"Besides, if your drug is sound, and actually cures or prevents diseases (or even if it doesn't and you advertise as much as Claritin does), people will buy your drugs... Patents don't enter into it."
Until your competitors reverse-engineer that drug you spent hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D, testing, FDA approval, etc. and start producing there own at a small fraction of what you're charging.
After a few times, the pharmaceutical firms will decide not to waste money developing new drugs, since they can't be sure they'll get a profit, or even cover the huge costs that went into all the development.
Oh, they'll gladly spend away all their money because you want to live? Don't be so naive.
Your comment reminds me of what's happened to tipping in meatspace. You know, in restaurants. Originally, tipping was meant to be a bonus given for very good or exceptional service. It was literally a gratuity -- you gave the tip because you wanted to, because you though the waiter/waitress deserved it.
But look at tipping now. You're looked down upon if you don't tip at least 15%, no matter how the service was. Tipping changed from being something done out of gratitude to something done out of obligation. You look like a cheap bum if you don't tip, period. Which really defeats the purpose of tipping in the first place. (Heck, a lot of restaurants automatically add a 15% obligatory "gratuity" to your bill for parties of 6 or more!)
Anyway, that's what your post reminded me of. Ten years down the line, maybe microtipping every site will be something you almost have to do. Or maybe not. OK, I'm done.
Only in higher species. Single-celled life forms typically just split themselves in two to reproduce. But since this is all pretty much simulations and such in a computer, you could have pretty much whatever reproductive system you wanted. Three genders? Why not?
I agree. Does anyone know of a good site that explains what you need to do to disable whatever daemons and such you don't need running, and anything else you need to do to secure a freshly installed Linux distro?
Yes, I am a Linux newbie, but the docs that come with, say, Red Hat 6.2, don't mention anything about how you go about disabling sendmail (which in RH6.1 is installed even if you tell it not to put it on), inetd, wu-ftpd, and whatever other programs, daemons, etc. need to be disabled, removed, or at least reconfigured.
Like you said, it's one thing to say "well, if you're running *nix, you should already know this stuff" and then kvetch that Linux isn't taking over the home desktop market.
Oh, and thanks to anyone who can tell me where I can read about all this stuff.
Just think: If companies could not turn a profit, why would they bother making any products in the first place?
The executives would still earn salaries. Workers don't earn profit from their sale of labor, but they still work.
Not exactly. Existing businesses wouldn't suddenly stop production if we suddenly switched to the "frictionless economy," as you called it. However, there's be much less incentive for entrepreneurs to create new businesses.
To understand this, we must make a distinction between "normal profit" and "economic profit". Normal profit is merely the base payment the entrepreneur needs to get for the job to be worth his time. If he earns less than this, he'll quit what he's doing and go to the next-best job. Economic profit is the extra money earned by the company that goes to him.
Entrepreneurs seek economic profit. It's as simple as that. If there's economic profit, that's what draws entrepreneurs to create new businesses in an industry -- they want a piece of the action.
However, in a frictionless economy, economic profit does not exist. Therefore, there's no economic reason for a person to be an entrepreneur and start a new company instead of working for an existing one. To him, the money would be pretty much the same, and joining an existing company requires less work than starting a new one.
Yes, in our current economy, some people are making obscene amounts of money. But outlawing profit isn't the way to do it. The answer is more competition. Competition forces companies to innovate, reduce costs, improve quality, and in short offer a better deal than other firms in the industry. The people making obscene amounts of money are usually the heads of humongous industries in an oligopoly (only a small number of competitors) or a monopoly. I.e., little competition.
It's not that simple, though, and the complications would take longer to explain fully than I really have room to post here. One problem is that some industries almost require an oligopolistic market to be profitable, because there are substantial startup costs that small firms can't handle. Think auto manufacturers: there's a lot of cash you have to lay down to start a factory, so it'll be pretty hard for anyone to start a new company. Another complication is economies of scale, where only large oligopolies or monopolies have the capacities necessary to realize low per-unit costs.
And of course there are other complications too, but in general more competition helps solve the problem of obscene profits. Generally, as competition in a market goes down, prices for consumers go up, and profits for firms increase. Outlawing economic profit isn't the way to solve problems in our mixed economy (no, it's not true capitalism).
P.S. Workers do earn profit from the sale of labor. It's called wages. They wouldn't be working if they weren't getting paid for it.
(Wow, this is pretty far down in the list. Wonder if anyone'll actually read it....)
"Just think: If companies could not turn a profit, most every product they sell would be much, much cheaper.
Just think: If companies could not turn a profit, why would they bother making any products in the first place?
"It's funny to me that hardcore capitalists, who complain so often about others feeling entitled to welfare, unemployment, medicare, etc., bitch and moan when they don't feel they're getting the opportunity to turn a profit that they feel "entitled" to.
Kinda like a number of/.ers (not all) bitch and moan when people do turn a profit, because "Everything Should be Free [Beer]!" and they're not getting all the free goodies that they feel "entitled" to.
"With all these new telescopes were coming out with how come we cant use these to see pictures of like europa or pluto or something.... I guess we have no chance of ever spotting another planet around another star if we cant even barely see our own!"
IIRC, pretty much all the extrasolar planets (those not orbiting our sun) were observed via indirect methods. They'd aim the telescope at the star and measure the "wobbling" caused by the planet gravitationally tugging the star as it went around. Another method is the dimming effect a planet would have as it eclipses the star it orbits.
However, I'd image big honkin' huge telescopes like that are optimized to look at stuff that's really really far away and not stuff that's relatively close like planets in our solar system. It's like how you really can't focus on something when it's right in your face -- your eyes don't work well at that close of range.
Also, this is a radio telescope, not an optical one. You wouldn't be able to see the planet anyway, although you could measure any radio emissions or radio reflections coming from its direction.
My big concern is that if you're capable of believing that god created life on earth, what aren't you capable of believing? The "all powerful" creature that works in "ways that cannot be understood" is a monsterous monkeywrench in critical thinking. There are people who believe the earth is hollow. If you believe in the all-pwerful/not-understandable god, you have no basis to disbelieve or be skeptical of the hollow-earthists. The supreme and incomprehensible being could easily hollow the earth out. Go and look, see the earth isn't hollow. But it could have been filled in seconds before you looked and hollowed out again as soon as you turn your back. Or it's non-hollowness could be an illusion. With an omnipotent/incomprehensible god it's as equally probable as any other possibility.
Um... doesn't quantum mechanics say the same thing? Unless you're observing something, you don't know if it's there or not, and even if you are observing, you can't even observe it perfectly.
"How can they objectively prove that an object millions and millions of miles away contains life forms."
How about "they go look and find some"? Actually, you can't prove they don't exist, but you can easily prove that they do (if they do, of course).
"If God had created any life outside of this Earth He would have written so in his word, the Bible."
Um, the Bible is a religious text, not a scientific one. The Bible doesn't say anything about electrons either, but you're reading Slashdot, aren't you?
Maybe one of you/. guys who knows more about crypto and how this PGP bug/hole/backdoor (depending on your level of paranoid, judging by other posts) applies to this situation:
I use PGP 6.5.3 for Win32 to encrypt the e-mail between myself and home while I'm away at college. I generated both keypairs (mine and the home one) myself, and copied them between the two computers via diskette. In other words, the public keys themselves never traveled across an untrusted network (ie the Internet). So, does this PGP problem affect me in this case whatsoever?
Extending the situation, does this problem have any effect if keys are exchanged via some secure channel, where no potentially untrusted third party has access to the keys (and the chance to add an ADK to them)? So, don't trust the keyservers (which I never use) and you'll pretty much be OK as long as you get the public key directly from the person it belongs to?
(Note: those who want to tell me "Get GPG, you luser" need not reply. Although I could certainly use the DOS port of it, or the true *n*x version, my family at home can't. I doubt I could successfully teach them (who are much like the average computer users) to use a DOS program to encrypt e-mail through the AOL client (yes, they use AOL, despite my arguments against it). You're not going to have true "cryptography for the masses" until you make it easy-to-use for the average user (read: until it has a GUI interface on it).)
Say you like Pepsi but your neighbor next door likes Coke and your neighbor across the street likes Seven-Up--the kind of data harvestable from supermarket checkout records. It will become possible to tailor the soft-drink image in the broadcast signal to reach each of you with your preferred brand.
Am I the only one who finds this silly? Think about it logically. I buy Product X. I like Product X. Therefore, they insert lots of advertisements for Product X into the TV stream. And that changes my buying habits how exactly?
Who pitched this idea to their boss? "I know, we'll try to sell them stuff they already buy! That's a good use of our advertising budget!"
(Yes, I know force-feeding you ads for complementary goods to Product X would be the "proper" use for this technology. But you would've though they would have said THAT instead. Gotta love marketers' logic....)
"Puh-leeeeeeze. Unless the FBI all of a sudden raises its number of employees by a factor of ten thousand or so, surveillance on every American citizen is not possible."
Sure it is, if you have black boxes attached to all the entry nodes (ie, ISPs) in the country. The vast majority of e-mail messages wouldn't interest the FBI at all. Those that match the keywords (or whatever exact system Carnivore uses) would be stored in a database for later retrieval. That way, when the FBI does want to investigate a particular person, they already have a log of anything he/she sent since the start of the system that might be "interesting."
Just because most of the logged messages are never used again or are never seen by human eyes doesn't meen it isn't snooping on everyone.
How many black markers does the NSA go though each year censoring -- er, redacting -- Freedom of Information Act releases? Does the NSA have someone whose main job is blocking out words?
When you think about it, whoever is stuck doing that would have to have awfully high security clearance. You can't hand a stack of insert-your-favorite-classified-info-thing-here documents to one of the interns and have them work on it.
The difference between Hunkapiller and Gates is that no one envisions a world with a gene sequencer on every desktop!
In reality, the problem would be even worse. At least if everyone had a sequencer, they would probably have some control over their genetic information. Of course, it'd probably be something goofy like sequencing your babies' genome right after birth so you can copyright/patent it and then control its dissemenation (legally, at least).
But the way things are shaping, regular people won't have control over their genetic information. Going back to your Micro$oft analogy, it would be more like you send a tissue sample to Hunkapiller.NET, which keeps the information and lets you know of anything it decides to tell you.
That's the root of the problem with knowing a person's genome. It isn't the knowledge itself. Rather, it's control over it. Most (but not all) of the horror stories you hear about (eg being denied health insurance because of a genetic trait) tend to come about because Big Corporations have your genetic data and use it in their best interest.
If only we could have a sequencer on every desktop. I guess we'll have to settle on just doing the first step ourselves.
Exactly why I always keep my status bar displayed. Hate sites that turn it off for me, it's that whole shite happening behind your back stuff that really gets me....
Unfortunately even that doesn't always work. A few lines of JavaScript can put any text you want in the status bar, including a faked URL. You'd have to right-click the link to make sure it's really what it says it is, or look at the source. Or, turn of JavaScript altogether.
Granted, it is pretty bad how Microsoft's scripting system will let an e-mailed script screw up anything and everything. I'm not disputing that.
However, you can't blame the OS for everything. In the end, it's the user's fault for running those scripts. It doesn't matter how secure the OS is, if the user is going to do something incredibly stupid to compromise everything. Quick anecdote: where I work, one of the salesman associated with the company ran the ILOVEYOU virus more than three weeks after all the news reports, warnings, and magazine articles about it! You have to use the security built into the OS for it to do anything.
And yes, although I am only learning about *nix-type systems, it seems to me you don't have to be logged in as root to do damage. For example, ILOVEYOU didn't screw with any system files. It targetted data files like mp3s and jpegs. Maybe I'm just a newbie, but wouldn't it be possible to delete a user's mp3s and graphics files without logging in as root? It's still destructive, and sure, it doesn't bring the entire system down. But then, ILOVEYOU didn't cripple the computer itself either.
Here we get back to a clueless user. Of course a networked *nix box will have some decent security on it. But if Joe user buys the latest version of Red Hat Linux and installs it on his machine, what's stopping him from always logging in as root? Sure it's a terrible idea, but he doesn't know that. For him, it lets him get into Linuxconf more easily, and it's the only way he knows how to mount his Windows volume. (OK, he's not a complete idiot, but being fresh from Windows, he isn't familiar with system security procedures.)
Obviously, a script kiddie will choose the path of least resistance if he wants to damage a nameless person's computer. If Windows is the most open to attack, he'll use VBScript. But like I believe I mentioned before, script kiddies use r00tkits to hack into *nix machines, and they have about the same level of expertise as it takes to find a VBScript virus and send that.
Finally, I know Linux mail programs don't allow scripts to run as root. But last time I checked, viruses existed before MS Outlook became the norm under Windows. VBScript might make them easier to write, but when that disappears, they'll target a less insecure platform.
In conclusion, although Microsoft might^H^H^H^H OK, does make it easier for viruses to entire a system, you can't blame them for the entire problem. Someone still has to create the thing (no matter how easy or unsophisticated it is), and the user still has to run the script. My original post was in response to the dozen or so posts that did little more than say "It's all Microsoft's fault!" That's a sure-fire way to getting lax about safeguarding other platforms.
In my opinion the article is overkill, a virus doesn't have to be particularly clever or well designed to cause havok anymore thanks to the beauty of MSFT operating systems. Any script kiddie or MSCE with a passable knowledge of Virus Building Script can bring it all toppling down.
<SARCASM>Yes! Since Microsoft has scripting support in their OS, that means they're to blame for script viruses! How dare they have scripts that run under Windows! Wait a minute...doesn't Linux also support scripts? Never mind that -- more MS bashing!</SARCASM>
But seriously (read before moderating this as Troll of Flamebait), the reason that the e-mail script viruses we've seen all attack MS Outlook isn't because of how terrible Windows is. It's because most computers run Windows! They're targetted just because they're more common! If you wanted to write a malicious virus, would you target at a rarely-used platform or the most common?
Like I said in the rant section of this post, Linux also allows scripts to be run. If Linux were to suddenly have 90% market saturation after MS is (finally!) broken up, we'd start seeing script kiddies targetting Linux users. So maybe they won't be e-mail viruses, but there's always r00tkits and other methods.
Sure, I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but this is ridiculous. But I guess since Microsoft == evil, we on/. must always blame them 100% when someone uses Windows's capabilities maliciously.
Before we start celebrating about how AppleSoup is going to give some legitimacy to Napster-type file sharing systems, read the article, especially this sentence:
"As for what will be carried over the networks, Biondi said he expects short videos to be distributed first, but eventually he envisions the Internet having either network television on demand or its own programming, or a combination."
It sounds like Hollywood is planning on using AppleSoup as a platform to have other computers host videos it wants to distribute. In this sense, it wouldn't really be a file-sharing system, but a way to take the load off of their own servers when Hollywood starts moving toward computer-based distribution. In other words, you can share only what they want you to share. Also, from the article:
"AppleSoup promises to actively police its network to try to find and weed out any file that is violating copyright law."
I'm wondering how they plan to do this. My best guess is that AppleSoup will have a list of the "only" legitimate files allowed to be distributed. Again, this will allow AppleSoup to distribute only what Hollywood wants. There's a good chance, in my opinion, that the average Joe won't be able to post his own homemade shorts or anything. "Actively polic[ing]" the system sounds like they're going to use a whitelist instead of a blacklist.
And of course, the article doesn't say what format these videos will be in. Possibly something specific to AppleSoup, and I'd bet they aren't going to release software for the average user to create these files either.
At least, that's the feeling I get from reading this article.
IANAL, but the privacy statement seems to state that your info will not be sold to a third party. The trick is that if the entire company is sold the a third party, that third party is now a first party.
DISCLAIMER: I Am Not A Lawyer (TM) as well
OK, I agree that in that case, the buyer of the company is now the first party. But wouldn't that also mean that the buyer is by default bound to honor Toysmart's contracts? Which would mean that using the data for marketing etc. still goes against the privacy policy?
It's something like this: XYZ Corp agrees to provide Joe with a service. Joe pays for this service in advance. But before XYZ provides the service, LMNOP Inc. buys the ailing XYZ. LMNOP is still bound to the XYZ contract with Joe, right? It can't keep the money and say, "Sorry, we're a different company now." Isn't this the same principle?
Log files, for example, are created on Web servers whenever users click on the "search" button. Mr. Garfinkel asked, Who has access to those log files? What computers are capturing those log files? What policies do institutions have for automatically deleting those files on a regular basis?
Garfinkel was arguing that FTP and Telnet are insecure partially because the servers can run log files, which can then be used by crackers. But then, he goes on to say that web search forms have the same problem (see quoted paragraph above). So why isn't he urging the colleges to consider shutting down HTTP as well? Heck, log files must be on every server, so block TCP/IP while you're at it!
I think it's been posted before, but the answer isn't removing access to various protocols. Colleges ought to give out a pamphlet of basic security measures to every incoming student, a sort of primer on protecting your computer from crackers. Maybe even provide firewall software for their students? Let's face it: most of them are't going to know anything about computer security, and it's probably their first time they have a high-bandwith always-on connection.
FTP, Telnet, and all the other protocols are useful in one way or another. The potential for misuse shouldn't lead to banning them or blocking them.
IMHO, I don't think we're going to see very many, if any at all, large-scale open-source games. The obvious problem in this case is cheating. Consider an open-source first-person shooter game that lets people play each other over a network. There's nothing to stop anyone from "tweaking" the code to give himself an unfair advantage (e.g., maybe doubling his characters defensive power). Of course the blatant cheaters will be kicked out or ignored soon enough, but someone smarter will make his changes subtle enough not to be readily noticable but still give him an advantage. Instead, however, I do see a future for open-source game development tools. I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who has a few good ideas for games but doesn't have the free time to build all the necessary engines and stuff. Open-source dev tools would help eliminate this problem, letting the designer jump more directly into the artistic/creative stuff. And of course this should be open-source: there's always going to be something you want to change on the game engine, giving it more features you want. Closed-source wouldn't let you do that kind of stuff, reducing the development to nothing more than, say, making new levels for Quake or something. So don't expect any big open-source games to be released, soon or ever. But there would be, I think, a market for open-source game dev tools. Yes, a *market*, as in selling it. All you'd have to do is add features like support/assistance for the code, or something else that goes beyond just the source code and binaries.
This is pretty dumb. ... 2. They do NOT come back on after a period of time, since I've never seen them since turning them off for my family years ago.
That's not entirely true. I don't remember exactly when (I think it was no more than a year ago) when AOL decided to erase whatever marketing prefs its users had already entered. By "erasing", naturally, I mean that all the "Yes, please waste my time with ads!" and "Sure, sell my name, address, and phone number to other companies" were reselected, regardless of what had previously been chosen. Obviously, AOL was hoping that its [l]users weren't going to notice the little e-mail telling them this.
So don't say AOL's being all nice, letting its members turn off those kinds of things.
It's like if the police clock you at 50 over the limit, but they don't catch you. However, they do get your liscence plate number. They have nothing on YOU because anybody could have been driving the car.
Actually, that's not true. If the car is registered to you, then you are responsible for how it is used (unless in the case of theft, naturally). If your girlfriend was driving your car in the scenario you suggested, you still get the ticket. It might not be your fault, but you'll get "punished" because you entrusted your girlfriend with your car and therefore are responsible in part for the ticket.
More on topic: If RIAA or whoever gets your IP, and then your ISP terminates your account, that's too bad. The "it wasn't actually me logged in" excuse won't cut it. After all, you gave the other person your password (in effect), but the account is still yours. The ISP will come back and say, "OK, so maybe it wasn't you who downloaded MP3s of [insert RIAA band here]. But you let other people use your account to download them, which is a breach of the terms of service and/or EULA, so we're cancelling your account anyway."
Slashdot Mirror
"Besides, if your drug is sound, and actually cures or prevents diseases (or even if it doesn't and you advertise as much as Claritin does), people will buy your drugs... Patents don't enter into it."
Until your competitors reverse-engineer that drug you spent hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D, testing, FDA approval, etc. and start producing there own at a small fraction of what you're charging.
After a few times, the pharmaceutical firms will decide not to waste money developing new drugs, since they can't be sure they'll get a profit, or even cover the huge costs that went into all the development.
Oh, they'll gladly spend away all their money because you want to live? Don't be so naive.
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Your comment reminds me of what's happened to tipping in meatspace. You know, in restaurants. Originally, tipping was meant to be a bonus given for very good or exceptional service. It was literally a gratuity -- you gave the tip because you wanted to, because you though the waiter/waitress deserved it.
But look at tipping now. You're looked down upon if you don't tip at least 15%, no matter how the service was. Tipping changed from being something done out of gratitude to something done out of obligation. You look like a cheap bum if you don't tip, period. Which really defeats the purpose of tipping in the first place. (Heck, a lot of restaurants automatically add a 15% obligatory "gratuity" to your bill for parties of 6 or more!)
Anyway, that's what your post reminded me of. Ten years down the line, maybe microtipping every site will be something you almost have to do. Or maybe not. OK, I'm done.
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"Reproduction takes two."
Only in higher species. Single-celled life forms typically just split themselves in two to reproduce. But since this is all pretty much simulations and such in a computer, you could have pretty much whatever reproductive system you wanted. Three genders? Why not?
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"And what if they [the machines] go open source...?"
Why would they? Open source to a computer would mean pretty much the same thing as "open binary software" would to you and me.
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I agree. Does anyone know of a good site that explains what you need to do to disable whatever daemons and such you don't need running, and anything else you need to do to secure a freshly installed Linux distro?
Yes, I am a Linux newbie, but the docs that come with, say, Red Hat 6.2, don't mention anything about how you go about disabling sendmail (which in RH6.1 is installed even if you tell it not to put it on), inetd, wu-ftpd, and whatever other programs, daemons, etc. need to be disabled, removed, or at least reconfigured.
Like you said, it's one thing to say "well, if you're running *nix, you should already know this stuff" and then kvetch that Linux isn't taking over the home desktop market.
Oh, and thanks to anyone who can tell me where I can read about all this stuff.
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Not exactly. Existing businesses wouldn't suddenly stop production if we suddenly switched to the "frictionless economy," as you called it. However, there's be much less incentive for entrepreneurs to create new businesses.
To understand this, we must make a distinction between "normal profit" and "economic profit". Normal profit is merely the base payment the entrepreneur needs to get for the job to be worth his time. If he earns less than this, he'll quit what he's doing and go to the next-best job. Economic profit is the extra money earned by the company that goes to him.
Entrepreneurs seek economic profit. It's as simple as that. If there's economic profit, that's what draws entrepreneurs to create new businesses in an industry -- they want a piece of the action.
However, in a frictionless economy, economic profit does not exist. Therefore, there's no economic reason for a person to be an entrepreneur and start a new company instead of working for an existing one. To him, the money would be pretty much the same, and joining an existing company requires less work than starting a new one.
Yes, in our current economy, some people are making obscene amounts of money. But outlawing profit isn't the way to do it. The answer is more competition. Competition forces companies to innovate, reduce costs, improve quality, and in short offer a better deal than other firms in the industry. The people making obscene amounts of money are usually the heads of humongous industries in an oligopoly (only a small number of competitors) or a monopoly. I.e., little competition.
It's not that simple, though, and the complications would take longer to explain fully than I really have room to post here. One problem is that some industries almost require an oligopolistic market to be profitable, because there are substantial startup costs that small firms can't handle. Think auto manufacturers: there's a lot of cash you have to lay down to start a factory, so it'll be pretty hard for anyone to start a new company. Another complication is economies of scale, where only large oligopolies or monopolies have the capacities necessary to realize low per-unit costs.
And of course there are other complications too, but in general more competition helps solve the problem of obscene profits. Generally, as competition in a market goes down, prices for consumers go up, and profits for firms increase. Outlawing economic profit isn't the way to solve problems in our mixed economy (no, it's not true capitalism).
P.S. Workers do earn profit from the sale of labor. It's called wages. They wouldn't be working if they weren't getting paid for it.
(Wow, this is pretty far down in the list. Wonder if anyone'll actually read it....)
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"Just think: If companies could not turn a profit, most every product they sell would be much, much cheaper.
Just think: If companies could not turn a profit, why would they bother making any products in the first place?
"It's funny to me that hardcore capitalists, who complain so often about others feeling entitled to welfare, unemployment, medicare, etc., bitch and moan when they don't feel they're getting the opportunity to turn a profit that they feel "entitled" to.
Kinda like a number of /.ers (not all) bitch and moan when people do turn a profit, because "Everything Should be Free [Beer]!" and they're not getting all the free goodies that they feel "entitled" to.
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"With all these new telescopes were coming out with how come we cant use these to see pictures of like europa or pluto or something.... I guess we have no chance of ever spotting another planet around another star if we cant even barely see our own!"
IIRC, pretty much all the extrasolar planets (those not orbiting our sun) were observed via indirect methods. They'd aim the telescope at the star and measure the "wobbling" caused by the planet gravitationally tugging the star as it went around. Another method is the dimming effect a planet would have as it eclipses the star it orbits.However, I'd image big honkin' huge telescopes like that are optimized to look at stuff that's really really far away and not stuff that's relatively close like planets in our solar system. It's like how you really can't focus on something when it's right in your face -- your eyes don't work well at that close of range.
Also, this is a radio telescope, not an optical one. You wouldn't be able to see the planet anyway, although you could measure any radio emissions or radio reflections coming from its direction.
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My big concern is that if you're capable of believing that god created life on earth, what aren't you capable of believing? The "all powerful" creature that works in "ways that cannot be understood" is a monsterous monkeywrench in critical thinking. There are people who believe the earth is hollow. If you believe in the all-pwerful/not-understandable god, you have no basis to disbelieve or be skeptical of the hollow-earthists. The supreme and incomprehensible being could easily hollow the earth out. Go and look, see the earth isn't hollow. But it could have been filled in seconds before you looked and hollowed out again as soon as you turn your back. Or it's non-hollowness could be an illusion. With an omnipotent/incomprehensible god it's as equally probable as any other possibility.
Um... doesn't quantum mechanics say the same thing? Unless you're observing something, you don't know if it's there or not, and even if you are observing, you can't even observe it perfectly.
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"How can they objectively prove that an object millions and millions of miles away contains life forms."
How about "they go look and find some"? Actually, you can't prove they don't exist, but you can easily prove that they do (if they do, of course).
"If God had created any life outside of this Earth He would have written so in his word, the Bible."
Um, the Bible is a religious text, not a scientific one. The Bible doesn't say anything about electrons either, but you're reading Slashdot, aren't you?
(And yes, I have read the Bible, thank you)
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Maybe one of you /. guys who knows more about crypto and how this PGP bug/hole/backdoor (depending on your level of paranoid, judging by other posts) applies to this situation:
I use PGP 6.5.3 for Win32 to encrypt the e-mail between myself and home while I'm away at college. I generated both keypairs (mine and the home one) myself, and copied them between the two computers via diskette. In other words, the public keys themselves never traveled across an untrusted network (ie the Internet). So, does this PGP problem affect me in this case whatsoever?
Extending the situation, does this problem have any effect if keys are exchanged via some secure channel, where no potentially untrusted third party has access to the keys (and the chance to add an ADK to them)? So, don't trust the keyservers (which I never use) and you'll pretty much be OK as long as you get the public key directly from the person it belongs to?
(Note: those who want to tell me "Get GPG, you luser" need not reply. Although I could certainly use the DOS port of it, or the true *n*x version, my family at home can't. I doubt I could successfully teach them (who are much like the average computer users) to use a DOS program to encrypt e-mail through the AOL client (yes, they use AOL, despite my arguments against it). You're not going to have true "cryptography for the masses" until you make it easy-to-use for the average user (read: until it has a GUI interface on it).)
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Say you like Pepsi but your neighbor next door likes Coke and your neighbor across the street likes Seven-Up--the kind of data harvestable from supermarket checkout records. It will become possible to tailor the soft-drink image in the broadcast signal to reach each of you with your preferred brand.
Am I the only one who finds this silly? Think about it logically. I buy Product X. I like Product X. Therefore, they insert lots of advertisements for Product X into the TV stream. And that changes my buying habits how exactly?
Who pitched this idea to their boss? "I know, we'll try to sell them stuff they already buy! That's a good use of our advertising budget!"
(Yes, I know force-feeding you ads for complementary goods to Product X would be the "proper" use for this technology. But you would've though they would have said THAT instead. Gotta love marketers' logic....)
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"Puh-leeeeeeze. Unless the FBI all of a sudden raises its number of employees by a factor of ten thousand or so, surveillance on every American citizen is not possible."
Sure it is, if you have black boxes attached to all the entry nodes (ie, ISPs) in the country. The vast majority of e-mail messages wouldn't interest the FBI at all. Those that match the keywords (or whatever exact system Carnivore uses) would be stored in a database for later retrieval. That way, when the FBI does want to investigate a particular person, they already have a log of anything he/she sent since the start of the system that might be "interesting."
Just because most of the logged messages are never used again or are never seen by human eyes doesn't meen it isn't snooping on everyone.
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"Better dead than smeg."
"I am an 'INTP'. The middle two letters (NT) are very common type of personality for programmers."
Jeez. The last person a Shashdot reader wants to hear is that they're NT at heart. Is using Linux instead just a form of denial?
(sorry -- couldn't resist)
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"Better dead than smeg."
Here's my question:
How many black markers does the NSA go though each year censoring -- er, redacting -- Freedom of Information Act releases? Does the NSA have someone whose main job is blocking out words?
When you think about it, whoever is stuck doing that would have to have awfully high security clearance. You can't hand a stack of insert-your-favorite-classified-info-thing-here documents to one of the interns and have them work on it.
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"Better dead than smeg."
The difference between Hunkapiller and Gates is that no one envisions a world with a gene sequencer on every desktop!
In reality, the problem would be even worse. At least if everyone had a sequencer, they would probably have some control over their genetic information. Of course, it'd probably be something goofy like sequencing your babies' genome right after birth so you can copyright/patent it and then control its dissemenation (legally, at least).
But the way things are shaping, regular people won't have control over their genetic information. Going back to your Micro$oft analogy, it would be more like you send a tissue sample to Hunkapiller.NET, which keeps the information and lets you know of anything it decides to tell you.
That's the root of the problem with knowing a person's genome. It isn't the knowledge itself. Rather, it's control over it. Most (but not all) of the horror stories you hear about (eg being denied health insurance because of a genetic trait) tend to come about because Big Corporations have your genetic data and use it in their best interest.
If only we could have a sequencer on every desktop. I guess we'll have to settle on just doing the first step ourselves.
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"Better dead than smeg."
Exactly why I always keep my status bar displayed. Hate sites that turn it off for me, it's that whole shite happening behind your back stuff that really gets me....
Unfortunately even that doesn't always work. A few lines of JavaScript can put any text you want in the status bar, including a faked URL. You'd have to right-click the link to make sure it's really what it says it is, or look at the source. Or, turn of JavaScript altogether.
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"Better dead than smeg."
OK, I'll bite.
Granted, it is pretty bad how Microsoft's scripting system will let an e-mailed script screw up anything and everything. I'm not disputing that.
However, you can't blame the OS for everything. In the end, it's the user's fault for running those scripts. It doesn't matter how secure the OS is, if the user is going to do something incredibly stupid to compromise everything. Quick anecdote: where I work, one of the salesman associated with the company ran the ILOVEYOU virus more than three weeks after all the news reports, warnings, and magazine articles about it! You have to use the security built into the OS for it to do anything.
And yes, although I am only learning about *nix-type systems, it seems to me you don't have to be logged in as root to do damage. For example, ILOVEYOU didn't screw with any system files. It targetted data files like mp3s and jpegs. Maybe I'm just a newbie, but wouldn't it be possible to delete a user's mp3s and graphics files without logging in as root? It's still destructive, and sure, it doesn't bring the entire system down. But then, ILOVEYOU didn't cripple the computer itself either.
Here we get back to a clueless user. Of course a networked *nix box will have some decent security on it. But if Joe user buys the latest version of Red Hat Linux and installs it on his machine, what's stopping him from always logging in as root? Sure it's a terrible idea, but he doesn't know that. For him, it lets him get into Linuxconf more easily, and it's the only way he knows how to mount his Windows volume. (OK, he's not a complete idiot, but being fresh from Windows, he isn't familiar with system security procedures.)
Obviously, a script kiddie will choose the path of least resistance if he wants to damage a nameless person's computer. If Windows is the most open to attack, he'll use VBScript. But like I believe I mentioned before, script kiddies use r00tkits to hack into *nix machines, and they have about the same level of expertise as it takes to find a VBScript virus and send that.
Finally, I know Linux mail programs don't allow scripts to run as root. But last time I checked, viruses existed before MS Outlook became the norm under Windows. VBScript might make them easier to write, but when that disappears, they'll target a less insecure platform.
In conclusion, although Microsoft might^H^H^H^H OK, does make it easier for viruses to entire a system, you can't blame them for the entire problem. Someone still has to create the thing (no matter how easy or unsophisticated it is), and the user still has to run the script. My original post was in response to the dozen or so posts that did little more than say "It's all Microsoft's fault!" That's a sure-fire way to getting lax about safeguarding other platforms.
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"Better dead than smeg."
In my opinion the article is overkill, a virus doesn't have to be particularly clever or well designed to cause havok anymore thanks to the beauty of MSFT operating systems. Any script kiddie or MSCE with a passable knowledge of Virus Building Script can bring it all toppling down.
<SARCASM>Yes! Since Microsoft has scripting support in their OS, that means they're to blame for script viruses! How dare they have scripts that run under Windows! Wait a minute...doesn't Linux also support scripts? Never mind that -- more MS bashing!</SARCASM>
But seriously (read before moderating this as Troll of Flamebait), the reason that the e-mail script viruses we've seen all attack MS Outlook isn't because of how terrible Windows is. It's because most computers run Windows! They're targetted just because they're more common! If you wanted to write a malicious virus, would you target at a rarely-used platform or the most common?
Like I said in the rant section of this post, Linux also allows scripts to be run. If Linux were to suddenly have 90% market saturation after MS is (finally!) broken up, we'd start seeing script kiddies targetting Linux users. So maybe they won't be e-mail viruses, but there's always r00tkits and other methods.
Sure, I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but this is ridiculous. But I guess since Microsoft == evil, we on /. must always blame them 100% when someone uses Windows's capabilities maliciously.
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"Better dead than smeg."
Before we start celebrating about how AppleSoup is going to give some legitimacy to Napster-type file sharing systems, read the article, especially this sentence:
"As for what will be carried over the networks, Biondi said he expects short videos to be distributed first, but eventually he envisions the Internet having either network television on demand or its own programming, or a combination."
It sounds like Hollywood is planning on using AppleSoup as a platform to have other computers host videos it wants to distribute. In this sense, it wouldn't really be a file-sharing system, but a way to take the load off of their own servers when Hollywood starts moving toward computer-based distribution. In other words, you can share only what they want you to share. Also, from the article:
"AppleSoup promises to actively police its network to try to find and weed out any file that is violating copyright law."
I'm wondering how they plan to do this. My best guess is that AppleSoup will have a list of the "only" legitimate files allowed to be distributed. Again, this will allow AppleSoup to distribute only what Hollywood wants. There's a good chance, in my opinion, that the average Joe won't be able to post his own homemade shorts or anything. "Actively polic[ing]" the system sounds like they're going to use a whitelist instead of a blacklist.
And of course, the article doesn't say what format these videos will be in. Possibly something specific to AppleSoup, and I'd bet they aren't going to release software for the average user to create these files either.
At least, that's the feeling I get from reading this article.
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"Better dead than smeg."
DISCLAIMER: I Am Not A Lawyer (TM) as well
OK, I agree that in that case, the buyer of the company is now the first party. But wouldn't that also mean that the buyer is by default bound to honor Toysmart's contracts? Which would mean that using the data for marketing etc. still goes against the privacy policy?
It's something like this: XYZ Corp agrees to provide Joe with a service. Joe pays for this service in advance. But before XYZ provides the service, LMNOP Inc. buys the ailing XYZ. LMNOP is still bound to the XYZ contract with Joe, right? It can't keep the money and say, "Sorry, we're a different company now." Isn't this the same principle?
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"Better dead than smeg."
From the article:
Garfinkel was arguing that FTP and Telnet are insecure partially because the servers can run log files, which can then be used by crackers. But then, he goes on to say that web search forms have the same problem (see quoted paragraph above). So why isn't he urging the colleges to consider shutting down HTTP as well? Heck, log files must be on every server, so block TCP/IP while you're at it!
I think it's been posted before, but the answer isn't removing access to various protocols. Colleges ought to give out a pamphlet of basic security measures to every incoming student, a sort of primer on protecting your computer from crackers. Maybe even provide firewall software for their students? Let's face it: most of them are't going to know anything about computer security, and it's probably their first time they have a high-bandwith always-on connection.
FTP, Telnet, and all the other protocols are useful in one way or another. The potential for misuse shouldn't lead to banning them or blocking them.
IMHO, I don't think we're going to see very many, if any at all, large-scale open-source games. The obvious problem in this case is cheating. Consider an open-source first-person shooter game that lets people play each other over a network. There's nothing to stop anyone from "tweaking" the code to give himself an unfair advantage (e.g., maybe doubling his characters defensive power). Of course the blatant cheaters will be kicked out or ignored soon enough, but someone smarter will make his changes subtle enough not to be readily noticable but still give him an advantage. Instead, however, I do see a future for open-source game development tools. I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who has a few good ideas for games but doesn't have the free time to build all the necessary engines and stuff. Open-source dev tools would help eliminate this problem, letting the designer jump more directly into the artistic/creative stuff. And of course this should be open-source: there's always going to be something you want to change on the game engine, giving it more features you want. Closed-source wouldn't let you do that kind of stuff, reducing the development to nothing more than, say, making new levels for Quake or something. So don't expect any big open-source games to be released, soon or ever. But there would be, I think, a market for open-source game dev tools. Yes, a *market*, as in selling it. All you'd have to do is add features like support/assistance for the code, or something else that goes beyond just the source code and binaries.
This is pretty dumb.
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2. They do NOT come back on after a period of time, since I've never seen them since turning them off for my family years ago.
That's not entirely true. I don't remember exactly when (I think it was no more than a year ago) when AOL decided to erase whatever marketing prefs its users had already entered. By "erasing", naturally, I mean that all the "Yes, please waste my time with ads!" and "Sure, sell my name, address, and phone number to other companies" were reselected, regardless of what had previously been chosen. Obviously, AOL was hoping that its [l]users weren't going to notice the little e-mail telling them this.
So don't say AOL's being all nice, letting its members turn off those kinds of things.
It's like if the police clock you at 50 over the limit, but they don't catch you. However, they do get your liscence plate number. They have nothing on YOU because anybody could have been driving the car.
Actually, that's not true. If the car is registered to you, then you are responsible for how it is used (unless in the case of theft, naturally). If your girlfriend was driving your car in the scenario you suggested, you still get the ticket. It might not be your fault, but you'll get "punished" because you entrusted your girlfriend with your car and therefore are responsible in part for the ticket.
More on topic: If RIAA or whoever gets your IP, and then your ISP terminates your account, that's too bad. The "it wasn't actually me logged in" excuse won't cut it. After all, you gave the other person your password (in effect), but the account is still yours. The ISP will come back and say, "OK, so maybe it wasn't you who downloaded MP3s of [insert RIAA band here]. But you let other people use your account to download them, which is a breach of the terms of service and/or EULA, so we're cancelling your account anyway."