Get off it. You must realize that Apple already knew who lost the phone. (Prototypes are both expensive and sensitive; I guarantee they knew who had one. They remote-killed this one, so they knew it had been lost, so they knew specifically who had lost it. I hope we're all smart enough to know that his relationship with Apple is unaffected by the public release of his name.
What, then? TFS must be claiming that for some reason the next potential employer is going to care about this incident. That is what we in the business call a ridiculous assertion.
For all the talk of cloaking technologies I hear around here, this is the first I've heard of this one. Sure, I'm not an expert in the field, but if this "took the world by storm" last year, I'm surprised no news stories ever reached me.
Most suspicious, though, are the references to this as a technology for which practical devices have been built. The effect described in TFA is something you could see empirically if you had a working model; you don't need someone to draw a diagram showing the course of a light ray for that. Out of context, such a diagram seems quite useless really.
So TFA talks about evolution of the idea into a practical device in a matter of months, and there's a link... but that just leads to another vague article that says two teams have built something, but doesn't show it. It, in turn, has external references to what might be academic papers... and after reading those abstracts I gave up.
Sounds like a bunch of hype to drum up interest (funding?) in research. You've claimed there's a working device; indicate the scale on which it works, and show a video, complete with explanation of why this "fatal flaw" is or isn't obviously visible in the video, and then we'll talk.
Even the U.S. criminal justice system does not "refuse to tolerate even the possibility of a false positive". Not even in theory.
Whether cheating on a given assignment could be caught in this way depends on the assignment. It's not all or nothing. Moreover, any method of detecting cheating is an exercise in collecting red flags and looking at patterns (remember, you don't have to evaluate whether a student is cheating based on one assignment in isolation) until suspicion reaches a threshold; and then investigating to see if even that pattern was just a coincidence. A tool for automated code analysis is just a source of "red flag" data.
You're framing your arguments as though this were some theoretical idea for how to catch cheating. It's been going on for at least 10-15 years. The bottom line is, the tools don't fail students; the professors do. If you don't trust them to exercise proper discretion in interpreting the output of these tools, you shouldn't be paying to take their course at all.
The "perfect technical solution or nothing" attitude serves only cheaters. I'll nonetheless refuse from making assumptions about your motives.
I'm not sure why you figure the threshold for 'worthwhile' is 1 year to recover initial capital; I believe in the energy field that would rule out most means of generation.
Comparing the cost to a human treadmill isn't as helpful as you might think. The purpose, therefore design, therefore cost drivers are completely different.
I would bet you could build a device cheap enough; the question is how much you'd pour into maintaining it to keep it running long enough to cover your expenses.
With caller ID, you have the ability to say "I'm not telling you who I am, and if that's not acceptable then it's up to you to not answer the phone". Can you preserve that ability if you use out-of-band billing data? Presumably not without modfiying the phone system... so I'm not so sure that's a good trade-off.
I do agree that any solution is going to requier technical change, though I disagree with the strict dichotomy GP alleges between legal problems and technical ones. I would've made the same sort of argument when the no-call registry was created in my home state, but it's been very effective.
Given the history of the telephone system, I think the government role is legitimate in solving this problem; but that role should be through indirect regulation (a way for the government to steer solutions to technical problems) rather than definition of certain acts as crimes (a way for the government to address social/behavior problems).
The government could put standards around what a service must do to be marketed as "caller ID" (or if "caller ID" is an owned mark, then pick some new name and educate the public to look for that instead). Those standards could be shaped to prevent the bad behavior (end user falsifying their identity) without interfering with good things (end user suppressing ID altogether; service provider like Google providing accurate identity information in a way the network didn't originally anticipate). It would then be the phone company's problem to design the technical solution that adheres to the standards, as it should be.
There are some lawyers who will try to make money arguing anything if they can find a way to make it sound ambiguous. That doesn't imply any legitimate ambiguity.
If the DMCA anti-circumvention language were interpreted in such a way that a measure you could circumvent were deemed not to "effectively control" access, then by definition the clause would never apply. No court is going to interpret the law in a self-nullifying manner. The purpose of interpretation is to figure out the legislature's intent; the courts are not going to decide that the legislature intended to do nothing when writing the anti-circumvention clause.
'It's supposedly an "entertainment device", whatever that means. I thought that looking at cartoons - especially stupid ones - counts as "entertainment"?'
So every "entertainment device" must provide you with anything and everything that you can describe as "entertainment"?
"Whether or not you agree with Fiore's political sentiments, I believe we can all agree that the censorship of his work should be denigrated"
Well, don't feel bad; lots of people believe things that are untrue.
I have no problem with Apple deciding what their product does. What a lot of people can't seem to get their brains around is: the iPod (and iPhone, and now iPad) is not a general-purpose computer.
Also, I do not regard this as censorship and wish people would quit abusing that term to the point that it has no meaning.
What difference does it make how hard it would be to drink the stuff? The danger is from skin contact, which would most likely be the result of mishandling and accident.
I enjoy going to smoke-free establishments as well; however, if that were my only reason for liking smoking bans, I would oppose them. If you don't like what goes on in a bar, it's your responsibility to not patronize that bar. If no bar owners choose to provide the product you want (a smoke-free bar), too bad for you; you shouldn't be able to legislate that someone provide a product you prefer.
HOWEVER, that is not the only reason to support a smoking ban. A far more valid reason, and the reason I do support such bans, is that the bar's employees are also exposed to second-hand smoke. The argument "they could choose not to work there" doesn't hold up, unless we also discard all of the OSHA regulations that provide for workplace safety.
The problem is, management (the people in control of the big corporations who harbor at most marginal technical aptitude) see the flaw but lack the imagination to understand how it could be used for real harm until they see it used for real harm.
(Actually, "lack the imagination" may be misleading. They are motivated to think that the problem is not a big deal, and they have no problem convincing themselves of this rather than exploring the possible threat scenarios.)
Full disclosure changes the risk from the company's point of view ("Oh, great, now we know people are trying to think of a way we're not seeing to exploit this") but the real tipping point is when they see a demonstration of harm being done (not merely a proof-of-concept that they can rationalize away).
That's all very interesting, except I'm not a proponent of the healthcare bill. The fact that you assumed I was based on what I'd written shows that you are the one blinded by your focus on "fighting the other side".
You also completely missed the point. If the will of the people was suborned in the passing of the bill, this was so because the tone of the argument from those against the bill was... pretty much like the tone of your post. The people arguing in that tone rendered themselves moot to the discussion.
Oh, and your "point blank fact" requires a citation.
So, if the judges opinion is that there is no scientific basis for the claim, then the judge should throw the case out? I'd rather that decision be made based on facts. Of course, revealing the facts is what a trial is for...
Do I believe she has a claim? Probably not. Since I don't know her medical condition (she is claiming a sensitivity), and I don't know the specifications of the scanner (and reading a bunch of/. posts that claim to know the specifications of the scanner is not convincing to me), I don't claim to know; but it sure sounds far-fetched.
Do I believe she thinks she has a claim? Maybe. It wouldn't be the first time someone misattributed a symptom to some arbitrary act he or she didn't appreciate. It also wouldn't be the first time someone just picked a deep pocket to go after in hopes of a favorable settlement. It also wouldn't be the first time someone filed a thinly-veiled suit for "being a jerk". (The latter is of course an abuse of the system, though I have to admit I would have a certain level of sympathy. I can think of few acts that are both as widely considered acceptable and as rude as telling someone how to express himself or herself.)
If you think the risk that someone yanks back a copy of a book from you is as Orwellian as it gets, then I have to assume your copies of 1984 were recalled before you read them.
Removing the emotionally loaded language is not "sugar coating", and you are 100% wrong when you claim that a more level-headed tone of discussion would not help anything.
If you want to debate specific uses of federal money, do it on an issue-by-issue basis. Your problem in that case is with the government's priorities, not with the tax. That the tax might be lower if priorities were as you prefer them is a symptom, not the problem.
Furthermore, while "5-10%" isn't very precise, it's still a very specific claim to be throwing around without supporting numbers. Should you elect to try to provide numbers in support of that calim, don't forget to account for the fact that 2/3 of the budget doesn't come from income taxes.
Lastly, I would point out that there is a process by which you can have your voice heard if you don't like the government's priorities, and that vague whining on/. isn't a useful step in that process.
Sounds like the submitter is concerned that people won't pay attention to this issue and/or take it seriously.
Here's an idea: If you want to encourage people to pay attention, lay off the trite cliches about Orwell and just stick to a factual discussion of what's going on.
You know who's really to blame for the health care bill passing? That would be the highly vocal conservatives yelling about "death panels" when they should've been sending a message people would listen to.
I think you've been reading too much Asimov. Don't get me wrong, I like Asimov; but when his robots poisoned the Earth to push humans back into space, the technology to spread beyond Earth already existed. If we started a concentrated effort today, how soon do you think we'd be ready to colonize anything?
As enlightened as it sounds to take a neutral view to change, the fact is we have a vested interest in perpetuating the environmental conditiosn on Earth to which we are adapted. Even if nature is pushing to change the climate, it is in our interest to try to keep it the same. Yes, we could adapt to some degree of change. Whether the challenge would make us stronger as a species is open to debate, and is really irrelevant (who are we trying to impress?).
Claiming that a catastrophic change would be "in our best interests" is just childish daydreaming. It ignores every historical precident. And yes, humans are capable of things no other species on Earth has been (or at least we have no reason to think otherwise); but the notion that it would be "good" to have to prove that or go extinct is ridiculous.
I realize implementations vary by location, but I don't think anyone is using cameras to enfore their "regular" law for running a red light. In the St. Louis area, for example, they implemented red light cameras to enforce a new type of "non-moving violation" which, as near as I can tell, should be called "getting your picture taken by one of our red light cameras".
(No, I'm not on crack when I tell you it's a non-moving violation. Perhaps our state lawmakers are, but they classified the violation as nonmoving so that they can ticket the vehicle instead of the driver. I can only assume that this law measures motion from the driver's frame of reference, such the street is what's moving.)
Also note that many systems do take more than one picture; ours even have some sort of video (though I've not personally seen the video quality).
Anyway, my point is that all the debate about the definition of running a red is moot. They're enforcing a new and different law. That said, I can also tell you that here in MO, I've been told by more than one cop that if you're in an intersection and the light is red, you've run a red light. Again this would vary by state, but you might want to check your assumptions about what is or isn't legal behavior at an intersection.
The truth (or misleading-ness) of your statement may depend on how you define the terms "backed by" and "investor with deep pockets".
I worked for a tiny software startup in the reporting field, back before enterprise reporting was a mature market. You could claim the company was "backed by investors with deep pockets". It's called venture capital, and it is in no way inconsistent with the view that the company is a dwarf trying to take on giants.
See, those deep pockets aren't fully committed to making that particular company a success. That company is one of many bets, each of which gets a tiny fraction of the contents of the deep pockets. They do take a certain amount of control in exchange for that money, but even so if the investment goes south they cut their losses.
I'm not quite following you here. I'll admit my physics is pretty rusty, but your own article puts the Plank unit of force at something on the order of 10^44 Newtons... so if we used that as the basic unit of force, not only wouldn't we have a prefix for a number of force units representing the smallest force we can detect; we wouldn't even have a prefix for a number of force units representing the weight of any every-day object.
That depends. Or I guess to be more precise, it may be mostly accurate in this instance but is an idea that is often carried too far.
Ideally I would hold that any expense should be ammortized over its expected use, or else you have no real basis for evaluating cost/benefit. But that's more a planning thing, and if we figure the up-front expenses for the shuttle were going to happen for politcal reasons, I suppose we can let that slide.
Even so, it only makes sense to dismiss something as a "sunk cost" if its future availability is unaffected by current use. To the extent that infrastructure "wears out" with each launch, the cost of repairing or replacing it should be figured as an incremental cost. (OTOH, if an item's lifetime is more driven by time than usage, then by all means use the hell out of it.)
If you mean that it's not reasonable to assume that an embedded journalist has the same ideals as the actual soldiers in the unit, I agree; and in that sense, maybe I theoretically disagree with what the blogger had to say.
But the bottom line is, that's a distinction without a difference. You can't single out one guy amidst a group of enemy combattants and say "well, he's not such a bad fellow, let's not harm him". If journalists want reasonable safety, they should not embed themselves in combat units, end of story.
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Get off it. You must realize that Apple already knew who lost the phone. (Prototypes are both expensive and sensitive; I guarantee they knew who had one. They remote-killed this one, so they knew it had been lost, so they knew specifically who had lost it. I hope we're all smart enough to know that his relationship with Apple is unaffected by the public release of his name.
What, then? TFS must be claiming that for some reason the next potential employer is going to care about this incident. That is what we in the business call a ridiculous assertion.
LOL
For all the talk of cloaking technologies I hear around here, this is the first I've heard of this one. Sure, I'm not an expert in the field, but if this "took the world by storm" last year, I'm surprised no news stories ever reached me.
Most suspicious, though, are the references to this as a technology for which practical devices have been built. The effect described in TFA is something you could see empirically if you had a working model; you don't need someone to draw a diagram showing the course of a light ray for that. Out of context, such a diagram seems quite useless really.
So TFA talks about evolution of the idea into a practical device in a matter of months, and there's a link... but that just leads to another vague article that says two teams have built something, but doesn't show it. It, in turn, has external references to what might be academic papers... and after reading those abstracts I gave up.
Sounds like a bunch of hype to drum up interest (funding?) in research. You've claimed there's a working device; indicate the scale on which it works, and show a video, complete with explanation of why this "fatal flaw" is or isn't obviously visible in the video, and then we'll talk.
Even the U.S. criminal justice system does not "refuse to tolerate even the possibility of a false positive". Not even in theory.
Whether cheating on a given assignment could be caught in this way depends on the assignment. It's not all or nothing. Moreover, any method of detecting cheating is an exercise in collecting red flags and looking at patterns (remember, you don't have to evaluate whether a student is cheating based on one assignment in isolation) until suspicion reaches a threshold; and then investigating to see if even that pattern was just a coincidence. A tool for automated code analysis is just a source of "red flag" data.
You're framing your arguments as though this were some theoretical idea for how to catch cheating. It's been going on for at least 10-15 years. The bottom line is, the tools don't fail students; the professors do. If you don't trust them to exercise proper discretion in interpreting the output of these tools, you shouldn't be paying to take their course at all.
The "perfect technical solution or nothing" attitude serves only cheaters. I'll nonetheless refuse from making assumptions about your motives.
I'm not sure why you figure the threshold for 'worthwhile' is 1 year to recover initial capital; I believe in the energy field that would rule out most means of generation.
Comparing the cost to a human treadmill isn't as helpful as you might think. The purpose, therefore design, therefore cost drivers are completely different.
I would bet you could build a device cheap enough; the question is how much you'd pour into maintaining it to keep it running long enough to cover your expenses.
With caller ID, you have the ability to say "I'm not telling you who I am, and if that's not acceptable then it's up to you to not answer the phone". Can you preserve that ability if you use out-of-band billing data? Presumably not without modfiying the phone system... so I'm not so sure that's a good trade-off.
I do agree that any solution is going to requier technical change, though I disagree with the strict dichotomy GP alleges between legal problems and technical ones. I would've made the same sort of argument when the no-call registry was created in my home state, but it's been very effective.
Given the history of the telephone system, I think the government role is legitimate in solving this problem; but that role should be through indirect regulation (a way for the government to steer solutions to technical problems) rather than definition of certain acts as crimes (a way for the government to address social/behavior problems).
The government could put standards around what a service must do to be marketed as "caller ID" (or if "caller ID" is an owned mark, then pick some new name and educate the public to look for that instead). Those standards could be shaped to prevent the bad behavior (end user falsifying their identity) without interfering with good things (end user suppressing ID altogether; service provider like Google providing accurate identity information in a way the network didn't originally anticipate). It would then be the phone company's problem to design the technical solution that adheres to the standards, as it should be.
There are some lawyers who will try to make money arguing anything if they can find a way to make it sound ambiguous. That doesn't imply any legitimate ambiguity.
If the DMCA anti-circumvention language were interpreted in such a way that a measure you could circumvent were deemed not to "effectively control" access, then by definition the clause would never apply. No court is going to interpret the law in a self-nullifying manner. The purpose of interpretation is to figure out the legislature's intent; the courts are not going to decide that the legislature intended to do nothing when writing the anti-circumvention clause.
'It's supposedly an "entertainment device", whatever that means. I thought that looking at cartoons - especially stupid ones - counts as "entertainment"?'
So every "entertainment device" must provide you with anything and everything that you can describe as "entertainment"?
Sorry, that's an idiotic claim. Next?
"Whether or not you agree with Fiore's political sentiments, I believe we can all agree that the censorship of his work should be denigrated"
Well, don't feel bad; lots of people believe things that are untrue.
I have no problem with Apple deciding what their product does. What a lot of people can't seem to get their brains around is: the iPod (and iPhone, and now iPad) is not a general-purpose computer.
Also, I do not regard this as censorship and wish people would quit abusing that term to the point that it has no meaning.
What difference does it make how hard it would be to drink the stuff? The danger is from skin contact, which would most likely be the result of mishandling and accident.
I enjoy going to smoke-free establishments as well; however, if that were my only reason for liking smoking bans, I would oppose them. If you don't like what goes on in a bar, it's your responsibility to not patronize that bar. If no bar owners choose to provide the product you want (a smoke-free bar), too bad for you; you shouldn't be able to legislate that someone provide a product you prefer.
HOWEVER, that is not the only reason to support a smoking ban. A far more valid reason, and the reason I do support such bans, is that the bar's employees are also exposed to second-hand smoke. The argument "they could choose not to work there" doesn't hold up, unless we also discard all of the OSHA regulations that provide for workplace safety.
That's not the problem.
The problem is, management (the people in control of the big corporations who harbor at most marginal technical aptitude) see the flaw but lack the imagination to understand how it could be used for real harm until they see it used for real harm.
(Actually, "lack the imagination" may be misleading. They are motivated to think that the problem is not a big deal, and they have no problem convincing themselves of this rather than exploring the possible threat scenarios.)
Full disclosure changes the risk from the company's point of view ("Oh, great, now we know people are trying to think of a way we're not seeing to exploit this") but the real tipping point is when they see a demonstration of harm being done (not merely a proof-of-concept that they can rationalize away).
That's all very interesting, except I'm not a proponent of the healthcare bill. The fact that you assumed I was based on what I'd written shows that you are the one blinded by your focus on "fighting the other side".
You also completely missed the point. If the will of the people was suborned in the passing of the bill, this was so because the tone of the argument from those against the bill was... pretty much like the tone of your post. The people arguing in that tone rendered themselves moot to the discussion.
Oh, and your "point blank fact" requires a citation.
So, if the judges opinion is that there is no scientific basis for the claim, then the judge should throw the case out? I'd rather that decision be made based on facts. Of course, revealing the facts is what a trial is for...
Do I believe she has a claim? Probably not. Since I don't know her medical condition (she is claiming a sensitivity), and I don't know the specifications of the scanner (and reading a bunch of /. posts that claim to know the specifications of the scanner is not convincing to me), I don't claim to know; but it sure sounds far-fetched.
Do I believe she thinks she has a claim? Maybe. It wouldn't be the first time someone misattributed a symptom to some arbitrary act he or she didn't appreciate. It also wouldn't be the first time someone just picked a deep pocket to go after in hopes of a favorable settlement. It also wouldn't be the first time someone filed a thinly-veiled suit for "being a jerk". (The latter is of course an abuse of the system, though I have to admit I would have a certain level of sympathy. I can think of few acts that are both as widely considered acceptable and as rude as telling someone how to express himself or herself.)
Welcome to "missing the point" theater.
If you think the risk that someone yanks back a copy of a book from you is as Orwellian as it gets, then I have to assume your copies of 1984 were recalled before you read them.
Removing the emotionally loaded language is not "sugar coating", and you are 100% wrong when you claim that a more level-headed tone of discussion would not help anything.
If you want to debate specific uses of federal money, do it on an issue-by-issue basis. Your problem in that case is with the government's priorities, not with the tax. That the tax might be lower if priorities were as you prefer them is a symptom, not the problem.
Furthermore, while "5-10%" isn't very precise, it's still a very specific claim to be throwing around without supporting numbers. Should you elect to try to provide numbers in support of that calim, don't forget to account for the fact that 2/3 of the budget doesn't come from income taxes.
Lastly, I would point out that there is a process by which you can have your voice heard if you don't like the government's priorities, and that vague whining on /. isn't a useful step in that process.
Sounds like the submitter is concerned that people won't pay attention to this issue and/or take it seriously.
Here's an idea: If you want to encourage people to pay attention, lay off the trite cliches about Orwell and just stick to a factual discussion of what's going on.
You know who's really to blame for the health care bill passing? That would be the highly vocal conservatives yelling about "death panels" when they should've been sending a message people would listen to.
The ice would melt at an extremely cold temperature. I assume it would hurt like hell.
I think you've been reading too much Asimov. Don't get me wrong, I like Asimov; but when his robots poisoned the Earth to push humans back into space, the technology to spread beyond Earth already existed. If we started a concentrated effort today, how soon do you think we'd be ready to colonize anything?
As enlightened as it sounds to take a neutral view to change, the fact is we have a vested interest in perpetuating the environmental conditiosn on Earth to which we are adapted. Even if nature is pushing to change the climate, it is in our interest to try to keep it the same. Yes, we could adapt to some degree of change. Whether the challenge would make us stronger as a species is open to debate, and is really irrelevant (who are we trying to impress?).
Claiming that a catastrophic change would be "in our best interests" is just childish daydreaming. It ignores every historical precident. And yes, humans are capable of things no other species on Earth has been (or at least we have no reason to think otherwise); but the notion that it would be "good" to have to prove that or go extinct is ridiculous.
I realize implementations vary by location, but I don't think anyone is using cameras to enfore their "regular" law for running a red light. In the St. Louis area, for example, they implemented red light cameras to enforce a new type of "non-moving violation" which, as near as I can tell, should be called "getting your picture taken by one of our red light cameras".
(No, I'm not on crack when I tell you it's a non-moving violation. Perhaps our state lawmakers are, but they classified the violation as nonmoving so that they can ticket the vehicle instead of the driver. I can only assume that this law measures motion from the driver's frame of reference, such the street is what's moving.)
Also note that many systems do take more than one picture; ours even have some sort of video (though I've not personally seen the video quality).
Anyway, my point is that all the debate about the definition of running a red is moot. They're enforcing a new and different law. That said, I can also tell you that here in MO, I've been told by more than one cop that if you're in an intersection and the light is red, you've run a red light. Again this would vary by state, but you might want to check your assumptions about what is or isn't legal behavior at an intersection.
I don't see much support for the argument that the world at microscopic scales is analog.
The truth (or misleading-ness) of your statement may depend on how you define the terms "backed by" and "investor with deep pockets".
I worked for a tiny software startup in the reporting field, back before enterprise reporting was a mature market. You could claim the company was "backed by investors with deep pockets". It's called venture capital, and it is in no way inconsistent with the view that the company is a dwarf trying to take on giants.
See, those deep pockets aren't fully committed to making that particular company a success. That company is one of many bets, each of which gets a tiny fraction of the contents of the deep pockets. They do take a certain amount of control in exchange for that money, but even so if the investment goes south they cut their losses.
I'm not quite following you here. I'll admit my physics is pretty rusty, but your own article puts the Plank unit of force at something on the order of 10^44 Newtons... so if we used that as the basic unit of force, not only wouldn't we have a prefix for a number of force units representing the smallest force we can detect; we wouldn't even have a prefix for a number of force units representing the weight of any every-day object.
That depends. Or I guess to be more precise, it may be mostly accurate in this instance but is an idea that is often carried too far.
Ideally I would hold that any expense should be ammortized over its expected use, or else you have no real basis for evaluating cost/benefit. But that's more a planning thing, and if we figure the up-front expenses for the shuttle were going to happen for politcal reasons, I suppose we can let that slide.
Even so, it only makes sense to dismiss something as a "sunk cost" if its future availability is unaffected by current use. To the extent that infrastructure "wears out" with each launch, the cost of repairing or replacing it should be figured as an incremental cost. (OTOH, if an item's lifetime is more driven by time than usage, then by all means use the hell out of it.)
If you mean that it's not reasonable to assume that an embedded journalist has the same ideals as the actual soldiers in the unit, I agree; and in that sense, maybe I theoretically disagree with what the blogger had to say.
But the bottom line is, that's a distinction without a difference. You can't single out one guy amidst a group of enemy combattants and say "well, he's not such a bad fellow, let's not harm him". If journalists want reasonable safety, they should not embed themselves in combat units, end of story.