Incorrect. Stem cell research has been going on for years in the U.S. and other countries. Bush is just the first president that has said anything about it because stem cell research became politicized round about when he was running for office.
About the only thing that did not break on my truck was the engine. I was impressed with the engine, but the steering column (replaced X3), steering linkage, rear differential (replaced X3), interior switches and materials, brakes, suspension, electrical, body fit and integrity were all so bad as to not be believed. This thing was a street queen receiving meticulous care and service at all required times, so any claims of abuse were absurd. Every time I had to take it down to be serviced or repaired or to fix a recall was another three to four hours lost out of my life. Thanks to my Powerbook, there was at least some productivity in the waiting room waiting for my vehicle or waiting for friends or family to pick me up after the dealer screwed up the service and needed to keep it overnight. It was the most unbelievable product ownership experience of my life.
A number of years ago I wrote an opinion in Epinions regarding a brand new Dodge truck I had purchased (the new ones in 1994 just after the redesign). The opinion was written after about four years of ownership. One week after writing the opinion I had a lawyer (presumably from Chrysler) call me and threaten libel. I replied all I wrote down were the facts. Nothing more and that I had all documentation to back up my claims. If he would like, I could create a website with all of the documentation. I never heard back, but it was that kind of treatment that unfortunately convinced me to never purchase another product from them again. it's too bad, because they do have some of the most exciting products out there, but they simply cannot build them reliably and their customer service (even at the supposed 5 star dealerships was atrocious).
Apple should simply be charging 5 cents instead of 99 cents a song, he said.
The issue is not what Apple is charging, but what the record companies are charging Apple. As I understand it, Apple Computer Inc. is making essentially nothing on the sale of each song, but rather are using song sales to drive sales of iPod and thus Macintosh computers and Apple software. I am sure that Apple would be more than happy to participate in a 5 cents/song pricing scheme, but it is the record industry that is going to be the hard ones to convince. I do not understand how the recording industry can say it would destroy record companies' incentive to invest in new acts when the potential for much greater revenues can be had with increased volume and lower prices. What they are missing is that new music is what is going to be transiently valuable, but that pre-existing libraries of music are a commodity and should economically be treated as such according to all economic theories I am aware of. This means low prices and high volume.
It sounds like you're saying the only person you could harm is yourself.
Negative. Reread my post. Schools and other individuals are potentially involved as well.
In the acceptance letter case, all the letters are sent out at once - or at least not in any particular order. Someone else's results are not a blocking condition on your results
Negative. I have served on admissions boards for medical schools and graduate schools, and it is not uncommon to have provisional letters of acceptance.
See my other comment as to why this is potentially problematic. I too understand the stress related to waiting for acceptance letters, but that does not excuse the actions.
With respect to your question:
They viewed their OWN status, and were informed, possibly, if they had been accepted or denied a month ahead of time. Now, where is the harm?
The harm is making plans that may or may not have all the information possible. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, right? So lets say you do start making plans, sell your house, you and your wife quit your jobs, and get ready to move, but then receive a letter of rejection because your letter of acceptance was provisional and based upon another applicant ahead of you not accepting. The possible permutations of other problems are myriad. Schools would open themselves up to lawsuits and other crap, simply because you chose to not follow the rules and selfishly help yourself to information that may or may not be accurate. This is equivalent to saying "I know there are enough seats in the theatre for everyone in line so I am just going to cut to the front of the line because I don't feel like waiting." What you might not know about that situation is that some folks may already have their tickets, but are not currently standing in line.
Why are you posting this anonymously? That might tell you something up front as most of us have an innate sense of right and wrong and have no problem posting in the clear.
However that said, 1) You do not really know the intentions of the school. Perhaps the hack allowed you to see letters of provisional acceptance? Perhaps those letters were intended to be on a wait list? You do not really know what the intention was until you receive your letter from the school. Otherwise expectations would be unmet and you could not use that in a court of law to press your case. So imagine that you did read that you were accepted, but in reality your letter of acceptance was predicated upon somebody else ahead of you not accepting? You would start making decisions for an entire month to move, make preparations and get ready for business school at Harvard before receiving your letter of rejection because the person ahead of you chose to attend. This structure is in place in many places where people are placed on provisional acceptance lists.
I do appreciate your effort to consider the potential philosophical perspectives but fundamentally, unauthorized access is commonly considered unethical and in many cases is illegal.
You would have had to have access to your sisters log on ID and password to accomplish that in this particular case. Never, Ever give out your passwords to anybody. Even if intentions are honorable, $#!^ like your example could happen.
Wow. So even though only one person actually did the hard work of figuring out how to hack into the site, 119 other individuals figured they too should follow the directions to hack in and learn the results. Harvard (rightly so) decided to not admit any of the 119 even though some of them possibly were initially accepted. Is this a response to some of the unethical and deceptive practices that have been rampant in the business world (i.e. Worldcom, Enron, pick your fav.) of late? Perhaps, but this is especially important in that much of business school (especially in ivy league schools) is about establishing relationships and connections. Do we want a bunch of ethically challenged folks getting to know one another in Harvard business school? I think not. In light of many of the current scandals in the business world, I would like to believe that schools do pay attention to these issues and perform some filtering at the front end rather than filtering or correcting during the educational process. After all, there are some things that cannot be taught. By the time one applies to business school, patterns of behavior are fairly well entrenched and behavioral correction of things we were supposed to learn in kindergarten is not the business schools responsibility.
It would be interesting to find out what their stories are. Why did they do it and what were they possibly thinking? Do they believe they should be blacklisted?
It should also be noted that Harvard was not the only school affected by this hack. Other business schools (MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Duke) were also compromised and I would encourage those schools to adopt the same actions as Harvard in this case.
It is not just about reporting news items. Most blogs are forums for personal opinion, like mine. However, I have also used it for publishing reviews that some folks do find interesting and for the occasional news item. The interesting thing is that through my blog I have received a number of inquiries from traditional journalists looking for information that runs the gamut from Macintosh stuff, to vision research to the latest inquiries on my article discussing the latest Newsweek cover. This is the revolutionary thing about blogs, right? They can encompass a tremendous amount of information that is available via the Internet that allows for the dissemination of information. If you recall, this was one of the original purposes for the Internet, as I recall folks talking about the liberties allowed when one can publish without having to go through the normal hierarchy that limits what gets heard. It is a revolution.
Well, mesh networking does not necessarily need a new 802.11x spec. This article on Tom Bridges blog is republished from the first issue of Make outlines how to create mesh networks using an Airport Express.
It really depends upon what he wants to do. A Masters or doctorate in bioinformatics combined with a bachelors in CS will get you a job very quickly and would be a much better choice than biochemistry if he really wanted to do that kind of work. Look at any one of these programs for bioinformatics training.
Chemistry, economics, business, biology, genetics, physics, computer science, neuroscience are all fields that could use folks with some training in computer science to help with modeling and other problems related to their work.
SGI is one possibility, but most folks doing this sort of work are looking at more inexpensive hardware and building clusters of commodity hardware to do their work. Also Apple's Xserves are proving to be quite cost effective and screaming performers for genetics work.
Ummmm, there are those as well. If I included those in my accounting, we would be closer than 200 or more/day. On days Macsurfer posts a link to a story I write or when some of the better known bloggers post a link to my site, the number of visits can soar to a thousand or more with hits being much greater than that. It was actually almost scary how fast the search bots started crawling the site when it first went live and now they bring up search requests within a day in most cases of posting a story.
I hope you have good protection against comment spam.
I specifically avoided allowing comments to be made within the blog because 1) I did not want to deal with comment spam (although there are some new tools with WordPress that help with commentspam) and 2) I barely have time to respond to the email comments/questions I receive for questions to the site in light of my research/work.
The problem of course is that blogs are accessible world wide and can potentially reach a much larger audience than if you were simply talking to friends about how crappy your company is. To some extent, the fired employees deserve some of the blame as they would have to realize the potential implications of posting the information they did, but this IS the problem with technologic advancement. There are always teething problems associated with new technologies being used within existing methodologies and communication paradigms. The trick is, always be careful of what you say and be willing to take the heat for it......even if it is on a personal blog that might be accessed by hundreds, or thousands of individuals. I am always amazed at the traffic my blog receives for a non-commercial ( I would rather keep it commercial free), personal site. Articles like my What is the iPod are some days getting a hundred hits or more from all over the world, so one should expect that some attention may come your way even with what you may consider minor posts.
Alpha? Jeez, what about buying Compaq? Killing Alpha was just part of that whole unbelievable financial screw up. What about when HP cancelled their calculator line? What about getting out of and back into the storage business? What about not paying enough attention to digital imaging when it was exploding? They've got some good consumer level print stuff now, but they are still missing the pro level stuff. What about not capitalizing on HP IP? Jeez, they are buying everybody elses cameras and iPod clones and such. What happened to all of HP's technology?
Actually, I stand by my statement that no other platform offers the same flexibility. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have other *NIX OS options, but right now Linux does not provide the possibility of running Photoshop, Word, Endnote, Keynote, IDL, along with the websites I run and the calculations I make. I can use Linux for IDL and some of the calculations I make and I can run websites with it at the same time that I perform the other work, but right now there are programs that simply are not available on Linux. Also, plug and play is critically important to me as I also run Firewire cameras for both video conferencing AND scientific image capture. Linux has proved difficult here as well as driver support for printers, color matching support and peripherals. Windows does many of these things, but stability is still a problem and security is a major issue and Linux is simply not there yet for my needs and for the needs of many others.
What is the fundamental difference with the "cluster version" of Windows? OS X clusters just fine and there are no "special editions" other than a few software additions that hardly count as a different OS. And Linux requires very little to get it in a cluster compute configuration.
However, Theimer said the cluster version will include some restrictions on how the version can be used to prevent companies from performing standard Web hosting or other functions.
Wow. When you compare this to the standard capability of OS X, it seems like a real rip off. You get reduced functionality. Why?
The first version will reproduce many basic features of Linux clusters, Theimer said.
Then why not use Linux?
The next version of the Compute Cluster edition will extend to Microsoft's.Net programming infrastructure, letting developers write software using the C# programming language, he said.
Ah, I see why now. But what impetus is there to use the first version if this is coming in the second version? Kinda like Windows 1.0 I guess.
Although such code runs more slowly than C programs running directly on Windows,
Aauuummm........
writing programs in C# that run atop.Net is easier and more secure.
Says who? It certainly is/will be easier but more secure is something that has yet to be proven. To date, the track record is not impressive.
Often, Theimer said, it's more important to have a program as soon as possible than to have it running at peak performance, he said.
Ah, the fast food approach to software design. Don't you know that stuff makes you code obese and causes an early demise necessitating frequent checkups?
A third version will include developer improvements to ease programming on clusters. It also will include high-level management tools and will help customers integrate their high-performance computing equipment with the rest of their infrastructure, he said.
This is going to be in the third version of the release? I guess they have been looking at Xgrid, Pooch and other software and it will take them two versions to integrate what others have already got.
Seriously, Microsoft. Please come up with some innovative features and give us something that no other vendor offers or in a package so slick that we cannot help ourselves, but to purchase the Microsoft solution. This is nothing that is not offered elsewhere in the market, but has the appearance of locking us further into a Microsoft paradigm.
You guys have the right idea in that cluster computing is going to be a bigger market than it currently is, but you have to be more hungry and learn again how to ship software that creates desire and meets your customers needs in a timely fashion.
How so? Because you seem to contradict yourself in the next sentence.
The training you went through was designed to not only desensitize you to the idea of killing another human being but also to instill a second-nature reaction so you could effectively defend yourself.
Look. The idea of a soldier, particularly a Marine, is to kill if necessary. As it was explained to me,...... If you are threatened, you WILL destroy your opponent. Otherwise you will lose and the first rule of warfare is not to lose. Furthermore, if ordered into a combat situation, you will pull the trigger when necessary and in an offensive situation (as opposed to a police action), there is no waiting to be threatened. Malice is not necessarily involved, as it is your job. It is what you do and if you are in a command situation, you will be also be able to order your troops to do the same.
Your training did not (I'm assuming) cause you to go on a killing spree. Videogames do contribute to a desensitization, but only when the "moment of truth" arrives. Getting to that moment is an entirely different thing.
You are talking about two completely different things. There is an innate reluctance to bring harm to another human being in most folks. In some folks who have sociopathic tendencies, this inhibition is already missing. They are pre-wired to be disinhibited to commit violence. The question is: Do video games have any influence on somebody who otherwise would not commit a violent act to become disinhibited and lower the threshold for violence.
There is a reason that the armed services are looking at video games to desensitize soldiers to pulling the trigger on a human being. As far back as the 1930's, the armed forces have known there is an innate reluctance to pulling the trigger on another human being (in most cases), and this resistance has to be overcome by training. Therefore, whereas the first targets were simply targets, modern targets have become more and more realistic, culminating today in video games that are more immersive. When I did the USMC ROTC bootcamp a dozen years ago or so, we had serious serious training to react, react, REACT! when confronted with an enemy target. This training is deeply ingrained so that at what is called "the moment of truth", you will not hesitate.
There likely is a small but significant correlation between video games and increased violence, but this will likely not be any greater than if they properly controlled for other means of aggressive expression, like playing football or rugby or simply getting into fights. Properly controlled studies will also have to control for drug and alcohol abuse.
so wouldn't changing the FSB or Multiplier fix this?
Not working out the math or knowing exactly what Tadayoshi has done, I cannot say for sure, but I am inclined to believe that the resulting signature would be a harmonic or some multiple of the original and still easily able to be identified by adding a function that searched possible variations along any simple modifiers.
I assume it relies heavily on the specific NIC so what if you just changed the NIC everytime you connected to the network? Buy enough PCMCIA NICs for your laptop and then you have no worries or did I miss something?
You assume incorrectly and are missing the point of this technology. Buy all the PCMCIA cards you want and you will still be able to be tracked with this technology. Essentially, it relies on "clock skewing" which means that when a CPU cycles, there are minor nano differences in the architecture of it that induce slight variations in the timing of the clock at various points throughout the CPU. When expanded out to the entire system, CPU, motherboard, peripherals, the differences become more complicated, but unique and thus easier to establish a unique signature.
Ph.D. student Tadayoshi Kohno said: "There are now a number of powerful techniques for remote operating system fingerprinting, that is, remotely determining the operating systems of devices on the Internet. We push this idea further and introduce the notion of remote physical device fingerprinting... without the fingerprinted device's known cooperation."
This dissertation will get this dude himself a position with the NSA. Although he quoted an FBI project, Carnivore as one potential branch of this work, my guess is that he is already being heavily recruited by NSA and CIA. They have more resources than the FBI to grab somebody like this, and would be smart to try and recruit him. Hey Tadayoshi.....you want a job?
Seriously. While lots of folks have been looking at ways to hard code the IP address within the hardware, this is a more impressive (and unique) way of looking at the problem. Everything has a signature of sorts that can be tracked (skin plumes, small molecular phenotypes, genetics, acoustic signatures, thermal signatures, etc....etc....etc...), and Tadayoshi simply decided to examine those small variations built into electronic devices to fingerprint hardware. Very clever, but of course nanomanufacturing is the counter to this technology. I say of course, but the "arms race" to do that is not an insignificant achievement. Tadayoshi's technology will absolutely have some significant staying power.
To those of us that have either been on the platform for a while (or since the beginning), or have already switched from another platform to OS X, this article will not provide much that we do not already know. However, for those not familiar with OS X, it is a pretty good read. I have used many platforms in parallel for years from the early days of the PC revolution (Apple ][, Macintosh, TRS-80, Commodore, Amiga, Atari, Compaq, Windows) to the later workstations (Sun, SGI, NeXT) and have my likes and dislikes for all of them. Having said that however, my preference has fallen on OS X. It is sooo easy to use, is truly plug and play, is more stable, more secure, has most of the GUI and CLI integration a geek could want as well as a pretty good selection of software that makes things either 1) more enjoyable and/or 2) more productive.
For a long while, I had multiple systems on or under my desk, peaking at one time with an SGI Octane, PowerMac 9600, Windows NT, and a Linux box to perform my scientific work, serve a website, do graphics work and general productivity. All of that functionality now exists beautifully in one OS X machine freeing up considerable desktop space. Also, thank goodness for flat panel displays! I serve a couple of websites up on my workstation as well as use it for computational calculations, a front for distributed computing, writing papers, doing graphics for figures and illustrations, preparing presentations etc...etc...etc...
No other platform offers this degree of ease of use combined with flexibility and functionality.
There are other things to consider in "selling" a product. What the market will bear is largely a simplistic economic viewpoint that looks at discrete periods of time. This is a model that will get companies and individuals who advocate those models in trouble with examples like bubbles. Specifically, like those that occurred in the tech markets of the late 90s and the current real estate markets in some parts of the country.
Slashdot Mirror
Incorrect. Stem cell research has been going on for years in the U.S. and other countries. Bush is just the first president that has said anything about it because stem cell research became politicized round about when he was running for office.
About the only thing that did not break on my truck was the engine. I was impressed with the engine, but the steering column (replaced X3), steering linkage, rear differential (replaced X3), interior switches and materials, brakes, suspension, electrical, body fit and integrity were all so bad as to not be believed. This thing was a street queen receiving meticulous care and service at all required times, so any claims of abuse were absurd. Every time I had to take it down to be serviced or repaired or to fix a recall was another three to four hours lost out of my life. Thanks to my Powerbook, there was at least some productivity in the waiting room waiting for my vehicle or waiting for friends or family to pick me up after the dealer screwed up the service and needed to keep it overnight. It was the most unbelievable product ownership experience of my life.
A number of years ago I wrote an opinion in Epinions regarding a brand new Dodge truck I had purchased (the new ones in 1994 just after the redesign). The opinion was written after about four years of ownership. One week after writing the opinion I had a lawyer (presumably from Chrysler) call me and threaten libel. I replied all I wrote down were the facts. Nothing more and that I had all documentation to back up my claims. If he would like, I could create a website with all of the documentation. I never heard back, but it was that kind of treatment that unfortunately convinced me to never purchase another product from them again. it's too bad, because they do have some of the most exciting products out there, but they simply cannot build them reliably and their customer service (even at the supposed 5 star dealerships was atrocious).
Apple should simply be charging 5 cents instead of 99 cents a song, he said.
The issue is not what Apple is charging, but what the record companies are charging Apple. As I understand it, Apple Computer Inc. is making essentially nothing on the sale of each song, but rather are using song sales to drive sales of iPod and thus Macintosh computers and Apple software. I am sure that Apple would be more than happy to participate in a 5 cents/song pricing scheme, but it is the record industry that is going to be the hard ones to convince. I do not understand how the recording industry can say it would destroy record companies' incentive to invest in new acts when the potential for much greater revenues can be had with increased volume and lower prices. What they are missing is that new music is what is going to be transiently valuable, but that pre-existing libraries of music are a commodity and should economically be treated as such according to all economic theories I am aware of. This means low prices and high volume.
It sounds like you're saying the only person you could harm is yourself.
Negative. Reread my post. Schools and other individuals are potentially involved as well.
In the acceptance letter case, all the letters are sent out at once - or at least not in any particular order. Someone else's results are not a blocking condition on your results
Negative. I have served on admissions boards for medical schools and graduate schools, and it is not uncommon to have provisional letters of acceptance.
See my other comment as to why this is potentially problematic. I too understand the stress related to waiting for acceptance letters, but that does not excuse the actions.
With respect to your question:
They viewed their OWN status, and were informed, possibly, if they had been accepted or denied a month ahead of time. Now, where is the harm?
The harm is making plans that may or may not have all the information possible. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, right? So lets say you do start making plans, sell your house, you and your wife quit your jobs, and get ready to move, but then receive a letter of rejection because your letter of acceptance was provisional and based upon another applicant ahead of you not accepting. The possible permutations of other problems are myriad. Schools would open themselves up to lawsuits and other crap, simply because you chose to not follow the rules and selfishly help yourself to information that may or may not be accurate. This is equivalent to saying "I know there are enough seats in the theatre for everyone in line so I am just going to cut to the front of the line because I don't feel like waiting." What you might not know about that situation is that some folks may already have their tickets, but are not currently standing in line.
Why are you posting this anonymously? That might tell you something up front as most of us have an innate sense of right and wrong and have no problem posting in the clear.
However that said, 1) You do not really know the intentions of the school. Perhaps the hack allowed you to see letters of provisional acceptance? Perhaps those letters were intended to be on a wait list? You do not really know what the intention was until you receive your letter from the school. Otherwise expectations would be unmet and you could not use that in a court of law to press your case. So imagine that you did read that you were accepted, but in reality your letter of acceptance was predicated upon somebody else ahead of you not accepting? You would start making decisions for an entire month to move, make preparations and get ready for business school at Harvard before receiving your letter of rejection because the person ahead of you chose to attend. This structure is in place in many places where people are placed on provisional acceptance lists.
I do appreciate your effort to consider the potential philosophical perspectives but fundamentally, unauthorized access is commonly considered unethical and in many cases is illegal.
You would have had to have access to your sisters log on ID and password to accomplish that in this particular case. Never, Ever give out your passwords to anybody. Even if intentions are honorable, $#!^ like your example could happen.
Wow. So even though only one person actually did the hard work of figuring out how to hack into the site, 119 other individuals figured they too should follow the directions to hack in and learn the results. Harvard (rightly so) decided to not admit any of the 119 even though some of them possibly were initially accepted. Is this a response to some of the unethical and deceptive practices that have been rampant in the business world (i.e. Worldcom, Enron, pick your fav.) of late? Perhaps, but this is especially important in that much of business school (especially in ivy league schools) is about establishing relationships and connections. Do we want a bunch of ethically challenged folks getting to know one another in Harvard business school? I think not. In light of many of the current scandals in the business world, I would like to believe that schools do pay attention to these issues and perform some filtering at the front end rather than filtering or correcting during the educational process. After all, there are some things that cannot be taught. By the time one applies to business school, patterns of behavior are fairly well entrenched and behavioral correction of things we were supposed to learn in kindergarten is not the business schools responsibility.
It would be interesting to find out what their stories are. Why did they do it and what were they possibly thinking? Do they believe they should be blacklisted?
It should also be noted that Harvard was not the only school affected by this hack. Other business schools (MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Duke) were also compromised and I would encourage those schools to adopt the same actions as Harvard in this case.
It is not just about reporting news items. Most blogs are forums for personal opinion, like mine. However, I have also used it for publishing reviews that some folks do find interesting and for the occasional news item. The interesting thing is that through my blog I have received a number of inquiries from traditional journalists looking for information that runs the gamut from Macintosh stuff, to vision research to the latest inquiries on my article discussing the latest Newsweek cover. This is the revolutionary thing about blogs, right? They can encompass a tremendous amount of information that is available via the Internet that allows for the dissemination of information. If you recall, this was one of the original purposes for the Internet, as I recall folks talking about the liberties allowed when one can publish without having to go through the normal hierarchy that limits what gets heard. It is a revolution.
Well, mesh networking does not necessarily need a new 802.11x spec. This article on Tom Bridges blog is republished from the first issue of Make outlines how to create mesh networks using an Airport Express.
It really depends upon what he wants to do. A Masters or doctorate in bioinformatics combined with a bachelors in CS will get you a job very quickly and would be a much better choice than biochemistry if he really wanted to do that kind of work. Look at any one of these programs for bioinformatics training.
Chemistry, economics, business, biology, genetics, physics, computer science, neuroscience are all fields that could use folks with some training in computer science to help with modeling and other problems related to their work.
SGI is one possibility, but most folks doing this sort of work are looking at more inexpensive hardware and building clusters of commodity hardware to do their work. Also Apple's Xserves are proving to be quite cost effective and screaming performers for genetics work.
Um those are called spam bots.
Ummmm, there are those as well. If I included those in my accounting, we would be closer than 200 or more/day. On days Macsurfer posts a link to a story I write or when some of the better known bloggers post a link to my site, the number of visits can soar to a thousand or more with hits being much greater than that. It was actually almost scary how fast the search bots started crawling the site when it first went live and now they bring up search requests within a day in most cases of posting a story.
I hope you have good protection against comment spam.
I specifically avoided allowing comments to be made within the blog because 1) I did not want to deal with comment spam (although there are some new tools with WordPress that help with commentspam) and 2) I barely have time to respond to the email comments/questions I receive for questions to the site in light of my research/work.
The problem of course is that blogs are accessible world wide and can potentially reach a much larger audience than if you were simply talking to friends about how crappy your company is. To some extent, the fired employees deserve some of the blame as they would have to realize the potential implications of posting the information they did, but this IS the problem with technologic advancement. There are always teething problems associated with new technologies being used within existing methodologies and communication paradigms. The trick is, always be careful of what you say and be willing to take the heat for it......even if it is on a personal blog that might be accessed by hundreds, or thousands of individuals. I am always amazed at the traffic my blog receives for a non-commercial ( I would rather keep it commercial free), personal site. Articles like my What is the iPod are some days getting a hundred hits or more from all over the world, so one should expect that some attention may come your way even with what you may consider minor posts.
Alpha anyone?
Alpha? Jeez, what about buying Compaq? Killing Alpha was just part of that whole unbelievable financial screw up. What about when HP cancelled their calculator line? What about getting out of and back into the storage business? What about not paying enough attention to digital imaging when it was exploding? They've got some good consumer level print stuff now, but they are still missing the pro level stuff. What about not capitalizing on HP IP? Jeez, they are buying everybody elses cameras and iPod clones and such. What happened to all of HP's technology?
Actually, I stand by my statement that no other platform offers the same flexibility. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have other *NIX OS options, but right now Linux does not provide the possibility of running Photoshop, Word, Endnote, Keynote, IDL, along with the websites I run and the calculations I make. I can use Linux for IDL and some of the calculations I make and I can run websites with it at the same time that I perform the other work, but right now there are programs that simply are not available on Linux. Also, plug and play is critically important to me as I also run Firewire cameras for both video conferencing AND scientific image capture. Linux has proved difficult here as well as driver support for printers, color matching support and peripherals. Windows does many of these things, but stability is still a problem and security is a major issue and Linux is simply not there yet for my needs and for the needs of many others.
What is the fundamental difference with the "cluster version" of Windows? OS X clusters just fine and there are no "special editions" other than a few software additions that hardly count as a different OS. And Linux requires very little to get it in a cluster compute configuration.
.Net programming infrastructure, letting developers write software using the C# programming language, he said.
.Net is easier and more secure.
However, Theimer said the cluster version will include some restrictions on how the version can be used to prevent companies from performing standard Web hosting or other functions.
Wow. When you compare this to the standard capability of OS X, it seems like a real rip off. You get reduced functionality. Why?
The first version will reproduce many basic features of Linux clusters, Theimer said.
Then why not use Linux?
The next version of the Compute Cluster edition will extend to Microsoft's
Ah, I see why now. But what impetus is there to use the first version if this is coming in the second version? Kinda like Windows 1.0 I guess.
Although such code runs more slowly than C programs running directly on Windows,
Aauuummm........
writing programs in C# that run atop
Says who? It certainly is/will be easier but more secure is something that has yet to be proven. To date, the track record is not impressive.
Often, Theimer said, it's more important to have a program as soon as possible than to have it running at peak performance, he said.
Ah, the fast food approach to software design. Don't you know that stuff makes you code obese and causes an early demise necessitating frequent checkups?
A third version will include developer improvements to ease programming on clusters. It also will include high-level management tools and will help customers integrate their high-performance computing equipment with the rest of their infrastructure, he said.
This is going to be in the third version of the release? I guess they have been looking at Xgrid, Pooch and other software and it will take them two versions to integrate what others have already got.
Seriously, Microsoft. Please come up with some innovative features and give us something that no other vendor offers or in a package so slick that we cannot help ourselves, but to purchase the Microsoft solution. This is nothing that is not offered elsewhere in the market, but has the appearance of locking us further into a Microsoft paradigm.
You guys have the right idea in that cluster computing is going to be a bigger market than it currently is, but you have to be more hungry and learn again how to ship software that creates desire and meets your customers needs in a timely fashion.
This is a flawed analogy.
...... If you are threatened, you WILL destroy your opponent. Otherwise you will lose and the first rule of warfare is not to lose. Furthermore, if ordered into a combat situation, you will pull the trigger when necessary and in an offensive situation (as opposed to a police action), there is no waiting to be threatened. Malice is not necessarily involved, as it is your job. It is what you do and if you are in a command situation, you will be also be able to order your troops to do the same.
How so? Because you seem to contradict yourself in the next sentence.
The training you went through was designed to not only desensitize you to the idea of killing another human being but also to instill a second-nature reaction so you could effectively defend yourself.
Look. The idea of a soldier, particularly a Marine, is to kill if necessary. As it was explained to me,
Your training did not (I'm assuming) cause you to go on a killing spree. Videogames do contribute to a desensitization, but only when the "moment of truth" arrives. Getting to that moment is an entirely different thing.
You are talking about two completely different things. There is an innate reluctance to bring harm to another human being in most folks. In some folks who have sociopathic tendencies, this inhibition is already missing. They are pre-wired to be disinhibited to commit violence. The question is: Do video games have any influence on somebody who otherwise would not commit a violent act to become disinhibited and lower the threshold for violence.
There is a reason that the armed services are looking at video games to desensitize soldiers to pulling the trigger on a human being. As far back as the 1930's, the armed forces have known there is an innate reluctance to pulling the trigger on another human being (in most cases), and this resistance has to be overcome by training. Therefore, whereas the first targets were simply targets, modern targets have become more and more realistic, culminating today in video games that are more immersive. When I did the USMC ROTC bootcamp a dozen years ago or so, we had serious serious training to react, react, REACT! when confronted with an enemy target. This training is deeply ingrained so that at what is called "the moment of truth", you will not hesitate.
There likely is a small but significant correlation between video games and increased violence, but this will likely not be any greater than if they properly controlled for other means of aggressive expression, like playing football or rugby or simply getting into fights. Properly controlled studies will also have to control for drug and alcohol abuse.
so wouldn't changing the FSB or Multiplier fix this?
Not working out the math or knowing exactly what Tadayoshi has done, I cannot say for sure, but I am inclined to believe that the resulting signature would be a harmonic or some multiple of the original and still easily able to be identified by adding a function that searched possible variations along any simple modifiers.
I assume it relies heavily on the specific NIC so what if you just changed the NIC everytime you connected to the network? Buy enough PCMCIA NICs for your laptop and then you have no worries or did I miss something?
You assume incorrectly and are missing the point of this technology. Buy all the PCMCIA cards you want and you will still be able to be tracked with this technology. Essentially, it relies on "clock skewing" which means that when a CPU cycles, there are minor nano differences in the architecture of it that induce slight variations in the timing of the clock at various points throughout the CPU. When expanded out to the entire system, CPU, motherboard, peripherals, the differences become more complicated, but unique and thus easier to establish a unique signature.
Ph.D. student Tadayoshi Kohno said: "There are now a number of powerful techniques for remote operating system fingerprinting, that is, remotely determining the operating systems of devices on the Internet. We push this idea further and introduce the notion of remote physical device fingerprinting ... without the fingerprinted device's known cooperation."
This dissertation will get this dude himself a position with the NSA. Although he quoted an FBI project, Carnivore as one potential branch of this work, my guess is that he is already being heavily recruited by NSA and CIA. They have more resources than the FBI to grab somebody like this, and would be smart to try and recruit him. Hey Tadayoshi.....you want a job?
Seriously. While lots of folks have been looking at ways to hard code the IP address within the hardware, this is a more impressive (and unique) way of looking at the problem. Everything has a signature of sorts that can be tracked (skin plumes, small molecular phenotypes, genetics, acoustic signatures, thermal signatures, etc....etc....etc...), and Tadayoshi simply decided to examine those small variations built into electronic devices to fingerprint hardware. Very clever, but of course nanomanufacturing is the counter to this technology. I say of course, but the "arms race" to do that is not an insignificant achievement. Tadayoshi's technology will absolutely have some significant staying power.
To those of us that have either been on the platform for a while (or since the beginning), or have already switched from another platform to OS X, this article will not provide much that we do not already know. However, for those not familiar with OS X, it is a pretty good read. I have used many platforms in parallel for years from the early days of the PC revolution (Apple ][, Macintosh, TRS-80, Commodore, Amiga, Atari, Compaq, Windows) to the later workstations (Sun, SGI, NeXT) and have my likes and dislikes for all of them. Having said that however, my preference has fallen on OS X. It is sooo easy to use, is truly plug and play, is more stable, more secure, has most of the GUI and CLI integration a geek could want as well as a pretty good selection of software that makes things either 1) more enjoyable and/or 2) more productive.
For a long while, I had multiple systems on or under my desk, peaking at one time with an SGI Octane, PowerMac 9600, Windows NT, and a Linux box to perform my scientific work, serve a website, do graphics work and general productivity. All of that functionality now exists beautifully in one OS X machine freeing up considerable desktop space. Also, thank goodness for flat panel displays! I serve a couple of websites up on my workstation as well as use it for computational calculations, a front for distributed computing, writing papers, doing graphics for figures and illustrations, preparing presentations etc...etc...etc...
No other platform offers this degree of ease of use combined with flexibility and functionality.
You must have missed economics 102 then.
There are other things to consider in "selling" a product. What the market will bear is largely a simplistic economic viewpoint that looks at discrete periods of time. This is a model that will get companies and individuals who advocate those models in trouble with examples like bubbles. Specifically, like those that occurred in the tech markets of the late 90s and the current real estate markets in some parts of the country.
Funny. Very funny. Much funnier than the "dupe" posts made by others, and for the mods, here is why: Because of the subtlety.
Funny is an overused mod, however in this case it is deserved. Mod parent up as funny!