why was megaupload raided when mediafire which was a much worse infringer (until recently) but is based in Texas of all places was not raided....seems might strange to me.
Because it's based in Texas and not run by a shady German businessman. US==moral double standards for everything
You do know that Megaupload voluntarily offered a web interface where rights holders could delete any content they wanted to delete?
You are aware of the fact that Megauploading was processing 800 file transfers per second 24 hours a day, making it impossible to monitor for copyright infringement? That they nevertheless had officials for dealing with any DMCA takedown request and fully complied with all of them? Just like Google, Youtube, and dozens of other file transfer services?
You know that Megaupload was prohibited by US law and the laws of many other countries from proactively snooping for potential copyright infringments in their users' accounts?
There is a good interview with Dotcom he recently gave for an NZ TV channel that might correct your prejudices a bit. I'm not saying he's a saint, but the allegations against Megaupload are essentially made up. The case is indeed pretty clear.
He legally changed his name to "Dotcom", but I personally disregard such clear and obvious publicity stunts.
I personally think it's funny. Anyway, thanks a lot for letting thousands of/. readers know about your opinion, no matter how unimportant or irrelevant it might be.
With Apple as the vanguard, companies have already done their best to lock down every device that is not a PC as tightly as possible during the past 10 years. They want to retain all control and make it illegal to hack, alter or use a device in the way you want even after you've bought it. Ideally, they'd wish to put the same software on all devices and make you pay to unlock features. Now they want to do the same on the PC by forcing developers to use their distribution channels and locking down the boot process.
Bottomline: The damage is already done. We'd need to have customer protection laws to invalidate all these measures and EULAs, but since the industry lobby is fairly strong, this is not going to happen -- at least not in the US.
Re:Let them talk forever, it's what the EU is for
on
Bye ACTA, Hello CETA
·
· Score: 1
what's been happening recently? Hell no. Greeks and the other countries that have been forced to beg for aid feeling they've lost all sovereignty and is being dictated by France and Germany
What a nonsense. These countries have full sovereignity, if they wanted they could leave the Euro zone any time -- and watch their country go down the drain. Luckily not even the Greek voters wanted that. Likeweise, it is completely ridiculous and irresponsible to ask for billions and billions of money without accepting any conditions on it; politicians like Tsipras are a joke and a danger to the public. It is truly sad that there seems to be a widespread trend against the EU now. People in rich countries don't want to pay even though they have benefited tremendously from the union and people in poor ones erroneously believe they didn't fuck up their economies on their own.
The sad fact is that most people have no clue how much they actually get from the EU every day, such as lack of wars or the possibility to freely move to and work in any European country they like. People also don't always realize how well. Give up the EU and give it another 50 years, and there will be another atrocial war in the middle of Europe.
Disclaimer: I'm a European, currently working as a foreigner in Portugal.
Arguably, LISP is the most powerful language one can program in today. It is also one of the more syntactically challenging
It is annoying that this nonsensical myth keeps coming up, which must be spread by people who have never done any extensive LISP programming. LISP has without any doubt an extremely simple syntax, in terms of syntactical simplicity it comes right after FORTH and is only surpassed by Scheme. A LISP program is nothing but a collection of S-Expressions. Yes, there are many parentheses, but in combination with prefix operators these are the reason why LISP's syntax is so simple, not vice versa.
When you're doing real LISP programming, the problem is rather it's semantics. Every program and every package creates a re-usable, often domain-specific sub-language, and it is very easy to loose track of all the functions you have, accidentally reinvent the wheel, or translate between redundant data representations. This in combination with lack of strong typing creates a maintainability problem. It is very easy to write obfuscated code in LISP that only very experienced programmers can decipher. However, the reason for this is almost never complicated syntax, which would have to be created by reader extensions and macros, but rather overly complex abstraction in combination with sloppy function naming and/or lack of documentation.
Hmm, there is going to be a continuing and significnt need for a device that has a real keyboard for all the people who write a lot of text every day
As one of those people I agree and would like to add something. If you're really writing a lot, not just any keyboard will do. Most laptops nowadays have really bad keyboards, and they became worse when everybody started to copy Apple's 'improved' laptop keyboards. Luckily, classic thinkpads still have decent keyboards. But of course, nothing beats buckling spring keyboards or Cherry switches. (I don't have experience with the latter but use a Unicomp at home; probably the best buy in computer hardware I've ever made -- and no, I'm not getting paid for saying this.) While we're at it,I should also mention that remapping capslock and control in case the control key is not next to the A key on your keyboard makes using it much more comfortable, especially if you're not a touch typist.
As for online storage and "lean" desktops. Well, people and companies will use that until they get burned badly.
Not really. The majority of people buy just about anything you throw at them if it's advertised enough, but this doesn't imply that they really want or need it -- unless you consider demand that is created artificially by marketing experts as an expression of people's desires, which is rather cynical IMHO.
I'd love to have a black&white e-ink reader with at least a 14'' screen that is able to display PDFs with lots of formulas properly, though, but after having waited for one for years I'm starting to believe that such a machine will never be produced. I'd also like to have a clunky laptop with model M style keyboard; or, a super-cheap little device with character-based LED that is freely programmable and has nearly endless battery life. Somehow the "revolutions" always result in products I don't want or need, whereas the products I want or need don't exist. Apparently I'm just not the right customer.:-/
I read huge amount of texts every day for a living, so you can kindly shove Morton's Demon up your arse.
If there's ever more a clear-cut case of "Morton's Demon", it's "I googled to verify my preconceived notion but never even bothered to google the most trivial of counterexamples". Aka, what you did.
Okay, fair enough. Good point. I really didn't know that UK was involved in that, too. The funny thing is that I just heard a lengthy talk about cognitive biases yesterday. By the way, research shows that they are practically always in place and cannot be defated effectively by becoming aware of them. If you want to get rid of them, you need to use particular methodology like carfeully planned experiments or ACH.
Yes, the OP used the word "extradition", but also said that the US wants to "secretly extradite" Assange from Sweden
Hence the article about the British secretly extraditing, rendering, and all sorts of other nasty stuff in cooperation (and even sometimes in the lead of) the US. So your point was...?
I was really just replying to your initial reply to the OP. I think, if you go back to it and read it again, you will recognize that you misinterpreted him -- as if he wanted to say that Sweden is more likely to officially extradite Assange than the UK. I merely suggested that this is not what the OP meant. That was my only point.
Premise: Conspiracies have happened on Earth in the past. Conclusion: Arguably the most high-profile person accused of crimes right now on Earth is about to fall victim to a secret conspiracy in highly visible violation of treaties while the world is watching, and so should not have to stand trial against serious criminal charges like a regular person would. Even though the conspiracy would have made far more sense to have acted long ago.
Sorry, but the logic train missed a few stops there.
That wasn't at all what I intended to convey. I see some cognitive biases at work in your reasoning above as well. Just to make this clear, the only way to make educated guesses about the future is from past evidence. Your attempt to ridiculize this fact is not very helpful. However, I mentioned the CIA rendition cases merely in order to illustrate that -- although I do not agree with what the OP seems to have suggested -- his suggestion is not as irrational as it may seem to you, although I believe I agree with you in the Assange case.
Have you ever read a history of the CIA? I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Just pick any book you like, as long as it is written by someone with reasonable academic credentials. You might get a surprise.
Jesus Christ, I'm a trained scientist. I read huge amount of texts every day for a living, so you can kindly shove Morton's Demon up your arse.
Yes, the OP used the word "extradition", but also said that the US wants to "secretly extradite" Assange from Sweden in order to torture him and indefinitely hold im without bringing any charges. If you think he meant "extradition" as in "official extradition, acknowledging official extradition treaties of UK or Sweden with the US", then I'm a bit sorry for you. (Not that I really care, I'm just wasting some time on/. instead of reading a paper...)
But here is one thing you should perhaps consider for a moment if you have the time. Suppose a few years ago someone had told you that the CIA maintains a number of secret prisons in sovereign European countries, where they bring supposed enemies of the US whom they have kidnapped, subject these people to torture and hold them indefinitely without charges -- would you have believed that person?
Really? I didn't know that. Swedens involvement is well-known, I googled it before my post. I probably missed UKs involvement, could you provide linsk to newspaper articles? Of course, if the UK was just as involved in unlawful renditions as Sweden, then the OP's point wouldn't make much sense.
Your point?
My point was that the OP claimed that Assange would be kidnapped and tortured by the US if he goes to Sweden. I don't think so, but your reply was completely off topic (about extradition, which the OP didn't talk about), because you evidently didn't read the OP's post. So I corrected that.
And are you so seriously into conspiracy theories that you think that they're going to "secretly" do anything in blatant violation of international treaties, with someone who's probably the highest profile wanted person on the planet right now?
No, I'm not.
Especially after the Swedish prime minister himself has pointed out that Sweden would need UK permission?
Here again, you completely ignore what was being discussed. I don't agree with the OP, but your replies illustrate such a lack of reading skills that I felt I had to say something.:P
Thank you for putting someone who has been maintaining a link site into the same category with someone who sends letter bombs and murderers. For a moment I was a bit unsure, thinking that in extradition requests the seriousness of the crime and potential differences of maximum penalties in both countries ought to be considered, but your post has made it quite clear to me that having a site with links to potentially copyright infringing content should be treated directly on a par with terrorism and murder.
You've just given the most convoluted explanation of dead reckoning I've ever read.
But isn't the problem that, since the error increases over time, the drones prefer to resort to GPS if they think it's available? What I find strange about the Iranian story, though, is that one would assume that a US drone only used encrypted GPS signals, i.e. P(Y) code according to Wikipedia. These shouldn't be spoofable. So was that perhaps a classical "fallback to an unsafe option" security problem?
...will choose the option "Yes, I want to see adult content."
And to be honest, speaking from experience as a child of the internet-free 80s, it is much better to wank off to real porn than to mail order catalogue models and used old adult magazines.
Or, you just try to harm for the next 30 years those companies who imposed the fine with their immoral lawsuits, invent and promote new p2p technology and generally try to make sure these companies loose billions after billions.
At least that's what I would do if somebody told me to pay 1.5 million dollars for maintaining a site with links to files that could be used to obtain potentially copyright infringing content.
Participators need to understand the culture of Iran.
Yes, let's all gather around, share our feelings, get to really know each other, sing "Kumbaya" around the campfire, and peace will follow. F***ing A.
The U.S. and Iran aren't preparing for war because we don't understand each other. We're preparing for war because we *do* understand each other.
What you say is unbelievably ignorant. I bet that you have never talked to any actual, living Iranian in your life and probably know absolutely nothing about Persian culture or even Iran as a country. (Like e.g. that you can go skiing there. You didn't know that, right?) In contrast to what you might presume with prejudice the Iranians I've met at conferences were friendly, not wearing beards, and had world-views that resemble most closely those of Europeans. (From my personal experience, Iranians are rather skeptical about the US, which is not very suprising given that the US has attacked and occupied a neighboring country.)
Moreover, the only people in US and Iran who are perhaps preparing for a war are the people in small circles of governments, each of which are corrupt in their own ways. The vast majorities of people in these countries certainly do not want a war. However, it is most likely that the US not preparing for a war with Iran, and of course Iran is not preparing for a war with the US either. (The latter would be so patently absurd that not even the current Iranian government would consider it.) Its all just rhetorics, geopolitical strategy plus some cheap attempts to score points in inner politics.
The Iranian people are suppressed by a theocracy. There is a dangerous moral police on the streets, so most of the live is within their homes, where they throw parties and dance to pop music. AFAIK, the situation is similar to other totalitarian states like the GDR or 70ies Soviet Union. People are careful what they are saying to whom and stay amongst friends. But most of them are pro-Western, although not pro American, and would like to live in a more secular and modern Muslim democracy.
I've never been using KDE so far, but have been working daily on a Gnome 2 desktop and now on XFCE. My impression is that people want and need a few windows with reasonable placement, workspaces, a panel with start menu und a few information icons, and a working file manager -- all of this is provided by current desktop environments. In my personal opinion, the rest is unneccessary. Linux and Unix desktops shouldn't compete with all the silly graphics eye candy and inconsistent web-like user interfaces of other OSes, most Linux users don't want or need that.
Which brings me to my only real concern: I want immediate responsiveness and immediate feedback to any user interaction, but even XFCE is sometimes too slow on my i7 920 machine. At least it's not as snappy as Mac OS classic used to be, and I can't see a technical reason for that. That's what desktop developers should focus on.
Anyway, lack of interest might just come from the fact that all desktop environments except Unity do for their users what they are supposed to do.
Moore went on, "Congress was criticized for not being tech savvy, but from a lot of the comments we got it became clear that the people who were calling us did not understand the bill any better than we did."
Now that is is a bizarre statement. Should they have understood the bill better than the people who made it?
I'm working in that field and know Pearl's work very well. The problem with uncertainty and current framework is the complexity. Probability theory, possibility measures, ranking theory, plausibility measures, Dempster-Shafer and all these slight variations of the same theme are altogether computationally intractable. Strongly heuristic shortcuts based on implausible assumptions are used (like stipulating independence between random variables for purely technical reasons), and much better ones need to be developed. Human cognition takes amazing shortcuts and AI methods are much too combinatorial in contrast to that.
Moreover, the problem of knowledge representation is still not solved adequately. Yes, there are a few large ontologies like Cyc, but they do not suffice. Basically, a lot of tools are there, but they are disconnected and there is no unifying framework or representation at all. To give you an example from NLP, the kind of tools used by computer scientists (e.g. description logic, event calculus) are practically worthless for doing real-world semantics, and of course logic has the same combinatorial complexity issues.
Breakthroughs will come by combining symbolic AI with connectionist and geometric representations, but only few people work on that (e.g. Smolensky), the math is complicated and not what your average AI/CS guy or computational linguist can handle.
I think what Norvig should have said is that robots with convincible, but ultimately non-intelligent soft AI will enter the consumer market within the next few decades - which is true, but something else entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's pretty clear that he's just retarded, though not deliberately.
Hm ... you could cut off your thumbs and replace them with something smaller?
why was megaupload raided when mediafire which was a much worse infringer (until recently) but is based in Texas of all places was not raided....seems might strange to me.
Because it's based in Texas and not run by a shady German businessman. US==moral double standards for everything
Wait a minute...
You do know that Megaupload voluntarily offered a web interface where rights holders could delete any content they wanted to delete?
You are aware of the fact that Megauploading was processing 800 file transfers per second 24 hours a day, making it impossible to monitor for copyright infringement? That they nevertheless had officials for dealing with any DMCA takedown request and fully complied with all of them? Just like Google, Youtube, and dozens of other file transfer services?
You know that Megaupload was prohibited by US law and the laws of many other countries from proactively snooping for potential copyright infringments in their users' accounts?
There is a good interview with Dotcom he recently gave for an NZ TV channel that might correct your prejudices a bit. I'm not saying he's a saint, but the allegations against Megaupload are essentially made up. The case is indeed pretty clear.
He legally changed his name to "Dotcom", but I personally disregard such clear and obvious publicity stunts.
I personally think it's funny. Anyway, thanks a lot for letting thousands of /. readers know about your opinion, no matter how unimportant or irrelevant it might be.
With Apple as the vanguard, companies have already done their best to lock down every device that is not a PC as tightly as possible during the past 10 years. They want to retain all control and make it illegal to hack, alter or use a device in the way you want even after you've bought it. Ideally, they'd wish to put the same software on all devices and make you pay to unlock features. Now they want to do the same on the PC by forcing developers to use their distribution channels and locking down the boot process.
Bottomline: The damage is already done. We'd need to have customer protection laws to invalidate all these measures and EULAs, but since the industry lobby is fairly strong, this is not going to happen -- at least not in the US.
what's been happening recently? Hell no. Greeks and the other countries that have been forced to beg for aid feeling they've lost all sovereignty and is being dictated by France and Germany
What a nonsense. These countries have full sovereignity, if they wanted they could leave the Euro zone any time -- and watch their country go down the drain. Luckily not even the Greek voters wanted that. Likeweise, it is completely ridiculous and irresponsible to ask for billions and billions of money without accepting any conditions on it; politicians like Tsipras are a joke and a danger to the public. It is truly sad that there seems to be a widespread trend against the EU now. People in rich countries don't want to pay even though they have benefited tremendously from the union and people in poor ones erroneously believe they didn't fuck up their economies on their own.
The sad fact is that most people have no clue how much they actually get from the EU every day, such as lack of wars or the possibility to freely move to and work in any European country they like. People also don't always realize how well. Give up the EU and give it another 50 years, and there will be another atrocial war in the middle of Europe.
Disclaimer: I'm a European, currently working as a foreigner in Portugal.
Arguably, LISP is the most powerful language one can program in today. It is also one of the more syntactically challenging
It is annoying that this nonsensical myth keeps coming up, which must be spread by people who have never done any extensive LISP programming. LISP has without any doubt an extremely simple syntax, in terms of syntactical simplicity it comes right after FORTH and is only surpassed by Scheme. A LISP program is nothing but a collection of S-Expressions. Yes, there are many parentheses, but in combination with prefix operators these are the reason why LISP's syntax is so simple, not vice versa.
When you're doing real LISP programming, the problem is rather it's semantics. Every program and every package creates a re-usable, often domain-specific sub-language, and it is very easy to loose track of all the functions you have, accidentally reinvent the wheel, or translate between redundant data representations. This in combination with lack of strong typing creates a maintainability problem. It is very easy to write obfuscated code in LISP that only very experienced programmers can decipher. However, the reason for this is almost never complicated syntax, which would have to be created by reader extensions and macros, but rather overly complex abstraction in combination with sloppy function naming and/or lack of documentation.
Hmm, there is going to be a continuing and significnt need for a device that has a real keyboard for all the people who write a lot of text every day
As one of those people I agree and would like to add something. If you're really writing a lot, not just any keyboard will do. Most laptops nowadays have really bad keyboards, and they became worse when everybody started to copy Apple's 'improved' laptop keyboards. Luckily, classic thinkpads still have decent keyboards. But of course, nothing beats buckling spring keyboards or Cherry switches. (I don't have experience with the latter but use a Unicomp at home; probably the best buy in computer hardware I've ever made -- and no, I'm not getting paid for saying this.) While we're at it,I should also mention that remapping capslock and control in case the control key is not next to the A key on your keyboard makes using it much more comfortable, especially if you're not a touch typist.
As for online storage and "lean" desktops. Well, people and companies will use that until they get burned badly.
metaphysical certainty
Perhaps you're right. We should probably spent the 2 million dollars/year on improving human intelligence first.
Not really. The majority of people buy just about anything you throw at them if it's advertised enough, but this doesn't imply that they really want or need it -- unless you consider demand that is created artificially by marketing experts as an expression of people's desires, which is rather cynical IMHO.
Me neither.
I'd love to have a black&white e-ink reader with at least a 14'' screen that is able to display PDFs with lots of formulas properly, though, but after having waited for one for years I'm starting to believe that such a machine will never be produced. I'd also like to have a clunky laptop with model M style keyboard; or, a super-cheap little device with character-based LED that is freely programmable and has nearly endless battery life. Somehow the "revolutions" always result in products I don't want or need, whereas the products I want or need don't exist. Apparently I'm just not the right customer. :-/
If there's ever more a clear-cut case of "Morton's Demon", it's "I googled to verify my preconceived notion but never even bothered to google the most trivial of counterexamples". Aka, what you did.
Okay, fair enough. Good point. I really didn't know that UK was involved in that, too. The funny thing is that I just heard a lengthy talk about cognitive biases yesterday. By the way, research shows that they are practically always in place and cannot be defated effectively by becoming aware of them. If you want to get rid of them, you need to use particular methodology like carfeully planned experiments or ACH.
I was really just replying to your initial reply to the OP. I think, if you go back to it and read it again, you will recognize that you misinterpreted him -- as if he wanted to say that Sweden is more likely to officially extradite Assange than the UK. I merely suggested that this is not what the OP meant. That was my only point.
Premise: Conspiracies have happened on Earth in the past.
Conclusion: Arguably the most high-profile person accused of crimes right now on Earth is about to fall victim to a secret conspiracy in highly visible violation of treaties while the world is watching, and so should not have to stand trial against serious criminal charges like a regular person would. Even though the conspiracy would have made far more sense to have acted long ago.
Sorry, but the logic train missed a few stops there.
That wasn't at all what I intended to convey. I see some cognitive biases at work in your reasoning above as well. Just to make this clear, the only way to make educated guesses about the future is from past evidence. Your attempt to ridiculize this fact is not very helpful. However, I mentioned the CIA rendition cases merely in order to illustrate that -- although I do not agree with what the OP seems to have suggested -- his suggestion is not as irrational as it may seem to you, although I believe I agree with you in the Assange case.
Have you ever read a history of the CIA? I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Just pick any book you like, as long as it is written by someone with reasonable academic credentials. You might get a surprise.
Jesus Christ, I'm a trained scientist. I read huge amount of texts every day for a living, so you can kindly shove Morton's Demon up your arse.
Yes, the OP used the word "extradition", but also said that the US wants to "secretly extradite" Assange from Sweden in order to torture him and indefinitely hold im without bringing any charges. If you think he meant "extradition" as in "official extradition, acknowledging official extradition treaties of UK or Sweden with the US", then I'm a bit sorry for you. (Not that I really care, I'm just wasting some time on /. instead of reading a paper...)
But here is one thing you should perhaps consider for a moment if you have the time. Suppose a few years ago someone had told you that the CIA maintains a number of secret prisons in sovereign European countries, where they bring supposed enemies of the US whom they have kidnapped, subject these people to torture and hold them indefinitely without charges -- would you have believed that person?
I certainly wouldn't have believed a word.
As has the UK, and much more egregiously.
Really? I didn't know that. Swedens involvement is well-known, I googled it before my post. I probably missed UKs involvement, could you provide linsk to newspaper articles? Of course, if the UK was just as involved in unlawful renditions as Sweden, then the OP's point wouldn't make much sense.
Your point?
My point was that the OP claimed that Assange would be kidnapped and tortured by the US if he goes to Sweden. I don't think so, but your reply was completely off topic (about extradition, which the OP didn't talk about), because you evidently didn't read the OP's post. So I corrected that.
And are you so seriously into conspiracy theories that you think that they're going to "secretly" do anything in blatant violation of international treaties, with someone who's probably the highest profile wanted person on the planet right now?
No, I'm not.
Especially after the Swedish prime minister himself has pointed out that Sweden would need UK permission?
Here again, you completely ignore what was being discussed. I don't agree with the OP, but your replies illustrate such a lack of reading skills that I felt I had to say something. :P
Unfortunately, Sweden has already assisted in the unlawful rendition and torture of foreigners...
Which is funny, given that, say, a Danish conservative would be considered a left-wing socialist or communist in the US.
Thank you for putting someone who has been maintaining a link site into the same category with someone who sends letter bombs and murderers. For a moment I was a bit unsure, thinking that in extradition requests the seriousness of the crime and potential differences of maximum penalties in both countries ought to be considered, but your post has made it quite clear to me that having a site with links to potentially copyright infringing content should be treated directly on a par with terrorism and murder.
You've just given the most convoluted explanation of dead reckoning I've ever read.
But isn't the problem that, since the error increases over time, the drones prefer to resort to GPS if they think it's available? What I find strange about the Iranian story, though, is that one would assume that a US drone only used encrypted GPS signals, i.e. P(Y) code according to Wikipedia. These shouldn't be spoofable. So was that perhaps a classical "fallback to an unsafe option" security problem?
...will choose the option "Yes, I want to see adult content."
And to be honest, speaking from experience as a child of the internet-free 80s, it is much better to wank off to real porn than to mail order catalogue models and used old adult magazines.
Or, you just try to harm for the next 30 years those companies who imposed the fine with their immoral lawsuits, invent and promote new p2p technology and generally try to make sure these companies loose billions after billions.
At least that's what I would do if somebody told me to pay 1.5 million dollars for maintaining a site with links to files that could be used to obtain potentially copyright infringing content.
Participators need to understand the culture of Iran.
Yes, let's all gather around, share our feelings, get to really know each other, sing "Kumbaya" around the campfire, and peace will follow. F***ing A.
The U.S. and Iran aren't preparing for war because we don't understand each other. We're preparing for war because we *do* understand each other.
What you say is unbelievably ignorant. I bet that you have never talked to any actual, living Iranian in your life and probably know absolutely nothing about Persian culture or even Iran as a country. (Like e.g. that you can go skiing there. You didn't know that, right?) In contrast to what you might presume with prejudice the Iranians I've met at conferences were friendly, not wearing beards, and had world-views that resemble most closely those of Europeans. (From my personal experience, Iranians are rather skeptical about the US, which is not very suprising given that the US has attacked and occupied a neighboring country.)
Moreover, the only people in US and Iran who are perhaps preparing for a war are the people in small circles of governments, each of which are corrupt in their own ways. The vast majorities of people in these countries certainly do not want a war. However, it is most likely that the US not preparing for a war with Iran, and of course Iran is not preparing for a war with the US either. (The latter would be so patently absurd that not even the current Iranian government would consider it.) Its all just rhetorics, geopolitical strategy plus some cheap attempts to score points in inner politics.
The Iranian people are suppressed by a theocracy. There is a dangerous moral police on the streets, so most of the live is within their homes, where they throw parties and dance to pop music. AFAIK, the situation is similar to other totalitarian states like the GDR or 70ies Soviet Union. People are careful what they are saying to whom and stay amongst friends. But most of them are pro-Western, although not pro American, and would like to live in a more secular and modern Muslim democracy.
Lack of interest is also a good sign.
I've never been using KDE so far, but have been working daily on a Gnome 2 desktop and now on XFCE. My impression is that people want and need a few windows with reasonable placement, workspaces, a panel with start menu und a few information icons, and a working file manager -- all of this is provided by current desktop environments. In my personal opinion, the rest is unneccessary. Linux and Unix desktops shouldn't compete with all the silly graphics eye candy and inconsistent web-like user interfaces of other OSes, most Linux users don't want or need that.
Which brings me to my only real concern: I want immediate responsiveness and immediate feedback to any user interaction, but even XFCE is sometimes too slow on my i7 920 machine. At least it's not as snappy as Mac OS classic used to be, and I can't see a technical reason for that. That's what desktop developers should focus on.
Anyway, lack of interest might just come from the fact that all desktop environments except Unity do for their users what they are supposed to do.
Moore went on, "Congress was criticized for not being tech savvy, but from a lot of the comments we got it became clear that the people who were calling us did not understand the bill any better than we did."
Now that is is a bizarre statement. Should they have understood the bill better than the people who made it?
Mod parent up.
I'm working in that field and know Pearl's work very well. The problem with uncertainty and current framework is the complexity. Probability theory, possibility measures, ranking theory, plausibility measures, Dempster-Shafer and all these slight variations of the same theme are altogether computationally intractable. Strongly heuristic shortcuts based on implausible assumptions are used (like stipulating independence between random variables for purely technical reasons), and much better ones need to be developed. Human cognition takes amazing shortcuts and AI methods are much too combinatorial in contrast to that.
Moreover, the problem of knowledge representation is still not solved adequately. Yes, there are a few large ontologies like Cyc, but they do not suffice. Basically, a lot of tools are there, but they are disconnected and there is no unifying framework or representation at all. To give you an example from NLP, the kind of tools used by computer scientists (e.g. description logic, event calculus) are practically worthless for doing real-world semantics, and of course logic has the same combinatorial complexity issues.
Breakthroughs will come by combining symbolic AI with connectionist and geometric representations, but only few people work on that (e.g. Smolensky), the math is complicated and not what your average AI/CS guy or computational linguist can handle.
I think what Norvig should have said is that robots with convincible, but ultimately non-intelligent soft AI will enter the consumer market within the next few decades - which is true, but something else entirely.