The idea that you are innocent until proven guilty is part of the social contract between us and our government - it does not apply between us or between us and the corporations we deal with. This concept applies to criminal law only.
However, it is possible for laws to be written that govern these private contracts - just try and evict a goat fekking, pr0n producing turd from your apartment complex and watch the 4CLU-less get involved.
They should be handing out a "school-enabled" PDA that
Only supports a limited set of games (till the hacks get at it)
Can be beamed quarterly and weekly to upload the student's schedule (homework, classes, trips, etc.)
Can beam in homework assignments (certainly suitable for at least some of them)
Tracks immunizations, sick days, etc.
Can be turned off from the front of the room (i.e., a teacher can electronically say "hey, I'm teaching here!")
Big brother? School is about being big brother in the good sense - someone who watches out for your best interests, makes sure you know how to do important things (like read), tries to help you overcome obstacles ("gee, that's a hard problem, what about doing..."), and kicks arse when a bully picks on you.
One trick question in operations research classes was based on these sorts of analyses.
Given historical information gathered from returning bombers that counts the number of holes in wings, fusulage, etc., recommend where to put additional armor.
The obvious (and wrong) answer - put more armor where there are more holes. This is wrong because you are looking at a biased sample. In fact, if you assume that the holes are distributed uniformly over the planes (also a bad assumption, but hey...), then you would want to place more armor where the planes were hit least, since the ones that were shot down are more likely to have been heavily hit in exactly those places where your sampled planes were not hit.
When I was a young 2685 (USAF code for mathematician) working as a ballistics engineer we got hold of some of the first TI-59 calculators with the nifty little magnetic card readers for inputting and storing programs. I had been playing with ballistic missile codes (both for live missiles and for a program called STRIKE (Strategic Targeting Resource Integrator and Kill Evaluator)) and suggested to the powers that be that it might be possible to get a pretty good fuel usage estimate for use in retargeting the Minuteman III (3 warhead system). Given the go-ahead, I pressed on.
The first problem was the development and testing cycle times. I was used to the IBM 360 turnaround times for punch decks of 2-4 hours (often overnight because of the classification of the programs (Secret, Top Secret, SCI)). The TI-59 was slow, so I developed a sort of emulator on the HP9825 desktop "Calculator" so I could get faster turnarounds. In those days computers belonged to "Data Automation" (AD), so we only got the HP9825 because the case said "Calculator". The system had a tape drive, card reader, plotter, printer, full keyboard, 32-character display and 4K of memory with its own programming language, but hey, the box said "Calculator" so, by the book, it wasn't a computer. By emulating the TI59 on the HP9825 I was able to do real-time run/debug/correct style programming that was really fun compared with the batch style programming we were using on the IBM 360.
By using some really tight code I was able to simulate the flight and deployment of the booster and the three reentry vehicles, computing the cross range and downrange perturbations and the resulting fuel costs, and estimate the total fuel used to deliver the RVs to the three targets as input by the user. This all had to fit in the 960-step/100 memory register of the TI59. Considering that amongst other things I had to invert a 3x3 matrix, space was pretty tight.
Using data from the actual targeting programs used in the Minuteman III, I built some curve fitting functions for fuel usage, used simple spherical trig range and azimuth calculations and managed to get within 5% of the actual fuel usage (the program's estimate was always close to the projection from the mainframe, and was usually in the.95 to 1.05 range about the true value).
The final program was to be carried on the ABCP (KC-135 "Looking Glass") to permit quick evaluation of proposed retargeting of MMIII missiles.
I feel the reason for running this project is wrong. "Let's start a project so we can register loads of
patents" should instead be "Let's start a project to benefit humanity"
Which pays better? Which lets you eat and breed and produce new copies of yourself and your kind (geekoids)?
Apply GA. Which dominates in 50 generations - OS or MS?
If their contract says "don't do that" (host a web server), then they are well within their rights. I am once again amazed that people seem to think that just because they could do something for a while (host web servers) it suddenly becomes an entitlement even though they were told (RTF-C) they could not do that.
While there is some legal precedent (if you don't take action to protect a trademark you can lose the right to ever take action), this is not analogous to this.
Web hosters are high-traffic customers, they ought to pay more than a user who wants to just access the web. It's call being fair.
This is like saying that a certain amount of rape is inevitable, so lay back and enjoy it.
There is a well-understood concept labeled "the broken window" that says that if you do not repair the cracked windows then eventually your neighbors do not repair their siding, then eventually no one repairs their roof, and eventually the housees become "a sort of rat-place" (thanks to Woody of "Cheers" fame).
This syndrome is often used (correctly) to explain why you cannot let your neighbor do ugly things to their place (like letting the cars rot in the front yard) because the effects move beyond their own property. The effort to stop this slide is sometimes called "community action" (when the speaker likes the objectives) and "vigilanteism" (when the speaker does not like the objectives).
For a proper answer we need a full map of the Web. But, as Lawrence and Giles
have shown, even the largest search engines cover only 16% of the Web. This is
where the tools of statistical mechanics come in handy they can be used to infer
the properties of the complete network from a finite sample.
Tread softly here, Grasshopper, the very fact that you can only easily see 16% of the Web means that
you must expect that your sample is strongly biased, hence does not represent the Web in its entirety.
Just as statistical resampling of the census would require much more care than a political entity can usually bring to bear,
so would attempting to extrapolate web characteristics from a sample at random.
What do you see for the future of content providers in the presence of ever growing information-wants-to-be-free movements? How can the editorial process (as opposed to the marketing process) provide enough demonstrated value-added to overcome the decreasing marginal return on sales in an environment where the first copy costs $100,000 (that's the copy the author sells to the reseller/publisher) and each subsequent copy is free?
Bonanza = take stock characters and bring challenges to them in a familiar setting (DS9)
Wagon Train = take stock characters and move them to new challenges in new settings (ST, STNG, Voyager)
Outer Limits = new characters and challenges each episode
Even my Aunt Sadie can get into (1) and (2) because she can focus on the hunks and TnAs, never mind the plots (gee, will anyone ever bed Spock???).
(3) requires much more love of ideas and concepts, and is a much tougher sell. However, done right, it is an incredible art and some of the best SciFi being pushed through the pipe.
I suppose it is about time that we stopped letting business get a free ride on the internet - that's why they thought they could make lotsa money. (Ever see the Seinfeld episode where Cosmo and Newman were going to make a killing collecting deposits on bottles by hauling them "for free" to Michigan?).
IRL, we pay (in part) for highways through gasoline taxes (a lot). If "per-byte" fees were used, we might see less napstering, pop-up ads and other bandwidth hogs change in their nature. If the "client" pays, the change would be away from napstering and other client-driven uses, if the "server" pays, then the change would be away from pop-ups and spam.
The question is, how long can techies suck resources from businesses before the businesses realize that banner ads on a web site are not nearly as cost-effective as buying a NASCAR vehicle and participating in the "rolling billboards" they call races? A lot of the shakeout is due, in part, to the growing realization that a computer screen (no matter how interesting) is not as good an advertising environment as a TV (the user has too much control on the computer). To get attention you need bandwidth and attention-dominance, otherwise TV ads would be constantly scrolling across the bottom of the screen while we watched the "entertainment".
[disclaimer]I use an old-technology browser so I don't have to put up with many of the ugly features of the New Web Order (NWO).[/disclaimer]
Re:First example of pi-based compression.
on
Share The Pi!
·
· Score: 1
An old sci-fi story used a similar idea to encode an entire encyclopedia by putting a scratch on a diamond rod - the idea was that by expressing the length to the mark over the entire rod you got an irrational fraction that could be read off as characters to get the information back out (the story problem was how to compress the huge amount of information for easy couriering back to the home site).
Of course, the real problem was that the required precision required the location be controlled to much less than the width of a carbon atom (and probably was beyond the reach of even the fundamental smallest distance possible in this universe - yes, there is such a distance).
That's why they call it science fiction - can you imagine a typical slacker hollywood type ever understanding such a fine point? Of course, hollywood types can't understand how geeks just do not seem to "get it" that understanding subtle film angles can make a movie infinitely more enjoyable either. To each their own, peace.
If you are into web stuff (Java, PHP, MySQL, ASP) you could find a non-profit and do about 4-8 hrs a week pro-bono. Then your resume can direct a prospective hire to the web see to see where you have strutted your stuff. Gives you a chance to learn if there is already a team in place.
When I taught prob/stats and simulation I would use the information-theoretic definition of random that says:
A number stream (viewed as a DB) is random if the number of characters to define it is greater than or equal to the number of characters it contains.
We would then progress to compression algorithms then to pseudo-random numbers as used in simulations.
Bottom line, philosophically at least, Pi cannot be random because it can be completed defined in a very small number of characters (e.g., the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle expressed in a flat (Euclidean) space. Even better, as the solution to a simple infinite series.) This argument also applies to e, and some other transcendental numbers.
Of course, authors like the ones quoted in the root story tend to confuse statistical tests with fact...
A more relevant question is: is one more likely to be shot in a gun battle between crack dealers or liquor store owners?
This is such an insightful comment that I wish I had saved some moderator points for it. This is exactly the point I have heard so seldom about all the "prohibition" crimes (drugs, prostitution, pr0n). These need to be brought out of the closets and into the realm of daily life so we can apply the things that worked until the 60's - public censure, shame and ridicule.
IMNSHO - any adult who verbally beats the shit out of some lowlife who is cruising pr0n in a public library ought to be a hero who quickly gathers a cheering throng (that's throng you prevert). As long as everyone turns their head and puts on their "unholier-than-thou" non-confrontational face, the censure tools will fail, and the pols will feel obligated to try to use laws instead.
And I know we all want to be PC and multi-culturally sensitive about these behaviors, but if we don't establish and enforce (through tools like shame) standards that apply to all we will eventually drift into a sort of dark, balkanized, all's fair world that will make Bladerunner look like a Disney-does-Norman-Rockwell matinee.
From the article:
Chris Hanson-Abbott, the chairman of Brigade Electronics of Blackheath, Europe's largest maker of vehicle reversing alarms, has won the right to develop markets for the new sound worldwide.
"We will be working flat out in the next three months to satisfy the huge response"
Production of the new sound will be farmed out to third-world sweat shops on loan from Nike to ensure that no shortage of the new sound will occur.
"We don't want anyone to not be able to hear the new sound if it is needed." he signed (lawsuits prevented him from actually using any sounds).
Amozon (sic) denied allegations that they were patenting all material vibrations in the 2-15KHz range.
Napster denies that the new sound was already available through its services, saying "we don't have it, and even if we did we wouldn't know it".
Meanwhile, N'SYNC and other sh*t-hot boy bands will be producing covers of the new sound, and rap artists are promising to co-opt it as well.
The West is unwilling to overcome their self-loathing long enough to admit that critical components of our system are essential to the sorts of freedoms we enjoy. Without those components nothing else matters. IMNSHO (and borrowing from other writers), those components are:
A system of checks and balances involving courts, legislatures and executives who live and breath life from a formal structure like the Constitution
Property rights so that individuals and companies can build and keep wealth. This includes the right to own your output and sell it as you wish
An underlying belief in the scientific method as an ultimate source of knowledge about how the universe works
Without these, no amount of fiber-optic wiring and CyberCafes can bring a region out of tribal poverty. To think otherwise is the worst form of elitist techno-hubris.
That's because the defense can deploy fixes to holes faster than the offense can attack them, so, assuming they both find out about them at the same time,
the defense wins.
Not true as long as offense uses automatic tools to attack (e.g., viruses, trojans, poorly educated users) while defense uses news, posts and manual updates to patch holes. Now, if defense went to distributing patches as viruses, they might keep up, but then people would have to be comfortable letting strangers viruses repair their systems. Not in our lifetime, bucko.
It seems to me that the house breaking analogy works very well here - and the idea that I should be able to secure my house with a cheapo 29.95 lock and expect the combination of "cheap lock" plus "legal sanctions" to provide me a sense of security is attractive. The lock need not be perfect because it serves mostly to ensure that if someone is in my house after having broken the lock, the fact that the lock is broken provides evidence of intent.
Now, building tools that make it easy to bypass the lock in a way that puts the burden back on me to prove intent becomes an infringement of my right to secure my property. I can either (1) prevent the development by making it very hard to do (PGP stuff) or (2) prevent development by making it very illegal (DMCA) or (3) prevent the use of the developed tools by making the use illegal.
Since there are lots of h4x0r lusers with nothing better to do that break my locks and leave the house exposed, option (1) is impractical, so I go with (2) and (3). If someone runs down the street popping the locks on the houses and claims "oh, its just a proof of concept, man" that is just self-serving bullshit, since I never claimed it was hard to do. If they accept payment from people who then go into my house, then they should expect to be persecuted and prosecuted.
Of course, in this case the developed software at least attempted to ensure that the lock was still valid, so some of this rant does not apply to this specific case, but it certainly applies to the general copy-protection/DMCA argument that has ensued.
The Bill of Rights applies to all people that the US government interacts with.
IMNSHO this is not the way it should be... being a citizen should give us more rights than non-citizens have. There should be incentives (beyond wanting access to economic opportunity) that make people want to study our Constitution and become citizens.
On the other hand, we should have a clearly defined set of rights that we do give all people with whom we (as represented by our government) interact.
The Bill of Rights is a decent template for such a subsidiary set of rights.
How about duct taping a bunch of cute furries to the outside of your R/C vehicle (these aren't really bots except to marketers and ID10ts).
Then you could attack with impunity while the victim blathered on about how the use of animal shields was inhuman.
Ever see "Road Warrior"? And yes, I thought about saying "duck tape ducklings".
Re:So why hasn't it happened? = Deterrence
on
Biohazard
·
· Score: 1
The US and most Western nations have a strongly worded policy that basically says that biological weapons are weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This means that we would feel free to retaliate against a biological attack with our nuclear capability (also WMD).
This is called deterrence - it gave us relative peace for over 50 years and counting ("relative peace" = no direct conflict between major powers - fek the little wars and their victims).
Certainly in a world where we do not go in and impose our own military rule until democracy can be germinated (e.g., Germany, Japan, post WW-II) at least deterence provides some safety from countries like Iraq and their religious fanatic friends.
Thank god I can live in a free country like the US and not be ruled by narrow-minded religious fanatics (ooops).
Slashdot Mirror
However, it is possible for laws to be written that govern these private contracts - just try and evict a goat fekking, pr0n producing turd from your apartment complex and watch the 4CLU-less get involved.
Big brother? School is about being big brother in the good sense - someone who watches out for your best interests, makes sure you know how to do important things (like read), tries to help you overcome obstacles ("gee, that's a hard problem, what about doing
The obvious (and wrong) answer - put more armor where there are more holes. This is wrong because you are looking at a biased sample. In fact, if you assume that the holes are distributed uniformly over the planes (also a bad assumption, but hey...), then you would want to place more armor where the planes were hit least, since the ones that were shot down are more likely to have been heavily hit in exactly those places where your sampled planes were not hit.
The first problem was the development and testing cycle times. I was used to the IBM 360 turnaround times for punch decks of 2-4 hours (often overnight because of the classification of the programs (Secret, Top Secret, SCI)). The TI-59 was slow, so I developed a sort of emulator on the HP9825 desktop "Calculator" so I could get faster turnarounds. In those days computers belonged to "Data Automation" (AD), so we only got the HP9825 because the case said "Calculator". The system had a tape drive, card reader, plotter, printer, full keyboard, 32-character display and 4K of memory with its own programming language, but hey, the box said "Calculator" so, by the book, it wasn't a computer. By emulating the TI59 on the HP9825 I was able to do real-time run/debug/correct style programming that was really fun compared with the batch style programming we were using on the IBM 360.
By using some really tight code I was able to simulate the flight and deployment of the booster and the three reentry vehicles, computing the cross range and downrange perturbations and the resulting fuel costs, and estimate the total fuel used to deliver the RVs to the three targets as input by the user. This all had to fit in the 960-step/100 memory register of the TI59. Considering that amongst other things I had to invert a 3x3 matrix, space was pretty tight.
Using data from the actual targeting programs used in the Minuteman III, I built some curve fitting functions for fuel usage, used simple spherical trig range and azimuth calculations and managed to get within 5% of the actual fuel usage (the program's estimate was always close to the projection from the mainframe, and was usually in the
The final program was to be carried on the ABCP (KC-135 "Looking Glass") to permit quick evaluation of proposed retargeting of MMIII missiles.
Which pays better? Which lets you eat and breed and produce new copies of yourself and your kind (geekoids)?
Apply GA. Which dominates in 50 generations - OS or MS?
While there is some legal precedent (if you don't take action to protect a trademark you can lose the right to ever take action), this is not analogous to this.
Web hosters are high-traffic customers, they ought to pay more than a user who wants to just access the web. It's call being fair.
There is a well-understood concept labeled "the broken window" that says that if you do not repair the cracked windows then eventually your neighbors do not repair their siding, then eventually no one repairs their roof, and eventually the housees become "a sort of rat-place" (thanks to Woody of "Cheers" fame).
This syndrome is often used (correctly) to explain why you cannot let your neighbor do ugly things to their place (like letting the cars rot in the front yard) because the effects move beyond their own property. The effort to stop this slide is sometimes called "community action" (when the speaker likes the objectives) and "vigilanteism" (when the speaker does not like the objectives).
Go figure.
Tread softly here, Grasshopper, the very fact that you can only easily see 16% of the Web means that you must expect that your sample is strongly biased, hence does not represent the Web in its entirety. Just as statistical resampling of the census would require much more care than a political entity can usually bring to bear, so would attempting to extrapolate web characteristics from a sample at random.
What do you see for the future of content providers in the presence of ever growing information-wants-to-be-free movements? How can the editorial process (as opposed to the marketing process) provide enough demonstrated value-added to overcome the decreasing marginal return on sales in an environment where the first copy costs $100,000 (that's the copy the author sells to the reseller/publisher) and each subsequent copy is free?
- Bonanza = take stock characters and bring challenges to them in a familiar setting (DS9)
- Wagon Train = take stock characters and move them to new challenges in new settings (ST, STNG, Voyager)
- Outer Limits = new characters and challenges each episode
Even my Aunt Sadie can get into (1) and (2) because she can focus on the hunks and TnAs, never mind the plots (gee, will anyone ever bed Spock???). (3) requires much more love of ideas and concepts, and is a much tougher sell. However, done right, it is an incredible art and some of the best SciFi being pushed through the pipe.[flameshields status=up]
IRL, we pay (in part) for highways through gasoline taxes (a lot). If "per-byte" fees were used, we might see less napstering, pop-up ads and other bandwidth hogs change in their nature. If the "client" pays, the change would be away from napstering and other client-driven uses, if the "server" pays, then the change would be away from pop-ups and spam.
The question is, how long can techies suck resources from businesses before the businesses realize that banner ads on a web site are not nearly as cost-effective as buying a NASCAR vehicle and participating in the "rolling billboards" they call races? A lot of the shakeout is due, in part, to the growing realization that a computer screen (no matter how interesting) is not as good an advertising environment as a TV (the user has too much control on the computer). To get attention you need bandwidth and attention-dominance, otherwise TV ads would be constantly scrolling across the bottom of the screen while we watched the "entertainment".
[disclaimer]I use an old-technology browser so I don't have to put up with many of the ugly features of the New Web Order (NWO).[/disclaimer]
Of course, the real problem was that the required precision required the location be controlled to much less than the width of a carbon atom (and probably was beyond the reach of even the fundamental smallest distance possible in this universe - yes, there is such a distance).
That's why they call it science fiction - can you imagine a typical slacker hollywood type ever understanding such a fine point? Of course, hollywood types can't understand how geeks just do not seem to "get it" that understanding subtle film angles can make a movie infinitely more enjoyable either. To each their own, peace.
[sarcasm]I like this, but then I think that artists should not be paid for their work ... [/sarcasm]
If you are into web stuff (Java, PHP, MySQL, ASP) you could find a non-profit and do about 4-8 hrs a week pro-bono. Then your resume can direct a prospective hire to the web see to see where you have strutted your stuff. Gives you a chance to learn if there is already a team in place.
Bottom line, philosophically at least, Pi cannot be random because it can be completed defined in a very small number of characters (e.g., the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle expressed in a flat (Euclidean) space. Even better, as the solution to a simple infinite series.) This argument also applies to e, and some other transcendental numbers.
Of course, authors like the ones quoted in the root story tend to confuse statistical tests with fact ...
IMNSHO - any adult who verbally beats the shit out of some lowlife who is cruising pr0n in a public library ought to be a hero who quickly gathers a cheering throng (that's throng you prevert). As long as everyone turns their head and puts on their "unholier-than-thou" non-confrontational face, the censure tools will fail, and the pols will feel obligated to try to use laws instead.
And I know we all want to be PC and multi-culturally sensitive about these behaviors, but if we don't establish and enforce (through tools like shame) standards that apply to all we will eventually drift into a sort of dark, balkanized, all's fair world that will make Bladerunner look like a Disney-does-Norman-Rockwell matinee.
Amozon (sic) denied allegations that they were patenting all material vibrations in the 2-15KHz range.
Napster denies that the new sound was already available through its services, saying "we don't have it, and even if we did we wouldn't know it".
Meanwhile, N'SYNC and other sh*t-hot boy bands will be producing covers of the new sound, and rap artists are promising to co-opt it as well.
The West is unwilling to overcome their self-loathing long enough to admit that critical components of our system are essential to the sorts of freedoms we enjoy. Without those components nothing else matters. IMNSHO (and borrowing from other writers), those components are:
- A system of checks and balances involving courts, legislatures and executives who live and breath life from a formal structure like the Constitution
- Property rights so that individuals and companies can build and keep wealth. This includes the right to own your output and sell it as you wish
- An underlying belief in the scientific method as an ultimate source of knowledge about how the universe works
Without these, no amount of fiber-optic wiring and CyberCafes can bring a region out of tribal poverty. To think otherwise is the worst form of elitist techno-hubris.Not true as long as offense uses automatic tools to attack (e.g., viruses, trojans, poorly educated users) while defense uses news, posts and manual updates to patch holes. Now, if defense went to distributing patches as viruses, they might keep up, but then people would have to be comfortable letting strangers viruses repair their systems. Not in our lifetime, bucko.
Better yet - scan /. for the phrase "Linux sux", then post some flamebait when you are ready to go to phase 2.
Now, building tools that make it easy to bypass the lock in a way that puts the burden back on me to prove intent becomes an infringement of my right to secure my property. I can either (1) prevent the development by making it very hard to do (PGP stuff) or (2) prevent development by making it very illegal (DMCA) or (3) prevent the use of the developed tools by making the use illegal.
Since there are lots of h4x0r lusers with nothing better to do that break my locks and leave the house exposed, option (1) is impractical, so I go with (2) and (3). If someone runs down the street popping the locks on the houses and claims "oh, its just a proof of concept, man" that is just self-serving bullshit, since I never claimed it was hard to do. If they accept payment from people who then go into my house, then they should expect to be persecuted and prosecuted.
Of course, in this case the developed software at least attempted to ensure that the lock was still valid, so some of this rant does not apply to this specific case, but it certainly applies to the general copy-protection/DMCA argument that has ensued.
On the other hand, we should have a clearly defined set of rights that we do give all people with whom we (as represented by our government) interact.
The Bill of Rights is a decent template for such a subsidiary set of rights.
Ever see "Road Warrior"? And yes, I thought about saying "duck tape ducklings".
This is called deterrence - it gave us relative peace for over 50 years and counting ("relative peace" = no direct conflict between major powers - fek the little wars and their victims).
Certainly in a world where we do not go in and impose our own military rule until democracy can be germinated (e.g., Germany, Japan, post WW-II) at least deterence provides some safety from countries like Iraq and their religious fanatic friends.
Thank god I can live in a free country like the US and not be ruled by narrow-minded religious fanatics (ooops).