The good souls who fight spam on the Net should embrace the rule of law over the reign of code, and then turn their coding efforts toward assuring this law actually rules.
The "rule of law" though is limited by the jurisdiction of where the law applies. Unfortunately, spam is like pollution and knows no boundaries. We'll all have to wait for something along the lines of IRRITATE:
International Ruling Regarding Inappropriate Textual Assemblages Tainting E-mail
For an overview of the spam problem, please see my paper.
Will any of these approaches reach sufficient deployment to be useful? I don't know. That's what the camram group are working on.
Depends on the percentage of deployment desired. Even if 25%-50% used this, I would enjoy it very much. I would imagine a "hashcash value" column in my inbox that I could sort by, and it would make it yet even easier for me to manually filter out the message (in addtion to using "to", "from", "subject", and "message size").
What proof is there that this server really exists as advertised? Its definitely a cool idea, but without photos (besides the one that looks like a photo-illustration on the description page), I find this hard to believe.
I think you have a good idea that does not go far enough. Let's not just free the fonts, let's free all of Microsoft and buy them out! I wonder what would happen if we (opensource community) all gained a majority control in Microsoft. Couldn't we just force them to become open/free/libre?
I'm glad this article author touched on what I consider the ultimate solution:
If you hired someone to read your mail and discard the spam, they would have little trouble doing it.
There are lots of unemployed people in the tech sector, why not hire them? Heck, let ME be your spam filter!
Then again, there are privacy concerns. Oh well.
For an interesting read, please my paper: 'An Analytical Look at Spam'. I touch on the "Hire a secretary" solution along with an extensive analysis of the entire spam situation.
The Hartford, Connecticut area Meetup was very small, but still a good time. No one had a clue who picked Chili's as the venue, but it was a good meal.
Hartford Area's Thoughts: The general consensus was that posting is not as worthwhile/enjoyable to do anymore on Slashdot for a couple reasons: - The need to post immediately within a few minutes of a story being posted to have any chance of moderation - Ambiguous "Lameness" filters when composing messages akin to porno filters: filtering out more stuff than they ought to.
15 people signed up on meetup. 6 people (roughtly) RSVP'd for the first meetup. 3 people actually showed up.
Meetup should allow people who actually show up to have more voting power over the next venue...
I've only had a chance this morning to read a little bit of
For The Anti-Spammers, It's All-Out E-War which is an interview with Martin Roth of SWAT. Once again, this story has too much focus on a particular person and not enough coverage of the basic issues of the problems involved.
Software license terminology is always confusing. I recommend looking at this explanation and nice diagram that shows catagories of software.
I've always wondered though, is software "open source" if you can look at the source code by not modify it? The word "open" is a little unclear in exactly what it implies. I guess that case is more of teasing-type proprietary software... You can look but don't touch!:-)
It breaks my heart to think of how many cats they killed before they got a "working" copy. Of course, they probably won't tell the press that. Its bad public relations. It also makes me wonder how many pet owners would want to copy their pet while realizing that their decision will likely result in the death of multiple bad copies in the process. Quite shameful. Its like killing your pet multiple times over, just to get one copy of the pet back.
IM usually != P2P
on
P2P in 2001
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"One area of P2P that saw plenty of development in 2001 was instant messaging."
Yahoo! IM, ICQ, AIM, etc. are not P2P. They are pretty server-centric systems.
America is acting in its self-perceived interests
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 1
Clarification of some issues:
1) Ignorance of Americans of how their actions are perceived by others is a problem. - Agreed, the ignorance contributes to problems of ticking off other people.
2) Seeking consensus on a global scale is both possible, AND the way to bring peace. - This is a key implication of what you have said. I disagree on that in a couple ways: First, you can't make everyone in the world happy. Second, America should act out of what is "right", not what the global consensus is. But the reality of situation is any nation-state will always act out of its self-perceived interests (whether they be right of wrong).
---
Activists who protest for unilateral peace have not met a starving dog.
> the chatbot programs don't track the conversation
Quite true. The simplest example is asking the same question twice to a chatbot. For LeknorChat4, it is specifically programmed to stop responding if the same quesiton is asked twice (to prevent flooding attacks of the program, among other reasons). But a real person should get ticked off, or at least ask why you are asking the same thing twice. The most important thing is seeing a varied response to the same question.
The coolest thing I realized is that a chatbot program will not recognize ASCII Art. I call this the "Newman Test" (named after me <G>) to figure out if an online chatter is a person or a bot. "Tell me what this looks like....":-)
<<<
A good friend of mine suggested to me that if two chat bots were engaged in a conversation with one another, they would end up talking forever. I was curious to find out if his theory was correct. At the time, I only knew one online chat bot (LeknorChat4) that could be instructed to contact and talk to another person through AOL Instant Messenger, and could not test the theory because I didn't have another bot to contact. But recently, I found out about another chat bot, SmarterChild, that works through AIM, and the following results were acquired.
>>>
The following is my theory on the differences between geeks and non-geeks on the necessity of privacy. Its a long rant, but I feel its appropriate to share at this time.
Privacy Background
Privacy has many facets:
1) Time Control: Don't waste my time.
2) Proximity Control: Leave me alone / Don't get near me.
3) Information Control: None of your business / I'm not going to tell you.
Main question: Why do people seek to uphold privacy?
Answer: To maintain control/influence.
Loss of privacy results in:
Time, Resources (money/assets/land), Phys and Psych Health,
and Influence (via loss of reputation, etc.)
1) Loss of Time Control: wasted time, money, emotional dam.
2) Loss of Prox. Control: wasted time, potential loss of money,
potential loss of physical safety, emotional damage
3) Loss of Information Control: lose money, reputation, influence.
My Rant
Geeks want privacy because they are nonconformists, i.e. they do things that other people don't do: think, explore their limits and the their world's limit, are skeptical, etc.
Because they do "different" things, they might be looked at unfavorably by the general public, and may be disliked! Thus, they lose influence in the world, which is conterproductive to what they truly seek: control/influence.
Question: So why do most people not seek to uphold privacy?
Answer: Perfect Conformists in theory have nothing to lose by bearing all. They do nothing out of the ordinary to warrant disliking by other conformists. The common reply by a Conformist is "I have nothing to hide."
But what about:
taboos? or to another extent:
stuff that everyone does but does not want to show? (sex, shitting, etc.) Depending on the culture, certain acts must be kept discreet
or you will be disliked by others, even though others know everyone does such natural acts, like sex and shitting. HOWEVER, if your influence is great enough, you can get away with doing anything:
Consider: Politicians who think they can do anything:
Bill Clinton,
Jesse Ventura (nutty, but has some restraint)
etc.
Consider: Michael Jackson being accused of molesting
young boys (hasn't not publicly proved his innocense),
yet he is still welcomed back into the
entertainment industry
So Conformists need some privacy, UNLESS they are taught
that such privacy is not socially needed. If they are taught
that Big Brother can watch them shitting, then it must be ok.
This is only a matter of time.
Governments do not like nonconformists generally, unless
they directly increase the influence of governments:
goverment benefited research by scientists (Einstein/nukes)
OTHERWISE they are considered a danger to society.
As Geeks, what can we do to convince Conformists that
they need to fight for privacy?
I'm not 100% sure. But read on...
I'm scared by Reality TV that glorifies loss of privacy
in exchange for cultural stardom. This is a privy/smart
way to convince Conformists that privacy is not needed
at any point in life.
The most powerful people in society have the best control
other their privacy while balancing interactions/influence
with/on rest of society. In this line of reasoning,
that what's makes a rich man better than a island recluse.
Back to educating Conformists of their error:
There is no such thing as a Perfect Conformist. Every person
has faults/errors/problems in life. Here is a list of potential
specific areas for loss of privacy:
1) Health records (if you have cancer, you could lose your job)
2) Buying Habits (supermarkets, video stores, book stores!!)
3) Location (GPS/tracking)
Overall, see the book "Database Nation".
So maybe you can show Conformists where others have
been abused. Show them they are not Perfect, and that they
do have things they may not want others to access/take
advantage of: (time, proximity, information) / OR have
influence over. Conformists seem not to mind having their
lives controlled. Why? Because that's the current state
of the system. They Conform not only with each other,
the "average", but they also Consent to being controlled.
Still Conformists will say "I have nothing to hide". Perhaps
the only way to break this point is to violate their privacy
and make them see directly. This is immoral, and
counterproductive since your argument is prevent such
occurences. *** Someone can keep denying a weakness
all they want with valid argument until their weakness is
exploited (taken advantage of). *** The same argument
goes for security. Somone can deny they are not secure,
but the only way to prove it is to exploit their weakness
directly and show them firsthand.
Thus, perhaps its that Conformists lack the ability to:
1) "What if..." possibilities - ponder the future, not just live
in the past and present. Considering the future requires
tackling one's fears. Hard to do! But their HOPE in feature
possible good things happening. So HOPE vs FEAR.
Consider: The person who jumps off a bridge if
everyone else did (or "Jonestown" for a more actual story)
Consider: The person who goes for short-term instead
of long-term benefits. (Note: Politicians will not think
long-term because they will gain no present-time influence
by such actions!!!!!!)
2) "Could it happen to me?" considerations - Not distance
themselves from reality / separation from others. Must
realize that what happens to someone else MAY also
happen to you.
3) "That could never happen to me" - Consider alternatives
that are unpleasant, or rare!! (its amazing how rare
possibilities are automatically deemed absolutely
"impossible" by people in society. Consider how the legal
system/ jury system will not believe truthful rare situations.
A more likely falsehood is more paletable. Rare situations
show people that they are not in control, which people don't
want to believe!!!
4) "I have nothing to hide." - Must stop Self-righteousness,
or belief that oneself is supremely perfect.
Beware the man who (thinks he) makes no mistakes!!!!
So ironically, the "non-conformist" is more in touch with
all fellow humanity, conform and non-conform alike.
CONCLUSIONS:
Conformists thus do not fear loss of privacy because:
1) Such a loss will occur in the future, something they don't
ponder about (the "future" that is).
2) People in general don't live in reality, but a filter of reality.
Many people do not consider how privacy plays in their lives.
Since they live in their la-la-lands, they don't consider that
their lives might end up being affected live other people's
lives have been, since they filter those out.
3) Such a loss would be unpleasant/rare, not possible in
their line of thought (if any "thought" really exists).
4) They believe they are perfect, thus losing Privacy only
affects unperfect people.
My last worry is that if Privacy is taken away slowly, people
will not react. But if it taken away quickly, people will fight
furiously to get it back immediately. For example: If someone
is stripped naked by force in public, that person will fight
to regain their privacy of their body's appearance. But
if society is taught that being naked in public is alright,
that person may feel alright to be naked in public. A better
analogy might say that if someone's clothes disappeared
magically, they would try to regain their privacy. But
if the clothes disappeared slowly, perhaps they wouldn't mind.
Wouldn't a frequency-based mass standard require a mass-to-energy or energy-to-mass conversion? That is not very easy to do. For mass-to-energy, we would need a perfect conversion to energy of a sample of mass, which is not easy to arrange in an experiment. As for energy-to-mass, we can only produce trace quantities of mass from electromagnetic waves that are in the range of cosmic rays in energy, a very costly thing to do. It would be interesting though if a series of precise energy-to-mass conversions could be done on a large enough scale to make one kilogram of some substance.
Despite these difficulties, I agree this methodology is probably the best standard, since frequency (or essentially the practice of counting) is the most reliable basis of a standard.
Just don't have me do the counting. I skip numbers.:-)
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how well the video compression works. It's the Latency, Stupid, as the article of this link points out that kills the performace of data transfer in modems, making them pretty unreliable for streaming video no matter how large the bandwidth is.
If you're looking for more than Sierra game music, check out the Videogame Music Archive for other 8,000 midis for NES, SNES, Genesis, and more.:-) Now that is nostalgia!
> they don't really have a clue exactly
> what it is they're doing, anyway. They
> just do it, and most of the time, it
> works well enough for them.
Good point. This goes along my theory/view that technology is created with knowledge, but generally used in ignorance.
Let's review how we get technology:
1. Scientist acquires knowledge by pure research.
2. Engineer applies scientist's shared knowledge to solve problems. This often includes designing technology.
3. Technologist uses devices and methods (technology) made by engineer, with the special point that the user can be ignorant on how the thing works.
Of course there is lots of interconnection, as scientists and engineers use technology, but whenever you use something that you don't know how it works or how to make it yourself, you are a "technologist". 99% of computer users are technologists, to a certain degree myself. Heck, there is a whole industry based on ignorance of how computers work called "Information Technology" where people just "troubleshoot" and never really know what the problems are. (I worked in that for a short while as an intern.) Software programmers fall somewhat under the "engineer" category if they have been trained correctly.
Anyway, society will always have "technologists" (perhaps "lamers") because:
1. People are generally not technically capable of learning how technology really works or how it is made.
2. There isn't enough time for everyone to learn everything. See mortality.
Sorry for the rant, but its important that people understand this situation.
Dunkerz, good point regarding decrease in dialup connections.
Also, it seems most analysts ignore the fact that many internet users are college kids who go home for the summer and don't have their internet connections for a bit.
Another point is that many free internet services have gone out of business.
Someone pointed out that the article is really saying that traffic growth is slowing down, but the number of users is not decreasing overall. Its sorta like Democrats saying Republicans cut the budget when the GOP-heads just slow the spending growth for some programs.:P
>Well actually yeah we do, it's really, really
>big and called the universe . But your
>point is still well taken.
From what I have been taught, that is wrong.
THERMODYNAMICS LESSON OF THE DAY
by Dr. Mike®
The universe under best understanding is an isolated system. Lets review our thermodynamic definitions:
Open System - Mass and energy can cross the system's boundary.
Closed System - Energy can cross the system's boundary, but mass can't.
Isolated System - Both mass and energy cannot cross the system's boundary.
The earth® is an open system, since both mass (hydrogen gas can float away into space) and energy (sunlight!) can cross earth's boundary. The boundary to our planet is sort of tough to define, but its best put at a couple 100 km up. (Space station is at 400km).
And someone screwed up before, the trophosphere only goes up about 10 km (the altitude that commerical airlines fly their planes). Then the stratosphere starts, followed by other layers on top of that.
Disclaimer: Dr. Mike® is a chemical engineer as degree bestowed by the University of Connecticut (BSE), but is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Caltech. The term "Dr." is used for entertainment purposes only, and should not be confused for a real doctorate degree (yet) or as a medical doctor.:P
All you have proven beyond a reasonable doubt is that the data was signed by someone with your private key. Nothing else. It is impossible to prove that YOU signed the data.
Perhaps giving out private keys and/or writting them down should be illegal, with stiff penalties...
I reasonably doubt people would give out their private keys if such laws were in effect.
I would hire that mecha kid from the movie A.I. to digitally sign all my log files. The court has got to trust someone that cute.:P
But in all seriousness, why not just PGP sign your log files? Also, is there any digital notary republic available? Something that can notarize sorta like PGP, but does not require user's own public/private key?
The bottom line is you have to beyond a reasonsible doubt:
1) Guarentee data authenticity
2) Guarentee data date/time of recording (or notarizing)
I think time servers should be turned into electric notary republics, but enough rambling from me...:)
Considering the work unit times were 7-8 hours approximately, a standard deviation of 30-80 seconds is not bad!! That shows minimal interference from uncontrolled factors (other programs inconsistantly using processor resources, temperature, etc.) I commend them for detailed explanation of the statistics.
What they need to do now (as they said) is do more than 5 trials for each configuration so their results are more reliable, THEN trying to decrease their standard deviations by controlling temperature, and other variables.
Figuring out which factors affect computation time would be interesting. Especially how the environment around the computer (temp, pressure, relative humidity:) affects computation time.
The reason Turned Based Games sell poorly is people who like TBGs just have a greater tendency to disagree with the idea of intellectual property. In a TBG, you are planning in a pseudo-"now" for the "future". Thus, such players' perspective is in the future. This leads to the idea that all games eventually will become uncopyrighted over time. So why not copy the game?
Real-time game players are stuck in "now" and have to pay their money "now" for something that is copyrighted "now". I'd rather have the future oriented perspective.:)
On a more confusing note, stick with the "past":
Stop complaining about crappy new games and stick with the classics. Go get an emulator and some ROMs.
Slashdot Mirror
The good souls who fight spam on the Net should embrace the rule of law over the reign of code, and then turn their coding efforts toward assuring this law actually rules.
The "rule of law" though is limited by the jurisdiction of where the law applies. Unfortunately, spam is like pollution and knows no boundaries. We'll all have to wait for something along the lines of IRRITATE:
International
Ruling
Regarding
Inappropriate
Textual
Assemblages
Tainting
E-mail
For an overview of the spam problem, please see my paper.
Will any of these approaches reach sufficient deployment to be useful? I don't know. That's what the camram group are working on.
Depends on the percentage of deployment desired. Even if 25%-50% used this, I would enjoy it very much. I would imagine a "hashcash value" column in my inbox that I could sort by, and it would make it yet even easier for me to manually filter out the message (in addtion to using "to", "from", "subject", and "message size").
What proof is there that this server really exists as advertised? Its definitely a cool idea, but without photos (besides the one that looks like a photo-illustration on the description page), I find this hard to believe.
I think you have a good idea that does not go far enough. Let's not just free the fonts, let's free all of Microsoft and buy them out! I wonder what would happen if we (opensource community) all gained a majority control in Microsoft. Couldn't we just force them to become open/free/libre?
I'm glad this article author touched on what I consider the ultimate solution:
If you hired someone to read your mail and discard the spam, they would have little trouble doing it.
There are lots of unemployed people in the tech sector, why not hire them? Heck, let ME be your spam filter!
Then again, there are privacy concerns. Oh well.
For an interesting read, please my paper: 'An Analytical Look at Spam'. I touch on the "Hire a secretary" solution along with an extensive analysis of the entire spam situation.
The Hartford, Connecticut area Meetup was very small, but still a good time. No one had a clue who picked Chili's as the venue, but it was a good meal.
Hartford Area's Thoughts:
The general consensus was that posting is not as worthwhile/enjoyable to do anymore on Slashdot for a couple reasons:
- The need to post immediately within a few minutes of a story being posted to have any chance of moderation
- Ambiguous "Lameness" filters when composing messages akin to porno filters: filtering out more stuff than they ought to.
15 people signed up on meetup.
6 people (roughtly) RSVP'd for the first meetup.
3 people actually showed up.
Meetup should allow people who actually show up to have more voting power over the next venue...
The Hartford Courant has released additional articles today (Monday, July 1) that follow up the Sunday's Bayou article.
I've only had a chance this morning to read a little bit of For The Anti-Spammers, It's All-Out E-War which is an interview with Martin Roth of SWAT. Once again, this story has too much focus on a particular person and not enough coverage of the basic issues of the problems involved.
Software license terminology is always confusing. I recommend looking at this explanation and nice diagram that shows catagories of software.
:-)
I've always wondered though, is software "open source" if you can look at the source code by not modify it? The word "open" is a little unclear in exactly what it implies. I guess that case is more of teasing-type proprietary software... You can look but don't touch!
It breaks my heart to think of how many cats they killed before they got a "working" copy. Of course, they probably won't tell the press that. Its bad public relations. It also makes me wonder how many pet owners would want to copy their pet while realizing that their decision will likely result in the death of multiple bad copies in the process. Quite shameful. Its like killing your pet multiple times over, just to get one copy of the pet back.
"One area of P2P that saw plenty of development in 2001 was instant messaging."
Yahoo! IM, ICQ, AIM, etc. are not P2P. They are pretty server-centric systems.
I think I'm going to go try Jabber.
Clarification of some issues:
1) Ignorance of Americans of how their actions are perceived by others is a problem. - Agreed, the ignorance contributes to problems of ticking off other people.
2) Seeking consensus on a global scale is both possible, AND the way to bring peace. - This is a key implication of what you have said. I disagree on that in a couple ways: First, you can't make everyone in the world happy. Second, America should act out of what is "right", not what the global consensus is. But the reality of situation is any nation-state will always act out of its self-perceived interests (whether they be right of wrong).
---
Activists who protest for unilateral peace have not met a starving dog.
> the chatbot programs don't track the conversation
:-)
Quite true. The simplest example is asking the same question twice to a chatbot. For LeknorChat4, it is specifically programmed to stop responding if the same quesiton is asked twice (to prevent flooding attacks of the program, among other reasons). But a real person should get ticked off, or at least ask why you are asking the same thing twice. The most important thing is seeing a varied response to the same question.
The coolest thing I realized is that a chatbot program will not recognize ASCII Art. I call this the "Newman Test" (named after me <G>) to figure out if an online chatter is a person or a bot. "Tell me what this looks like...."
Actually, its pretty funny to see two chatterbots talk to each other. Check out my test at:
What Happens When Chat Bots Talk to Each Other
Here's the main idea:
<<<
A good friend of mine suggested to me that if two chat bots were engaged in a conversation with one another, they would end up talking forever. I was curious to find out if his theory was correct. At the time, I only knew one online chat bot (LeknorChat4) that could be instructed to contact and talk to another person through AOL Instant Messenger, and could not test the theory because I didn't have another bot to contact. But recently, I found out about another chat bot, SmarterChild, that works through AIM, and the following results were acquired.
>>>
Privacy Background
Privacy has many facets:
1) Time Control: Don't waste my time.
2) Proximity Control: Leave me alone / Don't get near me.
3) Information Control: None of your business / I'm not going to tell you.
Main question: Why do people seek to uphold privacy?
Answer: To maintain control/influence.
Loss of privacy results in:
Time, Resources (money/assets/land), Phys and Psych Health, and Influence (via loss of reputation, etc.)
1) Loss of Time Control: wasted time, money, emotional dam.
2) Loss of Prox. Control: wasted time, potential loss of money,
potential loss of physical safety, emotional damage
3) Loss of Information Control: lose money, reputation, influence.
My Rant
Geeks want privacy because they are nonconformists, i.e. they do things that other people don't do: think, explore their limits and the their world's limit, are skeptical, etc.
Because they do "different" things, they might be looked at unfavorably by the general public, and may be disliked! Thus, they lose influence in the world, which is conterproductive to what they truly seek: control/influence.
Question: So why do most people not seek to uphold privacy?
Answer: Perfect Conformists in theory have nothing to lose by bearing all. They do nothing out of the ordinary to warrant disliking by other conformists. The common reply by a Conformist is "I have nothing to hide."
But what about: taboos? or to another extent:
stuff that everyone does but does not want to show? (sex, shitting, etc.) Depending on the culture, certain acts must be kept discreet or you will be disliked by others, even though others know everyone does such natural acts, like sex and shitting. HOWEVER, if your influence is great enough, you can get away with doing anything:
Consider: Politicians who think they can do anything:
Bill Clinton,
Jesse Ventura (nutty, but has some restraint)
etc.
Consider: Michael Jackson being accused of molesting young boys (hasn't not publicly proved his innocense), yet he is still welcomed back into the entertainment industry
So Conformists need some privacy, UNLESS they are taught that such privacy is not socially needed. If they are taught that Big Brother can watch them shitting, then it must be ok. This is only a matter of time.
Governments do not like nonconformists generally, unless they directly increase the influence of governments: goverment benefited research by scientists (Einstein/nukes) OTHERWISE they are considered a danger to society.
As Geeks, what can we do to convince Conformists that they need to fight for privacy? I'm not 100% sure. But read on...
I'm scared by Reality TV that glorifies loss of privacy in exchange for cultural stardom. This is a privy/smart way to convince Conformists that privacy is not needed at any point in life.
The most powerful people in society have the best control other their privacy while balancing interactions/influence with/on rest of society. In this line of reasoning, that what's makes a rich man better than a island recluse.
Back to educating Conformists of their error: There is no such thing as a Perfect Conformist. Every person has faults/errors/problems in life. Here is a list of potential specific areas for loss of privacy:
1) Health records (if you have cancer, you could lose your job)
2) Buying Habits (supermarkets, video stores, book stores!!)
3) Location (GPS/tracking)
Overall, see the book "Database Nation".
So maybe you can show Conformists where others have been abused. Show them they are not Perfect, and that they do have things they may not want others to access/take advantage of: (time, proximity, information) / OR have influence over. Conformists seem not to mind having their lives controlled. Why? Because that's the current state of the system. They Conform not only with each other, the "average", but they also Consent to being controlled.
Still Conformists will say "I have nothing to hide". Perhaps the only way to break this point is to violate their privacy and make them see directly. This is immoral, and counterproductive since your argument is prevent such occurences. *** Someone can keep denying a weakness all they want with valid argument until their weakness is exploited (taken advantage of). *** The same argument goes for security. Somone can deny they are not secure, but the only way to prove it is to exploit their weakness directly and show them firsthand.
Thus, perhaps its that Conformists lack the ability to:
1) "What if..." possibilities - ponder the future, not just live in the past and present. Considering the future requires tackling one's fears. Hard to do! But their HOPE in feature possible good things happening. So HOPE vs FEAR. Consider: The person who jumps off a bridge if everyone else did (or "Jonestown" for a more actual story) Consider: The person who goes for short-term instead of long-term benefits. (Note: Politicians will not think long-term because they will gain no present-time influence by such actions!!!!!!)
2) "Could it happen to me?" considerations - Not distance themselves from reality / separation from others. Must realize that what happens to someone else MAY also happen to you.
3) "That could never happen to me" - Consider alternatives that are unpleasant, or rare!! (its amazing how rare possibilities are automatically deemed absolutely "impossible" by people in society. Consider how the legal system/ jury system will not believe truthful rare situations. A more likely falsehood is more paletable. Rare situations show people that they are not in control, which people don't want to believe!!!
4) "I have nothing to hide." - Must stop Self-righteousness, or belief that oneself is supremely perfect. Beware the man who (thinks he) makes no mistakes!!!!
So ironically, the "non-conformist" is more in touch with all fellow humanity, conform and non-conform alike.
CONCLUSIONS:
Conformists thus do not fear loss of privacy because:
1) Such a loss will occur in the future, something they don't ponder about (the "future" that is).
2) People in general don't live in reality, but a filter of reality. Many people do not consider how privacy plays in their lives. Since they live in their la-la-lands, they don't consider that their lives might end up being affected live other people's lives have been, since they filter those out.
3) Such a loss would be unpleasant/rare, not possible in their line of thought (if any "thought" really exists).
4) They believe they are perfect, thus losing Privacy only affects unperfect people.
My last worry is that if Privacy is taken away slowly, people will not react. But if it taken away quickly, people will fight furiously to get it back immediately. For example: If someone is stripped naked by force in public, that person will fight to regain their privacy of their body's appearance. But if society is taught that being naked in public is alright, that person may feel alright to be naked in public. A better analogy might say that if someone's clothes disappeared magically, they would try to regain their privacy. But if the clothes disappeared slowly, perhaps they wouldn't mind.
Wouldn't a frequency-based mass standard require a mass-to-energy or energy-to-mass conversion? That is not very easy to do. For mass-to-energy, we would need a perfect conversion to energy of a sample of mass, which is not easy to arrange in an experiment. As for energy-to-mass, we can only produce trace quantities of mass from electromagnetic waves that are in the range of cosmic rays in energy, a very costly thing to do. It would be interesting though if a series of precise energy-to-mass conversions could be done on a large enough scale to make one kilogram of some substance.
:-)
Despite these difficulties, I agree this methodology is probably the best standard, since frequency (or essentially the practice of counting) is the most reliable basis of a standard.
Just don't have me do the counting. I skip numbers.
Oh, you have a good point. I forgot about buffering! Thanks for the correction.
:-)
Guess I was going nutty from using a modem all summer. Long live "high-speed" internet connections!
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how well the video compression works. It's the Latency, Stupid, as the article of this link points out that kills the performace of data transfer in modems, making them pretty unreliable for streaming video no matter how large the bandwidth is.
If you're looking for more than Sierra game music, check out the Videogame Music Archive for other 8,000 midis for NES, SNES, Genesis, and more. :-) Now that is nostalgia!
> they don't really have a clue exactly
> what it is they're doing, anyway. They
> just do it, and most of the time, it
> works well enough for them.
Good point. This goes along my theory/view that technology is created with knowledge, but generally used in ignorance.
Let's review how we get technology:
1. Scientist acquires knowledge by pure research.
2. Engineer applies scientist's shared knowledge to solve problems. This often includes designing technology.
3. Technologist uses devices and methods (technology) made by engineer, with the special point that the user can be ignorant on how the thing works.
Of course there is lots of interconnection, as scientists and engineers use technology, but whenever you use something that you don't know how it works or how to make it yourself, you are a "technologist". 99% of computer users are technologists, to a certain degree myself. Heck, there is a whole industry based on ignorance of how computers work called "Information Technology" where people just "troubleshoot" and never really know what the problems are. (I worked in that for a short while as an intern.) Software programmers fall somewhat under the "engineer" category if they have been trained correctly.
Anyway, society will always have "technologists" (perhaps "lamers") because:
1. People are generally not technically capable of learning how technology really works or how it is made.
2. There isn't enough time for everyone to learn everything. See mortality.
Sorry for the rant, but its important that people understand this situation.
Welcome to the future!
Dunkerz, good point regarding decrease in dialup connections.
:P
Also, it seems most analysts ignore the fact that many internet users are college kids who go home for the summer and don't have their internet connections for a bit.
Another point is that many free internet services have gone out of business.
Someone pointed out that the article is really saying that traffic growth is slowing down, but the number of users is not decreasing overall. Its sorta like Democrats saying Republicans cut the budget when the GOP-heads just slow the spending growth for some programs.
>Well actually yeah we do, it's really, really
>big and called the universe . But your
>point is still well taken.
From what I have been taught, that is wrong.
THERMODYNAMICS LESSON OF THE DAY
by Dr. Mike®
The universe under best understanding is an isolated system. Lets review our thermodynamic definitions:
- Open System - Mass and energy can cross the system's boundary.
- Closed System - Energy can cross the system's boundary, but mass can't.
- Isolated System - Both mass and energy cannot cross the system's boundary.
The earth® is an open system, since both mass (hydrogen gas can float away into space) and energy (sunlight!) can cross earth's boundary. The boundary to our planet is sort of tough to define, but its best put at a couple 100 km up. (Space station is at 400km).And someone screwed up before, the trophosphere only goes up about 10 km (the altitude that commerical airlines fly their planes). Then the stratosphere starts, followed by other layers on top of that.
Disclaimer: Dr. Mike® is a chemical engineer as degree bestowed by the University of Connecticut (BSE), but is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Caltech. The term "Dr." is used for entertainment purposes only, and should not be confused for a real doctorate degree (yet) or as a medical doctor.
All you have proven beyond a reasonable doubt is that the data was signed by someone with your private key. Nothing else. It is impossible to prove that YOU signed the data.
Perhaps giving out private keys and/or writting them down should be illegal, with stiff penalties...
I reasonably doubt people would give out their private keys if such laws were in effect.
I would hire that mecha kid from the movie A.I. to digitally sign all my log files. The court has got to trust someone that cute. :P
:)
But in all seriousness, why not just PGP sign your log files? Also, is there any digital notary republic available? Something that can notarize sorta like PGP, but does not require user's own public/private key?
The bottom line is you have to beyond a reasonsible doubt:
1) Guarentee data authenticity
2) Guarentee data date/time of recording (or notarizing)
I think time servers should be turned into electric notary republics, but enough rambling from me...
Considering the work unit times were 7-8 hours approximately, a standard deviation of 30-80 seconds is not bad!! That shows minimal interference from uncontrolled factors (other programs inconsistantly using processor resources, temperature, etc.) I commend them for detailed explanation of the statistics.
:) affects computation time.
What they need to do now (as they said) is do more than 5 trials for each configuration so their results are more reliable, THEN trying to decrease their standard deviations by controlling temperature, and other variables.
Figuring out which factors affect computation time would be interesting. Especially how the environment around the computer (temp, pressure, relative humidity
The reason Turned Based Games sell poorly is people who like TBGs just have a greater tendency to disagree with the idea of intellectual property. In a TBG, you are planning in a pseudo-"now" for the "future". Thus, such players' perspective is in the future. This leads to the idea that all games eventually will become uncopyrighted over time. So why not copy the game?
:)
Real-time game players are stuck in "now" and have to pay their money "now" for something that is copyrighted "now". I'd rather have the future oriented perspective.
On a more confusing note, stick with the "past": Stop complaining about crappy new games and stick with the classics. Go get an emulator and some ROMs.