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3126

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by IainB on March 05, 2014, 03:28 PM »

I like to view links to documents online via Google Docs Viewer.
Having tried out different scripts, there are two that I have kept and found useful:

• View Word, Powerpoint, PDF and TIFF files with Google Docs Viewer for Greasemonkey
  The author says that his script is derived from PDF/PPT/TIF viewer with Google docs for Greasemonkey
  
  
• gPDF - View Online PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint Files
  Available as:
  
  • Mozilla Firefox add-on.
  • Google Chrome Extension
  • Greasemonkey script (userscript).
  • Opera Extension

The two scripts are not identical, but do overlap in function, so I use them both together. Both scripts work fine in Firefox, and seem to work OK if you leave them both switched ON (Enabled), though when I have done that (i.e, left them both ON) and I view a doc in G.Viewer, I sometimes get an obscure message from Google to the effect that "Sorry, we cannot display that. You have exceeded your bandwidth utilisation..." or something. It might be the document size, but I am unsure what causes this, though by trial-and-error I found that switching off one of the scripts for a while seems to (usually) clear the problem, and I re-enable it later.

I have copied below 3 screenshot clips showing how document links look on the webpage, with:

• 1. Both scripts OFF.
• 2. only View etc. ON. (Displays a little Google Viewer icon.)
• 3. only gPDF ON.
  ___________________

(If you leave both scripts ON, then it looks like the 2nd image - i.e., with the little Google Viewer icon.)

1. Both scripts OFF:




2. only View etc. ON:




3. only gPDF ON:

3127

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by IainB on March 05, 2014, 02:33 PM »

@Curt: Good find.  
Those top few ads in Google have long been a nuisance. I once had a script that highlighted those adds (with a red rectangle), but it only worked on google.co.uk (I think, from memory), and ABP can't seem to block just those elements.
I use DuckDuckGo as default tool for searching now (which also collects Google searches), but on the rare occasion that I might want to doublecheck a search on just Google, then I still find those top few ads annoying/distracting, and of no use, so I shall use this script.
Many thanks!

EDIT: Oh! It doesn't seem to work! Doesn't seem to do anything.

3128

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on March 05, 2014, 01:19 AM »

Well, haven't we all - or at least most of us - been subjected to the same thing?

-barney (March 05, 2014, 12:16 AM)

A rhetorical question. I can't speak for anyone else, but in my case, the answer would be "Yes, but no", mainly because I have always resisted attempts to impose that sort of asinine method of motivation on me. It is insidious, self-destructive and corrosive of the human spirit, but probably more importantly, it is guaranteed to adversely affect quality of output of a process (Deming, et al - esp. the experiment with the red and white beads).

3129

Living Room / Re: Peer Review and the Scientific Process

« Last post by IainB on March 04, 2014, 11:46 PM »

The fraud was apparently first reported in the journal Nature.
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Over 100 published science journal articles just gibberish

• ...The fake papers are in the fields of computer science and math...
  
  
• ...This is not the first time nonsense papers have been published. ...
  
  
• ...But how could gibberish end up in respectable science papers? The man who discovered the recent frauds said it showed slipping standards among scientists.
  "High pressure on scientists leads directly to too prolific and less meaningful publications," computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in France, told FoxNews.com.
  But he has no explanation as to why the journals published meaningless papers.
  "They all should have been evaluated by a peer-review process. I've no explanation for them being here. I guess each of them needs an investigation," he said. ...
  
  
• ...The publishers also could not explain it, admitting that the papers “are all nonsense.”...
  
  
• ...Some professors said that pay rules that base professor salaries on the number of papers they publish may lead to fakes.
  “Most schools have merit raise systems of some kind, and a professor’s merit score is affected by his or her success in publishing scholarly papers,” Robert Archibald, a professor of economics at the College of William and Mary, who studies the economics of higher education, told FoxNews.com.
  He noted that because other professors may not read the paper, “publishing a paper that was computer-generated might help with merit pay.”
  Labbé also said that overly numerical measures might encourage fraud.
  “In aiming at measuring science it is perturbing science,” he said.
  

-IainB (March 04, 2014, 05:34 PM)

Looks like this could be an absolutely classic own goal by the moronic academic administrations that subscribe to the outmoded and discarded management practice of making merit pay based on numerical measures. It is well-documented what happens if you do that: you get unintended consequences.
Points 10 and 11 of Deming's 14-point philosophy cover this very well:

• 10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the workforce.
  
  
• 11. (a) Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
        (b) Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
  

Therefore, it is arguably not so much a case of "it showed slipping standards among scientists" as that it showed that the university administration was effectively dictating a lowered standard as being necessary to achieve higher merit pay  - i.e., the more you publish, the more we'll pay you, regardless of the quality.

3130

Living Room / UPDATE: Peer Review Game - Over 100 published science journal articles gibberish

« Last post by IainB on March 04, 2014, 05:34 PM »

The fraud was apparently first reported in the journal Nature.
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Over 100 published science journal articles just gibberish

By Maxim Lott
Published March 01, 2014
FoxNews.com

Image:fake articles in science journals.jpg

Do scientific papers ever seem like unreadable gibberish to you? Well, sometimes they really are.

Some 120 papers published in established scientific journals over the last few years have been found to be frauds, created by nothing more than an automated word generator that puts random, fancy-sounding words together in plausible sentence structures. As a result they have been pulled from the journals that originally published them.

The fake papers are in the fields of computer science and math and have titles such as “Application and Research of Smalltalk Harnessing Based on Game-Theoretic Symmetries”; “An Evaluation of E-Business with Fin”; and “Simulating Flip-Flop Gates Using Peer-to-Peer Methodologies.” The authors of those papers did not respond to requests for comment from FoxNews.com.

This is not the first time nonsense papers have been published.

In 1996, as a test, a physics professor submitted a fake paper to the philosophy journal Social Text. His paper argued that gravity is “postmodern” because it is “free from any dependence on the concept of objective truth.” Yet it was accepted and published.

But how could gibberish end up in respectable science papers? The man who discovered the recent frauds said it showed slipping standards among scientists.

"High pressure on scientists leads directly to too prolific and less meaningful publications," computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in France, told FoxNews.com.

But he has no explanation as to why the journals published meaningless papers.

"They all should have been evaluated by a peer-review process. I've no explanation for them being here. I guess each of them needs an investigation," he said.

The publishers also could not explain it, admitting that the papers “are all nonsense.”

“We are in the process of investigating… [and] taking the papers down as quickly as possible. A placeholder notice will be put up once the papers have been removed. Since we publish over 2,200 journals and 8,400 books annually, this will take some time,” Eric Merkel-Sobotta, a spokesman for the publisher Springer, which published 16 of the fake papers, told FoxNews.com.

The fraud was first reported in the journal Nature.

Labbé has made it his mission to detect fakes, and ironically has published a paper in a Springer journal about how to automatically detect fake papers. He also built a website that detects whether papers are computer generated.                                                                                     

“Our tools are very efficient to detect SCIgen papers and also to detect duplicates and plagiarisms,” Labbé said. SCIgen is the program that generates random papers.

Some professors said that pay rules that base professor salaries on the number of papers they publish may lead to fakes.

“Most schools have merit raise systems of some kind, and a professor’s merit score is affected by his or her success in publishing scholarly papers,” Robert Archibald, a professor of economics at the College of William and Mary, who studies the economics of higher education, told FoxNews.com.

He noted that because other professors may not read the paper, “publishing a paper that was computer-generated might help with merit pay.”

Labbé also said that overly numerical measures might encourage fraud.

“In aiming at measuring science it is perturbing science,” he said.

The author of this piece, Maxim Lott, can be reached on twitter at @maximlott or at [email protected]

3131

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on March 04, 2014, 01:12 AM »

At OutlinerSoftware.com, there is a character going by the name 22111 who is notorious for posting weird/irrational comments. He makes some curious comments. Sometimes they look like they could be interesting, and at other times they seem angry, arrogant, aggressive, or convoluted and nonsensical like stirred spaghetti.
Some people seem to think that he is an infuriating idiot or troll, others that he's a WUM (wind-up merchant). You can see some of his posts (and what people make of him) in this thread: What the he** are "contacts"? Chaos Intellect review - and why that prog, too, seems to be up for the bin - 22111
However, no-one has so far thought he was worth making a portrait of.

But, at ClimateAudit.org, they have another notorious commenter who uses the handle "Nick Stokes". This guy is so good, he is apparently worth making a portrait of - or at least, a caricature. It's rather cleverly done. To fully appreciate the humour, you probably need to read his comments referred to, and then look at the signals and puns in the cartoon (by Josh'14):

From: Behold, a Gordian - Josh 261
If you read the comment threads at Climate Audit then you will probably be familiar with a character called Nick Stokes who argues the impossible and indefensible with great tenacity. Steve's [the blog owner's] patience with him is exemplary and this thread, in particular, prompted the cartoon.
Cartoons by Josh
_____________________________

3132

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: WizNote (a PIM from China) - Mini-Review + Provisional User Forum

« Last post by IainB on March 01, 2014, 11:34 PM »

...'Ah, it has previous versions' I thought. Nope, it's only for VIP. ...

-urlwolf (February 22, 2014, 03:03 PM)

Previous versions seemed to work for me when I had saved a page online and edited it and then wanted to recover an earlier version.

3133

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: WizNote (a PIM from China) - Mini-Review + Provisional User Forum

« Last post by IainB on March 01, 2014, 11:30 PM »

WizNote blog posts: (translated from Chinese using Google Chrome auto-translate)
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

To know notebook business services 50% discount promotion
2014-02-28 products and services , business services

To know notebook business services 50% discount promotion
    To know notes business services in 2014 was 3 months 1 day to launch a new pay plan, we canceled the restrictions of space and the number of members of the group before the introduction of a more economical and practical "Basic Edition" and "Professional Edition", the new version of the program In terms of prices and services compare with similar products in the market with the best price, to better meet the needs of SMEs and organizations in the information management team.  For details, please visit  http://blog.wiz.cn/wiznote-biz-pricing.html

5 % discount promotion
    To thank the user to know the notes and business support services, is launching a 5% discount on the purchase policy: the 2014 3 months 1 day before the trial of all registered users of business services, before April 1, 2014 to purchase public cloud-based enterprise Edition and Professional Edition, the new program will enjoy 5 % off the purchase price. This policy is a rare concession missed! Hurry!
    Users can access the enterprise service management background, into the "service charges" page, select the product package directly to make a purchase.

    Login to know notes        Click here to open Enterprise Services
    We also adjusted the trial version of enterprise service policy experience, if you are currently a trial version of the user experience, from 3 May 1 onwards, your trial period will be adjusted to 30 days, 30 days after the trial expires, you can not add admin team members, but the user data and the client will not be affected .
_____________________________

I haven't copied these two as they contain images and details that have to go together to make sense.

• Update details re PC version 4.2 (images and technical list of new features and bugfixes).
• People groups, communication and sharing (images and technical list of new features).

3134

Mini-Reviews by Members / How to check the Service Pack level in Office 2013

« Last post by IainB on March 01, 2014, 11:26 PM »

I just read the post (copied below) from MS Outlook Info, and checked the version number of my MS Office install, and it was an old version. The updates seemed to have stopped at about 6 versions previously, and the Service Pack 1 version (15.0.4569.1507) evidently had not been installed.

So I went to About Microsoft Office 2013 Click-to-Run Updates and simply followed the steps where they say:

If updates are enabled and you are still at an older version, you can retry the update check by disabling and then re-enabling updates.

• 1. Open any Office application
• 2. Click on the File tab
• 3. Click on Account (Office Account in Outlook)
• 4. Click on Update Options
• 5. Click on Disable Updates
• 6. Click on Update Options again
• 7. Finally, click on Enable Updates

_____________________________

It worked a treat.

The MS Outlook Info post is copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images - so you probably need to read the actual post for best comprehension.

How to check the Service Pack level in Office 2013
Now that Service Pak 1 for Office 2013 has become available, how do I check if I actually have it installed?

Does this Service Pack also apply to my Office 365 Home Premium installation?

Office 2013 doesn’t really like to show off that it is running at Service Pack 1 level. Instead, you have to recognize it via the MSO version number.
Finding the MSO version number

To see the MSO version number, go to File-> Office Account in Outlook (or another Office 2013 application) and press the “About Outlook” button.

At the top, you’ll see 2 build numbers numbers; 1 for Outlook and 1 for MSO.

About Microsoft Outlook - Service Pack 1 MSO version number
The good old About dialog is still there but no longer reveals SP-level information.

When the number behind MSO is 15.0.4569.1506 or higher, then you have successfully installed Service Pack 1 for Office 2013.

For Office 365 subscription based installations of Office 2013, you’ll see the version number directly in the Office Account section as well. In that case, the version number for Service Pack 1 is: 15.0.4569.1507.

Office 365 Service Pack 1 version number
Forcing Office 365 to check for updates

Update Now button for Office 365When you are using Office 2013 as part of an Office 365 subscription, then the Service Pack update isn’t offered via Windows Update nor can you use the standalone installer.

Instead, the update will be installed automatically after a few days, or you can force the update detection by temporarily disabling Automatic Updates and then directly enable it again.

You can do this via:
File-> Office Account-> Update Options

A few seconds after you’ve re-enabled Updates, Office will show a notification that an update is available and will begin to download it. After it has been downloaded confirm that you want to start the installation or simply close any Office applications when being prompted.

Office 365 - Updates for this product are ready to install.

When the update has already been downloaded for you but you haven’t applied it yet, then you can start the installation of it via the Apply Updates command in the list that shows up when you click on the Update Options button.

Note: Service Pack 1 introduced an “Update Now” command to the Update Options button so in the future, manually checking for updates is much more intuitive.

3135

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: AHK script to insert date and time to file name

« Last post by IainB on February 27, 2014, 11:42 PM »

Just corrected the AHK code above. I had forgotten to put the final (correct) code in. Sorry.

3136

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on February 27, 2014, 04:03 PM »

Good Quotations by Famous People:
(famous quotes, witty quotes, and funny quotations collected by Gabriel Robins (http://www.cs.virginia.edu/%7Erobins) over the years)

From: http://www.cs.virgin.../~robins/quotes.html
(In a spoiler as it is a long list.)

Spoiler

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
    - H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
    - Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
    - Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)

"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."
    - Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat

"His ignorance is encyclopedic"
    - Abba Eban (1915-2002)

"If a man does his best, what else is there?"
    - General George S. Patton (1885-1945)

"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."
    - A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)

"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
    - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."
    - Saint Augustine (354-430)

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
    - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
    - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
    - Galileo Galilei

"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."
    - Emile Zola (1840-1902)

"This book fills a much-needed gap."
    - Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review

"The full use of your powers along lines of excellence."
    - definition of "happiness" by John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."
    - e e cummings (1894-1962)

"Give me a museum and I'll fill it."
    - Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

"Assassins!"
    - Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) to his orchestra

"I'll moider da bum."
    - Heavyweight boxer Tony Galento, when asked what he thought of William Shakespeare

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
    - Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
    - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems."
    - Rene Descartes (1596-1650), "Discours de la Methode"

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
    - Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
    - Henry Ford (1863-1947)

"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
    - Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
    - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed."
    - George Burns (1896-1996)

"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."
    - Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense."
    - Edsgar Dijkstra

"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg."
    - Bjarne Stroustrup

"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."
    - Paul Erdos (1913-1996)

"Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back."
    - Paul Erdos (1913-1996)

"Dancing is silent poetry."
    - Simonides (556-468bc)

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."
    - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
    - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near."
    - Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
    - Plato (427-347 B.C.)

"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it."
    - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'."
    - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn."
    - Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947-)

"We have art to save ourselves from the truth."
    - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
    - Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

"I think 'Hail to the Chief' has a nice ring to it."
    - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) when asked what is his favorite song

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
    - H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must."
    - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)

"The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."
    - unknown

"Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake a whole relationship."
    - Sharon Stone

"If you are going through hell, keep going."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"He who has a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'."
    - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions."
    - Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters."
    - Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
    - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
    - Voltaire (1694-1778)

"He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death."
    - H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them."
    - Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)

"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
    - J. Paul Getty (1892-1976)

"Facts are the enemy of truth."
    - Don Quixote - "Man of La Mancha"

"When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."
    - George Washington Carver (1864-1943)

"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself."
    - Anais Nin (1903-1977)

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
    - Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

"I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right."
    - Frederick (II) the Great

"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
    - Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

"Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."
    - George Eliot (1819-1880)

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
    - Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)

"Black holes are where God divided by zero."
    - Steven Wright

"I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it."
    - Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
    - Walt Disney (1901-1966)

"We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time."
    - Vince Lombardi

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."
    - James Branch Cabell

"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."
    - John D. Rockefeller (1874-1960)

"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."
    - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."
    - Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)

"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered."
    - Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
    - Umberto Eco

"Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down."
    - Jimmy Durante

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
    - Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
    - Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
    - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working."
    - Albert Giacometti (sculptor)

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
    - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."
    - Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."
    - Frank Zappa

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
    - Antoine de Saint Exupery

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
    - Isaac Asimov

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
    - Carl Sagan

"It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts."
    - G. B. Burgin

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
    - Auric Goldfinger, in "Goldfinger" by Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance"
    - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
    - Jimi Hendrix

"A clever man commits no minor blunders."
    - Goethe (1749-1832)

"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours."
    - Richard Bach

"A witty saying proves nothing."
    - Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera."
    - James Stephens (1882-1950)

"The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault."
    - Henry Kissinger (1923-)

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
    - Will Durant

"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
    - Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)

"It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion."
    - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."
    - Mario Andretti

"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means."
    - Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
    - Henry Ford (1863-1947)

"I'll sleep when I'm dead."
    - Warren Zevon (1947-2003)

"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."
    - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

"When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
    - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head."
    - Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

"Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together."
    - Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it"
    - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"While we are postponing, life speeds by."
    - Seneca (3BC - 65AD)

"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
    - Bumper Sticker

"God, please save me from your followers!"
    - Bumper Sticker

"Fill what's empty, empty what's full, and scratch where it itches."
    - the Duchess of Windsor, when asked what is the secret of a long and happy life

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
    - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

"Luck is the residue of design."
    - Branch Rickey - former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
    - Mel Brooks

"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
    - Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"Wit is educated insolence."
    - Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher."
    - Socrates (470-399 B.C.)

"Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me."
    - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
    - Gore Vidal

"Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them."
    - Samuel Palmer (1805-80)

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
    - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows."
    - Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)

"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny."
    - Guy Davenport

"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
    - Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
    - Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
    - Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."
    - Paul Dirac (1902-1984)

"I would have made a good Pope."
    - Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)

"In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience."
    - W.B. Prescott

"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."
    - John von Neumann (1903-1957)

"The mistakes are all waiting to be made."
    - chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game's opening position

"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."
    - Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

"Grove giveth and Gates taketh away."
    - Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep up with software demands

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
    - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
    - Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."
    - H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

"There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."
    - C. A. R. Hoare

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
    - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"What do you take me for, an idiot?"
    - General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy

"I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon."
    - Bill Hirst

"Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do."
    - Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."
    - Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
    - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
    - Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
    - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
    - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"Logic is in the eye of the logician."
    - Gloria Steinem

"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."
    - William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)

"Everything has been figured out, except how to live."
    - Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."
    - Martin Fraquhar Tupper

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it."
    - Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."
    - Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."
    - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."
    - Goethe (1749-1832)

"In the end, everything is a gag."
    - Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

"The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people."
    - Lucille S. Harper

"You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."
    - Yogi Berra

"I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known."
    - Walt Disney (1901-1966)

"He who hesitates is a damned fool."
    - Mae West (1892-1980)

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater."
    - Gail Godwin

"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
    - Henry Kissinger (1923-)

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
    - Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."
    - Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."
    - Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."
    - Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)

"I am not young enough to know everything."
    - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."
    - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
    - General George Patton (1885-1945)

"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."
    - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."
    - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking."
    - Katherine Cebrian

"I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it."
    - Steven Wright

"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour."
    - Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)

"Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure."
    - Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

"I have read your book and much like it."
    - Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

"The covers of this book are too far apart."
    - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."
    - Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end."
    - Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."
    - Voltaire (1694-1778)

"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."
    - Mae West (1892-1980)

"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
    - Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

"No Sane man will dance."
    - Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

"Hell is a half-filled auditorium."
    - Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."
    - Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)

"Vote early and vote often."
    - Al Capone (1899-1947)

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
    - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example."
    - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Hell is other people."
    - Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

"I am become death, shatterer of worlds."
    - Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (citing from the Bhagavad Gita, after witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion)

"Happiness is good health and a bad memory."
    - Ingrid Bergman (1917-1982)

"Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate."
    - Thomas Jones

"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."
    - Al Capone (1899-1947)

"The gods too are fond of a joke."
    - Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."
    - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting."
    - Gloria Leonard

"It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man."
    - Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell

"Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work."
    - Robert Orben

"The cynics are right nine times out of ten."
    - Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

"There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem."
    - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."
    - Revelations 6:8

    "Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance."
        - Plato (427-347 B.C.)

    "Plato was a bore."
        - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

    "Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal."
        - Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

    "I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy."
        - Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

    "Hemingway was a jerk."
        - Harold Robbins

"Men are not disturbed by things, but the view they take of things."
    - Epictetus (55-135 A.D.)

"What about things like bullets?"
    - Herb Kimmel, Behavioralist, Professor of Psychology, upon hearing the above quote (1981)

    "How can I lose to such an idiot?"
        - A shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)

    "Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday."
        - Woody Allen (1935-)

    "I don't feel good."
        - The last words of Luther Burbank (1849-1926)

    "Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure."
        - Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)

    "Men have become the tools of their tools."
        - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

    "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
        - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

    "It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant."
        - Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines

    "I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."
        - Gore Vidal

    "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
        - Woody Allen (1935-)

    "Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives."
        - Abba Eban (1915-2002)

    "A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually."
        - Abba Eban (1915-2002)

    "To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me."
        - Charles William Stubbs

    "Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
        - George Santayana (1863-1952)

    "Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
        - Fred Allen (1894-1956)

    "Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
        - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

    "In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
        - Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

    "Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."
        - Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

    "Why don't you write books people can read?"
        - Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)

    "Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
        - T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

    "Criticism is prejudice made plausible."
        - Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

    "It is better to be quotable than to be honest."
        - Tom Stoppard

    "Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting."
        - Karl Wallenda

    "Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
        - Sun Tzu

    "A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar."
        - Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)

    " The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
        - Alan Kay

    "Never mistake motion for action."
        - Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

    "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
        - Sir Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-1971)

    "Hell is paved with good samaritans."
        - William M. Holden

    "The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time."
        - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

    "Silence is argument carried out by other means."
        - Ernesto"Che"Guevara (1928-1967)

    "Well done is better than well said."
        - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

    "The average person thinks he isn't."
        - Father Larry Lorenzoni

    "Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd."
        - William Congreve (1670-1729)

    "A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted."
        - Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

    "Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."
        - Lewis Perelman

    "Dogma is the sacrifice of wisdom to consistency."
        - Lewis Perelman

    "Sometimes it is not enough to our best; we must do what is required."
        - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

    "The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."
        - Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

    "There is a country in Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal."
        - Sigfried Hulzer

    "Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done."
        - Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), while working, when informed that his wife is dying

    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
        - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

    "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
        - Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM, 1943

    "I think it would be a good idea."
        - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
        - Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

    "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
        - Will Rogers (1879-1935)

    "If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" "
        - Will Rogers (1879-1935)

    "The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy."
        - Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

    "Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity."
        - Irving Kristol

    "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
        - Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

    "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."
        - A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

    "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
        - H. M. Warner (1881-1958), founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927

    "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
        - Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962

    "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
        - Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

    "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
        - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

    "A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood."
        - General George S. Patton (1885-1945)

    "After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."
        - Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)

    "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."
        - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

    "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
        - last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923)

    "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
        - Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)

    "The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
        - Tom Clancy

    "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
        - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

    "It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."
        - Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), "The Prince"

    "Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
        - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

    "The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep."
        - Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live

    "We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees."
        - Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks

    "Half this game is ninety percent mental."
        - Yogi Berra

    "There is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole."
        - Bill Wulf

    "There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
        - Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

    "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
        - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

    "I criticize by creation - not by finding fault."
        - Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

    "Love is friendship set on fire."
        - Jeremy Taylor

    "God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time."
        - Robin Williams, commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky affair

    "My occupation now, I suppose, is jail inmate."
        - Unibomber Theodore Kaczynski, when asked in court what his current profession was

    "Woman was God's second mistake."
        - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

    "This isn't right, this isn't even wrong."
        - Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), upon reading a young physicist's paper

    "For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing."
        - Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

    "Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
        - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

    "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
        - Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

    "Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
        - Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.

    "Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run."
        - Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

    "He would make a lovely corpse."
        - Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

    "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
        - Irvin S. Cobb

    "I worship the quicksand he walks in."
        - Art Buchwald

    "Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
        - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

    "A poem is never finished, only abandoned."
        - Paul Valery (1871-1945)

    "We are not retreating - we are advancing in another Direction."
        - General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)

    "If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?"
        - Seymour Cray (1925-1996), father of supercomputing

    "#3 pencils and quadrille pads."
        - Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when asked what CAD tools he used to design the Cray I supercomputer; he also recommended using the back side of the pages so that the grid lines were not so dominant.

    "Interesting - I use a Mac to help me design the next Cray."
        - Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when he was told that Apple Inc. had recently bought a Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac.

    "Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."
        - Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God.

    "I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need."
        - Francois-Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues

    "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
        - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

    "The truth is more important than the facts."
        - Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

    "Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
        - Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)

    "There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
        - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

    "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
        - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)


© The quotations collection on this Web page is copyright © 1994-2006 by Professor Gabriel Robins (http://www.cs.virginia.edu/%7Erobins/). Permission is hereby granted to anyone to make copies of this Web page, either in part or in its entirety, for any purpose whatsoever, including using any part of the collection above in published works, as long as Gabriel Robins (http://www.cs.virginia.edu/%7Erobins/) is credited as the creator of this quotations collection and a Web link is included to this quotes Web page (i.e., in electronic or Web copies that use parts of this Web page, please link the citation/acknowledgement to http://www.cs.virgin.../~robins/quotes.html (http://www.cs.virgin...7Erobins/quotes.html)).

3137

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on February 27, 2014, 04:00 PM »

From Re: You like science fiction, don't you? Of course you do!

...A Muslim cleric, a Roman Catholic priest, and a Jewish rabbi were discussing their individual experiences of miracles.

The Muslim cleric said, "Once I was riding a camel alone, in the middle of the Sahara desert, and suddenly a fierce sandstorm appeared from nowhere.  I truly thought that my end had come as I lay next to my camel while we were being buried deeper and deeper under the sand, but I did not lose my faith in the almighty Allah, and I prayed and prayed and recited passages from the Koran.  Suddenly, a miracle occurred, and it seemed as though for a hundred metres all around me, the storm had stopped, but I could see it still raging beyond that distance."

The Roman Catholic priest spoke up next, "My experience was very similar.  One day when I was walking down a street in Belfast in Northern Ireland, during the time of the Troubles, I was walking past this pub when people ran out screaming 'It's a bomb!'.  Well, I just stood still, put my hands together, and prayed, thinking to protect all the poor people who might get hurt if it was indeed a bomb. Sure enough, just then, a bomb went off inside the pub, and blew out the wall next to where I was standing, throwing bricks, nails and bits of glass in all directions.  When the dust settled, I was still standing unharmed, in what seemed to be circle of safety all around me in a radius of about a hundred feet.  Inside that circle, no-one had been harmed."

The Jewish rabbi said, "I too have had an experience similar to this.  It was one Sabbath (a Saturday) when I was walking down the street to my synagogue in London.  I like to walk along past the Mercedes showroom, to look at the cars.  I would have loved to buy a new 350SL - it's my favourite car - but I could never afford it unless they sold it for half the price!  As I approached the showroom, I saw a sign in the window that said 'Today only! One only!  Special offer! Brand new 350SL demonstration model at half price!'   I nearly cried!  What could I do?  It was a Saturday, and Jews are not allowed to handle money or engage in commercial transactions on the Sabbath, so I could not buy it even though I could have afforded it.  So I put my hands together and prayed and prayed.  Suddenly, in answer to my prayers, a miracle occurred - for 500 feet all around me, it was a Tuesday!"

-IainB (December 29, 2011, 03:18 AM)

3138

Living Room / No, I Don't Trust You! - "Explicit Trusted Proxy in HTTP/2.0"

« Last post by IainB on February 27, 2014, 03:33 PM »

I put this in this thread as it seemed relevant to the SnowdenGate revelations re snooping/surveillance of traffic flowing variously through ISPs, Google, Microsoft, etc. - that is, SCS (State & Corporate Surveillance).

If the proposals of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) Internet-Draft "Explicit Trusted Proxy in HTTP/2.0" (14 Feb 2014) are agreed, then this snooping/surveillance looks like it could be formalised as "standard practice" in the Internet architecture, and authorised and enabled regardless of Internet users' wishes.

Currently I am aware of only one publicly available and apparently feasible defeat for "man-in-the-middle" attacks by ISPs, governments or other criminals - that would seem to be OpenDNSCrypt.
One wonders how long that is going to be tolerated by the SCS fraternity or indeed whether OpenDNS might not already have been obliged to compromise OpenDNSCrypt without publishing that fact. One would have no way of knowing for sure. It's all about Trust.

(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

No, I Don't Trust You! -- One of the Most Alarming Internet Proposals I've Ever Seen
February 22, 2014

If you care about Internet security, especially what we call "end-to-end" security free from easy snooping by ISPs, carriers, or other intermediaries, heads up! You'll want to pay attention to this.

You'd think that with so many concerns these days about whether the likes of AT&T, Verizon, and other telecom companies can be trusted not to turn our data over to third parties whom we haven't authorized, that a plan to formalize a mechanism for ISP and other "man-in-the-middle" snooping would be laughed off the Net.

But apparently the authors of IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) Internet-Draft "Explicit Trusted Proxy in HTTP/2.0" (14 Feb 2014) haven't gotten the message.

What they propose for the new HTTP/2.0 protocol is nothing short of officially sanctioned snooping.

Of course, they don't phrase it exactly that way.

You see, one of the "problems" with SSL/TLS connections (e.g. https:) -- from the standpoint of the dominant carriers anyway -- is that the connections are, well, fairly secure from snooping in transit (assuming your implementation is correct ... right?)

But some carriers would really like to be able to see that data in the clear -- unencrypted. This would allow them to do fancy caching (essentially, saving copies of data at intermediate points) and introduce other "efficiencies" that they can't do when your data is encrypted from your client to the desired servers (or from servers to client).

When data is unencrypted, "proxy servers" are a routine mechanism for caching and passing on such data. But conventional proxy servers won't work with data that has been encrypted end-to-end, say with SSL.

So this dandy proposal offers a dandy solution: "Trusted proxies" -- or, to be more straightforward in the terminology, "man-in-the-middle attack" proxies. Oh what fun.

The technical details get very complicated very quickly, but what it all amounts to is simple enough. The proposal expects Internet users to provide "informed consent" that they "trust" intermediate sites (e.g. Verizon, AT&T, etc.) to decode their encrypted data, process it in some manner for "presumably" innocent purposes, re-encrypt it, then pass the re-encrypted data along to its original destination.

Chomping at the bit to sign up for this baby? No? Good for you!

Ironically, in the early days of cell phone data, when full capability mobile browsers weren't yet available, it was common practice to "proxy" so-called "secure" connections in this manner. A great deal of effort went into closing this security hole by enabling true end-to-end mobile crypto.

Now it appears to be full steam ahead back to even worse bad old days!

Of course, the authors of this proposal are not oblivious to the fact that there might be a bit of resistance to this "Trust us" concept. So, for example, the proposal includes the assumption of mechanisms for users to opt-in or opt-out of these "trusted proxy" schemes.

But it's easy to be extremely dubious about what this would mean in the real world. Can we really be assured that a carrier going through all the trouble of setting up these proxies would always be willing to serve users who refuse to agree to the proxies being used, and allow those users to completely bypass the proxies? Count me as skeptical.

And the assumption that users can even be expected to make truly informed decisions about this seems highly problematic from the git-go. We might be forgiven for suspecting that the carriers are banking on the vast majority of users simply accepting the "Trust us -- we're your friendly man-in-the-middle" default, and not even thinking about the reality that their data is being decrypted in transit by third parties.

In fact, the fallacies deeply entrenched in this proposal are encapsulated within a paragraph tucked in near the draft's end:

"Users should be made aware that, different than end-to-end HTTPS, the achievable security level is now also dependent on the security features/capabilities of the proxy as to what cipher suites it supports, which root CA certificates it trusts, how it checks certificate revocation status, etc. Users should also be made aware that the proxy has visibility to the actual content they exchange with Web servers, including personal and sensitive information."

Who are they kidding? It's been a long enough slog just to get to the point where significant numbers of users check for basic SSL status before conducting sensitive transactions. Now they're supposed to become security/certificate experts as well?

Insanity.

I'm sorry gang, no matter how much lipstick you smear on this particular pig -- it's still a pig.

The concept of "trusted proxies" as proposed is inherently untrustworthy, especially in this post-Snowden era.

And that's a fact that you really can trust.

--Lauren--
I'm a consultant to Google. My postings are speaking only for myself, not for them.

- - -

Addendum (24 February 2014): Since the posting of the text above, I've seen some commentary (in at least one case seemingly "angry" commentary!) suggesting that I was claiming the ability of ISPs to "crack" the security of existing SSL connections for the "Trusted Proxies" under discussion. That was not my assertion.

I didn't try to get into technical details, but obviously we're assuming that your typical ISP doesn't have the will or ability to interfere in such a manner with properly implemented traditional SSL. That's still a significant task even for the powerful intelligence agencies around the world (we believe at the moment, anyway).

But what the proposal does push is the concept of a kind of half-baked "fake" security that would be to the benefit of dominant ISPs and carriers but not to most users -- and there's nothing more dangerous in this context than thinking you're end-to-end secure when you're really not.

In essence it's a kind of sucker bait. Average users could easily believe they were "kinda sorta" doing traditional SSL but they really wouldn't be, 'cause the ISP would have access to their unencrypted data in the clear. And as the proposal itself suggests, it would take significant knowledge for users to understand the ramifications of this -- and most users won't have that knowledge.

It's a confusing and confounding concept -- and an unwise proposal -- that would be nothing but trouble for the Internet community and should be rejected.

- - -

Posted by Lauren at February 22, 2014 08:24 PM | Permalink
Twitter: @laurenweinstein
Google+: Lauren Weinstein

3139

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by IainB on February 27, 2014, 07:38 AM »

I hadn't realised that GCHQ/NSA were apparently so amazingly up to their armpits in deliberately fomenting revolution/war [...]

-IainB (February 27, 2014, 04:44 AM)

this is not directly related to the linked presentation (? - it may be implied, but not clearly - although I would have been happier if the images were bigger, i.e. I may have missed something).
And I'm not saying they're not - and you may even have posted before here about it - but if you're going to throw out a statement that bald, it needs/deserves a reference/link.

-tomos (February 27, 2014, 05:11 AM)

Sorry, perhaps I should have pointed out the link in the Guido article where it says: View this document on Scribd. The material could be disinformation though, as Guido suggests, but if it isn't, then...

I have to say that there doesn't seem to be much bluntness (if any) about anything I wrote there - I was not making a definite or clear expression of something as fact or a formal account of facts or events. What I mentioned was a perception - that "this seems quite serious" and that they "were apparently so amazingly up to their armpits in deliberately fomenting revolution/war".
Someone else's perceptions and experience may differ, but that does not necessarily invalidate my perceptions, and it doesn't necessarily "need/deserve a reference/link" either, just because someone says it does or feels that it should to (say) align with their perceptions and to have any validity.

Let's suppose that someone was to say to me either:
(a) "Obama appears to be the greatest and most ethical President of our times", or
(b) "Obama appears to be the greatest liar and most deceiving President of our times".

In either case, I might say "What makes you say that?" in a genuine attempt to try to understand how they might have arrived at that perception. If my mind was open to the response, then I might learn something from the answer - who knows?

In actual fact, of course, I probably wouldn't ask such a question as I am usually indifferent as to why people think whatever they might think about their elected leaders. My rule of thumb is "By their fruits ye shall know them" - e.g., (say) Maggie Thatcher's rumoured penchant for breakfasting on the aborted foetuses of coalminers' wives, which, if true, would probably place her in a pretty dim light.

3140

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by IainB on February 27, 2014, 04:44 AM »

Guido Fawkes puts it in an amusing wrapper, as usual, but this seems quite serious. I hadn't realised that GCHQ/NSA were apparently so amazingly up to their armpits in deliberately fomenting revolution/war in targetted nations using so many tech + psych. skills.
Secret GCHQ Plan to Annoy Guido

3141

General Software Discussion / Re: Extension List Dumper (Firefox add-on) - Quick overview.

« Last post by IainB on February 25, 2014, 02:54 PM »

Just updated the opening post with this workaround note as to how to get an RTF copy of the extension list:

Note on display/output: (a workaround)
To produce the list of extensions as per my list in the spoiler above, all I did was select the appropriate output (BBS was selected), and then press Copy to clipboard, and paste into the DCF spoiler field.
@Curt would have done the same in his post (per the link above), except he posted into the DCF comment field directly.
However, I also wanted to have a copy of the list of extensions in my OneNote repository, but there's no "Rich Text Format" output option in Extension List Dumper.
So I Posted the comment, then opened the spoiler, selected all the listed text in there, copied it and posted it into OneNote.
Bingo! Nice RTF output!

So whenever I want an updated extension list, I simply use the DCF comments field as an intermediate step to getting the list in RTF, by Previewing the list in a DCF comment field, and then copying/pasting the RTF text into OneNote, and then discarding the comment (i.e., not posting it).

Here's a sample of the output I get, in OneNote:
(see image in opening post)

3142

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on February 25, 2014, 03:47 AM »

the really funny part is that you got them back to front

-Target (February 24, 2014, 09:36 PM)

Eheh. I did warn that "you might not get the joke, right off.".
(Clue: If you right-click each image and select Save Image As, it will reveal the filename...)
I thought it rather funny too. That's why I posted it.
(And yes, it is deliberate. It is in the style of Private Eye. It's quite clever.)

3143

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on February 24, 2014, 08:06 PM »

Very droll.
If you are unfamiliar with the UK, you might not get the joke, right off.

Ever Seen These Two in the Same Room?


Rolf Harris



Ukranian ambassador


We should be told…

3144

Developer's Corner / Re: PWCT- Programming Without Coding Technology: Free Science & Engineering software

« Last post by IainB on February 23, 2014, 11:19 PM »

They just posted an update: PWCT 1.9 (Art) Rev. 2014.02.24

3145

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on February 23, 2014, 08:39 PM »

As a rationalist, a keen environmentalist and a despiser of corporate cant, greed and corporates' hugely destructive environmental footprints despoiling the land/environment, I just love it when the troughers score a hilarious and ironic own goal.
I have already posted about 2 priceless ones in this thread:

• 1. The Hinkley Point C elephant in the room (H-U-G-E environmental footprints) - the massive "green energy alternatives" environmental footprints that they don't want you to see:
  

  It really is a very, very big elephant and, once seen, you cannot "unsee" it. Priceless.

  
  
• 2. Google Las Vegas Bird Fries now open for business. Yummy! - another massive environmental footprint, and apparently the first of several yet to come.
  _____________________________
  

Today I read of a rather good new one - it's on WSJ behind a paywall, but it was referred to in Forbes - here.

The WSJ article linked to by Forbes apparently puts it rather succinctly (and, I suspect, tongue-in-cheek) thus:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Exxon CEO Joins Suit Citing Fracking Concerns
Residents of Dallas Suburb Fight Construction of Tower That Would Provide Water for Drilling
By Daniel Gilbert
Feb. 20, 2014 5:45 p.m. ET

BARTONVILLE, Texas—One evening last November, a tall, white-haired man turned up at a Town Council meeting to protest construction of a water tower near his home in this wealthy community outside Dallas.

The man was Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp.

He and his neighbors had filed suit to block the tower, saying it is illegal and would create “a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,” in part because it would provide water for use in hydraulic fracturing. Fracking, which requires heavy trucks to haul and pump massive amounts of water, unlocks oil and gas from dense rock and has helped touch off a surge in U.S. energy output.

It also is a core part of Exxon’s business.

Assuming that this is true, then I reckon this chap Rex Tillerson should be given an award of some kind. It really is rather ironic/funny. Another LOL moment for me, at any rate. Priceless.

3146

Living Room / Re: DeskRule: A new kind of desktop search engine is born (ß testers wanted)

« Last post by IainB on February 23, 2014, 05:33 PM »

By the way, I just put a comment on the DeskRule forum: blog: here's deskrule, a new kind of desktop search engine

@nikos: Yes, it all helps. I would suggest that you check that DC (donationcoder) discussion forum for comments yourself, as the people making those comments will not necessarily put their comments in this forum of yours. Thus, you could miss seeing them altogether, if you didn't check the DC forum.

3147

Living Room / Re: DeskRule: A new kind of desktop search engine is born (ß testers wanted)

« Last post by IainB on February 23, 2014, 05:25 PM »

...I have to say though, in situations where I need to search on more specific metadata than what the filesystem offers, I often have domain-specific software that handles this better.

-Jibz (February 23, 2014, 05:02 PM)

Yes, likewise - e.g., as per my comment above about image files in Picasa, or my comments elsewhere on DCF re searching for words/phrases in audio files using OneNote's search (which is also integrated with Windows Search/Index).

3148

Living Room / Re: DeskRule: A new kind of desktop search engine is born (ß testers wanted)

« Last post by IainB on February 23, 2014, 05:13 PM »

It's an interesting idea - especially for photos (for me anyways).
The interface might just scare me off (video), it seems to me to be so fundamentally geeky and unintuitive. I can say that - but unfortunately I dont have any talent in the direction of offering/suggesting alternatives...

-tomos (February 23, 2014, 12:43 PM)

Interesting, yes. I thought it was quite nifty for photos too, though I use Picasa for managing my photos, because no IMT (Image Management Tool) that I have so far come across does all that face-recognition and searching of image file metadata so well - e.g., the camera type and its settings that took a photo of a specific person at a certain GPS on a certain date.

And though this DeskRule looks interesting, I have yet to find anything that quite matches the GDS (Google Desktop Search), which, before they started crippling it and then killed it off, had automated search to cover:

• files/directories across your desktop;
• files/directories in any connected LANs;
• Google Docs (now Google Drive).

- so that they effectively comprised one huge virtual desktop (which, IMHO is as it should be).

3149

Living Room / Re: DeskRule: A new kind of desktop search engine is born (ß testers wanted)

« Last post by IainB on February 23, 2014, 02:53 PM »

I dunno.
Per the Info Mgt threads, I put about six keywords into my file names. About 1-3 times a year I do a "drive read" into a text file. Then searching the text file is over 20 times faster than Win Search. ...

-TaoPhoenix (February 23, 2014, 11:35 AM)

I don't think I understand that. Why do you bother with the text file? If you effectively have your metadata tags/keywords in each file's name (i.e., in the filename of each file that you wish to have metadata tags in), then can't you more simply/easily - and possibly more quickly - make a dynamic search of the actual file names of that population of files at any point in time, using something such as (say) Everything?   

...So I'm not sure what this new approach has to offer. I don't do many obscure searches.

-TaoPhoenix (February 23, 2014, 11:35 AM)

I'm not sure either, yet, but I think the idea is to feed back comments such as these to the developer - which can be done in the discussion forum here: blog: here's deskrule, a new kind of desktop search engine

These are the posts there so far:

3150

Living Room / DeskRule: A new kind of desktop search engine is born (ß testers wanted)

« Last post by IainB on February 23, 2014, 05:16 AM »

Thought I'd post this from the zabkat.com blog (home of xplorer²) in case anyone on the forum might be interested helping out in ß testing on this new approach to search:

(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

DeskRule: A new kind of desktop search engine is born

Nowadays it is amazing how much information there is in your everyday documents. Take your photos for example, the "new" property system introduced with windows vista has no less than 86 properties for photos, and that's not counting the GPS geo-location information also available for pictures. Modern phones and advanced cameras add all this information in EXIF and XMP tags and the property system distills such tags into standard properties.

You may argue that if you own just the one camera you are not interested in the System.Photo.CameraModel property. Most of these are just for professional photographers. But how about searching for pictures with particular people in them? Say pictures of your daugter? This is possible because windows exposes automatic face recognition data inserted by your advanced camera or photo software in System.Photo.PeopleNames property. Likewise you can search by GPS coordinates to find pictures taken at some particular location, e.g. your latest trip in australia. Isn't it a waste of information when you only search by name?

The most powerful search tools of today — even xplorer² — are stuck using traditional shell column handlers which only expose around a third of the available properties. That is why we went ahead and wrote from scratch a new kind of search tool that taps into all the available properties, for photos, media and documents. It also offers traditional name/date/text content search. Its name is DeskRule and today you can have a go trying its capabilities.

This is pretty much work in progress but it has reached a point where it is a usable search engine so we are presenting it to you for your feedback and beta testing, which will help decide the future of its development.

Click to download DeskRule (free beta version, 500 KB)

Minimum requirements: windows Vista or later
   deskrule main window

DeskRule is still rough around the edges and rather slow, but things will improve in the near future. Unlike xplorer² which does "everything and the kitchen sink" file management, this is going to be a tool focused on just one thing, searching for files and folders. The general ideas are:

    Search everywhere. Wherever you have files DeskRule can locate them; not just normal folders, but also in mobile phones and cameras, zipfolders, FTP and all the other virtual folders available in the shell namespace.
     
    Use all item properties. Some 300 (windows unique system properties are available to be used as search parameters, both simple (name, date modified, file contents) and more advanced like Rating, Tags, Authors, even GPS.Longitude.
     
    Powerful search expressions. Search rules are individually powerful supporting regular expressions, and can be combined in complex search statements (boolean algebra) e.g. you could search for files with pin-point accuracy like:
    name="report" AND NOT (date="last month" OR rating="4 stars")

Here is a demo video: play

Your comments and suggestions (or bug reports) are very much appreciated, thanks!