Right now, I'd tend to say a house fly is many orders of magnitude more "inteligent" (whatever that means) than the most powerful of machines - in a package weighing less than a gram that is self-sustaining, flying, with superior evading capabilities.
I'm not even sure you could. making even a simple object such as a needle or surgical tool sterile is a complex matter. Doing this on a WHOLE PLANET would not be a simple feat !
Life is insidious. Once it gets there, it seems quite complicated to extirpate it. That's because biological matter is not static..
It *EVOLVES* - and that's why it's so resilient !
Bathe earth in a 300F environment for a few years. I have no doubt that a couple billion years later, earth would again be teaming with life - all you would need is a few procaryotes to have survived under a few thousand feets of rocks.
The problem with life is not how to sustain it - it's how to get it there in the 1st place.
Earth *WILL* remain habitable (maybe not by us though) probably for at least the next 1B years. Earth has sustained numerous catastrophic life annihilating events (major meteor strikes, giants volcanoes, etc..) and *YET* life remained. I very much doubt the amounts of CO2 we release or how much we curtail biodiversity (it will recover once we are gone) will be more threatening than a global instantaneous event.
Look at how hard we try to eradicate some basic forms of life (and some say they aren't even "alive") like viruses - and fail miserably.
Life is *WAY* more resilient that you might think. However, the human race might not be (although I just read some recent study showing that the Homo family was reduced to ~18.000 individual some 1.2 M years ago and yet did manage to survive..)
Well.. Actually, for the last 30 days or so, the only issues have been SVN24 (PRN24) and SVN57 (PRN29).. No issues with SVN/PRN 25 !
Note that every sat has to be taken down once in a while for diagnostics & such (it is mandated by NAVSTAR).
We've been running on a 32 SVNs schedule since March 23rd.. (that's how much will fit in planes A-F anyway - and how much the GPS system handles).. So GPS has been at max capacity for 10 month !
But it doesn't really matter how many sats you have - as long as your DOP (Dillution Of Precision) is satisfactory for your application.
SA made GPS accurate to 10m.. With the "SA" feature disabled, you're down to 2m... And with Satelite enhancements, it's more like 20cm !
But that's irrelevant.. Because SA was intended to disable any enemy force from using GPS for accurate positioning - until they realized D-GPS (Differential GPS) made the whole point moot (you take a reference point - you send the signal to the receiver - And therefore - the receiver can deduce the SA introduced clock error - because now you have a ref point.. And believe it or not - it is a United Stated Uniform service - the US Coast Gard - that came up with it to overcome the artificially introduced uncertainty).
However, the military still keep exclusive use of the 1Mhz band (with the 10Mhz being public) - for the only purpose of being able to make real time measurements on tropospheric distortions - so - what happens - is that the military can make 1m accurate reading WITHOUT sat aids.
- Retrieve a crab/lobstrer pot ? - Retrieve a Man Overboard ? - Fetch a gill net ? - Meet with a sister ship during a seine net operation ?... No.. lemme tell you.. 200m is NOT good enough !
(No personal experience here - but my Old Man did !)
It's not really FUD - although it's definitely a marketing ploy !
The only architectural difference between an IFL (Integrated Facility for Linux) and a CP (that's how a CPU that can also run z/OS is called) is how it behaves when the SERVC instruction (0xb220) is issued with the subcode to indicate it wants to determine the hardware configuration (0x00020001))
On an IFL, issuing this specific instruction with this specific parameter will halt the system (more specifically, the system will enter a 'System Check Stop' state).
Of course, in linux you can access the same information. So there is a new code to the instruction that allows it to retrieve the *exact* same information without trashing the system - which works only on the IFLs (0x00120001) - but won't trash a CP (SERVC will simply return the usual code you get when you send an unimplemented servc code in that case).
So the only difference between an IFL and a CP is how it handles that specific instruction - and its ONLY a marketing issue.
(see drivers/s390/char/sclp_cmd.c - look for SCLP_CMDW_READ_SCP_INFO and arch/s390/kernel/sclp.S in the linux source !)
A 2048 bit key usually denotes an Asymetric encryption (like RSA or DSA). AFAIK, there are no 2048 symetric encryptions in use today (the largest I know is 256 bits like AES-256).
So, you *REALLY* aren't using a 2048 bit password. Your password is most likely a hash to a key used to perform a symetric encryption of the private part of a RSA or DSA key.
What happens when you use asymetric encryptions, is that your system generates a random key. That key is then used to encrypt your data. That key is then encrypted with the public key of your RSA/DSA key. The encrypted key is then included to the encrypted contents. The private key is protected by another symetric encryption (may be different from the one used to encrypt that data itself) - and THAT is your password since it allows you to recover the encryption key used to encode your data. You need both the Public/Private key pair and the password used to encrypt the private key part in order to recover the original data.
Whether the 4th amendment applies or not is irrelevant. The 4th amendment just states that legislative power (The Congress) cannot pass into law any legislation that would allow unreasonable searches. However, in the case of airport searches, the mandate of the TSA is to prevent individuals from boarding aircrafts with potentially dangerous items/material.
So far so good. The TSA has some tools to detect any potential threat and/or will exercise their judgement to do just that. If they trigger a positive, they may possibly search you since the search is no longer "unreasonable".
The question is : what do they do if, while exercising their mandate, they find something that's illegal to possess (or any solid indication that you are carrying out illegal activities) ?
First of all, in *this* particular case, they most probably went beyond their mandate and should be charged with illegal detention. Not only was the principal not posing any threat to the aircraft, but he wasn't even doing anything illegal, *UNLESS* of course if the undisclosed recommendation to the TSA was indicating that carrying more than a certain amount of money was to be considered as an indication of a possible misdeed.
The question that arises now is : what happens if they figure out something illegal is taking place while not being a specific immediate danger to the well being of the aircraft and its passengers ? If TSA personel *does* have judiciary police power, then they may very well detain you on the ground that you have been caught red handed performing some illegal activity. If TSA personnel does NOT have judiciary power, they may simply relay to the proper jurisdiction the fact and let you go (just to have you caught on the other side of the door by - say - some DEA agents, airport police, the county Sheriff Department, or the FBI of you are committing a Federal Offense !). They may *actually* have to report the offense lest they be charged with accessory to the offense !
The article is about the fact that those advanced life supporting technological implements are possibly inherently unsafe if they both allow remote manipulation *and* are not properly authenticated. There is no discussion about any motive at this point.
The other subject (wiretaps) is highly more controversial because current governmental wire-taping policies in the U.S. are not necessarily backed by the judicial system but are basically carried out by executive orders - and some believe this is contrary to the wording of the 4th amendment of the U.S. constitution (protecting against unwarranted searches) and thus legitimizes some form of civil disobedience - hence the sympathy for those developing the means to do just that.
This leads to fears by some that our current society is leaning towards an Orwellian 'Big Brother' like world - where wire-tapping is not performed to incriminate specifically targeted individuals on the ground of a judicial inquiry, but rather as a random sampling method.
Makes sense.. Guess I didn't read TFA up to the end !
But anyway, I am not 100% sure (but I am no aerodynamics physicist) of how efficient this would be *overall* as far as fuel consumption is concerned.
However, the undeniable advantage is being able to zap through traffic (because the road lane would have to be committed to this) - and possibly going above posted speed limits "legally" But because one of the characteristics are that all vehicles are essentially tailgating each others, at high speed and with no driver intervention, there are also some concerns:
- All vehicles would need to be at a certain guaranteed reliability limit - The communication system has to be secure as you don't want some moron entering a "train" and feeding bogus information to the cluster - The communication system has to be reliable enough so that none of the train components miss some essential piece of information - The lane has to be protected against unauthorized intrusion - Possibly others..
Since when does ICANN run the WWW ? (and what the heck is "The WWW" ? - No The internet is not *only* about HTML transiting over HTTP thank you..)
But this put aside, I don't think it is the role of the ITU to govern over anything like HTTP, HTML, the Domain Name System (which is only governed by ICANN up to the point where you pick their root servers as a hint).
ITU is about telecommunication. It describes how information gets from point A to point B - and NOT the actual payload.. For example, the ITU does lay out the groundwork so that someone in some part of the world can make a call to someone else in another part of the world, but they do NOT specify what language you then use on the phone, what a standard greeting message is and the protocol used when talking with one another over the phone line.. Same for the IPU.. They ensure postal service is carried within their jurisdiction (which is something like 95% countries) - but certainly does not state how you should write a letter !
And how in the world are you going to recharge your laptop if you don't have an adapter ?
Btw.. power socket adapters cost like.99€ a piece (just don't buy them at the airport where they'll probably charge you 20€ for a crappy universal travel adapter).
If you're planning on traveling aboard, I suggest you look a bit ahead and buy a handful of those before you leave. And you don't have top throw them away.. you can use them the next time you go back.. 5€ investment for a lifetime of travel!
A "theory" is an attempt at giving a rational explanation of an observable.
For example, Newton's universal gravitation "theory" gave an explanation for what could be observed. It was relying (upon other things) on the hypothesis that space was universally cartesian.
A couple centuries later, some other guy proposed another "theory" - General Relativity - that explained the same effects using a different hypothesis - that the structure of space itself is altered by the presence of a mass.
What I am saying is that "theory" is indeed an attempt at explaining what one can observe. The hypothesis is something you assume to be true. An hypothesis may or may not be verified - and the theory makes assumptions - that the proposed hypothesis are true.
Note that "theory" is not the same a "theorem" and "hypothesis" is not the same as "conjecture". Hypothesis is closer to an axiom.
As a last example, the GUT (Grand Unified Theory) requires the existence of a specific particle : the Higgs boson to account for mass. The theory is there, the hypothesis is that the particle exists. So even though it is a theory it *still* needs to be validated (hence the LHC) by validating the hypothesis.
Slashdot Mirror
Right now, I'd tend to say a house fly is many orders of magnitude more "inteligent" (whatever that means) than the most powerful of machines - in a package weighing less than a gram that is self-sustaining, flying, with superior evading capabilities.
We're not even close.. not even..
I'm not even sure you could. making even a simple object such as a needle or surgical tool sterile is a complex matter. Doing this on a WHOLE PLANET would not be a simple feat !
Life is insidious. Once it gets there, it seems quite complicated to extirpate it. That's because biological matter is not static..
It *EVOLVES* - and that's why it's so resilient !
Bathe earth in a 300F environment for a few years. I have no doubt that a couple billion years later, earth would again be teaming with life - all you would need is a few procaryotes to have survived under a few thousand feets of rocks.
The problem with life is not how to sustain it - it's how to get it there in the 1st place.
--Ivan
Earth *WILL* remain habitable (maybe not by us though) probably for at least the next 1B years. Earth has sustained numerous catastrophic life annihilating events (major meteor strikes, giants volcanoes, etc..) and *YET* life remained. I very much doubt the amounts of CO2 we release or how much we curtail biodiversity (it will recover once we are gone) will be more threatening than a global instantaneous event.
Look at how hard we try to eradicate some basic forms of life (and some say they aren't even "alive") like viruses - and fail miserably.
Life is *WAY* more resilient that you might think. However, the human race might not be (although I just read some recent study showing that the Homo family was reduced to ~18.000 individual some 1.2 M years ago and yet did manage to survive..)
--Ivan
Well.. Actually, for the last 30 days or so, the only issues have been SVN24 (PRN24) and SVN57 (PRN29).. No issues with SVN/PRN 25 !
Note that every sat has to be taken down once in a while for diagnostics & such (it is mandated by NAVSTAR).
We've been running on a 32 SVNs schedule since March 23rd.. (that's how much will fit in planes A-F anyway - and how much the GPS system handles).. So GPS has been at max capacity for 10 month !
But it doesn't really matter how many sats you have - as long as your DOP (Dillution Of Precision) is satisfactory for your application.
--Ivan
[[citation needed]] - GPS sats are failing
SA made GPS accurate to 10m.. With the "SA" feature disabled, you're down to 2m... And with Satelite enhancements, it's more like 20cm !
But that's irrelevant.. Because SA was intended to disable any enemy force from using GPS for accurate positioning - until they realized D-GPS (Differential GPS) made the whole point moot (you take a reference point - you send the signal to the receiver - And therefore - the receiver can deduce the SA introduced clock error - because now you have a ref point .. And believe it or not - it is a United Stated Uniform service - the US Coast Gard - that came up with it to overcome the artificially introduced uncertainty).
However, the military still keep exclusive use of the 1Mhz band (with the 10Mhz being public) - for the only purpose of being able to make real time measurements on tropospheric distortions - so - what happens - is that the military can make 1m accurate reading WITHOUT sat aids.
Humph...
AFAIK, Loran-C was only for coastal operations.. Who would operate a 600ft ship in coastal waters ?
--Ivan
Well.. Guess Loran isn't object Oriented.. Functional is all that's needed for Loran.. (Latitude.. Longigute.. That's all you need to know really)..
And yes - it's just a troll troll..
(Although a professional wouldn't really care about that !)
200m is good for what ?
- Retrieve a crab/lobstrer pot ? ... No.. lemme tell you.. 200m is NOT good enough !
- Retrieve a Man Overboard ?
- Fetch a gill net ?
- Meet with a sister ship during a seine net operation ?
(No personal experience here - but my Old Man did !)
--Ivan
Ok.. Care to explain how you came to the conclusion it was 11 and not 10 types of people ?
--Ivan
Where are my mod points ?
+1 Funny ! (or is it +1 insightful ?)
It's not really FUD - although it's definitely a marketing ploy !
The only architectural difference between an IFL (Integrated Facility for Linux) and a CP (that's how a CPU that can also run z/OS is called) is how it behaves when the SERVC instruction (0xb220) is issued with the subcode to indicate it wants to determine the hardware configuration (0x00020001))
On an IFL, issuing this specific instruction with this specific parameter will halt the system (more specifically, the system will enter a 'System Check Stop' state).
Of course, in linux you can access the same information. So there is a new code to the instruction that allows it to retrieve the *exact* same information without trashing the system - which works only on the IFLs (0x00120001) - but won't trash a CP (SERVC will simply return the usual code you get when you send an unimplemented servc code in that case).
So the only difference between an IFL and a CP is how it handles that specific instruction - and its ONLY a marketing issue.
(see drivers/s390/char/sclp_cmd.c - look for SCLP_CMDW_READ_SCP_INFO and arch/s390/kernel/sclp.S in the linux source !)
--Ivan
A 2048 bit key usually denotes an Asymetric encryption (like RSA or DSA). AFAIK, there are no 2048 symetric encryptions in use today (the largest I know is 256 bits like AES-256).
So, you *REALLY* aren't using a 2048 bit password. Your password is most likely a hash to a key used to perform a symetric encryption of the private part of a RSA or DSA key.
What happens when you use asymetric encryptions, is that your system generates a random key. That key is then used to encrypt your data. That key is then encrypted with the public key of your RSA/DSA key. The encrypted key is then included to the encrypted contents. The private key is protected by another symetric encryption (may be different from the one used to encrypt that data itself) - and THAT is your password since it allows you to recover the encryption key used to encode your data. You need both the Public/Private key pair and the password used to encrypt the private key part in order to recover the original data.
--Ivan
Not so sure !
Whether the 4th amendment applies or not is irrelevant. The 4th amendment just states that legislative power (The Congress) cannot pass into law any legislation that would allow unreasonable searches. However, in the case of airport searches, the mandate of the TSA is to prevent individuals from boarding aircrafts with potentially dangerous items/material.
So far so good. The TSA has some tools to detect any potential threat and/or will exercise their judgement to do just that. If they trigger a positive, they may possibly search you since the search is no longer "unreasonable".
The question is : what do they do if, while exercising their mandate, they find something that's illegal to possess (or any solid indication that you are carrying out illegal activities) ?
First of all, in *this* particular case, they most probably went beyond their mandate and should be charged with illegal detention. Not only was the principal not posing any threat to the aircraft, but he wasn't even doing anything illegal, *UNLESS* of course if the undisclosed recommendation to the TSA was indicating that carrying more than a certain amount of money was to be considered as an indication of a possible misdeed.
The question that arises now is : what happens if they figure out something illegal is taking place while not being a specific immediate danger to the well being of the aircraft and its passengers ? If TSA personel *does* have judiciary police power, then they may very well detain you on the ground that you have been caught red handed performing some illegal activity. If TSA personnel does NOT have judiciary power, they may simply relay to the proper jurisdiction the fact and let you go (just to have you caught on the other side of the door by - say - some DEA agents, airport police, the county Sheriff Department, or the FBI of you are committing a Federal Offense !). They may *actually* have to report the offense lest they be charged with accessory to the offense !
--Ivan
What is the point of running a Commodore C64 Basic application on a DAMN PHONE ?
--Ivan
I am afraid I have to disagree with you.
The article is about the fact that those advanced life supporting technological implements are possibly inherently unsafe if they both allow remote manipulation *and* are not properly authenticated. There is no discussion about any motive at this point.
The other subject (wiretaps) is highly more controversial because current governmental wire-taping policies in the U.S. are not necessarily backed by the judicial system but are basically carried out by executive orders - and some believe this is contrary to the wording of the 4th amendment of the U.S. constitution (protecting against unwarranted searches) and thus legitimizes some form of civil disobedience - hence the sympathy for those developing the means to do just that.
This leads to fears by some that our current society is leaning towards an Orwellian 'Big Brother' like world - where wire-tapping is not performed to incriminate specifically targeted individuals on the ground of a judicial inquiry, but rather as a random sampling method.
Then again...
--Ivan
Ok.. Made a fool of myself..
There seem to be overwhelming evidence that I was utterly wrong.. Ah well..
Since I can't mod myself -1 stupid, I'll just flog myself 10 times !
--Ivan
Makes sense.. Guess I didn't read TFA up to the end !
But anyway, I am not 100% sure (but I am no aerodynamics physicist) of how efficient this would be *overall* as far as fuel consumption is concerned.
However, the undeniable advantage is being able to zap through traffic (because the road lane would have to be committed to this) - and possibly going above posted speed limits "legally"
But because one of the characteristics are that all vehicles are essentially tailgating each others, at high speed and with no driver intervention, there are also some concerns:
- All vehicles would need to be at a certain guaranteed reliability limit
- The communication system has to be secure as you don't want some moron entering a "train" and feeding bogus information to the cluster
- The communication system has to be reliable enough so that none of the train components miss some essential piece of information
- The lane has to be protected against unauthorized intrusion
- Possibly others..
--Ivan
Ah ah !
20% less fuel for the vehicles following the main vehicle..
(they forget to mention the *EXTRA* fuel expense for the leading vehicle that is basically towing the others..)
Basically, no one will ever want to be in front (look at cycle races.. it only works if people take turns at being the 1st in line..)
--Ivan
Crisping Kim Jong-Il.. I could live with that..
Crisping the NK population.. Not so sure..
--Ivan
Does that mean that the U.S. provided *Syria* with sensitive military hardware (ok.. with built-in kill switches) ?
If they didn't then it's not a kill switch and the U.S. simply provided their Israeli allies with electronic warfare technologies.
It was my understanding that syrian military hardware was russian based anyway..
So I'm not sure I understand the whole thing..
--Ivan
Cough cough !!!
Since when does ICANN run the WWW ? (and what the heck is "The WWW" ? - No The internet is not *only* about HTML transiting over HTTP thank you..)
But this put aside, I don't think it is the role of the ITU to govern over anything like HTTP, HTML, the Domain Name System (which is only governed by ICANN up to the point where you pick their root servers as a hint).
ITU is about telecommunication. It describes how information gets from point A to point B - and NOT the actual payload.. For example, the ITU does lay out the groundwork so that someone in some part of the world can make a call to someone else in another part of the world, but they do NOT specify what language you then use on the phone, what a standard greeting message is and the protocol used when talking with one another over the phone line.. Same for the IPU.. They ensure postal service is carried within their jurisdiction (which is something like 95% countries) - but certainly does not state how you should write a letter !
--Ivan
Uh ?
And how in the world are you going to recharge your laptop if you don't have an adapter ?
Btw.. power socket adapters cost like .99€ a piece (just don't buy them at the airport where they'll probably charge you 20€ for a crappy universal travel adapter).
If you're planning on traveling aboard, I suggest you look a bit ahead and buy a handful of those before you leave. And you don't have top throw them away.. you can use them the next time you go back.. 5€ investment for a lifetime of travel!
--Ivan
bad mod cancelation
I'm afraid I must (respectfully) disagree..
A "theory" is an attempt at giving a rational explanation of an observable.
For example, Newton's universal gravitation "theory" gave an explanation for what could be observed. It was relying (upon other things) on the hypothesis that space was universally cartesian.
A couple centuries later, some other guy proposed another "theory" - General Relativity - that explained the same effects using a different hypothesis - that the structure of space itself is altered by the presence of a mass.
What I am saying is that "theory" is indeed an attempt at explaining what one can observe. The hypothesis is something you assume to be true. An hypothesis may or may not be verified - and the theory makes assumptions - that the proposed hypothesis are true.
Note that "theory" is not the same a "theorem" and "hypothesis" is not the same as "conjecture". Hypothesis is closer to an axiom.
As a last example, the GUT (Grand Unified Theory) requires the existence of a specific particle : the Higgs boson to account for mass. The theory is there, the hypothesis is that the particle exists. So even though it is a theory it *still* needs to be validated (hence the LHC) by validating the hypothesis.
So to me : Hypothesis x Observation -> Theory
--Ivan