I patch PHP to set a constant in the namespace of the script whenever a 'dangerous' function is called (eg: system(), shell_exec, the backtick operator etc., others:-). The webserver also prepends (php.ini: auto_prepend_file) a PHP file that registers a shutdown-hook. Those constants can then be examined in the shutdown hook code to see if any of the dangerous functions have been called, and if so, check to see if *this* script is allowed to call them.
If the script is allowed to call the functions, all well and good, it's just logged. If not, the offending IP address is automatically firewalled. I purloined some scripts from the 'net that allow shell-level access to manipulate the firewall.
So, now I had a different problem - the webserver wasn't running anywhere near the privilege needed to alter the firewall, and I didn't want to just run it under sudo in case anyone broke in. I wrote a (java (for bounds-checking), compiled with gcj) setuid program that takes a command string to run, an MD5-like digest of the command, and a set of areas to ignore within the command when checking the digest. The number of areas is encoded into the digest to prevent extra areas being added. If the digest doesn't match, the program doesn't run. This is a bit more secure than 'sudo' because it places controls over exactly what can be in the arguments, as well as what command can be run. It's not possible to append ' | my_hack' as a shell-injection.
So, now if by some as-yet-unknown method, you can write your own scripts on my server (it has happened before, [sigh]), you're immediately firewalled after the first attempt - which typically is *not* 'rm -rf/':-) Perl and Python are both unavailable to the webserver uid, so PHP is pretty much the obvious attack vector.
Well, PHP and SQL injection of course, but the same script is used there - if the variables being sent to the page are odd in some way (typically I look for spaces after urldecoding them as a first step - SQL tends to have spaces in it:-), then the firewall is called on again. It's all logged, and the site-owners get to see when and why the IP is blocked. Sometimes it's even highlighted problems in their HTML:-)
What would be nice would be a register within a PHP script that simply identified which functions were called. In the meantime, this works well for me...
Just thought I'd share, because it's similar to what the author is saying regarding only trusting what you know to work, and everything else gets the kick (squeaky wheel-like:-)
You do realise this is an attempt by the government's sneaky arm(pit) to extend its powers to the equivalent of those already granted in the USA by the PATRIOT act, don't you ?
Oh, and as for "Reducing inherent rights is an impossibility in the States", two words: 'Guantanamo Bay'.
Given that I'm constantly being told how bad the IT job-market is, I suspect most would... Now Eric's made a chunk of change out of being an OS advocate (I think it was Redhat that gave him a load of shares), but I'm sure MS is in the position to offer seriously tempting offers to just about anyone. Kudos to him for sticking by his principles...
They have a list of people who own a licence, and therefore by default a list of those who don't. They park the van outside the house, aim the aerial at the windows and pick up the e-m radiation from the CRT screen. I very much doubt it works with LCD/Plasma screens or projectors.
As for the GP post, it is indeed possible to get your tuning circuit removed or remove the aerial connection internally (get an electrician to do it) and then use the TV as a monitor. It's one of the few things the court will accept. To not pay the licence, you have to prove an inability to watch TV, either by not having a TV, or by having one that cannot pick up signals.
The "problem" I have is that on a dual 23" LCD monitor, my desktop is 3840x1200. If my active application is on the screen without the menubar, I have to move the mouse aaaaaaaaalllllllll the way over to the menubar, then aaaaaaaallllllllll the way back again. If I miss the bottom of the menu bar, and click the finder background by mistake, I have to repeat this. I'm moving the mouse rapidly, a long long way, and I'm not too accurate when I get there... It's my pet hate.
Now, looking at my Safari browser I have a bunch of personal-preferences that are just below the toolbar. I don't find it a problem to move the mouse 6 inches up and click. I'm not going very fast because I don't have the same distance to travel - my accuracy is much higher. Personally I find this a *lot* easier.
I don't think it would be too hard for Apple to change the configurable-toolbar to create a copy of the application menu in-place at the top of the application window. That would work best for me, but unfortunately they don't do that.
That's because there are differing degrees of blindness. If you are even slightly blind (say 95% ok), but are registered as blind, you qualify for the discount.
If you are 100% blind, then it's your choice. Cough up the £1.75/month (b&w TV licence is £42/year, discount of 50%) to listen to a TV show you want, or listen to the radio.
The quality of programming on the BBC is far and away better than most commercial stations. The only reason US TV is acceptable to UK citizens is Tivo/DVR's, and even then I tend to just watch just a tiny few out of the 600 channels I have available.
"True, but if those weapons require an electrical system, god help you if it was of british design and manufacture."
Right, 'cos it's er, California (to pick a random example) has never had electrical problems (*cough* brownouts *cough*), and there's never trouble with electrical storms in the US when the sun throws its toys out the pram, ever. Honest. So, in the US you don't even get the power *to* the house on occasion...
And then again, (having just moved to the US) I've had a lot more light bulbs blow, PC's die, and the A/C give out, in 9 months, than I've had in 9 years in the UK. And what's with the girly little plugs ? And the low-voltage supply - what is it, 110 volts ? Hah! I piss in your general direction, but not too near the power supply:-)
Besides, all our nukes are loaded onto tiny little (by US standards) submarines that can get really close in to a coastline without being detected. Then the nukes are launched on cruise missiles, again hard to detect. We're sneaky little buggers:-) But the power is isolated away from anything else, so it all ought to work:-)
Remind me where most of your major cities are ? We'll take out the Great Lakes ones in a second batch, having hit both coasts simultaneously with ~5 minutes warning.
FWIW, I can't see the UK ever attacking the US, and vice versa (well, I think vice versa - if you carry on down the religious-fanatic-in-power route, who knows ?). I'm sure there are plans on both sides for invasion and/or destruction of the other though.
Well, perhaps you've never been in the situation where you've put a lot of effort into doing something, and then joe-random-nobody comes along and bitches that "it doesn't do XYZ". I have, and it hurts. I don't do it to others because I know how much I dislike it.
The tone of the OP wasn't "This is really great, and just think, it could eventually do *this*", which tends to get the author/inventor on-board and keen to implement the new feature. Instead it was "yeah, yeah, I *still* can't do XYZ. *And* I think you're just giving me [link to] excuses [/link]". You see, this is demotivating - not constructive, not useful. Just someone bitching, and I have no time for people like that.
It's not even a bug - it's not a problem with an existing feature. I can grant some level of bitchiness is allowed here. They've presumably been bitten by something they didn't like, expecting people to be nice about it seems too much to ask, these days. It simply doesn't do what he wanted, so he puts it down. "Wanker", thought I, but was too polite to say it...
Re-read what I wrote. If X licences content *from* the BBC, then X sues the BBC when the BBC gives it away (and wins). The Beeb is fully entitled to licence content to foreigners, because they didn't fund the organisation in the first place).
They have no obligation to consider the public interest of foreigners. In fact they ought to be trying to screw them over as much as possible - to get more money for their funders (UK citizens).
If I have signed a licencing agreement with X over a (presumably popular, though I've never listened to it myself) show, wouldn't X be rightfully annoyed if I then start giving it away ?
Say X's business depends on it, and they've committed funds on that basis - the beeb would be in obvious breach of the licence, and would be open to being sued. This is therefore not an excuse, it's a cold hard problem. Deal.
It annoys me when (anyone) makes a bold new move, and joe-random-nobody pops up with "yes, but it still doesn't do *this*". So what ? Progress is being made in a good direction. The idea is to applaud and encourage, not to bitch and moan. Some people are so unbelievably self-centred.
Simon (who's noted that being critical of someone on/. is a karma-reducing option, but hey, critical points can be valid too...)
I try to avoid using sarcasm in posts, but for some reason, the "pixies" irritated me...
It takes tremendous resource-planning - this 20-day project. I mean, there's absolutely nowhere that any multi-national organisation, university, home, garage whatever could possibly put another computer. Christ no. Everywhere is *completely* budgeted for, for that 20 day period. For the space of a desktop PC. Of course it is.
And (to make sure those 20 days are properly accounted for) I'll have to employ at least a dozen busybodies to run around, make up even more fictional costs to justify why they're there. Hey look - even the costs have costs. For 20 days. There's no way I could plug it in myself (!) and run the program, then switch it off. Just no way at all!
Oh and by the way, [laugh, snort!] I *certainly* do *not* work in academia. [laugh, again!]. I *do* think you've been eating some of that pixie dust though - I've bought and sold companies (2 of them actually), and I've never come across IT pixies. I've never had a problem finding a home for an engineers project either, if there's a potential gain for the company. Or if it's neat. Especially if it only lasts 20 days.
I've never yet seen a business plan for a computer-room that didn't have huge amounts of spare capacity built right in. And making use of it (for 20 days) seems like a good thing to me, not a bad one.
Actually you're welcome to put stuff in my spare room (for 20 days) if you like (there are 2), but you get no access, no backup, no reliability guarantee, no redundant power & no maintenance. I charge $1000/day. That's because it's my house not my business, mind. If I was setting up in business, I wouldn't be using my house...
The reason I'm emphasising 20 days is that if this is the break-even point for 1 project, you can give away the computers afterwards to schools/colleges/community. No long-term issues there. Or (more likely in a corporate culture), you could re-use them on the next project - at which point the grid costs are even worse of course, but then there are some logistical costs. Storage is cheap when the boxes arent' being used though...
The problem is you're seeing it as a long-term plan to have this resource lying around, needing maintenance, running continuously, etc. etc. I'm seeing it as "get in the car, buy the box, run the program, ditch the box (sensibly, of course)". If the cost is (in the end) the same, why keep the boxes ?
Look, what part of this is unclear ? I am not trying to compete with Sun!
In the university environment I mentioned above, they already have all that. They were paying for it regardless of if I push 10 boxes on the shelves in the spare rack-space and wire them up to the switch. Which is exactly what I did. With their blessing. "It'll be lost in the noise, go right ahead"...
So. Zero extra cost apart from electricity.
Most corporates have an IT dept as well, and I would expect the same to apply.
In the personal space, I put 10 machines in the spare room and leave the window open (it has a grill). Zero extra cost apart from electricity. Sure we can all make up costs and "apply" them, but for the case of an employee/student/individual just wanting "to do it", I can't see the big deal. Buy the machines unless you're highly parallelisable.
You know, I've got several linux boxes. I don't believe any of them cost $100 for every 20 days runtime! As for 250%, Oh boy! I have a bridge to sell you!
And, if it's my computer, what management are we talking about ? It's a program running on a computer. I start it. I wait. I analyse the results. What's to manage ?
If I buy 100 of these things, you use a simple batch script (I wrote one at college in about 2 days). Typing 'batch ' was all that was required to start something. Typing 'batch list' gave you a list of all running programs on the cluster, and typing 'batch progress []' gave you progress reports (written by the app into the file 'progress' in outputdir) for one, many, or all programs on the cluster. Similar commands for 'kill' 'stop' 'cont' etc. Easy. Our nodes were DECstations but I'm sure Linux is equally amenable...
My PhD was in Neural nets, we used to have nets that would take 20 hours or so to train, you would do that 10 times to make sure your results weren't anomalous, and then the input variables needed to be changed, and the whole thing re-run. This could quite happily take several weeks.
Now I can see that we could have rented time on the grid, but my point is that our use would categorise as continuously-required, and I don't think the sums add up.
So, assuming you huge problem is *really* parallelisable (lots aren't) you can split it over several hundred nodes and get an answer back relatively quickly. But most of us who need answers to such problems need to do this over and over again, so again I ask - where does the break-even point happen ? I suspect it's lower than Sun think it is...
Considering that a "CPU" can be had for $400 (2.8GHz Celeron D without even trying, just a search on google).
So 24 hours a day, $400 -> 16 days work. Let's add in 25% for "stuff" (electricity costs, etc., being generous...) and you're still saying that a problem that takes 20 days or more, you're better off buying a throw-away PC and running Linux on it.
So, it must be aimed at the smaller problems. Like what ?
So, I took a look at the website you've been touting on several posts. There's a book by Stuart Kauffman "The Origins Of Order", which clearly satisfies the requirements of the prize. Since other titles of Prof. Kauffman are listed, I can't see how they could have missed that one...
TOOO shows how auto-catalytism of peptides (tiny tiny molecules, 2 amino-acids or more, occur in non-living natural form etc.) could have formed the primeval building blocks. He provides a testable model for it. The test works. He uses the results to validate his model and then demonstrates the implications of those results.
One of the fundamental theses within TOOO is that of interconnection and interaction. A massive neural network without any connectivity is completely useless, make it highly connected and you end up with a brain. The same principles can apply to the evolution of life itself - interaction is the key, not any static properties.
TOOO then also addresses the limits that evolution must work within, and how even the simplest of these sets of peptides can become complex and integrated. He shows that order and chaos can be harnessed by evolution in a similar fashion to mutation and sex. He shows these are complementary approaches.
So why hasn't he won your prize ?
As for Logically, God exists and life has meaning, or He doesn't and it does not. There is no in-between for a binary condition., well that's not a binary condition (it's total bollocks as well, but leaving that to one side...)
There are four states for any two binary orthogonal values A and B, they are {A,B}, {A,!B}, {!A,B}, {!A,!B}. The only case your assertion holds is in the degenerate case where A=B (at which point A and B are not orthogonal)
For example, I do not believe in god (so god does not exist, at least for me), but my life has meaning to me.
So, I wondered what the hell you were on about until I hit the 'parent' link...
Man, you need to get yourself a better *quality* of nerd - at risk of seeming to *be* the AC, my position is close to his/hers. You need to show some management skills, and become a lead on a team, then move on up into technical management - there's loads of companies (I work at one) which promote technical people into technical management via an Architect position. Two or three years at that, and you're looking at a directorship, then a VP position. All of this presupposes you're capable, of course...
The crucial thing is to find the right company, and to bargain like hell when you first join - that's one of the few times when they haven't got all the cards. You know your worth (or you should) and if your idea doesn't match with theirs, either accept and put up with it, or move on. If you keep on moving on, perhaps it's time to lower your expectations, but so far *I* have bargained and won. It's expensive (in terms of time for personnel) for a company to hire... In the past I've asked for 1.5x the initial salary offer, and settled for 1.3x with some additional perks...
I think you're trying to make a counterpoint to my argument, but I'm not sure because you seem to be making my point exactly. There *is* a world of difference between actually experiencing someone jabbing a screwdriver into their skull, than having some 2nd-hand experience of it via some character when you know it's not real.
If you think the difference between a RPG and a FPS game are significant, you're a little behind the times my friend, at least as regards this discussion. Most RPG's now are full 3D immersive worlds. For a pointer to how this one looks... link...
Let me ask you this: if (while you're playing a RPG or FPS game), I say "I'll give you $1000 (real cash) if you make your guy jump off that cliff and die", would you do it ? Well perhaps you would and perhaps you wouldn't, I guess it depends on your character and where you are in the game. If, however, I take you to the top of the Empire State Building and offer you the same cash to jump off (payable afterwards, of course), I very much doubt you would jump.
So, you can make the distinction between harm in a game to a character (which is just a software construct) and harm to yourself. If you can't make the same distinction between the software construct and harm to another, it is a more fundamental problem with your personality than anything to do with video games.
I *really* wish I'd written this before, I think it sums up everything.
I think you're missing the point - it's not that you ought to be keeping your kids away from pop culture or violence in games, or whatever. The point is you ought to be being parents! No-one said it was going to be easy...
*You* have a responsibility to raise your kids. It's *your* values that they will start with, if you can be arsed to get off your backside and teach them. Sure they'll rebel (it's part of growing up), but what is learned early is learned best. Give them freedom to choose their actions from an early age, and give them the consequences of their actions as well. That simple lesson is what is missing in most kids that have "gone off the rails".
Actually I think it's just as negligent to keep the kids away from bad influences (to a certain degree anyway). If you don't let them make mistakes when the consequences are small, they'll make the same mistake when the consequences are large, because they'll know no better.
It's a bit like when children grow up in antiseptic conditions - smothered by well-wishing parents, they never cut themselves, never get dirty, etc. They grow up with a significantly-impaired immune system, subject to allergies for the rest of their lives. The time put-aside by nature for "learning" things was wasted, and the nascent adult suffers because of it.
There's a line from Latin Quarter's "America for beginners" that's more in reference to right-wing politics, but it fits pretty well here -
The vigilantes are on their way back, with prime-time fight the good fight
I've been playing role-playing games since I was 11 (D&D, AD&D, Runequest, MERP, Traveller, etc..). I can't say I've ever tried to translate those fantasies into reality. Because these are social games, I know a *lot* of other people who play them. Not any one of those people has turned out to be a non-productive member of society... Some now work for the M.O.D, some for NASA, some in government, some in companies, some are lawyers, the list goes on... I would say I know (personally) well over 70 people who role-play. All of them are model citizens.
Perhaps the vigilantes ought to choose a different fight... For every perceived problem ("violence in games"), there is a solution ("ban them") that is simple, obvious and wrong. (With apologies to whomever's quote I've just mangled).
For Gods sake, the Sahara desert was once a swamp. Had that change happened in the last 100 years people like you would be crying "end of the world".
You're dead right there - if immense regions of the world started to catastrophically change in environmental terms, it would indeed be cause for significant alarm.
The problem is that we don't know what it is that we ought to be watching out for (we only have trends), and we don't know what the risks are (because there are no scientific results we can draw on in living memory). So, we estimate.
The risk of something (anything) happening is not the probability of it happening, it's the probability of the event happening, multiplied by the consequences. We do have a fairly well-agreed definition of the consequences - there are many ice-cores, strata readings, magnetic effects etc. that show the earth can hit a 'tipping point', and snap to a new environmental mode - in some cases in as little as 50 years. Scientists on both sides of the debate agree with the tipping-point hypothesis, what is not agreed then is the probability of it happening. This is the contention.
I don't know of any extreme of weather where man battles and wins. The destructive power of nature is truly awesome - in the traditional rather than the watered-down Californian meaning. In my opinion, if there is doubt over the probabilities, we ought to be minimising the risk *anyway*, and that means trying to combat global warming (in as much as we are capable of it). Burying our head in the sands is sort of like sitting, waiting for the tidal wave to hit, rather than running to high-ground to try and stay alive. And just as foolish.
[grin] not really. You need a reasonable grounding in wave theory before you get to phenomena like standing-waves (eg: a string attached at one end, and agitated at the other) or superposition (eg: the "beating" sound of two similar-frequency sounds) and group/phase velocities are slightly farther on than that.
Let's try though: Imagine a slightly-complicated (3 ups and downs) wave in your head (or on paper), now repeat it three times - add the same wave to the start and the end of the original. You ought to see a sort of symmetry - three complicated waves (which are very self-similar) one after the other. Let's assume this is a wave travelling through space from A to B.
[aside: You also need to know that any complicated wave can be decomposed into a bunch of simple sine waves (at different frequencies), all superimposed on top of each other. Physicists call the simple sine waves the component frequencies of your wave]
The speed of information (group velocity, under normal conditions) is determined by the speed at which those 3 groups (hence the name:-) of waves arrive at the receiver. When the medium through which the wave is travelling has a constant refractive index [wave theory thing, just accept it as a property of the medium for now], the group velocity is equal to the phase velocity.
However, when the wave travels through a transparent medium (water, glass, transparent aluminium (!), etc.), the refractive index tends to change slightly with frequency. This is why different frequencies of light are split when going through a prism. In this case, the group velocities of the different colours of light are lower than c because of the refractive index of glass.
But, you say, here the group velocity is *higher*, well, the group velocity itself is usually a function of the wave's frequency, and you can create media with exotic refractive indices (this is the province of non-linear optics). Both of these can result in group velocity dispersion for different component-frequencies of the wave. The result is that the 3 waveforms in your head smear over time as a result of different frequency components of the pulse travelling at different velocities on their path from A to B.
So, now consider your 3 waves after they've been travelling for a certain time T. They now overlap in space as different frequencies from each of your 3 starting-waves travel at different speeds to the destination, so individual frequency-components (which ones depends on the refractive index) of the wave can arrive faster than c at the receiver. This is what the write-up meant when it said that only a portion of the signal is travelling faster than c. Crucially however, each one of the 3 waves does *not* travel faster than c as a whole, and in fact almost always travels slower.
At least, I rather hope the above is correct - I've not read or used any of this stuff for ~15 years:-)
There's more than one measure of the speed of light - the phase velocity and the group velocity. It's the group velocity that can't travel faster than c, the phase velocity is free to travel faster assuming dispersion is allowed. In any event, information travels at the speed of the group velocity, which is why the write-up mentions that Einstein ain't wrong just yet ("only a portion of the signal is affected").
If you look at this treatment of wave velocity, it's reasonably clear ([grin] - at least if you've done undergrad physics, but then in that case you'd know all about it anyway:-)
A good quote from the above link:
Unfortunately we frequently read in the newspapers about how someone has succeeded in transmitting a wave with a group velocity exceeding c, and we are asked to regard this as an astounding discovery, overturning the principles of relativity, etc. The problem with these stories is that the group velocity corresponds to the actual signal velocity only under conditions of normal dispersion, or, more generally, under conditions when the group velocity is less than the phase velocity. In other circumstances, the group velocity does not necessarily represent the actual propagation speed of any information or energy. For example, in a regime of anomalous dispersion, which means the refractive index decreases with increasing wave number, the preceding formula shows that what we called the group velocity exceeds what we called the phase velocity. In such circumstances the group velocity no longer represents the speed at which information or energy propagates.
The phenomena is also discussed in Feynman's Lectures on Physics ( vol 1, Chapter 48-6) in a bit more rigor - these books ought to be required reading of any physics undergrads:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I patch PHP to set a constant in the namespace of the script whenever a 'dangerous' function is called (eg: system(), shell_exec, the backtick operator etc., others
If the script is allowed to call the functions, all well and good, it's just logged. If not, the offending IP address is automatically firewalled. I purloined some scripts from the 'net that allow shell-level access to manipulate the firewall.
So, now I had a different problem - the webserver wasn't running anywhere near the privilege needed to alter the firewall, and I didn't want to just run it under sudo in case anyone broke in. I wrote a (java (for bounds-checking), compiled with gcj) setuid program that takes a command string to run, an MD5-like digest of the command, and a set of areas to ignore within the command when checking the digest. The number of areas is encoded into the digest to prevent extra areas being added. If the digest doesn't match, the program doesn't run. This is a bit more secure than 'sudo' because it places controls over exactly what can be in the arguments, as well as what command can be run. It's not possible to append ' | my_hack' as a shell-injection.
So, now if by some as-yet-unknown method, you can write your own scripts on my server (it has happened before, [sigh]), you're immediately firewalled after the first attempt - which typically is *not* 'rm -rf
Well, PHP and SQL injection of course, but the same script is used there - if the variables being sent to the page are odd in some way (typically I look for spaces after urldecoding them as a first step - SQL tends to have spaces in it
What would be nice would be a register within a PHP script that simply identified which functions were called. In the meantime, this works well for me...
Just thought I'd share, because it's similar to what the author is saying regarding only trusting what you know to work, and everything else gets the kick (squeaky wheel-like
Simon
You do realise this is an attempt by the government's sneaky arm(pit) to extend its powers to the equivalent of those already granted in the USA by the PATRIOT act, don't you ?
Oh, and as for "Reducing inherent rights is an impossibility in the States", two words: 'Guantanamo Bay'.
Simon.
[grin] Would *you* dine with the devil ?
Given that I'm constantly being told how bad the IT job-market is, I suspect most would... Now Eric's made a chunk of change out of being an OS advocate (I think it was Redhat that gave him a load of shares), but I'm sure MS is in the position to offer seriously tempting offers to just about anyone. Kudos to him for sticking by his principles...
Simon
They have a list of people who own a licence, and therefore by default a list of those who don't. They park the van outside the house, aim the aerial at the windows and pick up the e-m radiation from the CRT screen. I very much doubt it works with LCD/Plasma screens or projectors.
As for the GP post, it is indeed possible to get your tuning circuit removed or remove the aerial connection internally (get an electrician to do it) and then use the TV as a monitor. It's one of the few things the court will accept. To not pay the licence, you have to prove an inability to watch TV, either by not having a TV, or by having one that cannot pick up signals.
Simon.
The "problem" I have is that on a dual 23" LCD monitor, my desktop is 3840x1200. If my active application is on the screen without the menubar, I have to move the mouse aaaaaaaaalllllllll the way over to the menubar, then aaaaaaaallllllllll the way back again. If I miss the bottom of the menu bar, and click the finder background by mistake, I have to repeat this. I'm moving the mouse rapidly, a long long way, and I'm not too accurate when I get there... It's my pet hate.
Now, looking at my Safari browser I have a bunch of personal-preferences that are just below the toolbar. I don't find it a problem to move the mouse 6 inches up and click. I'm not going very fast because I don't have the same distance to travel - my accuracy is much higher. Personally I find this a *lot* easier.
I don't think it would be too hard for Apple to change the configurable-toolbar to create a copy of the application menu in-place at the top of the application window. That would work best for me, but unfortunately they don't do that.
Simon
That's because there are differing degrees of blindness. If you are even slightly blind (say 95% ok), but are registered as blind, you qualify for the discount.
If you are 100% blind, then it's your choice. Cough up the £1.75/month (b&w TV licence is £42/year, discount of 50%) to listen to a TV show you want, or listen to the radio.
The quality of programming on the BBC is far and away better than most commercial stations. The only reason US TV is acceptable to UK citizens is Tivo/DVR's, and even then I tend to just watch just a tiny few out of the 600 channels I have available.
Simon.
"True, but if those weapons require an electrical system, god help you if it was of british design and manufacture."
...
:-)
:-) But the power is isolated away from anything else, so it all ought to work :-)
Right, 'cos it's er, California (to pick a random example) has never had electrical problems (*cough* brownouts *cough*), and there's never trouble with electrical storms in the US when the sun throws its toys out the pram, ever. Honest. So, in the US you don't even get the power *to* the house on occasion
And then again, (having just moved to the US) I've had a lot more light bulbs blow, PC's die, and the A/C give out, in 9 months, than I've had in 9 years in the UK. And what's with the girly little plugs ? And the low-voltage supply - what is it, 110 volts ? Hah! I piss in your general direction, but not too near the power supply
Besides, all our nukes are loaded onto tiny little (by US standards) submarines that can get really close in to a coastline without being detected. Then the nukes are launched on cruise missiles, again hard to detect. We're sneaky little buggers
Remind me where most of your major cities are ? We'll take out the Great Lakes ones in a second batch, having hit both coasts simultaneously with ~5 minutes warning.
FWIW, I can't see the UK ever attacking the US, and vice versa (well, I think vice versa - if you carry on down the religious-fanatic-in-power route, who knows ?). I'm sure there are plans on both sides for invasion and/or destruction of the other though.
Simon
Well, perhaps you've never been in the situation where you've put a lot of effort into doing something, and then joe-random-nobody comes along and bitches that "it doesn't do XYZ". I have, and it hurts. I don't do it to others because I know how much I dislike it.
The tone of the OP wasn't "This is really great, and just think, it could eventually do *this*", which tends to get the author/inventor on-board and keen to implement the new feature. Instead it was "yeah, yeah, I *still* can't do XYZ. *And* I think you're just giving me [link to] excuses [/link]". You see, this is demotivating - not constructive, not useful. Just someone bitching, and I have no time for people like that.
It's not even a bug - it's not a problem with an existing feature. I can grant some level of bitchiness is allowed here. They've presumably been bitten by something they didn't like, expecting people to be nice about it seems too much to ask, these days. It simply doesn't do what he wanted, so he puts it down. "Wanker", thought I, but was too polite to say it...
Simon.
Re-read what I wrote. If X licences content *from* the BBC, then X sues the BBC when the BBC gives it away (and wins). The Beeb is fully entitled to licence content to foreigners, because they didn't fund the organisation in the first place).
They have no obligation to consider the public interest of foreigners. In fact they ought to be trying to screw them over as much as possible - to get more money for their funders (UK citizens).
Simon.
Since this is not progress - at least not by my definition. Perhaps in some twisted reality... your post is entirely bogus.
Simon
If I have signed a licencing agreement with X over a (presumably popular, though I've never listened to it myself) show, wouldn't X be rightfully annoyed if I then start giving it away ?
Say X's business depends on it, and they've committed funds on that basis - the beeb would be in obvious breach of the licence, and would be open to being sued. This is therefore not an excuse, it's a cold hard problem. Deal.
It annoys me when (anyone) makes a bold new move, and joe-random-nobody pops up with "yes, but it still doesn't do *this*". So what ? Progress is being made in a good direction. The idea is to applaud and encourage, not to bitch and moan. Some people are so unbelievably self-centred.
Simon
(who's noted that being critical of someone on
I try to avoid using sarcasm in posts, but for some reason, the "pixies" irritated me...
It takes tremendous resource-planning - this 20-day project. I mean, there's absolutely nowhere that any multi-national organisation, university, home, garage whatever could possibly put another computer. Christ no. Everywhere is *completely* budgeted for, for that 20 day period. For the space of a desktop PC. Of course it is.
And (to make sure those 20 days are properly accounted for) I'll have to employ at least a dozen busybodies to run around, make up even more fictional costs to justify why they're there. Hey look - even the costs have costs. For 20 days. There's no way I could plug it in myself (!) and run the program, then switch it off. Just no way at all!
Oh and by the way, [laugh, snort!] I *certainly* do *not* work in academia. [laugh, again!]. I *do* think you've been eating some of that pixie dust though - I've bought and sold companies (2 of them actually), and I've never come across IT pixies. I've never had a problem finding a home for an engineers project either, if there's a potential gain for the company. Or if it's neat. Especially if it only lasts 20 days.
I've never yet seen a business plan for a computer-room that didn't have huge amounts of spare capacity built right in. And making use of it (for 20 days) seems like a good thing to me, not a bad one.
Actually you're welcome to put stuff in my spare room (for 20 days) if you like (there are 2), but you get no access, no backup, no reliability guarantee, no redundant power & no maintenance. I charge $1000/day. That's because it's my house not my business, mind. If I was setting up in business, I wouldn't be using my house...
The reason I'm emphasising 20 days is that if this is the break-even point for 1 project, you can give away the computers afterwards to schools/colleges/community. No long-term issues there. Or (more likely in a corporate culture), you could re-use them on the next project - at which point the grid costs are even worse of course, but then there are some logistical costs. Storage is cheap when the boxes arent' being used though...
The problem is you're seeing it as a long-term plan to have this resource lying around, needing maintenance, running continuously, etc. etc. I'm seeing it as "get in the car, buy the box, run the program, ditch the box (sensibly, of course)". If the cost is (in the end) the same, why keep the boxes ?
Simon.
Look, what part of this is unclear ? I am not trying to compete with Sun!
In the university environment I mentioned above, they already have all that. They were paying for it regardless of if I push 10 boxes on the shelves in the spare rack-space and wire them up to the switch. Which is exactly what I did. With their blessing. "It'll be lost in the noise, go right ahead"...
So. Zero extra cost apart from electricity.
Most corporates have an IT dept as well, and I would expect the same to apply.
In the personal space, I put 10 machines in the spare room and leave the window open (it has a grill). Zero extra cost apart from electricity. Sure we can all make up costs and "apply" them, but for the case of an employee/student/individual just wanting "to do it", I can't see the big deal. Buy the machines unless you're highly parallelisable.
Simon.
You know, I've got several linux boxes. I don't believe any of them cost $100 for every 20 days runtime! As for 250%, Oh boy! I have a bridge to sell you!
And, if it's my computer, what management are we talking about ? It's a program running on a computer. I start it. I wait. I analyse the results. What's to manage ?
If I buy 100 of these things, you use a simple batch script (I wrote one at college in about 2 days). Typing 'batch ' was all that was required to start something. Typing 'batch list' gave you a list of all running programs on the cluster, and typing 'batch progress []' gave you progress reports (written by the app into the file 'progress' in outputdir) for one, many, or all programs on the cluster. Similar commands for 'kill' 'stop' 'cont' etc. Easy. Our nodes were DECstations but I'm sure Linux is equally amenable...
My PhD was in Neural nets, we used to have nets that would take 20 hours or so to train, you would do that 10 times to make sure your results weren't anomalous, and then the input variables needed to be changed, and the whole thing re-run. This could quite happily take several weeks.
Now I can see that we could have rented time on the grid, but my point is that our use would categorise as continuously-required, and I don't think the sums add up.
So, assuming you huge problem is *really* parallelisable (lots aren't) you can split it over several hundred nodes and get an answer back relatively quickly. But most of us who need answers to such problems need to do this over and over again, so again I ask - where does the break-even point happen ? I suspect it's lower than Sun think it is...
Simon.
Considering that a "CPU" can be had for $400 (2.8GHz Celeron D without even trying, just a search on google).
So 24 hours a day, $400 -> 16 days work. Let's add in 25% for "stuff" (electricity costs, etc., being generous...) and you're still saying that a problem that takes 20 days or more, you're better off buying a throw-away PC and running Linux on it.
So, it must be aimed at the smaller problems. Like what ?
Simon
So, I took a look at the website you've been touting on several posts. There's a book by Stuart Kauffman "The Origins Of Order", which clearly satisfies the requirements of the prize. Since other titles of Prof. Kauffman are listed, I can't see how they could have missed that one...
TOOO shows how auto-catalytism of peptides (tiny tiny molecules, 2 amino-acids or more, occur in non-living natural form etc.) could have formed the primeval building blocks. He provides a testable model for it. The test works. He uses the results to validate his model and then demonstrates the implications of those results.
One of the fundamental theses within TOOO is that of interconnection and interaction. A massive neural network without any connectivity is completely useless, make it highly connected and you end up with a brain. The same principles can apply to the evolution of life itself - interaction is the key, not any static properties.
TOOO then also addresses the limits that evolution must work within, and how even the simplest of these sets of peptides can become complex and integrated. He shows that order and chaos can be harnessed by evolution in a similar fashion to mutation and sex. He shows these are complementary approaches.
So why hasn't he won your prize ?
As for Logically, God exists and life has meaning, or He doesn't and it does not. There is no in-between for a binary condition., well that's not a binary condition (it's total bollocks as well, but leaving that to one side...)
There are four states for any two binary orthogonal values A and B, they are {A,B}, {A,!B}, {!A,B}, {!A,!B}. The only case your assertion holds is in the degenerate case where A=B (at which point A and B are not orthogonal)
For example, I do not believe in god (so god does not exist, at least for me), but my life has meaning to me.
Simon.
Since it's now the 4th story down the page, and I'm posting the 3rd post! /. can be odd, sometimes :-)
Simon
So, I wondered what the hell you were on about until I hit the 'parent' link...
Man, you need to get yourself a better *quality* of nerd - at risk of seeming to *be* the AC, my position is close to his/hers. You need to show some management skills, and become a lead on a team, then move on up into technical management - there's loads of companies (I work at one) which promote technical people into technical management via an Architect position. Two or three years at that, and you're looking at a directorship, then a VP position. All of this presupposes you're capable, of course...
The crucial thing is to find the right company, and to bargain like hell when you first join - that's one of the few times when they haven't got all the cards. You know your worth (or you should) and if your idea doesn't match with theirs, either accept and put up with it, or move on. If you keep on moving on, perhaps it's time to lower your expectations, but so far *I* have bargained and won. It's expensive (in terms of time for personnel) for a company to hire... In the past I've asked for 1.5x the initial salary offer, and settled for 1.3x with some additional perks...
Simon.
I think you're trying to make a counterpoint to my argument, but I'm not sure because you seem to be making my point exactly. There *is* a world of difference between actually experiencing someone jabbing a screwdriver into their skull, than having some 2nd-hand experience of it via some character when you know it's not real.
If you think the difference between a RPG and a FPS game are significant, you're a little behind the times my friend, at least as regards this discussion. Most RPG's now are full 3D immersive worlds. For a pointer to how this one looks
Let me ask you this: if (while you're playing a RPG or FPS game), I say "I'll give you $1000 (real cash) if you make your guy jump off that cliff and die", would you do it ? Well perhaps you would and perhaps you wouldn't, I guess it depends on your character and where you are in the game. If, however, I take you to the top of the Empire State Building and offer you the same cash to jump off (payable afterwards, of course), I very much doubt you would jump.
So, you can make the distinction between harm in a game to a character (which is just a software construct) and harm to yourself. If you can't make the same distinction between the software construct and harm to another, it is a more fundamental problem with your personality than anything to do with video games.
I *really* wish I'd written this before, I think it sums up everything.
Simon.
I think you're missing the point - it's not that you ought to be keeping your kids away from pop culture or violence in games, or whatever. The point is you ought to be being parents! No-one said it was going to be easy...
*You* have a responsibility to raise your kids. It's *your* values that they will start with, if you can be arsed to get off your backside and teach them. Sure they'll rebel (it's part of growing up), but what is learned early is learned best. Give them freedom to choose their actions from an early age, and give them the consequences of their actions as well. That simple lesson is what is missing in most kids that have "gone off the rails".
Actually I think it's just as negligent to keep the kids away from bad influences (to a certain degree anyway). If you don't let them make mistakes when the consequences are small, they'll make the same mistake when the consequences are large, because they'll know no better.
It's a bit like when children grow up in antiseptic conditions - smothered by well-wishing parents, they never cut themselves, never get dirty, etc. They grow up with a significantly-impaired immune system, subject to allergies for the rest of their lives. The time put-aside by nature for "learning" things was wasted, and the nascent adult suffers because of it.
Simon.
[grin] perhaps... The lady I'm thinking of is Queens Council. Perhaps barrister would have been a better term.
Simon
There's a line from Latin Quarter's "America for beginners" that's more in reference to right-wing politics, but it fits pretty well here -
I've been playing role-playing games since I was 11 (D&D, AD&D, Runequest, MERP, Traveller, etc..). I can't say I've ever tried to translate those fantasies into reality. Because these are social games, I know a *lot* of other people who play them. Not any one of those people has turned out to be a non-productive member of society... Some now work for the M.O.D, some for NASA, some in government, some in companies, some are lawyers, the list goes on... I would say I know (personally) well over 70 people who role-play. All of them are model citizens.
Perhaps the vigilantes ought to choose a different fight... For every perceived problem ("violence in games"), there is a solution ("ban them") that is simple, obvious and wrong. (With apologies to whomever's quote I've just mangled).
Simon
The problem is that we don't know what it is that we ought to be watching out for (we only have trends), and we don't know what the risks are (because there are no scientific results we can draw on in living memory). So, we estimate.
The risk of something (anything) happening is not the probability of it happening, it's the probability of the event happening, multiplied by the consequences. We do have a fairly well-agreed definition of the consequences - there are many ice-cores, strata readings, magnetic effects etc. that show the earth can hit a 'tipping point', and snap to a new environmental mode - in some cases in as little as 50 years. Scientists on both sides of the debate agree with the tipping-point hypothesis, what is not agreed then is the probability of it happening. This is the contention.
I don't know of any extreme of weather where man battles and wins. The destructive power of nature is truly awesome - in the traditional rather than the watered-down Californian meaning. In my opinion, if there is doubt over the probabilities, we ought to be minimising the risk *anyway*, and that means trying to combat global warming (in as much as we are capable of it). Burying our head in the sands is sort of like sitting, waiting for the tidal wave to hit, rather than running to high-ground to try and stay alive. And just as foolish.
Simon.
[grin] not really. You need a reasonable grounding in wave theory before you get to phenomena like standing-waves (eg: a string attached at one end, and agitated at the other) or superposition (eg: the "beating" sound of two similar-frequency sounds) and group/phase velocities are slightly farther on than that.
Let's try though: Imagine a slightly-complicated (3 ups and downs) wave in your head (or on paper), now repeat it three times - add the same wave to the start and the end of the original. You ought to see a sort of symmetry - three complicated waves (which are very self-similar) one after the other. Let's assume this is a wave travelling through space from A to B.
[aside: You also need to know that any complicated wave can be decomposed into a bunch of simple sine waves (at different frequencies), all superimposed on top of each other. Physicists call the simple sine waves the component frequencies of your wave]
The speed of information (group velocity, under normal conditions) is determined by the speed at which those 3 groups (hence the name
However, when the wave travels through a transparent medium (water, glass, transparent aluminium (!), etc.), the refractive index tends to change slightly with frequency. This is why different frequencies of light are split when going through a prism. In this case, the group velocities of the different colours of light are lower than c because of the refractive index of glass.
But, you say, here the group velocity is *higher*, well, the group velocity itself is usually a function of the wave's frequency, and you can create media with exotic refractive indices (this is the province of non-linear optics). Both of these can result in group velocity dispersion for different component-frequencies of the wave. The result is that the 3 waveforms in your head smear over time as a result of different frequency components of the pulse travelling at different velocities on their path from A to B.
So, now consider your 3 waves after they've been travelling for a certain time T. They now overlap in space as different frequencies from each of your 3 starting-waves travel at different speeds to the destination, so individual frequency-components (which ones depends on the refractive index) of the wave can arrive faster than c at the receiver. This is what the write-up meant when it said that only a portion of the signal is travelling faster than c. Crucially however, each one of the 3 waves does *not* travel faster than c as a whole, and in fact almost always travels slower.
At least, I rather hope the above is correct - I've not read or used any of this stuff for ~15 years
Simon.
There's more than one measure of the speed of light - the phase velocity and the group velocity. It's the group velocity that can't travel faster than c, the phase velocity is free to travel faster assuming dispersion is allowed. In any event, information travels at the speed of the group velocity, which is why the write-up mentions that Einstein ain't wrong just yet ("only a portion of the signal is affected").
If you look at this treatment of wave velocity, it's reasonably clear ([grin] - at least if you've done undergrad physics, but then in that case you'd know all about it anyway
A good quote from the above link:
The phenomena is also discussed in Feynman's Lectures on Physics ( vol 1, Chapter 48-6) in a bit more rigor - these books ought to be required reading of any physics undergrads
Simon