Everybody understands some part of the tools they are using. Whether it is "I type and letters appear on the computer screen" or "the engine won't turn so the battery is dead".
However, all systems have always had some black boxes that are simply accepted. The people that were running water wheel mills...how much did they understand of glaciers waxing and waning impacting their waterway that is being tapped? People that could maintain cars in the 50s and 60s...How much did they understand of why fuel + oxygen + spark = combustion? Or about how pulses of exhaust can hinder engine performance if not handled perfectly? Or how to make rubber for use on tires?
Every one of us exists with black boxes that, even though we may be curious, never get peered into. Sometimes, just being able to use a tool is enough.
Shouldn't we be giving credit to Phillip K. Dick for authoring this story idea instead of Spielberg who, undoubtedly, has enough credits to his name and merely directed this film?
Thank you. Completey agree. If they were JUST referencing Mintority Report, I could see not caring as it might be about special effects, endings completely the opposite from the original story, or Tom Cruise. But since they are actually calling out "Pre Crime" in the title, give the credit where it is due.
Considering most fire trucks display a warning to stay FIVE HUNDRED FEET back, 65 feet seems pretty close. Think about the number of seats in any sporting venue that are way more than 65 feet away from the action. A fair percentage of seats in a movie theater will be more than 65 feet from the screen.
Good question! If only there were some way of partnering this without the need for wires...Perhaps pair it with some device that is generally carried by most members of society that would be able to afford something like this. There might even be some device like that that tracks where the user is via some form of satellite system. Now if only this type of device also had a means of establishing a connection to some sort of vast world wide network!
Only a white guy is going to flip off a cop and think he should should get away with it. The rest of America knows you'll get shot in the back for pulling that shit.
That this was modded Troll is really a shame. It actually really gets to the heart of the matter. Police have created a system of being feared by the same people they are trying to protect. That is exactly what he is protesting. In TFA, he is very specific in explaining that he is protesting the killing of three unarmed people by area police.
For those that haven't RTFA, you should. It is actually a fairly well written and researched piece.
Realizing it is late in the response/mod cycle, the above should truly be modded up and not modded funny. Even though I was rolling with laughter, it is a very well put together flaying that both informs and insights. It is a shame that the post calling this gentleman's story horseshit is +5 while the defense against said post is stuck at +3 and has a Funny label attached to it.
When purchasing my last iPod, the BestBuy salesman wanted to sell me the ext warranty. I declined, and he expressed concern, because "they generally don't last much more than a year". To which I responded by showing him my generation 2 iPod that I had been using for somewhere around half a decade. I explained that it still worked just fine, I just wanted more space.
The point is, be careful with the things that you buy. Don't treat your portable devices like they are indestructable. Don't throw your WiiMote at your TV. Use an air canister on your computer. Change the fluids in your car.
And don't spend money on something you can't afford to lose or replace or repair.
Doesn't have the muscle? Amazon.com doesn't have the muscle to deal with this headache?
I worked for Eastern Mountain Sports as a cash register jockey back in 2002. We could take phone call orders and send product anywhere in US. The cash registers were able to calculate the sales tax based on entering the ship to address.
This points out a couple things:
It is not complicated. It is purely and simply based on the ship-to address (as somebody else already pointed out).
If a cash register could do this back in 2002 for a low-tech hiking supplies store, I'm quite certain Amazon.com can pull it off in 2009.
You do not need to multiply it by millions and millions of customers. You need to multiply it by 50 states. MAYBE add city specific taxes, as well.
Amazon already has the customer's zip code. Just do a lookup on what gets taxed, and by how much, based on zip code. Really not that difficult in the face of other things that get accomplished by computing systems these days.
(First, I must acknowledge the authors of TFA started it off by saying it was "snarky and unscientific". Noting that...)
How could Boston make this list? It is a serious hotspot for technology. There are numerous smaller tech specific schools, as well as the MIT factor (assuming that four hundred yards across the Charles is still considered "Boston" from the article's point of view). There are numerous financial companies that are always hiring for IT, or at least hiring from other Boston based consulting firms. Then there's Big Pharma. If you consider Boston to be "within the 495 belt", you have a hugenumber of opportunities. If you consider Boston to JUST be Boston proper, then the traffic is a non-issue, as you should be taking public transport anyway.
The traffic...I'm not going to say it is great, but it doesn't make the Forbes 12 Worst. However, it does make number eight on Jalopnic's list in 2008. That being said, there are alternatives to driving your car to most city locations.
Regarding the sports championships that were brought up...that's just stupid. As somebody already said, they list SF because of the LACK of championships, but list Boston because there are too many. Silly. If you are into sports, you will find a very educated (although biased) fan base for every major sport (excluding NASCAR). I could go on regarding the sports situation, but I'm pretty sure anyone that cares about sports is already aware of the mark Boston has made on the sports world in the past decade.
History. Someone complained that the town felt "old". Really? The city with the first university on this continent, the first battles of the Revolutionary war, the longest continuously run restaurants in the country, the first public park in the country, some of the oldest churches in the country, the oldest surviving naval vessel in the country, the first post office, the oldest professional sports venue(Fenway) in the country, and the first underground rail system in the country? That city came across as old? We prefer to view it as historic.
Considering Boston is one of the cities in this country with the longest and most influencial histories and is also a long standing technology innovator, I would think there would be some understanding as to why there might be a level of pride.
To bring home the point, you will notice that the author of TFA gave the number of job postings available for every other city on the list, except Boston and SF. That is because Boston (I don't know about SF) is still a power house in the tech world. The author complained about traffic and his home town teams losing too many sporting events to Boston's teams. Which is about as snarky and unscientific as you can get...
I live in Boston proper, and can provide some very solid numbers to back up the study's claims. Granted, it is just one man's example, but I don't think it's too far off of the norm. I must point out that I live IN THE CITY, not a suburb. I also don't have kids, or parents that require care. But Boston is a great example due to the HUGE number of city dwellers that use their cars to get from one point in the city (home) to another point (work) every day, even though there is viable public transit.
Another caveat is the Boston proper has an incredibly high insurance rate, and I had a high theft car, and liked to get caught speeding...
Two years ago, my car was stolen. I decided not to replace it, since I could just take the bus/train. I still had 2 years left to pay on it (insurance pay out was more than enough to cover it):
$350 for car payments
$300 for insurance
$125 for parking AT HOME
$75 for fuel
$10 for oil
$10,320 per year spent on car before repairs/tires/speeding tickets/car value dropping/excise tax/registration/inspection/parking tickets/tolls
I had company provided parking, so am not including that, but can attest to the $460 per month sited in the article being a reasonably good rate. I would assume the average is a bit higher, but that is just from briefly looking around, not actually paying it.
Now I have a link pass (subway/bus). Those cost $59 per month, but my company covers $50 of that. So monthly cost of public transit:
$9 for pass
$81 per year
Savings of $10,239 per year.
Now, for full disclosure, my wife and I spend about $100 per month for a ZipCar. I also spend about $100 per month on cab rides home from the bar. I can also admit to spending a little bit more money at the bar, because I don't have to drive home now! But I will chalk those differences up to the parking at work fees that I didn't have to include. I also read a LOT more now. I feel like I'm a part of the city. I have more opportunity to stop and take pictures. I have a good half mile walk every morning before entering the office. And I can take time to watch pretty ladies without worrying that I'm going to crash my car.
That being said, I really miss my car. If anyone has a chance to own an Acura Intgera Type R, I highly recommend it.
The problem they might run into is the speed of pressing the button to respond. I would imagine the computer would be able to beat the human every time it knew the answer.
This is actually where I think the humans have an advantage. They can press the button just because they think that they WILL know the answer in the time allotted.
Watson may be designed to predict its own ability to answer. But to allow it to just press the button, then use the entire time limit to find it would not be fair...
But either way, Apple is still providing a service here that both the developers and the consumers are using.
However, the service that Apple is providing is based entirely on promoting their own product line.
The developers are also providing a service to Apple by creating applications that draw customers to the iPhone/iTouch product. Every comparison to any new phone on the market always comes down to "the interface is good. Maybe as good as the iPhone's. But nothing can compete with the AppStore." [paraphrase]
Go ahead and charge a steep commission, but don't kick the same people that are giving your product an edge.
We do live in an age where whistleblowing has become a recognized responsibility in all fields, and taking an uninvolved stance does not always remove obligation.
I was trying to make a point about the existence of a neutral position, but when framed as an ethical question, as opposed to a legal question, it takes on a very different light. The neutral stance would be to ignore the obvious ethical thing to do. While the evil thing to do is to take advantage of the exploit.
A neutral stance attempts to avoid being unethical by taking no action. But the true definition of "unethical" is to NOT do what is ethically correct.
I still do not believe it makes the "neutral" hacker evil. But it does make them a scumbag.
You are trying to find a workaround on a very static point.
The static point is that if you find an exploit, you are under no obligation to inform the vendor. You are not evil if you do not inform the vendor.
What would make you evil includes, but is not limited to:
Hinting that you will release the exploit if they do not pay you.
Hinting to your buddies where to look for the exploit.
Releasing the exploit to the world.
Abusing the exploit for "personal gain"
I agree that there are far more ways to be evil, than not. But that does not mean that you are obligated in any way to do anything. And it does not mean that you are a scumbag if you do not report something that you have found.
Effectively, you are a scumbag if you do anything other than:
Nothing
Ask for compensation from vendor while you work with them to resolve the problem
Provide free services to the vendor while you work with them to resolve the problem
You've got to be careful though, it could also be blackmail
Absolutely.
Of course blackmailing the vendor would 1)be malicious and 2)involve releasing the exploit. Both of those would go far beyond the stance I am defending.
A responsible hacker notifies the vendor or author of the issue, giving them a reasonable amount of time to release a fix.
I think this is putting too much responsibility on the hacker. I would argue that the only responsibility the hacker has is to not use the exploit in a malicious manner. And asking for payment from the vendor for the work done by the hacker is not malicious. It is business.
The "personal gain" you reference should be limited to the enjoyment of investigating and engineering the exploit in the first place. If the exploit is released in any way, then I am on your side, and they become scumbag black hat. But if it never leaves the basement, and is discovered with the sole intent being to sit in a personal library of code, then there is no foul. Nor is there any onus placed on the hacker.
I do think that the exploit contest itself is an interesting grey area. But if the vendors are willing to put their systems up to that kind of scrutiny, then it can not be called malicious.
I agree that this is AIG actually trying to be a business that is responsible to its shareholders.
It is actually, now more then ever, in the government's best interest for AIG to make every attempt to go after any and all money it can, from all sources.
People were ticked off when they viewed AIG's actions as SPENDING money. Now they are ticked off when AIG is trying to GET money.
Public perception is a b*tch
[disclaimer: I am not a fan of AIG, and I believe that all upper management should have been fired without severance packages. I just think this particular uproar is a case of "everything the bad guy does is evil"]
The reason blackberrys are more attractive to networks than the iPhone is because
I'm sorry, but I'm fairly certain that most other networks would be more than happy to get a share of the iPhone market. The customers may not be happy with the resulting performance! But the networks would have no problem adding an iPhone, and accompanying plan, to their offerings...
So religion is the cause of our soaring health care premiums?
Can health insurance premiums be based on the religious affiliation of the insured?
(Of course they can't...)
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Wish I had mod points. That is a very very insightful story. I can see that moral being applied to a TON of news snippets heard every day. Thank you.
Everybody understands some part of the tools they are using. Whether it is "I type and letters appear on the computer screen" or "the engine won't turn so the battery is dead".
However, all systems have always had some black boxes that are simply accepted. The people that were running water wheel mills...how much did they understand of glaciers waxing and waning impacting their waterway that is being tapped? People that could maintain cars in the 50s and 60s...How much did they understand of why fuel + oxygen + spark = combustion? Or about how pulses of exhaust can hinder engine performance if not handled perfectly? Or how to make rubber for use on tires?
Every one of us exists with black boxes that, even though we may be curious, never get peered into. Sometimes, just being able to use a tool is enough.
Shouldn't we be giving credit to Phillip K. Dick for authoring this story idea instead of Spielberg who, undoubtedly, has enough credits to his name and merely directed this film?
Thank you. Completey agree. If they were JUST referencing Mintority Report, I could see not caring as it might be about special effects, endings completely the opposite from the original story, or Tom Cruise. But since they are actually calling out "Pre Crime" in the title, give the credit where it is due.
Considering most fire trucks display a warning to stay FIVE HUNDRED FEET back, 65 feet seems pretty close. Think about the number of seats in any sporting venue that are way more than 65 feet away from the action. A fair percentage of seats in a movie theater will be more than 65 feet from the screen.
Really, we're talking 22 yards here. That's pretty close.
0.0123106061 miles.
Good question! If only there were some way of partnering this without the need for wires...Perhaps pair it with some device that is generally carried by most members of society that would be able to afford something like this. There might even be some device like that that tracks where the user is via some form of satellite system. Now if only this type of device also had a means of establishing a connection to some sort of vast world wide network!
They can disregard civility all they want, but they can't detain me, and charge me fines.
A verbal altercation in which someone is disregarding civility never prevents people from walking away. A cop pulling you over does.
Only a white guy is going to flip off a cop and think he should should get away with it. The rest of America knows you'll get shot in the back for pulling that shit.
That this was modded Troll is really a shame. It actually really gets to the heart of the matter. Police have created a system of being feared by the same people they are trying to protect. That is exactly what he is protesting. In TFA, he is very specific in explaining that he is protesting the killing of three unarmed people by area police.
For those that haven't RTFA, you should. It is actually a fairly well written and researched piece.
Realizing it is late in the response/mod cycle, the above should truly be modded up and not modded funny. Even though I was rolling with laughter, it is a very well put together flaying that both informs and insights. It is a shame that the post calling this gentleman's story horseshit is +5 while the defense against said post is stuck at +3 and has a Funny label attached to it.
When purchasing my last iPod, the BestBuy salesman wanted to sell me the ext warranty. I declined, and he expressed concern, because "they generally don't last much more than a year". To which I responded by showing him my generation 2 iPod that I had been using for somewhere around half a decade. I explained that it still worked just fine, I just wanted more space.
The point is, be careful with the things that you buy. Don't treat your portable devices like they are indestructable. Don't throw your WiiMote at your TV. Use an air canister on your computer. Change the fluids in your car.
And don't spend money on something you can't afford to lose or replace or repair.
Wish I had some mod points. Damn funny, Riven...
Doesn't have the muscle? Amazon.com doesn't have the muscle to deal with this headache?
I worked for Eastern Mountain Sports as a cash register jockey back in 2002. We could take phone call orders and send product anywhere in US. The cash registers were able to calculate the sales tax based on entering the ship to address.
This points out a couple things:
It is not complicated. It is purely and simply based on the ship-to address (as somebody else already pointed out).
If a cash register could do this back in 2002 for a low-tech hiking supplies store, I'm quite certain Amazon.com can pull it off in 2009.
You do not need to multiply it by millions and millions of customers. You need to multiply it by 50 states. MAYBE add city specific taxes, as well.
Amazon already has the customer's zip code. Just do a lookup on what gets taxed, and by how much, based on zip code. Really not that difficult in the face of other things that get accomplished by computing systems these days.
they did not manufacture "two artificial atoms, or qubits". They manufactured two clusters of atoms that acted as qubits.
A qubit is not actually a quantum particle. It is a unit of quantum information. Now, do you consider the qubit to be the system or the state?
(First, I must acknowledge the authors of TFA started it off by saying it was "snarky and unscientific". Noting that...)
How could Boston make this list? It is a serious hotspot for technology. There are numerous smaller tech specific schools, as well as the MIT factor (assuming that four hundred yards across the Charles is still considered "Boston" from the article's point of view). There are numerous financial companies that are always hiring for IT, or at least hiring from other Boston based consulting firms. Then there's Big Pharma. If you consider Boston to be "within the 495 belt", you have a huge number of opportunities. If you consider Boston to JUST be Boston proper, then the traffic is a non-issue, as you should be taking public transport anyway.
The traffic...I'm not going to say it is great, but it doesn't make the Forbes 12 Worst. However, it does make number eight on Jalopnic's list in 2008. That being said, there are alternatives to driving your car to most city locations.
Regarding the sports championships that were brought up...that's just stupid. As somebody already said, they list SF because of the LACK of championships, but list Boston because there are too many. Silly. If you are into sports, you will find a very educated (although biased) fan base for every major sport (excluding NASCAR). I could go on regarding the sports situation, but I'm pretty sure anyone that cares about sports is already aware of the mark Boston has made on the sports world in the past decade.
History. Someone complained that the town felt "old". Really? The city with the first university on this continent, the first battles of the Revolutionary war, the longest continuously run restaurants in the country, the first public park in the country, some of the oldest churches in the country, the oldest surviving naval vessel in the country, the first post office, the oldest professional sports venue(Fenway) in the country, and the first underground rail system in the country? That city came across as old? We prefer to view it as historic.
Considering Boston is one of the cities in this country with the longest and most influencial histories and is also a long standing technology innovator, I would think there would be some understanding as to why there might be a level of pride.
To bring home the point, you will notice that the author of TFA gave the number of job postings available for every other city on the list, except Boston and SF. That is because Boston (I don't know about SF) is still a power house in the tech world. The author complained about traffic and his home town teams losing too many sporting events to Boston's teams. Which is about as snarky and unscientific as you can get...
I live in Boston proper, and can provide some very solid numbers to back up the study's claims. Granted, it is just one man's example, but I don't think it's too far off of the norm. I must point out that I live IN THE CITY, not a suburb. I also don't have kids, or parents that require care. But Boston is a great example due to the HUGE number of city dwellers that use their cars to get from one point in the city (home) to another point (work) every day, even though there is viable public transit.
Another caveat is the Boston proper has an incredibly high insurance rate, and I had a high theft car, and liked to get caught speeding...
Two years ago, my car was stolen. I decided not to replace it, since I could just take the bus/train. I still had 2 years left to pay on it (insurance pay out was more than enough to cover it):
$350 for car payments
$300 for insurance
$125 for parking AT HOME
$75 for fuel
$10 for oil
$10,320 per year spent on car before repairs/tires/speeding tickets/car value dropping/excise tax/registration/inspection/parking tickets/tolls
I had company provided parking, so am not including that, but can attest to the $460 per month sited in the article being a reasonably good rate. I would assume the average is a bit higher, but that is just from briefly looking around, not actually paying it.
Now I have a link pass (subway/bus). Those cost $59 per month, but my company covers $50 of that. So monthly cost of public transit:
$9 for pass
$81 per year
Savings of $10,239 per year.
Now, for full disclosure, my wife and I spend about $100 per month for a ZipCar. I also spend about $100 per month on cab rides home from the bar. I can also admit to spending a little bit more money at the bar, because I don't have to drive home now! But I will chalk those differences up to the parking at work fees that I didn't have to include. I also read a LOT more now. I feel like I'm a part of the city. I have more opportunity to stop and take pictures. I have a good half mile walk every morning before entering the office. And I can take time to watch pretty ladies without worrying that I'm going to crash my car.
That being said, I really miss my car. If anyone has a chance to own an Acura Intgera Type R, I highly recommend it.
The problem they might run into is the speed of pressing the button to respond. I would imagine the computer would be able to beat the human every time it knew the answer.
This is actually where I think the humans have an advantage. They can press the button just because they think that they WILL know the answer in the time allotted.
Watson may be designed to predict its own ability to answer. But to allow it to just press the button, then use the entire time limit to find it would not be fair...
So, if the female chimp gets tired of the male chimp and boots him, does the female chimp get half of the male chimp's meat for the rest of her life?
But that would just be posting to be an acheivement whore! How could you be so...pedestrian?
But either way, Apple is still providing a service here that both the developers and the consumers are using.
However, the service that Apple is providing is based entirely on promoting their own product line.
The developers are also providing a service to Apple by creating applications that draw customers to the iPhone/iTouch product. Every comparison to any new phone on the market always comes down to "the interface is good. Maybe as good as the iPhone's. But nothing can compete with the AppStore." [paraphrase]
Go ahead and charge a steep commission, but don't kick the same people that are giving your product an edge.
Okay, that was more convincing.
We do live in an age where whistleblowing has become a recognized responsibility in all fields, and taking an uninvolved stance does not always remove obligation.
I was trying to make a point about the existence of a neutral position, but when framed as an ethical question, as opposed to a legal question, it takes on a very different light. The neutral stance would be to ignore the obvious ethical thing to do. While the evil thing to do is to take advantage of the exploit.
A neutral stance attempts to avoid being unethical by taking no action. But the true definition of "unethical" is to NOT do what is ethically correct.
I still do not believe it makes the "neutral" hacker evil. But it does make them a scumbag.
The static point is that if you find an exploit, you are under no obligation to inform the vendor. You are not evil if you do not inform the vendor.
What would make you evil includes, but is not limited to:
I agree that there are far more ways to be evil, than not. But that does not mean that you are obligated in any way to do anything. And it does not mean that you are a scumbag if you do not report something that you have found.
Effectively, you are a scumbag if you do anything other than:
You've got to be careful though, it could also be blackmail
Absolutely.
Of course blackmailing the vendor would 1)be malicious and 2)involve releasing the exploit. Both of those would go far beyond the stance I am defending.
A responsible hacker notifies the vendor or author of the issue, giving them a reasonable amount of time to release a fix.
I think this is putting too much responsibility on the hacker. I would argue that the only responsibility the hacker has is to not use the exploit in a malicious manner. And asking for payment from the vendor for the work done by the hacker is not malicious. It is business.
The "personal gain" you reference should be limited to the enjoyment of investigating and engineering the exploit in the first place. If the exploit is released in any way, then I am on your side, and they become scumbag black hat. But if it never leaves the basement, and is discovered with the sole intent being to sit in a personal library of code, then there is no foul. Nor is there any onus placed on the hacker.
I do think that the exploit contest itself is an interesting grey area. But if the vendors are willing to put their systems up to that kind of scrutiny, then it can not be called malicious.
I agree that this is AIG actually trying to be a business that is responsible to its shareholders.
It is actually, now more then ever, in the government's best interest for AIG to make every attempt to go after any and all money it can, from all sources.
People were ticked off when they viewed AIG's actions as SPENDING money. Now they are ticked off when AIG is trying to GET money.
Public perception is a b*tch
[disclaimer: I am not a fan of AIG, and I believe that all upper management should have been fired without severance packages. I just think this particular uproar is a case of "everything the bad guy does is evil"]
The reason blackberrys are more attractive to networks than the iPhone is because
I'm sorry, but I'm fairly certain that most other networks would be more than happy to get a share of the iPhone market. The customers may not be happy with the resulting performance! But the networks would have no problem adding an iPhone, and accompanying plan, to their offerings...
So religion is the cause of our soaring health care premiums? Can health insurance premiums be based on the religious affiliation of the insured? (Of course they can't...)