xipetotec

Portland announces boil water notice on one day when I have no soda or beer in the house.

Not really.  25pdrs have gun shields so they're still getting bulletproof cover.  Sextons have a 2+ save against normal shooting because of their armor, but they are bigger and cost more and AT weapons are much deadlier against them since they don't get the innate save that the non-armored guns do. 

The big reason is that 8 25pdrs is 240 pts.  When you make them armored you get 330 points for 8 sextons.  Just not worth it for what you get with 25pdrs, you're much better off spending your points to get the 5.5" guns.

In general I prefer my brit artillery to be the towed variety.  No sense paying a premium for 25pdrs that are armored, it won't make them better at bombarding.

So what I am hearing is "cool model" but not a great unit? 

That would be my asesment. I'm pretty sure I've never actually killed anything with a sturmtiger.

So the sturmtiger out of Grey wolf is awful (as far as I remember they never erratad them to match the Nuts version).  You get one attempt to range in, then hit things under the template as conscript.  The odds really aren't with you on that one.  Sure it can ruin a building's day but

a) buildings aren't really that rewarding to be in in FOW int he first place and

b) Nobody in their right mind would ever put a unit in a building when there is a sturmtiger around

The ones in Nuts are a little better as they lose the indirect fire and gain a 48" direct fire.  But even then, in general, there are better things in the slot they take up.

Huge dune fan. Personally, I think that first book would be near impossible to get right in film. Of the two movies, you get a semblance to what the book is like only after seeing both. The sci-fi channel one does a better job sticking to the core plot, while the older one has a much more impressive use of costumes and sets. Neither get's it right.

 

I do strongly think that the book has far too many non-dialogue, non-action elements to actually create a movie from it. In any given section of the book, you have layers of unspoken dialog. You read what all the characters are thinking, what they think the other characters are thinking and what the bene-gesserit training says that they are thinking.  The older film tries to do this and it feels like a dubbed movie at times. The older film attempts to simplify the bene-gesserit training as psychic abilities, which probably translates better to those that haven't read the books, but is quite annoying for those that have.

 

In the book, the lack of water and spice are stressed far more than in either film. Much of this takes place in characters' thoughts, rather than dialog, but it is very core the book. In reading that book, you find your self thinking about your water-fat flesh more than normal. The book makes you thirsty, or at least makes you think about your water intake.

 

Neither film does a very good job explaining that "thinking machines" are forbidden, hence the great need for spice to create alternate solutions for a lack of non-human computers. In general, I think neither film does a very good job explaining the spice - they both try, but it boils down to a petrol alternative, rather than the drug it is. I'll admit, much of the issue is related to the target audience, which is Americans, whom can't really talk about a crak-like drug that benefits society....at least, not in film.

 

I also think that the classic Sci-Fi theme of all "white" casts really doesn't fit dune very well.

Just to be argumentative. 

I read Dune->Children of Dune last month.  The lack of water on Arrakis  rarely actually matters in the plot of the books.  While important to the setting its mainly important to making the fremen want to have a water rich world.  In movies you can show the fact that its a mutherfkin desert, you don't need the words to let people know that, plus you can only squeeze so much plot into a feature film (see Dune as example what happens when you try and squeeze more in). 

As for mentats/computers stuff . . . who cares?  It doesnt matter at all in the core of the plot.  Dune is a medieval fantasy set in the far future.  The mentats instead of computers is mostly just a setting thing.  I was arguing this with friends the other night.  Dune isn't a sci-fi book like say Old Man's War or Red Mars, its a fantasy book set in the future.

Because you still need to deter people from hanging around and stealing at leisure?  An alarm going off alerts people that something is going on and encourages the individual who set the alarm off to stop what they are doing and get out before the police arrive.  If I were a business owner I would definitely prefer the police showing up after 20 minutes rather than not showing up at all.  Plus its probably required by their insurance policy.

I'm pretty sure nobody breaks into a hobby store and makes a beeline past the booster boxes of M:TG if they're going for resale.  Safe guess is he needed things for himself.

Labyrinth is one of my favorite games right now.  Its work very similar to Twilight Struggle (which deals with the cold war) with the additions of troops and terror cells. 

Also, A Distant Plain is probably the best game in the COIN series right now (although I really can't recommend the COIN series enough, amazing games)  Playing ADP really makes you realize how crazy the whole Afghanistan fight is.

Well given the price of storage nowadays pretty much everything will be in there eventually.  If they're programmatically joining elements of a (literal) dictionary then you're moving away from a dictionary attack and more towards a brute force attack because the things your checking against aren't precomputed hashes.  Of course if your set of words is precomputed in the dictionary you're screwed I guess, and if someone really wants to crack your password they're going to do it.  In the end we can only hope that websites salt their hashes so things like dictionary attacks don't really help.

I think its also worth noting that if someone really wanted to hack your accounts and get your password is probably way easier to just pretend to be you and then call customer support.  I know the last time I had to change my password at work I only had to call the help desk and say who I was and ask them to reset the password.

Once again, as I usn

 

Once again, as I understand it, the problem with this approach is that the number of possible English words that can fit in 6 characters is a far smaller space than the total number of permutations of upper and lower case letters. Dictionary attacks take advantage of this by running all the combinations that are actual words first, which is a fairly quick process as these things go. I'm not a cryptologist, but I remember reading an article a while back on password security where they managed to arrange to get together with three hackers to demonstrate how these things got cracked, and all three said and showed that passwords based on real words were among the easiest to crack. I believe that XKCD strip was actually brought up and used as a bad example, but it was a while ago, that may have been in the commentary or just my own comparison.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to espouse using a 6 character word, just showing that a 6 character password with limited choices is still more secure than a 5 character password with extra characters (not accounting for dictionary attacks).  The takeaway from things like the XKCD comic is that longer and easier to remember is better than shorter but hard to remember.  No dictionary (probably) is going to have something like peanutCarsGirlMagnet in their list of passwords.

Case A:  5 character password with a mix of lowercase-uppercase-numbers-and symbols (to make my life easier just the ones on the number row).  Total Characters: 26 + 26 + 10 + 10 = 72.

Total possible permutations: (72x72x72x72x72) = 1,934,917,632

Case B: 6 Character password with just upper/lowercase. Total Characters: 52

Totalpossible permutations: (52*52*52*52*52*52) = 19,770,609,664

Just adding one more character in length more than makes up for the lack of extra 20 possible characters.

If your password is mostly random and not short you're probably good.

Generally things like passwords are hashed when they're stored in a database with a one way algorithm like MD5 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5 note that this is technically a bad example because MD5 has flaws that can be exploited).  So if you have a password that is 'password' it should be stored in the database as "5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99"

When you enter your password in the site its hashed, and then the hash is compared with whats in the database.  Thats why if you see a databreach like the kickstarter one they say encrypted passwords were stolen, the thieves have 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99 not password associated with your email.

Of course if they know the type of hash used they could brute force your password.  That is, simply hashing every password possible "abc111, abc112, abc113, abc114,  . . . etc" and comparing it to the hash they have.  That takes a LONG time for any reasonable length password and its not something someone would normally use unless they're desperate or they're the NSA or someone else with ridiculous computing power.

  Things like Dictionary Attacks and Rainbow tables shorten the amount of time needed to crack encrypted passwords.  Essentially someone goes and pre-hashes a whole bunch of things and then stores them in a file (dictionary attack) or does extra math stuff that I don't really get in the case of Rainbow Tables.  So to crack your password of 'password' they just look up the hashed value "5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99" in their table and out pops "password"  Now you're in trouble!  But those tables only have so much info in them because you can't store the hash of everything as it would be way to big, so it usually only has short, simple phrases "aaaaab" or things that people use all the time "password"

To be safe you just want something long and random enough to avoid being targeted by these sort of attacks but also something you can remember.

My favorite method was proposed by XKCD:

http://xkcd.com/936/

Note that I don't use it because I'm lazy.

Of course you could just follow the links provided in the article and see that Oregon does in fact have laws about this:

http://www.scottandscottllp.com/resources/state_data_breach_notification_law.pdf

And kickstarter is based in New York, which also has laws on the books about that.

Not sure what the rest of your points were trying to bring up. . . If a company knows about a breach and is required to disclose it and doesn't its in violation of the law, its not like these things breaches are hard to detect either.

Law enforcement and the government don't need to hack into a database for usernames and passwords, they just say terrorist and the courts let them in, which isn't a data breach.

And people who get your username and password and access a single account aren't a data breach either.  Thats at most illegal access and mostly just personal stupidity for giving out username/passwords.

They're legally required to notify customers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_breach_notification_laws

Also they probably said there was no evidence of unauthorized activity because there probably wasn't.  Nobody is hacking kickstarter so they can use your account to kickstart games, they're trying to get your email, password and other useful data that they can use to make real money.  On top of all that the passwords were encrypted so they're fairly useless unless someone wants to brute force them (not likely) or you used a common password that can be rainbow tabled (seriously, use a better password)

Do you not normally play on a 6x4 board?

I also asked Jophiel about this last night and he said he would most likely be coming.

I will be there

22nd should work for me as well.

Of course then theres the bigger question of why you would want to use a Stug A in EW.  Waaaaaaaaay overcosted for what you get.

It depends on how anal you are about it being correct.  The Stug A has a shorter casemate.  The short 75mm gun is also a little more complicated than just a chopped off long 75.

If you can't find one another option would be to go someplace like this and rent one for a few days and see how you like it

http://www.borrowlenses.com/AdvancedSearch.do?searchString=D7000

So from what you describe, and from my own personal preferences I would say that between the 5200 and the 7000 I would go with the 7000.  If you like manual shooting you're gonna be disapointed with something like the 5200.  I avoid any camera that doesn't have a top LCD display, its just too hard to adjust settings any mode.  Also it only has the back thumbwheel thingy (technical term) and doesn't also have one on the front.  That makes adjusting exposure in manual mode an absolute nightmare.  That camera is meant for someone who just wants to use the LCD screen and shoot in sport mode at their kids soccer game and show off that they have one of those fancy cameras that the lenses change out on.

I was actually going to suggest looking for an old D300 used.  Still a very good quality pro model from around 2005.  But really it looks like the 7000 is almost as good as that was.  Didn't realize the D7000 has an internal AF motor in it.  I guess I would have just sold myself on the D7000 if I didn't already have an FX sensor camera in my closet-o-cameras.

Do you have a list of things you plan on using the camera for?  I have a ton of cameras (although I've let the hobby slide recently) and Nikon was my brand of choice.  My first DSLR was a D70 and my DSLR of choice when I actually go out and take pictures anymore is my D700.  Keep in mind that any of the DX lenses will also crop the image of your older non DX format lenses by 1.5 IIRC.  So your 50mm film lens would become a 75mm lens on a DX camera.

More questions:

How important is video to you?  Size?  Are you willing to buy a body without lenses and then hunt down lenses?  Do you want to be able to autofocus old lenses? (critical/nice/whocares?)

Actually it probably is based on previous things you've searched for.  When I type 80's tv show into google, for example, I get 80's tv show theme songs, 80's tv costumes, 80's tv show helicopter.