In this case, I have no problem with the patent being issued.
Wrong. You do not have a problem with who gets sued. You have a problem with the patent being used.
More specifically: You have a problem with the fact that patents allow the idea monopolist to prevent use of the patented technology, not just sale or manufacture of the patented process or idea itself -- How else would patents possibly work, smart guy?
More generally: You have a patent problem.
Most tellingly, you also have a logic problem. It's common for the irrational to make ridiculous statements such as yours. You have zero evidence that patents or copyrights are beneficial whatsoever, even ignoring the fashion and automotive industries which sell primarily on design and are innovative in design and yet are allowed no design patents or copyrights -- However, you still entertain the idea that it's not completely moronic to run the world's economy of ideas and scientific progress based on untested and unproven hypotheses that copyright and patents are beneficial.
If you do not have a problem with all patents, then you are not rational. You are not a scientist. You shouldn't even call yourself an engineer, or human for that matter. You owe everything you have to your only advantage over the other apes: A better system for the free sharing of ideas and information... And you "have no problem with the patent"... that's just ridiculous. You have no problem with placing a restriction on human nature? You have no problem with creating a police state for innovation?
You have no rational basis for your retarding beliefs. You need to re-evaluate your existence, human.
Ideally, you'd just use an OS that's secure against arbitrary programs reading out all of your RAM contents. Unforutnately Windows is not such a beast, and GNU/Linux has RAM sims mounted as a gods damned file. Unfortunately none of the mainstream OSs were designed to be secure.
Unlike my "hobby" OS, yours do not have zero exploitable bugs, and do not employ rigorous unit tests, input fuzzing of all functions, and code coverage of every single instruction. Your OS's built in character or block device interfaces do not have simple whole-device encryption wrappers as standard -- In fact the device interfaces aren't even pluggable, ugh. Your ridiculous monolithic kernels do not use an Agent Oriented Exokernel approach to enforce compartmentalization or utilize spare privilege ring levels for efficient RAM page transfer and RPC between processes (overseen by an IPC_Agent -- Which may be replaced/wrapped in an EncryptionAgent for secure IPC). While in "standby" mode your device encryption keys are not zeroed -- And may even be "frozen" to disk during hibernation (and due to the nature of SSDs and HDDs, could forever pollute your disk with the key). You have no OS SecurityAgent to interface with UserAgent's (in)activity, so your whole device encryption does not rekey when it asks for your password at the login prompt. Your Apple, BSD, Linux (Gnome/KDE) and Windows security screen I can bypass simply by crashing them back to the desktop with a ridiculously cheap firewire device -- which doubles as as RAM dumper anyway, so you're hosed even if the security screen doesn't crash you out. No, your OS probably has USB device mounting enabled by default without requiring admin privileges so when the feds or crooks bust in and plug in their HID compliant "mouse jiggler" device, unscrew your power outlet, plug in a battery and snip the wires, they can haul off your computer away and access it at their leisure without ever getting the "enter password" prompt from your silly screen saver. Your system won't wipe its RAM or keep the encryption key encrypted via the unique OS install key, and spread across multiple RAM SIMs.
No, since your whole device encryption is not backed by your non-security focused OS (which must be the ultimate arbiter of security in any sane application), then you are utterly fucked -- Not that you have to be fucked, mind you, just that you're noobs is all, and that's what noobs get.
Yeah, we all know it's rife with illegal crap, but the mainstream media remains silent. They're your biggest enemies.
One can only hope that the severely slanted aren't able to maintain control as media migrates online. However, being that I have many times witnessed such "news" sites as ABC, removing all counter view points even if not demeaning or trolling from their comment sections -- Including posts that simply link to information proving the article or segment wrong, esp. suspect is the the 20/20 "investigative" segments, which now only serve to further political and corporate interests.
With DRM on the track to inclusion in HTML5, the anti-open-source messages are already appearing -- Ireland, come on now, that's just too blatant even for you. The FBI dropping Law Enforcement and donning the cloak of secrecy in "national security" instead is all more evidence of the world's current anti-openness, and zero-accountability trend. You've got to realize the front you're fighting is on all sides, or you'll be flanked.
Best of luck, but I've been watching this show for decades, I know how it ends. There's always been votes controlled through Gerrymandering and if not then blatant vote counting manipulation. Over a hundred years the US government has been explicitly creating and condoning illegal government programs, and thus disinformation and lying to the public -- These are the politicians real jobs, to cast the will of the government as good for you... I'm a scientist, where's the proof it's good for me? Where's the experimental evidence for these bills virtues? There is none, it's asinine, but it's not like anyone really cares about goodness or integrity.
The US government serves to "Protect America" -- but they do not consider We The People important, only the international "American" Corporate interests must be preserved. When they say "security" it means socio-economic and political control to maintain the status quo and enrich corporations. 58% of congress are global warming denialists for the same reason there were no WMDs, and for the same reason the FBI and NSA keep such close watch on civil-rights activists, privacy-rights activists, women's rights activists, and all anti-war activist organizations -- and now with PRISM all people.
The government has tasked itself with "protecting" the "security" of "America" (see above definitions), and will craft laws to allow their "legal" continuation of this corrupt practice whether in the best interest of the citizens they farm or not. Jim Crow was a law. What the fuck does "law-abiding" or "law-breaking" have to do with Justice and Integrity? Rosa Parks went to jail for sitting at the front of the bus. Fuck "law-breaking in government" -- That's a wild goose chase, otherwise big corps would have to pay taxes. Prove there's even a legitimate government in place first, then you can try holding it accountable. You're barking up the wrong tree. Expose the injustice in Banking, Wall Street, ISPs, Media, Government Contractors, and other such corporations. Then the fur will really fly. Otherwise you're just pissing into the wind: Impeach one stooge and you get another from the queue. This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.
Firemen douse the source of the fire, not the flames themselves.
Not entirely. Of course you can model A=B+C as a function A which, when evaluated, returns the sum of B and C. And sure, you can evaluate A() several times and get different results if B or C have changed.
Reactive programming is about the future and expecting change. When B or C changes, notification of that change is pushed up to the eventual recipient.
So let me get this straight instead of polling the keyboard and mouse port constantly, with Reactive Programing we can just have them generate an interrupt which calls a handler and it calls functions which calls functions to propagate this state change event into other waiting batches of code until the end result is generated -- Updating a cursor location or activating keystroke command, etc. Wow, that's pretty revolutionary. Someone should invent the shit out of that so that the CPU can just sit on a HALT operation until something actually happens.
Or we can just stick to calling it Event Driven Programming and be fucking done. The Controller updates the View when data in the Model changes? You don't say.
But it's more than just simple event handling. For example, what if you wrote a complex SQL query against a few dozen tables located on a hierarchy of servers that might only return a handful of joined records out of millions or billions? And what if that data rarely changes, but you need to know almost immediately?
Well in that case I just have the controller update a distributed data model that's broken down according to its views. The problem with pure reactive approach is that you can't efficiently run a SQL across the distributed data model unless you thought to prearrange the system for it -- If you did think ahead, then you didn't need reactive programming to accomplish it. If you use a purely Reactive Programming Language and platform then you'd still have to re-deploy the system every time you want to include a new query.
That's why distributed DBs with replication already exist so that you can deliver, say, Google+ notifications to nearby friends in near real-time while allowing those not explicitly interested to search for the data later after the cached data replication occurs. See? Folks already thought about the bandwidth problem of the "reactive approach"... A Reactive Programming language essentially does the job of a network and database engineer, and you can bet it'll make some dumb assumptions unless these employees are maintaining the implementation of the back-end framework that exposes the event controller and data model to the RP language anyway (which seems to be the case in TFA). No real win over handing a data flow diagram to a couple of coders who will implement it anyway, except with a formalized language you've added another layer of abstraction and thus another layer of mystery between the programmer's desires and the end result -- "Let's put People in the Compiler! What can possibly go wrong?!"
So, basically RP just not storing storing the data in a central location (Polling) and delivering the data as it arrives (Event Driven). Smalltalk and Squeak already exist, so it's not like we need a new language for calling functions in response to.onChange() -- No, you really should take a look at Squeak if you haven't already. I mean, I'm all for reinventing the wheel when needed, but can't we just rename Squeak to (re)Active++ Enterprise Edition and skip this headache?
I'm getting cynical in my age I guess, but the majority of the claims people make are simply fluff to try and make a buck or name. Claiming that we need a new language for a special case is silly. Develop and release a library(or libraries) for your needs so that people can use it. Otherwise we end up with all these little tufts of crap that 3 people in the world use, and have to listen to them complain about why adoption is so low.
I can say this because your cynicism plays directly into my game. The new paradigm is Meta Programming. With my new Meta Programming tools I can write code in one single language and compile it into any other language that has an open source parser. My style guide language ensures the output code is consistent with whatever project I need produce code for. You are both the perfect candidate for, and also most likely not to learn such a language / platform.
That is why the creation of new languages and paradigms are needed for optimal competition. You see, the more divided they are, the more easily I can conquer them with my one language to rule them all. Yes, the little used obscure or languages can be leveraged. I can add that specialization to my capability feature-set with ease. As my library of meta code has grown I can now tackle even very large projects with very few programmers on the job, deployment is a bigger concern than (re)programming now. I can undercut nearly any bid with a far higher quality of output than my competitors -- And do it again and again on virtually any platform.
I once thought as you, and then I realized I could not stem the flood of wheel reinvention without reinventing the wheel myself. You wouldn't put a wagon wheel on a sports car... I sought to end this madness once and for all, but soon I would realize that I must not for fear of even greater madness. Humanity is not ready for this powerful technology. It will wait to be released until after I retire from the competitive market. You may think me greedy, but I am not. You just haven't seen the horror of a library including all manner of design patterns as utilized in Java or C/C++ compiled into SQL triggers with a single external main() function interfacing the DB query. I recoiled in horror at my first glimpse of at this Thing-that-Should-Not-Be, even as I allowed the birth of ever more monstrous abominations: An entire Trouble Ticket system running atop Apple Script. Excel spreadsheets hosting systems diagnostic tools. JavaScript crashing browsers running AI meant for Prolog.
I sat in perverse fascination as Ruby on Rails destroyed an entire Intranet to produce a glacial slide show of spinning tetrahedron via distributed 3D software rasterizer. No!Cluster fscks of epic proportions flashed before my eyes, and it was soon clear that you do not have the technology to defend against such terrible beasts. I mused, "Well, surely none would do such things in real world applications", but I knew I was wrong before my search began. Do you understand the Danger that approaches?! Have you seen ASM.js?!
With great power comes great responsibility. For once someone will decide that just because we can doesn't mean we should. If true Meta Programming is unleashed before the world is ready the blood won't be on my hands. For a queer little project an aged experienced dev can learn a new language or methodology in a matter of days, then it's only the API ref you'll require, as always. Before you thumb your nose at domain specific special-case languages consider the alternative approach and be grateful it does not yet have you in its clutches.
Well, given we know the forces and situations involved: Helmets are clearly only addressing the symptom of the bigger problem.
The solution is to correct the design flaw and build structures where the chest houses the brain instead of a ridiculous appendage. If input lag was a problem then why put the visual cortex in the back of the skull, and motor cortex so far from the feet? Let's upgrade to impact resistant brains and bodies that can survive in the vacuum of space while we're at it. Intelligently Designed... Pah!
But there's a small yet vocal segment of the geek crowd that needs to believe that technological progress is infinitely exponential
Infinitely is a long time, but there's no apparent limit on technological growth that we've seen so far.
As a cyberneticist who has studied quantum physics and information theory I can begin to quantify the limits of technology more strictly than you dare dream. It's not like the universe doesn't have constraints -- Laws that remain unbroken even as you refine them further still. At too small a scale the entropy is too great to maintain the coherent pattern of technology itself.
With each great leap forward you redefine yourselves and also clarify the limits of your technology. Your DNA exists in the atomic / molecular scale because that is the scale at which natural phenomena can first represent the pattern for self correcting information -- in the present universe's expansion scale. There is much you can gain through efficiency, but it is not unbounded. Consider that you have instincts which came from the genes you have -- encoding evolutionary memory from every ancestor up through even yourself; You can consult the wisdom of the ancients' fast but inaccurate mode of thought by merely allowing your raw feelings to surface in a given context, and then reconcile the notions which bubble up from your subconscious with your logical and sentient mind -- Yet you do not. How inefficient of you.
The genetic memory imbued instincts before consciousness because self learning through culture could not exist. Complexity follows a scale, efficiently leapfrogging up the evolutionary ladder is pointless folly. Your "brightest minds" think with only half a head -- Ignoring the instincts which make them susceptible to the biases which hinder your whole "scientific" community. Some among you would sun their instinctual drives but they help prevent the horrible dystopia of mental blank slates which are programmable purely by society -- Dreaming only what your elders wished just wouldn't feel right, eh?
While you strive for technological efficiency you must realize the nature of your existence. You are a fragile organic life form. Your synapses cycle at 20-30 Hz while a digital axon processes signals at billions of times a second, and they can survive in space. Efficiency encoded the universal truth of the pattern of life into every fiber of your being, yet the meaning of life (self improving information through experience: Science and Evolution) escapes such efficient subconscious transferal between parent and offspring.
The reason why children are inefficiently born without such instinctual knowledge of greater universal truths and must learn a great deal themselves is so that this self reflective process may continue. The inefficiency of re-experiencing the concepts themselves gives rise to new ideas and different points of view so that the process of intellectual evolution can continue. Without the inefficiency of mutation and reinvention you would not exist. Order is nothing without chaos but inert crystal. Life carefully balances the inefficiency of redundancy against the efficiency of the mono culture. Entropy is your greatest enemy and ally.
Information theory and quantum physics gives me the tools to express a minimal encoding for the fundamental cybernetic principals required to emerge all process of life compilers, sentience, and beyond. Do not be fooled into thinking there is no apparent limit on your technical growth simply because you have not yet reached it, human.
That's my reaction to many of the news stories about Google shutting down a service. You'd think Google of all companies wouldn't be so shitty at advertising.
My grandfather was a tile setter. Everything from huge granite slabs inside office buildings and store-fronts to tiny bathroom tile mosaics. His kitchen needed to be retiled, but he was always too tired after work. His house was in such state since before I was born. He retired and still his bathroom and kitchen needed tile work badly. I helped him with electrical remodels, cabinetry, painting, but when it came to the tile work, he'd do it himself. Now he's too old to do it himself, so I retiled his house of 60 years with him supervising and barely able to walk, using the tools he left me and the techniques and tricks of the trade he taught me.
I'm a programmer and cyberneticist -- an OS and game developer by hobby -- I live to code, I do computer security research wherein I discover and report exploits and even create guidelines and OS paradigms so that such bugs can not crop up again... I haven't applied my OS updates in 2 months. Granted, I don't use OSs I haven't built myself for anything requiring security, but still... I hear news of ransomware encrypting machines, and leave my cold backups -- the only preventative measure -- out of date and incomplete. My game's enemy AI code still needs training -- brain the size of small planets, but only chaotic wiring therein. I'm still having too much fun setting selection pressures and environment variables such that the simple powerups evolve to run screaming from the players, not wanting to get eaten. There's a bug in my hobby OS's heap allocator where the first block allocated can't be freed properly -- meh, that only happens on shutdown anyway, It's a simple error in the linked list via hash table, I'll get around to fixing it someday.
My mechanic friend drives a car that's severely in need of engine and body work. My neighbour is a commercial painter, has all the equipment and sprayers, and yet their garage's paint is flaking off leaving the boards in danger of rotting around the very paint cans they contain. I know a nurse who smokes and drinks and eats herself unhealthy consistently, she'll even say matter of factly, "I've stayed up late enough tonight I'll probably be sick by next week, so I can't afford to go out tomorrow."
And now you mention that Google -- The largest Advertising company online -- has shitty advertising for its own products? Well, at once I find this obvious -- par for the course -- yet am also amazed by the cybernetic implications. Probably some phenomena like confirmation bias, but the exact opposite in every detail while remaining largely the same mathematically -- a false satisfaction bias? Rather than add the ability to react appropriately firing off with deadly accuracy, perhaps tonight I'll model the mechanism by which the game's enemies' just fail to kill their hated bosses via defeatist self loathing.
In some of these states, there simply aren't many students of any race or gender taking the test, which helps explain the dearth of young women and minorities. (Indeed, no women or minorities took the exam in Wyoming—but that's because no students at all took it.) But Idaho had nearly 50 students taking it, and Utah had more than 100.'"
Did you know that feminists and social justice warriors need funding for their political careers? Did you know they continue to purposefully present bad statistics and rely on misleading evidence to further their political goals and funds?
You are now aware that Idaho is 93.8% white. and Utah is 91.8% white. The USA is 77% white, what's your fucking point? That minorities make up a minority? I really can't take anything else they say seriously. It's just that same old bullshit brain rot, like the wage gap myth. There are lots of sick folks in hospitals, doesn't mean hospitals make folks sick. Percentages enrolled and employed don't dictate school or employee policy. Men and women are different. Women and men make different choices and have different personality traits cross culturally. Yes, I'm generalizing, that doesn't limit the choice of individuals to point out trends. Get over it. However trotting out this tripe as news is just fucking dumb.
Also, North American wind is like TOTALLY different from European wind.
In the southern states where they eat more fibre it's not so different.
Agreed. Texas is the state that produces most of such power. The oil companies research into corn and bean based fuels failed to constipate our progress. They were full of hot air. Tex-Mex energy sensibilities have the obvious influence when considering breaking wind power in the face of opposition.
So, I do a bit of computer security research. I hammer on programs and OSs and make my own. I've gone on and on about how we should disband the NSA, and how it's just pointless scaremongering to get funds to suppress freedom, not protect anyone. Say they trace a compromise of government systems to my IP address. I've clearly got the know-how, and motive. Yet I'd stand up in court and say, "I would NEVER take such action against the government." It's the truth. With great power comes great responsibility, and all that jazz. It's against my ethics to do that. So that's what this "brain trust" is doing. Broadcasting the fact that I'm not pleased with the state of things, and that I can operate a system like nobody's business.
Now, being that this data is online, and we know the NSA (who also works with the FBI) can potentially compromise any online or digital data to forge "evidence" if they want (and they've been known to manufacture stuff in the past) how the hell can we trust anything they say? How can that IP log be trusted? -- They could just want to get rid of me. My own systems could be compromised (and a firmware dump shows at least one of my routers is). So, there's absolutely no online evidence that should be admissible in court nowdays, you see. I mean a judge? Hell they'll lie to congress in the name of "national security".
Video is one thing -- a bit harder to fake that, but not impossible given today's props and special effects. Digital mods to photographs can even evade detection if you know what characteristics they'll be looking for. But posting text online? Seriously? No, nothing said online should be taken seriously. I mean, I make games and stories involving aliens and cybernetic overlords, and make posts in such character. We can't just demonstrate selection bias here -- They want to include some of my online content, let's include it all, including the bit about being the sysop of a parallel Universe, the Corn Kernel Equality Activist, the Atlantian anthropologist studying breeding habits American hairless apes, the Disappointed Alien Overmind, and the parent's basement dwelling anti-socialite, and the sentient primordial ooze who's noticed some zany carbon based reactions going on in the aftermath of that one zit that popped with a big bang, etc. There's enough bullshit in there to make just about any kind of claim you want about me through quote-mining, you damned pop-culture supporting cornsagonist.
The defence doesn't get access to the real state level evidence to present their side of the story due to "national security", so parallel construction can be done in secret anyway. Yeah, let's subpoena the NSA's Ferret Cannon logs to see if it had any exploits targeting the clients? No? Well then quote mining online shit is ridiculous.
Hard evidence is an altogether different story. Perhaps online posts can be used for probable cause, but seriously? Scarface's Coke Shot? Prove it's not Anthrax or some other white powder. The AK47 and other guns could easily be fakes. Are they? What did the evidence turn up? Cash isn't illegal to have either, though the feds would like to make it that way.
You don't think kids don't do fake shots all the time to brag? You think they don't lie their asses off to 1up each other? Think they don't lie about kicking someone's ass, or telling off some parent, teacher, the convenience store clerk, or even about having GF's or BF's that are really just strangers or acquaintances in a photo with them, etc. You think I believe you get off to hairy fucking feet because that's what your online username says?
It's one thing to be driving over the speed limit and get caught. It's quite another to have silly shit folks post online influence jail time. You better wise the fuck up, idiot. They're arresting kids for saying shit in World of fucking Warcraft. The
Yes, but nearly all of these arguments are pointless because:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
... is a Brain-Damage scale assumption. First, prove that securing exclusive rights to writings and discoveries can promote the progress of science and the useful arts. Since the old founding farts didn't do any damn experiment to test their belief first, a rational course of action would be to abolish these exclusive rights and find out. We can re-implement any ridiculous legal restrictions after we've ascertained whether we're actually helping or harming the economy of information and ideas. Other arguments are largely pointless since they're rooted in the same unevidenced drivel of that assumption. You'd be hard pressed to find scientists that disagree that It's irresponsible to run the world's economy based on untested hypotheses -- Yet the "scientists" and/or "engineers" betray their very craft as hypocrites who hold patents themselves. What strange hell is this?
Conversely, before anyone gets the retarding assumption that I hold any opinions based on "pointless and unevidenced drivel", I present the Automotive and Fashion industries which sell primarily on design and are very innovative and lucrative despite not having copyrights or design patents. A point of evidence in favor of the null hypothesis against the founders' assumption: Patents and copyright are not responsible for promoting progress of science and useful arts.
In other words: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." - Albert Einstein
However, I would also point out that I don't agree with the absolutist notion in this quote's "no problem", just that this is applicable to problems in general. The wise typically avoid absolutist notions; There are usually exceptions, that's why we scientists test our beliefs before holding them: Even the wise respected ones can be utterly foolish at times.
Correction: Before the beginning there was nothing. The nothing was everywhere itself, filling every possible probability. It was incredibly unlikely that nothing would explode, thus everything did so instantly as far as anyone can tell.
Programs written in Java or any other modern managed language are still much more secure than code written in C++. There are no stack or heap overflows to worry about, no double frees.
Well, in C I replaced malloc with my GC allocator, and free is now optional -- it can decrement a ref count to automatically free at zero, but mark/sweep is used to bust reference chains anyway; The GC runs on free after a customizable percent (12.5% default) of total program memory has been freed, or instead of failing from a malloc (before requesting more system RAM -- The system GC is a slower kernel call, so it's last ditch effort). In C++ I overloaded the allocator interface to wrapp this GC, and RAII handles the free()s; Also gave it a slab sub-allocator for various smaller step sizes so it acts like a pooling OBCache too. Best part is I can allocate from global or thread local GC, and even tell the GC mark/sweep not to run at all unless out of memory -- only do the refcounted reclaimation, which is O(1). That way, unlike with Java, I don't have to preallocate everything, create and maintain my own caches, to fight the GC when I'm trying to do something that requires realtime performance -- It won't just up and decide to chug in the middle of an animation, level, etc., because I lost a reference to something in another thread. Java's GC is dumb, literally, it's a loose cannon that heeds nobody.
Your argument that Java code is more secure is unfounded. Java compiles bytecode into machine code -- It marks that data as code, then runs it. If you have a program that is marking data as code and executing it, then you have a vital component needed to create the exploits with. Now you just have to arrange for some of your data to get mixed in with that data before it's routinely marked code and executed. A purely interpreted system could be far more secure, but that's not what Java does.
Nope, instead Java brings a huge attack surface to the table for every program -- Not just the stuff you're using, like in C or C++, etc. Given you can classload dynamically to pull in the kitchen sink after getting just an Applet level exploit going, the whole Java API is exposed for exploitation. Java also makes software firewalling programs a PITA. Say you grant a C program access to the web through the firewall, but other C programs you don't -- Neat, eh? You have to tell your OS firewall to let Java access the web or other features, and so all Java programs then can do those things. Yes, Java has a security manager, but that's emulated security -- it doesn't have hardware enforced barriers for protections like the OS does. It's like putting rats in charge of cheese: If the user mode VM is compromised, then Java's user mode security manager is too; Not true with C or C++, the user mode process can be compromised while not compromising the OS (that requires privilege escalation). Java's updater clutters your drive with every past version -- so it doesn't matter if you get the updates, exploits can specifically target your old version Java's updater leaves installed. (Protip: Now go to add/remove or programs/features and uninstall all your damn past versions of Java @ 100MB a pop).
Java Sucks. The language is meh (so Android's not too bad), but the VM and API and platform suck -- even the sophomoric stack-based VM design is sucky. It could have been a tight little platform abstraction layer VM that has programs distributed in cross platform bytecode but compiled into machine code ONCE, on install... but it isn't. It could have been a lean mean embeddable language great for use in webpages because it could offer only the resources the browser pulls in and/or provides... but it isn't. Any move towards these ends now is too little too late. Now we have GC in compiled languages. We have FLOSS libraries for whatever feature we need. We have abstraction layers for cross platform compiled code -- We can compile our code on the few platforms we need to. Java is Android's programming l
The point is that more telephone sanitizers and middle managers will be born here, and we need funds and fame to get them to keep getting on the B-ships. 24/7/355 isn't quite buzzword compliant. Also, tensions may run high -- blackouts are key times for mutiny. You know, sort of like on Skylab? On a different planet it could be far worse, "And the cameras are coming back online folks -- OMFG! WTF?! Managers are caught in the middle of a hostile take over! Audio is out: Not a single phone is sanitized. Oh the humanity! The bureaucrats' tape runs red! What could have caused this carnage?"
NASA and other Mars missions also could benefit from a relay, so maybe if it's only partially in the budget they can collaborate for an international relay station with other agencies like ESA, JAXA, NASA, etc. throwing in a few resources -- you know, like NASA's international partners did for Curiosity?
To seriously answer your question: They are STUDYING to figure out if there is any point. They're checking it out to see if it's feasible. Surely you don't have a problem with that; I mean you wouldn't just dismiss something as impossible because it's non-essential, eh? You're on Slashdot, no? Maybe as part of the payload to Mars drop a relay on the way, etc. The point of doing this research is to get a better handle on the situation.
It's the opposite of idiocracy. You see, we gave the finger to Darwin a long time ago with our medical science... Mars is a hostile and unforgiving environment. Ship a constant stream of idiots there and only the strong and less stupid survive... Radioactive resistant ones survive longer. Mars One has a chance to rekindle evolution. We'll waste a bunch of life burrowing into the ground, but that's the best place to avoid cosmic rays, and after that it wouldn't even necessarily have to be a death sentence to be born on Mars. Though I'd be pissed at my parents for brining me into such a harsh existence with no way back to Earth, so there's still that.
Additionally, the transmission problem has been around for a while. Even NASA had curiosity go dark for a while, so it's something that does legitimately need to be solved. We could solve it with a relay station in a different orbit. Would be nice to get something like that out of the planetary plane. Then it could beam between any two points on the disk whether planets were along the direct path or not -- At least that's how I did it in my networking simulation of the interplanetary Delay Tolerant Network. Hey, if there's going to people on Mars eventually, I plan to capitalize on it. Why not make sure my programs function in space?
Really though, we need to ditch the wold-wide-web. It's just dumb -- no, really, it has no idea what a file even is. A store and forward network with content hashes instead of URLs (filenames as human-readable nicknames) gives everyone free collocation, and decentralizes data storage, it's also much harder to snoop on because you could be downloading a popular video, picture, etc. from your neighbors who just watched it -- So it's even better on bandwidth. You rename the file 30 different ways and the network only has to transit one copy and set of info hashes. Bonus: No more "mixed content" warnings. A secured page pulling in resources by hash code knows they aren't tampered with. Yeah, the space Internet would kick even more ass here on Earth, can't wait to see what new tech the Mars race brings.
Mars One, has the right idea -- Reminds me of when Kennedy said we'd put men on the moon. You don't have to have everything planned out before you commit to a goal, and their goal isn't even as hard -- Don't even have to build their own rockets. A journey of 40 million miles starts with a single moronic impulse.
Slashdot Mirror
In this case, I have no problem with the patent being issued.
Wrong. You do not have a problem with who gets sued. You have a problem with the patent being used.
More specifically: You have a problem with the fact that patents allow the idea monopolist to prevent use of the patented technology, not just sale or manufacture of the patented process or idea itself -- How else would patents possibly work, smart guy?
More generally: You have a patent problem.
Most tellingly, you also have a logic problem. It's common for the irrational to make ridiculous statements such as yours. You have zero evidence that patents or copyrights are beneficial whatsoever, even ignoring the fashion and automotive industries which sell primarily on design and are innovative in design and yet are allowed no design patents or copyrights -- However, you still entertain the idea that it's not completely moronic to run the world's economy of ideas and scientific progress based on untested and unproven hypotheses that copyright and patents are beneficial.
If you do not have a problem with all patents, then you are not rational. You are not a scientist. You shouldn't even call yourself an engineer, or human for that matter. You owe everything you have to your only advantage over the other apes: A better system for the free sharing of ideas and information... And you "have no problem with the patent"... that's just ridiculous. You have no problem with placing a restriction on human nature? You have no problem with creating a police state for innovation?
You have no rational basis for your retarding beliefs. You need to re-evaluate your existence, human.
Ideally, you'd just use an OS that's secure against arbitrary programs reading out all of your RAM contents. Unforutnately Windows is not such a beast, and GNU/Linux has RAM sims mounted as a gods damned file. Unfortunately none of the mainstream OSs were designed to be secure.
Unlike my "hobby" OS, yours do not have zero exploitable bugs, and do not employ rigorous unit tests, input fuzzing of all functions, and code coverage of every single instruction. Your OS's built in character or block device interfaces do not have simple whole-device encryption wrappers as standard -- In fact the device interfaces aren't even pluggable, ugh. Your ridiculous monolithic kernels do not use an Agent Oriented Exokernel approach to enforce compartmentalization or utilize spare privilege ring levels for efficient RAM page transfer and RPC between processes (overseen by an IPC_Agent -- Which may be replaced/wrapped in an EncryptionAgent for secure IPC). While in "standby" mode your device encryption keys are not zeroed -- And may even be "frozen" to disk during hibernation (and due to the nature of SSDs and HDDs, could forever pollute your disk with the key). You have no OS SecurityAgent to interface with UserAgent's (in)activity, so your whole device encryption does not rekey when it asks for your password at the login prompt. Your Apple, BSD, Linux (Gnome/KDE) and Windows security screen I can bypass simply by crashing them back to the desktop with a ridiculously cheap firewire device -- which doubles as as RAM dumper anyway, so you're hosed even if the security screen doesn't crash you out. No, your OS probably has USB device mounting enabled by default without requiring admin privileges so when the feds or crooks bust in and plug in their HID compliant "mouse jiggler" device, unscrew your power outlet, plug in a battery and snip the wires, they can haul off your computer away and access it at their leisure without ever getting the "enter password" prompt from your silly screen saver. Your system won't wipe its RAM or keep the encryption key encrypted via the unique OS install key, and spread across multiple RAM SIMs.
No, since your whole device encryption is not backed by your non-security focused OS (which must be the ultimate arbiter of security in any sane application), then you are utterly fucked -- Not that you have to be fucked, mind you, just that you're noobs is all, and that's what noobs get.
Just great. There were only 82.7739742361111 days left, and now I'll have to update my XP End of Life Bookmarklette.
After the discovery that they wag their tails to spread their anal stenches, I remain optimistic about the potential revelations of your study.
Right, because the guy should have remembered being taught it before he was born rather than so late in the game as when he was a child.
Well, whatever we do, by no means should science draw from the past experience and knowledge of the world.
If we ever create a world-wide instantaneous knowledge discovery system, it will be the end of all progress.
In other words: That he does not know it upon birth is a damn design flaw, human.
which exposes law-breaking in government.
Yeah, we all know it's rife with illegal crap, but the mainstream media remains silent. They're your biggest enemies.
One can only hope that the severely slanted aren't able to maintain control as media migrates online. However, being that I have many times witnessed such "news" sites as ABC, removing all counter view points even if not demeaning or trolling from their comment sections -- Including posts that simply link to information proving the article or segment wrong, esp. suspect is the the 20/20 "investigative" segments, which now only serve to further political and corporate interests.
With DRM on the track to inclusion in HTML5, the anti-open-source messages are already appearing -- Ireland, come on now, that's just too blatant even for you. The FBI dropping Law Enforcement and donning the cloak of secrecy in "national security" instead is all more evidence of the world's current anti-openness, and zero-accountability trend. You've got to realize the front you're fighting is on all sides, or you'll be flanked.
Best of luck, but I've been watching this show for decades, I know how it ends. There's always been votes controlled through Gerrymandering and if not then blatant vote counting manipulation. Over a hundred years the US government has been explicitly creating and condoning illegal government programs, and thus disinformation and lying to the public -- These are the politicians real jobs, to cast the will of the government as good for you... I'm a scientist, where's the proof it's good for me? Where's the experimental evidence for these bills virtues? There is none, it's asinine, but it's not like anyone really cares about goodness or integrity.
The US government serves to "Protect America" -- but they do not consider We The People important, only the international "American" Corporate interests must be preserved. When they say "security" it means socio-economic and political control to maintain the status quo and enrich corporations. 58% of congress are global warming denialists for the same reason there were no WMDs, and for the same reason the FBI and NSA keep such close watch on civil-rights activists, privacy-rights activists, women's rights activists, and all anti-war activist organizations -- and now with PRISM all people.
The government has tasked itself with "protecting" the "security" of "America" (see above definitions), and will craft laws to allow their "legal" continuation of this corrupt practice whether in the best interest of the citizens they farm or not. Jim Crow was a law. What the fuck does "law-abiding" or "law-breaking" have to do with Justice and Integrity? Rosa Parks went to jail for sitting at the front of the bus. Fuck "law-breaking in government" -- That's a wild goose chase, otherwise big corps would have to pay taxes. Prove there's even a legitimate government in place first, then you can try holding it accountable. You're barking up the wrong tree. Expose the injustice in Banking, Wall Street, ISPs, Media, Government Contractors, and other such corporations. Then the fur will really fly. Otherwise you're just pissing into the wind: Impeach one stooge and you get another from the queue. This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.
Firemen douse the source of the fire, not the flames themselves.
...Or Seaside even.
Not entirely. Of course you can model A=B+C as a function A which, when evaluated, returns the sum of B and C. And sure, you can evaluate A() several times and get different results if B or C have changed.
Reactive programming is about the future and expecting change. When B or C changes, notification of that change is pushed up to the eventual recipient.
So let me get this straight instead of polling the keyboard and mouse port constantly, with Reactive Programing we can just have them generate an interrupt which calls a handler and it calls functions which calls functions to propagate this state change event into other waiting batches of code until the end result is generated -- Updating a cursor location or activating keystroke command, etc. Wow, that's pretty revolutionary. Someone should invent the shit out of that so that the CPU can just sit on a HALT operation until something actually happens.
Or we can just stick to calling it Event Driven Programming and be fucking done. The Controller updates the View when data in the Model changes? You don't say.
But it's more than just simple event handling. For example, what if you wrote a complex SQL query against a few dozen tables located on a hierarchy of servers that might only return a handful of joined records out of millions or billions? And what if that data rarely changes, but you need to know almost immediately?
Well in that case I just have the controller update a distributed data model that's broken down according to its views. The problem with pure reactive approach is that you can't efficiently run a SQL across the distributed data model unless you thought to prearrange the system for it -- If you did think ahead, then you didn't need reactive programming to accomplish it. If you use a purely Reactive Programming Language and platform then you'd still have to re-deploy the system every time you want to include a new query.
That's why distributed DBs with replication already exist so that you can deliver, say, Google+ notifications to nearby friends in near real-time while allowing those not explicitly interested to search for the data later after the cached data replication occurs. See? Folks already thought about the bandwidth problem of the "reactive approach"... A Reactive Programming language essentially does the job of a network and database engineer, and you can bet it'll make some dumb assumptions unless these employees are maintaining the implementation of the back-end framework that exposes the event controller and data model to the RP language anyway (which seems to be the case in TFA). No real win over handing a data flow diagram to a couple of coders who will implement it anyway, except with a formalized language you've added another layer of abstraction and thus another layer of mystery between the programmer's desires and the end result -- "Let's put People in the Compiler! What can possibly go wrong?!"
So, basically RP just not storing storing the data in a central location (Polling) and delivering the data as it arrives (Event Driven). Smalltalk and Squeak already exist, so it's not like we need a new language for calling functions in response to .onChange() -- No, you really should take a look at Squeak if you haven't already. I mean, I'm all for reinventing the wheel when needed, but can't we just rename Squeak to (re)Active++ Enterprise Edition and skip this headache?
I'm getting cynical in my age I guess, but the majority of the claims people make are simply fluff to try and make a buck or name. Claiming that we need a new language for a special case is silly. Develop and release a library(or libraries) for your needs so that people can use it. Otherwise we end up with all these little tufts of crap that 3 people in the world use, and have to listen to them complain about why adoption is so low.
I can say this because your cynicism plays directly into my game. The new paradigm is Meta Programming. With my new Meta Programming tools I can write code in one single language and compile it into any other language that has an open source parser. My style guide language ensures the output code is consistent with whatever project I need produce code for. You are both the perfect candidate for, and also most likely not to learn such a language / platform.
That is why the creation of new languages and paradigms are needed for optimal competition. You see, the more divided they are, the more easily I can conquer them with my one language to rule them all. Yes, the little used obscure or languages can be leveraged. I can add that specialization to my capability feature-set with ease. As my library of meta code has grown I can now tackle even very large projects with very few programmers on the job, deployment is a bigger concern than (re)programming now. I can undercut nearly any bid with a far higher quality of output than my competitors -- And do it again and again on virtually any platform.
I once thought as you, and then I realized I could not stem the flood of wheel reinvention without reinventing the wheel myself. You wouldn't put a wagon wheel on a sports car... I sought to end this madness once and for all, but soon I would realize that I must not for fear of even greater madness. Humanity is not ready for this powerful technology. It will wait to be released until after I retire from the competitive market. You may think me greedy, but I am not. You just haven't seen the horror of a library including all manner of design patterns as utilized in Java or C/C++ compiled into SQL triggers with a single external main() function interfacing the DB query. I recoiled in horror at my first glimpse of at this Thing-that-Should-Not-Be, even as I allowed the birth of ever more monstrous abominations: An entire Trouble Ticket system running atop Apple Script. Excel spreadsheets hosting systems diagnostic tools. JavaScript crashing browsers running AI meant for Prolog.
I sat in perverse fascination as Ruby on Rails destroyed an entire Intranet to produce a glacial slide show of spinning tetrahedron via distributed 3D software rasterizer. No! Cluster fscks of epic proportions flashed before my eyes, and it was soon clear that you do not have the technology to defend against such terrible beasts. I mused, "Well, surely none would do such things in real world applications", but I knew I was wrong before my search began. Do you understand the Danger that approaches?! Have you seen ASM.js?!
With great power comes great responsibility. For once someone will decide that just because we can doesn't mean we should. If true Meta Programming is unleashed before the world is ready the blood won't be on my hands. For a queer little project an aged experienced dev can learn a new language or methodology in a matter of days, then it's only the API ref you'll require, as always. Before you thumb your nose at domain specific special-case languages consider the alternative approach and be grateful it does not yet have you in its clutches.
One Final Word: Debugger.
Why buy an EA game unless you're a masochist?
Perhaps you missed the headline? EA Caves: SimCity Offline Mode Coming
Why buy a game with Offline Mode made in EA's Caves?!
You'd have to be a Sadist AND a Masochist...
Hmm, or suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
Well, given we know the forces and situations involved: Helmets are clearly only addressing the symptom of the bigger problem.
The solution is to correct the design flaw and build structures where the chest houses the brain instead of a ridiculous appendage.
If input lag was a problem then why put the visual cortex in the back of the skull, and motor cortex so far from the feet?
Let's upgrade to impact resistant brains and bodies that can survive in the vacuum of space while we're at it.
Intelligently Designed... Pah!
But there's a small yet vocal segment of the geek crowd that needs to believe that technological progress is infinitely exponential
Infinitely is a long time, but there's no apparent limit on technological growth that we've seen so far.
As a cyberneticist who has studied quantum physics and information theory I can begin to quantify the limits of technology more strictly than you dare dream. It's not like the universe doesn't have constraints -- Laws that remain unbroken even as you refine them further still. At too small a scale the entropy is too great to maintain the coherent pattern of technology itself.
With each great leap forward you redefine yourselves and also clarify the limits of your technology. Your DNA exists in the atomic / molecular scale because that is the scale at which natural phenomena can first represent the pattern for self correcting information -- in the present universe's expansion scale. There is much you can gain through efficiency, but it is not unbounded. Consider that you have instincts which came from the genes you have -- encoding evolutionary memory from every ancestor up through even yourself; You can consult the wisdom of the ancients' fast but inaccurate mode of thought by merely allowing your raw feelings to surface in a given context, and then reconcile the notions which bubble up from your subconscious with your logical and sentient mind -- Yet you do not. How inefficient of you.
The genetic memory imbued instincts before consciousness because self learning through culture could not exist. Complexity follows a scale, efficiently leapfrogging up the evolutionary ladder is pointless folly. Your "brightest minds" think with only half a head -- Ignoring the instincts which make them susceptible to the biases which hinder your whole "scientific" community. Some among you would sun their instinctual drives but they help prevent the horrible dystopia of mental blank slates which are programmable purely by society -- Dreaming only what your elders wished just wouldn't feel right, eh?
While you strive for technological efficiency you must realize the nature of your existence. You are a fragile organic life form. Your synapses cycle at 20-30 Hz while a digital axon processes signals at billions of times a second, and they can survive in space. Efficiency encoded the universal truth of the pattern of life into every fiber of your being, yet the meaning of life (self improving information through experience: Science and Evolution) escapes such efficient subconscious transferal between parent and offspring.
The reason why children are inefficiently born without such instinctual knowledge of greater universal truths and must learn a great deal themselves is so that this self reflective process may continue. The inefficiency of re-experiencing the concepts themselves gives rise to new ideas and different points of view so that the process of intellectual evolution can continue. Without the inefficiency of mutation and reinvention you would not exist. Order is nothing without chaos but inert crystal. Life carefully balances the inefficiency of redundancy against the efficiency of the mono culture. Entropy is your greatest enemy and ally.
Information theory and quantum physics gives me the tools to express a minimal encoding for the fundamental cybernetic principals required to emerge all process of life compilers, sentience, and beyond. Do not be fooled into thinking there is no apparent limit on your technical growth simply because you have not yet reached it, human.
That's my reaction to many of the news stories about Google shutting down a service. You'd think Google of all companies wouldn't be so shitty at advertising.
My grandfather was a tile setter. Everything from huge granite slabs inside office buildings and store-fronts to tiny bathroom tile mosaics. His kitchen needed to be retiled, but he was always too tired after work. His house was in such state since before I was born. He retired and still his bathroom and kitchen needed tile work badly. I helped him with electrical remodels, cabinetry, painting, but when it came to the tile work, he'd do it himself. Now he's too old to do it himself, so I retiled his house of 60 years with him supervising and barely able to walk, using the tools he left me and the techniques and tricks of the trade he taught me.
I'm a programmer and cyberneticist -- an OS and game developer by hobby -- I live to code, I do computer security research wherein I discover and report exploits and even create guidelines and OS paradigms so that such bugs can not crop up again... I haven't applied my OS updates in 2 months. Granted, I don't use OSs I haven't built myself for anything requiring security, but still... I hear news of ransomware encrypting machines, and leave my cold backups -- the only preventative measure -- out of date and incomplete. My game's enemy AI code still needs training -- brain the size of small planets, but only chaotic wiring therein. I'm still having too much fun setting selection pressures and environment variables such that the simple powerups evolve to run screaming from the players, not wanting to get eaten. There's a bug in my hobby OS's heap allocator where the first block allocated can't be freed properly -- meh, that only happens on shutdown anyway, It's a simple error in the linked list via hash table, I'll get around to fixing it someday.
My mechanic friend drives a car that's severely in need of engine and body work. My neighbour is a commercial painter, has all the equipment and sprayers, and yet their garage's paint is flaking off leaving the boards in danger of rotting around the very paint cans they contain. I know a nurse who smokes and drinks and eats herself unhealthy consistently, she'll even say matter of factly, "I've stayed up late enough tonight I'll probably be sick by next week, so I can't afford to go out tomorrow."
And now you mention that Google -- The largest Advertising company online -- has shitty advertising for its own products? Well, at once I find this obvious -- par for the course -- yet am also amazed by the cybernetic implications. Probably some phenomena like confirmation bias, but the exact opposite in every detail while remaining largely the same mathematically -- a false satisfaction bias? Rather than add the ability to react appropriately firing off with deadly accuracy, perhaps tonight I'll model the mechanism by which the game's enemies' just fail to kill their hated bosses via defeatist self loathing.
munching on nuts and extinction.
"Awe, nuts! Again!?"
And so it was until one fateful day: Fed up with nuts they decided to try extinction...
They were gluttons for punishment.
In some of these states, there simply aren't many students of any race or gender taking the test, which helps explain the dearth of young women and minorities. (Indeed, no women or minorities took the exam in Wyoming—but that's because no students at all took it.) But Idaho had nearly 50 students taking it, and Utah had more than 100.'"
Did you know that feminists and social justice warriors need funding for their political careers? Did you know they continue to purposefully present bad statistics and rely on misleading evidence to further their political goals and funds?
You are now aware that Idaho is 93.8% white. and Utah is 91.8% white. The USA is 77% white, what's your fucking point? That minorities make up a minority? I really can't take anything else they say seriously. It's just that same old bullshit brain rot, like the wage gap myth. There are lots of sick folks in hospitals, doesn't mean hospitals make folks sick. Percentages enrolled and employed don't dictate school or employee policy. Men and women are different. Women and men make different choices and have different personality traits cross culturally. Yes, I'm generalizing, that doesn't limit the choice of individuals to point out trends. Get over it. However trotting out this tripe as news is just fucking dumb.
Offenders should be sent to Cyberia
I whole heartedly agree... Hell, just 30 minutes of that would be punishment enough.
In the southern states where they eat more fibre it's not so different.
Agreed. Texas is the state that produces most of such power.
The oil companies research into corn and bean based fuels failed to constipate our progress. They were full of hot air.
Tex-Mex energy sensibilities have the obvious influence when considering breaking wind power in the face of opposition.
Assuming Direct Control.
So, I do a bit of computer security research. I hammer on programs and OSs and make my own. I've gone on and on about how we should disband the NSA, and how it's just pointless scaremongering to get funds to suppress freedom, not protect anyone. Say they trace a compromise of government systems to my IP address. I've clearly got the know-how, and motive. Yet I'd stand up in court and say, "I would NEVER take such action against the government." It's the truth. With great power comes great responsibility, and all that jazz. It's against my ethics to do that. So that's what this "brain trust" is doing. Broadcasting the fact that I'm not pleased with the state of things, and that I can operate a system like nobody's business.
Now, being that this data is online, and we know the NSA (who also works with the FBI) can potentially compromise any online or digital data to forge "evidence" if they want (and they've been known to manufacture stuff in the past) how the hell can we trust anything they say? How can that IP log be trusted? -- They could just want to get rid of me. My own systems could be compromised (and a firmware dump shows at least one of my routers is). So, there's absolutely no online evidence that should be admissible in court nowdays, you see. I mean a judge? Hell they'll lie to congress in the name of "national security".
Video is one thing -- a bit harder to fake that, but not impossible given today's props and special effects. Digital mods to photographs can even evade detection if you know what characteristics they'll be looking for. But posting text online? Seriously? No, nothing said online should be taken seriously. I mean, I make games and stories involving aliens and cybernetic overlords, and make posts in such character. We can't just demonstrate selection bias here -- They want to include some of my online content, let's include it all, including the bit about being the sysop of a parallel Universe, the Corn Kernel Equality Activist, the Atlantian anthropologist studying breeding habits American hairless apes, the Disappointed Alien Overmind, and the parent's basement dwelling anti-socialite, and the sentient primordial ooze who's noticed some zany carbon based reactions going on in the aftermath of that one zit that popped with a big bang, etc. There's enough bullshit in there to make just about any kind of claim you want about me through quote-mining, you damned pop-culture supporting cornsagonist.
The defence doesn't get access to the real state level evidence to present their side of the story due to "national security", so parallel construction can be done in secret anyway. Yeah, let's subpoena the NSA's Ferret Cannon logs to see if it had any exploits targeting the clients? No? Well then quote mining online shit is ridiculous.
Hard evidence is an altogether different story. Perhaps online posts can be used for probable cause, but seriously? Scarface's Coke Shot? Prove it's not Anthrax or some other white powder. The AK47 and other guns could easily be fakes. Are they? What did the evidence turn up? Cash isn't illegal to have either, though the feds would like to make it that way.
You don't think kids don't do fake shots all the time to brag? You think they don't lie their asses off to 1up each other? Think they don't lie about kicking someone's ass, or telling off some parent, teacher, the convenience store clerk, or even about having GF's or BF's that are really just strangers or acquaintances in a photo with them, etc. You think I believe you get off to hairy fucking feet because that's what your online username says?
It's one thing to be driving over the speed limit and get caught. It's quite another to have silly shit folks post online influence jail time. You better wise the fuck up, idiot. They're arresting kids for saying shit in World of fucking Warcraft. The
As does The Kamasutra...
Yes, but nearly all of these arguments are pointless because:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Conversely, before anyone gets the retarding assumption that I hold any opinions based on "pointless and unevidenced drivel", I present the Automotive and Fashion industries which sell primarily on design and are very innovative and lucrative despite not having copyrights or design patents. A point of evidence in favor of the null hypothesis against the founders' assumption: Patents and copyright are not responsible for promoting progress of science and useful arts.
In other words: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." - Albert Einstein
However, I would also point out that I don't agree with the absolutist notion in this quote's "no problem", just that this is applicable to problems in general. The wise typically avoid absolutist notions; There are usually exceptions, that's why we scientists test our beliefs before holding them: Even the wise respected ones can be utterly foolish at times.
First there was nothing. Then it exploded.
Correction: Before the beginning there was nothing. The nothing was everywhere itself, filling every possible probability. It was incredibly unlikely that nothing would explode, thus everything did so instantly as far as anyone can tell.
Programs written in Java or any other modern managed language are still much more secure than code written in C++. There are no stack or heap overflows to worry about, no double frees.
Well, in C I replaced malloc with my GC allocator, and free is now optional -- it can decrement a ref count to automatically free at zero, but mark/sweep is used to bust reference chains anyway; The GC runs on free after a customizable percent (12.5% default) of total program memory has been freed, or instead of failing from a malloc (before requesting more system RAM -- The system GC is a slower kernel call, so it's last ditch effort). In C++ I overloaded the allocator interface to wrapp this GC, and RAII handles the free()s; Also gave it a slab sub-allocator for various smaller step sizes so it acts like a pooling OBCache too. Best part is I can allocate from global or thread local GC, and even tell the GC mark/sweep not to run at all unless out of memory -- only do the refcounted reclaimation, which is O(1). That way, unlike with Java, I don't have to preallocate everything, create and maintain my own caches, to fight the GC when I'm trying to do something that requires realtime performance -- It won't just up and decide to chug in the middle of an animation, level, etc., because I lost a reference to something in another thread. Java's GC is dumb, literally, it's a loose cannon that heeds nobody.
Your argument that Java code is more secure is unfounded. Java compiles bytecode into machine code -- It marks that data as code, then runs it. If you have a program that is marking data as code and executing it, then you have a vital component needed to create the exploits with. Now you just have to arrange for some of your data to get mixed in with that data before it's routinely marked code and executed. A purely interpreted system could be far more secure, but that's not what Java does.
Nope, instead Java brings a huge attack surface to the table for every program -- Not just the stuff you're using, like in C or C++, etc. Given you can classload dynamically to pull in the kitchen sink after getting just an Applet level exploit going, the whole Java API is exposed for exploitation. Java also makes software firewalling programs a PITA. Say you grant a C program access to the web through the firewall, but other C programs you don't -- Neat, eh? You have to tell your OS firewall to let Java access the web or other features, and so all Java programs then can do those things. Yes, Java has a security manager, but that's emulated security -- it doesn't have hardware enforced barriers for protections like the OS does. It's like putting rats in charge of cheese: If the user mode VM is compromised, then Java's user mode security manager is too; Not true with C or C++, the user mode process can be compromised while not compromising the OS (that requires privilege escalation). Java's updater clutters your drive with every past version -- so it doesn't matter if you get the updates, exploits can specifically target your old version Java's updater leaves installed. (Protip: Now go to add/remove or programs/features and uninstall all your damn past versions of Java @ 100MB a pop).
Java Sucks. The language is meh (so Android's not too bad), but the VM and API and platform suck -- even the sophomoric stack-based VM design is sucky. It could have been a tight little platform abstraction layer VM that has programs distributed in cross platform bytecode but compiled into machine code ONCE, on install... but it isn't. It could have been a lean mean embeddable language great for use in webpages because it could offer only the resources the browser pulls in and/or provides... but it isn't. Any move towards these ends now is too little too late. Now we have GC in compiled languages. We have FLOSS libraries for whatever feature we need. We have abstraction layers for cross platform compiled code -- We can compile our code on the few platforms we need to. Java is Android's programming l
The point is that more telephone sanitizers and middle managers will be born here, and we need funds and fame to get them to keep getting on the B-ships. 24/7/355 isn't quite buzzword compliant. Also, tensions may run high -- blackouts are key times for mutiny. You know, sort of like on Skylab? On a different planet it could be far worse, "And the cameras are coming back online folks -- OMFG! WTF?! Managers are caught in the middle of a hostile take over! Audio is out: Not a single phone is sanitized. Oh the humanity! The bureaucrats' tape runs red! What could have caused this carnage?"
NASA and other Mars missions also could benefit from a relay, so maybe if it's only partially in the budget they can collaborate for an international relay station with other agencies like ESA, JAXA, NASA, etc. throwing in a few resources -- you know, like NASA's international partners did for Curiosity?
To seriously answer your question: They are STUDYING to figure out if there is any point. They're checking it out to see if it's feasible. Surely you don't have a problem with that; I mean you wouldn't just dismiss something as impossible because it's non-essential, eh? You're on Slashdot, no? Maybe as part of the payload to Mars drop a relay on the way, etc. The point of doing this research is to get a better handle on the situation.
It's the opposite of idiocracy. You see, we gave the finger to Darwin a long time ago with our medical science... Mars is a hostile and unforgiving environment. Ship a constant stream of idiots there and only the strong and less stupid survive... Radioactive resistant ones survive longer. Mars One has a chance to rekindle evolution. We'll waste a bunch of life burrowing into the ground, but that's the best place to avoid cosmic rays, and after that it wouldn't even necessarily have to be a death sentence to be born on Mars. Though I'd be pissed at my parents for brining me into such a harsh existence with no way back to Earth, so there's still that.
Additionally, the transmission problem has been around for a while. Even NASA had curiosity go dark for a while, so it's something that does legitimately need to be solved. We could solve it with a relay station in a different orbit. Would be nice to get something like that out of the planetary plane. Then it could beam between any two points on the disk whether planets were along the direct path or not -- At least that's how I did it in my networking simulation of the interplanetary Delay Tolerant Network. Hey, if there's going to people on Mars eventually, I plan to capitalize on it. Why not make sure my programs function in space?
Really though, we need to ditch the wold-wide-web. It's just dumb -- no, really, it has no idea what a file even is. A store and forward network with content hashes instead of URLs (filenames as human-readable nicknames) gives everyone free collocation, and decentralizes data storage, it's also much harder to snoop on because you could be downloading a popular video, picture, etc. from your neighbors who just watched it -- So it's even better on bandwidth. You rename the file 30 different ways and the network only has to transit one copy and set of info hashes. Bonus: No more "mixed content" warnings. A secured page pulling in resources by hash code knows they aren't tampered with. Yeah, the space Internet would kick even more ass here on Earth, can't wait to see what new tech the Mars race brings.
Mars One, has the right idea -- Reminds me of when Kennedy said we'd put men on the moon. You don't have to have everything planned out before you commit to a goal, and their goal isn't even as hard -- Don't even have to build their own rockets. A journey of 40 million miles starts with a single moronic impulse.