There will be some episodes where it reverts back to its roots, but somehow, through sheer human (ha) will, overcomes its mechanical nature.
That is the biggest hole in the plot. If you watched the pilot, you can see that Cylons, even human looking, are susceptible to a particular form of radiation that humans aren't, and you will also see that when Six is particularly excited, her spine glows. Another Cylon mentions that when his body dies, his memories will be uploaded to the Cylon network, so he must contain hardware to do that. They are physically quite different internally. How is it plausible that these colonials CAN'T detect Cylons? Unless Cylons are merely vat-grown humans with different loyalties! But that contradicts the plot too. The idea of infiltration units has been done before (Terminator) but that presupposed that the humans were in a state of disarray without (much) technology, whereas Galactica escapes pretty much intact with all its technology, medical facilities and staff, etc.
A Cylon and a human get trapped on a planet. They need to overcome their differences in order to survive.
I mean surely the pattern in your eyes and your fingerprints are unique and does not change, no ?
That's the problem, if an attacker can bypass the sensor and feed data directly into the recognition engine (which can be as simple as splicing a few cables) all he needs is a copy of your biometric data (which he can get from doing the same thing to any sensor you use) and he can present your authentication credentials anywhere that biometrics are used.
If your credit card or passport is stolen, it can be blocked and a new one issued. If you lose your PIN number, you can have it reset. If an identity thief obtains scans of your fingerprints, retina, etc, then you're stuck - no way to replace 'em, see.
And THAT is why biometrics are stupid - once compromised, they're compromised for good. Present-day systems are based on matching something you have (your card) with something you know (the PIN) to prove you are who you say you are. You can also have a system based on something you are (say your fingerprint) and something you know (a PIN). But relying on a system that is wholly something you are is so stupid it's just embarassing.
How's Estonia, a poor country, funding all this? Money from the EU? Is it being used as a testing ground for rolling out the same scheme in Western Europe?
That's all well and good, but after a developer codes 5 apps which work pretty much the same way, won't he just develop libraries so that any subsequent app will take less than an hour to code?
Most of the code written today falls into one of two categories:
1) Forms. Applications for getting data from a human into a database. 2) Reports. Applications for getting data from a database and into a human.
In the old days of machines of 8KB of memory and sub-Mips processors, programming was easier.
Oh PLEASE. Put any of today's PHP-kiddies in front of one of those and watch them crap their pants. Programming is EASY and it's going to get easier. Programming is data entry. The skill is in SOLVING PROBLEMS. Programming is just writing your solution down in a structured way, that's all. And really, it's no more difficult than typing. But some typists are just typists (like today's PHP/My First SQL kids), and some are best-selling authors who just happened to have typing as one of their skills.
Interestingly enough, although electronic records are easier to store than paper ones, they are also far more easily deleted. Deleting email is easier than throwing away a paper letter.
Except that's not actually true. If you have a paper letter, you tear it up, it's gone. Of course it can be photocopied, but still, those copies can (relatively) easily be found.
Delete and email - what if it's still in your mail folder? Many clients mark deleted emails as such then only carry out the purge when they "compress" the mail store. Maybe there's a copy still on the server, the delete instruction hasn't reached the other half of the cluster yet. Maybe there's a copy on the backup tape. Maybe the system is configured so that mail is logged on delivery, and deleting it from your client doesn't touch the master log.
Deleting email is actually far, far harder than destroying a letter.
I don't think he understands that financial and economic markets are linked to world events. Therefore, in order to accurately predict the movement of financial markets, you will need to be able to predict the future!
You are exactly right. Anyone who works in finance has heard of LTCM, the hedge fund. They had their technique mastered, were making piles of money - until the Russian government surprised everyone by defaulting on its debt. No way they could've predicted that from market data alone.
Without capital there is no investment. Without liquidity there is no commerce. Want to see what a country looks like when those don't work? Try Afghanistan or Somalia or North Korea. Civil war over remaining resources, famines because people can't afford food, so farmers can't afford equipment (or are fleeing from their lives in a civil war), plagues, because there's no healthcare system that can survive without copious amounts of money, etc etc.
Remember that most of the money made in the stock market is made off the losses of other stock holders
You are wrong. The market is not zero-sum. Wealth is not a fixed quantity - that's why we say someone MAKES money, because they create value through work. What is the role of the markets? They are a mechanism for allocating finite resources. The more money your company makes, the more productively it is using its resources, the more valuable it is.
What happened to pistol in one hand, flashlight in the other?
This is how people do it today: hold the pistol in your right hand, as normal. Hold the flashlight in your left hand, like a club, with the light pointing downwards. Now cross your wrists in front of you, right hand over left, the backs of your hands touching. Now you have all the benefit of a two-handed pistol stance and a your weapon is always aimed at what you're looking at.
Ah, the benefits of a military education. Never had to put that particular skill into use tho'...
Re:Hey corporate america - sometimes things cost $
on
The Saga of Katie.com
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· Score: 1
Dear "Penguin.com",
I own many Penguin books, but I will not buy a single one more until I hear that you have quit your harassment of the owner of the domain name "katie.com". Further, I will do everything I can to publicise your persecution of this individual. Just so you know.
Yours, &c,
Their email address is customer.service@penguin.co.uk.
Re:When did the Communists take over outer space?
on
Lawyers In Space...
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· Score: 1
who owns all those increasingly tiny slivers between all these circles?
Why does anyone have to? Good fences make good neighbours.
Re:When did the Communists take over outer space?
on
Lawyers In Space...
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· Score: 1
What about the pieces of land created by several surronding circles that nobody will own?
They are the PARTY ZONE, baby!
Re:When did the Communists take over outer space?
on
Lawyers In Space...
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· Score: 1
Listen now, the key is to make sure that people who want to grow the economy out there have as few obsticles and as many certainties as are required to get the capital and get on the map.
There's a big difference between owning land as a productive asset (mining, greenhouses, colonization, solar arrays, whatever), and owning it just to corner the market in land (i.e. to deny it to other people without doing anything with it yourself). That's why you have to bias the model towards moving actual people there.
Anyone who has spent time studying the law, obviously knows too much to be able to write a good law.
You presuppose that politicians do consistently write good laws, and there isn't the evidence for that. Even the US Constitution has amendments.
By all means there should be a staff of lawyers to advise, but there needs to be a means to ensure that lawyers don't write laws for the benefit of lawyers, which is a real problem now. For example, Cherie Blair and her law firm, Matrix, is making millions of pounds a year from laws her husband's government passes.
I land on the opposite side of your 102km object, stake my claim and start mining.
Fair point:-)
It would need some refinement to cope with loopholes like the one you suggest but I think the basic principle of if you can settle it, it's yours is sound.
Re:When did the Communists take over outer space?
on
Lawyers In Space...
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· Score: 1
What happens if you send a probe to land on a spot on Mars and begin construction over a 5 year period of an elaborate base. Then somebody else beats you to occupying it?
I've thought of that - my idea of requiring actual people is intended to prevent grabbing territory effortlessly using self-reproducing machines. A further refinement would be that land can only be owned by individuals not by corporate entities. If a corporation wants to use the land, it has to rent it from the owner. That's how the patent system works now (in theory, anyway).
Re:Planetary settlements probably never happen
on
Lawyers In Space...
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· Score: 1
The preservationists undoubtedly will want to keep it pure so it can be studies without earthly contamination.
You mean, the preservationists will assert their ownership of Mars, which implies the right to say how it can and cannot be used?
The concept of intrinsic value is false - there is no cosmic balance sheet that says how much anything is worth. The notion of value is assigned by humans, and it's based on what we can use something for. The value of a piece of land is determined by its use. Aesthetic value is still value - "the pleasure of looking at this object is worth so many dollars to me" - which is how and why art can be sold. Is the value of Mars as a giant nature reserve high enough to justify never going there to look at it?
Sure, some sci-fi geeks/think/ they want to go, but generally people need some green.
Yeah, how 'bout those crazy folk who live in the desert? Or those freaks who live in the arctic?
Oh wait, seems that many humans do prefer inhospitable environments after all, and manage to live perfectly well there. Me, I'm still working on my strategy to move north of Kiruna...
No private enterprise has ever made an investment of anywhere near that size, especially when the payback would take decades, if ever.
Ever hear of the English and Dutch "East India" companies? Jan Company, they called the VOC, like John Smith, for its ubiquity. It had greater industrial and logistical capability than most countries. Don't underestimate what a private enterprise can do if it's just left alone to do it.
Re:When did the Communists take over outer space?
on
Lawyers In Space...
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· Score: 5, Insightful
You can't claim anything until you set foot out there, and put some reasonable limit on how much land each individual can claim when there is a shortage.
How about this:
1) If you land on an object <100km on its longest axis and remain for one year, it's yours in perpetuity. If you leave before then, the object becomes unowned. 2) If you land on an object >100km on its longest axis and remain for one year, a circle around your landing spot 100km in diameter is yours in perpetuity. No-one else may land in your circle during your first year for the purpose of claiming ownership (tho' they can of course visit if you let them) and if you leave, the land becomes unowned. 3) If you land on an object on which insufficient land remains for your 100km circle, and you remain for one year, you get the largest possible circle without overlapping anyone elses around your landing point. If you feel hard done by, you should've picked something else to stake your claim on.
But that's what they WANT. The last thing NASA et al wants is for ordinary folk to get into space. They want it all for themselves, and they want the ordinary folk's taxes to support them. The idea that anyone could go into space without getting their rubber-stamp is NASA's nightmare.
. There is not, and should not be, any privatization of outer space. It is a common thing that should belong to all
It's hard to know where to begin to refute such stupidity. Space will not be a part of everyday life until it is economically viable; that is to say, until the value of things you can do in space exceeds the cost of getting into space in the first place. If it costs you USD 10Bn to get to an asteroid and back and you can bring back USD 11Bn worth of minerals with you, then getting a job in space will be no harder than getting a job on an oil rig, or in a mine. But if, as soon as you get back to Earth, your minerals are confiscated because they "belong to all", then why would you bother going? If your colony can be raided by anyone with a ship and there's no policing based on ownership, how is that different from your home being robbed now?
Until and unless a legal framework for ownership of assets (perhaps by being the first to land on them and remain for a period of time) exists, space will remain the preserve of a self-perpetuating government-academic elite and a dream for the common man - but that common man's taxes are what'll pay for it all still. Once space is opened up to industry, then ordinary people can move there, and only then.
If the soldiers on the ground are going to be so completely dependent on electrical equipment?
That's why the Marine Corps is investing its R&D dollars in tougher, more comfortable boots for riflemen, not this sci-fi crap.
We have a similar problem here in Britain now. Those prize fuckwits Tony Blair and Geoff Hoon have decided to cut the strength of the Army (again!) and spend the money on fancy-schmancy high tech. Aye there's plenty of money to pay defence contractors to do pie-in-the-sky UAV research, but our soldiers go without basic kit, like desert boots and camo, body armour, etc. Parliament has found that every defence procurement since New Labour came to power was an utter disaster. Lions led by donkeys, indeed.
If you trash the database - a human error - the cluster is useless.
One word for you my friend: Flashback. You say to Oracle "restore this table to the state it was in 5 minutes ago" and it's done, all transactionally consistent. No messing around with backup tapes and the like. It's enormously powerful, takes the concept of "rollback" to a whole 'nother level.
As if DBA egos weren't out of control already, now we have control over TIME ITSELF! BWAHAHA! Back, sea! Back!
I agree, BBC should definitely tack on a disclaimer that they're related to BBC3 and 4.
They should give Sky equal opprotunity to advertise. The BBC isn't like any other TV company. It's financed by a television tax, and the reason often given is that it is advertising-free. Well it isn't - it's a monopoly advertiser itself.
Slashdot Mirror
There will be some episodes where it reverts back to its roots, but somehow, through sheer human (ha) will, overcomes its mechanical nature.
That is the biggest hole in the plot. If you watched the pilot, you can see that Cylons, even human looking, are susceptible to a particular form of radiation that humans aren't, and you will also see that when Six is particularly excited, her spine glows. Another Cylon mentions that when his body dies, his memories will be uploaded to the Cylon network, so he must contain hardware to do that. They are physically quite different internally. How is it plausible that these colonials CAN'T detect Cylons? Unless Cylons are merely vat-grown humans with different loyalties! But that contradicts the plot too. The idea of infiltration units has been done before (Terminator) but that presupposed that the humans were in a state of disarray without (much) technology, whereas Galactica escapes pretty much intact with all its technology, medical facilities and staff, etc.
A Cylon and a human get trapped on a planet. They need to overcome their differences in order to survive.
LOL!
I mean surely the pattern in your eyes and your fingerprints are unique and does not change, no ?
That's the problem, if an attacker can bypass the sensor and feed data directly into the recognition engine (which can be as simple as splicing a few cables) all he needs is a copy of your biometric data (which he can get from doing the same thing to any sensor you use) and he can present your authentication credentials anywhere that biometrics are used.
If your credit card or passport is stolen, it can be blocked and a new one issued. If you lose your PIN number, you can have it reset. If an identity thief obtains scans of your fingerprints, retina, etc, then you're stuck - no way to replace 'em, see.
And THAT is why biometrics are stupid - once compromised, they're compromised for good. Present-day systems are based on matching something you have (your card) with something you know (the PIN) to prove you are who you say you are. You can also have a system based on something you are (say your fingerprint) and something you know (a PIN). But relying on a system that is wholly something you are is so stupid it's just embarassing.
How's Estonia, a poor country, funding all this? Money from the EU? Is it being used as a testing ground for rolling out the same scheme in Western Europe?
That's all well and good, but after a developer codes 5 apps which work pretty much the same way, won't he just develop libraries so that any subsequent app will take less than an hour to code?
Most of the code written today falls into one of two categories:
1) Forms. Applications for getting data from a human into a database.
2) Reports. Applications for getting data from a database and into a human.
This sort of development is a commodity.
In the old days of machines of 8KB of memory and sub-Mips processors, programming was easier.
Oh PLEASE. Put any of today's PHP-kiddies in front of one of those and watch them crap their pants. Programming is EASY and it's going to get easier. Programming is data entry. The skill is in SOLVING PROBLEMS. Programming is just writing your solution down in a structured way, that's all. And really, it's no more difficult than typing. But some typists are just typists (like today's PHP/My First SQL kids), and some are best-selling authors who just happened to have typing as one of their skills.
Interestingly enough, although electronic records are easier to store than paper ones, they are also far more easily deleted. Deleting email is easier than throwing away a paper letter.
Except that's not actually true. If you have a paper letter, you tear it up, it's gone. Of course it can be photocopied, but still, those copies can (relatively) easily be found.
Delete and email - what if it's still in your mail folder? Many clients mark deleted emails as such then only carry out the purge when they "compress" the mail store. Maybe there's a copy still on the server, the delete instruction hasn't reached the other half of the cluster yet. Maybe there's a copy on the backup tape. Maybe the system is configured so that mail is logged on delivery, and deleting it from your client doesn't touch the master log.
Deleting email is actually far, far harder than destroying a letter.
I don't think he understands that financial and economic markets are linked to world events. Therefore, in order to accurately predict the movement of financial markets, you will need to be able to predict the future!
You are exactly right. Anyone who works in finance has heard of LTCM, the hedge fund. They had their technique mastered, were making piles of money - until the Russian government surprised everyone by defaulting on its debt. No way they could've predicted that from market data alone.
But financial markets?
Without capital there is no investment. Without liquidity there is no commerce. Want to see what a country looks like when those don't work? Try Afghanistan or Somalia or North Korea. Civil war over remaining resources, famines because people can't afford food, so farmers can't afford equipment (or are fleeing from their lives in a civil war), plagues, because there's no healthcare system that can survive without copious amounts of money, etc etc.
Remember that most of the money made in the stock market is made off the losses of other stock holders
You are wrong. The market is not zero-sum. Wealth is not a fixed quantity - that's why we say someone MAKES money, because they create value through work. What is the role of the markets? They are a mechanism for allocating finite resources. The more money your company makes, the more productively it is using its resources, the more valuable it is.
What happened to pistol in one hand, flashlight in the other?
This is how people do it today: hold the pistol in your right hand, as normal. Hold the flashlight in your left hand, like a club, with the light pointing downwards. Now cross your wrists in front of you, right hand over left, the backs of your hands touching. Now you have all the benefit of a two-handed pistol stance and a your weapon is always aimed at what you're looking at.
Ah, the benefits of a military education. Never had to put that particular skill into use tho'...
Their email address is customer.service@penguin.co.uk.
who owns all those increasingly tiny slivers between all these circles?
Why does anyone have to? Good fences make good neighbours.
What about the pieces of land created by several surronding circles that nobody will own?
They are the PARTY ZONE, baby!
Listen now, the key is to make sure that people who want to grow the economy out there have as few obsticles and as many certainties as are required to get the capital and get on the map.
There's a big difference between owning land as a productive asset (mining, greenhouses, colonization, solar arrays, whatever), and owning it just to corner the market in land (i.e. to deny it to other people without doing anything with it yourself). That's why you have to bias the model towards moving actual people there.
Anyone who has spent time studying the law, obviously knows too much to be able to write a good law.
You presuppose that politicians do consistently write good laws, and there isn't the evidence for that. Even the US Constitution has amendments.
By all means there should be a staff of lawyers to advise, but there needs to be a means to ensure that lawyers don't write laws for the benefit of lawyers, which is a real problem now. For example, Cherie Blair and her law firm, Matrix, is making millions of pounds a year from laws her husband's government passes.
I land on the opposite side of your 102km object, stake my claim and start mining.
:-)
Fair point
It would need some refinement to cope with loopholes like the one you suggest but I think the basic principle of if you can settle it, it's yours is sound.
What happens if you send a probe to land on a spot on Mars and begin construction over a 5 year period of an elaborate base. Then somebody else beats you to occupying it?
I've thought of that - my idea of requiring actual people is intended to prevent grabbing territory effortlessly using self-reproducing machines. A further refinement would be that land can only be owned by individuals not by corporate entities. If a corporation wants to use the land, it has to rent it from the owner. That's how the patent system works now (in theory, anyway).
The preservationists undoubtedly will want to keep it pure so it can be studies without earthly contamination.
/think/ they want to go, but generally people need some green.
You mean, the preservationists will assert their ownership of Mars, which implies the right to say how it can and cannot be used?
The concept of intrinsic value is false - there is no cosmic balance sheet that says how much anything is worth. The notion of value is assigned by humans, and it's based on what we can use something for. The value of a piece of land is determined by its use. Aesthetic value is still value - "the pleasure of looking at this object is worth so many dollars to me" - which is how and why art can be sold. Is the value of Mars as a giant nature reserve high enough to justify never going there to look at it?
Sure, some sci-fi geeks
Yeah, how 'bout those crazy folk who live in the desert? Or those freaks who live in the arctic?
Oh wait, seems that many humans do prefer inhospitable environments after all, and manage to live perfectly well there. Me, I'm still working on my strategy to move north of Kiruna...
No private enterprise has ever made an investment of anywhere near that size, especially when the payback would take decades, if ever.
Ever hear of the English and Dutch "East India" companies? Jan Company, they called the VOC, like John Smith, for its ubiquity. It had greater industrial and logistical capability than most countries. Don't underestimate what a private enterprise can do if it's just left alone to do it.
You can't claim anything until you set foot out there, and put some reasonable limit on how much land each individual can claim when there is a shortage.
How about this:
1) If you land on an object <100km on its longest axis and remain for one year, it's yours in perpetuity. If you leave before then, the object becomes unowned.
2) If you land on an object >100km on its longest axis and remain for one year, a circle around your landing spot 100km in diameter is yours in perpetuity. No-one else may land in your circle during your first year for the purpose of claiming ownership (tho' they can of course visit if you let them) and if you leave, the land becomes unowned.
3) If you land on an object on which insufficient land remains for your 100km circle, and you remain for one year, you get the largest possible circle without overlapping anyone elses around your landing point. If you feel hard done by, you should've picked something else to stake your claim on.
There, property rights in space solved.
sure way to cripple space exploration
But that's what they WANT. The last thing NASA et al wants is for ordinary folk to get into space. They want it all for themselves, and they want the ordinary folk's taxes to support them. The idea that anyone could go into space without getting their rubber-stamp is NASA's nightmare.
Until and unless a legal framework for ownership of assets (perhaps by being the first to land on them and remain for a period of time) exists, space will remain the preserve of a self-perpetuating government-academic elite and a dream for the common man - but that common man's taxes are what'll pay for it all still. Once space is opened up to industry, then ordinary people can move there, and only then.
If the soldiers on the ground are going to be so completely dependent on electrical equipment?
That's why the Marine Corps is investing its R&D dollars in tougher, more comfortable boots for riflemen, not this sci-fi crap.
We have a similar problem here in Britain now. Those prize fuckwits Tony Blair and Geoff Hoon have decided to cut the strength of the Army (again!) and spend the money on fancy-schmancy high tech. Aye there's plenty of money to pay defence contractors to do pie-in-the-sky UAV research, but our soldiers go without basic kit, like desert boots and camo, body armour, etc. Parliament has found that every defence procurement since New Labour came to power was an utter disaster. Lions led by donkeys, indeed.
If you trash the database - a human error - the cluster is useless.
One word for you my friend: Flashback. You say to Oracle "restore this table to the state it was in 5 minutes ago" and it's done, all transactionally consistent. No messing around with backup tapes and the like. It's enormously powerful, takes the concept of "rollback" to a whole 'nother level.
As if DBA egos weren't out of control already, now we have control over TIME ITSELF! BWAHAHA! Back, sea! Back!
If the customer only cares about the bottom line, they get what they deserve.
Penny wise, pound foolish. Always the way, these days.
I agree, BBC should definitely tack on a disclaimer that they're related to BBC3 and 4.
They should give Sky equal opprotunity to advertise. The BBC isn't like any other TV company. It's financed by a television tax, and the reason often given is that it is advertising-free. Well it isn't - it's a monopoly advertiser itself.