Maybe the laptop was like two years old already, which makes it rather low value in the second hand market, like 10-20% of the new value. Thief lists it at the low end of normal prices for such laptops, makes a quick sale, and for the buyer the good faith argument is easy enough to defend.
Joking aside, if prize money is related to the difficulty of an exploit, then why is a Linux kernel exploit half the price of a Windows kernel exploit?
Early studies strongly suggested that partial self-driving solutions did more harm than good, which is why I think we should wait to make self-driving technology available until it can truly take the place of the human driver, rather than introducing a solution that only works part of the time and can lead to false confidence the rest of the time.
I have the same feeling about it. Make the human do more, keep them attentive, and let the car correct when an accident is about to happen (e.g. slam on the breaks when a sudden obstacle appears, or help keep traction when a drastic turn is made).
I could be wrong, and I'd like to be wrong, but my gut says we'd be better off waiting a few more years for a more complete solution, rather than deploying a partial solution more broadly.
Simple counter argument: deploying even partial solutions at a rather large scale, like Tesla is doing, provides a great source of real world data and experience for the software developers. Sure things are bound to go wrong sometimes in the autopilot in its current state, some things that are simple oversights or bugs, other things that may have been unforeseen such as a truck that almost perfectly matches the colour of the sky behind it.
Of course, I know the scale of such an operation is way too big to make it practical. Yet it's a fun thought experiment.
The only somewhat serious way to get it to Earth I can think of (though still rather impractical, and not sure if possible at all - the amount of energy needed for the required course changes would probably be a major issue already) would be to send in on a course that would skirt one or more planets to slow it down, in a similar manner we use gravity assists to speed up spacecraft. Then slow it down to a speed that it is barely faster than the earth, letting earth's gravity catch it and smack it in the middle of the Sahara or Gobi deserts.
I suspect there will be... issues trying to build a parachute that could slow down a 200 km wide hunk of iron. For one thing, (and this is just one tiny objection) the air at the top of the asteroid would be a bit thin even with the bottom touching the earth.
Of course, I know, I should have been clearer here. Air-based parachutes won't work. Instead you'd have to use a SOLAR parachute. You're falling towards the sun, and you just need a reverse solar sail - the one that can accelerate space craft away from the sun, can also slow it down when you go towards the sun.
There of course will be practical issues with the whole size of the darn thing and travel times of a slowed down asteroid, but that's what the smart guys at NASA are for.
Other solution: how about gravitationally accessed decelleration? Maybe that also works.
There are a few major differences with the real thing, which vastly change the psychological impact.
This seems to simulate life ON Mars, rather than travelling TO Mars. Big difference: on the journey there is far less to do than upon arrival on the red planet. Boredom is what gives rise to tensions, having (hopefully interesting) things to do is what keeps you happy.
The experiment lasts for 8 months, doesn't a (mostly boring) return trip take longer than that?
There is ALWAYS the option of bailing out halfway. Yes, sure, it's forbidden and so, but the option is there. The people in the dome know that. If they really want, if someone gets really sick with some life-threatening condition, they WILL be taken out. In the event of a real trip to Mars, that option just isn't there. There is no help around the corner, it is not simulated far away, it's really far away. Knowing that you are committed is a whole different thing than knowing you can make it stop, even if it is only in really extreme situations.
The simulation is a limited time, and a well known limited time. Participants can count down to the day they're released, and know when the torture wills top. That makes it much easier to deal with than the one-way trip as suggested by Mars One.
The above are all things that I know can not be practically or even ethically be done on Earth. It may make a huge difference, though, when a manned Mars mission would actually take place. How people really deal with the above is not sure. One of the main things may be how to deal with emergencies, especially the part where you know that you can never summon help - I mean just look at how people fall over one another about the idea of movie theatres jamming mobile phones, potentially blocking people from making emergency calls until they walk out of the theatre!
I'm sure that the NASA spacecraft that attaches some rockets to the asteroid to change its course, can also attach a parachute or two so it can land gently.
After all, the thing is really just about 200 km diameter. Shouldn't be too hard to find a spot for that. As long as it's not in the sea (global warming is doing enough already to give us wet feet) or NIMBY as I like to keep the view I have now.
In many countries, only the uploading (distribution) part is illegal indeed, not the downloading/streaming part. Depending on the exact wording, it may even be legal to download stuff and keep copies without license.
From a legal perspective, bittorrent is a problem as it automatically uploads as you download, or at the very best offers to upload - in case there are only seeders, no other leechers or none that are interested in your downloaded parts. This is in most countries a breach of copyright.
The driver still is responsible for operating the vehicle, including in emergency situations. The owner here did not make any attempt to avoid the collision but should have been aware of the situation. Either he was being an inattentive driver, or he deliberately failed to take action, expecting the Tesla system to instead. In either case the Tesla system is not the one to blame for the accident not being avoided.
As much as I love the idea of automated cars, I still have the feeling it's applied the wrong way.
Tesla takes away the easy parts of the driving from the driver. That's of course like 98% of a regular car ride. Most rides you just follow the road, stop at traffic lights, move on with traffic, nothing happens. It's the bit that is the problem: cars or trucks that cross in front of you and force you to slow down, pedestrians suddenly trying to cross, etc.
So as a result, 98% of the time the driver doesn't need to pay attention because the car does so. Most of the above described situations are also handled by autopilot: the crossing truck is detected, and the car slows down or even stops as needed. I think in most cases by the time the driver realises the car is not reacting, it's too late.
In the captioned case, possibly the driver saw the truck, but was used to his car seeing it as well and automatically start slowing down. So the truck starts to turn on the road, and the car starts slowing down. Mmm... The car starts slowing down, I said. There's this obstacle. Hey, shouldn't it start to slow down about now? It always does. Oh. Maybe I should help and apply the brake. Like now. Before something goes CRASH!
It sounds much safer to me to have the driver in control all the times, and have the car look "over his shoulder" and correct if something is about to go wrong. It's got most of the benefits of the existing autopilot, without inviting drivers to go watch Harry Potter movies while sitting behind the wheel.
I don't see flying cars/buses/whatever here any time soon. The reason: high-rise buildings (most city blocks here are anywhere from 50 to 480 meters tall) and mountains (the tallest being over 900 meters tall). With those high-rises there is almost no place for any aircraft to land safely, it's just too dense. There's a heliport at the harbour and a few super luxury hotels have helipads on the rooftop. That are about your only realistic options.
Add to that the sheer volume of people that want to be moved. Trains are the more efficient way to go for that - the busiest line is operating 12-coach trains, 20 trains an hour, and it's actually not enough to handle rush hour traffic. The train network is being expanded steadily, with more lines being added. Mostly underground, out of the way of everything. Currently the trains handle some 3.5 million passenger trips every day, road public transport (buses, minibuses, taxis) handle at least that number of trips between them.
Other dense population centres will have the same problems. Huge numbers of people that want to move around, basically limiting any air transport to just a fancy premium service. No space to land on the ground as you're always too close to buildings, one of the main issues after noise would be the unpredictable winds tossing your drone around.
I like the current one. It's tried and tested, all the bugs have been ironed out. Not likely to cause any upsets any time soon. It ain't broke, why fix it?
This also puts the age of both the earth and the moon at "when the first rocks formed", not "when the celestial body formed" which imho is when a significant amount of space debris, possibly molten, clumps together to form something resembling a planet. There's probably no way to really figure that one out.
As the moon is supposedly formed from material from the earth, it could be argued to be the same age (it being from the same clump of material, plus some of the asteroid that caused the split - which in turn may have contained material that solidified much earlier, of course).
In that line of thought, how can we be sure that these moon rocks and earth's oldest rocks are really formed on these bodies and are not fragments of much older objects that were caught in the respective gravity fields?
Slashdot Mirror
Yay! More of our beloved DRM!
Darn. Back to the drawing board it is!
And for all the nonsense xkdc produces, I do have the feeling they'll get their numbers right. That's the least one can expect form a bunch of nerds :)
Maybe the laptop was like two years old already, which makes it rather low value in the second hand market, like 10-20% of the new value. Thief lists it at the low end of normal prices for such laptops, makes a quick sale, and for the buyer the good faith argument is easy enough to defend.
That wouldn't explain why Edge has so high a price on its exploits, as it's one of the smaller browsers nowadays.
Joking aside, if prize money is related to the difficulty of an exploit, then why is a Linux kernel exploit half the price of a Windows kernel exploit?
Isn't that the case in the US for a long long time already, somewhat solved a few years ago but since yesterday back to how it was?
ER staff: "Sorry, this patient can't pay for his treatment, please take him out again."
Early studies strongly suggested that partial self-driving solutions did more harm than good, which is why I think we should wait to make self-driving technology available until it can truly take the place of the human driver, rather than introducing a solution that only works part of the time and can lead to false confidence the rest of the time.
I have the same feeling about it. Make the human do more, keep them attentive, and let the car correct when an accident is about to happen (e.g. slam on the breaks when a sudden obstacle appears, or help keep traction when a drastic turn is made).
I could be wrong, and I'd like to be wrong, but my gut says we'd be better off waiting a few more years for a more complete solution, rather than deploying a partial solution more broadly.
Simple counter argument: deploying even partial solutions at a rather large scale, like Tesla is doing, provides a great source of real world data and experience for the software developers. Sure things are bound to go wrong sometimes in the autopilot in its current state, some things that are simple oversights or bugs, other things that may have been unforeseen such as a truck that almost perfectly matches the colour of the sky behind it.
Of course, I know the scale of such an operation is way too big to make it practical. Yet it's a fun thought experiment.
The only somewhat serious way to get it to Earth I can think of (though still rather impractical, and not sure if possible at all - the amount of energy needed for the required course changes would probably be a major issue already) would be to send in on a course that would skirt one or more planets to slow it down, in a similar manner we use gravity assists to speed up spacecraft. Then slow it down to a speed that it is barely faster than the earth, letting earth's gravity catch it and smack it in the middle of the Sahara or Gobi deserts.
I suspect there will be... issues trying to build a parachute that could slow down a 200 km wide hunk of iron. For one thing, (and this is just one tiny objection) the air at the top of the asteroid would be a bit thin even with the bottom touching the earth.
Of course, I know, I should have been clearer here. Air-based parachutes won't work. Instead you'd have to use a SOLAR parachute. You're falling towards the sun, and you just need a reverse solar sail - the one that can accelerate space craft away from the sun, can also slow it down when you go towards the sun.
There of course will be practical issues with the whole size of the darn thing and travel times of a slowed down asteroid, but that's what the smart guys at NASA are for.
Other solution: how about gravitationally accessed decelleration? Maybe that also works.
There are a few major differences with the real thing, which vastly change the psychological impact.
This seems to simulate life ON Mars, rather than travelling TO Mars. Big difference: on the journey there is far less to do than upon arrival on the red planet. Boredom is what gives rise to tensions, having (hopefully interesting) things to do is what keeps you happy.
The experiment lasts for 8 months, doesn't a (mostly boring) return trip take longer than that?
There is ALWAYS the option of bailing out halfway. Yes, sure, it's forbidden and so, but the option is there. The people in the dome know that. If they really want, if someone gets really sick with some life-threatening condition, they WILL be taken out. In the event of a real trip to Mars, that option just isn't there. There is no help around the corner, it is not simulated far away, it's really far away. Knowing that you are committed is a whole different thing than knowing you can make it stop, even if it is only in really extreme situations.
The simulation is a limited time, and a well known limited time. Participants can count down to the day they're released, and know when the torture wills top. That makes it much easier to deal with than the one-way trip as suggested by Mars One.
The above are all things that I know can not be practically or even ethically be done on Earth. It may make a huge difference, though, when a manned Mars mission would actually take place. How people really deal with the above is not sure. One of the main things may be how to deal with emergencies, especially the part where you know that you can never summon help - I mean just look at how people fall over one another about the idea of movie theatres jamming mobile phones, potentially blocking people from making emergency calls until they walk out of the theatre!
I'm sure that the NASA spacecraft that attaches some rockets to the asteroid to change its course, can also attach a parachute or two so it can land gently.
After all, the thing is really just about 200 km diameter. Shouldn't be too hard to find a spot for that. As long as it's not in the sea (global warming is doing enough already to give us wet feet) or NIMBY as I like to keep the view I have now.
You still don't answer the question. You don't even try to. It seems to me you don't have an answer.
That doesn't answer the question. Why would that cheap (online) distribution be a reason to limit copyright to a mere five years?
Just wondering, does your wife do anything but buying and watching movies and other TV content?
The statistic is almost meaningless.
And a very low number, especially when following through on your argument.
It's illegal to, say, use a VPN to pretend you're in Canada to stream content
Is it? Under whose/which law? Your local law, Canadian law or that of the country where the streaming service originates?
What do "current means of distribution" have to do with that?
In many countries, only the uploading (distribution) part is illegal indeed, not the downloading/streaming part. Depending on the exact wording, it may even be legal to download stuff and keep copies without license.
From a legal perspective, bittorrent is a problem as it automatically uploads as you download, or at the very best offers to upload - in case there are only seeders, no other leechers or none that are interested in your downloaded parts. This is in most countries a breach of copyright.
The driver still is responsible for operating the vehicle, including in emergency situations. The owner here did not make any attempt to avoid the collision but should have been aware of the situation. Either he was being an inattentive driver, or he deliberately failed to take action, expecting the Tesla system to instead. In either case the Tesla system is not the one to blame for the accident not being avoided.
As much as I love the idea of automated cars, I still have the feeling it's applied the wrong way.
Tesla takes away the easy parts of the driving from the driver. That's of course like 98% of a regular car ride. Most rides you just follow the road, stop at traffic lights, move on with traffic, nothing happens. It's the bit that is the problem: cars or trucks that cross in front of you and force you to slow down, pedestrians suddenly trying to cross, etc.
So as a result, 98% of the time the driver doesn't need to pay attention because the car does so. Most of the above described situations are also handled by autopilot: the crossing truck is detected, and the car slows down or even stops as needed. I think in most cases by the time the driver realises the car is not reacting, it's too late.
In the captioned case, possibly the driver saw the truck, but was used to his car seeing it as well and automatically start slowing down. So the truck starts to turn on the road, and the car starts slowing down. Mmm... The car starts slowing down, I said. There's this obstacle. Hey, shouldn't it start to slow down about now? It always does. Oh. Maybe I should help and apply the brake. Like now. Before something goes CRASH!
It sounds much safer to me to have the driver in control all the times, and have the car look "over his shoulder" and correct if something is about to go wrong. It's got most of the benefits of the existing autopilot, without inviting drivers to go watch Harry Potter movies while sitting behind the wheel.
Funny you mention Hong Kong. It's where I live.
I don't see flying cars/buses/whatever here any time soon. The reason: high-rise buildings (most city blocks here are anywhere from 50 to 480 meters tall) and mountains (the tallest being over 900 meters tall). With those high-rises there is almost no place for any aircraft to land safely, it's just too dense. There's a heliport at the harbour and a few super luxury hotels have helipads on the rooftop. That are about your only realistic options.
Add to that the sheer volume of people that want to be moved. Trains are the more efficient way to go for that - the busiest line is operating 12-coach trains, 20 trains an hour, and it's actually not enough to handle rush hour traffic. The train network is being expanded steadily, with more lines being added. Mostly underground, out of the way of everything. Currently the trains handle some 3.5 million passenger trips every day, road public transport (buses, minibuses, taxis) handle at least that number of trips between them.
Other dense population centres will have the same problems. Huge numbers of people that want to move around, basically limiting any air transport to just a fancy premium service. No space to land on the ground as you're always too close to buildings, one of the main issues after noise would be the unpredictable winds tossing your drone around.
Can still be a perfect place to host malware, especially as it's a rather irrelevant site and likely no-one will notice any time soon.
There is, this line:
But that doesn't matter. There's nothing on Giuliani's server worth hacking.
It's awfully close to the "if you've got nothing to hide..." argument used when you're expected to hand over your privacy.
Yet it's highly predictable. Bugs are by nature unpredictable and leading to unexpected behaviour. Haven't seen that with the moon.
I like the current one. It's tried and tested, all the bugs have been ironed out. Not likely to cause any upsets any time soon. It ain't broke, why fix it?
This also puts the age of both the earth and the moon at "when the first rocks formed", not "when the celestial body formed" which imho is when a significant amount of space debris, possibly molten, clumps together to form something resembling a planet. There's probably no way to really figure that one out.
As the moon is supposedly formed from material from the earth, it could be argued to be the same age (it being from the same clump of material, plus some of the asteroid that caused the split - which in turn may have contained material that solidified much earlier, of course).
In that line of thought, how can we be sure that these moon rocks and earth's oldest rocks are really formed on these bodies and are not fragments of much older objects that were caught in the respective gravity fields?