Legislation is often not founded in science, but in popular opinion. You better come up with some good reasons, not just state history.
I still argue that one or two a-bombs launched from a remote location with limited tonnage directed towards some properly sized space-rocks is a very acceptable risk if we are to assess technology that could potentially save the entire planet. There isn't much chance that the bombs would go off accidentally while in the atmosphere, and there isn't much chance we will experience an extintion level event.
The devil is in the details. There isn't much radioactive material in a modern a-bomb - a few kg IIRC. Even less if it's an H-bomb. That is the reason why a nuclear meltdown at a nuclear reactor is such a major disaster - since there potentially is more radioactive material to be dispersed at such a site than there is inside of a bomb.
After thinking about it, the car/bowling ball scenario has a large flaw. The real, long-term damage would be from climate change, tidal waves, shock waves and volcano eruptions.
If dispersing the rock into smaller pieces would mean less impact of those factors, then whether I'm right or not about smaller being better in terms of impact on impact side is irrelevant. What we're really arguing about is what effect having one large rock or several smaller rocks has on the survivability on the side of the planet that isn't hit. We're really talking so large that we're writing off one side. Will there be less dust, less volcanic eruptions, less tidal waves if there are several smaller rocks? Will the effect last longer or shorter?
Bullcrap. They used to do atmospheric tests - in remote areas on a relatively large scale. Half the world definitely didn't get contaminated. Some bombs are cleaner than others - as defined by the amount of radiactive fallout they leave behind.
Besides, we could create a bomb that needs a series of mechanical processes to occur before it is armed. Making absoultely sure the nuclear material isn't dispersed in case of a failure just prior to achieving orbit is another matter. Then, we would need to make sure the bomb wouldn't melt on reentry, spreading the radioactive material all over.
Heck - with the ISS, we could even send the bomb in two pieces, and then launch the final approach from the ISS. Be creative, buddy.
Ok. Now I'm really scared. Since when are science fiction movies used for reference for anything scientic?
Let's say you've got a 100 metric tons worth of asteroid heading for the planet. If we broke it up into 1000 pieces at 100kg each, are you really arguing that the individual pieces would do as much damage as the single one? Sure, they would do local damage, but 100 tons worth of space rock would certainly do damage on a global scale. Think about it - only half the globe would be hit by the debris, but the whole globe would be affected by the massive aftermath of an extintion level event - there would be a massive tidal wave, shock waves, volcano eruptions and a massive cloud of dust leading to climate change killing life.
How much more or less dust would result from the "pebbles" scenario is probably what I'm asking. And how for how long would it stick around?
Sadly, the elderly don't get it. The Segway could be a liberator for a lot of them. The relative slowness would allow them to continue moving about independently after their reactions and vision has detoriated so far that they have their license revoked. I for one would much prefer to have grandpa on the sidewalk on a Segway going 9mph, rather than in his car putting everyone at a much greater risk.
Hopefully, the availability of the Segway might lead to medical doctors being less reluctant to revoke the driver's license from elderly people they have known most of their adult lives. They can now give them a good alternative that will suffice for most uses (visiting their family, going to the grocery store, visiting their friends). If you need to go far, you can drive a lot of taxi for the price of having a car.
I will probably recommend my employer buy one or two of those. It will be a nice way to get to meetings relatively nearby, rather than dealing with (paying for and waiting for) a taxi.
Frankly, many smaller fragments would probably be better than a large asteroid. I would like to hear the reasons why a large, thermonuclear device would not be a good idea.
As an example, take two identical cars. On one car, drop a bowling bowl on the roof. On the other car, drop pebble with the combined weight of the bowling bowl. Now compare the damage.
Besides, more material would burn up in the atmosphere if there was a hail of smaller rocks rather than one large rock. The surface would be greater - as simple as that.
A large problem is that web applications tend to require javascripting in order to function. Sure, I have a bit of javascripting in mine, but this sort of exploit is the reason why I make sure the app degrades gracefully. You really, really need to check and validate passed vars and such on the server side anyway. So - first make it work without javascripting, and then enhance it using javascripting.
Life for security conscious admins would be much easier if we all abided by this principle.
You are pointing to a flaw in the anti-spam technology.
How about another way to block spam : make some way to distribute a fingerprint of each known spam message. It could be a perl pipe, or some other technology. Say - a range of possible sizes (to account for personalization, and to easily select the correct set of potential spam fingerprints to check against) and a regexp or substring that would verify that the email is indeed spam (the fingerprint).
If we could distribute those rather than a list of spammer IPs, I would venture to guess it's a much more effective countermeasure.
Now, if we would just make this distributed by P2P, we would have a nice, buzzword-compliant spam-killer.
Jokes aside - you think this would work? How large would the strings need to be? How could the spammers circumvent?
I would highly disagree. People who live in cramped cities appreciate the Segway since it provides an alternative to bikes and mopeds. You don't get sweaty from using it, and it is potentially safer than a moped. However, if you live in a more open area where traffic jams don't really pose a problem, sure it is makes less sense.
Before you pass judgement, look at how much time people spend in traffic jams, and what the real average speed is when you drive in downtown areas.
First, we may become very dependent upon the technology - like electricity and the combustion engine.
Second, the technology may be intricate enough to make safety procedures so complex that they will be difficult to describe closely enough that they be mandated. Furthermore, technology owners can also obscure the argument, since most people don't posess the knowledge to detect the bullshit being presented to them. Computer security is an example of this.
Third, insufficient oversight of dangerous technology is also a risk. Even though there are regulations, it may be expensive to enforce the rules, or the technology owners are the only ones capable of performing the oversight. I would say GM field trials MIGHT fall into this category - and that security in Microsoft products probably falls into this category.
Migrating to a different OS costs money, whether from an expensive one to a cheaper one, or from one expensive to another. When you make the calculations, make sure to include a calculation of when the migration will start to pay off.
Setting up multiple alternatives might also be a possibility. Set up a matrix, and figure out how much effort goes into the various boxes that could be migrated - and at what risks.
If you have a simple IIS web server serving static, migrating to Linux will most likely be rather painless. Replacing a file server likewise (unless it is running XP - I'm not soo sure about that one).
It is extremely hard to give any more specific advice than this - since you aren't very specific yourself. How much business logic is tied up in Microsoft products - and how much can easily be replaced by open or java-based alternatives?
I trust Red Hat packages and Red Hat network. It is much too high profile for them to allow it to be hacked and then used to distribute trojan'ed software.
I live in Norway. Although there is some rot, I would argue that artists have an ok deal here. Basically, some artists that are considered successful and important get their living wage paid for them - no strings attached, as far as I know. Of course, nominating and selecting those artists is probably a rather unfair undertaking.
People who really care about writing will write, almost no matter what as long as people get the opportunity to read their work and they can make their living while writing. (I'll skip spelling out the nuances in this sentence, since you're a smart guy.) That seems to be part of what you're saying, at least. Now - some writers are good writers, and some writers are bad writers. Everyone is a bad writer to begin with. How can we set up a system where bad writers become good writers?
I am not arguing that intellectual theft is required or desirable. I still want references to the source, or having someone say "this work is largely inspired by The Rainmaker by John Grisham", along with a reference . They would be able to publish it on their website, and get some feedback. It would be word-of-mouth, and people would write because they care about writing. There would be a random chance of recognition, which would lead to a lifetime scholarship. I frankly think that would be a more honest way than the current way.
The fact that copyright was intended by your Consitutional Fathers to be a time-limited, and Congress just extended it again, shows that the current practice is flawed. Mickey Mouse would become public domain. That - to me - is excellent. They have milked him for what he's worth, and there's nothing new and interesting coming out. On the other hand, it would be very interesting to see what independent artists would be able to do with such a cultural icon.
Maybe we should compromize, and say that copyright on fictional works should last for 5 years?
Security patches are to be reckoned with. However, the long interval between new Windows server releases means that there will be large differences inbetween versions. If there's something that the IT departments don't like, it's large differences. That means that there are more things that may go wrong. Their current business logic software may even need a complete rewrite if the changes are large enough.
So - I really have to wonder what crack Microsoft is smoking. They seem to be desperately out of tune with their users in the server market, and the Linux acceptance is proof. Professional users like backwards compatibility, and incremental changes. That is something UNIX and Linux provides.
Look at OSX, too. After their initial release, they've been spewing out evolutionary releases and bug fixes.
So, by having such large new server releases, they are raising the stakes for everyone - both themselves and the corporate users.
Oh well. I don't mind if Microsoft loses power and influence..
Or maybe there is a *VERY NASTY* exploit circulating privately? This is why the people who set up honeynets and dissect the scans are our heroes. They would hopefully detect unknown exploits in software, just by looking at the fingerprint of the attack and figuring out if it is already known.
That being said, that alone is not enough. Everyone should run their updates nightly, and make sure their security don't collapse completely once one box has been taken.
However, I would like to take the opportunity to applaud the honeynet people who actively act like sitting ducks in order to protect the rest of us.
I whole-hartedly agree. With your background, you really should look into the ever emerging mobile computing market. That means internet-connected cell phones and PDAs, as well as laptop computers and tablet PCs.
I am sure you will find lots of interesting areas to specialize in if you look into those technologies. Who knows - maybe you know something relevant, so they don't need to reinvent the wheel all the time?
Maybe we should remove all copyrights on fictional written works for a while? The industry is creating a false sense for would-be-artists that they can make a good living doing what they excel at, but most of them don't get anywhere due to mismanagment and greed. So - copyrights have largely ceased to benefit those who create the works of art.
Why then should we feed the corporations with gullible, naive people out to change the world?
I also get increasinly mad at people who continuously get money because their granddad was a good writer. That somehow is very wrong - as in, all people should have equal opportunity and equal responsibility.
Copyrights on factual works is a bit of a different story. We have not understood the world sufficiently well to do something that drastical to the science community. However, patent reform is direly needed if our industry is going to start growing again - with real growth, not just growth based upon more effective court-room tactics.
This would hopefully be enough to dissuade you. Is that something you wish to expose your kids to? I would say that an adults-only set of computers and/or logins sounds like a good, though expensive idea.
Anyone have any experience using (Open)MOSIX? I have a partially CPU-bound application (automatic part is IO-bound, manual part is CPU-bound) in Perl, Apache and MySQL. Anyone got experience with this stuff?
For those who don't even know what MOSIX is, it is a kernel patch that essentially creates a virtual computer out of several boxes. They claim they will scale your application as long as you have multiple processes (they migrate them as needed) - without any coding on your part.
Since I'm looking for extra performance with limited resources, this looks like a potentially easy way out:)
GM food ban was to the best of my knowledge consumer-driven. Are you mad at the EU for being more democratic than the USA? There is a lot of discussion about this issue still going on, and there might be reversal later on. However, I would argue that GM foods need to be tested and monitored very carefully before they are used. They are potentially extremely beneficial, so it would be disaterous for the planet's future if they are widely adopted too soon (since that could both threaten the planet, or threaten the future of GM foods).
So - no - the EU is not essentially mean to US companies. However, it has high standards, sometimes higher than the US standards. When US companies face EU standards, they prefer to confront the standards as anticompetitive, rather than raise their own standards. That approach is much cheaper.
It doesn't really matter to Microsoft what the US government thinks if the result is that EU-wide sales of Microsoft products plummets. Taken to the extreme, Microsoft assets could end up being confiscated unless Microsoft pays back the money they have illegally muscled away from businesses.
I think it will be extremely interesting to see how this plays out in case of a rather strict remedy. The EU is becoming increasingly self-aware, and the US gov't is the US gov't.
Frankly, a large payback from Microsoft resulting from inflated prices would be a good way of kickstarting a sluggish economy (and would have been in the USA too). They've got 40 billion dollars on book, and some of it was acquired illegally.
Slashdot Mirror
Legislation is often not founded in science, but in popular opinion. You better come up with some good reasons, not just state history.
I still argue that one or two a-bombs launched from a remote location with limited tonnage directed towards some properly sized space-rocks is a very acceptable risk if we are to assess technology that could potentially save the entire planet. There isn't much chance that the bombs would go off accidentally while in the atmosphere, and there isn't much chance we will experience an extintion level event.
The devil is in the details. There isn't much radioactive material in a modern a-bomb - a few kg IIRC. Even less if it's an H-bomb. That is the reason why a nuclear meltdown at a nuclear reactor is such a major disaster - since there potentially is more radioactive material to be dispersed at such a site than there is inside of a bomb.
After thinking about it, the car/bowling ball scenario has a large flaw. The real, long-term damage would be from climate change, tidal waves, shock waves and volcano eruptions.
If dispersing the rock into smaller pieces would mean less impact of those factors, then whether I'm right or not about smaller being better in terms of impact on impact side is irrelevant. What we're really arguing about is what effect having one large rock or several smaller rocks has on the survivability on the side of the planet that isn't hit. We're really talking so large that we're writing off one side. Will there be less dust, less volcanic eruptions, less tidal waves if there are several smaller rocks? Will the effect last longer or shorter?
Bullcrap. They used to do atmospheric tests - in remote areas on a relatively large scale. Half the world definitely didn't get contaminated. Some bombs are cleaner than others - as defined by the amount of radiactive fallout they leave behind.
Besides, we could create a bomb that needs a series of mechanical processes to occur before it is armed. Making absoultely sure the nuclear material isn't dispersed in case of a failure just prior to achieving orbit is another matter. Then, we would need to make sure the bomb wouldn't melt on reentry, spreading the radioactive material all over.
Heck - with the ISS, we could even send the bomb in two pieces, and then launch the final approach from the ISS. Be creative, buddy.
Ok. Now I'm really scared. Since when are science fiction movies used for reference for anything scientic?
Let's say you've got a 100 metric tons worth of asteroid heading for the planet. If we broke it up into 1000 pieces at 100kg each, are you really arguing that the individual pieces would do as much damage as the single one? Sure, they would do local damage, but 100 tons worth of space rock would certainly do damage on a global scale. Think about it - only half the globe would be hit by the debris, but the whole globe would be affected by the massive aftermath of an extintion level event - there would be a massive tidal wave, shock waves, volcano eruptions and a massive cloud of dust leading to climate change killing life.
How much more or less dust would result from the "pebbles" scenario is probably what I'm asking. And how for how long would it stick around?
Sadly, the elderly don't get it. The Segway could be a liberator for a lot of them. The relative slowness would allow them to continue moving about independently after their reactions and vision has detoriated so far that they have their license revoked. I for one would much prefer to have grandpa on the sidewalk on a Segway going 9mph, rather than in his car putting everyone at a much greater risk.
Hopefully, the availability of the Segway might lead to medical doctors being less reluctant to revoke the driver's license from elderly people they have known most of their adult lives. They can now give them a good alternative that will suffice for most uses (visiting their family, going to the grocery store, visiting their friends). If you need to go far, you can drive a lot of taxi for the price of having a car.
I will probably recommend my employer buy one or two of those. It will be a nice way to get to meetings relatively nearby, rather than dealing with (paying for and waiting for) a taxi.
Frankly, many smaller fragments would probably be better than a large asteroid. I would like to hear the reasons why a large, thermonuclear device would not be a good idea.
As an example, take two identical cars. On one car, drop a bowling bowl on the roof. On the other car, drop pebble with the combined weight of the bowling bowl. Now compare the damage.
Besides, more material would burn up in the atmosphere if there was a hail of smaller rocks rather than one large rock. The surface would be greater - as simple as that.
Any physics geeks care to give me some numbers?
A large problem is that web applications tend to require javascripting in order to function. Sure, I have a bit of javascripting in mine, but this sort of exploit is the reason why I make sure the app degrades gracefully. You really, really need to check and validate passed vars and such on the server side anyway. So - first make it work without javascripting, and then enhance it using javascripting.
Life for security conscious admins would be much easier if we all abided by this principle.
You are pointing to a flaw in the anti-spam technology.
How about another way to block spam : make some way to distribute a fingerprint of each known spam message. It could be a perl pipe, or some other technology. Say - a range of possible sizes (to account for personalization, and to easily select the correct set of potential spam fingerprints to check against) and a regexp or substring that would verify that the email is indeed spam (the fingerprint).
If we could distribute those rather than a list of spammer IPs, I would venture to guess it's a much more effective countermeasure.
Now, if we would just make this distributed by P2P, we would have a nice, buzzword-compliant spam-killer.
Jokes aside - you think this would work? How large would the strings need to be? How could the spammers circumvent?
I would highly disagree. People who live in cramped cities appreciate the Segway since it provides an alternative to bikes and mopeds. You don't get sweaty from using it, and it is potentially safer than a moped. However, if you live in a more open area where traffic jams don't really pose a problem, sure it is makes less sense.
Before you pass judgement, look at how much time people spend in traffic jams, and what the real average speed is when you drive in downtown areas.
High-tech introduces risk in several ways.
First, we may become very dependent upon the technology - like electricity and the combustion engine.
Second, the technology may be intricate enough to make safety procedures so complex that they will be difficult to describe closely enough that they be mandated. Furthermore, technology owners can also obscure the argument, since most people don't posess the knowledge to detect the bullshit being presented to them. Computer security is an example of this.
Third, insufficient oversight of dangerous technology is also a risk. Even though there are regulations, it may be expensive to enforce the rules, or the technology owners are the only ones capable of performing the oversight. I would say GM field trials MIGHT fall into this category - and that security in Microsoft products probably falls into this category.
The problem with Dell is that they appear to have a rather low R&D budget. So, by buying Dell, we are discouraging research.
:)
So - on moral grounds, HP and Palm would be slightly more moral choices.
If someone can persuade me I'm wrong, I'll be quite happy with that
Gah! I hate those things.
Migrating to a different OS costs money, whether from an expensive one to a cheaper one, or from one expensive to another. When you make the calculations, make sure to include a calculation of when the migration will start to pay off.
Setting up multiple alternatives might also be a possibility. Set up a matrix, and figure out how much effort goes into the various boxes that could be migrated - and at what risks.
If you have a simple IIS web server serving static, migrating to Linux will most likely be rather painless. Replacing a file server likewise (unless it is running XP - I'm not soo sure about that one).
It is extremely hard to give any more specific advice than this - since you aren't very specific yourself. How much business logic is tied up in Microsoft products - and how much can easily be replaced by open or java-based alternatives?
I trust Red Hat packages and Red Hat network. It is much too high profile for them to allow it to be hacked and then used to distribute trojan'ed software.
I live in Norway. Although there is some rot, I would argue that artists have an ok deal here. Basically, some artists that are considered successful and important get their living wage paid for them - no strings attached, as far as I know. Of course, nominating and selecting those artists is probably a rather unfair undertaking.
People who really care about writing will write, almost no matter what as long as people get the opportunity to read their work and they can make their living while writing. (I'll skip spelling out the nuances in this sentence, since you're a smart guy.) That seems to be part of what you're saying, at least. Now - some writers are good writers, and some writers are bad writers. Everyone is a bad writer to begin with. How can we set up a system where bad writers become good writers?
I am not arguing that intellectual theft is required or desirable. I still want references to the source, or having someone say "this work is largely inspired by The Rainmaker by John Grisham", along with a reference . They would be able to publish it on their website, and get some feedback. It would be word-of-mouth, and people would write because they care about writing. There would be a random chance of recognition, which would lead to a lifetime scholarship. I frankly think that would be a more honest way than the current way.
The fact that copyright was intended by your Consitutional Fathers to be a time-limited, and Congress just extended it again, shows that the current practice is flawed. Mickey Mouse would become public domain. That - to me - is excellent. They have milked him for what he's worth, and there's nothing new and interesting coming out. On the other hand, it would be very interesting to see what independent artists would be able to do with such a cultural icon.
Maybe we should compromize, and say that copyright on fictional works should last for 5 years?
Security patches are to be reckoned with. However, the long interval between new Windows server releases means that there will be large differences inbetween versions. If there's something that the IT departments don't like, it's large differences. That means that there are more things that may go wrong. Their current business logic software may even need a complete rewrite if the changes are large enough.
So - I really have to wonder what crack Microsoft is smoking. They seem to be desperately out of tune with their users in the server market, and the Linux acceptance is proof. Professional users like backwards compatibility, and incremental changes. That is something UNIX and Linux provides.
Look at OSX, too. After their initial release, they've been spewing out evolutionary releases and bug fixes.
So, by having such large new server releases, they are raising the stakes for everyone - both themselves and the corporate users.
Oh well. I don't mind if Microsoft loses power and influence..
Or maybe there is a *VERY NASTY* exploit circulating privately? This is why the people who set up honeynets and dissect the scans are our heroes. They would hopefully detect unknown exploits in software, just by looking at the fingerprint of the attack and figuring out if it is already known.
That being said, that alone is not enough. Everyone should run their updates nightly, and make sure their security don't collapse completely once one box has been taken.
However, I would like to take the opportunity to applaud the honeynet people who actively act like sitting ducks in order to protect the rest of us.
I whole-hartedly agree. With your background, you really should look into the ever emerging mobile computing market. That means internet-connected cell phones and PDAs, as well as laptop computers and tablet PCs.
I am sure you will find lots of interesting areas to specialize in if you look into those technologies. Who knows - maybe you know something relevant, so they don't need to reinvent the wheel all the time?
Maybe we should remove all copyrights on fictional written works for a while? The industry is creating a false sense for would-be-artists that they can make a good living doing what they excel at, but most of them don't get anywhere due to mismanagment and greed. So - copyrights have largely ceased to benefit those who create the works of art.
Why then should we feed the corporations with gullible, naive people out to change the world?
I also get increasinly mad at people who continuously get money because their granddad was a good writer. That somehow is very wrong - as in, all people should have equal opportunity and equal responsibility.
Copyrights on factual works is a bit of a different story. We have not understood the world sufficiently well to do something that drastical to the science community. However, patent reform is direly needed if our industry is going to start growing again - with real growth, not just growth based upon more effective court-room tactics.
This would hopefully be enough to dissuade you. Is that something you wish to expose your kids to? I would say that an adults-only set of computers and/or logins sounds like a good, though expensive idea.
Anyone have any experience using (Open)MOSIX? I have a partially CPU-bound application (automatic part is IO-bound, manual part is CPU-bound) in Perl, Apache and MySQL. Anyone got experience with this stuff?
:)
For those who don't even know what MOSIX is, it is a kernel patch that essentially creates a virtual computer out of several boxes. They claim they will scale your application as long as you have multiple processes (they migrate them as needed) - without any coding on your part.
Since I'm looking for extra performance with limited resources, this looks like a potentially easy way out
I would encourage the slashdot editors to use the xhtml acronym tag for acronyms.
GM food ban was to the best of my knowledge consumer-driven. Are you mad at the EU for being more democratic than the USA? There is a lot of discussion about this issue still going on, and there might be reversal later on. However, I would argue that GM foods need to be tested and monitored very carefully before they are used. They are potentially extremely beneficial, so it would be disaterous for the planet's future if they are widely adopted too soon (since that could both threaten the planet, or threaten the future of GM foods).
So - no - the EU is not essentially mean to US companies. However, it has high standards, sometimes higher than the US standards. When US companies face EU standards, they prefer to confront the standards as anticompetitive, rather than raise their own standards. That approach is much cheaper.
It doesn't really matter to Microsoft what the US government thinks if the result is that EU-wide sales of Microsoft products plummets. Taken to the extreme, Microsoft assets could end up being confiscated unless Microsoft pays back the money they have illegally muscled away from businesses.
I think it will be extremely interesting to see how this plays out in case of a rather strict remedy. The EU is becoming increasingly self-aware, and the US gov't is the US gov't.
Frankly, a large payback from Microsoft resulting from inflated prices would be a good way of kickstarting a sluggish economy (and would have been in the USA too). They've got 40 billion dollars on book, and some of it was acquired illegally.