Isolation is the bacterial form of inbreeding. Without external competition increasing the available gene pool for reproduction (asexual in this case), mutations are going to occur no matter what. From the study - "populations developed defects in their ability to repair DNA, greatly increasing the rate of additional mutations in those strains". The emphasis is, this would NOT have occured in the wild, in mixed populations.
Yes, I was referring primarily to the absence of an external population with which to mediate the process. Allow me to address it from another perspective which is more difficult to answer - in the wild, would the group go through a smaller or greater number of mutations?
"Inbreeding has a variety of consequences. Allele exposure can cause genes to be expressed that are not otherwise expressed. This fact, combined with the fact that most mutations are recessive may indicate that inbreeding drives evolution. Speciation, a key process in evolution, depends on reproductive barriers, a necessary feature of which is inbreeding."
The mutation process here is driven by inbreeding and keeping the population isolated.
While I don't believe in creation, mutations occuring in 40,000 generations (one mutation every 63 generations) of inbred bateria is hardly proof of evolution.
To elaborate, what you learned about was ELECTRICAL currents being induced by MAGNETISM. The fundamentals of transformers, generators, electromagnets, etc.
That is not what his article is about. Perhaps it is because you are 14 that you can't be bothered reading it.
I agree with most of what you say, specifically regarding what is NOT a fundamental right. My entire point was that the term "right" is used to describe anything that a governing body determines its people should have, rather than what nature determines you are specifically entitled to. My point however goes further in saying that nature doesn't relegate any specific, natural rights to you as a person, and that ALL rights are human constructs. I'm not saying society is wrong in determining that to survive and progress as a species we need certain social rules and guidelines in place. "Rights" have indeed proved vital to our advancement.
By saying that right to internet access is just as legitimate at a fundamental level as freedom of speech, I'm inversely implying that describing freedom of speech as a "right" is just as illegitimate at a fundamental level as "freedom to access teh webs!" I'm not arguing in favour of one over the other - I'm arguing against both from an anthropologic point of view.
However, by your definition, I see we're approaching the subject from two very different tacts. I have a tendency to strip all lateral thinking from an argument and look at it purely analytically. You are correct of course, and history has proven, that humans should be regarded as having certain inalienable human rights. Though what those are would be the subject of a far greater debate.
There is no such thing as "rights" except by social definition. You don't get a contract with the universe when you're born. Even the so-called "right to life" is determined by those around you, whether they be abortionists or maurauding barbarians.
If you instead want to discuss what "Should be" a right and what "shouldnt be" a right, feel free to rejoin the conversation. However, our human "rights" are simply what our ruling governing body determines them to be. If the government of Finland has decided 1mbit internet access is a right, then it is just are legitimately a fundamental human right for them as US-constitution based rights are for Americans.
I believe philosophers speaking from a non-religious point of view would agree there is no such thing as "rights". We don't have contract with the universe when we're born. People use the word "rights" to describe what they think they deserve to get simply for being born. The truth is, which ScentCone seems to miss, that "rights" are an artificial social contract determined by whomever you put in charge to determine such. If Finland's government has decided 1mb internet access is a right, then it is just as much a fundamental right as any US Constitution-based rights are for Americans.
I'm not disagreeing with you Homburg, just expanding on the points you raise.
If you're going to go back to fundamental existeance-based rights, the "freedom of speech" is also an artificial construct, which denies my basic human "right" to bash over the head anyone whom I don't like. In truth, all "rights" are a social agreement by which we can try and live in peace. Others in these comments talk about "right to shelter", whereas such a concept doesn't exist in primal society. You can construct your own shelter, and try and use it, as long as you're able fend off anyone else who'll come and try to take it.
As societal values shift, so does the implication of these socially-given "rights", which is why "Freedom of Speech", originally intended and implemented in social contract as a means of allowing people to express their own values and beliefs without fear of lethal repercussion, is now considered by most to mean "Freedom to invasively force my opinion on other people who don't care to hear it."
As you would expect, my explanation was from a hypothetical view of "if I was using the LiveCD method as discussed."
Personally I'm happy with the security I already have in place, which certainly doesn't involve LiveCDs, but this isn't meant to be a discussion on three-factor authentication or the like, it's about the pros and cons of a regular user using a LiveCD as opposed to their regular PC to log in.
I believe the benefits for the average user would outweight the risks. Certainly the idea can use an improvement - a possible business direction for some budding entrepreneur out there - however it's far better than the status quo users who are constantly, on a daily basis, infecting millions of machines worldwide with malware through their own ineptitude. And it is indeed malware and phising (both vectors which are mitigated through this method) which are the primary sources of the scourge of stolen information. If 99% of attacks are malware/phising and 1% are MITM, don't you also think it better for people to knock out those 99%?
If we see other vectors increasing in popularity, I'm certain we'll see the response from the security community increasing in equal measure. But remember - the users being focused on here are those who simply don't know any better. Though - I can see it coming already.
Email from: yourbank@internationalbanks.cc Subject: Use LiveCDs to safeguard your internet banking! Attachment: LiveCD.exe
A dozen? I can only think of three. Excluding such fanciful attacks as "camera over the shoulder". Indeed, a forged cert combined with DNS poisoning could be used as a possible MITM attack. However, as in my post below, you can explore possible attack vectors for the sake of argument into infinite regression. Opposite to your argument is the fact that my bank always requires the latest version of Java to be installed to use its online banking. Each time Java is updated and my LiveCD thus becomes out-of-date, I'd be forced to burn a new LiveCD which would throw in all the browser security improvements that go along with it.
My argument is, it's not "terrible advice". At worst, it's "good advice which could be improved upon."
Browser security is only an issue if you're visiting other sites, in the same session, on the same boot, on your LiveCD. Browsers on LiveCDs don't magically download malware from the internet by themselves - you have to direct them to. And most conventional malware must install itself - which won't happen on a LiveCD. There are a very few flash/js based attacks that work live in the same session - but really, if your either (a) your bank has third-party inline flash ads or (b) you don't trust java content from your bank's own website, then why are you banking with them online?
And going as far as questioning whether your CD burning software is infected is ridiculous. You can't be any more certain that your mouse doesn't have imbedded circuitry tracing your movement pattens, or your keyboard doesn't have a keylogger built directly into it, or the aliens aren't tapping directly into your cablings electromagnetic intereference patterns to directly access your bank account as you do. You're going to extremes purely for the point of argument, but although it may have passed you by, it was established several thousands years ago that "nothing is certain".
If you can imagine up scenarios like malware built into your cd-burning software specifically to target LiveCDs being used for online banking, I can't fathom how you trust a banks own employees enough to actually keep your money with them instead of under the mattress.
The first line of your post regarding the advantage for digit-lacking users was fine and you should have stuck to that rather than descending into generalised mouse-bashing. I call shennanigans on most of what you've said. "Muscle memory" helping you "locate" the trackball? I realise you're talking about subtle nuances in positioning, but I don't believe any mouse user has ever had difficulty finding the mouse subconciously without even thinking about it. When I want to use the mouse, I move my hand to it. I don't look at it. I don't think about it. Its just where it should be.
Also easier on my fingers, no weird ergonomic twisting like a mouse.
I don't know what you're doing to your mouse, however there is virtually no finger movement at all with NORMAL usage of a mouse. Movement is controlled almost entirely by the wrist. On the contrary, unless running at a very high resolution, fingers have to be repositioned around every five seconds to continue the "movement" of a trackball.
Also faster because I don't have to continually readjust from rolling the mouse off the pad.
See the previous point - you have to reposition fingers on a trackball constantly. However, I have not, since the late 90s, encountered any problems with a mouse running off a pad. Mouse resolution is considerably higher than it used to be. I can play 30 rounds of Counterstrike without once lifting the mouse off the pad for positioning. My 1920x1200 screen, with the mouse running at a medium res, translates to roughly 3.5" x 3" of pad surface.
Now - take a deep breath and realise, as I do, that preference in pointing devices comes down simply to personal opinion. Saying you prefer a trackball is fine. But you don't need to make up fanciful reasons why a mouse is inferior.
Addendum: TBH, I can't be bothered arguing any more. I'm simply dismayed that what other countries are constructing in similarly built up areas with a total cost of $5-15 million per mile here is going to set us back $56 million. It's difficult to fathom.
Indeed it's not my area of expertise, but that doesn't mean I can't take out a copy of JoTE and compare the costs in column A to the costs for a similar project on column B and then put an aghast look on my face and wonder where all that extra money is going!;)
Seeking clarification only - do you mean 25 million per mile rather than 25 billion? That's claiming USD$36 billion per mile.
Do you have any sources on that? I'm unable to find any European rail costing more than EUR 15 million per mile. And that includes the stations.
Presuming elevation the entire length, that would set it back around $9 million per mile. Take into account land purchase and you'd see a sizeable increase on that. I'm simply disputing that $56 million per mile is necessary for both construction and upkeep. I'd have to wager a very large portion (50-60%) must be earmarked for beauracracy.
From the article, it says this is going to cost $45 billion to build. $45 BILLION? For 800 miles of high-speed tracks and trains? I can't see any concievable way, even if they had to purchases premium land the entire length rather than using state land, that there's any way to justify 56 million dollars per mile. International constructions have cost around one twentieth of this amount.
Slashdot Mirror
Isolation is the bacterial form of inbreeding. Without external competition increasing the available gene pool for reproduction (asexual in this case), mutations are going to occur no matter what. From the study - "populations developed defects in their ability to repair DNA, greatly increasing the rate of additional mutations in those strains". The emphasis is, this would NOT have occured in the wild, in mixed populations.
Yes, I was referring primarily to the absence of an external population with which to mediate the process. Allow me to address it from another perspective which is more difficult to answer - in the wild, would the group go through a smaller or greater number of mutations?
Is that are joke or are you intentionally dense? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding
"Inbreeding has a variety of consequences. Allele exposure can cause genes to be expressed that are not otherwise expressed. This fact, combined with the fact that most mutations are recessive may indicate that inbreeding drives evolution. Speciation, a key process in evolution, depends on reproductive barriers, a necessary feature of which is inbreeding."
The mutation process here is driven by inbreeding and keeping the population isolated.
While I don't believe in creation, mutations occuring in 40,000 generations (one mutation every 63 generations) of inbred bateria is hardly proof of evolution.
and consider to a cautionary tale.
To elaborate, what you learned about was ELECTRICAL currents being induced by MAGNETISM. The fundamentals of transformers, generators, electromagnets, etc. That is not what his article is about. Perhaps it is because you are 14 that you can't be bothered reading it.
Then you weren't paying attention two years ago and don't realise this is the inverse to what you were learning about then.
I agree with most of what you say, specifically regarding what is NOT a fundamental right. My entire point was that the term "right" is used to describe anything that a governing body determines its people should have, rather than what nature determines you are specifically entitled to. My point however goes further in saying that nature doesn't relegate any specific, natural rights to you as a person, and that ALL rights are human constructs. I'm not saying society is wrong in determining that to survive and progress as a species we need certain social rules and guidelines in place. "Rights" have indeed proved vital to our advancement.
By saying that right to internet access is just as legitimate at a fundamental level as freedom of speech, I'm inversely implying that describing freedom of speech as a "right" is just as illegitimate at a fundamental level as "freedom to access teh webs!" I'm not arguing in favour of one over the other - I'm arguing against both from an anthropologic point of view.
However, by your definition, I see we're approaching the subject from two very different tacts. I have a tendency to strip all lateral thinking from an argument and look at it purely analytically. You are correct of course, and history has proven, that humans should be regarded as having certain inalienable human rights. Though what those are would be the subject of a far greater debate.
There is no such thing as "rights" except by social definition. You don't get a contract with the universe when you're born. Even the so-called "right to life" is determined by those around you, whether they be abortionists or maurauding barbarians. If you instead want to discuss what "Should be" a right and what "shouldnt be" a right, feel free to rejoin the conversation. However, our human "rights" are simply what our ruling governing body determines them to be. If the government of Finland has decided 1mbit internet access is a right, then it is just are legitimately a fundamental human right for them as US-constitution based rights are for Americans.
I believe philosophers speaking from a non-religious point of view would agree there is no such thing as "rights". We don't have contract with the universe when we're born. People use the word "rights" to describe what they think they deserve to get simply for being born. The truth is, which ScentCone seems to miss, that "rights" are an artificial social contract determined by whomever you put in charge to determine such. If Finland's government has decided 1mb internet access is a right, then it is just as much a fundamental right as any US Constitution-based rights are for Americans.
I'm not disagreeing with you Homburg, just expanding on the points you raise.
If you're going to go back to fundamental existeance-based rights, the "freedom of speech" is also an artificial construct, which denies my basic human "right" to bash over the head anyone whom I don't like. In truth, all "rights" are a social agreement by which we can try and live in peace. Others in these comments talk about "right to shelter", whereas such a concept doesn't exist in primal society. You can construct your own shelter, and try and use it, as long as you're able fend off anyone else who'll come and try to take it.
As societal values shift, so does the implication of these socially-given "rights", which is why "Freedom of Speech", originally intended and implemented in social contract as a means of allowing people to express their own values and beliefs without fear of lethal repercussion, is now considered by most to mean "Freedom to invasively force my opinion on other people who don't care to hear it."
Wishing I had mod points. Thanks for taking the time out to write such a thorough and logical response.
An example is a hypervisor level rootkit, such as SubVirt or BluePill. http://www.eecs.umich.edu/virtual/papers/king06.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Pill_(malware)
As you would expect, my explanation was from a hypothetical view of "if I was using the LiveCD method as discussed."
Personally I'm happy with the security I already have in place, which certainly doesn't involve LiveCDs, but this isn't meant to be a discussion on three-factor authentication or the like, it's about the pros and cons of a regular user using a LiveCD as opposed to their regular PC to log in.
I believe the benefits for the average user would outweight the risks. Certainly the idea can use an improvement - a possible business direction for some budding entrepreneur out there - however it's far better than the status quo users who are constantly, on a daily basis, infecting millions of machines worldwide with malware through their own ineptitude. And it is indeed malware and phising (both vectors which are mitigated through this method) which are the primary sources of the scourge of stolen information. If 99% of attacks are malware/phising and 1% are MITM, don't you also think it better for people to knock out those 99%?
If we see other vectors increasing in popularity, I'm certain we'll see the response from the security community increasing in equal measure. But remember - the users being focused on here are those who simply don't know any better. Though - I can see it coming already.
A dozen? I can only think of three. Excluding such fanciful attacks as "camera over the shoulder". Indeed, a forged cert combined with DNS poisoning could be used as a possible MITM attack. However, as in my post below, you can explore possible attack vectors for the sake of argument into infinite regression. Opposite to your argument is the fact that my bank always requires the latest version of Java to be installed to use its online banking. Each time Java is updated and my LiveCD thus becomes out-of-date, I'd be forced to burn a new LiveCD which would throw in all the browser security improvements that go along with it. My argument is, it's not "terrible advice". At worst, it's "good advice which could be improved upon."
Browser security is only an issue if you're visiting other sites, in the same session, on the same boot, on your LiveCD. Browsers on LiveCDs don't magically download malware from the internet by themselves - you have to direct them to. And most conventional malware must install itself - which won't happen on a LiveCD. There are a very few flash/js based attacks that work live in the same session - but really, if your either (a) your bank has third-party inline flash ads or (b) you don't trust java content from your bank's own website, then why are you banking with them online?
And going as far as questioning whether your CD burning software is infected is ridiculous. You can't be any more certain that your mouse doesn't have imbedded circuitry tracing your movement pattens, or your keyboard doesn't have a keylogger built directly into it, or the aliens aren't tapping directly into your cablings electromagnetic intereference patterns to directly access your bank account as you do. You're going to extremes purely for the point of argument, but although it may have passed you by, it was established several thousands years ago that "nothing is certain".
If you can imagine up scenarios like malware built into your cd-burning software specifically to target LiveCDs being used for online banking, I can't fathom how you trust a banks own employees enough to actually keep your money with them instead of under the mattress.
Also easier on my fingers, no weird ergonomic twisting like a mouse.
I don't know what you're doing to your mouse, however there is virtually no finger movement at all with NORMAL usage of a mouse. Movement is controlled almost entirely by the wrist. On the contrary, unless running at a very high resolution, fingers have to be repositioned around every five seconds to continue the "movement" of a trackball.
Also faster because I don't have to continually readjust from rolling the mouse off the pad.
See the previous point - you have to reposition fingers on a trackball constantly. However, I have not, since the late 90s, encountered any problems with a mouse running off a pad. Mouse resolution is considerably higher than it used to be. I can play 30 rounds of Counterstrike without once lifting the mouse off the pad for positioning. My 1920x1200 screen, with the mouse running at a medium res, translates to roughly 3.5" x 3" of pad surface.
Now - take a deep breath and realise, as I do, that preference in pointing devices comes down simply to personal opinion. Saying you prefer a trackball is fine. But you don't need to make up fanciful reasons why a mouse is inferior.
Addendum: TBH, I can't be bothered arguing any more. I'm simply dismayed that what other countries are constructing in similarly built up areas with a total cost of $5-15 million per mile here is going to set us back $56 million. It's difficult to fathom.
Indeed it's not my area of expertise, but that doesn't mean I can't take out a copy of JoTE and compare the costs in column A to the costs for a similar project on column B and then put an aghast look on my face and wonder where all that extra money is going! ;)
Seeking clarification only - do you mean 25 million per mile rather than 25 billion? That's claiming USD$36 billion per mile. Do you have any sources on that? I'm unable to find any European rail costing more than EUR 15 million per mile. And that includes the stations.
Presuming elevation the entire length, that would set it back around $9 million per mile. Take into account land purchase and you'd see a sizeable increase on that. I'm simply disputing that $56 million per mile is necessary for both construction and upkeep. I'd have to wager a very large portion (50-60%) must be earmarked for beauracracy.
From the article, it says this is going to cost $45 billion to build. $45 BILLION? For 800 miles of high-speed tracks and trains? I can't see any concievable way, even if they had to purchases premium land the entire length rather than using state land, that there's any way to justify 56 million dollars per mile. International constructions have cost around one twentieth of this amount.