Genomics researchers use essentially the same strategy to look for similarities in DNA (the other source code...)
They take a long string of DNA and compute hashes of base positions
1 - 16 2 - 17 3 - 18
and so on...
53101 - 53116
and so fourth...
They also have a neat hack called dotplots. You make a scatter plot, and put a dot at coordinates (x, y) iff the hash of sequence X at position x equals the hash of sequence Y at position y. Similar regions of code show up as diagnoal runs of dots.
You can also dotplot a piece of code against itself. In DNA, you often see repeated regions, and sometimes see inverted repeats, where the diagonals slant down instead of up.
Large repeated regions in C code would suggest poor coding practice. Inverted repeats in C would be bizarre.
Suppose there's something (like heart disease) that afflicts 10% of the population. Faced with an uncertain future, Joe (and his 9 cohorts) buys insurance so that he can pay for treatment if he is the unlucky 10%.
Now suppose that improving technology (like DNA sequencing) allows us to predict the future: Joe will get heart disease (and his 9 cohorts won't). Since the future is certain, the insurance market vanishes. No one will sell Joe insurance, because he is a known loss, and his 9 cohorts won't buy insurance, because they know that they won't need it.
Now when Joe gets heart disease, he can't afford treatment. Do we as a society institute some kind of welfare system to pay for Joe's treatment? Or do we just leave him to die?
I find it funny when people complain about the rediculousness of low-tech firearms on a spaceship
OK, I'll bite.
I used to watch Lost In Space when I was a kid. I knew it was hokey, but as long as I accepted it on its own terms, it was good enought for TV.
Then one year I came home from college, and I was channel surfing, and I stumbled across an old episode. The Robinsons were trapped on some alien space craft, and they were shooting their way out, firing those laser pistols they always carried, and then one of them starts lobbing grenades...and I'm just sitting there thinking...
...yeah, that's the ticket. Whenever
I'm on board a strange spacecraft, I always lob a few fragmentation grenades around. If their containment vessel can't handle the shock, that's their problem.
Hissing noise? What hissing noise? Hey...does the air in here seem little thin?
The FBI doesn't want to find Bulger (his testimony would be too embarrasing), so they are posting wanted ads in a medium (web banner ads) that is known not to work.
they most likely just have an understanding with the relevant District Attorney. The FBI chooses whom to arrest, and the DA decides which cases to prosecute
Here in Boston, we just sent an FBI agent--name of Connolly--up the river for having "understandings" like that with some of the local wise guys.
Granted, they were into kneecaps, not kiddy porn, but I'm hard pressed to see the difference in principle--or law.
Another reason for technical people not to read patents is that courts in the United States have held that unless you are a patent attorney, you aren't competent to determine whether you are infringing a given patent.
This makes reading patents a real lose-lose proposition:
if you think you infringe and you do infringe, then you knowlingly infringe
if you think you don't infringe and you do infringe, then you still knowlingly infringe, because you weren't competent to think that you didn't infringe
Control. The music industry is no different from any other huge corporation...When faced with a new technology...that will revolutionize their business, their response is...
a. Destroy it. And if they cannot,
b. Control it. And if they cannot,
c. Control the consumer...
and control is why the music industry will never implement her "modest proposal": if it succeeds, then they lose control of the market, and with it their monoploy profits.
This absolutely correct, and Ian seems to not quite get it
If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! Here's a fool-proof way to deliver music to millions who might otherwise would never purchase a CD in a store...It's instantaneous, costs are minimal, shipping non-existant...a staggering vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs.
All true, and if you think about it, you realize that this is why the music industry is terrified: if you have the internet, you don't need the record labels.
One of the express design goals of Perl6 is full backward compatability with Perl5 code.
One of the reasons that Perl6 is happening now is that the technology to do this was proven out over the last few years through the work done on the Perl B::* modules.
Hard to take seriously
on
Cyber-Attacks?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Look at the graph titled "Rise in Cyber Attacks". It shows an exponential rise in the "Number of reported cyber incidents". Pretty scary, no?
Now read the footnote
*Includes probes, illicit entry and attacks aimed at causing damage or taking control
It's hard to take something like this seriously. It's like putting up a graph showing "Rise in illegal activity", with a footnote that says,
*includes parking violations, theft, and murder
- SWM
These are a few of my favorite (Microsoft) bugs
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Libertarians recognize the administration of justice as an essential function of government. It is one of the few things that CAN NOT and SHOULD NOT be privatized.
Re:What needs to happen...
on
ICANN Updates
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Every decision about assigning IP addresses to corresponding web addresses should be democratically made by the net-community.
How about
Every decision about assigning IP addresses to corresponding web addresses should made by the individual who wants to access the web site.
To access a web site, type its IP address. If you don't like typing IP addresses, build a database. If you don't have the time/inclination to build your own database, subscribe to one.
It's not a technical problem. It's not even an implementation problem. All popular operating systems allow you to specify the IP address of your DNS server, and there are already alternate DNS servers out there. If you don't like ICANN's, find another.
Slashdot Mirror
Genomics researchers use essentially the same strategy to look for similarities in DNA (the other source code...)
They take a long string of DNA and compute hashes of base positions
1 - 16
2 - 17
3 - 18
and so on...
53101 - 53116
and so fourth...
They also have a neat hack called dotplots. You make a scatter plot, and put a dot at coordinates (x, y) iff the hash of sequence X at position x equals the hash of sequence Y at position y. Similar regions of code show up as diagnoal runs of dots.
You can also dotplot a piece of code against itself. In DNA, you often see repeated regions, and sometimes see inverted repeats, where the diagonals slant down instead of up.
Large repeated regions in C code would suggest poor coding practice. Inverted repeats in C would be bizarre.
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/rants/merlyn.ht ml
Suppose there's something (like heart disease) that afflicts 10% of the population. Faced with an uncertain future, Joe (and his 9 cohorts) buys insurance so that he can pay for treatment if he is the unlucky 10%.
Now suppose that improving technology (like DNA sequencing) allows us to predict the future: Joe will get heart disease (and his 9 cohorts won't). Since the future is certain, the insurance market vanishes. No one will sell Joe insurance, because he is a known loss, and his 9 cohorts won't buy insurance, because they know that they won't need it.
Now when Joe gets heart disease, he can't afford treatment. Do we as a society institute some kind of welfare system to pay for Joe's treatment? Or do we just leave him to die?
of the same subject
How The Internet Will Make The Record Labels Evaporate
OK, I'll bite.
I used to watch Lost In Space when I was a kid. I knew it was hokey, but as long as I accepted it on its own terms, it was good enought for TV.
Then one year I came home from college, and I was channel surfing, and I stumbled across an old episode. The Robinsons were trapped on some alien space craft, and they were shooting their way out, firing those laser pistols they always carried, and then one of them starts lobbing grenades...and I'm just sitting there thinking...
The FBI doesn't want to find Bulger (his testimony would be too embarrasing), so they are posting wanted ads in a medium (web banner ads) that is known not to work.
It all makes sense.
From the article
Sales revenue has risen from about $435 billion in 1990 to around $660 billion last year.
Can anyone comfirm this? $500B is about 5% of GDP.
Do you spend 5% of your gross income on stuff that telemarketers sell you?
XS Mechanics
It might not be that good
DRM...could be used...to make sure that what you think is the output from the voting software really is.
The output from the voting software will be whatever the people who control the DRM system want it to be.
And once the DRM system is compromised, you won't even know who controls it.
I assume from this that Feynman once scored 124 on an IQ test.
OTOH, he recounts in one of his books that he sees equations in his head in color: the exponents in brown, the coefficients in green, etc.
A standard IQ test may not accurately measure the intelligence of someone who's brain comes with font-lock.
it is absolutely wrong to steal software from a company. Whether it is ones or zeros or bags of money, it is stealing.
If it's bags of money, it's called stealing.
If it's ones and zeros, it's called copyright infringement.
They are different things.
That's why we have different words for them.
they most likely just have an understanding with the relevant District Attorney. The FBI chooses whom to arrest, and the DA decides which cases to prosecute
Here in Boston, we just sent an FBI agent--name of Connolly--up the river for having "understandings" like that with some of the local wise guys.
Granted, they were into kneecaps, not kiddy porn, but I'm hard pressed to see the difference in principle--or law.
This makes reading patents a real lose-lose proposition:
Don't like it? Write your congressman.
a. Destroy it. And if they cannot,
b. Control it. And if they cannot,
c. Control the consumer...
and control is why the music industry will never implement her "modest proposal": if it succeeds, then they lose control of the market, and with it their monoploy profits.
For further analysis along these lines, see
How The Internet Will Make The Record Labels Evaporate.
from Jakob Nielsen
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9509.html
This absolutely correct, and Ian seems to not quite get it
All true, and if you think about it, you realize that this is why the music industry is terrified: if you have the internet, you don't need the record labels.Further discussion at How The Internet Will Make The Record Labels Evaporate .
Yes.
One of the express design goals of Perl6 is full backward compatability with Perl5 code.
One of the reasons that Perl6 is happening now is that the technology to do this was proven out over the last few years through the work done on the Perl B::* modules.
Look at the graph titled "Rise in Cyber Attacks".
It shows an exponential rise in the "Number of reported cyber incidents".
Pretty scary, no?
Now read the footnote
*Includes probes, illicit entry and attacks aimed at causing damage or taking control
It's hard to take something like this seriously.
It's like putting up a graph showing "Rise in illegal activity", with a footnote that says,
*includes parking violations, theft, and murder
- SWM
Just to show how cool I am.
Libertarians recognize the administration of justice as an essential function of government. It is one of the few things that CAN NOT and SHOULD NOT be privatized.
Security through Obscurity Rules!
'nuff said
- SWM
How about
To access a web site, type its IP address. If you don't like typing IP addresses, build a database. If you don't have the time/inclination to build your own database, subscribe to one.It's not a technical problem. It's not even an implementation problem. All popular operating systems allow you to specify the IP address of your DNS server, and there are already alternate DNS servers out there. If you don't like ICANN's, find another.
Go for anarchy and ICANN becomes a non-issue.
I walked into the used computer store in my town and bought a IBM IntelliStation for $200. Top-quality HW, 90-day warrantee, cash-and-carry.
- SWM
There's really nothing to admire.