I'd bet that already there are people looking at it and saying to themselves "Now how can I adapt this to attack this other device?". And at the same time, of course, they're also looking on improving the attack system, etc.
Somebody above said "There'll be more attacks like this. Count on it." and I'm sure that he was right, if only because now there's an example of the art around.
While the point is good, the approach is too limited.
I'd recommend that a good copy of the OS be written to CDROM, and that the system be booted from CDROM. No hard disk. No writable media. Or you could have a hard disk (or even thumbdrive) and only use it for log-files.
If this wouldn't work, because there needed to be state-specific memory, then use a hard disk, but boot the system only from CDROM. And when you mount the hard disk, mark it as non-executable. And NO network connections.
This would mean that only the data files could be corrupted, and that no executable program could be "added" without physical replacement of the boot CD. That could even be locked shut, if you want. But even if you don't, then alteration of the system is going to require physical access. And you can run a modern OS. (Linux is my choice. I don't know how to do what I was proposing with anything else.)
The basic rule for a secure system is "use an air gap to require physical access". I applied that, and a bit of additional hardening. (Boot the system from a ReadOnly media, mount writeable media as non-executable.) But the air gap is the basic security measure. With than even a standard system would be relatively safe.
Everything you said is true...and I'm still opposed to more countries getting nuclear weapons. I really wish nobody had them. The other possibilites are vile enough, but nuclear weapons threaten to take the planet back to nobody living on the surface, or for 3 miles down, except radiodurans bacteria.
OTOH, a *SMALL* local nuclear war would solve the global warming problem. Might take us all the way to the start of a new ice age. (Probably not. There's too much CO2 in the air and in the oceans and the continents are out of position.) But I wouldn't like to live anywhere within a thousand miles of the war, and on the downwind side anywhere within a few thousand miles. And we could expect cancer rates to surge for hundreds of years all over the globe. (And faster evolution of bacteria, of course. They've got a large enough population to support the increased mutation rate, and their breeding pattern tends to eliminate unhealthy lines without contaminating the healthy ones, unlike those that reproduce sexually. Sexual reproduction depends on a low rate of mutations to remain healthy.)
I really don't like nuclear weapons. Plagues at least only decimate a few species.
Well, then as a citizen of the US, I must be very careful to speak precisely.
Don't be silly. English is widely known as one of the more confusing languages in the world. As a native speaker, I rarely notice this, but when I think carefully, it certainly seems plausible. Just for example (and to stay in topic) baseball fans shouting in unison "Kill the umpire" aren't considered to be in a conspiracy to commit murder. Not even if one of then commits an overt act. (Say throwing a beer bottle at the umpire.) That's what the law calls a conspiracy to commit a felony, but it's never seen as one, because nobody takes "Kill the umpire" literally.
Then there's the street in San Francisco spelled "Gough", which changes it's pronunciation from area to area. "Go", "Golf" without the "l", etc., but is never pronounced "Gup" (ref. hiccough). In passing I note that my on-line spelling dictionary doesn't recognize "hiccough" as a valid word, suggesting instead "hiccup", even though "hiccough" is the more traditional spelling. Perhaps that's now seen as British, rather than American, English.
I can easily interpret Iranians chanting "Death to the US!" to be analogous to the baseball crowd chanting "Kill the umpire!". Whether it is intentionally stronger or weaker is probably neither a cultural nor a linguistic fact, but rather determined by the emotions of the crowd. (There have, indeed, been times when an Umpire has had his life endangered.)
And it is also quite common for people to avoid saying that someone is dead. People don't like to be directly reminded of personal tragedy. This is not uniquely Iranian (though it may, perhaps, be stronger there). But morticians and bereavement cards commonly speak of "The dear departed", and avoid the direct mention of death. I expect that it's a human universal. (As are chants like "Kill the Umpire".)
There are many studies in the fields of "The madness of crowds". We don't tend to see them in action as often now because television is a distancing medium. We see things happening in isolation. This is one reason why college campuses are fertile places for demonstrations. City streets don't work nearly as well, because of the vehicular traffic. Revival meetings are carefully structured to take advantage of this, and work environments are carefully structured to avoid it. When a crowd feels wronged, it's likely to act so as to get revenge. The distinction between a crowd and a mob is minor...and all important. But mobs that don't have leaders are idiots that are likely to burn down their own homes. Sometimes a leader arises spontaneously, and if that happens it's likely to be someone who is totally driven by emotion with no thought of consequences. More often the leader is pre-planned, and the instigation of the mob from the crowd is intentional. In that case the mob *can* be channeled into harmless displays of emotion. Or can be channeled in other ways.
Mobs are dangerous, and they are often used against oppressors. But they also tend to dissolve, and leave their erstwhile members at a loss to explain their actions.
Sorry, but you're thinking everyone has the same priorities you do. For me it was easier to try to install the distribution, and, when it didn't work, switch to another that I knew would.
But do note that Debian *did* have the packages needed to get WiFi working, so checking things out wouldn't have worked. They just didn't include them on the install DVD.
And I could have tuned the system so that Debian would have managed the power better. It just wasn't worth the effort fiddling around. So I re-installed Ubuntu.
The point, however, was that WiFi isn't yet flawless under Linux. Ubuntu seems to do a pretty good job of it, but Ubuntu isn't the same as Linux. (Debian and Fedora have better claims than Ubuntu, despite Ubuntu's popularity.) I'll agree that someone so inclined and properly skilled should be able to set up WiFi on a current Linux system, but this doesn't make it ready for the general user. Only a few distros even *try* to fill that niche. Of those that do the most prominent is Ubuntu. It does a pretty good job.
Personally, I don't like fiddling with my system. I abominate the interface of KDE4, enough so that I switched to Gnome, even though KDE3 was far superior to either of those choices. But I didn't try to keep KDE3 working. That's not where I put my energies. And if Gnome3 turns out to be just as bad, I'll switch to LXDE or some such. There are plenty of Window managers. I happen to find KDE3 the best, but that doesn't mean I feel like maintaining it when the developers have left. That's not where I want to put my energies. (I note that a few people *are* putting there energies there. They have my best wishes. I hope they are successful. But I'm still not putting my energies there. For one thing, I don't currently have the proper skill-set. For another, it's a HUGE!!! task. Qt3 will soon [if not yet] be unsupported. So the system will need to be moved to Qt4. A minor task for a single program. But for ALL the programs???)
Not Amazon either. I'd go along with 99.9%. If they tack on another 9, then I want proof. If they tack on two or three more nines, then it had better be damn good proof, and I'll still be dubious. When they claim 99.9999%, then I claim hogwash. And I won't be likely to believe any proof they offer.
I note that neither proof, nor even an argument for plausibility was offered. Merely an assertion. I suspect an astroturfer charged with defending "Amazon's good name". Either that or a troll.
Depending on your system wi-fi on Linux was difficult up through around 2003-5. And it's still not perfect.
E.g., A DVD-1 of Debian Squeeze (two months ago) doesn't contain some of the files needed to enable wi-fi. To get it working you need either some other install disk (DVD-2?) or a hardwired connection.
OTOH, I'm more bothered by the way it mismanages power when on battery. I know there are answers out there, but switching to Ubuntu was an easier answer.
Well, IBM seems to think the next step is liquid coolant. Then you can just keep stacking them higher. Not sure myself. I don't really like the idea of water inside the chips, and there doesn't seem to be a good replacement for freon. (Or maybe there is. What do modern refrigerators work on?)
That's a good enough reason to not buy a steam game. If I consider a game worthwhile I don't want to only play it for as long as someone else decides to support it.
Often enough that I stopped buying games with copy protection. I may try again with the new Civilization, though. I hear it can be played through wine, and that's an attraction. But I haven't yet researched how well it works, or whether it can be installed. And whether it's picky about just which versions of the OS it uses. (I'm still playing Alpha Centuari, but these days I need to play it in an emulator. It's not compatible with a modern Linux.)
I don't really consider that marriage should be a concern of the state, except that it makes collecting and allocating taxes easier.
I *do* consider myself a libertarian, but I'm certainly not represented by the "Libertarian" party. I *do* consider it a function of government to make available a quality education to all children (and adults). Also, I consider that a simple linear income tax is reasonable. But one along the lines of y = mx + b, where b is so set that everyone is guaranteed a minimal income sufficient to support them (though they might need to move to where it's cheaper to live). Most of our wealth, remember, is due to the investments made by our ancestors dating back to before Archimedes. And we are all descendants from anyone living that far back that had any descendants at all.
This becomes especially important in the current and coming decades when the number of jobs will be shrinking as more and more jobs become automated.
That said, I didn't distinguish between individual income tax and corporate income tax. Those are totally distinct. Corporations aren't entitled to ANY rights until they start being bound by the normal laws on things like theft, fraud, homicide, etc. And putting a corporation in jail is a bit difficult. I still think that the tax laws should be radically simplified, but I see no reason that corporations should be allowed to go on welfare. But there are the expenses involved in filing tax records, etc., so b probably shouldn't be zero. This, however, is as a matter of pragmatic decision, not of justice. In justice most corporations that currently exist should be disbanded for wholesale ignoring and corruption of the law. (Not all, and I'd be willing to entertain examples of corporations that have acted morally and at least not committed any capital crimes. I'm sure there are many.)
As I said, there isn't a candidate on the ballot that represents my views. I think that pretty nearly ANY form of marriage is reasonable. As long as divorce is permitted. And as long as the welfare of any dependents upon the marriage is upheld. For that matter, I don't believe the FDA should be able to restrict the availability of drugs. I *do* believe that it should be entitled to insist that it be allowed to rate the drugs in a manner that it decides is appropriate, and to require that the informational material on how it rates the drugs be available to the purchaser at the time of purchase, and for consultation afterwards. So it should be able to rate, say, heroin as a dangerously addictive drug, but not be able to prevent someone selling it as a cough remedy. (It's original intended use, as I understand.) It should also be able to require that any contaminants be listed. And selling drugs that do not match the specifications should be considered at least fraud, and possibly, depending on the contaminants, assault with a deadly weapon. (N.B.: Some forms of pollution should also be considered assault with a deadly weapon, with commensurate penalties.)
P.S.: Acting as an agent of a corporation should not absolve one of guilt for one's personal acts. And such acts should be prosecuted. Technically today there is no absolution, but in practice the only individuals who get charged are occasional scape-goats. This is not acceptable. If the superiors of such an individual knew or had reason to know about the action then they should also be liable. Deliberate evasion of knowledge is not an acceptable defense.
It's not a meme. It's a design feature of the system. This would not be true if the winning candidate was required to get a majority of the votes, but as only a plurality of the votes is required, voting for a third party is, essentially, saying "Neither of the two leading contenders is enough better than the other that I care to choose between them." And as only a plurality is required, one of them will win. Possibly with only 20% of the vote, but all that's required is that their closest opponent not get more than 19.99999% for that to suffice.
Personally I favor Condorcet voting, but Instant Runoff is nearly as good and much easier to explain.
Yes, it's a part of the cost of running an open web-site. That doesn't mean it's not a cost. (Possibly not a major one, though.)
This is an identified on-going cost. That others do the same thing doesn't mean this isn't a cost. (And I *did* originally say that this was a minor problem.)
The actual point was that I couldn't find anything BUT minor problems. Perhaps I should have been more explicit.
(OTOH, I don't really trust Amazon. That incident with removing already purchased copies of 1984 still sticks in my craw.)
The extra bandwidth that I was talking about was that bandwidth used by Amazon in making the periodic backup copy. Which happens repeatedly. The frequency with which it happens determines the amount of extra bandwidth.
The thing is, trying to figure out what code is doing is essentially the halting problem, and that has been proven to be insoluble. (Of course, it's useful to be able so solve it for partitions of the domain, But you can't solve it for an arbitrary program in a Turing complete language...and even solving it for the partitions that are normal programs is probably impossible. [Normal programs have limitations like finite memory store, etc.])
With that said, for any particular size x boundary it is possible to solve the halting problem with a program that uses no more than a2^x + bx + c units of memory. a, b, and c are constants chosen so that the equation works for all of x == 0, x == 1, and x = 5G. (Note that I didn't specify that this is a minimal bound, nor what unit x measures. bit, bytes, words, kilobytes, it doesn't really matter. The point is that the system solving the problem has to be immensely more powerful (both in RAM available and in cycles used) than they system that is being solved for.
E.g., for a small state space one can just trace all paths to every state that halts. This obviously only works in a finite space. And you have to allow for cycles where only one variable is changing. (e.g.: for (x = 0; x 2^25; x++) continue; ) which will eventually halt.
Clearly smarter programs can handle simple degenerate cases in much less space, but to handle all of them requires tracing the possible paths of execution (forwards or backwards, or both, it doesn't matter).
So while programs that attempt this are interesting, they can't reasonably be general. And sandboxing is a much better and easier solution.
Correction: Well - umm, I don't know what you're trying to say exactly, theres only ONE syntax it can be in: Machine language.
Even assembler is a transform (obfuscation?) of machine language. This thing you call "Javascript" is multiple layers of such transforms, but it still must resolve down to machine language.
I hope you now understand more clearly the point the point you were making.
(FWIW, Ruby code can be embedded in Javascript. And often is. I'm certain that other languages can also do this.)
Well, there are basically two problems that I see:
1) If the data is a copy, how do you keep the copy synced with the original.
2) If the data is a hot-link, who pays for the extra bandwidth?
Those are both minor, and only one will apply. But to me it seems that there should probably be an update cycle. The main question is "how fast?". If it's a slow update cycle, then there should be little on-going expense, and it should facilitate Wikipedia doing it's job.
Ideally, Amazon should host Wikipedia in the cloud, and Wikipedia should do periodic hot-updates to it's local database. This would decrease the cost to Wikipedia and facilitate Amazon doing hot-links. But there's the matter of control of the original sources, domain name, etc., and I'm afraid that I wouldn't trust Amazon enough for that to be an acceptable alternative. We don't live in an ideal world.
Well, the first problem that I have with this, is I have no proof that anyone else has a soul. This occurs even before I ask myself exactly *what* the definition of soul is, so I can determine whether I, myself, have one.
So you are asking me to believe a lot of vaguely defined things that it's my first approximation choice to disbelieve in. And they're vaguely defined, so I can neither verify nor refute them.
As a result, my only remaining choice is to consider it a silly argument. f you'd like to try again with more carefully defined terms, then I might well be able to consider it seriously. (This doesn't mean I'll agree with you. I don't think I will. But as stated I can't even be sure of that.)
The screenshots are there, and all I can say is "ugh!". I suppose it might be ok for a netbook, or a phone, but for a notebook, laptop, or desktop (or server) that's a truly hideous interface.
There's a much smaller scale one in motion right now in the Mojave. I haven't been tracking it, so it could even have been completed. PG&E is probably evaluating it for success before plunging ahead with a larger project.
I think you are misunderstanding both the nature and the purpose of his predictions.
You didn't note that they are essentially unfalsifiable. You should have. If you had, you would have noticed that your first complaint was wrong. They are unfalsifiable for the same reason that the "predictions" of Toffler's "Future Shock" were unfalsifiable. They are a description of potentials, not of things that will happen, but of things that *may* happen.
I'm not sure that he's wrong in general, but I'm quite convinced that he's not only wrong in detail, but that he expects to be wrong in details. He's describing trends. With trends you don't predict exactly when something will happen, but when to start looking for it, and when it will likely be successful when it appears. This is a sort of mechanistic interpretation of Charles Fort's "Steam Engine time". (A real phenomenon, with an uncertain causality. E.g., three people tried to patent the telephone in, I believe, the same month, but certainly within the same year.)
On to point 2. I can't believe that he's a silly as you are claiming. I read those books, and I think I would have noticed. I suspect that you are misinterpreting something you heard or read, or that you read a secondary source who misunderstood things. (Possibly on purpose. Reporters process news to make it more interesting with an almost total disregard for truth.) OTOH, this could result from a simple grammatical misunderstanding. He does believe (and I agree) that a sufficient neural net would be equivalent to a brain. This, however, depends not only on quantity, but also upon organization. (And he certainly knows this better than I do, as he as produced inventions based on neural nets.)
As for point 3.... No. He doesn't assert that. He doesn't believe that. And that's not even a distortion of what he says. It's too wrong for that.
As for an accurate guide to the future... Best you consult a crystal ball. Kurtzweil, and other futurists, describe possibilities. And they tend to project with a large fudge factor in their time span. Even so they are NEVER correct, except partially. If you expect otherwise you are being unreasonable. It *is* best to think of them as a more fact based and less dramatized version of science fiction, however. Psychohistorians they aren't.
FWIW: I've read the denial, and I've several times read the debunking that he made the claim.
I'm not convinced.
OTOH, at the time he made the claim it was basically true. He was being asked about the design of (IIRC) MSDOS, and people were saying that it would get in the way of expanding RAM. Then (at a time when the average RAM was around 16K) he said "640KB should be enough for anyone". He wasn't being unreasonable, or short-sighted (no matter how it looks now). He was being practical. And he was basically admitting that it would require a new generation of processors and a re-write of the OS to go beyond that limit. (I think there were also legal reasons why the code wasn't designed for low memory. Something about a deal with IBM. But I'm far less sure about that.)
In short: 1) Yes, he did say it. 2) No, he wasn't being stupid.
He just didn't foresee that the i386 would use the same instruction set that the 8086 did. And previously every change of CPU generations had meant a change in op codes.
P.S.: I wasn't there when he said it, but I read it in Datamation soon after he said it. It was reported from the meeting at which it was said. (But I can't remember which year it was, sorry. Or which convention.)
Re:This treatment may not work, might be dangerous
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Many skin cells also repair their teleomeres, as do those lining the gut.
Basically, any cell line that faces extremely hazardous environmental conditions is designed to reproduce immortally. (Not sure about, say, macrophages or a few other varieties. Not my field.) It has to be. The Hayflick limit (50 reproductions/cell line) is only an average, not a maximum, and some cell lines don't obey it at all.
The teleomere gizmo was probably evolved as a defense against cancer, though, so any removal of it has to be done cautiously. But note that some cell lines have already had to forgo that particular defense. There *are* others.
And there are also other problems. E.g.: Mitochondria. Within one body mitochondria tend to accumulate errors that slow them down. (They've got a much higher mutation rate than other parts of the cell...and they reproduce fairly frequently.) One of the functions performed by reproduction is the winnowing of mitochondria so that only those still effective continue. (This is normally done via miscarriages at the stage of only a few cells, so there often isn't even a missed period.) But within the body there's no way to remove the minimally functional mitochondria. And mal-preforming mitochondria tend to emit LOTS of free-radicals.
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Which makes this a very interesting test case.
I'd bet that already there are people looking at it and saying to themselves "Now how can I adapt this to attack this other device?". And at the same time, of course, they're also looking on improving the attack system, etc.
Somebody above said "There'll be more attacks like this. Count on it." and I'm sure that he was right, if only because now there's an example of the art around.
While the point is good, the approach is too limited.
I'd recommend that a good copy of the OS be written to CDROM, and that the system be booted from CDROM. No hard disk. No writable media. Or you could have a hard disk (or even thumbdrive) and only use it for log-files.
If this wouldn't work, because there needed to be state-specific memory, then use a hard disk, but boot the system only from CDROM. And when you mount the hard disk, mark it as non-executable. And NO network connections.
This would mean that only the data files could be corrupted, and that no executable program could be "added" without physical replacement of the boot CD. That could even be locked shut, if you want. But even if you don't, then alteration of the system is going to require physical access. And you can run a modern OS. (Linux is my choice. I don't know how to do what I was proposing with anything else.)
The basic rule for a secure system is "use an air gap to require physical access". I applied that, and a bit of additional hardening. (Boot the system from a ReadOnly media, mount writeable media as non-executable.) But the air gap is the basic security measure. With than even a standard system would be relatively safe.
Everything you said is true...and I'm still opposed to more countries getting nuclear weapons. I really wish nobody had them. The other possibilites are vile enough, but nuclear weapons threaten to take the planet back to nobody living on the surface, or for 3 miles down, except radiodurans bacteria.
OTOH, a *SMALL* local nuclear war would solve the global warming problem. Might take us all the way to the start of a new ice age. (Probably not. There's too much CO2 in the air and in the oceans and the continents are out of position.) But I wouldn't like to live anywhere within a thousand miles of the war, and on the downwind side anywhere within a few thousand miles. And we could expect cancer rates to surge for hundreds of years all over the globe. (And faster evolution of bacteria, of course. They've got a large enough population to support the increased mutation rate, and their breeding pattern tends to eliminate unhealthy lines without contaminating the healthy ones, unlike those that reproduce sexually. Sexual reproduction depends on a low rate of mutations to remain healthy.)
I really don't like nuclear weapons. Plagues at least only decimate a few species.
Well, then as a citizen of the US, I must be very careful to speak precisely.
Don't be silly. English is widely known as one of the more confusing languages in the world. As a native speaker, I rarely notice this, but when I think carefully, it certainly seems plausible. Just for example (and to stay in topic) baseball fans shouting in unison "Kill the umpire" aren't considered to be in a conspiracy to commit murder. Not even if one of then commits an overt act. (Say throwing a beer bottle at the umpire.) That's what the law calls a conspiracy to commit a felony, but it's never seen as one, because nobody takes "Kill the umpire" literally.
Then there's the street in San Francisco spelled "Gough", which changes it's pronunciation from area to area. "Go", "Golf" without the "l", etc., but is never pronounced "Gup" (ref. hiccough). In passing I note that my on-line spelling dictionary doesn't recognize "hiccough" as a valid word, suggesting instead "hiccup", even though "hiccough" is the more traditional spelling. Perhaps that's now seen as British, rather than American, English.
I can easily interpret Iranians chanting "Death to the US!" to be analogous to the baseball crowd chanting "Kill the umpire!". Whether it is intentionally stronger or weaker is probably neither a cultural nor a linguistic fact, but rather determined by the emotions of the crowd. (There have, indeed, been times when an Umpire has had his life endangered.)
And it is also quite common for people to avoid saying that someone is dead. People don't like to be directly reminded of personal tragedy. This is not uniquely Iranian (though it may, perhaps, be stronger there). But morticians and bereavement cards commonly speak of "The dear departed", and avoid the direct mention of death. I expect that it's a human universal. (As are chants like "Kill the Umpire".)
There are many studies in the fields of "The madness of crowds". We don't tend to see them in action as often now because television is a distancing medium. We see things happening in isolation. This is one reason why college campuses are fertile places for demonstrations. City streets don't work nearly as well, because of the vehicular traffic. Revival meetings are carefully structured to take advantage of this, and work environments are carefully structured to avoid it. When a crowd feels wronged, it's likely to act so as to get revenge. The distinction between a crowd and a mob is minor...and all important. But mobs that don't have leaders are idiots that are likely to burn down their own homes. Sometimes a leader arises spontaneously, and if that happens it's likely to be someone who is totally driven by emotion with no thought of consequences. More often the leader is pre-planned, and the instigation of the mob from the crowd is intentional. In that case the mob *can* be channeled into harmless displays of emotion. Or can be channeled in other ways.
Mobs are dangerous, and they are often used against oppressors. But they also tend to dissolve, and leave their erstwhile members at a loss to explain their actions.
Sorry, but you're thinking everyone has the same priorities you do. For me it was easier to try to install the distribution, and, when it didn't work, switch to another that I knew would.
But do note that Debian *did* have the packages needed to get WiFi working, so checking things out wouldn't have worked. They just didn't include them on the install DVD.
And I could have tuned the system so that Debian would have managed the power better. It just wasn't worth the effort fiddling around. So I re-installed Ubuntu.
The point, however, was that WiFi isn't yet flawless under Linux. Ubuntu seems to do a pretty good job of it, but Ubuntu isn't the same as Linux. (Debian and Fedora have better claims than Ubuntu, despite Ubuntu's popularity.) I'll agree that someone so inclined and properly skilled should be able to set up WiFi on a current Linux system, but this doesn't make it ready for the general user. Only a few distros even *try* to fill that niche. Of those that do the most prominent is Ubuntu. It does a pretty good job.
Personally, I don't like fiddling with my system. I abominate the interface of KDE4, enough so that I switched to Gnome, even though KDE3 was far superior to either of those choices. But I didn't try to keep KDE3 working. That's not where I put my energies. And if Gnome3 turns out to be just as bad, I'll switch to LXDE or some such. There are plenty of Window managers. I happen to find KDE3 the best, but that doesn't mean I feel like maintaining it when the developers have left. That's not where I want to put my energies. (I note that a few people *are* putting there energies there. They have my best wishes. I hope they are successful. But I'm still not putting my energies there. For one thing, I don't currently have the proper skill-set. For another, it's a HUGE!!! task. Qt3 will soon [if not yet] be unsupported. So the system will need to be moved to Qt4. A minor task for a single program. But for ALL the programs???)
Not Amazon either. I'd go along with 99.9%. If they tack on another 9, then I want proof. If they tack on two or three more nines, then it had better be damn good proof, and I'll still be dubious. When they claim 99.9999%, then I claim hogwash. And I won't be likely to believe any proof they offer.
I note that neither proof, nor even an argument for plausibility was offered. Merely an assertion. I suspect an astroturfer charged with defending "Amazon's good name". Either that or a troll.
Depending on your system wi-fi on Linux was difficult up through around 2003-5. And it's still not perfect.
E.g., A DVD-1 of Debian Squeeze (two months ago) doesn't contain some of the files needed to enable wi-fi. To get it working you need either some other install disk (DVD-2?) or a hardwired connection.
OTOH, I'm more bothered by the way it mismanages power when on battery. I know there are answers out there, but switching to Ubuntu was an easier answer.
Well, IBM seems to think the next step is liquid coolant. Then you can just keep stacking them higher. Not sure myself. I don't really like the idea of water inside the chips, and there doesn't seem to be a good replacement for freon. (Or maybe there is. What do modern refrigerators work on?)
That's a good enough reason to not buy a steam game. If I consider a game worthwhile I don't want to only play it for as long as someone else decides to support it.
Often enough that I stopped buying games with copy protection. I may try again with the new Civilization, though. I hear it can be played through wine, and that's an attraction. But I haven't yet researched how well it works, or whether it can be installed. And whether it's picky about just which versions of the OS it uses. (I'm still playing Alpha Centuari, but these days I need to play it in an emulator. It's not compatible with a modern Linux.)
I don't really consider that marriage should be a concern of the state, except that it makes collecting and allocating taxes easier.
I *do* consider myself a libertarian, but I'm certainly not represented by the "Libertarian" party. I *do* consider it a function of government to make available a quality education to all children (and adults). Also, I consider that a simple linear income tax is reasonable. But one along the lines of y = mx + b, where b is so set that everyone is guaranteed a minimal income sufficient to support them (though they might need to move to where it's cheaper to live). Most of our wealth, remember, is due to the investments made by our ancestors dating back to before Archimedes. And we are all descendants from anyone living that far back that had any descendants at all.
This becomes especially important in the current and coming decades when the number of jobs will be shrinking as more and more jobs become automated.
That said, I didn't distinguish between individual income tax and corporate income tax. Those are totally distinct. Corporations aren't entitled to ANY rights until they start being bound by the normal laws on things like theft, fraud, homicide, etc. And putting a corporation in jail is a bit difficult. I still think that the tax laws should be radically simplified, but I see no reason that corporations should be allowed to go on welfare. But there are the expenses involved in filing tax records, etc., so b probably shouldn't be zero. This, however, is as a matter of pragmatic decision, not of justice. In justice most corporations that currently exist should be disbanded for wholesale ignoring and corruption of the law. (Not all, and I'd be willing to entertain examples of corporations that have acted morally and at least not committed any capital crimes. I'm sure there are many.)
As I said, there isn't a candidate on the ballot that represents my views. I think that pretty nearly ANY form of marriage is reasonable. As long as divorce is permitted. And as long as the welfare of any dependents upon the marriage is upheld. For that matter, I don't believe the FDA should be able to restrict the availability of drugs. I *do* believe that it should be entitled to insist that it be allowed to rate the drugs in a manner that it decides is appropriate, and to require that the informational material on how it rates the drugs be available to the purchaser at the time of purchase, and for consultation afterwards. So it should be able to rate, say, heroin as a dangerously addictive drug, but not be able to prevent someone selling it as a cough remedy. (It's original intended use, as I understand.) It should also be able to require that any contaminants be listed. And selling drugs that do not match the specifications should be considered at least fraud, and possibly, depending on the contaminants, assault with a deadly weapon. (N.B.: Some forms of pollution should also be considered assault with a deadly weapon, with commensurate penalties.)
P.S.: Acting as an agent of a corporation should not absolve one of guilt for one's personal acts. And such acts should be prosecuted. Technically today there is no absolution, but in practice the only individuals who get charged are occasional scape-goats. This is not acceptable. If the superiors of such an individual knew or had reason to know about the action then they should also be liable. Deliberate evasion of knowledge is not an acceptable defense.
It's not a meme. It's a design feature of the system. This would not be true if the winning candidate was required to get a majority of the votes, but as only a plurality of the votes is required, voting for a third party is, essentially, saying "Neither of the two leading contenders is enough better than the other that I care to choose between them." And as only a plurality is required, one of them will win. Possibly with only 20% of the vote, but all that's required is that their closest opponent not get more than 19.99999% for that to suffice.
Personally I favor Condorcet voting, but Instant Runoff is nearly as good and much easier to explain.
Yes, it's a part of the cost of running an open web-site. That doesn't mean it's not a cost. (Possibly not a major one, though.)
This is an identified on-going cost. That others do the same thing doesn't mean this isn't a cost. (And I *did* originally say that this was a minor problem.)
The actual point was that I couldn't find anything BUT minor problems. Perhaps I should have been more explicit.
(OTOH, I don't really trust Amazon. That incident with removing already purchased copies of 1984 still sticks in my craw.)
Don't worry. If those fears are removed, others will replace them.
The extra bandwidth that I was talking about was that bandwidth used by Amazon in making the periodic backup copy. Which happens repeatedly. The frequency with which it happens determines the amount of extra bandwidth.
The thing is, trying to figure out what code is doing is essentially the halting problem, and that has been proven to be insoluble. (Of course, it's useful to be able so solve it for partitions of the domain, But you can't solve it for an arbitrary program in a Turing complete language...and even solving it for the partitions that are normal programs is probably impossible. [Normal programs have limitations like finite memory store, etc.])
With that said, for any particular size x boundary it is possible to solve the halting problem with a program that uses no more than a2^x + bx + c units of memory. a, b, and c are constants chosen so that the equation works for all of x == 0, x == 1, and x = 5G. (Note that I didn't specify that this is a minimal bound, nor what unit x measures. bit, bytes, words, kilobytes, it doesn't really matter. The point is that the system solving the problem has to be immensely more powerful (both in RAM available and in cycles used) than they system that is being solved for.
E.g., for a small state space one can just trace all paths to every state that halts. This obviously only works in a finite space. And you have to allow for cycles where only one variable is changing. (e.g.: for (x = 0; x 2^25; x++) continue; ) which will eventually halt.
Clearly smarter programs can handle simple degenerate cases in much less space, but to handle all of them requires tracing the possible paths of execution (forwards or backwards, or both, it doesn't matter).
So while programs that attempt this are interesting, they can't reasonably be general. And sandboxing is a much better and easier solution.
Correction:
Well - umm, I don't know what you're trying to say exactly, theres only ONE syntax it can be in: Machine language.
Even assembler is a transform (obfuscation?) of machine language. This thing you call "Javascript" is multiple layers of such transforms, but it still must resolve down to machine language.
I hope you now understand more clearly the point the point you were making.
(FWIW, Ruby code can be embedded in Javascript. And often is. I'm certain that other languages can also do this.)
Well, there are basically two problems that I see:
1) If the data is a copy, how do you keep the copy synced with the original.
2) If the data is a hot-link, who pays for the extra bandwidth?
Those are both minor, and only one will apply. But to me it seems that there should probably be an update cycle. The main question is "how fast?". If it's a slow update cycle, then there should be little on-going expense, and it should facilitate Wikipedia doing it's job.
Ideally, Amazon should host Wikipedia in the cloud, and Wikipedia should do periodic hot-updates to it's local database. This would decrease the cost to Wikipedia and facilitate Amazon doing hot-links. But there's the matter of control of the original sources, domain name, etc., and I'm afraid that I wouldn't trust Amazon enough for that to be an acceptable alternative. We don't live in an ideal world.
Well, the first problem that I have with this, is I have no proof that anyone else has a soul. This occurs even before I ask myself exactly *what* the definition of soul is, so I can determine whether I, myself, have one.
So you are asking me to believe a lot of vaguely defined things that it's my first approximation choice to disbelieve in. And they're vaguely defined, so I can neither verify nor refute them.
As a result, my only remaining choice is to consider it a silly argument. f you'd like to try again with more carefully defined terms, then I might well be able to consider it seriously. (This doesn't mean I'll agree with you. I don't think I will. But as stated I can't even be sure of that.)
The screenshots are there, and all I can say is "ugh!". I suppose it might be ok for a netbook, or a phone, but for a notebook, laptop, or desktop (or server) that's a truly hideous interface.
There's a much smaller scale one in motion right now in the Mojave. I haven't been tracking it, so it could even have been completed. PG&E is probably evaluating it for success before plunging ahead with a larger project.
I think you are misunderstanding both the nature and the purpose of his predictions.
You didn't note that they are essentially unfalsifiable. You should have. If you had, you would have noticed that your first complaint was wrong. They are unfalsifiable for the same reason that the "predictions" of Toffler's "Future Shock" were unfalsifiable. They are a description of potentials, not of things that will happen, but of things that *may* happen.
I'm not sure that he's wrong in general, but I'm quite convinced that he's not only wrong in detail, but that he expects to be wrong in details. He's describing trends. With trends you don't predict exactly when something will happen, but when to start looking for it, and when it will likely be successful when it appears. This is a sort of mechanistic interpretation of Charles Fort's "Steam Engine time". (A real phenomenon, with an uncertain causality. E.g., three people tried to patent the telephone in, I believe, the same month, but certainly within the same year.)
On to point 2. I can't believe that he's a silly as you are claiming. I read those books, and I think I would have noticed. I suspect that you are misinterpreting something you heard or read, or that you read a secondary source who misunderstood things. (Possibly on purpose. Reporters process news to make it more interesting with an almost total disregard for truth.) OTOH, this could result from a simple grammatical misunderstanding. He does believe (and I agree) that a sufficient neural net would be equivalent to a brain. This, however, depends not only on quantity, but also upon organization. (And he certainly knows this better than I do, as he as produced inventions based on neural nets.)
As for point 3.... No. He doesn't assert that. He doesn't believe that. And that's not even a distortion of what he says. It's too wrong for that.
As for an accurate guide to the future...
Best you consult a crystal ball. Kurtzweil, and other futurists, describe possibilities. And they tend to project with a large fudge factor in their time span. Even so they are NEVER correct, except partially. If you expect otherwise you are being unreasonable. It *is* best to think of them as a more fact based and less dramatized version of science fiction, however. Psychohistorians they aren't.
FWIW:
I've read the denial, and I've several times read the debunking that he made the claim.
I'm not convinced.
OTOH, at the time he made the claim it was basically true. He was being asked about the design of (IIRC) MSDOS, and people were saying that it would get in the way of expanding RAM. Then (at a time when the average RAM was around 16K) he said "640KB should be enough for anyone". He wasn't being unreasonable, or short-sighted (no matter how it looks now). He was being practical. And he was basically admitting that it would require a new generation of processors and a re-write of the OS to go beyond that limit. (I think there were also legal reasons why the code wasn't designed for low memory. Something about a deal with IBM. But I'm far less sure about that.)
In short:
1) Yes, he did say it.
2) No, he wasn't being stupid.
He just didn't foresee that the i386 would use the same instruction set that the 8086 did. And previously every change of CPU generations had meant a change in op codes.
P.S.: I wasn't there when he said it, but I read it in Datamation soon after he said it. It was reported from the meeting at which it was said. (But I can't remember which year it was, sorry. Or which convention.)
Conservative in how much you spend.
Many skin cells also repair their teleomeres, as do those lining the gut.
Basically, any cell line that faces extremely hazardous environmental conditions is designed to reproduce immortally. (Not sure about, say, macrophages or a few other varieties. Not my field.) It has to be. The Hayflick limit (50 reproductions/cell line) is only an average, not a maximum, and some cell lines don't obey it at all.
The teleomere gizmo was probably evolved as a defense against cancer, though, so any removal of it has to be done cautiously. But note that some cell lines have already had to forgo that particular defense. There *are* others.
And there are also other problems. E.g.: Mitochondria. Within one body mitochondria tend to accumulate errors that slow them down. (They've got a much higher mutation rate than other parts of the cell...and they reproduce fairly frequently.) One of the functions performed by reproduction is the winnowing of mitochondria so that only those still effective continue. (This is normally done via miscarriages at the stage of only a few cells, so there often isn't even a missed period.) But within the body there's no way to remove the minimally functional mitochondria. And mal-preforming mitochondria tend to emit LOTS of free-radicals.