Two words: Diamond Age. If you are paranoid about black helicopters, read it and prepare to get real paranoid about the next century or two.
Crippling Reproduction A GOOD Thing!
on
Golden Rice
·
· Score: 2
"What I liked about it was that the developers hadn't crippled the strain's ability to reproduce. Genetically-engineered wheat is generally crippled, forcing farmers to buy new seed from the company year after year."
That is terrible. The reason genetically-engineered wheat is generally crippled is not just for the company's sake, but to prevent a genetically-engineered strain from out-competing natural strains. The reason is simple - ecosystems containing these organisms are extremely complex and even tiny changes may have far-reaching effects. By "crippling" genetically-engineered organisms' reproduction, you always have the option of returning the ecosystem to its former state simply by stopping shipments of new seed.
To release genetically-engineered rice without crippling its reproduction is irresponsible and probably unethical in the pertinent scientific community. If you are unconvinced, try taking an important piece of an application of yours, making some changes, perhaps to the public interfaces, and then putting it back in untested for the next build without version control or backups. Now see what happens to your application.
I am all for using genetically engineered whatever, but only if appropriate safeguards are taken. The easy and obvious safeguard is crippling reproduction, at least until effects are observed for several decades. That is, unless the impact on every organism in the ecosystem is evaluated prior to release, which is nearly impossible, except in extremely closed systems, without computational anNum) resources currently beyond our means.
It is unlikely that these things could hold geo-static position very well, even in normal weather. The wind speeds at the altitudes they fly at surely require too much energy to counter without draining the cells and plunging onto your house. More likely, they glide wherever the winds take them. Now comes along a bad storm system and your wireless access is completely screwed. They would be good for drifting, but if they don't maintain station, there seems to be little practical use as an access provider.
Perhaps if you lofted enough of them to create a network that circled the earth slowly, you would have something. But that sounds awfully expensive to me. Sounds pretty neat, though. Espeically if you had a continously updated map and could watch them scatter away from storm fronts. Then again, they might fly high enough to escape the main blow of the system, but I imagine major systems must really screw up the atmosphere above them. Any weather experts in the house?
Question of curiosity: Unless this was an inside job, the intrusion took place over the Net. That is, a public network. Let's say, as in the above post, that it becomes very widespread and that someone develops a competing product with similar functionality (but, obviously, not cut and pasted source).
If MS sues the company for copyright infringement on the basis of similar functionality, couldn't the company in question turn around and sue MS corporate security to recover legal fees and damages for gross negligence in connecting the repositories to a public network without adequate safeguards?
If that seems clear cut, imagine this scenario: MS security is provided by a third party; the incident above happens.
Any incoming stream can be manipulated into an actual file and a proper bot could send the necessary commands to continue paging if required. Any time you can view something, you can download it with a few software hacks. This is, in part, why virtually every attempt to make "secure" steams of music, news, whatever is doomed to fail.
The trouble with P2P is that its very nature precludes the establishment of all-encompassing standards. Any one peer can invent standards and that standard is only as successful as the peer who invents it is in convincing other peers to host sofware that can consume or provide information via that standard.
Put simply, in the P2P network, for better or for worse, peers are not required to subscribe to a certain set of massivly popular transmission standards (e.g. HTML) or even protocols (e.g. ftp, http), but can adopt the standard or protocol of the group or moment they want to belong to. The feasibility of an institutional attempt to standardize P2P around a single protocol or standard is strongly in doubt even in a niche data domain, though there are occassionally benefits to such standardization.
Unless my browser is crapping out, you might want to close the tag in that puppy because I get a blank page in my browser and that seems a likely suspect. That and the.txt suffix, unless you want to pull the HTML out or use tags. But the source reads well.
Re:But do you want universal access by company PC
on
Universal Access
·
· Score: 1
Right on - if "Universal Access" is going to be doled out by corporate interests, there definitely needs to be some legal standards (or even regulation, as horrible as that sounds mixed with technology) around what control the corporation has over communication products it places in the home. Think of it this way - if a company you worked for offered to install or pay for an install of a second telephone line and a telephone in your home, would this give them the right to tap it? I don't think so, but computers essentially become communication devices under the "Universal Access" paradigm and "tapping" is accomplished by virtue of the records left around on a computer and any information that flows through the corporate network.
Note that I do not think corporate interests are inherently malicious or that most companies would use this grant of computing equipment to employees as a platform to intrude on employee privacy. However, I know that it is easy for people at companies (or in any group, for that matter) to arbitrarily decide on courses of action that might not be logical/ethical/fair in the big scheme of things.
Expect to see some court cases surrounding legitimate employee use of company-granted computers and ability, if any, of the granting company to rollback employee privacy soon. If regulations are not made, case law certainly will.
I imagine that the importance of encryption to ecommerce is the primary motivation here, as stated, but some interesting what-ifs for discussion:
Who knows if "Echelon" exists with any real functionality, but could the easing of encryption export regulations indicate that the security agencies of the acquiescing countries are now able to decrypt most consumer-(read terrorist)-available encryption? Or could it indicate that attempts such as the supposed Echelon are failing to the point of not even worrying about encryption since they are not able to tap into the worldwide email flow with any great degree of success, even on non-encrypted email (due to tapping difficulties and massive volume)?
I suppose a conspiracy theorist would suggest that the new rules are intended to free up encryption so the people who are trying to veil their communiqués for nefarious purposes will have easy access to it and, by using it, attract attention to themselves by its usage, allowing Echelon-like systems to operate in a narrower band of possibility by setting the existence of encryption as its primary search criteria. Of course, this presupposes that the answer to the first question posed above is yes, security agencies can decrypt most publicly available encryption.
Word on the street suggests that Hypersonic SQL is superior to Instant DB in terms of functionality and performance, but has more bugs than InstantDB (I cannot verify this personally as I have only used Hypersonic SQL, so consider the above hearsay until verified independently). It is, however, open source (on Sourceforge) and implemented in pure Java. Documentation as to source is okay and it is simple enough to dig into most parts of the source without having to be a Java guru. No concrete information on scalability to real loads at this point, but it works well for development and prototyping with simple to moderate dataabse complexity. Another advantage is its small footprint and different operating modes, allowing it to be embedded in other applications (it can even realistically run in an applet).
Slashdot Mirror
Two words: Diamond Age. If you are paranoid about black helicopters, read it and prepare to get real paranoid about the next century or two.
"What I liked about it was that the developers hadn't crippled the strain's ability to reproduce. Genetically-engineered wheat is generally crippled, forcing farmers to buy new seed from the company year after year."
That is terrible. The reason genetically-engineered wheat is generally crippled is not just for the company's sake, but to prevent a genetically-engineered strain from out-competing natural strains. The reason is simple - ecosystems containing these organisms are extremely complex and even tiny changes may have far-reaching effects. By "crippling" genetically-engineered organisms' reproduction, you always have the option of returning the ecosystem to its former state simply by stopping shipments of new seed.
To release genetically-engineered rice without crippling its reproduction is irresponsible and probably unethical in the pertinent scientific community. If you are unconvinced, try taking an important piece of an application of yours, making some changes, perhaps to the public interfaces, and then putting it back in untested for the next build without version control or backups. Now see what happens to your application.
I am all for using genetically engineered whatever, but only if appropriate safeguards are taken. The easy and obvious safeguard is crippling reproduction, at least until effects are observed for several decades. That is, unless the impact on every organism in the ecosystem is evaluated prior to release, which is nearly impossible, except in extremely closed systems, without computational anNum) resources currently beyond our means.
It is unlikely that these things could hold geo-static position very well, even in normal weather. The wind speeds at the altitudes they fly at surely require too much energy to counter without draining the cells and plunging onto your house. More likely, they glide wherever the winds take them. Now comes along a bad storm system and your wireless access is completely screwed. They would be good for drifting, but if they don't maintain station, there seems to be little practical use as an access provider.
Perhaps if you lofted enough of them to create a network that circled the earth slowly, you would have something. But that sounds awfully expensive to me. Sounds pretty neat, though. Espeically if you had a continously updated map and could watch them scatter away from storm fronts. Then again, they might fly high enough to escape the main blow of the system, but I imagine major systems must really screw up the atmosphere above them. Any weather experts in the house?
Question of curiosity: Unless this was an inside job, the intrusion took place over the Net. That is, a public network. Let's say, as in the above post, that it becomes very widespread and that someone develops a competing product with similar functionality (but, obviously, not cut and pasted source).
If MS sues the company for copyright infringement on the basis of similar functionality, couldn't the company in question turn around and sue MS corporate security to recover legal fees and damages for gross negligence in connecting the repositories to a public network without adequate safeguards?
If that seems clear cut, imagine this scenario: MS security is provided by a third party; the incident above happens.
Any incoming stream can be manipulated into an actual file and a proper bot could send the necessary commands to continue paging if required. Any time you can view something, you can download it with a few software hacks. This is, in part, why virtually every attempt to make "secure" steams of music, news, whatever is doomed to fail.
The trouble with P2P is that its very nature precludes the establishment of all-encompassing standards. Any one peer can invent standards and that standard is only as successful as the peer who invents it is in convincing other peers to host sofware that can consume or provide information via that standard.
Put simply, in the P2P network, for better or for worse, peers are not required to subscribe to a certain set of massivly popular transmission standards (e.g. HTML) or even protocols (e.g. ftp, http), but can adopt the standard or protocol of the group or moment they want to belong to. The feasibility of an institutional attempt to standardize P2P around a single protocol or standard is strongly in doubt even in a niche data domain, though there are occassionally benefits to such standardization.
The TITLE tag, that is.
Unless my browser is crapping out, you might want to close the tag in that puppy because I get a blank page in my browser and that seems a likely suspect. That and the .txt suffix, unless you want to pull the HTML out or use tags. But the source reads well.
Right on - if "Universal Access" is going to be doled out by corporate interests, there definitely needs to be some legal standards (or even regulation, as horrible as that sounds mixed with technology) around what control the corporation has over communication products it places in the home. Think of it this way - if a company you worked for offered to install or pay for an install of a second telephone line and a telephone in your home, would this give them the right to tap it? I don't think so, but computers essentially become communication devices under the "Universal Access" paradigm and "tapping" is accomplished by virtue of the records left around on a computer and any information that flows through the corporate network.
Note that I do not think corporate interests are inherently malicious or that most companies would use this grant of computing equipment to employees as a platform to intrude on employee privacy. However, I know that it is easy for people at companies (or in any group, for that matter) to arbitrarily decide on courses of action that might not be logical/ethical/fair in the big scheme of things.
Expect to see some court cases surrounding legitimate employee use of company-granted computers and ability, if any, of the granting company to rollback employee privacy soon. If regulations are not made, case law certainly will.
Who knows if "Echelon" exists with any real functionality, but could the easing of encryption export regulations indicate that the security agencies of the acquiescing countries are now able to decrypt most consumer-(read terrorist)-available encryption? Or could it indicate that attempts such as the supposed Echelon are failing to the point of not even worrying about encryption since they are not able to tap into the worldwide email flow with any great degree of success, even on non-encrypted email (due to tapping difficulties and massive volume)?
I suppose a conspiracy theorist would suggest that the new rules are intended to free up encryption so the people who are trying to veil their communiqués for nefarious purposes will have easy access to it and, by using it, attract attention to themselves by its usage, allowing Echelon-like systems to operate in a narrower band of possibility by setting the existence of encryption as its primary search criteria. Of course, this presupposes that the answer to the first question posed above is yes, security agencies can decrypt most publicly available encryption.
Word on the street suggests that Hypersonic SQL is superior to Instant DB in terms of functionality and performance, but has more bugs than InstantDB (I cannot verify this personally as I have only used Hypersonic SQL, so consider the above hearsay until verified independently). It is, however, open source (on Sourceforge) and implemented in pure Java. Documentation as to source is okay and it is simple enough to dig into most parts of the source without having to be a Java guru. No concrete information on scalability to real loads at this point, but it works well for development and prototyping with simple to moderate dataabse complexity. Another advantage is its small footprint and different operating modes, allowing it to be embedded in other applications (it can even realistically run in an applet).