It may be the truth that it would take 6 months for Boies to write that code. But if he's a programmer and told his/her boss it would take 6 months or even 6 days to write that he should be sacked.
From what I understand the code was copied but it was trivial. It's as if Ford sued Toyota for billions because someone used the exact same sensor to check whether a car door was fully shut or not, instead of reinventing a different one. Yes that could happen too, but it's still stupid.
Car analogy: rally cars and F1 cars do not have airbags. But the drivers are still safer in the same sort of crashes.
Because the drivers know what they are doing and the cars have other protections configured. Airbags in those scenarios would just cause more problems than they'd solve.
Same goes for antivirus software. If you know what you are doing, antivirus software is more likely to cause you problems than viruses are.
My different browsers (for different tasks) run using different user accounts. So even if they get pwned by a drive by, it is less likely to affect my main user account.
Even if the locations are disaster proof, if you stop being able to ship stuff easily for whatever reason, you stop being able to make stuff. And the ability to ship stuff easily from country to country depends on a lot of things "working OK".
Our civilization is actually very fragile and becoming more so. Lots of specialization and interdependence.
I hope more people (including our leaders) realize this and don't do anything stupid.
It's like the human body, you blow away both kidneys or a liver it ain't gonna work that well anymore.
Whereas you could hack a branch off a tree and it usually doesn't matter that much to the tree's survival, you could even stick the branch in the ground and there's a chance it might become another tree (the chance increases if you do it right).
And when you go to fungi or bacteria, it matters even less.
10 minutes of wasted time. People who know what they are doing don't decide whether sites are phishing scams or not by using screenshots, or by how they look.
If a phisher does things "properly" the phish site should look EXACTLY like the real thing, and it should even have the same stupid check pictures/words that some sites like to have.
You'd do stuff like check the certificates, including who they are signed by, and contacting the bank if you think their site has been pwned. Get some sort of document trail - so if they say it's OK and it's not you have more ammo against them. Yes I have chosen to not sign on to a bank when I thought their certificates were suspicious (the cert changed, the CA changed and the cert type changed to a multiple country one) - the bank got back to me later and said it was OK.
I don't install antivirus software on my home Windows PC. And I know what I'm doing. At least more than the various antivirus vendors who have done similar screw ups every few years or so! If I need to check some stuff I check it with virustotal.
I do install antivirus software on other people's computers. But you don't update stuff ASAP. Yes viruses are a risk, but so are mistakes by software vendors. And AV software makes your computer system slower- you pay for that all the time.
FWIW I'm one of those that thinks AV software should not be installed on production servers (unless they happen to be servers that are supposed to scan for viruses - gateway scanner etc).
Nope haven't read about it. Thing is I'm more interested in using something like it than reading about it. As I said I've been waiting for such tech since the 1990s. And that's like 20 years already.
It wasn't even a great leap back then- quite obvious actually. In the 1990s there was decent progress into brain computer interfaces for animals. Mobile phones were around already, and there were even wearable computers. And the WWW too. Put it all together with a super PDA UI.
So it was the step that we just haven't got around to taking yet.
Of course the problem is, as shown by Apple and Douglas Engelbart, it doesn't pay to be too early. Apple's Newton wasn't a success - the tech and suitable ecosystem (broadband internet) wasn't there yet.
But it is now just so tantalizingly close. I mean "HEY! GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!".
Overall I'm not very impressed with our rate of technological progress. OK Intel and the other CPU/GPU bunch have done their part, but the rest are quite disappointing.
p.s. I even tried to get the IETF and ICANN to reserve a TLD: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yeoh-tldhere-01 Because back then I figured such stuff would one of the building blocks in a suitable ecosystem for wearable computing that would be open, cheap and fairly easy to implement and build on.
So it was rather disappointing and disgusting that the ICANN just kept on with "Yet Another Dot Com Wannabe" and "Yet Another Useless TLD". Yes I did write to them, and no I didn't have a spare 200 kilobux lying around to apply for a TLD (and then give it to the world if successful).
Has he bought a tinfoil hat recently? To protect his useless brain from EMP.
Seriously who is going to detonate an EMP over UK? That'll piss off nearby countries like France and Ireland too. A country crazy enough to do it better be prepared for a nuclear response.
And if "the terrorists" can get hold of a massive EMP device why wouldn't they get hold of a nuke instead and nuke UK? A mass EMP weapon has to be detonated in the atmosphere, which requires a missile or high-altitude balloon, either requires a lot more gear and dependencies than nuking a city.
Sounds useless and contrived to me. It detects high "brain cpu" load for a specific task and then takes over controlling the robots. The computer might as well take over most control of the robots in the first place, since it HAS ALREADY BEEN PROGRAMMED to be able to do that!
If you really want computers to augment humans, once you have a wearable computer+sensors that are sufficiently advanced you can have them do the following: 1) Continuous video+audio recording in high res of past X minutes, and low res for longer periods. This way you don't have to miss stuff - you can tell the computer to switch to high res till further notice (the past X minutes would already be in high res) and then save it. Eidetic memory for the masses! 2) Continuous background image recognition (look for faces or objects - military version = gun muzzle detection, vehicle detection, anti-camouflage ) 3) Continuous background audio recognition (voice etc[1]). 4) GPS+ map + compass direction feedback. 5) Work with "area/location computers" (so that you can more easily control/access location specific stuff - lights, jukebox, climate control, menus, ordering systems). 6) Many more stuff - see below too.
If brain computer interfaces become safe, reliable and good, you could use stuff like "thought macros". For example a fancy computer program would let me link certain thought patterns with certain actions or objects.
That way I can do: [start command][recall object]<some thought pattern>[go][end]. And then the computer recalls the relevant object which could be a video, photo, sound, file or whatever.
I can also do [start command][recall previous][go][send to]<thought pattern of friend>[go][end]. Or get the computer to help calculate stuff, search databases. Or even do "rain man" counting (you could get the computer to highlight/mark the objects it is counting so that you can countercheck that it is counting correctly - humans are OK at detecting if something should be highlighted by the computer and isn't - counting large numbers of stuff fast isn't our forte ).
Thought patterns in square brackets are commands. Though patterns in angle brackets are various thought patterns you choose to associate with a person or item.
Someone smart can probably work out the details and improve on the idea - I hope someone does soon - I'm getting old waiting for the future to arrive. Put it all together you'd have humans with eidetic memory, telepathy, telekinesis, and other super/magical powers. The technology is already mostly there - we've already got some sort of telepathy with mobile phones etc. Heck in the 1990s I was hoping wearable computing would take off and we'd already have this "magic" by now.
The main hindrance to progress I see would be copyright and patent law. You'd be crippled by DRM and you wouldn't be able to walk into a cinema without all that stuff being forced off.
[1]Military versions could also do sniper location assistance from "crack-thump", possibly more accurate if sharing data from teammates - assuming all clocks are high res and synchronized - and teammate positions are known accurately (could be possible with UWB).
YOU miss the point. It isn't a real live city that's why they would be able to do experiments/tests that won't be viable in a real live city.
In a real live city you'd get in big trouble if you tried to repeat a disaster with a few changes, just to see if the results agree with what the computer simulation predicts.
They could use this full scale model to help learn how to build accurate supercomputer models of cities. They can do experiments to help test the models that would not be viable in a real live city.
Fine, give me the money upfront and I'll start[0] by paying scientists to work on designing and building a space station with actual artificial gravity[1] and decent radiation shielding.
Once we have that technology working in practical ways it removes the main obstacles to long term human space travel and inhabitation. It would no longer matter so much that it takes months to get to some place in the solar system.
Next step would be tests on space-based mining, factories and farms[2]. These can be done concurrently.
Then space colonies, and self-sustaining space colonies.
In contrast much of the human space travel stuff NASA is working on appears to be mostly dead end stuff. You are not going to have a viable human colony using that tech (drugs to slow wasting and bone loss etc). It can come in handy for specific cases, but it's pretty stupid to waste time, resources and money on this sort of stuff at our current tech stage. All that NASA talk about going to Mars is stupid at this stage too- Mars is a gravity well. Only do it later when the space colonies are rich and thriving (from the asteroids).
[0] Or I might just spend it all on women and cool toys;). [1] Example option for a small station is using tethers and a counterweight. [2] Fish farms could be one of the many good farm options. Sunlight + CO2 + nitrogen+iron for algae.The fish (e.g. tilapia) eat the algae, the humans eat the fish. I suspect fish farms could be fine in low-g regions of a space station/colony (water oxygenation could be a problem in zero-g regions, but maybe the fish and their food might be able do fine in an air-water foam). It'll cost a lot to get that much water up into space, but we should later be able to get lots of water from asteroids and similar. So initial ones would be small scale test farms which should cost less to set up.
Farms on the Moon might be worth considering - but there are many unknowns - lunar soil is very very different from earth soil. Better to stick to hydroponics.
If I were the NSA I'd buy a lot of Google ads in return for even more help- the ads don't actually have to be shown at all. And do a similar thing with Facebook et all too. To get around the pesky laws I could also get Google to do all the dirty work. "We're not spying on US citizens, we're paying Google to conduct nation-wide statistical surveys, analyze the results and provide us with high level reports so that we can better plan our strategies".
Hey everyone in the USA doesn't like Big Government right? So by outsourcing to Corporations we don't need to hire as many people in Government (or by as much hardware). What the people ask for, the people get.
Given the little I understand about coding, there are usually zillions of ways (many convoluted) to come up with the correct results if you don't care about doing it very well, don't care about performance, storage, robustness or readability. You could write a program to write a large subset of the possible programs.
When you do care, the number of solutions goes down.
You're not going to get a much better commute time as long as there are other cars on the road trying to do different things. As for large buffers I assume you mean the space between cars. If all drivers left a large space between cars there would be fewer cars on the highways and drivers would have to wait longer to merge into those highways during peak hours. If they strictly only merged when there was a big enough gap they might only be able to merge onto the highway after the peak hour traffic has passed;). Whereas if they went in anyway they would cause the car behind to slow down because that driver will try to maintain a large gap and so have to slow down and that slow down will cause all the cars behind to slow down. Once there are enough cars trying to merge regardless of the gap, the traffic will come to a stop. And you get traffic jam.
I really would like to know how well the driver-less car system detects objects and obstacles. Because once in a while I see trucks and other vehicles that illegally carry stuff that sticks out past their rear bumper. So if the driver-less car's sensors and lasers don't pick those up the passengers might get impaled when the AI tries to drive up to the offending truck at a stop.
If Google's driver-less car actually requires a human driver to pay attention all the time to back it up then it's not really good enough for most people. The tech has to improve to be at least 10 times safer than the average human, then most humans will be willing to give up control the way they give up control when using an elevator or passenger airplane.
Basically there is another very important thing a good voting system has to do: Convince enough of the losers that they lost.
A fancy electronic system could do equality, secrecy and integrity (it is possible to make such a system - go ask a good cryptographer), but be too fancy for the losers to understand and be convinced that they lost.
When you cannot convince the losers that they lost fair and square - you may get a riot or even a civil war and that defeats the purpose of holding elections.
Slashdot Mirror
You may or may not really know what you're doing, we have little way to know for sure, but you saying it about yourself is meaningless.
Actually it is not meaningless. It's a bit like raising the bet in poker ;). But on Slashdot it doesn't cost much to challenge that.
In absence of a "challenge" it can save some time and space.
What if you know a person has died and cause of death, but you don't know when? How would you store that?
I'd store person has died and cause of death but leave death date as null - to be updated later.
It may be the truth that it would take 6 months for Boies to write that code. But if he's a programmer and told his/her boss it would take 6 months or even 6 days to write that he should be sacked.
From what I understand the code was copied but it was trivial. It's as if Ford sued Toyota for billions because someone used the exact same sensor to check whether a car door was fully shut or not, instead of reinventing a different one. Yes that could happen too, but it's still stupid.
Car analogy: rally cars and F1 cars do not have airbags. But the drivers are still safer in the same sort of crashes.
Because the drivers know what they are doing and the cars have other protections configured. Airbags in those scenarios would just cause more problems than they'd solve.
Same goes for antivirus software. If you know what you are doing, antivirus software is more likely to cause you problems than viruses are.
My different browsers (for different tasks) run using different user accounts. So even if they get pwned by a drive by, it is less likely to affect my main user account.
Even if the locations are disaster proof, if you stop being able to ship stuff easily for whatever reason, you stop being able to make stuff. And the ability to ship stuff easily from country to country depends on a lot of things "working OK".
Our civilization is actually very fragile and becoming more so. Lots of specialization and interdependence.
I hope more people (including our leaders) realize this and don't do anything stupid.
It's like the human body, you blow away both kidneys or a liver it ain't gonna work that well anymore.
Whereas you could hack a branch off a tree and it usually doesn't matter that much to the tree's survival, you could even stick the branch in the ground and there's a chance it might become another tree (the chance increases if you do it right).
And when you go to fungi or bacteria, it matters even less.
10 minutes of wasted time. People who know what they are doing don't decide whether sites are phishing scams or not by using screenshots, or by how they look.
If a phisher does things "properly" the phish site should look EXACTLY like the real thing, and it should even have the same stupid check pictures/words that some sites like to have.
You'd do stuff like check the certificates, including who they are signed by, and contacting the bank if you think their site has been pwned. Get some sort of document trail - so if they say it's OK and it's not you have more ammo against them. Yes I have chosen to not sign on to a bank when I thought their certificates were suspicious (the cert changed, the CA changed and the cert type changed to a multiple country one) - the bank got back to me later and said it was OK.
I don't install antivirus software on my home Windows PC. And I know what I'm doing. At least more than the various antivirus vendors who have done similar screw ups every few years or so! If I need to check some stuff I check it with virustotal.
I do install antivirus software on other people's computers. But you don't update stuff ASAP. Yes viruses are a risk, but so are mistakes by software vendors. And AV software makes your computer system slower- you pay for that all the time.
FWIW I'm one of those that thinks AV software should not be installed on production servers (unless they happen to be servers that are supposed to scan for viruses - gateway scanner etc).
Nope haven't read about it. Thing is I'm more interested in using something like it than reading about it. As I said I've been waiting for such tech since the 1990s. And that's like 20 years already.
It wasn't even a great leap back then- quite obvious actually. In the 1990s there was decent progress into brain computer interfaces for animals. Mobile phones were around already, and there were even wearable computers. And the WWW too. Put it all together with a super PDA UI.
So it was the step that we just haven't got around to taking yet.
Of course the problem is, as shown by Apple and Douglas Engelbart, it doesn't pay to be too early. Apple's Newton wasn't a success - the tech and suitable ecosystem (broadband internet) wasn't there yet.
But it is now just so tantalizingly close. I mean "HEY! GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!".
BTW I'm also waiting for this to get done: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2845905&cid=39980559
Overall I'm not very impressed with our rate of technological progress. OK Intel and the other CPU/GPU bunch have done their part, but the rest are quite disappointing.
p.s. I even tried to get the IETF and ICANN to reserve a TLD: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yeoh-tldhere-01
Because back then I figured such stuff would one of the building blocks in a suitable ecosystem for wearable computing that would be open, cheap and fairly easy to implement and build on.
So it was rather disappointing and disgusting that the ICANN just kept on with "Yet Another Dot Com Wannabe" and "Yet Another Useless TLD". Yes I did write to them, and no I didn't have a spare 200 kilobux lying around to apply for a TLD (and then give it to the world if successful).
Your original point was saying simulations only work if you have the data and the model is accurate enough.
My point was the town can help improve simulations.
And you then said I miss the point and it isn't a real live city (which was kinda obvious already and didn't even need saying).
So what have I missed so far?
Has he bought a tinfoil hat recently? To protect his useless brain from EMP.
Seriously who is going to detonate an EMP over UK? That'll piss off nearby countries like France and Ireland too. A country crazy enough to do it better be prepared for a nuclear response.
And if "the terrorists" can get hold of a massive EMP device why wouldn't they get hold of a nuke instead and nuke UK? A mass EMP weapon has to be detonated in the atmosphere, which requires a missile or high-altitude balloon, either requires a lot more gear and dependencies than nuking a city.
Sounds useless and contrived to me. It detects high "brain cpu" load for a specific task and then takes over controlling the robots. The computer might as well take over most control of the robots in the first place, since it HAS ALREADY BEEN PROGRAMMED to be able to do that!
If you really want computers to augment humans,
once you have a wearable computer+sensors that are sufficiently advanced you can have them do the following:
1) Continuous video+audio recording in high res of past X minutes, and low res for longer periods. This way you don't have to miss stuff - you can tell the computer to switch to high res till further notice (the past X minutes would already be in high res) and then save it. Eidetic memory for the masses!
2) Continuous background image recognition (look for faces or objects - military version = gun muzzle detection, vehicle detection, anti-camouflage )
3) Continuous background audio recognition (voice etc[1]).
4) GPS+ map + compass direction feedback.
5) Work with "area/location computers" (so that you can more easily control/access location specific stuff - lights, jukebox, climate control, menus, ordering systems).
6) Many more stuff - see below too.
If brain computer interfaces become safe, reliable and good, you could use stuff like "thought macros". For example a fancy computer program would let me link certain thought patterns with certain actions or objects.
That way I can do: [start command][recall object]<some thought pattern>[go][end]. And then the computer recalls the relevant object which could be a video, photo, sound, file or whatever.
I can also do [start command][recall previous][go][send to]<thought pattern of friend>[go][end]. Or get the computer to help calculate stuff, search databases. Or even do "rain man" counting (you could get the computer to highlight/mark the objects it is counting so that you can countercheck that it is counting correctly - humans are OK at detecting if something should be highlighted by the computer and isn't - counting large numbers of stuff fast isn't our forte ).
Thought patterns in square brackets are commands. Though patterns in angle brackets are various thought patterns you choose to associate with a person or item.
Someone smart can probably work out the details and improve on the idea - I hope someone does soon - I'm getting old waiting for the future to arrive. Put it all together you'd have humans with eidetic memory, telepathy, telekinesis, and other super/magical powers. The technology is already mostly there - we've already got some sort of telepathy with mobile phones etc. Heck in the 1990s I was hoping wearable computing would take off and we'd already have this "magic" by now.
The main hindrance to progress I see would be copyright and patent law. You'd be crippled by DRM and you wouldn't be able to walk into a cinema without all that stuff being forced off.
[1]Military versions could also do sniper location assistance from "crack-thump", possibly more accurate if sharing data from teammates - assuming all clocks are high res and synchronized - and teammate positions are known accurately (could be possible with UWB).
YOU miss the point. It isn't a real live city that's why they would be able to do experiments/tests that won't be viable in a real live city.
In a real live city you'd get in big trouble if you tried to repeat a disaster with a few changes, just to see if the results agree with what the computer simulation predicts.
They could use this full scale model to help learn how to build accurate supercomputer models of cities. They can do experiments to help test the models that would not be viable in a real live city.
This might reduce some writes (not all): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc959914.aspx
Warning: it could break apps that rely on having correct "last access times". Windows does not have Linux's relatime stuff yet.
But many Linux systems would also constantly write something to the drive. Especially if they have services that log stuff to a local syslog.
Even worse: with Windows the hibernation file is different from the swap file: hiberfil.sys vs pagefile.sys.
Fine, give me the money upfront and I'll start[0] by paying scientists to work on designing and building a space station with actual artificial gravity[1] and decent radiation shielding.
;).
Once we have that technology working in practical ways it removes the main obstacles to long term human space travel and inhabitation. It would no longer matter so much that it takes months to get to some place in the solar system.
Next step would be tests on space-based mining, factories and farms[2]. These can be done concurrently.
Then space colonies, and self-sustaining space colonies.
In contrast much of the human space travel stuff NASA is working on appears to be mostly dead end stuff. You are not going to have a viable human colony using that tech (drugs to slow wasting and bone loss etc). It can come in handy for specific cases, but it's pretty stupid to waste time, resources and money on this sort of stuff at our current tech stage. All that NASA talk about going to Mars is stupid at this stage too- Mars is a gravity well. Only do it later when the space colonies are rich and thriving (from the asteroids).
[0] Or I might just spend it all on women and cool toys
[1] Example option for a small station is using tethers and a counterweight.
[2] Fish farms could be one of the many good farm options. Sunlight + CO2 + nitrogen+iron for algae.The fish (e.g. tilapia) eat the algae, the humans eat the fish. I suspect fish farms could be fine in low-g regions of a space station/colony (water oxygenation could be a problem in zero-g regions, but maybe the fish and their food might be able do fine in an air-water foam). It'll cost a lot to get that much water up into space, but we should later be able to get lots of water from asteroids and similar. So initial ones would be small scale test farms which should cost less to set up.
Farms on the Moon might be worth considering - but there are many unknowns - lunar soil is very very different from earth soil. Better to stick to hydroponics.
Giving me 1 trillion dollars is also better than killing brown people with oil.
How about we do that first?
Didn't the CAs say about the same thing? So why should this end up differently?
In both systems the security is going to be about as crap as the weakest link (crappiest CA/subdomain or reseller).
By law the NSA isn't supposed to spy on US citizens. Google and similar corporations are not bound by such laws.
Some actually have formal prices for such stuff. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/18/microsoft_does_not_charge_for_government_surveillance/
If I were the NSA I'd buy a lot of Google ads in return for even more help- the ads don't actually have to be shown at all. And do a similar thing with Facebook et all too. To get around the pesky laws I could also get Google to do all the dirty work. "We're not spying on US citizens, we're paying Google to conduct nation-wide statistical surveys, analyze the results and provide us with high level reports so that we can better plan our strategies".
Hey everyone in the USA doesn't like Big Government right? So by outsourcing to Corporations we don't need to hire as many people in Government (or by as much hardware). What the people ask for, the people get.
No. Slashdot ate it. Not the browser. Go use "view source" or equivalent to check. The stuff between is gone.
If Slashdot just outputs HTML verbatim this site would be full of XSS and other attacks.
Try posting <b>. If it really was verbatim, stuff would be bold after that.
Given the little I understand about coding, there are usually zillions of ways (many convoluted) to come up with the correct results if you don't care about doing it very well, don't care about performance, storage, robustness or readability. You could write a program to write a large subset of the possible programs.
When you do care, the number of solutions goes down.
Wonder if you have already heard of this:
http://acestoohigh.com/2012/04/23/lincoln-high-school-in-walla-walla-wa-tries-new-approach-to-school-discipline-expulsions-drop-85/
You're not going to get a much better commute time as long as there are other cars on the road trying to do different things. As for large buffers I assume you mean the space between cars. If all drivers left a large space between cars there would be fewer cars on the highways and drivers would have to wait longer to merge into those highways during peak hours. If they strictly only merged when there was a big enough gap they might only be able to merge onto the highway after the peak hour traffic has passed ;). Whereas if they went in anyway they would cause the car behind to slow down because that driver will try to maintain a large gap and so have to slow down and that slow down will cause all the cars behind to slow down. Once there are enough cars trying to merge regardless of the gap, the traffic will come to a stop. And you get traffic jam.
I really would like to know how well the driver-less car system detects objects and obstacles. Because once in a while I see trucks and other vehicles that illegally carry stuff that sticks out past their rear bumper. So if the driver-less car's sensors and lasers don't pick those up the passengers might get impaled when the AI tries to drive up to the offending truck at a stop.
If Google's driver-less car actually requires a human driver to pay attention all the time to back it up then it's not really good enough for most people. The tech has to improve to be at least 10 times safer than the average human, then most humans will be willing to give up control the way they give up control when using an elevator or passenger airplane.
Basically there is another very important thing a good voting system has to do: Convince enough of the losers that they lost.
A fancy electronic system could do equality, secrecy and integrity (it is possible to make such a system - go ask a good cryptographer), but be too fancy for the losers to understand and be convinced that they lost.
When you cannot convince the losers that they lost fair and square - you may get a riot or even a civil war and that defeats the purpose of holding elections.
Sure made an impression on the ground.