Actually, not so much for supporting Copernicanism, but for telling the masses about it. Another post in this thread points out the the church knew full well that Copernicus was right. However, the church pushed the Aristotelian view because it put the peasants in the exact place that the hierarchy wanted them.
Geez. Sounds like Microsoft source code. History, unlearned lesson, repetition...
Hold onto that thought, 'cause I'm about to blow a Mack truck-sized hole in it.
Do a google search on Alfred Wegener, and you'll see a guy who got his ass kicked all over the place for proposing a theory that contradicted scientific understanding at the time. And was harassed as vigorously as any religious heretic. Want more? Here's the frigging link.
Through the hoop, nothin' but net.
Do yourself a favor and check out Science's reaction to Darwin and doubters of Global Warning. Shocking behaviour all around, if you ask me.
When MS says that revealing their source reveals their trade secrets, they're lying - all the secrets are right their in the binaries.
Except that the copyrighted work, their source code, is protected by an encryption system known as "compiling"...
Re:Make a movie starring bin Laden and a Pig...
on
A New Kind of War
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· Score: 2
There's a NYTimes article that I read yesterday that pretty much blows holes in that idea. Here's the link. I apparently have a login cookie at work, but not at home, so I'm gonna have to quote from memory.
The author asked a bunch of young militant "Muslim" seminary students if they'd belive that Osama bin Laden was an evil man if the author showed them video of him doing evil acts. Their answer: "Everybody knows Americans can make fake pictures and movies, so we wouldn't believe it."
I'm afraid that they've got that angle covered.
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war?
on
A New Kind of War
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· Score: 2
Well... I guess then maybe we ought to study how he did it?
I've got a simple solution to the Afghan population. For the most part, they're too busy starving to death to worry about who's in charge (other than the fact that if they step out of line, the Taliban will kill them quicker than starvation will).
Bring in massive amounts of material aid to the refugee camps that are already forming. Food, decent shelter, medical care, education, and above all, physical security from our armed forces. It's going to take billions of dollars, but in the end, anyone who doesn't take advantage of the camps is in all probability an enemy, and can be dealt with as such.
The people of Afghanistan are not our enemies. Hunger and poverty are our enemies. I'm sure ObL has gotten thousands of recruits because he can afford to feed people more than once a week. The people that we need to take on are not starving to death, but using starvation and poverty to keep control. Yes folks, crippling poverty and hunger has in fact become a matter of National Security, and should be dealt with the same way we deal with other threats. Deal with it.
Thanks... Much apprish. That gave me enough to go on to do a google search. Actually, one link I found most enlightening was at www.thestarsandstripes.com. To wit:
On Oct. 3, 1989, after assuming a host of covert Reagan-era arrangements with Iraq that were intended to "balance" the Arab country against fundamentalist Iran, President George Bush signed National Security Directive 26 (NSD-26) "U.S. Policy Toward the Persian Gulf." With regard to Iraq, the Top Secret directive stated: "The United States should propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to moderate its behavior and to increase our influence."
I think this pretty much sums up the arrogance that our government has displayed in the last twenty years...
Any idea where to find documentation on that? My finger is hovering over the "extaordinary claims" button. I'm willing to beleive, but please provide sources.
And from what I hear on NPR, the NGOs have their hands so tied by the Taliban that none of that aid is actually getting to anybody... Except those that have no need of it, at any rate. Sounds like Somalia all over again.
I found it telling that the Taliban is composed almost entirely of mullahs trained in Pakistan. From my read of the article, the Pakistanis took a lesson straight out of the CIA's playbook and instituted a puppet government to further their own national interests (namely not having to give almost half of their country back to Afghanistan as a result of a 100-year-old treaty)... And I can see why they're suddenly taking a hard line against terrorism. They don't want to be held responsible for the situation and risk catching some of the shit that they know will be heading into the region.
What can be done? According to the article, Afghanistan is a country in name only, with the dominant form of government being localized tribalism. Freedom and all that stuff is well and good, but as the Iranian author pointed out, you've got to get yourself fed before you can think about it. Short and sweet: if Afghanistan is to be rescued from itself, somebody's gonna have to sweep everything away and try to run the "country" as a protectorate. And we all know how bad an idea that is (as both we and the Russians have learned over the past 20 or so years)...
God, that's twisted. But what can you expect out of someone who calls a giant purple baby-alien-thing with a TV in its tummy and no sexual characteristics whatsoever a blatant homosexual?
Criticising our noninvolvement with Rwanda is a strawman. We tried to do good in that area earlier, in Somalia, and saw our soldiers brutally butchered and dragged through the streets. Pardon me if we got the message that we weren't wanted there.
Not to dilute your point, as journalistic manipulation is absolutely unacceptable. However, NPR reported the same thing, and actually talked to a few of the Palestinians. This did happen, even though the alleged use of file footage because it makes a good picture is would be a disgusting abuse.
I know others have already replied, but I just want to add my voice, saying "Spot on!" It irritates me every time somebody on the news suggests that he was derelicting his duty. I didn't vote for him either, but while he was out of the spotlight, he was in position to do the most good possible should the need have arisen.
"Even so, it would just mean the same old thing, Law abiding citizens and companies are less secure while criminals are untouched."
Even more so... What happens when the backdoor gets compromised? What we're talking about here is a deliberate weakening of an encryption scheme, which flatly contradicts the purpose of encrypting anything in the first place!
What about using reverse steganography to generate the key? To wit, use the difference between successive bytes as the key instead of the actual CD values? You can even specify which bits to check... Compare each byte to the last, or every other byte, or every sixteenth byte... I think there's probably an endless amount of variations one can use to generate a key from a nonramdom dataset, as long as only the communicating parties know exactly how the data is used as the key. (Hmm. Getting flashbacks to SDMI and watermarking here...) I know it still wouldn't be strictly nonrandom. But if one makes it just hard enough to break that the authorities can't read the message until it's too late to act on its contents, then the (theoretical) communication has had its intended result.
One final thing (and I know this could be considered offtopic, but it really needs to be said)... Things like this proposal to mandate backdoors is tantamount to a presumption of guilt, and should not be tolerated in a free society. It may seem heartless and cruel for me to say it, but as deplorable and sickening Tuesday's event was, it's the price we all have to pay for Freedom, and each one of the victims is a martyr to the cause. I personally am not going to let this change the way I live my life. If I am to be wounded or killed in such a determined, vicious, and deadly attack in the future, there is virtually nothing I can do to prevent it, even after submitting to draconian limits on my personal liberty. One of the tautologies of life is "Shit happens."
With that in mind, who has lived a fuller life in the end? One who goes on with life recognizing the risk that this can always happen again, or one who huddles cravenly behind illusory protections and refuses to take the risks that make life worth living? If you want to reduce your quality of life in order to gain some sort of ephemeral sense of security and safety, be my guest. But don't you dare force me to do the same. (And I know somebody's going to come back with a flame to the tune of, "Don't you dare risk my safety by demanding your liberty!" To you I say, "Stuff it." )
I'm not saying we should do nothing. Far from it. But demonstrating that we are not the weak and stupid people that some believe us to be would be far preferable to proving them right.
Re:emergency staircase
on
More WTC News
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· Score: 2
Wow. That thing's pretty cool. But yeah, handicapped people would be SOL with it.
Although the references in the literature to "flaming buildings" was a bit amusing (yes, I understand it's a mistranslation...).
No, I agree in principle on all counts. Our government does not need to be pulling the crap it does in our names, and I think it's absolutely deplorable. But I have to ask, how responsible can I or any other person-on-the-street American citizen be for something like Iran-Contra where the truth was actively kept from us in almost every way possible? We didn't have a clue what was going on until a C-130 full of weapons for the Contras pancaked in somewhere in Central America. And that sparked an investigation that should have led to the impeachment of a president, had we the evidence and the balls to pin it on him. Yeah, what happens eventually leaks out, but far, far too late for any of us to do anything to prevent it. Personally, I burn with an impotent sort of rage when I think about the sort of crap that happened in El Salvador and Honduras just because our government didn't like the governmental system of Nicaragua. I just don't see how one solitary ant can be expected to move a mountain.
I guess I'm saying that you have to make the buck stop somewhere, or you'll conclude that every human being on the planet needs to be executed posthaste. The dividing line between active participants and and everyone else is a convenient and well-recognized place to do so, even if not absolutely 100% just in all cases.
Re:emergency staircase
on
More WTC News
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Yeah... I've been wondering if some sort of "emergency slide" would be more effective at getting people out in a hurry... I picture something like the spiral slides in a waterpark, located in the central space of the building. Probably with some sort of mechanism to keep everyone on the slide moving at the same speed (wouldn't have to be powered; a simple harness attached to a cable to provide resistance would probably do the trick)... 'Course, this wouldn't have helped people above the impact site, but I can't help but think that with some design work that an idea like this could make a dent in the length of time it takes to evacuate such large buildings. And I don't think there'd be much of a barrier to handicapped people using such a system either, although I could be wrong on that one.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
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· Score: 2
We're not talking population densities anywhere near what we have here in the U.S. or in other major cities around the world. What part of the word "share" do they not understand?
Dude, I know we're not angels. We're just as human as you or anyone else in the world. If you feel I'm directly responsible for every evil that America has done, would you advocate that I slit my throat in protest? Do you want the videotape as proof?
Nobody deserves what happened yesterday. The people who can do such things are malignantly twisted individuals. At least I can say that I try, and feel remorse when I fuck up. Go look at my posting history for today. (Yes, I got a little excited when the shit hit the fan yesterday. Who didn't? I understand that I wasn't thinking clearly.) None of us here are cookie-cutter duplicates spouting the same party line. To hold the view that we are is to hold in your heart the very kind of blind, hating generalization that allowed the horror of 11 September, 2001 to happen in the first place.
And yes. If there are citizens of the United States of America who are directly responsible for terrorist acts or who directly fund such acts, they should be given no more consideration than anyone foreign to the U.S. The KKK comes to mind as a prime example. And I know it's "politically unreliable" to suggest it, but letting Kissenger face trial at the Hague would be the right thing to do, in my opinion. It would show that when America does the wrong thing, it can feel remorse, pick itself up, and try to right the wrongs.
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 2
"My watch passes metal detectors without causing a blip..."
Which I think is damned funny, because I can't go throught the metal detectors in Jackson, Mississippi without being wand-searched because the metal in my shoes and in the button on my jeans sets the thing off every time. Why do they set them so sensitive in the sticks but ignore the problem in more densely populated (and highly threatened) areas?
"...let the man who gets tired of not getting his whiskey fast enough shoot the stewardess."
Hmm. Anyone stupid enough to do so would probably get popped himself. There's a reason we're still around to discuss this. It's called Mutually Assured Destruction, A.K.A. Nuclear Deterrence. These things work on the micro scale too...
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, not so much for supporting Copernicanism, but for telling the masses about it. Another post in this thread points out the the church knew full well that Copernicus was right. However, the church pushed the Aristotelian view because it put the peasants in the exact place that the hierarchy wanted them.
Geez. Sounds like Microsoft source code. History, unlearned lesson, repetition...
Hold onto that thought, 'cause I'm about to blow a Mack truck-sized hole in it.
Do a google search on Alfred Wegener, and you'll see a guy who got his ass kicked all over the place for proposing a theory that contradicted scientific understanding at the time. And was harassed as vigorously as any religious heretic. Want more? Here's the frigging link.
Through the hoop, nothin' but net.
Do yourself a favor and check out Science's reaction to Darwin and doubters of Global Warning. Shocking behaviour all around, if you ask me.
Good point. I know I'd use a feature like that...
Hmm. Sounds like it's time for the security industry to take a sabbatical... And then sweep up the pieces after everything self-destructs...
I don't see any other way, really. If security is outlawed, only outlaws will have security.
When MS says that revealing their source reveals their trade secrets, they're lying - all the secrets are right their in the binaries.
Except that the copyrighted work, their source code, is protected by an encryption system known as "compiling"...
There's a NYTimes article that I read yesterday that pretty much blows holes in that idea. Here's the link. I apparently have a login cookie at work, but not at home, so I'm gonna have to quote from memory.
The author asked a bunch of young militant "Muslim" seminary students if they'd belive that Osama bin Laden was an evil man if the author showed them video of him doing evil acts. Their answer: "Everybody knows Americans can make fake pictures and movies, so we wouldn't believe it."
I'm afraid that they've got that angle covered.
Well... I guess then maybe we ought to study how he did it?
I've got a simple solution to the Afghan population. For the most part, they're too busy starving to death to worry about who's in charge (other than the fact that if they step out of line, the Taliban will kill them quicker than starvation will).
Bring in massive amounts of material aid to the refugee camps that are already forming. Food, decent shelter, medical care, education, and above all, physical security from our armed forces. It's going to take billions of dollars, but in the end, anyone who doesn't take advantage of the camps is in all probability an enemy, and can be dealt with as such.
The people of Afghanistan are not our enemies. Hunger and poverty are our enemies. I'm sure ObL has gotten thousands of recruits because he can afford to feed people more than once a week. The people that we need to take on are not starving to death, but using starvation and poverty to keep control. Yes folks, crippling poverty and hunger has in fact become a matter of National Security, and should be dealt with the same way we deal with other threats. Deal with it.
I think this pretty much sums up the arrogance that our government has displayed in the last twenty years...
Any idea where to find documentation on that? My finger is hovering over the "extaordinary claims" button. I'm willing to beleive, but please provide sources.
And from what I hear on NPR, the NGOs have their hands so tied by the Taliban that none of that aid is actually getting to anybody... Except those that have no need of it, at any rate. Sounds like Somalia all over again.
I found it telling that the Taliban is composed almost entirely of mullahs trained in Pakistan. From my read of the article, the Pakistanis took a lesson straight out of the CIA's playbook and instituted a puppet government to further their own national interests (namely not having to give almost half of their country back to Afghanistan as a result of a 100-year-old treaty)... And I can see why they're suddenly taking a hard line against terrorism. They don't want to be held responsible for the situation and risk catching some of the shit that they know will be heading into the region.
What can be done? According to the article, Afghanistan is a country in name only, with the dominant form of government being localized tribalism. Freedom and all that stuff is well and good, but as the Iranian author pointed out, you've got to get yourself fed before you can think about it. Short and sweet: if Afghanistan is to be rescued from itself, somebody's gonna have to sweep everything away and try to run the "country" as a protectorate. And we all know how bad an idea that is (as both we and the Russians have learned over the past 20 or so years)...
God, that's twisted. But what can you expect out of someone who calls a giant purple baby-alien-thing with a TV in its tummy and no sexual characteristics whatsoever a blatant homosexual?
"Can't everyone just relax and be nice to each other for a change?"
Better cover your ass when you say things like that... Somebody might nail you to a tree.
(Also tongue-in-cheek...)
Criticising our noninvolvement with Rwanda is a strawman. We tried to do good in that area earlier, in Somalia, and saw our soldiers brutally butchered and dragged through the streets. Pardon me if we got the message that we weren't wanted there.
Not to dilute your point, as journalistic manipulation is absolutely unacceptable. However, NPR reported the same thing, and actually talked to a few of the Palestinians. This did happen, even though the alleged use of file footage because it makes a good picture is would be a disgusting abuse.
I know others have already replied, but I just want to add my voice, saying "Spot on!" It irritates me every time somebody on the news suggests that he was derelicting his duty. I didn't vote for him either, but while he was out of the spotlight, he was in position to do the most good possible should the need have arisen.
"Even so, it would just mean the same old thing, Law abiding citizens and companies are less secure while criminals are untouched."
Even more so... What happens when the backdoor gets compromised? What we're talking about here is a deliberate weakening of an encryption scheme, which flatly contradicts the purpose of encrypting anything in the first place!
What about using reverse steganography to generate the key? To wit, use the difference between successive bytes as the key instead of the actual CD values? You can even specify which bits to check... Compare each byte to the last, or every other byte, or every sixteenth byte... I think there's probably an endless amount of variations one can use to generate a key from a nonramdom dataset, as long as only the communicating parties know exactly how the data is used as the key. (Hmm. Getting flashbacks to SDMI and watermarking here...) I know it still wouldn't be strictly nonrandom. But if one makes it just hard enough to break that the authorities can't read the message until it's too late to act on its contents, then the (theoretical) communication has had its intended result.
One final thing (and I know this could be considered offtopic, but it really needs to be said)... Things like this proposal to mandate backdoors is tantamount to a presumption of guilt, and should not be tolerated in a free society. It may seem heartless and cruel for me to say it, but as deplorable and sickening Tuesday's event was, it's the price we all have to pay for Freedom, and each one of the victims is a martyr to the cause. I personally am not going to let this change the way I live my life. If I am to be wounded or killed in such a determined, vicious, and deadly attack in the future, there is virtually nothing I can do to prevent it, even after submitting to draconian limits on my personal liberty. One of the tautologies of life is "Shit happens."
With that in mind, who has lived a fuller life in the end? One who goes on with life recognizing the risk that this can always happen again, or one who huddles cravenly behind illusory protections and refuses to take the risks that make life worth living? If you want to reduce your quality of life in order to gain some sort of ephemeral sense of security and safety, be my guest. But don't you dare force me to do the same. (And I know somebody's going to come back with a flame to the tune of, "Don't you dare risk my safety by demanding your liberty!" To you I say, "Stuff it." )
I'm not saying we should do nothing. Far from it. But demonstrating that we are not the weak and stupid people that some believe us to be would be far preferable to proving them right.
Wow. That thing's pretty cool. But yeah, handicapped people would be SOL with it.
Although the references in the literature to "flaming buildings" was a bit amusing (yes, I understand it's a mistranslation...).
No, I agree in principle on all counts. Our government does not need to be pulling the crap it does in our names, and I think it's absolutely deplorable. But I have to ask, how responsible can I or any other person-on-the-street American citizen be for something like Iran-Contra where the truth was actively kept from us in almost every way possible? We didn't have a clue what was going on until a C-130 full of weapons for the Contras pancaked in somewhere in Central America. And that sparked an investigation that should have led to the impeachment of a president, had we the evidence and the balls to pin it on him. Yeah, what happens eventually leaks out, but far, far too late for any of us to do anything to prevent it. Personally, I burn with an impotent sort of rage when I think about the sort of crap that happened in El Salvador and Honduras just because our government didn't like the governmental system of Nicaragua. I just don't see how one solitary ant can be expected to move a mountain.
I guess I'm saying that you have to make the buck stop somewhere, or you'll conclude that every human being on the planet needs to be executed posthaste. The dividing line between active participants and and everyone else is a convenient and well-recognized place to do so, even if not absolutely 100% just in all cases.
Yeah... I've been wondering if some sort of "emergency slide" would be more effective at getting people out in a hurry... I picture something like the spiral slides in a waterpark, located in the central space of the building. Probably with some sort of mechanism to keep everyone on the slide moving at the same speed (wouldn't have to be powered; a simple harness attached to a cable to provide resistance would probably do the trick)... 'Course, this wouldn't have helped people above the impact site, but I can't help but think that with some design work that an idea like this could make a dent in the length of time it takes to evacuate such large buildings. And I don't think there'd be much of a barrier to handicapped people using such a system either, although I could be wrong on that one.
We're not talking population densities anywhere near what we have here in the U.S. or in other major cities around the world. What part of the word "share" do they not understand?
Dude, I know we're not angels. We're just as human as you or anyone else in the world. If you feel I'm directly responsible for every evil that America has done, would you advocate that I slit my throat in protest? Do you want the videotape as proof?
Nobody deserves what happened yesterday. The people who can do such things are malignantly twisted individuals. At least I can say that I try, and feel remorse when I fuck up. Go look at my posting history for today. (Yes, I got a little excited when the shit hit the fan yesterday. Who didn't? I understand that I wasn't thinking clearly.) None of us here are cookie-cutter duplicates spouting the same party line. To hold the view that we are is to hold in your heart the very kind of blind, hating generalization that allowed the horror of 11 September, 2001 to happen in the first place.
And yes. If there are citizens of the United States of America who are directly responsible for terrorist acts or who directly fund such acts, they should be given no more consideration than anyone foreign to the U.S. The KKK comes to mind as a prime example. And I know it's "politically unreliable" to suggest it, but letting Kissenger face trial at the Hague would be the right thing to do, in my opinion. It would show that when America does the wrong thing, it can feel remorse, pick itself up, and try to right the wrongs.
Which I think is damned funny, because I can't go throught the metal detectors in Jackson, Mississippi without being wand-searched because the metal in my shoes and in the button on my jeans sets the thing off every time. Why do they set them so sensitive in the sticks but ignore the problem in more densely populated (and highly threatened) areas?
"...let the man who gets tired of not getting his whiskey fast enough shoot the stewardess."
Hmm. Anyone stupid enough to do so would probably get popped himself. There's a reason we're still around to discuss this. It's called Mutually Assured Destruction, A.K.A. Nuclear Deterrence. These things work on the micro scale too...