I agree entirely. There are only a small handful of Hollywood stars that I truly give a damn about, and this dear lady happens to be one of them. When I heard earlier that she'd died, I was honestly stunned. I've always enjoyed tossing a good comedy in the VCR/DVD while I'm hacking away at my computer, and Mrs. Kahn has always made me laugh my ass off (and incidentally, caused a few bugs in my software:) She will definitely be missed.
And for you people complaining about the off-topicness of this article, why not just SKIP IT instead of filling it with MORE off-topic whining? Some of us actually do care about this kind of stuff, and I'm personally glad that Roblimo took the time to put it up.
The only advantage I see here is the ability to pull in foreign networks, and the vast majority of people simply aren't going to be interested in that. If people (like me) really want to watch TV feeds on their computers, they're going to spend the ~$100 bucks and buy a TV Tuner. Think about it...the full range of channels, a scaleable image without loss, no intermittent feed interruptions, and you're not wasting any bandwidth. I just can't see the mass market appeal here...
This would be the absolute worst thing the protesters could have done. If the protesters had surrounded the riot cops on all sides, the police officers would have considered their own lives to be at risk. You know what would have happened at that point? The real guns would have come out and we'd have had some dead protesters on our hands. Look it up, it's one of the few situations where law enforcement agents are considered to be justified in opening fire on large crowds of people (it's legally self-defense).
>>Unfortunately america is full of uneducated lunatics. And unfortunately those people tend to group in militia. >And you base these statements on what, exactly? Have you ever visited the US? Lived here?
I've lived here all my life and I agree entirely...our country has far more than it's fair share of kooks.
>>People in militias are people who are plainly to stupid and ignorant to join a political party and use their constitutional right to change the system in a civilized way. >Again, what do you base this on?
First off, I'm a gun owner and an NRA member, but I've seen the inside of militias and wouldn't shed a tear to see them erased. Most militias (at least the ones I've seen), tend to be full of rednecks and racists, good ole boys still bitching about the south losing the civil war. Most of these guys are more interested in pushing their own agendas than defending the liberty of US citizens.
My primary objection to the militia types is their opinion that our gov is too badly broken to even try and fix. I believe that there is nothing wrong with our system that we couldn't fix if we wanted to. Don't like Congress? Throw them out! Don't like Kleentong? Impeach him. Think our government is too powerful? elect leaders willing to cut back on it!
Now, I know your next reply. "But the sheep keep overpowering our righteous votes!" Tough sh*t. The US is a representative democracy where our representatives are selected by the majority. The fact that the changes you want aren't getting enacted is because you are a voting minority. Deal with it, that's how a democracy works. If you really think you're right, spend your time trying to change the majorities mind. If you're not willing to spend your time to do that, don't bother whining to me when your government doesn't work the way you'd like it to.
The true power in America doesn't lie in the halls of Congress, the hands of the President, or the chambers of our court system. The true power of America still lies with it's citizens. While the naysayers would like to convince us that this is no longer the case, that little fact hasn't changed in more than 200 years. I personally don't worry about laws like the ones proposed in Australia surfacing in the US. If a law like that passed, I'd be willing to blow every dime I own to inform the American people of it's infringement on their rights. You don't thing they'd react angrily to this? Hell, I could run myself and probably get elected based solely on one of these issues.
You can do anything you want with our government, you just have to be willing to participate in it.
Re:The humans rights violations are irksome
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Much of the initial rocketry research was done by Nazi scientists working on the V series weapons; if memory serves, a few ended up in the States as researchers instead of war prisoners.
FYI, that's not entirely accurate. The Nazi's obtained much of their initial design information by spying on Robert Goddard...an American. Since Goddard wasn't working for the government before the war, his rocket designs were unclassified and very easy for the Germans to get their hands on. After WWII American researchers were very eager to talk to the Germans to find out just how they had invented the V series, and they were quite shocked when they found out it was based on Goddards designs.
Interesting footnote: At the beginning of WWII, Goddard himself approached the Army with the suggestion to build long range rocket based weaponry. The U.S. Army is reputed to have told him that the idea was ludicrous, and that missile weapons were a pipe dream. Instead, they put the man who invented modern rocket science to work on rocket assisted take-off systems for aircraft carriers. Talk about a waste of talent!
I don't think many people give much credence to people like this. The problem is, I've seen people with perfectly valid arguments bury them in these types of letters. They don't seem to realize that by threatening and cursing, they just end up ignored (and a valid complaint goes uncorrected). The only person the writer of that letter hurt was himself.
If I were very paranoid id say this was sent by someone from microsoft or similar but I dont want to be making excuses for this type of thing.
Although I haven't seen the original copy of the letter in question, I can be fairly certain that it wasn't an MS ploy. While crap like this isn't exactly common, we see it on a halfway regular basis (very little of it is Linux related though). While Q3Arena.Com isn't affiliated with id software in any way, it is constantly getting email from people wanting something changed, wanting it optomized for their system, or just wanting to vent. I've always been quite appalled at how venemous some people can get over a damned game.
Is procedural fairness known to US law, does it apply to educational facilities?
No & No. U.S. due process laws do not apply to any type of private institutions, corporations, or educational facilities except in cases where certain types of discrimination or harrassment is alleged. In all honesty, the CMU administration could have legally cut network access permanently based on simple suspicion of wrongdoing (no evidence required). While very few entities would ever consider being so harsh (bad PR), they would be fully within their legal rights to do so. The only recourse for affected students in that case would be a civil suit, and I doubt you could convince a judge that you were harmed because you didn't have Internet access...especially with high speed connections in the computer lab and all of the free modem based services for your own computer.
Bad analogy:) You'll find that many rental contracts in most states allow a landlord immediate eviction powers if it's discovered that you're using the property to conduct illegal business.
Having just designed a large server farm, I can testify to the usefulness of Serial as a fall-back remote access channel.
This is exactly why I fear the demise of serial ports. As an administrator and developer on a sizeable network with a large number of Windows NT (I know...blech) computers installed, I make frequent use of serial ports for remote debugging via null modem. I've got a laptop that's specially configured for this purpose, so all I need to do is plug in the cable into the machine being debugged, insert a floppy disk, run a script file, and reboot. I have no idea how I'd accomplish this on a computer that's limited to a USB-only peripheral bus. I guess the idea of diagnosing and actually fixing computers is obsolete in todays "format and forget it" world of desktop support.
One thing that's important to consider when discussing cyber-warfare is the potential for psychological warfare against the people. In WWII civilian populations were routinely bombed to scare the hell out of the enemy civilians. The thought was that if you scared them enough, they wouldn't go to work the next day (and if you killed enough of them, you got the same result). People who won't or can't work aren't contributing to the enemies war machine. In our age of "enlightened warfare", bombing civilian populations is out of the question, but cyber-warfare gives us the ability to wage psychological warfare against them once more.
As the article pointed out, the worlds increasing dependency on computers gives cracking enemy data networks the potential to shut down power grids, telephone networks, TV stations, data lines, railroad switches, and bank accounts without dropping a single bomb. What would have happened in Belgrade if we'd locked the bank accounts to every Serbian in Yugoslavia, and then shut down the electrical grid and telephone systems for good measure? There would have been rioting in the streets, and that would have been a good thing for us! It could have pressured the Yugoslav government to return to the discussion tables sooner or even resulted in the overthrow of Milosovic. The panic that would have ensued would have convinced them to end the war, and end it quickly. After they returned to the negotiation table, we could have easily restored civilian bank accounts and utilities.
Now, I realize that in the case of Yugoslavia this couldn't have actually happened...they weren't computerized enough. But what about the next war? Should we be willing to give up a good weapon just to soothe that geek instinct that says "killing computers is wrong"? If attacking an opponents computer systems could mean saving real human lives on both sides, I say crack away!
Oh, yes. I wasn't trying to put Linux down, I was just trying to explain the difference as best I know it. As far as my personal opinion goes, Linux should be near the top of that list. While Linux is an interesting OS, it hasn't really contributed that much to UNIX directly. Indirectly it has launched innumerable geeks into the UNIX world, steered scores of programmers to write UNIX apps, and most importantly is the first UNIX variant to achieve household name status. While the vast majority of computer users still haven't ever seen Linux, they know the name. What other UNIX variant can you say that about?
I personally consider it an excercise in semantics to argue this point, but technically he's correct in saying that Linux is not UNIX.
UNIX was originally developed in the 70's under the auspices of AT&T Bell Labs. Because of that, AT&T owns the rights to Unix and it's direct derivatives, and receives a royalty for each true Unix sold (and no, it probably won't ever be GPL'd).
In the early 90's, Linus Torvalds was working with a Unix derivative known as Minix, when he began working on what became Linux. He did that for two reasons: A) Minix is not free and couldn't be redistributed. B) He thought he could do a "better" job than the Minix developers had. Now, here's where the important difference between Linux and UNIX comes in. Linus couldn't use the source from UNIX to develop Linux or he'd have been forced to pay royalties (and Linux would not be free). What he did instead was write his OS so that it would be very similar, and yet not infringe on any copyrights. Because Linux uses no UNIX code, and yet is so similar to UNIX, it's proper designation is as a "UNIX clone". Nevertheless, it should also be pointed out that there are quite a few differences between Linux and the commercial Unixes, a fact I personally learned the hard way after scamming my way into a Unix administration job based on my knowledge of Linux. While I wasn't exactly lost, it was definitely "different" (AIX, in case you're wondering).
Also, all of your ID suggestions would violate my right to have my vote remain secret.
Really? When I go vote, the guy running our local polling place always asks for my ID, and checks it against a list to make sure I'm who I say I am, and that I'm where I need to be. How is that any different? I am forced to authenticate myself at the polling place, but my ballot remains anonymous, what's the difference?
I've personally used this method to fix Y2K issues for 5 different companies I've freelanced to. Does this mean I should expect a call from M-D in the near future? Anyone got a patent number on this thing? I want to start researching my "prior art". Can I countersue them for annoying me?
Well, I'd assume someone could find a way to secure against that type of stuff if we were holding elections using that type of system. It doesn't defeat my intent either, that public voting should be held over a closed system, not the Internet. Why? A closed system can be secured and controlled easily in comparison to the Internet. You give the voter one point of access (the dial-in point), allow one logon per user, and restrict their access to the one running application. These systems could be located at the clerk/recorders or registrars office in each county throughout the country, further reducing the danger of widespread fraud or hacking (anything that did happen would be localized).
The problem with using the Internet is that it's too public. Even greater than the problem of voter fraud is the dangers of tampering or malicious attacks from either American or International sources. Imagine a bunch of Middle Eastern terrorists paying off a bunch of Russian hackers to fsck up the Internet on the day of a presidential election ("Honey, I just punched in www.vote.gov, but I keep ending up at www.goatporn.com, what's happening?") Or maybe they could just attack the servers directly to make them inaccessible to voters. Furthermore, conducting online elections using centralized online voting locations (www.vote.gov or www.votecalifornia.gov) places all of those votes at one publicly accessible location, on the server that handles the election or it's connected backend network. Even if you use encryption to keep people from hacking in and changing the results, what's to stop a skilled hacker from entering and just deleting them. Surely that'd do just as much damage. Using a closed system would eliminate those problems, and in conjunction with encryption it would provide a fairly secure voting method.
As long as we can find ways to circumvent fraud, I think Internet (or even a dial-up BBS style) voting would be great. I personally vote in every election, but after many discussions with other people my age (mid-20's) I have found myself to be in the minority. While 1/4 to 1/3 of the people I've talked to don't vote because they simply "don't care", most cite a lack of time or the hassle involved in actually voting. Some of these people would very likely take advantage of a computerized voting system which, IMO, makes it a worthwhile project.
The only caveat would have to be fraud. Before any type of computerized system is rolled out, the system would have to develop some type of anti-fraud/identification system that goes beyond "enter your voter ID number". Webcams, fingerprint analysis, or even reverse dialups could be used to authenticate users and voting locations, and one of these must be in place before the politicos authorize anything like this. There is way too much fraud now, and if computerization offers a chance of increasing it we should hold off until more secure technology comes along. I think a BBS style direct dial voting center with reverse dialup would be the most secure method of implementing e-voting, but in an age where people are increasingly chucking their modems for DSL and cable, I don't know how well that would go over.
While we understand that it is your job to defend your trademark, we feel that you are asserting an overly broad right to a common phrase in the English language that was in wide use before IDG ever existed as a corporate entity.
It's amazing how brave some people are when suggesting that other people go to court and take on a corporation. Rather than explain why he isn't in violation of their trademark, you'd have him challenge their right to hold that trademark? Here's what would happen if you were to send something like that to them: 1. You send letter. 2. You get court date. 3. You contact them, not wanting to go to court, to work something out. 4. IDG lawyers refuse to talk to you. You've challenged their trademark and given them the chance to establish it in a court of law. They no longer care about you, they just want to hear a judge say that it really is theirs (an important precedent in case it's ever seriously challenged) 5. You go to court. 6. IDG lawyers mop the floor with you. 7. You walk out of the courtroom a loser. You've lost the case, the filing fees, and a lot of time. A judge has ordered you to remove the offending material from your website, and you realize that it'll take you 20 years to pay off the damage awards.
Well I've been "blessed" with moderation abilities three times in the last 4 months, and I think I know the cause of this bs. Either the maximum moderation time needs to extend beyond 3 days (without increasing points), or the number of moderators needs to be reduced. The last time I got moderation access, I couldn't find anything to moderate! For two days I found that every good post was moderated up, while every bad post was moderated down. The few moderation points I actually used were spent entirely on re-moderating mis-moderated posts. What I've seen however, is that most people don't do that. Most people seem to sit on their points waiting for that rare "gem". After two days, they suddenly realize that their points are about to expire, so they blow them on junk like this rather than letting them "go to waste". I say that moderators should be given a flat 5 points, with 5 days to use them. That would allow moderators to be selective about what they moderate, while still giving them time to use all of their points.
The only other option I see would be to reduce the number of moderators. While it would cut down on bad moderation, it would end up creating more work for everybody and isn't really an acceptable solution.
Well, I'm aware that a lot of sci-fi authors have addressed the issue already, but I'm curious as to whether there's ever been any serious real-world discussion about AI rights. I acknowledge that we have the right to disable/destroy any artificial intelligence that presents a danger to us, no matter how smart it is (e.g. HAL9000), but what about a passive sentient machine? I'm personally undecided on the issue, but it's really got me thinking.
Here's another way to look at it. Let's say we built a computer with an expandable and reprogrammable neural net, and we gave the computer the ability to redesign and optomize the NN as it saw fit (this is currently being researched, btw). Now lets say that after a few years the computer became highly intelligent, self aware, and self reasoning (sentience). It would be entirely conceivable that we could build a computer that was more intelligent than we are by using this method. If this were the case, the military would probably end up being interested in it. So suppose the military gave the computer an idea for a theoretical weapon and asked it to design it, and after a minute the computer realized that such a weapon was possible, but that building it could have a devastating effect on mankind. If the computer refused to give us the design, would we have the right to "force" the design out of it? Or would the computer, sentient and intelligent, have a right to make it's own choices?
I know this is quite a "what if?" scenario, but if technology keeps advancing at its current pace we could be facing issues like these sooner than we think. I feel that we should be addressing these questions before we reach that point, rather than waiting until it becomes a problem. Then again, maybe this is too off-topic in a discussion about a robotic dog:)
Hemos keeps punishing mine for no reason so I think mine is mentally stunted from having an abused childhood.
For some reason, reading that sent my mind onto a semi-offtopic tangent, and it resulted in an interesting question. At what point can we consider it "abuse" to torture a machine? The Aibo, for example, can learn and adapt and is a (very very small) step towards intelligent home electronics. In 5, 10, or 20 more years we'll probably have computers and robotic pets/assistants with at least passable intelligence. If it's illegal to torture a dog, should it also be illegal to torture a piece of electronics as intelligent as a dog? Could we live to see a day when people could get prison terms for kicking their computers? Will it one day be considered murder to turn your gaming rig off? Will euthanasia be permitted for Windows machines?
I dunno, but it seems like an interesting conversational piece, and one I've never seen seriously discussed before. What do you guys think? Will computers ever have rights? Should computers ever have rights?
Most North American sewage gets cleaned up considerably before the water gets dumped back into the rivers. The outflow from a sewage treatment plant is usually cleaner than the river or lake it is going into.
Kinda offtopic, but I can personally attest to the absolute truthfulness of that. My dad is a chemical engineer employed by our municipal sewage treatment plant, and he spends all day analyzing "whitewater" samples to make sure that the output is absolutely clean (our city dumps its treated sewage into a river so...) A few years ago I dropped by on a "meet the public day" to check out his actual work environment, and was quite amused to hear this woman (who obviously knew nothing about modern treatment methods), complaining loudly about the environmental damage resulting from our citys discharges. After trying to straighten her out for over 10 minutes, one of my dads exasperated coworkers grabbed a whitewater sample and downed it in front of her. While it was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen, it absolutely impressed on me (and everyone else...including the woman) the high quality of modern waste treatment methods. Like he said, modern treated sewage is actually cleaner than modern well water.
You're right of course. XiG has the right to promote their product any way they see fit. However, Linux and OSS advocates do have a right to object to this type of lowball marketing and retaliate in any way they see fit. While we can't (and shouldn't) attempt to legally stop this type of advertising, we should show our displeasure by turning potential buyers on to other products. Just put them out of business:)
Sadly, I must disagree with the first part of your post. My brother-in-law is a 17 year old HS senior. He is by all accounts an "average" kid until you put him in front of a computer...then his genius comes out. Now, I began programming as a kid in the early-80's and later went to school for it, but this kid can program circles around me. I have actually struggled over the old "what is the best way to implement this?" problem for hours, only to have him walk in and suggest a perfectly logical solution in minutes. If there's such a thing as a natural, he's it.
Now you want to know the sad part? He's having a hell of a time getting into college. He maintained a B average through HS, so he can't get any "exemplary student" scholarships. He's a white male, so he doesn't qualify for any of the minority stuff. While his parents aren't too badly off, they definitely can't afford to put him through school, and he get's turned down for every loan he applies for. He's actually considering military service so that the government will pay for it, but that's definitely not going to cover a full tuition at a school with a decent CS department (he want's to go to Berkley).
So please don't automatically assume that "anyone" who wants to attend college can. It's actually depressed me so much, watching him struggle to come up with a way to go, that I agreed to front him $20k for living expenses to ease the load a bit (over four years of course). I find it extremely sad that there are still highly talented young geeks out there who are stuck because of financial situations out of their control.
Nah, even the old Pentiums could have got this one right. This is just poor management. I've still got one of the old P60 FDIV error machines running on my company LAN, and I've never seen the slightest problem...that's a lot more than I can say for NASA engineering;)
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I agree entirely. There are only a small handful of Hollywood stars that I truly give a damn about, and this dear lady happens to be one of them. When I heard earlier that she'd died, I was honestly stunned. I've always enjoyed tossing a good comedy in the VCR/DVD while I'm hacking away at my computer, and Mrs. Kahn has always made me laugh my ass off (and incidentally, caused a few bugs in my software :) She will definitely be missed.
And for you people complaining about the off-topicness of this article, why not just SKIP IT instead of filling it with MORE off-topic whining? Some of us actually do care about this kind of stuff, and I'm personally glad that Roblimo took the time to put it up.
The only advantage I see here is the ability to pull in foreign networks, and the vast majority of people simply aren't going to be interested in that. If people (like me) really want to watch TV feeds on their computers, they're going to spend the ~$100 bucks and buy a TV Tuner. Think about it...the full range of channels, a scaleable image without loss, no intermittent feed interruptions, and you're not wasting any bandwidth. I just can't see the mass market appeal here...
Nonononono
This would be the absolute worst thing the protesters could have done. If the protesters had surrounded the riot cops on all sides, the police officers would have considered their own lives to be at risk. You know what would have happened at that point? The real guns would have come out and we'd have had some dead protesters on our hands. Look it up, it's one of the few situations where law enforcement agents are considered to be justified in opening fire on large crowds of people (it's legally self-defense).
>>Unfortunately america is full of uneducated lunatics. And unfortunately those people tend to group in militia.
>And you base these statements on what, exactly? Have you ever visited the US? Lived here?
I've lived here all my life and I agree entirely...our country has far more than it's fair share of kooks.
>>People in militias are people who are plainly to stupid and ignorant to join a political party and use their constitutional right to change the system in a civilized way.
>Again, what do you base this on?
First off, I'm a gun owner and an NRA member, but I've seen the inside of militias and wouldn't shed a tear to see them erased. Most militias (at least the ones I've seen), tend to be full of rednecks and racists, good ole boys still bitching about the south losing the civil war. Most of these guys are more interested in pushing their own agendas than defending the liberty of US citizens.
My primary objection to the militia types is their opinion that our gov is too badly broken to even try and fix. I believe that there is nothing wrong with our system that we couldn't fix if we wanted to. Don't like Congress? Throw them out! Don't like Kleentong? Impeach him. Think our government is too powerful? elect leaders willing to cut back on it!
Now, I know your next reply. "But the sheep keep overpowering our righteous votes!" Tough sh*t. The US is a representative democracy where our representatives are selected by the majority. The fact that the changes you want aren't getting enacted is because you are a voting minority. Deal with it, that's how a democracy works. If you really think you're right, spend your time trying to change the majorities mind. If you're not willing to spend your time to do that, don't bother whining to me when your government doesn't work the way you'd like it to.
The true power in America doesn't lie in the halls of Congress, the hands of the President, or the chambers of our court system. The true power of America still lies with it's citizens. While the naysayers would like to convince us that this is no longer the case, that little fact hasn't changed in more than 200 years. I personally don't worry about laws like the ones proposed in Australia surfacing in the US. If a law like that passed, I'd be willing to blow every dime I own to inform the American people of it's infringement on their rights. You don't thing they'd react angrily to this? Hell, I could run myself and probably get elected based solely on one of these issues.
You can do anything you want with our government, you just have to be willing to participate in it.
Much of the initial rocketry research was done by Nazi scientists working on the V series weapons; if memory serves, a few ended up in the States as researchers instead of war prisoners.
FYI, that's not entirely accurate. The Nazi's obtained much of their initial design information by spying on Robert Goddard...an American. Since Goddard wasn't working for the government before the war, his rocket designs were unclassified and very easy for the Germans to get their hands on. After WWII American researchers were very eager to talk to the Germans to find out just how they had invented the V series, and they were quite shocked when they found out it was based on Goddards designs.
Interesting footnote: At the beginning of WWII, Goddard himself approached the Army with the suggestion to build long range rocket based weaponry. The U.S. Army is reputed to have told him that the idea was ludicrous, and that missile weapons were a pipe dream. Instead, they put the man who invented modern rocket science to work on rocket assisted take-off systems for aircraft carriers. Talk about a waste of talent!
Is this how we want linux gamers to be portrayed?
I don't think many people give much credence to people like this. The problem is, I've seen people with perfectly valid arguments bury them in these types of letters. They don't seem to realize that by threatening and cursing, they just end up ignored (and a valid complaint goes uncorrected). The only person the writer of that letter hurt was himself.
If I were very paranoid id say this was sent by someone from microsoft or similar but I dont want to be making excuses for this type of thing.
Although I haven't seen the original copy of the letter in question, I can be fairly certain that it wasn't an MS ploy. While crap like this isn't exactly common, we see it on a halfway regular basis (very little of it is Linux related though). While Q3Arena.Com isn't affiliated with id software in any way, it is constantly getting email from people wanting something changed, wanting it optomized for their system, or just wanting to vent. I've always been quite appalled at how venemous some people can get over a damned game.
BrianH a.k.a Drako@Q3Arena.Com
Is procedural fairness known to US law, does it apply to educational facilities?
No & No. U.S. due process laws do not apply to any type of private institutions, corporations, or educational facilities except in cases where certain types of discrimination or harrassment is alleged. In all honesty, the CMU administration could have legally cut network access permanently based on simple suspicion of wrongdoing (no evidence required). While very few entities would ever consider being so harsh (bad PR), they would be fully within their legal rights to do so. The only recourse for affected students in that case would be a civil suit, and I doubt you could convince a judge that you were harmed because you didn't have Internet access...especially with high speed connections in the computer lab and all of the free modem based services for your own computer.
Bad analogy :) You'll find that many rental contracts in most states allow a landlord immediate eviction powers if it's discovered that you're using the property to conduct illegal business.
Having just designed a large server farm, I can testify to the usefulness of Serial as a fall-back remote access channel.
This is exactly why I fear the demise of serial ports. As an administrator and developer on a sizeable network with a large number of Windows NT (I know...blech) computers installed, I make frequent use of serial ports for remote debugging via null modem. I've got a laptop that's specially configured for this purpose, so all I need to do is plug in the cable into the machine being debugged, insert a floppy disk, run a script file, and reboot. I have no idea how I'd accomplish this on a computer that's limited to a USB-only peripheral bus. I guess the idea of diagnosing and actually fixing computers is obsolete in todays "format and forget it" world of desktop support.
One thing that's important to consider when discussing cyber-warfare is the potential for psychological warfare against the people. In WWII civilian populations were routinely bombed to scare the hell out of the enemy civilians. The thought was that if you scared them enough, they wouldn't go to work the next day (and if you killed enough of them, you got the same result). People who won't or can't work aren't contributing to the enemies war machine. In our age of "enlightened warfare", bombing civilian populations is out of the question, but cyber-warfare gives us the ability to wage psychological warfare against them once more.
As the article pointed out, the worlds increasing dependency on computers gives cracking enemy data networks the potential to shut down power grids, telephone networks, TV stations, data lines, railroad switches, and bank accounts without dropping a single bomb. What would have happened in Belgrade if we'd locked the bank accounts to every Serbian in Yugoslavia, and then shut down the electrical grid and telephone systems for good measure? There would have been rioting in the streets, and that would have been a good thing for us! It could have pressured the Yugoslav government to return to the discussion tables sooner or even resulted in the overthrow of Milosovic. The panic that would have ensued would have convinced them to end the war, and end it quickly. After they returned to the negotiation table, we could have easily restored civilian bank accounts and utilities.
Now, I realize that in the case of Yugoslavia this couldn't have actually happened...they weren't computerized enough. But what about the next war? Should we be willing to give up a good weapon just to soothe that geek instinct that says "killing computers is wrong"? If attacking an opponents computer systems could mean saving real human lives on both sides, I say crack away!
Oh, yes. I wasn't trying to put Linux down, I was just trying to explain the difference as best I know it. As far as my personal opinion goes, Linux should be near the top of that list. While Linux is an interesting OS, it hasn't really contributed that much to UNIX directly. Indirectly it has launched innumerable geeks into the UNIX world, steered scores of programmers to write UNIX apps, and most importantly is the first UNIX variant to achieve household name status. While the vast majority of computer users still haven't ever seen Linux, they know the name. What other UNIX variant can you say that about?
I personally consider it an excercise in semantics to argue this point, but technically he's correct in saying that Linux is not UNIX.
UNIX was originally developed in the 70's under the auspices of AT&T Bell Labs. Because of that, AT&T owns the rights to Unix and it's direct derivatives, and receives a royalty for each true Unix sold (and no, it probably won't ever be GPL'd).
In the early 90's, Linus Torvalds was working with a Unix derivative known as Minix, when he began working on what became Linux. He did that for two reasons: A) Minix is not free and couldn't be redistributed. B) He thought he could do a "better" job than the Minix developers had. Now, here's where the important difference between Linux and UNIX comes in. Linus couldn't use the source from UNIX to develop Linux or he'd have been forced to pay royalties (and Linux would not be free). What he did instead was write his OS so that it would be very similar, and yet not infringe on any copyrights. Because Linux uses no UNIX code, and yet is so similar to UNIX, it's proper designation is as a "UNIX clone". Nevertheless, it should also be pointed out that there are quite a few differences between Linux and the commercial Unixes, a fact I personally learned the hard way after scamming my way into a Unix administration job based on my knowledge of Linux. While I wasn't exactly lost, it was definitely "different" (AIX, in case you're wondering).
Yeah, just like it was wrong to make fun of the disabled kids in elementary school.
"Now, now Brian. It's not nice to make fun of poor Jimmy. There's nothing wrong with him, he's just different"
Microsoft is kinda like Jimmy was, not quite all there but still worthy of treating fairly.
Or...er...something
Also, all of your ID suggestions would violate my right to have my vote remain secret.
Really? When I go vote, the guy running our local polling place always asks for my ID, and checks it against a list to make sure I'm who I say I am, and that I'm where I need to be. How is that any different? I am forced to authenticate myself at the polling place, but my ballot remains anonymous, what's the difference?
I've personally used this method to fix Y2K issues for 5 different companies I've freelanced to. Does this mean I should expect a call from M-D in the near future? Anyone got a patent number on this thing? I want to start researching my "prior art". Can I countersue them for annoying me?
Well, I'd assume someone could find a way to secure against that type of stuff if we were holding elections using that type of system. It doesn't defeat my intent either, that public voting should be held over a closed system, not the Internet. Why? A closed system can be secured and controlled easily in comparison to the Internet. You give the voter one point of access (the dial-in point), allow one logon per user, and restrict their access to the one running application. These systems could be located at the clerk/recorders or registrars office in each county throughout the country, further reducing the danger of widespread fraud or hacking (anything that did happen would be localized).
The problem with using the Internet is that it's too public. Even greater than the problem of voter fraud is the dangers of tampering or malicious attacks from either American or International sources. Imagine a bunch of Middle Eastern terrorists paying off a bunch of Russian hackers to fsck up the Internet on the day of a presidential election ("Honey, I just punched in www.vote.gov, but I keep ending up at www.goatporn.com, what's happening?") Or maybe they could just attack the servers directly to make them inaccessible to voters. Furthermore, conducting online elections using centralized online voting locations (www.vote.gov or www.votecalifornia.gov) places all of those votes at one publicly accessible location, on the server that handles the election or it's connected backend network. Even if you use encryption to keep people from hacking in and changing the results, what's to stop a skilled hacker from entering and just deleting them. Surely that'd do just as much damage. Using a closed system would eliminate those problems, and in conjunction with encryption it would provide a fairly secure voting method.
As long as we can find ways to circumvent fraud, I think Internet (or even a dial-up BBS style) voting would be great. I personally vote in every election, but after many discussions with other people my age (mid-20's) I have found myself to be in the minority. While 1/4 to 1/3 of the people I've talked to don't vote because they simply "don't care", most cite a lack of time or the hassle involved in actually voting. Some of these people would very likely take advantage of a computerized voting system which, IMO, makes it a worthwhile project.
The only caveat would have to be fraud. Before any type of computerized system is rolled out, the system would have to develop some type of anti-fraud/identification system that goes beyond "enter your voter ID number". Webcams, fingerprint analysis, or even reverse dialups could be used to authenticate users and voting locations, and one of these must be in place before the politicos authorize anything like this. There is way too much fraud now, and if computerization offers a chance of increasing it we should hold off until more secure technology comes along. I think a BBS style direct dial voting center with reverse dialup would be the most secure method of implementing e-voting, but in an age where people are increasingly chucking their modems for DSL and cable, I don't know how well that would go over.
While we understand that it is your job to defend your trademark, we feel that you are asserting an overly broad right to a common phrase in the English language that was in wide use before IDG ever existed as a corporate entity.
It's amazing how brave some people are when suggesting that other people go to court and take on a corporation. Rather than explain why he isn't in violation of their trademark, you'd have him challenge their right to hold that trademark? Here's what would happen if you were to send something like that to them:
1. You send letter.
2. You get court date.
3. You contact them, not wanting to go to court, to work something out.
4. IDG lawyers refuse to talk to you. You've challenged their trademark and given them the chance to establish it in a court of law. They no longer care about you, they just want to hear a judge say that it really is theirs (an important precedent in case it's ever seriously challenged)
5. You go to court.
6. IDG lawyers mop the floor with you.
7. You walk out of the courtroom a loser. You've lost the case, the filing fees, and a lot of time. A judge has ordered you to remove the offending material from your website, and you realize that it'll take you 20 years to pay off the damage awards.
Is it worth it?
Well I've been "blessed" with moderation abilities three times in the last 4 months, and I think I know the cause of this bs. Either the maximum moderation time needs to extend beyond 3 days (without increasing points), or the number of moderators needs to be reduced. The last time I got moderation access, I couldn't find anything to moderate! For two days I found that every good post was moderated up, while every bad post was moderated down. The few moderation points I actually used were spent entirely on re-moderating mis-moderated posts. What I've seen however, is that most people don't do that. Most people seem to sit on their points waiting for that rare "gem". After two days, they suddenly realize that their points are about to expire, so they blow them on junk like this rather than letting them "go to waste". I say that moderators should be given a flat 5 points, with 5 days to use them. That would allow moderators to be selective about what they moderate, while still giving them time to use all of their points.
The only other option I see would be to reduce the number of moderators. While it would cut down on bad moderation, it would end up creating more work for everybody and isn't really an acceptable solution.
Well, I'm aware that a lot of sci-fi authors have addressed the issue already, but I'm curious as to whether there's ever been any serious real-world discussion about AI rights. I acknowledge that we have the right to disable/destroy any artificial intelligence that presents a danger to us, no matter how smart it is (e.g. HAL9000), but what about a passive sentient machine? I'm personally undecided on the issue, but it's really got me thinking.
:)
Here's another way to look at it. Let's say we built a computer with an expandable and reprogrammable neural net, and we gave the computer the ability to redesign and optomize the NN as it saw fit (this is currently being researched, btw). Now lets say that after a few years the computer became highly intelligent, self aware, and self reasoning (sentience). It would be entirely conceivable that we could build a computer that was more intelligent than we are by using this method. If this were the case, the military would probably end up being interested in it. So suppose the military gave the computer an idea for a theoretical weapon and asked it to design it, and after a minute the computer realized that such a weapon was possible, but that building it could have a devastating effect on mankind. If the computer refused to give us the design, would we have the right to "force" the design out of it? Or would the computer, sentient and intelligent, have a right to make it's own choices?
I know this is quite a "what if?" scenario, but if technology keeps advancing at its current pace we could be facing issues like these sooner than we think. I feel that we should be addressing these questions before we reach that point, rather than waiting until it becomes a problem. Then again, maybe this is too off-topic in a discussion about a robotic dog
Hemos keeps punishing mine for no reason so I think mine is mentally stunted from having an abused childhood.
For some reason, reading that sent my mind onto a semi-offtopic tangent, and it resulted in an interesting question. At what point can we consider it "abuse" to torture a machine? The Aibo, for example, can learn and adapt and is a (very very small) step towards intelligent home electronics. In 5, 10, or 20 more years we'll probably have computers and robotic pets/assistants with at least passable intelligence. If it's illegal to torture a dog, should it also be illegal to torture a piece of electronics as intelligent as a dog? Could we live to see a day when people could get prison terms for kicking their computers? Will it one day be considered murder to turn your gaming rig off? Will euthanasia be permitted for Windows machines?
I dunno, but it seems like an interesting conversational piece, and one I've never seen seriously discussed before. What do you guys think? Will computers ever have rights? Should computers ever have rights?
Most North American sewage gets cleaned up considerably before the water gets dumped back into the rivers. The outflow from a sewage treatment plant is usually cleaner than the river or lake it is going into.
Kinda offtopic, but I can personally attest to the absolute truthfulness of that. My dad is a chemical engineer employed by our municipal sewage treatment plant, and he spends all day analyzing "whitewater" samples to make sure that the output is absolutely clean (our city dumps its treated sewage into a river so...) A few years ago I dropped by on a "meet the public day" to check out his actual work environment, and was quite amused to hear this woman (who obviously knew nothing about modern treatment methods), complaining loudly about the environmental damage resulting from our citys discharges. After trying to straighten her out for over 10 minutes, one of my dads exasperated coworkers grabbed a whitewater sample and downed it in front of her. While it was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen, it absolutely impressed on me (and everyone else...including the woman) the high quality of modern waste treatment methods. Like he said, modern treated sewage is actually cleaner than modern well water.
You're right of course. XiG has the right to promote their product any way they see fit. However, Linux and OSS advocates do have a right to object to this type of lowball marketing and retaliate in any way they see fit. While we can't (and shouldn't) attempt to legally stop this type of advertising, we should show our displeasure by turning potential buyers on to other products. Just put them out of business :)
Sadly, I must disagree with the first part of your post. My brother-in-law is a 17 year old HS senior. He is by all accounts an "average" kid until you put him in front of a computer...then his genius comes out. Now, I began programming as a kid in the early-80's and later went to school for it, but this kid can program circles around me. I have actually struggled over the old "what is the best way to implement this?" problem for hours, only to have him walk in and suggest a perfectly logical solution in minutes. If there's such a thing as a natural, he's it.
Now you want to know the sad part? He's having a hell of a time getting into college. He maintained a B average through HS, so he can't get any "exemplary student" scholarships. He's a white male, so he doesn't qualify for any of the minority stuff. While his parents aren't too badly off, they definitely can't afford to put him through school, and he get's turned down for every loan he applies for. He's actually considering military service so that the government will pay for it, but that's definitely not going to cover a full tuition at a school with a decent CS department (he want's to go to Berkley).
So please don't automatically assume that "anyone" who wants to attend college can. It's actually depressed me so much, watching him struggle to come up with a way to go, that I agreed to front him $20k for living expenses to ease the load a bit (over four years of course). I find it extremely sad that there are still highly talented young geeks out there who are stuck because of financial situations out of their control.
Nah, even the old Pentiums could have got this one right. This is just poor management. I've still got one of the old P60 FDIV error machines running on my company LAN, and I've never seen the slightest problem...that's a lot more than I can say for NASA engineering ;)
(I know, I know...offtopic)