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Slashback: Dilemma, Privacy, Chess
Front-row seats. zer0vector writes "The previously mentioned camera that was attached to the external fuel tank on Atlantis gave some great shots of launch this afternoon on NASA TV. During the feed, it looked like the ejection of the solid rocket boosters damaged or obscured the camera, leading to a fuzzy image during the fuel tank separation stage."
SkyNet has not yet achieved consciousness. DrEnter writes "According to this Yahoo article, Vladimir Kramnik has defeated 'Deep Fritz' (apparently the world's most powerful chess computer) to take the lead, 2.5-0.5 (the first game was a draw). You can find out more details at the contest site."
Damned if you do, but also if you don't. cybaea writes "A recent article in InfoWorld argues that the latest Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Packs may be illegal for health care providers under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. To make matters worse, not installing the Service Packs may also be illegal. Damned if you do, damned if you don't ..."
Dad, please switch to a real operating system. It's still spreading. deego writes " An e-mail-borne computer virus that lets crackers control infected Windoze machines remotely continues to spread and constitutes the most severe attack this year. The worm, known as W32.Bugbear, or I-Worm.Tanatos, infects computers that use Microsoft's Windows operating systems. It was first spotted a week ago and has spread to dozens of countries. Article here."
Please sit down first. calib0r writes "CNN.com is running an article on the most recent events dealing with the nissan.com lawsuit. Salon.com ran an article about this a few months ago. More information can also be found here."
Just about EVERYTHING is illegal under HIPAA. I've never seen such ridiculously stringent specs. If you want a good laugh, check out www.hipaacomply.com and read through the technology FAQ's. Even faxing is restricted.
What's your damage, Heather?
Kramnik gets $1,000,000 if he wins, $800,000 if he draws, and $600,000 if he loses. I knew I wasn't spending all that time on Yahoo! Chess for nothing...
It gets better - Nissan Motor has registered the domain name nissancomputer.com which they'll "give" to Nissan Computers if Nissan Motor get given the nissan.com domain name. Now, if they've brought nissancomputer.com with the express purpose of squatting on it for exchange of monies, services or goods (for example, a domain name) - surley that's a blatant case of cybersquatting by Nissan Motor?
If Nissan Motors wanted to have an exclusive name, they should have made one up.
They took an existing word (in 2 languages, nonetheless) which also happens to be a surname. Now, they can't expect exclusive rights over that name.
- Bugbear actually uses one of forty different subject lines. It also sometimes throws in some random data, just for fun.
- Bugbear is a descendant of Badtrans, a nasty but not particularly widespread virus from earlier this year. The keystroke logger seems to have been borrowed bit-for-bit (at least in the copy I isolated and analysed).
JousterYea, that's why Fritz won the Computer Chess World Championship in 1995 against Deep Blue. SCNR.
Deep Blue has been broken up and sold off in bits. It was not so much a computer as a temporary assembly of parts. So Deep Fritz would be the strongest living chess computer. After all we don't expect Kasparov to beat dead grandmasters.
I think that it is time to introduce weight categories like they have in boxing. So neither competitor would be allowed to weigh more than 1000 pounds. Otherwise the game is a bit like watching an industrial robot beat the crap out of Mike Tyson, OK so it might be fun to watch but it is not real sport.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
There is no way to save users from themselves. If a sizable part of the population need to use computers, there will always be a significant number of those who do stupid things from them. These problems will continue no matter how secure Windows becomes. These problems will occur on any software platform that is simple enough for the general population to use.
Actually, with a certain class of user, Windows' automatic updates make Windows more secure than Linux. Amoung windows users, that class is rather large. We may see less of the Code Red Viruses, but the Shoot Yourself in the Foot Viruses will continue.
Linux does have one advantage though. It is intensely hard to install programs for Linux. It is so complicated that it is very hard to automate. And as long as users have to install viruses by hand, and download the correct libraries to get them to run, you can be sure that Linux users won't have to worry much about a Linux virus spreading like wildfire across the net.
Can I register a domain name SomeCompany.com and then do the following:
My response would have been, "damn right, freedom of speech..."
But now, I'm just confused.
What did he do that violated any laws?
He's paid $2.2 million in legal fees. It's not like he had a choice about showing up in court to defend himself.
Now Nissan motors can take his domain name after all the legal bills? And if not, he'll be ordered to give them financial reparations for "diluting their brand name?"
If evaluating a chess position takes 150 units of processor time, and eliminating a position from consideration takes 1 unit of processor time, we shouldn't prune the decision tree at all! Never mind that as we get a little above a dozen moves into the future, we are considering (and tracking in some sort of memory) more moves than there are molecules in the universe. Posh! All that matters is the number of moves evaluated.
Also:
Jouster
That is a ridiculous statement! If you read through all the things listed maybe you would realise some people _can't_ install microsoft's patches because of there EULA requirements.
During the feed, it looked like the ejection of the solid rocket boosters damaged or obscured the camera...
That can be a problem for the crew too, or used to be. Each SRB has rocket motors that separate it from the external tank at around two minutes MET. Debris from these motors can get on the forward orbiter windows. Not too many years ago the shuttle flight software was changed - a "window washer" mod - to fire the FU RCS jets for a few seconds at SRB seperation to keep the windscreen clear of debris.
Just thought you'd be interested to know...
--JIm
Would you prefer Linux? Immensely stable but they keep having to re-administer the anasthesia because you keep waking up while your neurosurgeon reads the FAQ?
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
We've been told at my University that we (as system administrators) can go ahead and click the "I accept" on any Microsoft service pack or hotfix, our licensing agreement with M$ overrides anything they put in a EULA.
Microsoft could actually wind up violating their own agreement if they take action not specified in the big license.
Of course, he might actually have a spine (or independant wealth), and wanted the domain more than the money.
This strikes me as no different than the McDonalds (the junk-food chain) vs McDonalds (the family owned restaurant that predates the fast food chain) a while back. The bigger business considers itself more important, and has the money to throw at lawyers to make that delusion a reality.
If *you* had a family domain, and some company offered you what you consider a pittance for it, how would you feel? Would you consider yourself an informed "hardball" player? Would you "cackle with glee" at your great luck in having a valuable name?
It really disgusts me that companies consider themselves more important than individuals. It disgusts me even more that the legal system mostly agrees with them. Neither of those comes *close*, however, to the disgust I feel about actual individual *humans* who agree that companies have more rights than everyone else, and actually criticize other humans for standing up for what few rights we have left.
Press releases touting this week's match boast that Fritz has beaten both Kasparov and Deep Blue. The win over Kasparov came, however, in a super fast kind of chess, where computers have a decided edge. And Fritz didn't really beat Deep Blue-it beat an early version of its software running on slower hardware.
Do I think that there is an added value to better algorithms and pruning methods over pure computational firepower? Sure, but you need to keep in mind that now that Deep Blue has been disassembled, there is no way to get an honest, head to head comparison.
As if it matters, I still get my but kicked by good old GNU Chess.
So? Kramnik can only evaluate three moves per second, and he's kicking Fritz's ass. Moves per second has very little to do with how good a player is.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Just the tank camera, no cutaways, all the way from launch to SRB seperation.
Play it fast (hold the frame advance button down) for another cool view of the whole launch in about 15 seconds.
One simple rule for its versus it's
Since neither Hebrew nor Arabic is written with Latin characters, I find the "it's the name of a month" argument rather weak.
Erm... if you want to take that tack... "Nissan" in Japanese isn't written with Latin characters either.
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Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.