It feels like the W3C and browser makers are building "cars" with no brakes. And when "cars crash" users and websites are blamed.
For a website to output stuff safely from a 3rd party (e.g. spammer on blog/guestbook) they have to make sure every accelerator pedal is not pressed, AND somehow it has to work for new/future accelerator pedals...
There's technology to cache bittorrent stuff. Go google.
The problem is if ISPs do that for all torrents the *AA will come after them.
If it weren't for the "Copyright issue" there would be no big problems with bittorrent - the ISP could have a bunch of Super Peers - then they'll deprioritize their customer's inter-ISP p2p stuff, while getting the Super Peers fetch torrents that customers are fetching.
Most customers won't care about the inter-ISP P2P speeds being really slow as long as the Super Peers fetch the stuff fast and start seeding at top speeds to the customers (who presumably also start seeding too).
If it were up to me I wouldn't bother with all that fancy tech.
If I really wanted to reduce the number of vehicles entering a city, I'll just increase parking rates by a huge amount and have a bunch of special vehicles/teams that regularly go about removing illegally parked vehicles (have fun paying a lot to get your vehicle back).
Delivery trucks and taxis won't be affected much, but those people who drive in and park for many hours and drive out will be affected.
If you don't want to affect shopping malls you could always tweak the parking rates accordingly.
Can't be that difficult to audit/regulate private car park operators - not like they can pack up and move so easily. And if their car park is bigger than a few spaces it's not going to be easy to hide:).
Call me a fascist pig or call me stupid, but I think it'll be much cheaper to implement, no need for fancy tech - tech that might not work reliably or might not work with visitor vehicles from other states/countries.
Allegedly the USA is a democratic republic - so the Sovereign = voters.
As I implied earlier somewhere down the line the "General" has become the Sovereign and an _enemy_ of the voters/citizens.
If you see carefully most of them don't do stuff truly for the voters (or plan to), they just throw a bone or two to the voters and hope that distracts them enough so they can do what they want.
"It's funny that the way to LOSE a war according to the art of war is to have the army in a distant land and run the people into recession in order to fund that war (that you should be using the supplies from the fallen army/land to restock"
Lose a war? That assumes your beloved General and his army are fighting a war _for_ _you_. Funny assumption to make given the circumstances.
After all guess who is winning and who is losing. It sure isn't the citizens of the US or Iraq who are winning:). It was pretty obvious what would happen before the battle even started.
Know thyself and the real enemy indeed.
"We have always been at war with Oceania/Iraq/Iran/Drugs/etc".
So does all that secrecy protect you from your _real_ enemies?
BUT you know what? I still think the greatest danger to the USA (and the world in general) is NOT Iran or North Korea or Iraq. The greatest danger to the USA is the US Gov (or whoever is controlling it).
You think all that secrecy helps protect you against Iran etc? Maybe it does, but does it protect you against the US Gov who is arguably a greater threat? How many times do they have to Diebold your elections before it's too late?
Do you really think the US Gov has the best interests of the USA at heart? All those lies to start a "war" against Iraq. The billions of dollars spent in that war and siphoned away.
Sure you can _try_[1] to keep secrets on how US makes nukes etc, but I find it hard to believe that all the other secrets and tricks are worth it - e.g. sending _slightly_ flawed nuke secrets to Iran[2]. Flawed blueprints that can probably be corrected by any nuclear scientists worth his/her uranium salts. Why? To set them up to justify an invasion to get more oil? You know they know how to make nukes because your top secret people told them in some clever top secret way, how nice.
So good reason to invade them eh? That'll sure make you guys popular and safe from them terrorists...
[1] The russkies have often said it's easy to get secrets - just get the Yanks to brag about stuff. A little extra info here and a little extra there and they get the full picture:).
You can't easily reprogram one of those neural networks those AI researchers love either. You train them. The only advantage I guess is you can make many copies of a trained network (unless they use a tech that makes it hard - like actual neurons:) ).
The biotech bunch have a higher chance of increasing a hamster's IQ than the compsci AI researchers making something as "smart" as a hamster. Randomly copy brain genes from here and there and stuff might happen:).
I'm not saying the biotech bunch really know what they are doing, but they can produce results.
That's why I say we're at the alchemy stage. The alchemists did actually manage to achieve a lot of stuff - they just didn't have a good theory on what was going on. Once they got a decent theory and understanding they stopped flailing about so much and the field became a science - Chemistry.
The problem with the "emergent intelligence" from lots of "neural networks" approach is even if it works you often don't really know why it works (or whether it's really working the way you want) - it's more a probability thing.
The idea that a neural network given a "large enough corpus" can resemble a human being might be true. But a "long enough dead end" could look like a highway. Then again we are probably dead ends too, and so it's more a matter of which one goes on for longer;).
My other objection to such approaches is, if you wanted a nonhuman intelligence from neural networks that you don't really understand (the workings of), you can always go get one from the pet store.
As it is the Biotech people probably have a better chance of making smarter AI than the computer scientists working on AI - who appear to be still stuck at a primitive level. But both may still not understand why:).
Without a leap in the science of Intelligence/Consciousness, it would then be something like the field of Alchemy in the old days.
I am not an AI researcher, but I believe things like "building a huge corpus" are wrong approaches.
It has long been my opinion that what you need is something that automatically creates models of stuff - simulations. Once you get it trying to recursively model itself (consciousness) and the observed world at the same time AND predict "what might be the best thing to do" then you might start to get somewhere.
Sure pattern recognition is important, but it's just a way for the Modeller to create a better model of the observed world. It is naturally advantageous for an entity to be able to model and predict other entities, and if the other entities are doing the same, you have a need to self model.
So my question is how do you set stuff up so that it automatically starts modelling and predicting what it observes (including self observations)?;)
1) You could cover your mouth - a full face helmet or a burqa, or as if to yawn, cough or sneeze.
2) If both parties are aware of such devices and are prepared they could move their lips to mouth decoy words and only vocalize the non-decoy words to carry the meaning they want.
3) Use a different language especially one which is less reliant on lip movement. People can communicate in Mandarin (or other chinese dialects - Cantonese etc) without having to move their lips much (if at all).
I don't usually use toilet paper - I use water and soap to clean, and then a towel to dry (trick is to make sure everything is clean first, otherwise...:) ). I don't think I'm the only one in the world who does this.
I find the idea of using toilet paper rather unsanitary (and also less comfortable too).
If using soap and water is good enough to clean your hands, it should be good enough for cleaning your butt. If it isn't good enough for you then you should be using something better, and toilet paper certainly isn't better - I don't see surgeons cleaning their hands and arms with toilet paper.
If you're obsessive you could apply alcohol to kill any left over germs.
"Second, while most anyone can get a set of limbs like this runner has, actually they can't without significant sacrifice, ie, amuptation. The IOC should, for the sake of decency, not permit that."
It's not just about decency.
It's also about protecting the "Brand". If they allowed this sort of thing it will damage the "Olympics" brand.
They're obviously not interested in the X Games market, or the XXX games market:).
Yes you own your computer. But what happens if someone steals your computer?
That's where government, rule of law and due process comes in. You don't get to be judge, jury and "executioner" over the person who steals your computer (sure in some cases you get to shoot them, but there are still _laws_ that govern those cases). The government MUST maintain its monopoly over violence at all times - it does this via the police, the courts and other systems. If it is unable or unwilling to do it, society can NOT scale beyond clans (small mutually trusting groups of humans)- look at Africa and other places for examples - mob rule, extrajudiciary executions etc.
If enough people believe "there's no such thing as stealing a computer" then the relevant laws could be changed/repealed.
Same goes if enough people believe "there's no such thing as illegal immigration".
But AFAIK most people in the US don't share your view at all, and so there is such a thing as illegal immigration.
I bet most of the illegal immigrants won't agree with you if they thought about it - after all most of those Mexicans didn't sneak all the way into the US just to end up in the "United States of Mexico", there was a reason why they left Mexico;).
You don't like the way things are? You should show why your way would be better, rather than basically saying it just should be that way.
It's just silly to allow anyone into your country without controls.
Not allowing free immigration is one of the very few ways a Country can pick who is part of it - whether as a legal resident or a citizen.
Citizenship by birth is popular but it's just an average way of filling the ranks;).
I suggest that a well thought out immigration policy can benefit a country significantly in the long term.
Immigrants have served the US well in the past - nuclear technology, aerospace etc.
Some countries have rules where if you put in X million dollars you can become a citizen or PR but in theory a country could use other less materialistic criteria.
Having low cost labour to pick fruit and do other stuff citizens don't want to do has its advantages, but perhaps you might wish to rethink the "children of immigrants born in the country automatically become citizens" policy.
You don't necessarily have to kick them out, but at least you will have options. You could select for traits that you desire - personality, intelligence, looks, physical ability, latent genes, immunity to diseases (via blood tests of course) etc.
Whether it is windows or linux, it is hard for a browser flaw to trash the entire system if you don't run as root/admin.
BUT that's besides my main point, most of the windows worms and malware nowadays are "user" level only - no root, no system privileges obtained nor desired by the malware author - they just want bots they can use to send spam or DDoS stuff.
The way such malware is installed is by application bugs or user error - both of these are not Windows specific problems. Firefox has had lots of problems and I am very sure it will continue to have problems.
These modes of infection are just as possible on Ubuntu, SuSE, RedHat etc. As for monoculture, all those popular distros have perl and sh installed by default. Can you imagine what a malicious perl script can do? I can. It could even google for new instructions:). It'll be interesting to see how the antivirus people would keep up with rapidly changing perl scripts that can fetch new code from all sorts of places, including each other:).
From a security technology perspective windows and linux are about the same - they are both still primitive and unsafe for normal users.
Both windows and linux (most distros) by default run the browser with the full privileges of the user using the GUI, this is not a good idea. The browser should be sandboxed off.
I have suggested that things work the following way: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693
Market share has everything to do with infection. Nobody in their right mind will bother writing a QNX specific DDOS bot.
If you are living in a safe small village and your doors are unlocked, a vulnerability exists, but nobody is going to exploit it.
Back when I worked in IT security I found a fair number of security problems that never got public. Some weren't fixed for years. There are tons of security problems out there. But the hackers have plenty of far far easier AND more _profitable_ targets around.
Slashdot Mirror
How about adding a tag to help turn stuff off and keep them off?
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2007Sep/0034.html
It feels like the W3C and browser makers are building "cars" with no brakes. And when "cars crash" users and websites are blamed.
For a website to output stuff safely from a 3rd party (e.g. spammer on blog/guestbook) they have to make sure every accelerator pedal is not pressed, AND somehow it has to work for new/future accelerator pedals...
Well forcing the use javascript for that is a step backwards.
Sites WILL open new windows for users.
There's technology to cache bittorrent stuff. Go google.
The problem is if ISPs do that for all torrents the *AA will come after them.
If it weren't for the "Copyright issue" there would be no big problems with bittorrent - the ISP could have a bunch of Super Peers - then they'll deprioritize their customer's inter-ISP p2p stuff, while getting the Super Peers fetch torrents that customers are fetching.
Most customers won't care about the inter-ISP P2P speeds being really slow as long as the Super Peers fetch the stuff fast and start seeding at top speeds to the customers (who presumably also start seeding too).
If it were up to me I wouldn't bother with all that fancy tech.
:).
If I really wanted to reduce the number of vehicles entering a city, I'll just increase parking rates by a huge amount and have a bunch of special vehicles/teams that regularly go about removing illegally parked vehicles (have fun paying a lot to get your vehicle back).
Delivery trucks and taxis won't be affected much, but those people who drive in and park for many hours and drive out will be affected.
If you don't want to affect shopping malls you could always tweak the parking rates accordingly.
Can't be that difficult to audit/regulate private car park operators - not like they can pack up and move so easily. And if their car park is bigger than a few spaces it's not going to be easy to hide
Call me a fascist pig or call me stupid, but I think it'll be much cheaper to implement, no need for fancy tech - tech that might not work reliably or might not work with visitor vehicles from other states/countries.
Could be living in a nightclub area.
IIRC the first rush hour starts at about 10+pm. The second is about 2:30-3:30.
The food pyramid has little basis in science.
People interested in their own wellbeing should have ignored the food pyramid.
A good clue was it was produced by the Department of Agriculture.
The last I checked those silly food pyramids and rings and crap weren't produced by the Department of Health, or even the FDA.
Think about it honestly, has the US DoA's top priority ever been the health of the US citizens?
Go figure.
What was done in the study? Survey forms etc?
Confusion? I see Disney wants it both ways :).
There's also the battle over "Winnie the Pooh":
http://iblsjournal.typepad.com/illinois_business_law_soc/2006/03/winnie_the_pooh.html
Allegedly the USA is a democratic republic - so the Sovereign = voters.
As I implied earlier somewhere down the line the "General" has become the Sovereign and an _enemy_ of the voters/citizens.
If you see carefully most of them don't do stuff truly for the voters (or plan to), they just throw a bone or two to the voters and hope that distracts them enough so they can do what they want.
"It's funny that the way to LOSE a war according to the art of war is to have the army in a distant land and run the people into recession in order to fund that war (that you should be using the supplies from the fallen army/land to restock"
:). It was pretty obvious what would happen before the battle even started.
Lose a war? That assumes your beloved General and his army are fighting a war _for_ _you_. Funny assumption to make given the circumstances.
After all guess who is winning and who is losing. It sure isn't the citizens of the US or Iraq who are winning
Know thyself and the real enemy indeed.
"We have always been at war with Oceania/Iraq/Iran/Drugs/etc".
So does all that secrecy protect you from your _real_ enemies?
Sure that is all true.
:).
BUT you know what? I still think the greatest danger to the USA (and the world in general) is NOT Iran or North Korea or Iraq. The greatest danger to the USA is the US Gov (or whoever is controlling it).
You think all that secrecy helps protect you against Iran etc? Maybe it does, but does it protect you against the US Gov who is arguably a greater threat? How many times do they have to Diebold your elections before it's too late?
Do you really think the US Gov has the best interests of the USA at heart? All those lies to start a "war" against Iraq. The billions of dollars spent in that war and siphoned away.
Sure you can _try_[1] to keep secrets on how US makes nukes etc, but I find it hard to believe that all the other secrets and tricks are worth it - e.g. sending _slightly_ flawed nuke secrets to Iran[2]. Flawed blueprints that can probably be corrected by any nuclear scientists worth his/her uranium salts. Why? To set them up to justify an invasion to get more oil? You know they know how to make nukes because your top secret people told them in some clever top secret way, how nice.
So good reason to invade them eh? That'll sure make you guys popular and safe from them terrorists...
[1] The russkies have often said it's easy to get secrets - just get the Yanks to brag about stuff. A little extra info here and a little extra there and they get the full picture
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/jan/05/energy.g2
If crap really happens some people would rather have lots of supplies of fuel, food and water.
Of course some people would rather have lots of ammo and guns.
You can't eat gold. Maybe it might be used as a currency, but maybe not.
We'll just have see how it all unfolds.
"But you can't reprogram a hamster!"
:) ).
:).
You can't easily reprogram one of those neural networks those AI researchers love either. You train them. The only advantage I guess is you can make many copies of a trained network (unless they use a tech that makes it hard - like actual neurons
The biotech bunch have a higher chance of increasing a hamster's IQ than the compsci AI researchers making something as "smart" as a hamster. Randomly copy brain genes from here and there and stuff might happen
I'm not saying the biotech bunch really know what they are doing, but they can produce results.
That's why I say we're at the alchemy stage. The alchemists did actually manage to achieve a lot of stuff - they just didn't have a good theory on what was going on. Once they got a decent theory and understanding they stopped flailing about so much and the field became a science - Chemistry.
The problem with the "emergent intelligence" from lots of "neural networks" approach is even if it works you often don't really know why it works (or whether it's really working the way you want) - it's more a probability thing.
;).
:).
;)
The idea that a neural network given a "large enough corpus" can resemble a human being might be true. But a "long enough dead end" could look like a highway. Then again we are probably dead ends too, and so it's more a matter of which one goes on for longer
My other objection to such approaches is, if you wanted a nonhuman intelligence from neural networks that you don't really understand (the workings of), you can always go get one from the pet store.
As it is the Biotech people probably have a better chance of making smarter AI than the computer scientists working on AI - who appear to be still stuck at a primitive level. But both may still not understand why
Without a leap in the science of Intelligence/Consciousness, it would then be something like the field of Alchemy in the old days.
I am not an AI researcher, but I believe things like "building a huge corpus" are wrong approaches.
It has long been my opinion that what you need is something that automatically creates models of stuff - simulations. Once you get it trying to recursively model itself (consciousness) and the observed world at the same time AND predict "what might be the best thing to do" then you might start to get somewhere.
Sure pattern recognition is important, but it's just a way for the Modeller to create a better model of the observed world. It is naturally advantageous for an entity to be able to model and predict other entities, and if the other entities are doing the same, you have a need to self model.
So my question is how do you set stuff up so that it automatically starts modelling and predicting what it observes (including self observations)?
Well I hope they didn't outsource the coding to 5 different software companies in India who then in turn outsource it to the same subcontractor :).
1) You could cover your mouth - a full face helmet or a burqa, or as if to yawn, cough or sneeze.
2) If both parties are aware of such devices and are prepared they could move their lips to mouth decoy words and only vocalize the non-decoy words to carry the meaning they want.
3) Use a different language especially one which is less reliant on lip movement. People can communicate in Mandarin (or other chinese dialects - Cantonese etc) without having to move their lips much (if at all).
I don't usually use toilet paper - I use water and soap to clean, and then a towel to dry (trick is to make sure everything is clean first, otherwise... :) ). I don't think I'm the only one in the world who does this.
I find the idea of using toilet paper rather unsanitary (and also less comfortable too).
If using soap and water is good enough to clean your hands, it should be good enough for cleaning your butt. If it isn't good enough for you then you should be using something better, and toilet paper certainly isn't better - I don't see surgeons cleaning their hands and arms with toilet paper.
If you're obsessive you could apply alcohol to kill any left over germs.
You failed as a Darwin Award contender.
Sony batter or two and you would have been in the running, or at least an honorable mention.
Great, the PC manufacturers are copying Apple again.
"Second, while most anyone can get a set of limbs like this runner has, actually they can't without significant sacrifice, ie, amuptation. The IOC should, for the sake of decency, not permit that."
:).
It's not just about decency.
It's also about protecting the "Brand". If they allowed this sort of thing it will damage the "Olympics" brand.
They're obviously not interested in the X Games market, or the XXX games market
Yes you own your computer. But what happens if someone steals your computer?
;).
That's where government, rule of law and due process comes in. You don't get to be judge, jury and "executioner" over the person who steals your computer (sure in some cases you get to shoot them, but there are still _laws_ that govern those cases). The government MUST maintain its monopoly over violence at all times - it does this via the police, the courts and other systems. If it is unable or unwilling to do it, society can NOT scale beyond clans (small mutually trusting groups of humans)- look at Africa and other places for examples - mob rule, extrajudiciary executions etc.
If enough people believe "there's no such thing as stealing a computer" then the relevant laws could be changed/repealed.
Same goes if enough people believe "there's no such thing as illegal immigration".
But AFAIK most people in the US don't share your view at all, and so there is such a thing as illegal immigration.
I bet most of the illegal immigrants won't agree with you if they thought about it - after all most of those Mexicans didn't sneak all the way into the US just to end up in the "United States of Mexico", there was a reason why they left Mexico
You don't like the way things are? You should show why your way would be better, rather than basically saying it just should be that way.
(I'm not a US citizen or resident.)
;).
It's just silly to allow anyone into your country without controls.
Not allowing free immigration is one of the very few ways a Country can pick who is part of it - whether as a legal resident or a citizen.
Citizenship by birth is popular but it's just an average way of filling the ranks
I suggest that a well thought out immigration policy can benefit a country significantly in the long term.
Immigrants have served the US well in the past - nuclear technology, aerospace etc.
Some countries have rules where if you put in X million dollars you can become a citizen or PR but in theory a country could use other less materialistic criteria.
Having low cost labour to pick fruit and do other stuff citizens don't want to do has its advantages, but perhaps you might wish to rethink the "children of immigrants born in the country automatically become citizens" policy.
You don't necessarily have to kick them out, but at least you will have options. You could select for traits that you desire - personality, intelligence, looks, physical ability, latent genes, immunity to diseases (via blood tests of course) etc.
Well you could always give the interpreter decent body armor. That'll help reduce the "turnover" rate, plus might make recruitment easier.
:).
The interpreter could have better and more body armor than a soldier since the soldier has to carry weapons, ammo and other stuff.
Makes for better odds if the bullet has to go through - body armor (in), the interpreter, then his/her body armor (out), then only YOUR body armor
Whether it is windows or linux, it is hard for a browser flaw to trash the entire system if you don't run as root/admin.
:). It'll be interesting to see how the antivirus people would keep up with rapidly changing perl scripts that can fetch new code from all sorts of places, including each other :).
BUT that's besides my main point, most of the windows worms and malware nowadays are "user" level only - no root, no system privileges obtained nor desired by the malware author - they just want bots they can use to send spam or DDoS stuff.
The way such malware is installed is by application bugs or user error - both of these are not Windows specific problems. Firefox has had lots of problems and I am very sure it will continue to have problems.
These modes of infection are just as possible on Ubuntu, SuSE, RedHat etc. As for monoculture, all those popular distros have perl and sh installed by default. Can you imagine what a malicious perl script can do? I can. It could even google for new instructions
From a security technology perspective windows and linux are about the same - they are both still primitive and unsafe for normal users.
Both windows and linux (most distros) by default run the browser with the full privileges of the user using the GUI, this is not a good idea. The browser should be sandboxed off.
I have suggested that things work the following way: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693
Market share has everything to do with infection. Nobody in their right mind will bother writing a QNX specific DDOS bot.
If you are living in a safe small village and your doors are unlocked, a vulnerability exists, but nobody is going to exploit it.
Back when I worked in IT security I found a fair number of security problems that never got public. Some weren't fixed for years. There are tons of security problems out there. But the hackers have plenty of far far easier AND more _profitable_ targets around.