Your joke would actually be funny if Kozinski was truly distributing anything. At best, it was his personal stash that he assumed was "safe" from anyone else. And it sounds like the images being described by the wire stories are jokes, of a prurious nature yes, but not meant to tittilate. I keep a whole bunch of crap like that on my Imageshack page so I can poke fun at it in forums like Fark.
If he's guilty of anything, it's attempting to use security thru obscurity. This is especially stupid when you've become a public figure, facing far more scrutiny than the average Joe Stickyank.
Interestingly, the question that's going unanswered is: Who were the people attempting to dig dirt on this man in the first place, and why? I'd look very closely at the snitches, and the first people to yell "recuse" -- attempting to influence the outcome of a federal trial is far more ethically disturbing than keeping a couple furry/cosplay/zoophile pictures on your webspace to laugh at.
Finally, the obscenity trial will have a jury verdict. The guilt/innocence decisions will not be made by the judge. Therefore, the court is correct, this is a personal matter.
NOW.. we can finally tackle the issue of downloading music and movies illegally, and impose death on those that do.
You're confusing the US Congress as a branch independant from the corporate branch.
For an intentionally hyperbolic look at how the criminalization of IP rights violations might be extended to extremes, have a go at the very dark cyberpunk dystopia depicted in K.W. Jeter's Noir. It's not the only theme in the novel, but it does at one point visit the bottom of the slippery slope that this bill embarks upon. Honestly, I'm surprised it's not more of a geek cult favorite, since it pokes [rather grim] fun at so many geeky political and social issues.
My/. review of this book is here. It's a bit florid, but that was in imitation of Jeter's style.
If you know much about the state of UAVs these days, research and development is going mainly into autonomous vehicles.
Actually I do, quite a bit. I design them.
And no, it's not. The autonomy part is fairly easy and the control algorithms already exist.
Autonomy =/= unpiloted. There's still a pilot, the operator still has a stick and a HUD, he just doen't need to continually correct heading, airspeed, pitch, and throttle for changes in wind conditions, updrafts, etc.
Very, very few UAVs will be "unpiloted" and any such "unpiloted UAVs" will be large HALE vehicles on station for weeks at a time, or strategic long mission duration vehicles operated by the CIA in foreign airspace anyway. In these cases, for the mission phases when the vehicle will be "unpiloted," a pilot will be on duty to intervene should the situation warrant.
Most of the R&D work these days is going into miniaturization, power sources, novel sensors, networking and long distance communications, image-based tracking, mensuration and geolocation, and also sensor data fusion and machine-to-machine interfaces.
IEEE's ICRA is in Pasadena next week, come check out the Exhibition, and see for yourselves.
I work for a small UAV manufacturer that supplies a lot of UAVs to the US military for squad-level reconaissance, and recent rulings have really become a burden on our R&D efforts.
The biggest "security implication" perceived by the FAA is interference with air traffic. However, the FAA lumps all UAVs into one category, from the Predator on down to tiny biomimetic dragonflys. This makes it nearly impossible for us to test fly our new products, without hauling a truckload of gear up to the nearest military test range.
And contrary to the belief of many, very few UAVs are armed. Only two US UAVs in operation carry payloads. The rest carry cameras.
One of the soldiers that trains other soldiers to use our products likes to say, "if the US military could distribute ammo and supplies as effectively as the troops distribute pornography among themselves, we'd be invincible."
It's not a matter of distribution. It's a combination of a) the contraband nature of the media forcing it to go bootleg, and b) the insecurity of the OS that is most widely used.
I suggest making them reload a clean image of the entire boot volume every time they startup, and give them a partition to store their "family videos" and other personal documents. And disable autorun.ini, for god's sake.
He also described to me the practice of "family night" video screenings. I won't go into detail, but to participate, you must bring your own blanket, a towel, and adhere to a strict "eyes forward" policy.
That was one of the first suggestions. But they gotta run mission planning and data analysis apps written for Windows. And they won't run under Wine. Tried that already.
We build UAV systems for the US military. Widely used ones. Lately one of the branch's weapons labs has been coming to us and saying "we need a ground system that will operate any UAV or UGV. Why don't you use a computer?"
So the R&D chief goes on a rant (to me, in private): "We've tried sending PCs into deployment, and they come back filthy with 'family videos' and viruses. We try sealing up and enclosing the USB/FW ports and DVD slots, and they come back pried open. No computers."
Customer (to me, during requirements review): "The soldiers get issued WinXP notebooks anyhow. Utilize them."
So I was handed the task of managing the resolution to this showdown. My first thought was, "Porn is not my problem." Second thought, "Hell, give them some clean porn ferchrissakes." Third thought, "oh crap -- we can't certify our product if it is a) in the decision making loop for a certain class of UAV, and b) can run any old crapware, including family videos."
So it's not just a porn problem, but a problem with the inadequacy of the Windows OS itself. I know that this is potential flamebait moderation material, but it's a major thorn in our side: it's not a realtime OS, and even the embedded version of XP isn' real time. And it's susceptibility to viruses and hackers really makes it unsuitable for much more than family photos, letters to Jane, and facebook.
Solution: Give them what they want, on their dime, while spending R&D money to prototype what they need. (Sorry - can't describe it.) Then when the inadequacies become painfully apparent, offer them the alternative, ready for development testing.
Actually, that would be crawling "down" the tether.
And, due to conservation of angular momentum, your descent would slow the rotation of the station, to a degree directly proportional to your percentage of the total mass of the system. And if this percentage were too large, then you'd also have to send mass down the other side to keep the center of rotation of the combined system a practical distance from your end.
Not as easy as it looks, but still probably easier than building a Stanford Torus.
I love the series, don't get me wrong, I own five titles. But they contain numerous errors in the schematics, sometimes critical ones.
Some are obvious, like misoriented diodes in a rectifying bridge. Some are not, like a PNP BJT where a NPN should be.
However, before you build any of the projects, especially any of the high powered ones, make sure you search online for errata, or better yet, have a real EE check the circuit (if you're not one). And if you wanna build something really nasty, like an EMP gun or a magnetic accelerator, treat it like you would the Anarchist's Cookbook...
Also be aware that the Evil Genius series is very light on theory of operation, and what is present is occasionally oversimplified to the point of being misleading. Don't rely on them for theory.
But overall, for a hobbyist, they are an excellent example of how to approach a complete project, including planning, packaging, and building your own tools and test equipment. And for those who don't want to craft every PWB or enclosure on their own, the publisher sells kits.
3D billiards, in a wire cage with holes in the corners and faces, using balls with a high drag/mass ratio, and cues that deliver puffs of air from a bulb at the far end squeezed by the player.
I have no clue how one would rack in such an arrangement, however. Any ideas?
Rather than try to summarize the entire net history of RAH flamewars, you can explore a somewhat reasonably-stated approximation of the typical love/hate fest on everything2.com: start reading here.
(*I hesitate to even mention RAH, due to the inevitable flame war that his name inspires, and SiaSL is not the most cinematic story in his bibliography, but it's arguably his most thought-provoking work.)
you can't really measure anything going on inside it.
My information may be a bit dated, but I believe you can measure 3 properties of a singularity: 1) it's mass, 2) its electric charge, and 3) it's spin rate.
Aluminum beer can design, as in using only the absolute minimum amount of material necessary to accomplish the primary job (keeping the contents all in one piece during normal travel) with no consideration of unusual circumstances. (Have you ever dropped an unopened diet coke or Heineken can from counter height onto concrete?)
It's a limited metaphor, intended primarily for dry humor.
For full humorous effect, consider if the aluminum can metaphor were extended to its full meaning: The passengers would have to press on the walls from the inside to give the car the necessary rigidity to withstand acceleration and braking. If the car were to hit anything, the passengers would spray outward in a fine, high pressure stream. And this result can be used intentionally to "shotgun" the passengers, by punching a hole in the side and opening a door.
Emissions aren't necessarily a problem. The more efficient an engine is, the cleaner the exhaust.
Safety, on the other hand... well, it's probably a safe prediction to say that, to help achieve the 100MPG requirement, many designers will take structural inspiration from modern aluminum beer can technology.
I had a perfect way figured out, halfway through the third book. I'll try to describe it without using spoilers...
One of the storylines had already demonstrated that the Confederation had a biotech solution to enable the antagonists to get what they wanted without destroying the human race, i.e. the construction of artificial receptacles for them, which could then (conceivably) be customized at will by the end users... not that this would be a solution to the inevitable social and political complications that would arise, but at least the extinction of the human race wouldn't be quite so imminent.
The story was 90% on its way to that solution, when *wham* deus ex... but that kind of ending was telegraphed from the beginning of the first novel, imo.
Slashdot Mirror
If he's guilty of anything, it's attempting to use security thru obscurity. This is especially stupid when you've become a public figure, facing far more scrutiny than the average Joe Stickyank.
Interestingly, the question that's going unanswered is: Who were the people attempting to dig dirt on this man in the first place, and why? I'd look very closely at the snitches, and the first people to yell "recuse" -- attempting to influence the outcome of a federal trial is far more ethically disturbing than keeping a couple furry/cosplay/zoophile pictures on your webspace to laugh at.
Finally, the obscenity trial will have a jury verdict. The guilt/innocence decisions will not be made by the judge. Therefore, the court is correct, this is a personal matter.
For an intentionally hyperbolic look at how the criminalization of IP rights violations might be extended to extremes, have a go at the very dark cyberpunk dystopia depicted in K.W. Jeter's Noir. It's not the only theme in the novel, but it does at one point visit the bottom of the slippery slope that this bill embarks upon. Honestly, I'm surprised it's not more of a geek cult favorite, since it pokes [rather grim] fun at so many geeky political and social issues.
My /. review of this book is here. It's a bit florid, but that was in imitation of Jeter's style.
Opus:HSN::bughunter:Amazon.com
FSM knows there are plenty of posts that need the latter.
Actually I do, quite a bit. I design them.
And no, it's not. The autonomy part is fairly easy and the control algorithms already exist.
Autonomy =/= unpiloted. There's still a pilot, the operator still has a stick and a HUD, he just doen't need to continually correct heading, airspeed, pitch, and throttle for changes in wind conditions, updrafts, etc.
Very, very few UAVs will be "unpiloted" and any such "unpiloted UAVs" will be large HALE vehicles on station for weeks at a time, or strategic long mission duration vehicles operated by the CIA in foreign airspace anyway. In these cases, for the mission phases when the vehicle will be "unpiloted," a pilot will be on duty to intervene should the situation warrant.
Most of the R&D work these days is going into miniaturization, power sources, novel sensors, networking and long distance communications, image-based tracking, mensuration and geolocation, and also sensor data fusion and machine-to-machine interfaces.
IEEE's ICRA is in Pasadena next week, come check out the Exhibition, and see for yourselves.
The biggest "security implication" perceived by the FAA is interference with air traffic. However, the FAA lumps all UAVs into one category, from the Predator on down to tiny biomimetic dragonflys. This makes it nearly impossible for us to test fly our new products, without hauling a truckload of gear up to the nearest military test range.
And contrary to the belief of many, very few UAVs are armed. Only two US UAVs in operation carry payloads. The rest carry cameras.
It's not a matter of distribution. It's a combination of a) the contraband nature of the media forcing it to go bootleg, and b) the insecurity of the OS that is most widely used.
I suggest making them reload a clean image of the entire boot volume every time they startup, and give them a partition to store their "family videos" and other personal documents. And disable autorun.ini, for god's sake.
He also described to me the practice of "family night" video screenings. I won't go into detail, but to participate, you must bring your own blanket, a towel, and adhere to a strict "eyes forward" policy.
That was one of the first suggestions. But they gotta run mission planning and data analysis apps written for Windows. And they won't run under Wine. Tried that already.
So the R&D chief goes on a rant (to me, in private): "We've tried sending PCs into deployment, and they come back filthy with 'family videos' and viruses. We try sealing up and enclosing the USB/FW ports and DVD slots, and they come back pried open. No computers."
Customer (to me, during requirements review): "The soldiers get issued WinXP notebooks anyhow. Utilize them."
So I was handed the task of managing the resolution to this showdown. My first thought was, "Porn is not my problem." Second thought, "Hell, give them some clean porn ferchrissakes." Third thought, "oh crap -- we can't certify our product if it is a) in the decision making loop for a certain class of UAV, and b) can run any old crapware, including family videos."
So it's not just a porn problem, but a problem with the inadequacy of the Windows OS itself. I know that this is potential flamebait moderation material, but it's a major thorn in our side: it's not a realtime OS, and even the embedded version of XP isn' real time. And it's susceptibility to viruses and hackers really makes it unsuitable for much more than family photos, letters to Jane, and facebook.
Solution: Give them what they want, on their dime, while spending R&D money to prototype what they need. (Sorry - can't describe it.) Then when the inadequacies become painfully apparent, offer them the alternative, ready for development testing.
And, due to conservation of angular momentum, your descent would slow the rotation of the station, to a degree directly proportional to your percentage of the total mass of the system. And if this percentage were too large, then you'd also have to send mass down the other side to keep the center of rotation of the combined system a practical distance from your end.
Not as easy as it looks, but still probably easier than building a Stanford Torus.
Some are obvious, like misoriented diodes in a rectifying bridge. Some are not, like a PNP BJT where a NPN should be.
However, before you build any of the projects, especially any of the high powered ones, make sure you search online for errata, or better yet, have a real EE check the circuit (if you're not one). And if you wanna build something really nasty, like an EMP gun or a magnetic accelerator, treat it like you would the Anarchist's Cookbook...
Also be aware that the Evil Genius series is very light on theory of operation, and what is present is occasionally oversimplified to the point of being misleading. Don't rely on them for theory.
But overall, for a hobbyist, they are an excellent example of how to approach a complete project, including planning, packaging, and building your own tools and test equipment. And for those who don't want to craft every PWB or enclosure on their own, the publisher sells kits.
As a paying Yahoo Mail Plus customer, this is precisely my opinion as well.
Good riddance, MSFT. Go embrace and destroy something else.
2 - Take your laptop to Starbucks for a coffee.
3 - Profit!
NappyBo had clearly never encountered the BushCo brand of malicious incompetence.
I have no clue how one would rack in such an arrangement, however. Any ideas?
I'm imagining, then, that it sounded something like "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."
[ducks]
Rather than try to summarize the entire net history of RAH flamewars, you can explore a somewhat reasonably-stated approximation of the typical love/hate fest on everything2.com: start reading here.
Agreed.
Why not abuse another epic SF classic, like Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land*, Asimov's Foundation, or perhaps even Delany's Dhalgren?
Even Herbert had some other novels that would make awesome movies (Whipping Star, Hellstrom's Hive, The White Plague)...
(*I hesitate to even mention RAH, due to the inevitable flame war that his name inspires, and SiaSL is not the most cinematic story in his bibliography, but it's arguably his most thought-provoking work.)
reference here (2nd answer)
And Brian Williams.
And if you tried to describe the concept of singularity to him, 40 years ago, it'd so totally ruin his day.
It's a limited metaphor, intended primarily for dry humor.
For full humorous effect, consider if the aluminum can metaphor were extended to its full meaning: The passengers would have to press on the walls from the inside to give the car the necessary rigidity to withstand acceleration and braking. If the car were to hit anything, the passengers would spray outward in a fine, high pressure stream. And this result can be used intentionally to "shotgun" the passengers, by punching a hole in the side and opening a door.
The link is to an abstract only page, but the abstract conveys my point.
Safety, on the other hand... well, it's probably a safe prediction to say that, to help achieve the 100MPG requirement, many designers will take structural inspiration from modern aluminum beer can technology.
One of the storylines had already demonstrated that the Confederation had a biotech solution to enable the antagonists to get what they wanted without destroying the human race, i.e. the construction of artificial receptacles for them, which could then (conceivably) be customized at will by the end users... not that this would be a solution to the inevitable social and political complications that would arise, but at least the extinction of the human race wouldn't be quite so imminent.
The story was 90% on its way to that solution, when *wham* deus ex... but that kind of ending was telegraphed from the beginning of the first novel, imo.
Pyrophoricity.