This is the case, if I remember correctly, in "The World Jones Made", that was referenced here (also in the carpet people, but that's not SF). I have to say I'm not a big fan of time travel stories, but I'll take them any day over future-vision (which is very rare). Time travel makes sense because the traveler doesn't know the future, he has only general understanding of things that might happen (depending on the interpretation, maybe he can prevent them from happening). I did watch Paycheck, and it was ridiculous. The point is he knew what everyone will do, in a way that depended on the actions he took because of knowing. The only way to avoid the paradox is to claim you must get a stable solution (he'll do what he knows he'll do and not try to prevent it), and this throws the world into a paradox. What happen if two people use the machine? The whole idea fails...
The reason is it interferes with our illusion of free will. If you see the future, you see what you'll do, there's no way around it. Dick was well aware of it, and wrote this in fact, but that's not a solution. I'm not sure how Herbert handled this, but I've never seen anyone handling it properly, its to alien. Terry Pratchett went as far as possible in pointing it out in the carpet people, but it still doesn't work. You just can't relate to a character that knows it has no free will, I think.
If you're a geek, you know him as a founding member of Monty Python (Patsy in The Holy Grail or Cardinal "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition" Fang).
More importantly, he was the animator, throughout the Flying Circus. At first he was only the animator, and only later started acting minor roles. He was also less involved in writing sketches than the rest (doing mainly the cartoons). Started directing there as well, as director of the holy grail (he was in charge of photography, Terry Jones in charge of acting, mainly).
First thing, though: the probability it's known is 100%. After all, you know about it, right? What makes you think you're so unique, so special, so much more brilliant than any other person in the world that you're the only one who's noticed it and figured it out? Nothing. In fact, given the number of people in the world it's a virtual certainty that someone smarter than you found this vulnerability before you.
I have to disagree, the number of people in the world is irrelevant in its own. I haven't found the exploit, but one might assume he is more likely to find one because he devote more time to it, have better access, better understanding, more training or many other reasons. In fact it's not unreasonable that the expert checking his company's software has some advantage over any other person (for each, exists, in this order). Furthermore, one might even consider the motivation to exploit, since the damage to you might not be helping the attacker. The other point I tried to make is that all products are defective to some extent. The fact another system is not known to be vulnerable might be just because you only test your system.
There are, I understand, systems that are required by law to be secured (health data, for example). Since no system is secure, they should all be closed, right?
If the exploit is secret and maybe the bad guys know about it and maybe they don't, the only safe course is to assume they do know about it and act accordingly.
This is a false dichotomy. There is no "safe" and "unsafe" systems, there are only more or less safe systems. So it depends on the cost of handling the exploit. I could extend your metaphor by pointing to the fact a locked door won't give you complete protection. Do you go on vacation without installing an alarm? Barring the windows? Hiring a security company? The list of possible measures is endless, if you're willing to get extreme enough, and for each one you could use the same argument, so something is wrong. If the exploit is secret you estimate the probability it's known and the cost to fix it and decide according to both of these. It is reasonable the outcome will different for vendor/client (the vendor should fix, the client shouldn't), since the vendor has a lot more systems with the exploit...
A lot faster, in this context, is more powerful. The reason being it's not faster by a constant (as a modern computer is faster than a not-so modern one), but in a more complicated way. The point is, we're talking about complexity, not computability, so "possible" means "possible in an efficient way". The notion of efficiency we use is poly-time, is there a polynomial p(n), such that the algorithm will always stop after p(|x|) steps on input x. A problem is NP if it can be solved in poly-time by a non-deterministic turing machine, which we might describe as a machine that tosses coins in a weird way. If the coins might get you to a positive result, they will get you there, if not they won't. For example, you can check if there is a Travelling Salesman short path by choosing a random path and checking it, in a non-deterministic machine you'll get a short one if it exist. You can describe it a "the computation goes through all possible paths, giving the OR of the results". P=NP means for any such problem you can solve it with a real machine (deterministic machine), and it seems unlikely. However, quantum computers, which we don't have and don't really know if they are feasible, seem like something in between. Loosely speaking, you get some sort of parallelism this way, but not the powerful non-deterministic sort. There are some problems, integer factorization and discrete logarithm for example, that have an efficient quantum algorithms but we don't know of any efficient classical algorithm.
By the way, I wrote BQP > BPP > P. This means:
BQP - bounded error quantum polynomial time, quantum poly-time algorithms with randomness that are significantly more probable to give the right answer than a wrong one.
BPP - bounded error probabilistic polynomial time, classical poly-time algorithms with randomness that are significantly more probable to give the right answer than a wrong one.
P - polynomial time, classical poly-time algorithms, no randomness.
It is believed each one is strictly bigger than the next, and we rely on this. IT is well known that factorization and D-log are in BQP. And most of the existing cryptographic protocols (authentication, encryption, etc.) rely on the hardness of these problems. We can solve problems in BPP, so if those are in BPP those cryptographic protocols are insecure, we hope this is not the case...
You're right, I wasn't accurate. I meant the problems we're discussing, which are always NP, but didn't state it. In all games for a single player the requirements for a solution are local, so it is necessarily in NP, it can be verified in linear time (go over all of its parts, verify each based on local environment of fixed size, so you do it in fixed time). I should have said it. Of course, games that aren't NP does not make sense, how will you know that the solution you found is a good one? The ability to do so is the definition of NP.
A) a quantum machine can (presumably, of course) do more than a probabilistic turing machine, which in turn can do more (again, presumably) than a deterministic turing machine. That is, BQP > BPP > P, or so we believe. So it is possible that a quantum computer can solve NP-Hard problems in polynomial time and still P!=NP, as weird as it might sound. The point in this context is that simulating quantum behavior in a classical machine takes exponential memory (if I remember correctly, exponential time, in any case).
B) The fact that an efficient algorithm exist doesn't make the problem easy in human terms. In fact, most of the games we talk about, in the standard sizes, can be solved easily by naive algorithms on modern computers (and not so modern computer), but they are still hard for humans, despite the fact that the human brain is much bigger/faster/efficient in many operation (vision, for example). The reason is the brain is not designed to learn general algorithms, but for specific uses. Therefore, even if we're interested in hard games the hardness we seek for isn't computational complexity but difference from the structure of the brain, the hardness is in using the brain in different ways. If this wasn't the case, we could process natural languages all day, looking for local ambiguities and deciding them based on global structure, but most people do not enjoy this stuff...
The point, of course, is that we believe that many problems are hard but not NP-Hard (I gave two examples, there are others). In fact, most of our cryptography (maybe all, but I'm not sure) is based on hardness of presumably non NP-Hard problems (but NP, of course). You can play the RSA-breaking game, it's not NP-Hard but it is hard... (as far as we know, of course)
Well, your argument assumes something about equivalence of computational models (or, actually, to which model the brain is equivalent). It is believed that quantum computability > probabilistic computability > deterministic computability (I mean efficient computability in all models, of course), to which one is the brain equivalent?
Furthermore, the brain is not designed to run algorithms, it's not a universal turing machine. The vast majority of humans are unable to grasp the idea of algorithm, and running one properly in your head for non-trivial amount of data is, well, non-trivial. If you disagree I suggest doing some code reviews, it should convince you. So, I don't think there's any connection between the notion of computational complexity and what's hard for humans, but we might learn some things about the way we devise problems, maybe about some sort of "typical hardness" when sampled by human design.
Since I had to suffer through at least one professor who didn't understand basic complexity theory last night, and I know that Slashdot generally screws it up to.
NP-Hard means that there's no (deterministic) polynomial-time algorithm to solve the games
Sadly, you seem not to understand the term yourself. NP-Hard means that given an efficient (deterministic polynomial-time) algorithm to this problem, one can devise an efficient algorithm for any NP problem, so any problem for which solutions can be verified. It might not mean that they aren't solvable (they are solvable efficiently iff P=NP), and a problem might not be solvable and still not NP-Hard. Discrete logarithm and factorization, for example, are suspected to be neither polynomial time computable nor NP-Hard (on classical models, not quantum).
In general, the idea that we are attracted to NP-Hard problem seems quite unlikely to me. We might be attracted to hard problems, but since humans are unable to run algorithms in their heads, why would we use the notion of computational complexity for this "hardness"? It seems more likely that generating problems in the way we do is likely to produce NP-Hard problems than to say we're interested in them as games...
Insects are old. The oldest ones are about 400 million years, that is about twice as much as the oldest dinosaurs. Some of the families (that still exist) existed well before them and they are obviously the most successful class, at least in the animal kingdom. You can also find examples of giant insects, when oxygen levels were high enough to support them (no blood system, poor oxygen transportation), still before dinosaurs. Ants are much more recent development but even they appeared about 100 million years ago, clearly early enough for dinosaurs to handle.
First, your statistical data is wrong. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics the median age of Jews in Israel is 30.6 years (as of 2005) and it's impossible the average is 10 years higher. The median age for Arabs is 19.8 years, so the average is indeed just a little over 20 (as of 2005, again).
As for the number of births per woman, the number for Israeli Arabs is 3.72, for Israeli Jews 2.69, so the difference is not that great. The prediction is that by 2025 the Arab population will count for about 25% of the population in Israel. If you look further away, you're only guessing, as there are changes due to cultural changes, but there will probably never be an Arab majority in Israel, because you didn't count for demographic changes in the Jewish population. The ultra-orthodox (Haredim) have much higher birth rate than the Arabs, so if you'll just extrapolate based on current birth rates, you'll see they'll become the dominant group by the end of the century, while the Arabs never pass the 40%. However, the birth rate in the Druze population dropped from 3.5 to 2.6 per woman between 1995 and 2005. The birth rate in Arab population is already going down, it used to be around 4.4 in the 90s.
Oh, and all this numbers are about Israeli residents, which include a large group of permanent residents who are not citizens, mostly Arabs from eastern Jerusalem
As for an Arab prime minister, I wouldn't bet on it. You don't know Israeli politics. First you have the fact Jews will continue to be the majority. Second is that voting percentages are higher in Jewish population than in Arab population (although I can't find the numbers at the moment, it should be around 75% for Jews, 60% for Arabs for Israeli citizens living in Israel). Then you should remember that significant part of the Arabs vote to parties led by a Jew.
Regarding the poll, I don't think it means much. Teenagers tend to go for extremes, but when they grow up they, well, grow up. The poll also noted 31% saying they'll disobey an order in military service to serve in the occupied territories and 48% said they'll disobey orders to help in evacuation of settlers (also in the occupied territories, of course). This numbers have nothing to do with what the Israeli army is actually dealing with, with soldiers who are just a few years older (in Israel we have conscription just after high-school, 3 years for men, 2 for women).
In general, given a Palestinian state will exist, Israel might remain a democracy with a strong Jewish majority for many decades. In fact, the only real danger to Israel's existence as a democracy with Jewish majority (what people here call "a Democratic Jewish State") is the inability to separate from the Palestinians, but that's a different matter...
That position sounds so insane, that I thought that there must be more to it than that...
You were right. Those that claim they can't contribute organs due to religious beliefs mean they can't contribute organs before cardiac death, and from what I understand (I'm not a MD) it it usually impossible to use the organs after cardiac death, and they are taken after brain death. What Elyashiv opposes is causing cardiac death to those who suffered brain death, claiming this would be murder. In general, the religious Jewish law is that preservation of life overrides everything (almost everything, see this).
I'm not claiming Elyashiv's point is reasonable, but it is not that unreasonable....
From what I understand, there is some fear from prosecution, or the ACTA won't be relevant, would it? And the many Puritans took significant part in politics in England (you might have heard of Oliver Cromwell, for example), your description is simply wrong. The Puritans left mainly because they didn't like the Anglican Church, and wanted to openly take part in a Puritan Church.
You make a caricature of both the puritans and those you object to today, in different directions, and then say there are no similarities. Maybe if you'll look at things as they are you'll see them.
You do know the States (the north-east, at least) were founded by people escaping Britain for political (mainly religious) prosecution, right? They didn't fight where they couldn't win, they fled instead. So, you can't win if you'll always run, but sometimes you can't win anyway. You have to pick your battles. I don't really know how things are in the US (or Europe) right now, but there is a point at which you just leave to fight another battle.
Just like troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, drone crews have access to chaplains, psychologists and doctors. They are taught to keep an eye on one another for signs of stress.
So I'd say the military thought about this and is trying to handle it. They might not do it well, but they're definitely doing something in this respect, and I would expect they would manage to reduce psychological damage to reasonable levels.
What you suggest doesn't make sense, you say that everyone break the law, so we must only prosecute those that don't hide it.
Even with current handling of illegally obtained evidence, most of the laws you break you actually break in a public way (for example, all tax violations). If the authorities would want to get to you, they have all your tax information, and all the information from other sources regarding your income and expanses, they can find what you did wrong if they'll only put enough work to it. It is also the case with most other laws, there was some evidence which is legal and point to the violation. The problem is sorting through all the information and finding the relevant one, and that's a difficult problem. Now, you'll find it hard to commit almost any crime completely in the privacy of your home, in such a way no outside information will point to it, so if they want to get you, they will.
Remember, illegal evidence isn't the only way to fish for violations, and prosecution is much more deterring than ignoring the illegal evidence.
This is ridiculous, although it is the behavior of any legal system I know of. Obviously evidents that were acquired in some illegal process should still be used, but those FBI officials who "didn't play by the rules" should be tried. I believe that for a policeman to know that violating a citizen's rights will send him to jail is probably more persuading than that what he found in this manner won't be used. In the current method, if you think you can't get the evidence in any other way there is no reason not to get it illegally and hide the illegality.
So, someone (I don't know how the US justice system works very well) should prosecute those responsible, as you do in any other violation of the law.
At least until they'll get to the idea of planting the decryption into the costumer and neural connection.
The reason is simple, at some point the content you're trying to lock has to get to the costumer, that's the whole point. At that point (at the first point it's free, you might say) rip it. They might make it difficult, but you can always replace the actual audio/video generation with recording. There is no way to encrypt the audio/video. Then, if there is any open format that is universally (or almost universally) supported, the content is no longer protected.
The only ways (I can imagine) to protect this content are things like: * neural connection with encryption, when removing the chip from the brain is impossible (obviously far beyond modern technology, not to mention moral issues) * players check online for copyright of content (beyond modern technology, won't work without internet connection, privacy issues) Or similar crazy ideas. It will take many years before they'll get to something of this sort.
All this apply only to non-interactive content, of course, because in interactive content you might encrypt (using hardware encryption) the computation, then it won't leak.
It is true that in 2008 only tens of Israeli civilians died, I have to agree, but this greatly vary from year to year. It mainly depend on the techniques terrorists use and how much do we adapt. In 2001, for example, the numbers will be in the hundreds, so will be the number of Palestinians, by the way. What you just did will be similar to explain the war in Afghanistan while ignoring everything that happened until 2003, 9/11, for example.
Anyway, you miss the point. Terror is not killing civilians, many people kill civilians all the time, terror is intentionally killing civilians (in order to spread terror). Israeli bases are (in most cases, and anyway near the borders) outside civilian settlements, so you can fairly say when civilians were killed it was intentional. Hamas operate from civilian buildings, this includes houses, but also schools, hospitals etc. You might claim that when they do that we can't attack, but that's not the international law, we may attack, provided we take care to harm as few civilians as possible. Now, the critical point is, of course, the acceptable ratio. I would advise checking the numbers, and comparing the ratio here in other places where forces tend to use civilians as cover.
Anyway, when we have more firepower, more people will die on the other side. We do not, for example, shoot missiles randomly into populated areas, as Hamas does (from time to time). We try to hit the terrorists, you might argue that we don't try to avoid civilians enough, but saying we kill them on purpose... I simply can't find the words for that.
Israel never moved the border in the way you describe, rockets were shot at us (I'm an Israeli) over two borders, Lebanon and Gaza. Ask the UN, and they will tell you we retreated long ago (that is, 9 years for Lebanon, 4 for Gaza) to the border, as it was since 1948 (though we do invade from time to time, I don't like when people shoot at me).
In 1948, the Israeli armed forces tried to drive Arabs out of territories they controlled, the Arab forces (armies of neighboring countries) urged them to leave (to make their war easier) and in general there was a war (so, death and destruction all around). Although the actions by Israeli forces were problematic, you should remember two points:
* There was no organized transfer, otherwise places like Jaffa and Haifa would be cleared of Arabs as well.
* Things must be considered in comparison to the norms of those days, as you don't judge your founding fathers for denying other people their rights (slaves). In the forties transfer solutions in an attempt to create countries of a single nation were common and accepted. In Europe you can look at the way Poland and Czechoslovakia treated their German citizens, in Asia you can look at India and Pakistan.
As for the place of the Irgun in Israeli history and politics, I can tell you they held very little influence at the time they acted, and for 25 more years. They reached power long after they stop using terror and became just a political organization.
As for body counts, your argument seem to be flawed, for several reasons:
* You can't (in most cases) tell if a dead Palestinian is a civilian, they don't wear uniforms.
* What about the dead combatants? If the Palestinians kill 10 civilians a month, no soldiers, and we kill 20 civilians among 200 combatants, you'll have us as the terrorists?
* What does your argument say about any NATO member? They all killed more civilians in Afghanistan then they had died in terror attacks... So I guess NATO is a terror organization.
Regarding the UN resolutions, Israel didn't violate that many resolutions of the security council (we did violate some, for example we gather intelligence in Lebanese sky), and the general assembly has no power in the UN, as we know. And although we point from time to time at other countries, I can't think of any one but Lebanon (which has worse record then we have) and Iran (which is probably the country that violated the most).
So no, Israel in not above reproach, nobody is, but it is also not automatically guilty of everything you might think of, and guilt should be proved with actual facts.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the case, if I remember correctly, in "The World Jones Made", that was referenced here (also in the carpet people, but that's not SF). I have to say I'm not a big fan of time travel stories, but I'll take them any day over future-vision (which is very rare). Time travel makes sense because the traveler doesn't know the future, he has only general understanding of things that might happen (depending on the interpretation, maybe he can prevent them from happening). I did watch Paycheck, and it was ridiculous. The point is he knew what everyone will do, in a way that depended on the actions he took because of knowing. The only way to avoid the paradox is to claim you must get a stable solution (he'll do what he knows he'll do and not try to prevent it), and this throws the world into a paradox. What happen if two people use the machine? The whole idea fails...
unlike predicting it.
The reason is it interferes with our illusion of free will. If you see the future, you see what you'll do, there's no way around it. Dick was well aware of it, and wrote this in fact, but that's not a solution. I'm not sure how Herbert handled this, but I've never seen anyone handling it properly, its to alien. Terry Pratchett went as far as possible in pointing it out in the carpet people, but it still doesn't work. You just can't relate to a character that knows it has no free will, I think.
If you're a geek, you know him as a founding member of Monty Python (Patsy in The Holy Grail or Cardinal "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition" Fang).
More importantly, he was the animator, throughout the Flying Circus. At first he was only the animator, and only later started acting minor roles. He was also less involved in writing sketches than the rest (doing mainly the cartoons). Started directing there as well, as director of the holy grail (he was in charge of photography, Terry Jones in charge of acting, mainly).
First thing, though: the probability it's known is 100%. After all, you know about it, right? What makes you think you're so unique, so special, so much more brilliant than any other person in the world that you're the only one who's noticed it and figured it out? Nothing. In fact, given the number of people in the world it's a virtual certainty that someone smarter than you found this vulnerability before you.
I have to disagree, the number of people in the world is irrelevant in its own. I haven't found the exploit, but one might assume he is more likely to find one because he devote more time to it, have better access, better understanding, more training or many other reasons. In fact it's not unreasonable that the expert checking his company's software has some advantage over any other person (for each, exists, in this order). Furthermore, one might even consider the motivation to exploit, since the damage to you might not be helping the attacker. The other point I tried to make is that all products are defective to some extent. The fact another system is not known to be vulnerable might be just because you only test your system.
There are, I understand, systems that are required by law to be secured (health data, for example). Since no system is secure, they should all be closed, right?
If the exploit is secret and maybe the bad guys know about it and maybe they don't, the only safe course is to assume they do know about it and act accordingly.
This is a false dichotomy. There is no "safe" and "unsafe" systems, there are only more or less safe systems. So it depends on the cost of handling the exploit. I could extend your metaphor by pointing to the fact a locked door won't give you complete protection. Do you go on vacation without installing an alarm? Barring the windows? Hiring a security company? The list of possible measures is endless, if you're willing to get extreme enough, and for each one you could use the same argument, so something is wrong. If the exploit is secret you estimate the probability it's known and the cost to fix it and decide according to both of these. It is reasonable the outcome will different for vendor/client (the vendor should fix, the client shouldn't), since the vendor has a lot more systems with the exploit...
A lot faster, in this context, is more powerful. The reason being it's not faster by a constant (as a modern computer is faster than a not-so modern one), but in a more complicated way. The point is, we're talking about complexity, not computability, so "possible" means "possible in an efficient way". The notion of efficiency we use is poly-time, is there a polynomial p(n), such that the algorithm will always stop after p(|x|) steps on input x. A problem is NP if it can be solved in poly-time by a non-deterministic turing machine, which we might describe as a machine that tosses coins in a weird way. If the coins might get you to a positive result, they will get you there, if not they won't. For example, you can check if there is a Travelling Salesman short path by choosing a random path and checking it, in a non-deterministic machine you'll get a short one if it exist. You can describe it a "the computation goes through all possible paths, giving the OR of the results". P=NP means for any such problem you can solve it with a real machine (deterministic machine), and it seems unlikely. However, quantum computers, which we don't have and don't really know if they are feasible, seem like something in between. Loosely speaking, you get some sort of parallelism this way, but not the powerful non-deterministic sort. There are some problems, integer factorization and discrete logarithm for example, that have an efficient quantum algorithms but we don't know of any efficient classical algorithm.
By the way, I wrote BQP > BPP > P. This means:
BQP - bounded error quantum polynomial time, quantum poly-time algorithms with randomness that are significantly more probable to give the right answer than a wrong one.
BPP - bounded error probabilistic polynomial time, classical poly-time algorithms with randomness that are significantly more probable to give the right answer than a wrong one.
P - polynomial time, classical poly-time algorithms, no randomness.
It is believed each one is strictly bigger than the next, and we rely on this. IT is well known that factorization and D-log are in BQP. And most of the existing cryptographic protocols (authentication, encryption, etc.) rely on the hardness of these problems. We can solve problems in BPP, so if those are in BPP those cryptographic protocols are insecure, we hope this is not the case...
You're right, I wasn't accurate. I meant the problems we're discussing, which are always NP, but didn't state it. In all games for a single player the requirements for a solution are local, so it is necessarily in NP, it can be verified in linear time (go over all of its parts, verify each based on local environment of fixed size, so you do it in fixed time). I should have said it. Of course, games that aren't NP does not make sense, how will you know that the solution you found is a good one? The ability to do so is the definition of NP.
You're missing both of my point.
A) a quantum machine can (presumably, of course) do more than a probabilistic turing machine, which in turn can do more (again, presumably) than a deterministic turing machine. That is, BQP > BPP > P, or so we believe. So it is possible that a quantum computer can solve NP-Hard problems in polynomial time and still P!=NP, as weird as it might sound. The point in this context is that simulating quantum behavior in a classical machine takes exponential memory (if I remember correctly, exponential time, in any case).
B) The fact that an efficient algorithm exist doesn't make the problem easy in human terms. In fact, most of the games we talk about, in the standard sizes, can be solved easily by naive algorithms on modern computers (and not so modern computer), but they are still hard for humans, despite the fact that the human brain is much bigger/faster/efficient in many operation (vision, for example). The reason is the brain is not designed to learn general algorithms, but for specific uses. Therefore, even if we're interested in hard games the hardness we seek for isn't computational complexity but difference from the structure of the brain, the hardness is in using the brain in different ways. If this wasn't the case, we could process natural languages all day, looking for local ambiguities and deciding them based on global structure, but most people do not enjoy this stuff...
The point, of course, is that we believe that many problems are hard but not NP-Hard (I gave two examples, there are others). In fact, most of our cryptography (maybe all, but I'm not sure) is based on hardness of presumably non NP-Hard problems (but NP, of course). You can play the RSA-breaking game, it's not NP-Hard but it is hard... (as far as we know, of course)
Well, your argument assumes something about equivalence of computational models (or, actually, to which model the brain is equivalent). It is believed that quantum computability > probabilistic computability > deterministic computability (I mean efficient computability in all models, of course), to which one is the brain equivalent?
Furthermore, the brain is not designed to run algorithms, it's not a universal turing machine. The vast majority of humans are unable to grasp the idea of algorithm, and running one properly in your head for non-trivial amount of data is, well, non-trivial. If you disagree I suggest doing some code reviews, it should convince you. So, I don't think there's any connection between the notion of computational complexity and what's hard for humans, but we might learn some things about the way we devise problems, maybe about some sort of "typical hardness" when sampled by human design.
Since I had to suffer through at least one professor who didn't understand basic complexity theory last night, and I know that Slashdot generally screws it up to.
NP-Hard means that there's no (deterministic) polynomial-time algorithm to solve the games
Sadly, you seem not to understand the term yourself. NP-Hard means that given an efficient (deterministic polynomial-time) algorithm to this problem, one can devise an efficient algorithm for any NP problem, so any problem for which solutions can be verified. It might not mean that they aren't solvable (they are solvable efficiently iff P=NP), and a problem might not be solvable and still not NP-Hard. Discrete logarithm and factorization, for example, are suspected to be neither polynomial time computable nor NP-Hard (on classical models, not quantum).
In general, the idea that we are attracted to NP-Hard problem seems quite unlikely to me. We might be attracted to hard problems, but since humans are unable to run algorithms in their heads, why would we use the notion of computational complexity for this "hardness"? It seems more likely that generating problems in the way we do is likely to produce NP-Hard problems than to say we're interested in them as games...
Insects are old. The oldest ones are about 400 million years, that is about twice as much as the oldest dinosaurs. Some of the families (that still exist) existed well before them and they are obviously the most successful class, at least in the animal kingdom. You can also find examples of giant insects, when oxygen levels were high enough to support them (no blood system, poor oxygen transportation), still before dinosaurs. Ants are much more recent development but even they appeared about 100 million years ago, clearly early enough for dinosaurs to handle.
First, your statistical data is wrong. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics the median age of Jews in Israel is 30.6 years (as of 2005) and it's impossible the average is 10 years higher. The median age for Arabs is 19.8 years, so the average is indeed just a little over 20 (as of 2005, again).
As for the number of births per woman, the number for Israeli Arabs is 3.72, for Israeli Jews 2.69, so the difference is not that great. The prediction is that by 2025 the Arab population will count for about 25% of the population in Israel. If you look further away, you're only guessing, as there are changes due to cultural changes, but there will probably never be an Arab majority in Israel, because you didn't count for demographic changes in the Jewish population. The ultra-orthodox (Haredim) have much higher birth rate than the Arabs, so if you'll just extrapolate based on current birth rates, you'll see they'll become the dominant group by the end of the century, while the Arabs never pass the 40%. However, the birth rate in the Druze population dropped from 3.5 to 2.6 per woman between 1995 and 2005. The birth rate in Arab population is already going down, it used to be around 4.4 in the 90s.
Oh, and all this numbers are about Israeli residents, which include a large group of permanent residents who are not citizens, mostly Arabs from eastern Jerusalem
As for an Arab prime minister, I wouldn't bet on it. You don't know Israeli politics. First you have the fact Jews will continue to be the majority. Second is that voting percentages are higher in Jewish population than in Arab population (although I can't find the numbers at the moment, it should be around 75% for Jews, 60% for Arabs for Israeli citizens living in Israel). Then you should remember that significant part of the Arabs vote to parties led by a Jew.
Regarding the poll, I don't think it means much. Teenagers tend to go for extremes, but when they grow up they, well, grow up. The poll also noted 31% saying they'll disobey an order in military service to serve in the occupied territories and 48% said they'll disobey orders to help in evacuation of settlers (also in the occupied territories, of course). This numbers have nothing to do with what the Israeli army is actually dealing with, with soldiers who are just a few years older (in Israel we have conscription just after high-school, 3 years for men, 2 for women).
In general, given a Palestinian state will exist, Israel might remain a democracy with a strong Jewish majority for many decades. In fact, the only real danger to Israel's existence as a democracy with Jewish majority (what people here call "a Democratic Jewish State") is the inability to separate from the Palestinians, but that's a different matter...
That position sounds so insane, that I thought that there must be more to it than that...
You were right. Those that claim they can't contribute organs due to religious beliefs mean they can't contribute organs before cardiac death, and from what I understand (I'm not a MD) it it usually impossible to use the organs after cardiac death, and they are taken after brain death. What Elyashiv opposes is causing cardiac death to those who suffered brain death, claiming this would be murder. In general, the religious Jewish law is that preservation of life overrides everything (almost everything, see this). I'm not claiming Elyashiv's point is reasonable, but it is not that unreasonable....
And this idea explains Indian elephants? Not to mention many other large herbivores that still exist...
From what I understand, there is some fear from prosecution, or the ACTA won't be relevant, would it? And the many Puritans took significant part in politics in England (you might have heard of Oliver Cromwell, for example), your description is simply wrong. The Puritans left mainly because they didn't like the Anglican Church, and wanted to openly take part in a Puritan Church. You make a caricature of both the puritans and those you object to today, in different directions, and then say there are no similarities. Maybe if you'll look at things as they are you'll see them.
You do know the States (the north-east, at least) were founded by people escaping Britain for political (mainly religious) prosecution, right? They didn't fight where they couldn't win, they fled instead. So, you can't win if you'll always run, but sometimes you can't win anyway. You have to pick your battles. I don't really know how things are in the US (or Europe) right now, but there is a point at which you just leave to fight another battle.
No we won't, I don't think we'll see many swimming world records falling in the foreseeable future, not when we're back with normal swimsuits.
From TFA:
Just like troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, drone crews have access to chaplains, psychologists and doctors. They are taught to keep an eye on one another for signs of stress.
So I'd say the military thought about this and is trying to handle it. They might not do it well, but they're definitely doing something in this respect, and I would expect they would manage to reduce psychological damage to reasonable levels.
“There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it
everywhere.” --Isaac Asimov
They can do scientific work wherever they want, and anything is published anyway, how come they are spies?
What you suggest doesn't make sense, you say that everyone break the law, so we must only prosecute those that don't hide it.
Even with current handling of illegally obtained evidence, most of the laws you break you actually break in a public way (for example, all tax violations). If the authorities would want to get to you, they have all your tax information, and all the information from other sources regarding your income and expanses, they can find what you did wrong if they'll only put enough work to it. It is also the case with most other laws, there was some evidence which is legal and point to the violation. The problem is sorting through all the information and finding the relevant one, and that's a difficult problem. Now, you'll find it hard to commit almost any crime completely in the privacy of your home, in such a way no outside information will point to it, so if they want to get you, they will.
Remember, illegal evidence isn't the only way to fish for violations, and prosecution is much more deterring than ignoring the illegal evidence.
This is ridiculous, although it is the behavior of any legal system I know of. Obviously evidents that were acquired in some illegal process should still be used, but those FBI officials who "didn't play by the rules" should be tried. I believe that for a policeman to know that violating a citizen's rights will send him to jail is probably more persuading than that what he found in this manner won't be used. In the current method, if you think you can't get the evidence in any other way there is no reason not to get it illegally and hide the illegality.
So, someone (I don't know how the US justice system works very well) should prosecute those responsible, as you do in any other violation of the law.
At least until they'll get to the idea of planting the decryption into the costumer and neural connection.
The reason is simple, at some point the content you're trying to lock has to get to the costumer, that's the whole point. At that point (at the first point it's free, you might say) rip it. They might make it difficult, but you can always replace the actual audio/video generation with recording. There is no way to encrypt the audio/video. Then, if there is any open format that is universally (or almost universally) supported, the content is no longer protected.
The only ways (I can imagine) to protect this content are things like:
* neural connection with encryption, when removing the chip from the brain is impossible (obviously far beyond modern technology, not to mention moral issues)
* players check online for copyright of content (beyond modern technology, won't work without internet connection, privacy issues)
Or similar crazy ideas. It will take many years before they'll get to something of this sort.
All this apply only to non-interactive content, of course, because in interactive content you might encrypt (using hardware encryption) the computation, then it won't leak.
It is true that in 2008 only tens of Israeli civilians died, I have to agree, but this greatly vary from year to year. It mainly depend on the techniques terrorists use and how much do we adapt. In 2001, for example, the numbers will be in the hundreds, so will be the number of Palestinians, by the way. What you just did will be similar to explain the war in Afghanistan while ignoring everything that happened until 2003, 9/11, for example.
Anyway, you miss the point. Terror is not killing civilians, many people kill civilians all the time, terror is intentionally killing civilians (in order to spread terror). Israeli bases are (in most cases, and anyway near the borders) outside civilian settlements, so you can fairly say when civilians were killed it was intentional. Hamas operate from civilian buildings, this includes houses, but also schools, hospitals etc. You might claim that when they do that we can't attack, but that's not the international law, we may attack, provided we take care to harm as few civilians as possible. Now, the critical point is, of course, the acceptable ratio. I would advise checking the numbers, and comparing the ratio here in other places where forces tend to use civilians as cover.
Anyway, when we have more firepower, more people will die on the other side. We do not, for example, shoot missiles randomly into populated areas, as Hamas does (from time to time). We try to hit the terrorists, you might argue that we don't try to avoid civilians enough, but saying we kill them on purpose... I simply can't find the words for that.
You should get your facts right.
Israel never moved the border in the way you describe, rockets were shot at us (I'm an Israeli) over two borders, Lebanon and Gaza. Ask the UN, and they will tell you we retreated long ago (that is, 9 years for Lebanon, 4 for Gaza) to the border, as it was since 1948 (though we do invade from time to time, I don't like when people shoot at me).
In 1948, the Israeli armed forces tried to drive Arabs out of territories they controlled, the Arab forces (armies of neighboring countries) urged them to leave (to make their war easier) and in general there was a war (so, death and destruction all around). Although the actions by Israeli forces were problematic, you should remember two points:
* There was no organized transfer, otherwise places like Jaffa and Haifa would be cleared of Arabs as well.
* Things must be considered in comparison to the norms of those days, as you don't judge your founding fathers for denying other people their rights (slaves). In the forties transfer solutions in an attempt to create countries of a single nation were common and accepted. In Europe you can look at the way Poland and Czechoslovakia treated their German citizens, in Asia you can look at India and Pakistan.
As for the place of the Irgun in Israeli history and politics, I can tell you they held very little influence at the time they acted, and for 25 more years. They reached power long after they stop using terror and became just a political organization.
As for body counts, your argument seem to be flawed, for several reasons:
* You can't (in most cases) tell if a dead Palestinian is a civilian, they don't wear uniforms.
* What about the dead combatants? If the Palestinians kill 10 civilians a month, no soldiers, and we kill 20 civilians among 200 combatants, you'll have us as the terrorists?
* What does your argument say about any NATO member? They all killed more civilians in Afghanistan then they had died in terror attacks... So I guess NATO is a terror organization.
Regarding the UN resolutions, Israel didn't violate that many resolutions of the security council (we did violate some, for example we gather intelligence in Lebanese sky), and the general assembly has no power in the UN, as we know. And although we point from time to time at other countries, I can't think of any one but Lebanon (which has worse record then we have) and Iran (which is probably the country that violated the most).
So no, Israel in not above reproach, nobody is, but it is also not automatically guilty of everything you might think of, and guilt should be proved with actual facts.