No, quite frankly most microkernels are written as CS Ph.D student thesis where they only need theoretical appeal. At best they are usually implemented in a small theoretical setting where they need not deal with the messy interfaces and hardware present in the real world. Of course there have been some real world exceptions and BeOS might be one of them.
Certainly microkernal design has some compelling advantages. The same advantages any layer of abstraction adds, greater code reuse and easier code maintenance. Effectively we get the same benefits from keep a consistant binary format/software interface. However, the benefits of abstraction often come with performance penalties, and often inhibit innovation if they are not designed perfectly the first time.
The issue is as much one of programer organization as it is of engineering superiority. Micro-kernels or monolithic kernels can all accomplish the same things but they work better in differnt organizations. A corporation which often has sharp organizational distinctions between groups coding differnt sections, the money to invest in R&D to define an efficent and extensible interface and often lacking the flexibility to allow one individual to dictate his coding styles a microkernel is quite appealing. In contrast for an open source project, which often lacks expertise when they first begin coding a solution, the explicit interfaces in the microkernel would strangle them with all their bad design choices. Moreover, enthusiasm and many eyes allows them to both handle the extra code maintenance and ensure consistant coding style without rigidity.
Finally I just don't understand the point of your argument. Linux is bad because Linus is not personally an expert on microkernel vs. monolithic kernels? Can I equally well say your post is bad because you are not an expert either but simply relying on what others say.
Religious battles in coding are just stupid. Despite what many CS professors want to believe deciding between differnt design models is more about psychology than engineering. It is difficult for even one person to hold all the code they wrote clearly in their mind and impossible for a group project, so we evolve tools like microkernels to compartmentalize our programs and help us solve the organizational problems of programming. Howwever, it is just downright silly to forget that the ultimate goal is to solve the psychological problem of getting people to create a large project. Clearly Linus has managed to overcome this problem and if you think better why not go do it yourself.
Isn't this just a general feature of journaling filesystems, you can always go back and get the previous disk drive state. Perhaps things are usually configured to allow the filesystem to permantly lose a file once it is deleted but surely this can be changed in the config.
In other words this no delete feature provides no more protection against delibrate sabatoge than that already guaranteed by sane options for a filesystem.
It would be great if we could get some general standards for object passing and calling. Be it COM CORBA or whatever it shouldn't depend on what widget set someone wants to run in their window manager. In fact programs should be able to rely on this even if no GUI is running.
I think the unix world needs to settle on a universal object model and implement it either in the kernel itself or in a low level driver.
At first I was inclined to agree with you. All the various files in/etc/ or in/sbin installed in many packages is a huge pain. I do think installation programs should be more uniform about using symlinks. So that all program files would truly be kept in/usr/???/progname/ and everything would be a symlink to this, preferably keeping the symlinks to applications and core system tools in differnt directories. Some programs follow the symlink philosophy but not enough.
Aside from this minor quible I think the extra 'complication' of the unix files is largely illusionary. All systems must store systemwide settings and data. Some OS's hide this information in a registry or other opaque data structure so you never see the clutter left behind by programs but it creates just as many if not more problems.
No, I think he wants a safety mechanism that lets people write to files, and hence potentially open them and truncate to nothing but not unlink the files. It wouldn't protect from delibrate sabotage but it would help avoid some common screw ups.
Though on second thought you could probably just implement something like this directly using rm (create an extra group for no-delete access and have rm check to see if it is through this group you have access). So perhaps he instead means files which you can write to the end of the file but not delete prior stuff. That would be a nice feature, though I'm not convinced it doesn't already exist.
In the core system what I find most lacking is better support for providing psuedo-kernel type services. For instance windowing systems/3d accelerators end up being interfaced with a bunch of hacks and make use of little to no unified kernel support for this sort of thing.
I've also never been impresed by the IPC facilities in unix, it seems there are a bunch of 'okay' solutions cluttering up the kernel but no really good/modern IPC solution. It would be nice if we could get one protocol with a bunch of options or a few good protocals aimed at certain situations (shared memory models, message passing etc..).
I'm sure there are a few more things that aren't the best deep down in the kernel architecture. For instance many not-super-critical sections of code in linux use bad/stall prone algorithm. However, this isn't a problem in all unices. But other than the above issue the only real disadvantage to the users is lack of software and that isn't really a unix problem.
Unfortunatly people have a great deal of trouble understanding small probabilities, we tend to round them off to zero once they fall below a certain level. Just as bad most people tend to worry about things they can understand and see examples of (like mugging and murder) and ignore those dangers they don't understand or have never seen even if these dangers are more risky.
Global warming and asteroid impacts are two great examples. While global warming doesn't have the low probability problem (some of its extreme consequences like a repeat of the younger dras cold period do) it is likewise an unfamiliar danger with the capacity to impact most humans. Yet our natural inclination is to be afraid of events we see like planes flying into the world trade center even if they are of less risk to ourselves.
A close call with a large asteroid is exactly what we need to wake us up. It is probably too much to hope that we would start allocating our budget based on an objective risk/benefit analysis. Hopefully though it could at least raise our level of emotional concern about these global catastrophes.
The analysis of the data transfer 'problem' linked by this article is as simple, straighforward and totally ridiculous. We are all well aware of the dangers of using a simple linear aproximation to predicte the future in regards to microchip improvements and we shouldn't be stupid enough to accept it in this case. Admitedly the author of the comment doesn't make the same mistake of assuming that data transfer rates will be linear with respect to time but he makes the equally unsuported assumption that data transfer rates are linear (in fact a constant multiple) in data storage. Without any reason to believe these technologies progress at the same rate this is no more than a guess.
Moreover, there are particular reasons to believe the data-transfer rates are not a particular problem. For one even if his prediction is correct it isn't clear there is really a problem. In a device often used for backup 3days to fill might not be unreasonable. Moreover, storage transfer rates are often limited by the data transfer rate which is usually far less than the system bus speed or other dedicated high speed communications (interprocessor communication). Thus suggesting it is merely the cost-performance tradeoff which is limiting storage transfer rates not a pure technological problem. Indeed, if the main system bus speed does not increase fast enough so as to allow us to implement tape transfer as it's own specialized bus then memory literally will not be able to produce data fast enough to fill the device anyway.
If the worry is instead that the tape drive simply won't be able to read or write data then one should remember that tape/drive access is extremely parrallelizeable. If the IBM technology for writing the tape does not already proced at high speed nothing prevents stacking several of them next to each other so an entier slice of the tape is read at once.
Do you also refuse to eat at a relatives house if their computer is virus laden or crash prone? After all if they can't be trusted to keep their computer working why should you trust them to make safe, sanitary food.
Perhaps if computer usage/programming had evolved to the level of personal hygenie, namely routine effort anyone could do would prevent computer crashes, your point would be convincing. However, in practice we realize even the best professional programmers make errors even buffer overflows (and we don't even really know it's an 'error' perhaps the program exited gracefully after realizing the demands exceded its capacity and simply hadn't been programed to handle this size situation). So unlike your hygenie example this hardly impeaches the basic organizational discipline/compotency.
Had this really been a computer engaged in flight critical tasks I would feel quite differntly. Programming error or even an unanticipated shutdown is not acceptable in systems necessery for real-time flight control. Since this was instead a system to reassign crew and guarantee compliance with federal labour law I feel much differntly. In fact if this system had been subject to a rigorous source code review by an outside team to check for bugs, or linked into some sort of failover system with differntly programmed systems accomplishing the same task I would worry that their priorities are being misplaced.
Arguably an airline, given their limited budgets, which puts too much redundancy into their non-critical systems has an incorrect set of priorities.
Perhaps I wasn't clear but the entire point of this system is that even if they have capture *all* of your communication and later comprimise your private key they can not go back and prove you or your confidant wrote the messages.
Wow, that was an interesting and clever paper. At the very end of the paper though they consider the situation with email. In particular the question is asked if an encryption system which works for an asynchronos system like email but doesn't allow outsiders to prove authorship is possible.
The solution proposed is to use ring signatures which only permit proof that one of the parties to the communication (secret) wrote the message. As the authors note this solution still suffers from the defect that a third party who manages to obtain the plaintext of a message can still prove that it was created by one of the participants. This can be partially protected against by encrypting the signature part of the message (assuming the message itself was not already so encrypted) to the recipient but if the recipients private keys are ever comprimised (a subpeona, confiscation of computer by law enforcement) this protection vanishes.
The authors contend that no system using a non-interactive protocol can both provide authentication to the parties involved but resist proof of authorship by at least one of the parties in the case of key comprimise. I don't believe this is correct and while I can not provide a full system which demonstrates this property I can provide a sketch of how one might work and it would be an intriguing problem to design a cryptographic system with these properties.
Suppose at some time t0 Bob creates a public private key pair together with time stamp attesting to the time of creation. This time stamp, and the key itself could be authenticated by Bob signing with his conventional non-repuditory long-lived key. Let us call the key parts Public and Private. Suppose also that we can discover a one way function S with an associated function (not necessarily one-way) P with the following property. If we apply the one way function S to Private and the function P to Public we create a new public/private key-pair, i.e., S(Private) is the private key associated with public key P(Public). If we could find such suitable functions we could design a cryptosystem with the requisite properties.
Every time a fixed interval of time passes, say an hour, Bob applies the one-way function S to Private storing the new result and forgetting the original key. Thus after 1 hour Bob has the key S(Private) after two hours S(S(Private)) and so forth. Now when Alice chooses to send Bob a message she chooses for what period of time Bob is capable of authenticating that message. If she thinks he will read it immediatly she might choose an hour, if he is out of town perhaps a week. After composing the message Alice computes some sort of signature/authentication (Ring signature etc..). Now alice computes the number of hours that will have passed between the creation time stamp of Bob's public key and the time her authentication period ends. She then applies the function P to Public once for every hour and uses the result to encrypt her signature. She then appends the encrypted signature, and the unencrypted time it will expire to the message and sends it to Bob. If the communication is to be secret she could then encrypt the entire message authentican and all with her favorite encryption scheme.
So long as Bob recieves the message from Alice before the authentican period has ended he has no trouble decrypting the authenticating signature. Bob simply computes the number of hours from the current time until the authentication period ends, applies S to Private that many times (not forgetting the current value of private in this case) and uses the result to decrypt Alice's authentication since the properties of the functions guarantee this is the corresponding private key to the public key alice used for encryption. Once decrypted the signature authenticates Alice's message and then is discarded by Bob (If a ring signature is used Bob can create the same signature at any time if he has the message plaintext so has no incentive to keep the decrypted signature).
First I have a minor quible about mentioning theorems in the 'rote learning' section and suggestion rote learning is opposed to practical/hands on learning. I agree entierly that rote learning is a problem as is mere memorization of theorems. However, abstract thought, logical reasoning and the like are important teaching goals which can be achieved by requiring students to prove and apply theorems.
In any case I find it bizarre that people seem to consistantly underplay the effects of culture in learning. Not only in comparisons of countries but also in racial differences in education, studies show that even when black and white students attend the same school their is a significant academic acheivment gap. Clearly this is the result of some type of culture (we can argue about whether blacks are being sent messages they can't achieve academically or their is a culture which tells them academics is 'acting white').
When I talk with my friends from russia, and other countries which often outperform us in math the thing I find most striking is they claim their is much less, stigma to being a nerd. In a culture which mocks you for being good or even interested in mathematics and science why should we be surprised students do worse. When being an intellectual is considered a disadvantage in presidential politics the message being sent to our children is quite clear.
As a mathmatician and someone who teaches mathematics perhaps the biggest difference between students who succed and those who don't is interest. Those students who are genuienly curious and want to find out why things happen invariably do well while those who just want to be told a formula they can memorize eventually do poorly. Sure, some effect can be had by teaching logic and reasoning rather than rote memorization (although attempts to do this through 'new math' ran into brick walls because parents and teachers couldn't handle the problems themselves). However, real improvement requires students actually be interested and curious about what they are studying.
Is it any surprise that a culture which tells you that you are a 'nerd' and have something wrong with you when you demonstrate interest in math doesn't perform well in math?
Yes, this may be true, although I would like to see an argument about why no one *should* no about them as opposed to simply the feeling that we don't want others to know about them. However, it is unavoidable unless we want to drastically restrict other freedoms. Loss of privacy is inevitable, the only thing we can do is make sure it happens fairly.
Look, you can't have it both ways. Either the government keeps it's hands off your recording devices and electronic gadgets and we lose privacy or we lose rights to free speech and to use our nifty gadgets.
We can already see this tension being played out with camera phones. In order to stop people from potential photographs the government only has the option of banning, or at least restricting the type of camera phones. This effect is only going to get worse.
What happens when everyone wears a voice activated computer? Necesserily such a computer must be equiped with a microphone, do you support government regulation which prohibits you from sharing the information that microphone picks up? How is this not a violation of free speech?
Perhaps we can protect privacy *inside* the home but privacy in public places is hopeless. By virtue of these places being public you are expoused to the eyes and ears of the public and without severe government repression these will become more and more augmented by technology.
The problem is that our privacy in these situations are guaranteed only by people's failible memories and lack of attention. Unless you want to outlaw digital improvements to these senses it is impossible to protect privacy. It is similar to the situation faced with large companies and your data. In that case the problem is that we freely give all sorts of small bits of information which becomes a significant privacy invasion when all assembled in a big database, but you can hardly make it illegal to aggregate *your* information in a database.
The only plausible solution which the government can enact is to make sure people are aware when their conversations or image might be recorded, as companies are now required to reveal when they will share your information. So maybe the people who walk around with digital camera's on their eyeglasses will be forced to make it visible, but, as with what has happened with corporations getting your information this is unlikely to stop people from having conversations on the street or encourage them to hide behind masks to protect their privacy.
Alright, I don't expect high journalistic standards from slashdot, but this attack on the creators veracity is beyond the pale. Making an ad homenim attack like this is something I expect of Fox News I thought slashdot at least had enough intelligence to recognize such an atrocious logical error.
Whether or not the creator of this system *also* knows how to make speech recognition systems is completly irrelevant to whether or not this system has this ability. This is like suggesting that because Boeing makes missles as well as planes every 747 is equiped with a self-destruct capability like missles.
In any case as I keep pointing out, in the long run we can't hope to maintain our privacy (if this even should rightly be called privacy...your speech on the street is public after all). If we seek to maintain personal liberty you can't stop people from using electronic aids, which will no doubt eventually expand to include microphones and cameras so that you can simply ask your personal information system what the name of that hot girl you talked to about philosophy today. Neither can you prevent these people from sharing and indexing this data, which most people would probably do to help catch terrorists or something.
Rather, what we should be worrying about is the *unequal* infringment of privacy. The reason that privacy infringment, by the government not a creepy neighbor, is worrisome is because we fear prosecution or beratmeant for our oddities. We are afraid the government will choose to prosecute those who engage in S&M, or smoke pot, or read Das Capitol.
Luckily nearly everyone has private oddities and perversions. So long as differnt societal groups lose privacy at the same rate this effect will help head off the persecution mentioned above. If people found out that it isn't only minorities and lowlifes but also their neighbors and respected citizens who are smoking pot or having kinky sex they are unlikely to prosecute this group and perhaps our rights would even expand as a result.
However, when privacy is eroded disproportionatly horrible results can occur. Whites use many kinds of drugs in *greater* proportions than blacks yet blacks are many times more likely to be in jail for these crimes. Some of this is just outright discrimination by juries, judges or prosecuters. Most of it though is because of increased scrutiny/loss of privacy, i.e. blacks are arrested more because they are far more likely to be searched or looked over by police.
I worry that this current system is going to have similarly bad results. Most likely it is only installed in the city itself, possibly only the high crime areas. This doesn't seem so bad if you are thinking only about murders, but consider what happens on new years eve. If you live in a poor neighborhood you are arrested for firing into the air but the rich are virtually free of this restriction.
Admitedly, I'm not very worried in this case. I tend to think celebratory shots *ought* to be prohibted and the penalties are small, unlike drugs. However, rather than inaccuratly implying this thing is going to record speech we could put our efforts into setting a good example about impinging on privacy in an even manner.
This is a silly objection to not regulating VOIP. The costs of allowing regulation of such a technology are far beyond the amount of money paid in taxes (especially for people making free calls) and other sources of revenue can easily be substituted.
Society has deemed it important to have emergency response centers and 911 service (and I agree) and thus we need to tax people in order to pay for these services. The notion that this tax must be paid by telephone users is based on several misconceptions.
First we have the misconception that somehow the people who use the service should pay for the service. In many circumstances in private industry this is valid but there is no reason to believe this is true for emergency centers. If we really wanted to adopt this system we could simply charge people when the emergency services arrive after a 911 call. I think the fact most people would find this troublesome, as it discourages those without much money from using emergency services, shows that in this case we really DON'T believe emergency services should necesserily be payed for by those who use them. Rather it is a general societal good and should be paid for through general societal coffers (income tax, property tax).
Secondly, this rests on the misconception that a phone tax somehow charges the people using the resources appropriately. However, it is quite unlikely that those who have 2 phones are twice as likely to use 911 nor are those who make more calls more likely to use 911.
In short this issue is a chimera. 911 and other services can be paid for just as fairly using other revenue sources. The reasons to put it on the phone services in the first place was just to hide the tax from the public, they know about it now and we might as well fess up.
Yes, congress is specifically given the right to set up an institution of copyright. If you had cared to read my post I never suggested that copyright law would be thereby overturned. However, nothing in the text of the copyright clause in the constitution appears to give congress any power to regulate devices which might circumvent copyright. Unless you actually have historical precident which suggests the courts have interpreted this clause not only to give congress the power to create copyright but also regulate any technology allowing infringment this is simply a silly objection.
Perhaps the point of the initial point went over your head, or you buzzed in to correct me before you had time to think about it so let me explain again. As I understand congress has no constitutional authority to regulate things like broadcast flags, or TiVOs except through the power of the commerce clause. If things like keyboard-computer communication, without which much of the modern computer age would be impossible, is deemed not to affect interstate commerce in the relevant way then it seems likely that other indirect effects like time-shifting would not be regarded as affecting interstate commerce either.
Quite likely either I or the original article is making a mistake here. If anyone has a good explanation for what I am missing I would love to hear. However, if you are going to be a dick about it you might want to make sure you know what you are talking about first. If the current poster actually has reason to believe the copyright clause in the constitution is interpreted broadly how about actually sharing your information instead of lording it over us.
This ruling appears pretty straightforward, after all a keyboard cable barely reaches 5 feet much less across state lines. However, when you realize that the standard in question was simply 'affecting interstate or foreign commerce' the result is much more significant. Especially considering the very broad interpratation of this clause in the past.
If this ruling is upheld it could have some very interesting consequences relating to governmental power. In general the federal government only has the power to legislate things which affect interstate commerce (plus a bunch of other exception...which we won't consider here). For instance if it was determined that a TiVO does not affect interstate/foriegn commerce the FCC would not have the ability to foist broadcast flags or other copyright protection mechanisms. Similar problems would occur with any attempt to federally regulate copyright protection into the PC.
Surely, one would think that protecting copyright would affect interstate commerce (whether this is effective or not is an entierly seperate matter). However, this misses the true significance of this ruling. Despite the fact that some of the keystrokes were sent in interstate email he still apparently considered the keyboard itself not to be affecting interstate commerce. For this not to be considered interstate commerce suggests a much stricter/direct standard is being applied.
Perhaps I am misinterpreting the standard involved. The article wasn't very precisce and perhaps the federal wiretap act actually requires the *communication itself* to be interstate. However, I think this is unlikely as I believe it also covers *in state* wire taps. Although, even if I am correct I imagine this will be reversed on appeal. This is simply a far too drastic change in understanding of what it means to affect interstate commerce.
As much as I hate to credit Bush with good judgement, especially in respect to the enviornment I think he may be correct about the Kyoto treaty. I realize that most enviornmentalist and liberals strongly support the Kyoto treaty but often they seem not to look past the fact that it is a pro-enviornment international agreement. Good policy deciscions, enviornmental or not, need to be based on a detailed estimation of the effects not simply warm feelings about the intended goal. It is not uncommon for economic and societal regulation to have paradoxical effects and actually encourage the opposite of their intended consequence and I fear Kyoto may be such an example.
In particular the danger with Kyoto is that it places legal caps on emissions from developed countries while enforcing no such requirements on third world countries. There are non-binding targets but realistically few third world countries are going to sacrifice economic development for a non-binding CO2 emissions target. I can't really say I blame them, certainly if I was living in poor squalid conditions I would not take kindly to my government sacrificing my chance to earn a better wage because the industrialized countries dumped too much CO2 into the air when they were trying to modernize.
The economic consequences now seem fairly obvious. A plant built in a first world country, party to the Kyoto treaty, is likely to require a more expensive emission control system or the purchase of emissions credits in addition to the already high price of labor. Therefore Kyoto is likely to simply encourage the building of CO2 emitting plants in third world countries on whom the treaty is not binding. Even if some provision of the treaty or national law prevents the company in question from building such a plant themselves it will only be a short time before investors in china or elsewhere realize they can produce widgets much cheaper and construct a factory to supply them.
Now if the effect of the treaty was simply to move jobs and plants overseas I would have no problem with it. I think the idea that americans (or your favorite first world nation) should keep jobs rather than giving them to desperatly poor third world nations is downright selfish. The claptrap that these jobs, who the people in the third world seem to overwhelmingly prefer to their former employment, are somehow actually bad for the residents of the third world is just a flimsy cover story so liberals don't feel squeamish about supporting organized labour. Admitedly there are cases where companies have moved in and abused the local population, and we need to be carefull about totalitarian regimes like china joining forces with multinational corporations to exploit their citizens. However, it is arrogant and insulting to suggest that the citizens of a democracy like india are not perfectly capable of deciding if a corporate factory or plant is to their national detriment or benefit.
Loss of jobs, though probably the concern of the Bush administration, is not the real danger. More disturbing is the prospect that by further encouraging factory relocation to the third world we actually increase CO2 emissions. Already most first world countries have some emission control requirements but by increasing the cost of emissions significantly we will push many plants and operations over the line where relocation guarantees a significant increase in profit. However, once in a third world country they will have even less incentive to curtail CO2 emissions thus potentially increasing global CO2 production.
Admitedly this is probably much more of an issue for the US, because of it's more liquid markets and production, than it is for europe. Also europe may already be affected by this problem with factories moving the the USA. So while european nations signing the Kyoto treaty may result in a reduction of CO2 emissions it is quite possible that the long term effect of a US signature would be to *increase* emissions by encouraging factories to locate in areas wi
What bothers me about the CSI show is that they consistantly screw up scientific facts they are presenting. I can deal with simplification for the TV audience but things like giving acceleration as a velocity and occasionaly downright false statements about DNA or chemistry isn't right.
I really love the show but it would only take one guy with an undergrad in science to watch the show and correct the bad impressions they send.
On a more subtle level the show does give the impression that many of the types of evidence are completly relibale, e.g. fingerprints when new scientific evidence is actually showing they occasionally lead to incorrect results.
Also, I don't like the fact that they always seem to critisize sexually deviant communities they investigate. I appreciate the titalation factor in investigating wifeswapping or other subcultures. However, I dislike the fact that they often seem to critisize the culture in these areas (of course none of the CSIs do this) while they don't take a similar attitude with churchgoing or other 'normal' activities.
Explain how an iris scan or a fingerprint is more of an invasion of privacy?
I don't know about you but I've never looked at my iris and it certainly doesn't seem deeply personal. Neither does my fingerprints.
At worst these just make identification more accurate. The cards don't do anything more than ones with just pictures on them, but they are harder to forge and people are less likely to mistakenly misidentify someone. How does this further reduce my privacy.
Maybe I'm missing something but if so I would love to hear what additional social negatives iris scans and fingerprints bring about. I agree there is some concern with law enforcement having everyone's fingerprints and thus being able to determine who was protesting or who was doing something else. However, law enforcement officers are already building up such a database (here in the US kids get fingerprinted in case they are abducted) and this is where we should get concerned not when it is put on an ID card
I keep hearing concern over things like a national ID card or other mandatory identification system. However, these sorts of worries just distract us from the real privacy concerns.
Pragmatically we already have national ID cards. Between drivers liscensces, passports and social security cards we have all the disadvantages of a national ID card. I can barely get through a day, much less a lifetime without these IDs.
The fact that I *could* theoretically get along without these cards doesn't mean anything. If I created a national DNA database (full DNA which could be tested for diseases) it wouldn't be okay if I allowed people to pay $100 to opt out.
Continuing to crow about things like national ID cards distracts from real issues of privacy. Defating national ID schemes gives us empty victories that make us think we are maintaining our privacy.
--
Personally I think maintaining privacy, at least in the traditional sense, isn't a viable option. Even if we win every legislative victory it is too easy to give corporations access to our personal data for a minor convenience. The fact that a few privacy minded individuals might avoid this net makes no difference in the big picture. Any societal harms will still occur even if 1% of society is not in any database.
Privacy, despite the name, is not a personal issue. The harms are not individual, accuring to you because your information is in a database but rather societal resulting from the fact that a large enough percentage of people are in databases.
Instead of fighting minor skirmishes against ID cards while our privacy is eroded behind our back we should try and minimize the negative social effects of privacy. The primary danger that erosion of privacy provides is that effective privacy will be availible only to the rich. This is already happening....cameras aren't put in well to do suburbs.
I contend this is the primary danger from losing privacy. Everyone does socially unacceptable things behind closed doors, be it smoking joints or having kinky sex. If we don't make sure privacy is lost by the well-off at the same rate it is lost by the poor we risk exagerating the problems we have in the war on drugs. Namely, where the poor and minorities are targeted, either legally or just by insurance companies and public opinion, for their 'inappropriate behavior' while the rich get a free pass.
Look people this is a fictional world. Many fictional worlds include customs which would be utterly inappropriate in the real world. Every MMORPG includes random horrible violence. Usually you kill things like goblins just because of their race. Why is this suddenly differnt.
The ultimate point being that you can explore, and enjoy an online fantasy world without endorsing what occurs in that world. If we can't have discriminatory or asshole NPCs how do you acheive game conflict. Nothing I have seen suggests the game is *advocating* this position. I think this sort of thing can give important flavor and something for the players to campaign against.
In a broader sense I think these outrages are not only misplaced but cause us to miss broader issues. There is no danger in the modern world that people will backslide and start treating women as property again. However, there are plenty of subtle ways in which women are kept down and oppressed. This sort of 'outrage' detracts from the real issue.
For instance 90% of males I know, even 'liberated' males prefer to date women who are less assertive and intelligent than them. Girls who act like their male friends in assertivity and arguing about CS (or math or whatever) simply aren't found desierable. Guys who think logically are awarded with praise while often girls who do the same thing are chided for being too 'masculine'.
Every time we waste our time and focus on one of these 'outrages' we make things worse. Men get to think of themselves as 'liberated' and supporting equality for women when in fact they are the heart of the modern problem. It is only by focusing attention of these subtle inter-personal interactions can any true progress be made.
Unfortunatly the UC system has a long record of censorship going back to the free speech movement of the 60s at UC Berkeley. Of course now they claim to be in favor of free speech but this apparently only means free speech they deem appropriate.
The same week UC Berkeley gave it's official celebration of the aniversery of the free speech movement it invoked it's trademark power to ban T-shirts which said "Fuck Trojans."
Quite frankly I don't think much has changed since the 60's. They still claim to favor free speech but it only goes so far as speech they think is 'appropriate'.
I think you are missing an important point about english usage. It is not the case that a "blah X" is necesserily a type of X. In other words there is no contradiction for his definition of libertarian even though it doesn't apply to civil libertarians. In short a civil libertarian is not necesserily a full on libertarian.
As an example a "former republican" is not a republican. A more relevant example is an "occasional asshole" is not necesserily an asshole. In this case I think the same thing is occuring. Libertarian means believes in smaller government (so the definition given above holds..if you are a libertarian you believe in smaller government not ifs ands or buts). A Civil Libertarian is someone who is a libertarian in regard to civil matters, just like occasional tells you when someone is an asshole.
Of course conservative doesn't have one easy meaning but I don't think that was intended to be a definition but rather a description of mainstream political fact.
It's good to see that they considered this important theorem but given my understanding of arrow's theorem suggests they give it far too short shift. In particular they seem to be under the impression that it only causes problems because the introduction of another canidate might effect the election. This might be mathematically equivalent but it sweeps a very important point under the rug.
Another implication of arrow's theorem is that voters have an incentive to misrepresent their preferences. I believe this is equivalent to the irrelevant alternatives statement mathematically. Imagine an election where the introduction of an extra party would shift the election supposing everyone voted honestly, now this can only happen if that party is part of the smith set (i.e. beats at least one other party). This means that certain people would have incentive not to vote honestly so as to guarantee this party either does or doesn't make it into the smith set.
In short I don't think we can so blithely dismiss the consequences of arrow's theorem as, "well yah sometimes adding a new party affects the election" The result of this is that concordant voting, just like IRV also has situations which encourage insincer voting.
This means that the choice of voting system must be made by more practical pragmatic concerns. For instance what types of elections are common, simplicity for the average voter and the political system. Quite frankly the US is a two party system and this system has many advantages. For a two party system a IRV is a very good system.
The question of getting rid of the two party system is another matter entierly, but most of our governmental institutions are designed to work in a two party system and changing this requires much more than a change in voting system.
Frankly, I don't think a truly multi-party system is a good idea given our constitution. If we truly wanted three or more serious parties I think we would be compelled to move to a parlimentary system. Also the constitution was designed to make things difficult to do and it is only the oil of the party machinery which can get things done in congress. I think there is a real danger that any serious third party would simply bring congress to a grinding halt.
Slashdot Mirror
No, quite frankly most microkernels are written as CS Ph.D student thesis where they only need theoretical appeal. At best they are usually implemented in a small theoretical setting where they need not deal with the messy interfaces and hardware present in the real world. Of course there have been some real world exceptions and BeOS might be one of them.
Certainly microkernal design has some compelling advantages. The same advantages any layer of abstraction adds, greater code reuse and easier code maintenance. Effectively we get the same benefits from keep a consistant binary format/software interface. However, the benefits of abstraction often come with performance penalties, and often inhibit innovation if they are not designed perfectly the first time.
The issue is as much one of programer organization as it is of engineering superiority. Micro-kernels or monolithic kernels can all accomplish the same things but they work better in differnt organizations. A corporation which often has sharp organizational distinctions between groups coding differnt sections, the money to invest in R&D to define an efficent and extensible interface and often lacking the flexibility to allow one individual to dictate his coding styles a microkernel is quite appealing. In contrast for an open source project, which often lacks expertise when they first begin coding a solution, the explicit interfaces in the microkernel would strangle them with all their bad design choices. Moreover, enthusiasm and many eyes allows them to both handle the extra code maintenance and ensure consistant coding style without rigidity.
Finally I just don't understand the point of your argument. Linux is bad because Linus is not personally an expert on microkernel vs. monolithic kernels? Can I equally well say your post is bad because you are not an expert either but simply relying on what others say.
Religious battles in coding are just stupid. Despite what many CS professors want to believe deciding between differnt design models is more about psychology than engineering. It is difficult for even one person to hold all the code they wrote clearly in their mind and impossible for a group project, so we evolve tools like microkernels to compartmentalize our programs and help us solve the organizational problems of programming. Howwever, it is just downright silly to forget that the ultimate goal is to solve the psychological problem of getting people to create a large project. Clearly Linus has managed to overcome this problem and if you think better why not go do it yourself.
It is plain stupid to value theory over results.
Isn't this just a general feature of journaling filesystems, you can always go back and get the previous disk drive state. Perhaps things are usually configured to allow the filesystem to permantly lose a file once it is deleted but surely this can be changed in the config.
In other words this no delete feature provides no more protection against delibrate sabatoge than that already guaranteed by sane options for a filesystem.
It would be great if we could get some general standards for object passing and calling. Be it COM CORBA or whatever it shouldn't depend on what widget set someone wants to run in their window manager. In fact programs should be able to rely on this even if no GUI is running.
I think the unix world needs to settle on a universal object model and implement it either in the kernel itself or in a low level driver.
At first I was inclined to agree with you. All the various files in /etc/ or in /sbin installed in many packages is a huge pain. I do think installation programs should be more uniform about using symlinks. So that all program files would truly be kept in /usr/???/progname/ and everything would be a symlink to this, preferably keeping the symlinks to applications and core system tools in differnt directories. Some programs follow the symlink philosophy but not enough.
Aside from this minor quible I think the extra 'complication' of the unix files is largely illusionary. All systems must store systemwide settings and data. Some OS's hide this information in a registry or other opaque data structure so you never see the clutter left behind by programs but it creates just as many if not more problems.
No, I think he wants a safety mechanism that lets people write to files, and hence potentially open them and truncate to nothing but not unlink the files. It wouldn't protect from delibrate sabotage but it would help avoid some common screw ups.
Though on second thought you could probably just implement something like this directly using rm (create an extra group for no-delete access and have rm check to see if it is through this group you have access). So perhaps he instead means files which you can write to the end of the file but not delete prior stuff. That would be a nice feature, though I'm not convinced it doesn't already exist.
In the core system what I find most lacking is better support for providing psuedo-kernel type services. For instance windowing systems/3d accelerators end up being interfaced with a bunch of hacks and make use of little to no unified kernel support for this sort of thing.
I've also never been impresed by the IPC facilities in unix, it seems there are a bunch of 'okay' solutions cluttering up the kernel but no really good/modern IPC solution. It would be nice if we could get one protocol with a bunch of options or a few good protocals aimed at certain situations (shared memory models, message passing etc..).
I'm sure there are a few more things that aren't the best deep down in the kernel architecture. For instance many not-super-critical sections of code in linux use bad/stall prone algorithm. However, this isn't a problem in all unices. But other than the above issue the only real disadvantage to the users is lack of software and that isn't really a unix problem.
Unfortunatly people have a great deal of trouble understanding small probabilities, we tend to round them off to zero once they fall below a certain level. Just as bad most people tend to worry about things they can understand and see examples of (like mugging and murder) and ignore those dangers they don't understand or have never seen even if these dangers are more risky.
Global warming and asteroid impacts are two great examples. While global warming doesn't have the low probability problem (some of its extreme consequences like a repeat of the younger dras cold period do) it is likewise an unfamiliar danger with the capacity to impact most humans. Yet our natural inclination is to be afraid of events we see like planes flying into the world trade center even if they are of less risk to ourselves.
A close call with a large asteroid is exactly what we need to wake us up. It is probably too much to hope that we would start allocating our budget based on an objective risk/benefit analysis. Hopefully though it could at least raise our level of emotional concern about these global catastrophes.
The analysis of the data transfer 'problem' linked by this article is as simple, straighforward and totally ridiculous. We are all well aware of the dangers of using a simple linear aproximation to predicte the future in regards to microchip improvements and we shouldn't be stupid enough to accept it in this case. Admitedly the author of the comment doesn't make the same mistake of assuming that data transfer rates will be linear with respect to time but he makes the equally unsuported assumption that data transfer rates are linear (in fact a constant multiple) in data storage. Without any reason to believe these technologies progress at the same rate this is no more than a guess.
Moreover, there are particular reasons to believe the data-transfer rates are not a particular problem. For one even if his prediction is correct it isn't clear there is really a problem. In a device often used for backup 3days to fill might not be unreasonable. Moreover, storage transfer rates are often limited by the data transfer rate which is usually far less than the system bus speed or other dedicated high speed communications (interprocessor communication). Thus suggesting it is merely the cost-performance tradeoff which is limiting storage transfer rates not a pure technological problem. Indeed, if the main system bus speed does not increase fast enough so as to allow us to implement tape transfer as it's own specialized bus then memory literally will not be able to produce data fast enough to fill the device anyway.
If the worry is instead that the tape drive simply won't be able to read or write data then one should remember that tape/drive access is extremely parrallelizeable. If the IBM technology for writing the tape does not already proced at high speed nothing prevents stacking several of them next to each other so an entier slice of the tape is read at once.
Do you also refuse to eat at a relatives house if their computer is virus laden or crash prone? After all if they can't be trusted to keep their computer working why should you trust them to make safe, sanitary food.
Perhaps if computer usage/programming had evolved to the level of personal hygenie, namely routine effort anyone could do would prevent computer crashes, your point would be convincing. However, in practice we realize even the best professional programmers make errors even buffer overflows (and we don't even really know it's an 'error' perhaps the program exited gracefully after realizing the demands exceded its capacity and simply hadn't been programed to handle this size situation). So unlike your hygenie example this hardly impeaches the basic organizational discipline/compotency.
Had this really been a computer engaged in flight critical tasks I would feel quite differntly. Programming error or even an unanticipated shutdown is not acceptable in systems necessery for real-time flight control. Since this was instead a system to reassign crew and guarantee compliance with federal labour law I feel much differntly. In fact if this system had been subject to a rigorous source code review by an outside team to check for bugs, or linked into some sort of failover system with differntly programmed systems accomplishing the same task I would worry that their priorities are being misplaced.
Arguably an airline, given their limited budgets, which puts too much redundancy into their non-critical systems has an incorrect set of priorities.
Perhaps I wasn't clear but the entire point of this system is that even if they have capture *all* of your communication and later comprimise your private key they can not go back and prove you or your confidant wrote the messages.
Wow, that was an interesting and clever paper. At the very end of the paper though they consider the situation with email. In particular the question is asked if an encryption system which works for an asynchronos system like email but doesn't allow outsiders to prove authorship is possible.
The solution proposed is to use ring signatures which only permit proof that one of the parties to the communication (secret) wrote the message. As the authors note this solution still suffers from the defect that a third party who manages to obtain the plaintext of a message can still prove that it was created by one of the participants. This can be partially protected against by encrypting the signature part of the message (assuming the message itself was not already so encrypted) to the recipient but if the recipients private keys are ever comprimised (a subpeona, confiscation of computer by law enforcement) this protection vanishes.
The authors contend that no system using a non-interactive protocol can both provide authentication to the parties involved but resist proof of authorship by at least one of the parties in the case of key comprimise. I don't believe this is correct and while I can not provide a full system which demonstrates this property I can provide a sketch of how one might work and it would be an intriguing problem to design a cryptographic system with these properties.
Suppose at some time t0 Bob creates a public private key pair together with time stamp attesting to the time of creation. This time stamp, and the key itself could be authenticated by Bob signing with his conventional non-repuditory long-lived key. Let us call the key parts Public and Private. Suppose also that we can discover a one way function S with an associated function (not necessarily one-way) P with the following property. If we apply the one way function S to Private and the function P to Public we create a new public/private key-pair, i.e., S(Private) is the private key associated with public key P(Public). If we could find such suitable functions we could design a cryptosystem with the requisite properties.
Every time a fixed interval of time passes, say an hour, Bob applies the one-way function S to Private storing the new result and forgetting the original key. Thus after 1 hour Bob has the key S(Private) after two hours S(S(Private)) and so forth. Now when Alice chooses to send Bob a message she chooses for what period of time Bob is capable of authenticating that message. If she thinks he will read it immediatly she might choose an hour, if he is out of town perhaps a week. After composing the message Alice computes some sort of signature/authentication (Ring signature etc..). Now alice computes the number of hours that will have passed between the creation time stamp of Bob's public key and the time her authentication period ends. She then applies the function P to Public once for every hour and uses the result to encrypt her signature. She then appends the encrypted signature, and the unencrypted time it will expire to the message and sends it to Bob. If the communication is to be secret she could then encrypt the entire message authentican and all with her favorite encryption scheme.
So long as Bob recieves the message from Alice before the authentican period has ended he has no trouble decrypting the authenticating signature. Bob simply computes the number of hours from the current time until the authentication period ends, applies S to Private that many times (not forgetting the current value of private in this case) and uses the result to decrypt Alice's authentication since the properties of the functions guarantee this is the corresponding private key to the public key alice used for encryption. Once decrypted the signature authenticates Alice's message and then is discarded by Bob (If a ring signature is used Bob can create the same signature at any time if he has the message plaintext so has no incentive to keep the decrypted signature).
However, once the
First I have a minor quible about mentioning theorems in the 'rote learning' section and suggestion rote learning is opposed to practical/hands on learning. I agree entierly that rote learning is a problem as is mere memorization of theorems. However, abstract thought, logical reasoning and the like are important teaching goals which can be achieved by requiring students to prove and apply theorems.
In any case I find it bizarre that people seem to consistantly underplay the effects of culture in learning. Not only in comparisons of countries but also in racial differences in education, studies show that even when black and white students attend the same school their is a significant academic acheivment gap. Clearly this is the result of some type of culture (we can argue about whether blacks are being sent messages they can't achieve academically or their is a culture which tells them academics is 'acting white').
When I talk with my friends from russia, and other countries which often outperform us in math the thing I find most striking is they claim their is much less, stigma to being a nerd. In a culture which mocks you for being good or even interested in mathematics and science why should we be surprised students do worse. When being an intellectual is considered a disadvantage in presidential politics the message being sent to our children is quite clear.
As a mathmatician and someone who teaches mathematics perhaps the biggest difference between students who succed and those who don't is interest. Those students who are genuienly curious and want to find out why things happen invariably do well while those who just want to be told a formula they can memorize eventually do poorly. Sure, some effect can be had by teaching logic and reasoning rather than rote memorization (although attempts to do this through 'new math' ran into brick walls because parents and teachers couldn't handle the problems themselves). However, real improvement requires students actually be interested and curious about what they are studying.
Is it any surprise that a culture which tells you that you are a 'nerd' and have something wrong with you when you demonstrate interest in math doesn't perform well in math?
Yes, this may be true, although I would like to see an argument about why no one *should* no about them as opposed to simply the feeling that we don't want others to know about them. However, it is unavoidable unless we want to drastically restrict other freedoms. Loss of privacy is inevitable, the only thing we can do is make sure it happens fairly.
Look, you can't have it both ways. Either the government keeps it's hands off your recording devices and electronic gadgets and we lose privacy or we lose rights to free speech and to use our nifty gadgets.
We can already see this tension being played out with camera phones. In order to stop people from potential photographs the government only has the option of banning, or at least restricting the type of camera phones. This effect is only going to get worse.
What happens when everyone wears a voice activated computer? Necesserily such a computer must be equiped with a microphone, do you support government regulation which prohibits you from sharing the information that microphone picks up? How is this not a violation of free speech?
Perhaps we can protect privacy *inside* the home but privacy in public places is hopeless. By virtue of these places being public you are expoused to the eyes and ears of the public and without severe government repression these will become more and more augmented by technology.
The problem is that our privacy in these situations are guaranteed only by people's failible memories and lack of attention. Unless you want to outlaw digital improvements to these senses it is impossible to protect privacy. It is similar to the situation faced with large companies and your data. In that case the problem is that we freely give all sorts of small bits of information which becomes a significant privacy invasion when all assembled in a big database, but you can hardly make it illegal to aggregate *your* information in a database.
The only plausible solution which the government can enact is to make sure people are aware when their conversations or image might be recorded, as companies are now required to reveal when they will share your information. So maybe the people who walk around with digital camera's on their eyeglasses will be forced to make it visible, but, as with what has happened with corporations getting your information this is unlikely to stop people from having conversations on the street or encourage them to hide behind masks to protect their privacy.
Alright, I don't expect high journalistic standards from slashdot, but this attack on the creators veracity is beyond the pale. Making an ad homenim attack like this is something I expect of Fox News I thought slashdot at least had enough intelligence to recognize such an atrocious logical error.
Whether or not the creator of this system *also* knows how to make speech recognition systems is completly irrelevant to whether or not this system has this ability. This is like suggesting that because Boeing makes missles as well as planes every 747 is equiped with a self-destruct capability like missles.
In any case as I keep pointing out, in the long run we can't hope to maintain our privacy (if this even should rightly be called privacy...your speech on the street is public after all). If we seek to maintain personal liberty you can't stop people from using electronic aids, which will no doubt eventually expand to include microphones and cameras so that you can simply ask your personal information system what the name of that hot girl you talked to about philosophy today. Neither can you prevent these people from sharing and indexing this data, which most people would probably do to help catch terrorists or something.
Rather, what we should be worrying about is the *unequal* infringment of privacy. The reason that privacy infringment, by the government not a creepy neighbor, is worrisome is because we fear prosecution or beratmeant for our oddities. We are afraid the government will choose to prosecute those who engage in S&M, or smoke pot, or read Das Capitol.
Luckily nearly everyone has private oddities and perversions. So long as differnt societal groups lose privacy at the same rate this effect will help head off the persecution mentioned above. If people found out that it isn't only minorities and lowlifes but also their neighbors and respected citizens who are smoking pot or having kinky sex they are unlikely to prosecute this group and perhaps our rights would even expand as a result.
However, when privacy is eroded disproportionatly horrible results can occur. Whites use many kinds of drugs in *greater* proportions than blacks yet blacks are many times more likely to be in jail for these crimes. Some of this is just outright discrimination by juries, judges or prosecuters. Most of it though is because of increased scrutiny/loss of privacy, i.e. blacks are arrested more because they are far more likely to be searched or looked over by police.
I worry that this current system is going to have similarly bad results. Most likely it is only installed in the city itself, possibly only the high crime areas. This doesn't seem so bad if you are thinking only about murders, but consider what happens on new years eve. If you live in a poor neighborhood you are arrested for firing into the air but the rich are virtually free of this restriction.
Admitedly, I'm not very worried in this case. I tend to think celebratory shots *ought* to be prohibted and the penalties are small, unlike drugs. However, rather than inaccuratly implying this thing is going to record speech we could put our efforts into setting a good example about impinging on privacy in an even manner.
This is a silly objection to not regulating VOIP. The costs of allowing regulation of such a technology are far beyond the amount of money paid in taxes (especially for people making free calls) and other sources of revenue can easily be substituted.
Society has deemed it important to have emergency response centers and 911 service (and I agree) and thus we need to tax people in order to pay for these services. The notion that this tax must be paid by telephone users is based on several misconceptions.
First we have the misconception that somehow the people who use the service should pay for the service. In many circumstances in private industry this is valid but there is no reason to believe this is true for emergency centers. If we really wanted to adopt this system we could simply charge people when the emergency services arrive after a 911 call. I think the fact most people would find this troublesome, as it discourages those without much money from using emergency services, shows that in this case we really DON'T believe emergency services should necesserily be payed for by those who use them. Rather it is a general societal good and should be paid for through general societal coffers (income tax, property tax).
Secondly, this rests on the misconception that a phone tax somehow charges the people using the resources appropriately. However, it is quite unlikely that those who have 2 phones are twice as likely to use 911 nor are those who make more calls more likely to use 911.
In short this issue is a chimera. 911 and other services can be paid for just as fairly using other revenue sources. The reasons to put it on the phone services in the first place was just to hide the tax from the public, they know about it now and we might as well fess up.
Yes, congress is specifically given the right to set up an institution of copyright. If you had cared to read my post I never suggested that copyright law would be thereby overturned. However, nothing in the text of the copyright clause in the constitution appears to give congress any power to regulate devices which might circumvent copyright. Unless you actually have historical precident which suggests the courts have interpreted this clause not only to give congress the power to create copyright but also regulate any technology allowing infringment this is simply a silly objection.
Perhaps the point of the initial point went over your head, or you buzzed in to correct me before you had time to think about it so let me explain again. As I understand congress has no constitutional authority to regulate things like broadcast flags, or TiVOs except through the power of the commerce clause. If things like keyboard-computer communication, without which much of the modern computer age would be impossible, is deemed not to affect interstate commerce in the relevant way then it seems likely that other indirect effects like time-shifting would not be regarded as affecting interstate commerce either.
Quite likely either I or the original article is making a mistake here. If anyone has a good explanation for what I am missing I would love to hear. However, if you are going to be a dick about it you might want to make sure you know what you are talking about first. If the current poster actually has reason to believe the copyright clause in the constitution is interpreted broadly how about actually sharing your information instead of lording it over us.
This ruling appears pretty straightforward, after all a keyboard cable barely reaches 5 feet much less across state lines. However, when you realize that the standard in question was simply 'affecting interstate or foreign commerce' the result is much more significant. Especially considering the very broad interpratation of this clause in the past.
If this ruling is upheld it could have some very interesting consequences relating to governmental power. In general the federal government only has the power to legislate things which affect interstate commerce (plus a bunch of other exception...which we won't consider here). For instance if it was determined that a TiVO does not affect interstate/foriegn commerce the FCC would not have the ability to foist broadcast flags or other copyright protection mechanisms. Similar problems would occur with any attempt to federally regulate copyright protection into the PC.
Surely, one would think that protecting copyright would affect interstate commerce (whether this is effective or not is an entierly seperate matter). However, this misses the true significance of this ruling. Despite the fact that some of the keystrokes were sent in interstate email he still apparently considered the keyboard itself not to be affecting interstate commerce. For this not to be considered interstate commerce suggests a much stricter/direct standard is being applied.
Perhaps I am misinterpreting the standard involved. The article wasn't very precisce and perhaps the federal wiretap act actually requires the *communication itself* to be interstate. However, I think this is unlikely as I believe it also covers *in state* wire taps. Although, even if I am correct I imagine this will be reversed on appeal. This is simply a far too drastic change in understanding of what it means to affect interstate commerce.
As much as I hate to credit Bush with good judgement, especially in respect to the enviornment I think he may be correct about the Kyoto treaty. I realize that most enviornmentalist and liberals strongly support the Kyoto treaty but often they seem not to look past the fact that it is a pro-enviornment international agreement. Good policy deciscions, enviornmental or not, need to be based on a detailed estimation of the effects not simply warm feelings about the intended goal. It is not uncommon for economic and societal regulation to have paradoxical effects and actually encourage the opposite of their intended consequence and I fear Kyoto may be such an example.
In particular the danger with Kyoto is that it places legal caps on emissions from developed countries while enforcing no such requirements on third world countries. There are non-binding targets but realistically few third world countries are going to sacrifice economic development for a non-binding CO2 emissions target. I can't really say I blame them, certainly if I was living in poor squalid conditions I would not take kindly to my government sacrificing my chance to earn a better wage because the industrialized countries dumped too much CO2 into the air when they were trying to modernize.
The economic consequences now seem fairly obvious. A plant built in a first world country, party to the Kyoto treaty, is likely to require a more expensive emission control system or the purchase of emissions credits in addition to the already high price of labor. Therefore Kyoto is likely to simply encourage the building of CO2 emitting plants in third world countries on whom the treaty is not binding. Even if some provision of the treaty or national law prevents the company in question from building such a plant themselves it will only be a short time before investors in china or elsewhere realize they can produce widgets much cheaper and construct a factory to supply them.
Now if the effect of the treaty was simply to move jobs and plants overseas I would have no problem with it. I think the idea that americans (or your favorite first world nation) should keep jobs rather than giving them to desperatly poor third world nations is downright selfish. The claptrap that these jobs, who the people in the third world seem to overwhelmingly prefer to their former employment, are somehow actually bad for the residents of the third world is just a flimsy cover story so liberals don't feel squeamish about supporting organized labour. Admitedly there are cases where companies have moved in and abused the local population, and we need to be carefull about totalitarian regimes like china joining forces with multinational corporations to exploit their citizens. However, it is arrogant and insulting to suggest that the citizens of a democracy like india are not perfectly capable of deciding if a corporate factory or plant is to their national detriment or benefit.
Loss of jobs, though probably the concern of the Bush administration, is not the real danger. More disturbing is the prospect that by further encouraging factory relocation to the third world we actually increase CO2 emissions. Already most first world countries have some emission control requirements but by increasing the cost of emissions significantly we will push many plants and operations over the line where relocation guarantees a significant increase in profit. However, once in a third world country they will have even less incentive to curtail CO2 emissions thus potentially increasing global CO2 production.
Admitedly this is probably much more of an issue for the US, because of it's more liquid markets and production, than it is for europe. Also europe may already be affected by this problem with factories moving the the USA. So while european nations signing the Kyoto treaty may result in a reduction of CO2 emissions it is quite possible that the long term effect of a US signature would be to *increase* emissions by encouraging factories to locate in areas wi
What bothers me about the CSI show is that they consistantly screw up scientific facts they are presenting. I can deal with simplification for the TV audience but things like giving acceleration as a velocity and occasionaly downright false statements about DNA or chemistry isn't right.
I really love the show but it would only take one guy with an undergrad in science to watch the show and correct the bad impressions they send.
On a more subtle level the show does give the impression that many of the types of evidence are completly relibale, e.g. fingerprints when new scientific evidence is actually showing they occasionally lead to incorrect results.
Also, I don't like the fact that they always seem to critisize sexually deviant communities they investigate. I appreciate the titalation factor in investigating wifeswapping or other subcultures. However, I dislike the fact that they often seem to critisize the culture in these areas (of course none of the CSIs do this) while they don't take a similar attitude with churchgoing or other 'normal' activities.
Explain how an iris scan or a fingerprint is more of an invasion of privacy?
I don't know about you but I've never looked at my iris and it certainly doesn't seem deeply personal. Neither does my fingerprints.
At worst these just make identification more accurate. The cards don't do anything more than ones with just pictures on them, but they are harder to forge and people are less likely to mistakenly misidentify someone. How does this further reduce my privacy.
Maybe I'm missing something but if so I would love to hear what additional social negatives iris scans and fingerprints bring about. I agree there is some concern with law enforcement having everyone's fingerprints and thus being able to determine who was protesting or who was doing something else. However, law enforcement officers are already building up such a database (here in the US kids get fingerprinted in case they are abducted) and this is where we should get concerned not when it is put on an ID card
I keep hearing concern over things like a national ID card or other mandatory identification system. However, these sorts of worries just distract us from the real privacy concerns.
Pragmatically we already have national ID cards. Between drivers liscensces, passports and social security cards we have all the disadvantages of a national ID card. I can barely get through a day, much less a lifetime without these IDs.
The fact that I *could* theoretically get along without these cards doesn't mean anything. If I created a national DNA database (full DNA which could be tested for diseases) it wouldn't be okay if I allowed people to pay $100 to opt out.
Continuing to crow about things like national ID cards distracts from real issues of privacy. Defating national ID schemes gives us empty victories that make us think we are maintaining our privacy.
--
Personally I think maintaining privacy, at least in the traditional sense, isn't a viable option. Even if we win every legislative victory it is too easy to give corporations access to our personal data for a minor convenience. The fact that a few privacy minded individuals might avoid this net makes no difference in the big picture. Any societal harms will still occur even if 1% of society is not in any database.
Privacy, despite the name, is not a personal issue. The harms are not individual, accuring to you because your information is in a database but rather societal resulting from the fact that a large enough percentage of people are in databases.
Instead of fighting minor skirmishes against ID cards while our privacy is eroded behind our back we should try and minimize the negative social effects of privacy. The primary danger that erosion of privacy provides is that effective privacy will be availible only to the rich. This is already happening....cameras aren't put in well to do suburbs.
I contend this is the primary danger from losing privacy. Everyone does socially unacceptable things behind closed doors, be it smoking joints or having kinky sex. If we don't make sure privacy is lost by the well-off at the same rate it is lost by the poor we risk exagerating the problems we have in the war on drugs. Namely, where the poor and minorities are targeted, either legally or just by insurance companies and public opinion, for their 'inappropriate behavior' while the rich get a free pass.
Look people this is a fictional world. Many fictional worlds include customs which would be utterly inappropriate in the real world. Every MMORPG includes random horrible violence. Usually you kill things like goblins just because of their race. Why is this suddenly differnt.
The ultimate point being that you can explore, and enjoy an online fantasy world without endorsing what occurs in that world. If we can't have discriminatory or asshole NPCs how do you acheive game conflict. Nothing I have seen suggests the game is *advocating* this position. I think this sort of thing can give important flavor and something for the players to campaign against.
In a broader sense I think these outrages are not only misplaced but cause us to miss broader issues. There is no danger in the modern world that people will backslide and start treating women as property again. However, there are plenty of subtle ways in which women are kept down and oppressed. This sort of 'outrage' detracts from the real issue.
For instance 90% of males I know, even 'liberated' males prefer to date women who are less assertive and intelligent than them. Girls who act like their male friends in assertivity and arguing about CS (or math or whatever) simply aren't found desierable. Guys who think logically are awarded with praise while often girls who do the same thing are chided for being too 'masculine'.
Every time we waste our time and focus on one of these 'outrages' we make things worse. Men get to think of themselves as 'liberated' and supporting equality for women when in fact they are the heart of the modern problem. It is only by focusing attention of these subtle inter-personal interactions can any true progress be made.
Unfortunatly the UC system has a long record of censorship going back to the free speech movement of the 60s at UC Berkeley. Of course now they claim to be in favor of free speech but this apparently only means free speech they deem appropriate.
The same week UC Berkeley gave it's official celebration of the aniversery of the free speech movement it invoked it's trademark power to ban T-shirts which said "Fuck Trojans."
Quite frankly I don't think much has changed since the 60's. They still claim to favor free speech but it only goes so far as speech they think is 'appropriate'.
I think you are missing an important point about english usage. It is not the case that a "blah X" is necesserily a type of X. In other words there is no contradiction for his definition of libertarian even though it doesn't apply to civil libertarians. In short a civil libertarian is not necesserily a full on libertarian.
As an example a "former republican" is not a republican. A more relevant example is an "occasional asshole" is not necesserily an asshole. In this case I think the same thing is occuring. Libertarian means believes in smaller government (so the definition given above holds..if you are a libertarian you believe in smaller government not ifs ands or buts). A Civil Libertarian is someone who is a libertarian in regard to civil matters, just like occasional tells you when someone is an asshole.
Of course conservative doesn't have one easy meaning but I don't think that was intended to be a definition but rather a description of mainstream political fact.
So I found a brief discussion of arrow's theorem on the website .
It's good to see that they considered this important theorem but given my understanding of arrow's theorem suggests they give it far too short shift. In particular they seem to be under the impression that it only causes problems because the introduction of another canidate might effect the election. This might be mathematically equivalent but it sweeps a very important point under the rug.
Another implication of arrow's theorem is that voters have an incentive to misrepresent their preferences. I believe this is equivalent to the irrelevant alternatives statement mathematically. Imagine an election where the introduction of an extra party would shift the election supposing everyone voted honestly, now this can only happen if that party is part of the smith set (i.e. beats at least one other party). This means that certain people would have incentive not to vote honestly so as to guarantee this party either does or doesn't make it into the smith set.
In short I don't think we can so blithely dismiss the consequences of arrow's theorem as, "well yah sometimes adding a new party affects the election" The result of this is that concordant voting, just like IRV also has situations which encourage insincer voting.
This means that the choice of voting system must be made by more practical pragmatic concerns. For instance what types of elections are common, simplicity for the average voter and the political system. Quite frankly the US is a two party system and this system has many advantages. For a two party system a IRV is a very good system.
The question of getting rid of the two party system is another matter entierly, but most of our governmental institutions are designed to work in a two party system and changing this requires much more than a change in voting system.
Frankly, I don't think a truly multi-party system is a good idea given our constitution. If we truly wanted three or more serious parties I think we would be compelled to move to a parlimentary system. Also the constitution was designed to make things difficult to do and it is only the oil of the party machinery which can get things done in congress. I think there is a real danger that any serious third party would simply bring congress to a grinding halt.