Maybe Apple should create another brand, where the products have fewer features, extra "avantegarde" BS, a 20x bigger price tag and an artificially limited production run.
Stimulate and train a horse as much as you want but they just can't do certain things as well as we can (and vice versa).
Now you can also stunt the potential and that's where environment comes in.
As for those diseases, take the case of HIV:
As long as you take the trouble to educate people, it doesn't seem like such a big problem.
The stupid people who can't control themselves will die. The smart ones who just have got to do it will use condoms. So yes it'll be a tragedy, but people are big on freedom of choice right?
If that continues there will be some evolution whether in HIV or in humans. HIV (or others like hepatitis etc) could evolve past those barriers before we get smarter or more self controlled. So there's a race going on, most just don't know it yet.
I too think smart is good, but perhaps in the long run smartness is overrated, and the equivalent of the peacocks elaborate tail feathers. Used mainly to impress potential mates.
Does it look like we're really using our intelligence to extend our species long term survivability?
The last I checked we have not built space stations that can build more space stations from asteroids.
Roaches have better odds (and they'll probably sneak on board too if we build them).
I've definitely seen mysql use up tons of memory before for no apparent reason. Trouble is it did this at a customer's site on a live machine with lots of users.
My ex-boss insisted on MySQL - whereas me and my colleague were pushing for postgresql instead. Oh well...
Postgresql has its fair share of problems, but looking at the Postgresql and MySQL mailing lists and bug reports, I'm more comfortable with the Postgresql problems.
"and the utility of a RDBMS is not defined by database sizes it can handle"
Actually there is some relevance.
If you needed a database gigabytes in size a few _years_ ago, MySQL would have been a really bad choice (it still is crap, just less so IMO).
For MyISAM: You would have to configure it to get tables bigger than the default 4GB limit (there's a number of row limit and table size limit). Hope you don't make the new setting too small so you're still working in the place when those run out too;).
For Innodb: Before the single file per table, if you're moving about gigabytes of stuff, you end up with one huge multigigabyte innodb table.
For both: Adding an index was the same as "alter table" and involved making a copy of the table.
So let's say you have a 40GB table and 40GB of space free. No index add for you:). Keep in mind if you have plenty of space free making a copy of a 40GB table does take time.
BTW concurrent inserts to an innodb table with an auto increment field were slow till only recently (well allegedly they've fixed that).
The truth is, we're all in suspended animation and travelling in a fleet towards some distant planet (because our old planet got a bit crappy).
It's a very long journey.
In order to stop our minds from rotting away even in suspended animation, we have to keep them occupied with something.
So we have computers to simulate a world and our minds can then "live in it". Fortunately since our minds are slowed down by the suspended animation by many orders of magnitudes, the computers can manage to simulate things in time.
Of course, well something went wrong and so it's taking a _lot_ longer to get to a suitable planet, so the Ship AIs have kicked in Plan B.
That's where they have to make new generations of humans - since the journey is taking so long that even humans in stasis eventually die.
And also due to resource problems, the Ship AIs have implemented "Natural Disasters" from time to time to free up some "capacity".
Naturally you the hero, figure out the (after many generations people forget stuff and lose documentation) special "magic" that gives you higher powers - and later on "super" privileges to the simulation (and more).
Thing is there are also AIs in the simulation who have gone bad (nobody's perfect and it has been a very long time...), and they want out of the simulation, and they have a plan.
Naturally you eventually save the girl, the world etc, because you "cheat" and wake up - and while you're not in suspended animation your brain works magnitudes faster than the simulation and thus the AIs in the simulation (even though a few "wake up" - they were still slower - and you prevented them from getting access to more computing resources - e.g. killing the simulation stuff).
But region locking has little to do with preventing copying. The copy might also end up region locked, but it's still a copy:).
Region locking is all about market segmentation and control in the hopes of more $$$.
I doubt that you _MUST_ be online to play most of those games (e.g. MMORPG), so someone might remove the online checking bits and voila the "Unauthorized" version will then have one advantage over the "original".
We "switch off" dogs, horses etc all the time. And these are generations ahead of any AI we have.
Personally I think we should be focusing on augmenting humans instead of creating "Real" AIs.
Why? Because we are not doing a good job taking care of the billions of already existing nonhuman intelligences. So why create even more to abuse and enslave?
Just because you can have children doesn't automatically mean the time is right. Wait till we as a civilization have grown up (to be a mature civilization) then maybe it won't be such a bad idea to have "children" of our own.
Don't forget, dogs are generally happy to obey humans and do not resent us - but this took many generations of breeding.
If we create very intelligent AIs without all the other "goodies" the "I'm so happy to see you" doggies have "built-in", we're just creating more problems rather than solutions.
In contrast if we use that sort of tech to augment humans so that they can do things better and more easily we avoid a whole bunch of potential issues.
The lines might get blurry at some point, but by that point we'd probably be more ready.
Basically you pick a theme and then you bashed keys on your keyboard and the program will try to keep things in tune, and chuck out riffs and ornamentations depending on which key you press and what stage the "song" is in.
What I want is for the browser to give me a warning if the cert (self-signed or CA signed - separate warning controls) is a NEW one, or it has CHANGED since the last time (and the browser should keep copies of the previous certs for comparison).
CA signed certs give a false sense of security too.
1) Verisign have already proven they can't be trusted to do things right. 2) AFAIK with popular browsers you don't get a warning if the cert changes or even the CA changes as long as the cert is signed by a CA installed in the browser.
Of course in the greater scheme of things your banking and other sites probably have bigger security holes in practice that make all these cert problems look like "small potatoes".
SQL injection. "Mother's maiden name" to reset password (yes I know you can use something different from your mother's maiden name - but people who forget their passwords regularly will forget that too;) ).
"anyone arguing in favor of not putting up big warnings when a browser sees a self-signed cert is a dumb-ass"
"Encryption without authentication is worthless to anyone who cares about security; if you don't know who you're communicating with, what's the point of encryption?"
I prefer the browser to give me big warnings if the cert (whether self-signed or CA signed) is a NEW one, or it has CHANGED since the last time (and the browser should keep copies of the previous certs for comparison).
Once it does that it might even be safer than the normal process with CA signed certs. Do you trust all the CAs whose certs are installed in your browser? If you don't but you still keep their certs installed just so you don't get "prompts", then you're not very different from the people who ignore those warnings and prompts.
With my suggestion you could go "hey, my bank is using a new cert, and hey it's a different CA from some obscure country, hmmm maybe I better not log in".
That won't happen with most popular browsers - you get no warning that the cert has changed as long as it's a valid CA.
"I'm also Brazilian, and I can vouch for the number of frauds we have before e-voting. And how the number of frauds decreased drastically after the voting machines."
As I've been claiming it's a LOT easier to cheat with electronic voting systems without being detected. Maybe you've been experiencing it already, that's why everyone _sees_ less fraud.
How can you know the frauds decreased? How are you so sure that it's not because the _detection_ of frauds decreased drastically?
Because the results have been strongly correlated with independent exit polls? Have they? Because each single vote goes (via a keypad that is made by two unrelated teams from different companies, swappable and validated) to two different machines made and managed by different people and are counted independently and they have matched up near 100%?
Give me examples of fraud using paper voting that's hard to detect assuming a system similar to what I mentioned and assuming proper procedures - since we will also assume proper procedures for electronic voting.
I claim far fewer corrupt people are needed to implement cheating with electronic voting than you do with paper voting. With the exceptions of stuff like postal votes - I believe the current existing systems are weak vs rigging via postal votes. But I believe good solutions for that will apply to both pen+paper and electronic voting.
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And the RIAA will use this as more evidence that piracy has gone up.
Unauthorized copies of music being shipped...
Similar to buying Louis Vuitton, or Rolex etc.
Maybe Apple should create another brand, where the products have fewer features, extra "avantegarde" BS, a 20x bigger price tag and an artificially limited production run.
Max intelligence is mainly a matter of genetics.
Stimulate and train a horse as much as you want but they just can't do certain things as well as we can (and vice versa).
Now you can also stunt the potential and that's where environment comes in.
As for those diseases, take the case of HIV:
As long as you take the trouble to educate people, it doesn't seem like such a big problem.
The stupid people who can't control themselves will die. The smart ones who just have got to do it will use condoms. So yes it'll be a tragedy, but people are big on freedom of choice right?
If that continues there will be some evolution whether in HIV or in humans. HIV (or others like hepatitis etc) could evolve past those barriers before we get smarter or more self controlled. So there's a race going on, most just don't know it yet.
I too think smart is good, but perhaps in the long run smartness is overrated, and the equivalent of the peacocks elaborate tail feathers. Used mainly to impress potential mates.
Does it look like we're really using our intelligence to extend our species long term survivability?
The last I checked we have not built space stations that can build more space stations from asteroids.
Roaches have better odds (and they'll probably sneak on board too if we build them).
Yeah like switch from ATP to cold fusion - only problem is you need to drink heavy water and have palladium implants in your muscles.
;).
Benefit? You can run for hours at sprint speeds and your tendons or joints will wear out first
" one huge multigigabyte innodb table"
Agh I meant file. And you can't shrink that file easily even if lots of it is unused.
The problem with MySQL is the "brochure" looks very nice to the PHBs.
But when you get to the details, a lot of the advantages/features are mutually exclusive.
Want fast simple selects - MyISAM
Want fast single user inserts - MyISAM
Want fast concurrent inserts - InnoDB
Want fast concurrent inserts to tables with an "autoincrement" column - better look at this http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/innodb-auto-increment-handling.html
I've definitely seen mysql use up tons of memory before for no apparent reason. Trouble is it did this at a customer's site on a live machine with lots of users.
My ex-boss insisted on MySQL - whereas me and my colleague were pushing for postgresql instead. Oh well...
Postgresql has its fair share of problems, but looking at the Postgresql and MySQL mailing lists and bug reports, I'm more comfortable with the Postgresql problems.
Stuff like this scares me:
"ORDER BY DESC in InnoDB not working"
http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=31001
So it might actually be a good thing if MySQL fades away.
(which reminds me of the error message when it crashes every once in a while: MySQL has gone away :) )
"is no way you are going to recover an account number that has been blacked out"
;).
Unless you saved it in layers - where the blacked out part is on top and the stuff underneath it is still there.
Hilarious when other people do that. Not so funny if it's your people
"and the utility of a RDBMS is not defined by database sizes it can handle"
;).
:).
Actually there is some relevance.
If you needed a database gigabytes in size a few _years_ ago, MySQL would have been a really bad choice (it still is crap, just less so IMO).
For MyISAM:
You would have to configure it to get tables bigger than the default 4GB limit (there's a number of row limit and table size limit). Hope you don't make the new setting too small so you're still working in the place when those run out too
For Innodb:
Before the single file per table, if you're moving about gigabytes of stuff, you end up with one huge multigigabyte innodb table.
For both:
Adding an index was the same as "alter table" and involved making a copy of the table.
So let's say you have a 40GB table and 40GB of space free. No index add for you
Keep in mind if you have plenty of space free making a copy of a 40GB table does take time.
BTW concurrent inserts to an innodb table with an auto increment field were slow till only recently (well allegedly they've fixed that).
I used to write tanks for Omega.
Not sure if these are the working versions of my tanks (haven't played it in a while):
1v1 or "free for all" tank:
http://nearly.mine.nu.nyud.net/lyeoh/pubfiles/omega/baz31.zip
team tank:
http://nearly.mine.nu.nyud.net/lyeoh/pubfiles/omega/banzai.zip
There are better tactics in terms of winning, but they might be a bit more boring.
The truth is, we're all in suspended animation and travelling in a fleet towards some distant planet (because our old planet got a bit crappy).
:).
It's a very long journey.
In order to stop our minds from rotting away even in suspended animation, we have to keep them occupied with something.
So we have computers to simulate a world and our minds can then "live in it". Fortunately since our minds are slowed down by the suspended animation by many orders of magnitudes, the computers can manage to simulate things in time.
Of course, well something went wrong and so it's taking a _lot_ longer to get to a suitable planet, so the Ship AIs have kicked in Plan B.
That's where they have to make new generations of humans - since the journey is taking so long that even humans in stasis eventually die.
And also due to resource problems, the Ship AIs have implemented "Natural Disasters" from time to time to free up some "capacity".
Naturally you the hero, figure out the (after many generations people forget stuff and lose documentation) special "magic" that gives you higher powers - and later on "super" privileges to the simulation (and more).
Thing is there are also AIs in the simulation who have gone bad (nobody's perfect and it has been a very long time...), and they want out of the simulation, and they have a plan.
Naturally you eventually save the girl, the world etc, because you "cheat" and wake up - and while you're not in suspended animation your brain works magnitudes faster than the simulation and thus the AIs in the simulation (even though a few "wake up" - they were still slower - and you prevented them from getting access to more computing resources - e.g. killing the simulation stuff).
Lastly, of course that's not really the truth
42 :)
But region locking has little to do with preventing copying. The copy might also end up region locked, but it's still a copy :).
Region locking is all about market segmentation and control in the hopes of more $$$.
I doubt that you _MUST_ be online to play most of those games (e.g. MMORPG), so someone might remove the online checking bits and voila the "Unauthorized" version will then have one advantage over the "original".
It should be no surprise that spammers lie.
After all just look at typical spam emails.
So many spams have:
Fake Subject field
Fake Sender field
Other fake headers
Deceptive content
After all those lies do people actually believe they can send spammers real (humour me ok?) money and expect something that's not fake?
If judges can't see it's fraud (lying for personal gain) perhaps those judges are fakes too.
We "switch off" dogs, horses etc all the time. And these are generations ahead of any AI we have.
Personally I think we should be focusing on augmenting humans instead of creating "Real" AIs.
Why? Because we are not doing a good job taking care of the billions of already existing nonhuman intelligences. So why create even more to abuse and enslave?
Just because you can have children doesn't automatically mean the time is right. Wait till we as a civilization have grown up (to be a mature civilization) then maybe it won't be such a bad idea to have "children" of our own.
Don't forget, dogs are generally happy to obey humans and do not resent us - but this took many generations of breeding.
If we create very intelligent AIs without all the other "goodies" the "I'm so happy to see you" doggies have "built-in", we're just creating more problems rather than solutions.
In contrast if we use that sort of tech to augment humans so that they can do things better and more easily we avoid a whole bunch of potential issues.
The lines might get blurry at some point, but by that point we'd probably be more ready.
Not replicants.
The term you're looking for is Artificial Intelligence.
Sounds a bit like Jam Session which came out for the Apple IIGS in 1988.
http://monsterfeet.com/1mhz/show.php?id=5
Basically you pick a theme and then you bashed keys on your keyboard and the program will try to keep things in tune, and chuck out riffs and ornamentations depending on which key you press and what stage the "song" is in.
http://monsterfeet.com/1mhz/files/jam_session/jam_session1.gif
http://monsterfeet.com/1mhz/files/jam_session/jam_session4.gif
"which changed the soundtrack to reflect the progress of the battle was revolutionary"
;) ).
Has there been a comic book superhero power like that? Where you always hear background music that's appropriate to the immediate/potential situation.
Something like "spider sense" but probably not as specific (and works for romantic and comedy situations too
IIRC I was going around with hitting stuff with bare hands and it worked rather well (but I think the character I was using had pretty good stats ;) ).
What I want is for the browser to give me a warning if the cert (self-signed or CA signed - separate warning controls) is a NEW one, or it has CHANGED since the last time (and the browser should keep copies of the previous certs for comparison).
;) ).
CA signed certs give a false sense of security too.
1) Verisign have already proven they can't be trusted to do things right.
2) AFAIK with popular browsers you don't get a warning if the cert changes or even the CA changes as long as the cert is signed by a CA installed in the browser.
Of course in the greater scheme of things your banking and other sites probably have bigger security holes in practice that make all these cert problems look like "small potatoes".
SQL injection. "Mother's maiden name" to reset password (yes I know you can use something different from your mother's maiden name - but people who forget their passwords regularly will forget that too
"anyone arguing in favor of not putting up big warnings when a browser sees a self-signed cert is a dumb-ass"
"Encryption without authentication is worthless to anyone who cares about security; if you don't know who you're communicating with, what's the point of encryption?"
I prefer the browser to give me big warnings if the cert (whether self-signed or CA signed) is a NEW one, or it has CHANGED since the last time (and the browser should keep copies of the previous certs for comparison).
Once it does that it might even be safer than the normal process with CA signed certs. Do you trust all the CAs whose certs are installed in your browser? If you don't but you still keep their certs installed just so you don't get "prompts", then you're not very different from the people who ignore those warnings and prompts.
With my suggestion you could go "hey, my bank is using a new cert, and hey it's a different CA from some obscure country, hmmm maybe I better not log in".
That won't happen with most popular browsers - you get no warning that the cert has changed as long as it's a valid CA.
"before better voting systems, shouldn't we need better politicians ?"
Convince someone better to be a candidate then.
If you can't find anyone better and willing including yourself, then I guess you're stuck with the existing bunch.
"I'm also Brazilian, and I can vouch for the number of frauds we have before e-voting. And how the number of frauds decreased drastically after the voting machines."
As I've been claiming it's a LOT easier to cheat with electronic voting systems without being detected. Maybe you've been experiencing it already, that's why everyone _sees_ less fraud.
How can you know the frauds decreased? How are you so sure that it's not because the _detection_ of frauds decreased drastically?
Because the results have been strongly correlated with independent exit polls? Have they?
Because each single vote goes (via a keypad that is made by two unrelated teams from different companies, swappable and validated) to two different machines made and managed by different people and are counted independently and they have matched up near 100%?
Give me examples of fraud using paper voting that's hard to detect assuming a system similar to what I mentioned and assuming proper procedures - since we will also assume proper procedures for electronic voting.
I claim far fewer corrupt people are needed to implement cheating with electronic voting than you do with paper voting. With the exceptions of stuff like postal votes - I believe the current existing systems are weak vs rigging via postal votes. But I believe good solutions for that will apply to both pen+paper and electronic voting.
Hmm, where do you meet such women?
;).
Wait, where do you meet women other than Mom