Simply because if you let someone define the pattern and then let them have a large enough sample size, they'll always find an example of it. He claims that if you were to draw horizontal lines that the bodies would for musical notes, but for paintings of the last supper, this is incredibly likely to happen, and if you get 15 or so of them together, you're going to have something that sounds decently like music. If he can take that same pattern and find it in more of Da Vinci's work, then he may be onto something. Right now it's just too likely to be a fluke.
Besides, with the number of times that it was painted over, there's no way to definitively know whether he's even viewing what Da Vinci painted.
Well, that and the US's politics makes me *very* nervous about the future on freedom of speech on the 'net. Not to insult you, but it seems to me that reacting to something that hasn't happened yet is what got us into the war in Iraq. Breaking everything apart now seems premature when there's nothing concretely wrong with the current setup, just the potential for abuse (which would be larger were it broken up).
p.s. The countries chosen to be in that list seems rather loaded to me. Yes, it was, but it was also the list of countries that are the biggest worry for what would happen were this to come about. Canada would be no worse than the US, I also find it unlikely that they would be better. I don't see how any other country would be better than the US of today, but there are a lot of countries that would be worse. Besides, with the victories being won in the US courts right now with pornography and video games, it doesn't look like any laws would stay in effect very long. We're a long way off from any large abuses from the US.
The real answer is many systems, all around the world, that are controlled by many groups. Good idea. The group in Russia is actively attempting to hack all the other systems, the Chinese group is hacking other systems while censoring everything coming/going out of it, and the US group is setting a standard and then not following it so that you get locked into a proprietary system. Whether you like it or not, the best government is a benevolent monarchy; when there's actual wrong doing, then something will be done. Until then, too few people will care to build momentum for a change.
I absolutely agree with the exception that France and other first world countries have a tendency to not limit rogue countries (see the entire military infrastructure of pre-2003 Iraq). While France itself isn't going to do something bad, they're not going to keep another country from doing something bad. The US isn't perfect, but it's better than France in that Respect.
England, through CCTV, has shown that it's no better than the US when it comes to privacy. Germany's laughable in its computing laws and knee-jerk reactions to video games (not directly related to the argument, but a symptom). Canada doesn't have the cajones or the ability to back any international policy, Russia and China belong in the first group you listed. Anyone else?
Correct me if I'm wrong, and i almost certainly am, but is that because you're a small ISP? If you were larger and running some backbones I could see requests for European sites going through your routers, but if you're not running major routers, all this means is that your customers are requesting a lot of sites from asia and very few asians are requesting sites from your customers, which, from a small ISP, isn't surprising in the least.
However, if I'm underestimating your ISP or I'm misunderstanding something else, please correct me.
It's not likely given they would have to be extradited in most cases. Since extradition (usually) requires the permission of the country they're currently in, if the punishment is that outlandish, they won't grant their permission. As a sibling post mentioned, the chances of the US actually doing something that ridiculous is very small (when they allow the death penalty for rape *without* murder, then come talk to me).
I have used it to look up exotic drink mixes when a bartender did not know the recipe (no comments on that one) "The secret ingredient is semen. ANIMAL semen."
Are they trying extortion now to get some originality in the sports titles?
"Sure is a nice game company you got there. It's be a shame if something happened to Gamestop, or WalMart. People forget, shipments don't get ordered, all sorts of things happen..."
They need to remember the cryptography community and the history of the field. The NSA has made a lot of cryptographic algorithms with some of the most talented mathematicians in their generations. Years later, when they're declassified, the cryptography experts pick them apart and they've found some of the core algorithms were deeply flawed. If the NSA can't keep a closed-source algorithm secure, what makes any private company think they can do it?
When you compile a program about 90% of the information in the original code is lost. The variable names, the object names, function names, and all comments are stripped out and replaced with something else. A decompiler can see some code, but not the code, and for large applications, that makes a huge difference.
FTFA:
American robot consumers have yet to comprehend the cost of the programming and mechanical complexity necessary to create effective, realistic, interactive robots. This could just have easily been titled "Why the US Consumer Doesn't Deserve a Viper." Anyone who thinks that we should be buying robots regardless of the price is an idiot. He cites the success of the Roomba and says that, were it a bipedal, humanoid-looking robot holding a vacuum hose, it wouldn't have done as well. That's one of those "Duh" moments for me. If it were a robot with a vacuum hose, anyone would be able to see that they wasted time and energy on making it look human rather than making it more functional. The Roomba is successful because of its excellent functionality. The size and shape make it ideal for vacuuming a carpet, where if it were anthropomorphized, it would have cost more and been worse.
Give the American consumer a functional robot and we'll buy it. Give us something that looks ridiculous, maybe a little eerie, and costs more while being less functional, and we won't buy it.
Saying that encrypting traffic is only used to cover up illegal activity is like saying that sealing the envelope before giving it to your postal carrier is only being used to hide illegal activity. In fact, there are laws in the US saying that you can't open a letter that's not yours, so why is it so suspicious suddenly when we demand and enforce the same thing online?
From what I understand, Comcast was sending the RSTs based on traffic patterns and port use, not what the packets contained. That's how they were able to catch encrypted traffic as well.
So we're locking something and then handing them the keys to those locks in an attempt to keep them from using it in a way that we don't want them to? My how the tables have turned...
But in all seriousness, it's not hiding the activity from the end users, but from the ISPs that are blocking torrent traffic.
I don't understand the assumption that they can't embed a high-end graphics card in a motherboard I assume that it can be done but it hasn't. The reason I assume it hasn't been done is that the resulting motherboard would then have to go through testing and the video card would have to get integrated. In the meanwhile, the GPU market is moving forward and releasing new cards and marking down existing ones. In addition, the video card industry moves faster than the motherboard industry generally speaking, so while a good motherboard is useful 6 months later at roughly the same cost, a video card isn't. Most motherboard manufacturers would rather let enthusiasts with higher graphics requirements purchase the card separately and embed low-quality GPUs for people who don't need a better one.
That's ridiculous and stupid. He tended to show a smug arrogance, thinking that "the weak-minded masses" were stupid and didn't deserve to live. It reminds me of a lot of the attitudes that I encounter on slashdot, including yours.
There will be no Americans in IT in 20 years. That's one possibility. The other possibility is that, as they become more technically skilled, their standard of living will rise, the economy will build up with an influx of cash from foreign corporations, and they will become consumers of the products that IT makes as well, increasing demand in their own country until it gets to the point where they are trying to outsource to other nations.
There's also the little matter of, well, matter. Dust clouds, intervening meteors, etc, that would degrade the quality of the signal. The problem with radio isn't that it's not reliable, it's that it's bandwidth is lower and it can't be aimed as precisely. With the proper optical equipment, we could shoot a laser from Alpha Centauri that hit the earth and nothing but the earth. Doing the same with a radio wave would be difficult at best.
However, as you said, radio's doing just fine for us right now. I imagine radio being the old reliable, the copper wire to laser's fibre optic, as it were.
What's better for a chinese citizen, a Google search that's censored by google as legally required by the government, a chinese company's search result, or no search result? I'm of the opinion that a censored google is better than no google at all.
As pointed out in the article, Yahoo would have been putting their chinese employees at risk by refusing to turn over the information. Where's the moral superiority there? The only argument that can be made is that they shouldn't do any business at all in China, thereby increasing the separation between chinese citizens and the rest of the world. Unless you think isolation is in the best interest of the Chinese people (eg North Korea).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the hit in the face was necessary for the chest wound. So it was two hits.
It was two in the morning. I'm having trouble understanding it too.
Simply because if you let someone define the pattern and then let them have a large enough sample size, they'll always find an example of it. He claims that if you were to draw horizontal lines that the bodies would for musical notes, but for paintings of the last supper, this is incredibly likely to happen, and if you get 15 or so of them together, you're going to have something that sounds decently like music. If he can take that same pattern and find it in more of Da Vinci's work, then he may be onto something. Right now it's just too likely to be a fluke.
Besides, with the number of times that it was painted over, there's no way to definitively know whether he's even viewing what Da Vinci painted.
Exactly. I just found the words "vote Romney" in ascii values in the value of Pi. My hands are tied...
I absolutely agree with the exception that France and other first world countries have a tendency to not limit rogue countries (see the entire military infrastructure of pre-2003 Iraq). While France itself isn't going to do something bad, they're not going to keep another country from doing something bad. The US isn't perfect, but it's better than France in that Respect.
England, through CCTV, has shown that it's no better than the US when it comes to privacy. Germany's laughable in its computing laws and knee-jerk reactions to video games (not directly related to the argument, but a symptom). Canada doesn't have the cajones or the ability to back any international policy, Russia and China belong in the first group you listed. Anyone else?
Correct me if I'm wrong, and i almost certainly am, but is that because you're a small ISP? If you were larger and running some backbones I could see requests for European sites going through your routers, but if you're not running major routers, all this means is that your customers are requesting a lot of sites from asia and very few asians are requesting sites from your customers, which, from a small ISP, isn't surprising in the least.
However, if I'm underestimating your ISP or I'm misunderstanding something else, please correct me.
It's not likely given they would have to be extradited in most cases. Since extradition (usually) requires the permission of the country they're currently in, if the punishment is that outlandish, they won't grant their permission. As a sibling post mentioned, the chances of the US actually doing something that ridiculous is very small (when they allow the death penalty for rape *without* murder, then come talk to me).
Are they trying extortion now to get some originality in the sports titles?
"Sure is a nice game company you got there. It's be a shame if something happened to Gamestop, or WalMart. People forget, shipments don't get ordered, all sorts of things happen..."
If I'm going through The Projects at night in my brand new Civic, locking the doors doesn't mean I'm carrying drugs. How's that?
They need to remember the cryptography community and the history of the field. The NSA has made a lot of cryptographic algorithms with some of the most talented mathematicians in their generations. Years later, when they're declassified, the cryptography experts pick them apart and they've found some of the core algorithms were deeply flawed. If the NSA can't keep a closed-source algorithm secure, what makes any private company think they can do it?
When you compile a program about 90% of the information in the original code is lost. The variable names, the object names, function names, and all comments are stripped out and replaced with something else. A decompiler can see some code, but not the code, and for large applications, that makes a huge difference.
Give the American consumer a functional robot and we'll buy it. Give us something that looks ridiculous, maybe a little eerie, and costs more while being less functional, and we won't buy it.
Saying that encrypting traffic is only used to cover up illegal activity is like saying that sealing the envelope before giving it to your postal carrier is only being used to hide illegal activity. In fact, there are laws in the US saying that you can't open a letter that's not yours, so why is it so suspicious suddenly when we demand and enforce the same thing online?
From what I understand, Comcast was sending the RSTs based on traffic patterns and port use, not what the packets contained. That's how they were able to catch encrypted traffic as well.
So we're locking something and then handing them the keys to those locks in an attempt to keep them from using it in a way that we don't want them to? My how the tables have turned...
But in all seriousness, it's not hiding the activity from the end users, but from the ISPs that are blocking torrent traffic.
That's ridiculous and stupid. He tended to show a smug arrogance, thinking that "the weak-minded masses" were stupid and didn't deserve to live. It reminds me of a lot of the attitudes that I encounter on slashdot, including yours.
You say that now, but in thirty years you'll be watching every episode of Law and Order: Martian Victims Unit along with the rest of us.
There's also the little matter of, well, matter. Dust clouds, intervening meteors, etc, that would degrade the quality of the signal. The problem with radio isn't that it's not reliable, it's that it's bandwidth is lower and it can't be aimed as precisely. With the proper optical equipment, we could shoot a laser from Alpha Centauri that hit the earth and nothing but the earth. Doing the same with a radio wave would be difficult at best.
However, as you said, radio's doing just fine for us right now. I imagine radio being the old reliable, the copper wire to laser's fibre optic, as it were.
If that's what we're doing here, then I'm guessing it's one of those "you can't say no to Melinda" situations.
What's better for a chinese citizen, a Google search that's censored by google as legally required by the government, a chinese company's search result, or no search result? I'm of the opinion that a censored google is better than no google at all.
As pointed out in the article, Yahoo would have been putting their chinese employees at risk by refusing to turn over the information. Where's the moral superiority there? The only argument that can be made is that they shouldn't do any business at all in China, thereby increasing the separation between chinese citizens and the rest of the world. Unless you think isolation is in the best interest of the Chinese people (eg North Korea).