I agree that malaria is worse than DDT for humans (though the other damage it does to the ecosystem is also clear, if harder to determine the impact of).
But the consistent use of bed nets for a couple of years would wipe malaria out (since the parasite requires a human host for part of its life cycle). Unfortunately short-sighted (as bad as US and EU) textile trade protection in many thirld-world countries prevents the importation of bed nets by aid organizations even if the country doesn't produce them.
Of course both of us are in agreement that people typically look for black/white characterisations of complex problems, and come up with short-sighted "solutions" as a result. But your example doesn't hold up.
A firewall is the wrong approach anyway. It presumes that you can declare a sure perimeter behind which things can be "trusted."
There are so many ways around most firewalls (modems, wireless networks, unscrupulous visitors, virii on removable media and whotnot) that the firewall is really just the "front door."
End-to-end security -- defense in depth -- is the only way to be sure. Each machine has to be "strong enough" -- just like most office desks and doors are equipped with locks, though most of us don't use 'em.
Clearly we live in a world where most desktops are _completely_ insecure, so firewalls aren't completely worthless. But perhaps SOAP and the like will have some benefit through clueing in some of the clueless that there's more to security than throwing up a firewall.
Self-assembly is very cool. Unfortunately this isn't an example.
He mixes the components together but then pours them onto a matrix. Then he mixes the next one and pours that on the previous one. So still cool, but not "self-assembling"
Self-assembling structures like proteins and DNA do exist, and are more useful. DNA is an example of a structure which includes positional info (i.e. addressing) which an earlier poster indicated would be important.
Likely a cell is a good example of an ideal machine. It's very complex, but it includes power source, self-maintenance and assembly. These little parts he's building (they're not even "machines" yet) don't address these issues.
I'm afraid you're incorrect. What you describe is UUCP addressing, used by Unix machines after about '79 (+/- a couple of years; my memory is fuzzy about this because I didn't use Unix back then).
ARPA mail (described in RFC733 and such) originally used, as an earlier poster said, a modified version of FTP. In fact the early FTP RFCs included mail xfer commands.
As you do correctly note, HOSTS.TXT file (which was well established when I first encountered it in '80 -- it predated the uucp !-notation) contained all the host names and their aliases. There were only 10's, and then 100's of machines on the 'net, so you could fit them all and all their nicknames in the file (like AI, MIT-AI, MITAI, the machine I used the most back then). Eventually this table got too big to fit in a PDP-10 address space so aliases were purged. This was probably around the time of the DNS transition anyway (I don't remember exactly) when we appended.ARPA or.MIL to all the legacy names.
The DoD uses Iridium internally. In fact there is a second Iridium ground station in HI operated by the DoD.
It's not the only service that has world-wide coverage, but the terminals, sucky as they are, are much smaller than inmarsat et al.
The "widespread panic" argument is fun, but reality is that $72MM isn't a lot for them to pay to keep the cabability around (given the huge sunk cost paid by the investors). In fact this is probably the best deal the pentagon has ever gotten with their COTS purchasing program!
It's actually worse than you think. Yes you're a party to a lawsuit even if you don't want to be.
The first time I got a letter like this (about a Sprint lawsuit) I did some investigation. By the time you get the letter telling you you're a party, the defendent has negotiated a settlement. So unfortunately you don't help the defendent by opting _not_ to be a party! The reason is that by agreeing (after the fact) you at least close the issue off. If you decide not to participate the company has to worry that you might sue them individually.
This doesn't seem like a big deal with a $3.50 refund, but in fact this is what screwed Dow Corning: they agreed to the fake science of the trial sharks just to get the issue behind them, and then some opportunists "opted out" and hit them up again.
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This is a false dichotomy.
I agree that malaria is worse than DDT for humans (though the other damage it does to the ecosystem is also clear, if harder to determine the impact of).
But the consistent use of bed nets for a couple of years would wipe malaria out (since the parasite requires a human host for part of its life cycle). Unfortunately short-sighted (as bad as US and EU) textile trade protection in many thirld-world countries prevents the importation of bed nets by aid organizations even if the country doesn't produce them.
Of course both of us are in agreement that people typically look for black/white characterisations of complex problems, and come up with short-sighted "solutions" as a result. But your example doesn't hold up.
A firewall is the wrong approach anyway. It presumes that you can declare a sure perimeter behind which things can be "trusted."
There are so many ways around most firewalls (modems, wireless networks, unscrupulous visitors, virii on removable media and whotnot) that the firewall is really just the "front door."
End-to-end security -- defense in depth -- is the only way to be sure. Each machine has to be "strong enough" -- just like most office desks and doors are equipped with locks, though most of us don't use 'em.
Clearly we live in a world where most desktops are _completely_ insecure, so firewalls aren't completely worthless. But perhaps SOAP and the like will have some benefit through clueing in some of the clueless that there's more to security than throwing up a firewall.
Self-assembly is very cool. Unfortunately this isn't an example.
He mixes the components together but then pours them onto a matrix. Then he mixes the next one and pours that on the previous one. So still cool, but not "self-assembling"
Self-assembling structures like proteins and DNA do exist, and are more useful. DNA is an example of a structure which includes positional info (i.e. addressing) which an earlier poster indicated would be important.
Likely a cell is a good example of an ideal machine. It's very complex, but it includes power source, self-maintenance and assembly. These little parts he's building (they're not even "machines" yet) don't address these issues.
I'm afraid you're incorrect. What you describe is UUCP addressing, used by Unix machines after about '79 (+/- a couple of years; my memory is fuzzy about this because I didn't use Unix back then).
.ARPA or .MIL to all the legacy names.
ARPA mail (described in RFC733 and such) originally used, as an earlier poster said, a modified version of FTP. In fact the early FTP RFCs included mail xfer commands.
As you do correctly note, HOSTS.TXT file (which was well established when I first encountered it in '80 -- it predated the uucp !-notation) contained all the host names and their aliases. There were only 10's, and then 100's of machines on the 'net, so you could fit them all and all their nicknames in the file (like AI, MIT-AI, MITAI, the machine I used the most back then). Eventually this table got too big to fit in a PDP-10 address space so aliases were purged. This was probably around the time of the DNS transition anyway (I don't remember exactly) when we appended
This is all described in the RFCs.
The DoD uses Iridium internally. In fact there is a second Iridium ground station in HI operated by the DoD.
It's not the only service that has world-wide coverage, but the terminals, sucky as they are, are much smaller than inmarsat et al.
The "widespread panic" argument is fun, but reality is that $72MM isn't a lot for them to pay to keep the cabability around (given the huge sunk cost paid by the investors). In fact this is probably the best deal the pentagon has ever gotten with their COTS purchasing program!
It's actually worse than you think. Yes you're a party to a lawsuit even if you don't want to be.
The first time I got a letter like this (about a Sprint lawsuit) I did some investigation. By the time you get the letter telling you you're a party, the defendent has negotiated a settlement. So unfortunately you don't help the defendent by opting _not_ to be a party! The reason is that by agreeing (after the fact) you at least close the issue off. If you decide not to participate the company has to worry that you might sue them individually.
This doesn't seem like a big deal with a $3.50 refund, but in fact this is what screwed Dow Corning: they agreed to the fake science of the trial sharks just to get the issue behind them, and then some opportunists "opted out" and hit them up again.
delete class action_lawyers *all;