Your brain is probably recursively simulating itself.
It's useful for a creature to be able to model and predict the external world.
And often that requires creating models of other entities.
If those entities also try to model and predict you, you'd have to model them modeling you:).
Running simulations and predictive models might be better on a computer that can handle infinite states at the same time. Even if it's a bit sloppy and noisy:).
Maybe "consciousness" is what happens when you hit the limit of recursively modeling and predicting yourself by one of those "new fangled quantum computers".
I wonder how the Antivirus people would cope with detecting polymorphic perl malware (or scripts that download stuff from the internet and "eval" them). They'll probably have to flag all perl scripts as malware:).
"It's getting pretty hard to do a lot of this stuff on Windows Vista and Windows 7," Nils said. "Especially when a lot of people who stayed with [Windows XP] switch to Windows 7 because they didn't want Vista, the bad guys may start to figure out they can more easily exploit these bugs more reliably on a Mac."
"Mac OS X has some ASLR but not much, and there is no DEP in OS X," Miller said. "My exploit relied on exploit code being in certain spot, and that it would [execute], and in Vista neither of those things would have happened."
Go ahead stay in the reality distortion field and drink the kool-aid.
It's NOT the contest that proves it. Just read what the guy says and go investigate to see if what he is saying is true.
Just see: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2941 and: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9759132-7.html
Quote:
"With my Safari exploit, I put the code into a process and I know exactly where it's going to be. There's no randomization. I know when I jump there, the code is there and I can execute it there. On Windows, the code might show up but I don't know where it is. Even if I get to the code, it's not executable. Those are two hurdles that Macs don't have."
You don't have to be a genius to figure it out. OSX doesn't have the same protections. It doesn't even have the protections Windows XP SP2 has and that came out 5 years ago.
If you don't believe me, just get the opinion of any of the top security researchers on the security of OSX compared to XP/Vista.
The reason why OSX is not exploited as much as windows is it is the equivalent of a house in a small village. Hardly anyone would bother break in even if the door is unlocked.
There's no point creating a tiny network of zombies. A huge network is where the money is.
If I were a malware writer I'd be rubbing my hands with glee if OSX's market share goes up.
Apple makes cool stuff, but they don't make secure stuff.
Mac OSX and Linux are as insecure as Microsoft Windows XP/Vista if not more so. Go ask the guy who hacked OSX in a contest.
The earlier versions of windows (Win9x,Win2K) were less secure.
Thousands of the zombied machines out there are zombies because the _user_ installed the malware. They were fooled by some website, thought they were _infected_ so they followed some instructions, "ran some scan" and got themselves infected.
If OSX/Linux had that class of users and a larger market share they could be infected as well. There is NOTHING on OSX or say Ubuntu/Redhat ("out of the box") would save a user who decides to run something says it's going to do something innocuous, but does something nasty as well.
In contrast Vista does have better sandboxing ("File System and Registry Virtualization").
Hmm I think some of those in Royal Mail used to take it as a challenge.
One of my friends had mail sent to him but with the address incomplete (no street address!). When a letter came for him with a full address, he got both:).
Indirectly - when governments "print money" (actual creation or soft loans) to bailout companies. For example: if the US Gov prints more US dollars and it results in inflation, it means those who have net positive US dollars are poorer (since their USD becomes worth less). Lots of countries and companies around the world use the US dollar to buy/sell oil and other goods - thus they hold billions or even trillions of it.
Of course if you owe a lot of money, inflation helps you - your debt becomes smaller in purchasing power terms. The USA happens to owe a lot of money in USD.
Whenever you're sick with an unpleasant contagious disease, go to your boss and shake his hand (say something if necessary). If he has his own room, put your germs on the door knobs/handles.
It seems it all depends on whether he really could buy the "lottery tickets" at a fraction of face value...
If it's uncertain then it seems like gambling to me.
Investing on the other hand is what some people/companies do when nobody wins the lottery so the winning pot builds up to a huge amount. Then they buy as many combinations as they possibly can.
Naturally if too many people also win and share the pot they lose. But that's investment for you:).
I guess I'm too unsophisticated to understand math and strategies much more complicated than that...
>it seems like it'd be pretty "easy" to deal with the flu symptoms today: just siphon fluid from people's lungs until they defeat the flu.
It might be a bit difficult to siphon fluid from other people's lungs while having to siphon fluid from your own lungs.
Hospitals can deal with a few cases. But when it gets to a pandemic level stuff starts to fall apart.
There'll also be a few nuts who will break quarantine and infect others. Some even intentionally.
Oh humans will survive. There'll be a bunch of survivalists and tribes stuck in the jungle. But given how modern society is dependent on so many specialists, it's hard to keep things running smoothly if the "3 people in the organization that know how to do X are dead or incapacitated". Sure given time maybe someone else can figure it out, but is there time? Nowadays a lot of thing is "just in time", no vast amount of stocks in warehouses.
That's why navy ships are "overcrewed". If 30% of the crew died, there's still a high chance the ship can still fight battles.
I doubt many companies are "overcrewed" nowadays. Any extra capacity would have been cut or converted to $$$$ and siphoned off.
But here's a statistic for them - in the past 2 US elections: "eligible voters who did not vote" > "number of votes for the winning president".
If enough of those nonvoters actually bothered to vote, even though for different candidates, the two parties would start changing their tune - since they would know that those voters might realize that in the next election they can get together and kick the two out (if they really dislike the Two that much).
BUT, as it is, why should the two parties change? Unless the elections were severely diebolded, more than 98% of the voters voted for the "two party" candidates. If either of the Two Parties change too much they might lose their share of the voters. Why should they care about what the nonvoters think? They don't count!
So, the Two Parties may not actually be colluding that much. They could be just representing the people. Hey, 98% is pretty good representation - democracy at work and all that. If you don't like it, blame the voters and the nonvoters.
Any evidence that he isn't just like one of those lottery winners?
The losers don't get much press. Once in a while someone wins big and everyone wants to know how that person did it.
Even if there's a good reason why that person is "winning", often that person might not even be able to tell you how to replicate the success (he certainly can tell you lots of stuff, but that's not the same thing:) ). Apparently there's a finance guy who sells when his back hurts - and it works pretty well. His mind probably gathers various info from all sorts of sources processes it, when it's bad he gets more stressed and he gets back pain.
Warren Buffet does appear to have a consistent track record and his method does appear to make sense.
I know someone in the finance industry and he says what he really does is transfer money from the stupid to the smart (himself ), and it's not about "making more efficient markets", "providing liquidity" and all that bullshit. He says the difference with him is at least he's honest about it ( at least to some people:) ). He's pretty savvy, and can quickly work out if a casino has screwed up with a game/system. The trouble with casinos is they don't welcome players who make too much - if they find out that you're making too much, they'll never let you in again - even if you win legitimately. In contrast the financial markets welcome players who keep winning big.
Call me cynical but in my opinion all the "fancy math and investment strategies"[1] are the equivalent of smoke and mirrors magicians use to hide what they are really doing.
Think about it - what is actually happening if a bunch of people keep trading stuff amongst each other till things end up priced many times their original value, while they collect a commission per transaction (and a even bonus in some cases)? Where's the money really going?
If you really believe that sort of thing helps make the market more efficient, then there's someone out there who would like to sell you a "High Grade Structured Enhanced Leveraged Bridging Fund".
[1] Don't get me wrong - non-fancy math and strategies are OK. When it comes to investment, the fancier the math, the more likely it is to be BS.
Rather strange that the avian flu could end up in a vaccine that's supposed to contain a very different sort of flu.
If they are that careless and sloppy maybe they should be shutdown for safety reasons. How about National Security reasons?
The level of incompetence required is hard to distinguish from evil.
This is not stuff like "Conficker".
What next? Whoops we accidentally sent you a weaponized flu we were working on for the Military. Sorry, we'll give you a discount on your next order OK?
In many cases (especially if virtualization is used): root in virtual machine + bug in your CPU and/or bug in vm software = root in host machine.
Apparently there is an exploitable bug in intel processors. The "offsets" for the exploit might change depending on the motherboard you are using. So you better not be using a popular motherboard:).
Slashdot Mirror
Your brain is probably recursively simulating itself.
:).
:).
It's useful for a creature to be able to model and predict the external world.
And often that requires creating models of other entities.
If those entities also try to model and predict you, you'd have to model them modeling you
Running simulations and predictive models might be better on a computer that can handle infinite states at the same time. Even if it's a bit sloppy and noisy
Maybe "consciousness" is what happens when you hit the limit of recursively modeling and predicting yourself by one of those "new fangled quantum computers".
"It doesn't matter if your computer is classical or quantum, they can still only solve the same kinds of problems"
:) ).
But in different time.
There are problems that quantum computers can solve faster than classical computers (at least in theory
Uh it does run Linux.
:).
Imagine that - the Microsoft researchers are being paid by Microsoft and develop stuff that uses Linux
In theory you could download from it wirelessly as well.
So no need to take it home. Just copy off the downloaded stuff, delete to free up space and give it a new set of instructions.
Imagine if OSX gets 30% marketshare.
:).
I wonder how the Antivirus people would cope with detecting polymorphic perl malware (or scripts that download stuff from the internet and "eval" them). They'll probably have to flag all perl scripts as malware
And guess who is responsible for the code quality of quicktime? Apple.
OSX is swiss cheese too. It has dozens of setuid programs. It has no "DEP" - something that Windows XP had 5 years ago with service pack 2.
It's not just me claiming that. I know others who would say the same thing.
Both Charlie Miller and "Nils" say OSX is easier to exploit.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/03/mac_os_x_top_target_in_browser.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9759132-7.html
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2941
Quotes:
"It's getting pretty hard to do a lot of this stuff on Windows Vista and Windows 7," Nils said. "Especially when a lot of people who stayed with [Windows XP] switch to Windows 7 because they didn't want Vista, the bad guys may start to figure out they can more easily exploit these bugs more reliably on a Mac."
"Mac OS X has some ASLR but not much, and there is no DEP in OS X," Miller said. "My exploit relied on exploit code being in certain spot, and that it would [execute], and in Vista neither of those things would have happened."
Go ahead stay in the reality distortion field and drink the kool-aid.
It's NOT the contest that proves it. Just read what the guy says and go investigate to see if what he is saying is true.
Just see: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2941
and: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9759132-7.html
Quote:
"With my Safari exploit, I put the code into a process and I know exactly where it's going to be. There's no randomization. I know when I jump there, the code is there and I can execute it there. On Windows, the code might show up but I don't know where it is. Even if I get to the code, it's not executable. Those are two hurdles that Macs don't have."
You don't have to be a genius to figure it out. OSX doesn't have the same protections. It doesn't even have the protections Windows XP SP2 has and that came out 5 years ago.
If you don't believe me, just get the opinion of any of the top security researchers on the security of OSX compared to XP/Vista.
The reason why OSX is not exploited as much as windows is it is the equivalent of a house in a small village. Hardly anyone would bother break in even if the door is unlocked.
There's no point creating a tiny network of zombies. A huge network is where the money is.
If I were a malware writer I'd be rubbing my hands with glee if OSX's market share goes up.
Apple makes cool stuff, but they don't make secure stuff.
Mac OSX and Linux are as insecure as Microsoft Windows XP/Vista if not more so. Go ask the guy who hacked OSX in a contest.
The earlier versions of windows (Win9x,Win2K) were less secure.
Thousands of the zombied machines out there are zombies because the _user_ installed the malware. They were fooled by some website, thought they were _infected_ so they followed some instructions, "ran some scan" and got themselves infected.
If OSX/Linux had that class of users and a larger market share they could be infected as well. There is NOTHING on OSX or say Ubuntu/Redhat ("out of the box") would save a user who decides to run something says it's going to do something innocuous, but does something nasty as well.
In contrast Vista does have better sandboxing ("File System and Registry Virtualization").
Hmm I think some of those in Royal Mail used to take it as a challenge.
:).
One of my friends had mail sent to him but with the address incomplete (no street address!). When a letter came for him with a full address, he got both
Could be you.
Directly - your pension/investment funds etc
Indirectly - when governments "print money" (actual creation or soft loans) to bailout companies. For example: if the US Gov prints more US dollars and it results in inflation, it means those who have net positive US dollars are poorer (since their USD becomes worth less). Lots of countries and companies around the world use the US dollar to buy/sell oil and other goods - thus they hold billions or even trillions of it.
Of course if you owe a lot of money, inflation helps you - your debt becomes smaller in purchasing power terms. The USA happens to owe a lot of money in USD.
Those cunning parasites are trying to keep you alive for longer.
They don't want you to die because they'll lose their home.
They are also rather attached to you.
Maybe. But don't bet on it giving you resistance (there's a chance it might even make it worse):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin
That's no proof of a healthy immune system.
It's hard to catch contagious diseases if you're stuck in a basement all the time.
Clap, clap, clap.
Try this then:
Whenever you're sick with an unpleasant contagious disease, go to your boss and shake his hand (say something if necessary). If he has his own room, put your germs on the door knobs/handles.
It seems it all depends on whether he really could buy the "lottery tickets" at a fraction of face value...
:).
If it's uncertain then it seems like gambling to me.
Investing on the other hand is what some people/companies do when nobody wins the lottery so the winning pot builds up to a huge amount. Then they buy as many combinations as they possibly can.
Naturally if too many people also win and share the pot they lose. But that's investment for you
I guess I'm too unsophisticated to understand math and strategies much more complicated than that...
Tasers don't kill people. People kill people. :)
>it seems like it'd be pretty "easy" to deal with the flu symptoms today: just siphon fluid from people's lungs until they defeat the flu.
It might be a bit difficult to siphon fluid from other people's lungs while having to siphon fluid from your own lungs.
Hospitals can deal with a few cases. But when it gets to a pandemic level stuff starts to fall apart.
There'll also be a few nuts who will break quarantine and infect others. Some even intentionally.
Oh humans will survive. There'll be a bunch of survivalists and tribes stuck in the jungle. But given how modern society is dependent on so many specialists, it's hard to keep things running smoothly if the "3 people in the organization that know how to do X are dead or incapacitated". Sure given time maybe someone else can figure it out, but is there time? Nowadays a lot of thing is "just in time", no vast amount of stocks in warehouses.
That's why navy ships are "overcrewed". If 30% of the crew died, there's still a high chance the ship can still fight battles.
I doubt many companies are "overcrewed" nowadays. Any extra capacity would have been cut or converted to $$$$ and siphoned off.
You're probably doing it wrong. Just add fava beans and a nice chianti.
> Temporarily putting people at risk; in the long run, it's building a more resistant species.
The thing is, it might be a nonhuman species.
Some people might be a bit dismayed with that.
I think even the crocodiles might shed a tear or two (BTW they have better immune systems in many ways).
They keep saying their vote will be wasted.
But here's a statistic for them - in the past 2 US elections: "eligible voters who did not vote" > "number of votes for the winning president".
If enough of those nonvoters actually bothered to vote, even though for different candidates, the two parties would start changing their tune - since they would know that those voters might realize that in the next election they can get together and kick the two out (if they really dislike the Two that much).
BUT, as it is, why should the two parties change? Unless the elections were severely diebolded, more than 98% of the voters voted for the "two party" candidates. If either of the Two Parties change too much they might lose their share of the voters. Why should they care about what the nonvoters think? They don't count!
So, the Two Parties may not actually be colluding that much. They could be just representing the people. Hey, 98% is pretty good representation - democracy at work and all that. If you don't like it, blame the voters and the nonvoters.
The bloomberg article I linked to was talking about Baxter and avian flu.
Weaponized flu is a bit different.
If that avian flu Baxter sent was really a weaponized flu that's even bigger news.
Any evidence that he isn't just like one of those lottery winners?
:) ). Apparently there's a finance guy who sells when his back hurts - and it works pretty well. His mind probably gathers various info from all sorts of sources processes it, when it's bad he gets more stressed and he gets back pain.
:) ). He's pretty savvy, and can quickly work out if a casino has screwed up with a game/system. The trouble with casinos is they don't welcome players who make too much - if they find out that you're making too much, they'll never let you in again - even if you win legitimately. In contrast the financial markets welcome players who keep winning big.
The losers don't get much press. Once in a while someone wins big and everyone wants to know how that person did it.
Even if there's a good reason why that person is "winning", often that person might not even be able to tell you how to replicate the success (he certainly can tell you lots of stuff, but that's not the same thing
Warren Buffet does appear to have a consistent track record and his method does appear to make sense.
I know someone in the finance industry and he says what he really does is transfer money from the stupid to the smart (himself ), and it's not about "making more efficient markets", "providing liquidity" and all that bullshit. He says the difference with him is at least he's honest about it ( at least to some people
Call me cynical but in my opinion all the "fancy math and investment strategies"[1] are the equivalent of smoke and mirrors magicians use to hide what they are really doing.
Think about it - what is actually happening if a bunch of people keep trading stuff amongst each other till things end up priced many times their original value, while they collect a commission per transaction (and a even bonus in some cases)? Where's the money really going?
If you really believe that sort of thing helps make the market more efficient, then there's someone out there who would like to sell you a "High Grade Structured Enhanced Leveraged Bridging Fund".
[1] Don't get me wrong - non-fancy math and strategies are OK. When it comes to investment, the fancier the math, the more likely it is to be BS.
Nowadays some are spread by companies that make vaccines.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aTo3LbhcA75I
Rather strange that the avian flu could end up in a vaccine that's supposed to contain a very different sort of flu.
If they are that careless and sloppy maybe they should be shutdown for safety reasons. How about National Security reasons?
The level of incompetence required is hard to distinguish from evil.
This is not stuff like "Conficker".
What next? Whoops we accidentally sent you a weaponized flu we were working on for the Military. Sorry, we'll give you a discount on your next order OK?
In many cases (especially if virtualization is used):
:).
root in virtual machine + bug in your CPU and/or bug in vm software = root in host machine.
Apparently there is an exploitable bug in intel processors. The "offsets" for the exploit might change depending on the motherboard you are using. So you better not be using a popular motherboard