LIC
381.
by alister 13y ago
If you recast these questions according to how deliveries work right now, I think you see that we already have all those problems and we manage to live with them: 1. Won't theft run rampant if UPS drops off your package at your door wh
382.
by alister 13y ago
> in very old cities ... running into an interesting archaeological site Why are archaeological sites are so far underground? Are ancient cities actually getting higher in altitude as old ruins get covered up? Why Pompeii was buried is c
383.
by alister 13y ago
> Trousseau is a gpg encrypted key-value store designed to be a simple, safe and relient place for your data. Relient? I think he meant "reliant" but even that doesn't sound right. Reliant means "trustful", sug
384.
by alister 13y ago
If we were talking about "idea" in a totally general way, your point is fine. (I'd add astrology to your list.) But I, and I'm pretty sure that Scott Adams also, were talking about business ideas; i.e., are there any p
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by alister 13y ago
Speaking of Scott Adams' business ideas, I've always liked his "Rules for Filtering Out Bad Ideas": http://filters.pen.io/ My favorite is #3: It doesn't matter how many people dislike an idea. All
386.
by alister 13y ago
One important way in which the UTF-8 standard differs from Ken Thompson's and Rob Pike's original proposal: The 5th and 6th bytes were eliminated. The encoding is now always 1 to 4 bytes long. But UTF-8 can still represent all of
387.
by alister 13y ago
UTF-8 is variable width using 8, 16, 24, or 32 bits per code point. I wondered why you didn't write that "UTF-8 is variable width using 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, or 48 bits per code point", because that's how Prosser/Tho
388.
by alister 13y ago
Wow, how times change. The smart advice was to never use Javascript. (Years ago pg even wrote, " I would not even use Javascript, if I were you. Most of the Javascript I see on the Web isn't necessary, and much of it breaks."
389.
by alister 14y ago
> Comodo firewall subscribed me to something called GeekBuddy, Adobe Reader trying to install McAfee, QuickTime trying to sign me up for offers Perhaps what we need is a meta-installer that runs standard installers but ticks check box
390.
by alister 14y ago
I experienced another security failure on Rogers' part: Just a few weeks ago I was able to reset the passcode on my Rogers cell phone account by supplying just my cell number and date of birth. This was through an automated system and no ot

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