road taxes were often levied on the basis of miles travled using a technology called "toll boothes."
I seem to vaguely recall something called a "gasoline tax" as well, which was supposed to have the same effect. Not to mention various levies on tires, which, again, are paid directly in relation to miles traveled.
And now that I think of it, didn't cars used to have something in them specifically to recored miles traveled *already*?
Of course the GPS boxes will never *ever* be used to actually record the movements and whereabouts of citizens "for the children" or to "combat terrorism," no siree Bob!
No, what they are saying is that they copied a disc and the two discs had the same hash value.
If you *don't care* what the contents of the original disc are, as is the case with forensic investigation, only that the dupe acurately reflects it, than checking the hash value of both against each is a perfectly valid test.
What they're testing for here *is* random errors in the copy process, not intentional tampering.
but according to NIST, and my own experince, such is not the case. Not only is dd cheaper by thousands of dollars than the "professional" apps made to do such things, but it's often *more* effective, and almost always easier to use.
At its heart it's just a simple copy command.
In fact, the dd tool is so simple, and simple minded, that it would be easier to write a simple graphical front end for it than to learn the GUI of exiting Windows apps designed to do the same thing.
I don't know quite how to break this to you, but *sometimes* language is the simpler, more powerful and more *intuitive* means of getting something across than pointing at a picture and grunting.
Unless, of course, your intellect hasn't yet advanced to that level of sophistication.
KFG
Thank you, that's the very passage. . .
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 1
I was indeed thinking of. Sounds rather distressingly like the state of the modern "wage earner," don'nit?
KFG
If the makers of this system can get it to. . .
on
Robot Pharmacists
·
· Score: 1
fill millions of pillboxes per second, even mistakenly and over the entire span of the installed base,they'll certainly be deserving of some sort of industrial design award.
Look up the history of. . . `
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
the Virgina Colony. The Hudson Bay Trading Company. The East Indian Trading Company. Etc.
The framers of the Constitution knew damn well what corporations "would become." They had *already* become them.
Provisions were made in the Constitution and legislative law to deal with this issue. Great essays were written on the subject by learned minds such as Thomas Jefferson. 50 years later such matters were still uppermost in the minds of America's great social philosopher's, such as Thoreau.
Our forefather's weren't idiots, weren't ignorant and weren't "cavemen." Their world was, in many respects, "more like our own than our own."
Stock markets, insurance companies, leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers, all done on a global scale, were already a century or more of old news before the first shot of the revolution was fired on the green at Lexington.
For God's sake man, Jefferson and Adams were *lawyers* and had actually participated in such actions. They learned their loathing of them first hand.
So what went wrong?
Well, let me put it to you this way. Do *you* still do business with these large corporations, giving them the money and power to buy law? Traded a little freedom for luxury items and security maybe?
I forget who it was, but an ancient historian, commenting on the aculturation of the Britons under Roman rule, wrote something along these lines:
"And so, the gullible natives, eventually came to call their slavery "culture.""
Ring any bells close to home?
That's the problem with republicanism, don't you see. The problems start at the top, more often than not, but *responsibiltiy* always, always, alway, falls to the bottom.
People don't want responsibility. They want a Big Mac while bopping to the latest Brittney Spears "tune."
KFG
Of course this should be followed by. . .
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 2
the answer to Santayana's infamous final exam which posed that very question.
Because.:)
As for your sig, why do you think that guns are long, skinny, and have holes down the middle of their barrels?
"If some chain store uploaded rev 2.2.4 robo-phamacist with a bug that replaced erythromycin with warfarin we could have a massive computer sized problem."
Which would be a *human* error of fairly massive proprotion involving multiple people over a chain of events.
You do realize you put your life in the hands of such systems every day already, don't you? Who do you think built your car? Who do you think controls the traffic lights? People? Get real. Robots and computers do it, and they do it better.
Ok, lets take it a bit closer to the exact subject at hand. *How do you think these drugs are made in the first place*? A couple of old crones stiring chemicals in vats with old 2x4's?
No, computer controled robotic systems make the drugs because it's proven *safer,* even on the grand scale.
If you want to worry, worry about the pharmacies giving you the right bottle with wrong drug in it because the computer at the manufaturing plant screwed up. Man, that would be a more widespeard disaster than just one chain having a bug. It would be world wide.
Hasn't happened. Relax. As long as people watch the machines the machines make you safer.
KFG
Please note that parent poster didn't say. . . .
on
Robot Pharmacists
·
· Score: 2
the robot *wouldn't* make mistakes. He said the robot was less *likely* to.
This is really a pretty undeniable fact. Robots have become ubiquitous in manufacturing largly just because of this. Robots don't come in Monday morning hung over after a fight with their wife. Robots aren't thinking about the upcoming weekend while performing critical tasks. Robots don't even drink beer so they don't have to hide the can of the one they snuck onto the job in the new Chevy's door panel.
Do robots make mistakes? Of course they do. That's why quality control is always best handled by a person. Robots are better at labor, people are better at judgment.
A wise employer puts his people where they will do best, even if his "people" are machines.
You're also making the error of equating large, general purpose computing systems with small, specialized and embeded systems. These systems are *far* more robust than a general purpose computer. They're made that way. They can operate for decades without a single, *computer* related failure ( most failures of robotic systems come from old fashioned mechanical wear of the physical componants).
How much do such systems cost, can a pharmacy afford one? Well, if you look at the low end of such embeded robotic systems you'll find that every pharmacy already has one. It's called a thermostat.
In this case were're only talking about something on the order of sophistication somewhat lower than a desktop CNC mill. Those go for under $10K now.
KFG
The point of this shouldn't be to. . .
on
Robot Pharmacists
·
· Score: 5, Informative
replace the pharmacist, for all the reasons you've stated and more. The point is to automate one of the routine jobs of the pharmacist where mechanical means is less prone to error and removes an act of pure labor from the job.
The pharmacist should, as a matter of course, double check on the work of the robot, because even robots can make mistakes.
This isn't like replacing the pharmacist. It's like giving a ditch digger a backhoe to replace his shovel, or automating a daily incremental system backup so the admin can spend his time and attention somewhere more profitable.
hired out are a special case. Certainly an ISP is the most obvious example, and one where the indirection is so great most users don't even realize they're users.
I'd only point out that help desk people are themselves users of the system, and generally rank only a smidgeon above subscribers on the "luse-O-meter."
troubleshooting often has nothing whatsover to do with the system at all.
The primary difference between a really good admin and a BOFH is the realization that "lusers" are *part of the system.* A really, *really* good admin has to be that apparently rarest of geeks, the person with outrageously good technical *and* people skills.
After all, the admin isn't just responsible for the machines, he is also the primary interface between the machines and the people.
How do you know if your company has a really talented admin? If he kills all of a user's processes and deletes all of his files, and the user is so greatful the treats the admin to lunch.
Now *that* is evidence of an admin who has figured out what his job is and how to do it. Which is, unfortunately, rare.
If they don't want people to spell like them they shouldn't make poor, impressionable children read them in school.
KFG
We have a martial arts equivalent. . .
on
Tai Chi Robots
·
· Score: 1
of napalm. It's called, are you ready for it? Napalm. Using napalm is a martial art.
You seem to have missed a key concept somewhere along the way.
KFG
Ah, there's a lot of. . .
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 1
bliss in the air tonight, isn't there?
KFG
For the simple reason . . .
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 1
because that's how science is *defined.*
KFG
No, what this is saying is that. . .
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 3, Informative
some physicists believe they may be seeing things at the macro level that are unexplainable by Relativitly theory, and then extrapolating that, without any apparent justification, that if such is the case *maybe* explaining this differece can open the bridge to the Theory of Everything.
Please note that most physicists are of a mind that the physicist who are seeing these things are, ummmmm, seeing things.
So far it's all still a lot of waving of hands in the air and ignoring the part where "a miracle happens."
Not to say that it might not all work out in the end, but to imply that Relativity has been disproven, or even that certain limits have been found, is, ummmmm, premature.
KFG
I'm sorry, but this is entirely incorrect.
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The fact that light is in orbit has *no* effect on its speed. You're thinking of light as a Newtonian object getting "sucked into" the black hole. Light isn't "sucked in." The escape velocity of the black hole is simply higher than the speed of light and the light follows a ballistic trajectory. . . at * the speed of light.*
Light is not Newtonian. It dosn't "speed up" as it falls, or "slow down" as it rises. That's kind of the point. Try working some simple Lorentz Transformations to begin to get a feel for this.
KFG
You misunderstand completely
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The more we learn where our knowledge is incorrect the more *correct* it becomes. The job of the scientist is thus to question *everything.*
The very thing that shakes your faith in our knowledge is the very thing that *strengthens* our knowledge.
that's generally a sign of maturation of any technology. It happens. There's only so much "new" to go around, and then you've used it up.
You can see signs of it throughtout the entire computer industry too. They're starting to sell chrome like it's a technological feature. They only have to do that when they've run out of *actual* new technological features to sell. "Buy our OS, it's got prettier widgets and shit."
There was that "smell-O-vision" thingy that someone said they were working on a while ago. Man, just wait to you get hit with a "popup" perfume ad with that sucker. Maybe nothing new is a Good Thing?
Slashdot Mirror
get out much, do you?
KFG
road taxes were often levied on the basis of miles travled using a technology called "toll boothes."
I seem to vaguely recall something called a "gasoline tax" as well, which was supposed to have the same effect. Not to mention various levies on tires, which, again, are paid directly in relation to miles traveled.
And now that I think of it, didn't cars used to have something in them specifically to recored miles traveled *already*?
Of course the GPS boxes will never *ever* be used to actually record the movements and whereabouts of citizens "for the children" or to "combat terrorism," no siree Bob!
KFG
Well duh. That's their *job.*
KFG
I was afraid the symbol might be trademarked and I'd get sued for using it in an unapproved fashion.
KFG
No, what they are saying is that they copied a disc and the two discs had the same hash value.
If you *don't care* what the contents of the original disc are, as is the case with forensic investigation, only that the dupe acurately reflects it, than checking the hash value of both against each is a perfectly valid test.
What they're testing for here *is* random errors in the copy process, not intentional tampering.
KFG
but according to NIST, and my own experince, such is not the case. Not only is dd cheaper by thousands of dollars than the "professional" apps made to do such things, but it's often *more* effective, and almost always easier to use.
At its heart it's just a simple copy command.
In fact, the dd tool is so simple, and simple minded, that it would be easier to write a simple graphical front end for it than to learn the GUI of exiting Windows apps designed to do the same thing.
I don't know quite how to break this to you, but *sometimes* language is the simpler, more powerful and more *intuitive* means of getting something across than pointing at a picture and grunting.
Unless, of course, your intellect hasn't yet advanced to that level of sophistication.
KFG
I was indeed thinking of. Sounds rather distressingly like the state of the modern "wage earner," don'nit?
KFG
fill millions of pillboxes per second, even mistakenly and over the entire span of the installed base,they'll certainly be deserving of some sort of industrial design award.
KFG
Red,White and Blue stripes.
You had a point in there somewhere, or what?
I'm sorry, but sympathetic magic doesn't work.
KFG
the Virgina Colony. The Hudson Bay Trading Company. The East Indian Trading Company. Etc.
The framers of the Constitution knew damn well what corporations "would become." They had *already* become them.
Provisions were made in the Constitution and legislative law to deal with this issue. Great essays were written on the subject by learned minds such as Thomas Jefferson. 50 years later such matters were still uppermost in the minds of America's great social philosopher's, such as Thoreau.
Our forefather's weren't idiots, weren't ignorant and weren't "cavemen." Their world was, in many respects, "more like our own than our own."
Stock markets, insurance companies, leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers, all done on a global scale, were already a century or more of old news before the first shot of the revolution was fired on the green at Lexington.
For God's sake man, Jefferson and Adams were *lawyers* and had actually participated in such actions. They learned their loathing of them first hand.
So what went wrong?
Well, let me put it to you this way. Do *you* still do business with these large corporations, giving them the money and power to buy law? Traded a little freedom for luxury items and security maybe?
I forget who it was, but an ancient historian, commenting on the aculturation of the Britons under Roman rule, wrote something along these lines:
"And so, the gullible natives, eventually came to call their slavery "culture.""
Ring any bells close to home?
That's the problem with republicanism, don't you see. The problems start at the top, more often than not, but *responsibiltiy* always, always, alway, falls to the bottom.
People don't want responsibility. They want a Big Mac while bopping to the latest Brittney Spears "tune."
KFG
the answer to Santayana's infamous final exam which posed that very question.
:)
Because.
As for your sig, why do you think that guns are long, skinny, and have holes down the middle of their barrels?
KFG
"If some chain store uploaded rev 2.2.4 robo-phamacist with a bug that replaced erythromycin with warfarin we could have a massive computer sized problem."
Which would be a *human* error of fairly massive proprotion involving multiple people over a chain of events.
You do realize you put your life in the hands of such systems every day already, don't you? Who do you think built your car? Who do you think controls the traffic lights? People? Get real. Robots and computers do it, and they do it better.
Ok, lets take it a bit closer to the exact subject at hand. *How do you think these drugs are made in the first place*? A couple of old crones stiring chemicals in vats with old 2x4's?
No, computer controled robotic systems make the drugs because it's proven *safer,* even on the grand scale.
If you want to worry, worry about the pharmacies giving you the right bottle with wrong drug in it because the computer at the manufaturing plant screwed up. Man, that would be a more widespeard disaster than just one chain having a bug. It would be world wide.
Hasn't happened. Relax. As long as people watch the machines the machines make you safer.
KFG
the robot *wouldn't* make mistakes. He said the robot was less *likely* to.
This is really a pretty undeniable fact. Robots have become ubiquitous in manufacturing largly just because of this. Robots don't come in Monday morning hung over after a fight with their wife. Robots aren't thinking about the upcoming weekend while performing critical tasks. Robots don't even drink beer so they don't have to hide the can of the one they snuck onto the job in the new Chevy's door panel.
Do robots make mistakes? Of course they do. That's why quality control is always best handled by a person. Robots are better at labor, people are better at judgment.
A wise employer puts his people where they will do best, even if his "people" are machines.
You're also making the error of equating large, general purpose computing systems with small, specialized and embeded systems. These systems are *far* more robust than a general purpose computer. They're made that way. They can operate for decades without a single, *computer* related failure ( most failures of robotic systems come from old fashioned mechanical wear of the physical componants).
How much do such systems cost, can a pharmacy afford one? Well, if you look at the low end of such embeded robotic systems you'll find that every pharmacy already has one. It's called a thermostat.
In this case were're only talking about something on the order of sophistication somewhat lower than a desktop CNC mill. Those go for under $10K now.
KFG
replace the pharmacist, for all the reasons you've stated and more. The point is to automate one of the routine jobs of the pharmacist where mechanical means is less prone to error and removes an act of pure labor from the job.
The pharmacist should, as a matter of course, double check on the work of the robot, because even robots can make mistakes.
This isn't like replacing the pharmacist. It's like giving a ditch digger a backhoe to replace his shovel, or automating a daily incremental system backup so the admin can spend his time and attention somewhere more profitable.
KFG
hired out are a special case. Certainly an ISP is the most obvious example, and one where the indirection is so great most users don't even realize they're users.
I'd only point out that help desk people are themselves users of the system, and generally rank only a smidgeon above subscribers on the "luse-O-meter."
My point stands.
KFG
And since that's precisely the sort of overly subtle humor that often gets me in trouble I feel a bit foolish over not catching it. :)
The problem is, I've actually encountered that very response in "real life" with distressing frequency.
KFG
troubleshooting often has nothing whatsover to do with the system at all.
The primary difference between a really good admin and a BOFH is the realization that "lusers" are *part of the system.* A really, *really* good admin has to be that apparently rarest of geeks, the person with outrageously good technical *and* people skills.
After all, the admin isn't just responsible for the machines, he is also the primary interface between the machines and the people.
How do you know if your company has a really talented admin? If he kills all of a user's processes and deletes all of his files, and the user is so greatful the treats the admin to lunch.
Now *that* is evidence of an admin who has figured out what his job is and how to do it. Which is, unfortunately, rare.
KFG
by reading great literature.
Shakespeare, Chaucer, Marlowe, etc.
If they don't want people to spell like them they shouldn't make poor, impressionable children read them in school.
KFG
of napalm. It's called, are you ready for it? Napalm. Using napalm is a martial art.
You seem to have missed a key concept somewhere along the way.
KFG
bliss in the air tonight, isn't there?
KFG
because that's how science is *defined.*
KFG
some physicists believe they may be seeing things at the macro level that are unexplainable by Relativitly theory, and then extrapolating that, without any apparent justification, that if such is the case *maybe* explaining this differece can open the bridge to the Theory of Everything.
Please note that most physicists are of a mind that the physicist who are seeing these things are, ummmmm, seeing things.
So far it's all still a lot of waving of hands in the air and ignoring the part where "a miracle happens."
Not to say that it might not all work out in the end, but to imply that Relativity has been disproven, or even that certain limits have been found, is, ummmmm, premature.
KFG
The fact that light is in orbit has *no* effect on its speed. You're thinking of light as a Newtonian object getting "sucked into" the black hole. Light isn't "sucked in." The escape velocity of the black hole is simply higher than the speed of light and the light follows a ballistic trajectory. . . at * the speed of light.*
Light is not Newtonian. It dosn't "speed up" as it falls, or "slow down" as it rises. That's kind of the point. Try working some simple Lorentz Transformations to begin to get a feel for this.
KFG
The more we learn where our knowledge is incorrect the more *correct* it becomes. The job of the scientist is thus to question *everything.*
The very thing that shakes your faith in our knowledge is the very thing that *strengthens* our knowledge.
Think about it.
KFG
that's generally a sign of maturation of any technology. It happens. There's only so much "new" to go around, and then you've used it up.
You can see signs of it throughtout the entire computer industry too. They're starting to sell chrome like it's a technological feature. They only have to do that when they've run out of *actual* new technological features to sell. "Buy our OS, it's got prettier widgets and shit."
There was that "smell-O-vision" thingy that someone said they were working on a while ago. Man, just wait to you get hit with a "popup" perfume ad with that sucker. Maybe nothing new is a Good Thing?
KFG