Homo sapiens has had more impact on biodiversity than any other species. The Great Oxidation Event lasted hundreds of millions of years and, while we have no means of establishing a survey of taxa from that era, it was most likely the result of a very large number of species, and indeed is such a long period of time that many speciation events could readily have occurred. Further, the autotrophs that released the oxygen in the first place had no means of affecting many of the anaerobes that live deep underground—and we do.
Here are your citations for humanity's impact. Suffice it to say that many of them will still be noticeable in a few million years:
The Future of Biodiversity, the abstract for which starts: "Recent extinction rates are 100 to 1000 times their pre-human levels in well-known, but taxonomically diverse groups from widely different environments. If all species currently deemed "threatened" become extinct in the next century, then future extinction rates will be 10 times recent rates. Some threatened species will survive the century, but many species not now threatened will succumb. Regions rich in species found only within them (endemics) dominate the global patterns of extinction."
I don't know why you then decided to compare humanity's effect on biodiversity to that of mass extinction events, but let me explain to you why they are completely different.
When an extinction event occurs, there is a single source of pressure that living organisms must accommodate, or at most a couple: the sky is darker, the air is colder, the atmosphere is now filled with water rather than ammonia, et cetera. Humans have not been exerting this kind of pressure at all. We systematically destroy ecosystems, replacing hundreds of species of plants and animals with just one or two (which are, naturally, attuned to depend on us feeding, fertilizing, irrigating, and sheltering them) and we poison the water, air and soil with thousands of chemicals and chemical cocktails (an issue which is now so bad it's affectingus.)
This is too much for evolution to handle. Especially due to chemical poisoning, many of the hardiest species most likely to survive a natural disaster have been snared by exotic and unexpected genetic vulnerabilities. DDT was found to act as a sex hormone in birds, for example, causing males to develop female genitalia. As a South African, I'm sure you're aware that it's still in use, combating Malaria, even though it has been banned in many countries.
We are whittling down biodiversity in ways that the Great Oxygen Catastrophe didn't. It selected one major branch of the tree, the organisms that depended on a reducing atmosphere, and marginalized them, creating room for the healthy and d
I was going to post something along these lines, decided to search for "Alice" just to be safe... and lo, I was beaten to the punch.
It's definitely been far more influential than any actual programming book, regardless of any (heretical) challenges to its status as best. Although I might have to give some serious adoration to Through the Looking-Glass, since (amongst other things) it includes an introduction to the concept of names as independent entities. Both are totally infused with extremely insightful and poignant lessons in clear thinking.
The answer is simple, but really worth saying, so I'll blow two moderations to make it (sorry, ChromeAeonium and Fluffeh.)
To quote Julian Huxley:
It is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution — appointed without being asked if he wanted it, and without proper warning and preparation. What is more, he can't refuse the job. Whether he wants to or not, whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth. That is his inescapable destiny, and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned.
Not since the beginnings of life on this planet has one species had the ability to affect so many others, so quickly. Species have started going extinct at a far greater rate since humans started mucking things up than before. What we've been doing to this planet's biodiversity is a lot more than it did to itself before we showed up.
Of course, stories like this one pop up from time to time, but if the truth is that we really don't know, then it's probably wiser to be careful and protective than presumptuous and selfish.
The student needs to work to find out how he/she learns best for each subject and apply that/those technique(s).
Unfortunately, most middle-school students (the story uses an example of seventh-graders) aren't too good at resisting temptation or being sufficiently introspective. I think the real issue is that parents and teachers are trying to apply the (failed) "abandon children in front of television" parenting approach to education.
There are, of course, situations where that wouldn't work. Consider, for example, the actual scenario in Trusting Trust, where all copies of compiler version foo are infected: foo-1 would be expected to produce different results, as every new version of the compiler should include new optimisations. For a large enough file, this is essentially prohibitively impossible. (Relatedly, while clang has been able to compile Linux for almost a year now, its code output is going to be radically different to the point of uselessness anyway.)
That's exactly the idea. While such a move would eventually be discovered, the amount of damage that could be done before that happened could be substantial, and the amount of work required to (a) find the bad code in a copy of the source tree and, especially, then (b) detect bad binaries would be pretty staggering. It should also be stressed that this isn't just some fanciful nightmare scenario as Kahabut suspects; Ken Thompson did it to the Unix kernel long ago.
That's pretty much it. Malicious control over the master copy of the kernel source means you can bake a rootkit into everything everywhere with enough clever code. All it takes is one generation of bad files to silently patch all successive copies during compilation, and you've got the stuff that cypherpunk nightmares are made of.
Try looking for '(public) web annotation'. I remember playing with a Mozilla Suite extension years ago that more or less did what Sidewiki does. Incidentally, there's a Wikimedia project proposal for this, too.
This is a mindblowingly old and tired debate, but I think the typical reply to you goes something like "most people are mostly stupid and as a result we need to take care of them. Further," goes the repartee, "all of this this should be opt-in to begin with."
I doubt the world's total of intelligence agencies are necessarily interested in protecting all of the people who might be in danger. Minor resistance leaders not worth the blip they make on the CIA's radar, for example, because the overthrowing of their dictatorship doesn't have any strategic interest for the US. Or those affected by corruption in intelligence agencies who would be direct targets. The world is, alas, more complex than the informants-in-Afghanistan scenario of WikiLeaks's first major hit.
Well, there was also the exit wound he left in Commodore to consider. I've heard that the headaches that Atari caused for Commodore's acquisition of Amiga didn't exactly help.
I like how the base unit of damage to a company name is the "Tramiel". How much face has Sony lost in the past five years, would you say? 2-3 kiloTramiels?
Ooh, ooh, ooh; want to learn how to defend yourself against pointed sticks, do we? Getting all high and mighty, eh? Fresh fruit not good enough for you, eh? Well let me tell you something my lad! When you're walking home tonight and some great homicidal maniac comes after YOU with a bunch of loganberries, don't come cryin' to me!
Which, it should be noted, is a mite better than the mindset that wrote the Patriot Act would allow, so go ahead and tell your friends to move up here anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Homo sapiens has had more impact on biodiversity than any other species. The Great Oxidation Event lasted hundreds of millions of years and, while we have no means of establishing a survey of taxa from that era, it was most likely the result of a very large number of species, and indeed is such a long period of time that many speciation events could readily have occurred. Further, the autotrophs that released the oxygen in the first place had no means of affecting many of the anaerobes that live deep underground—and we do.
Here are your citations for humanity's impact. Suffice it to say that many of them will still be noticeable in a few million years:
I don't know why you then decided to compare humanity's effect on biodiversity to that of mass extinction events, but let me explain to you why they are completely different.
When an extinction event occurs, there is a single source of pressure that living organisms must accommodate, or at most a couple: the sky is darker, the air is colder, the atmosphere is now filled with water rather than ammonia, et cetera. Humans have not been exerting this kind of pressure at all. We systematically destroy ecosystems, replacing hundreds of species of plants and animals with just one or two (which are, naturally, attuned to depend on us feeding, fertilizing, irrigating, and sheltering them) and we poison the water, air and soil with thousands of chemicals and chemical cocktails (an issue which is now so bad it's affecting us.)
This is too much for evolution to handle. Especially due to chemical poisoning, many of the hardiest species most likely to survive a natural disaster have been snared by exotic and unexpected genetic vulnerabilities. DDT was found to act as a sex hormone in birds, for example, causing males to develop female genitalia. As a South African, I'm sure you're aware that it's still in use, combating Malaria, even though it has been banned in many countries.
We are whittling down biodiversity in ways that the Great Oxygen Catastrophe didn't. It selected one major branch of the tree, the organisms that depended on a reducing atmosphere, and marginalized them, creating room for the healthy and d
Can you elaborate on that?
Just when you thought Slashdot couldn't get any worse.
Sorry, Venkman, I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.
I was going to post something along these lines, decided to search for "Alice" just to be safe... and lo, I was beaten to the punch.
It's definitely been far more influential than any actual programming book, regardless of any (heretical) challenges to its status as best. Although I might have to give some serious adoration to Through the Looking-Glass, since (amongst other things) it includes an introduction to the concept of names as independent entities. Both are totally infused with extremely insightful and poignant lessons in clear thinking.
The answer is simple, but really worth saying, so I'll blow two moderations to make it (sorry, ChromeAeonium and Fluffeh.)
To quote Julian Huxley:
It is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution — appointed without being asked if he wanted it, and without proper warning and preparation. What is more, he can't refuse the job. Whether he wants to or not, whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth. That is his inescapable destiny, and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned.
Not since the beginnings of life on this planet has one species had the ability to affect so many others, so quickly. Species have started going extinct at a far greater rate since humans started mucking things up than before. What we've been doing to this planet's biodiversity is a lot more than it did to itself before we showed up.
Of course, stories like this one pop up from time to time, but if the truth is that we really don't know, then it's probably wiser to be careful and protective than presumptuous and selfish.
Ah, good call. Bravo.
The student needs to work to find out how he/she learns best for each subject and apply that/those technique(s).
Unfortunately, most middle-school students (the story uses an example of seventh-graders) aren't too good at resisting temptation or being sufficiently introspective. I think the real issue is that parents and teachers are trying to apply the (failed) "abandon children in front of television" parenting approach to education.
There are, of course, situations where that wouldn't work. Consider, for example, the actual scenario in Trusting Trust, where all copies of compiler version foo are infected: foo-1 would be expected to produce different results, as every new version of the compiler should include new optimisations. For a large enough file, this is essentially prohibitively impossible. (Relatedly, while clang has been able to compile Linux for almost a year now, its code output is going to be radically different to the point of uselessness anyway.)
Not to worry: iOS devices have come in just "black" and "white" for some time.
I'd expect they'd make sneaky commits by abusing root power rather than just tampering with the source files... which are in version control anyway.
That's exactly the idea. While such a move would eventually be discovered, the amount of damage that could be done before that happened could be substantial, and the amount of work required to (a) find the bad code in a copy of the source tree and, especially, then (b) detect bad binaries would be pretty staggering. It should also be stressed that this isn't just some fanciful nightmare scenario as Kahabut suspects; Ken Thompson did it to the Unix kernel long ago.
That's pretty much it. Malicious control over the master copy of the kernel source means you can bake a rootkit into everything everywhere with enough clever code. All it takes is one generation of bad files to silently patch all successive copies during compilation, and you've got the stuff that cypherpunk nightmares are made of.
Here is what it's referring to. CS graduates are expected to recognize instances of it instinctively.
Try looking for '(public) web annotation'. I remember playing with a Mozilla Suite extension years ago that more or less did what Sidewiki does. Incidentally, there's a Wikimedia project proposal for this, too.
I see. So 1 McBride = 293.75 Tramiels? Important to remember.
By "all of this" I meant "all of this privacy-invading tracking stuff." Didn't you even read the headline?
This is a mindblowingly old and tired debate, but I think the typical reply to you goes something like "most people are mostly stupid and as a result we need to take care of them. Further," goes the repartee, "all of this this should be opt-in to begin with."
I doubt the world's total of intelligence agencies are necessarily interested in protecting all of the people who might be in danger. Minor resistance leaders not worth the blip they make on the CIA's radar, for example, because the overthrowing of their dictatorship doesn't have any strategic interest for the US. Or those affected by corruption in intelligence agencies who would be direct targets. The world is, alas, more complex than the informants-in-Afghanistan scenario of WikiLeaks's first major hit.
Well, there was also the exit wound he left in Commodore to consider. I've heard that the headaches that Atari caused for Commodore's acquisition of Amiga didn't exactly help.
I like how the base unit of damage to a company name is the "Tramiel". How much face has Sony lost in the past five years, would you say? 2-3 kiloTramiels?
Ooh, ooh, ooh; want to learn how to defend yourself against pointed sticks, do we? Getting all high and mighty, eh? Fresh fruit not good enough for you, eh? Well let me tell you something my lad! When you're walking home tonight and some great homicidal maniac comes after YOU with a bunch of loganberries, don't come cryin' to me!
What if it's only making their lives slightly better, instead of as better as it could be? (Otherwise, I would probably stand by shutdown's reply.)
And me without my mod points. A billion "yes"es to your second point, friend.
Which, it should be noted, is a mite better than the mindset that wrote the Patriot Act would allow, so go ahead and tell your friends to move up here anyway.
Public opinion is less important than potentially protecting lives. I think WikiLeaks thought that through already.