There have been indications of this sort of thing for some time, but it's very politically contentious. Kennewick man is one example. There have been some ideas that the people in Tierra Del Fuego had different origins from other groups in South America (Indicating perhaps they were remnants of a previous group coming to the Americas that were displaced by later arrivals).
The main effect is to slow down either supporting or falsifying the ideas about earlier human groups in the western hemisphere.
It's an area where peoples sense of origin and cultural place are on the line, and that's often a very sensitive spot. This leads to a lot of questioning of motives of the scientists in doing the research (i.e. They're trying to say we were just another set of invaders), and of the native groups when they want remains turned over before study (i.e. They're trying to hinder our research.).
Not everyone does think it would be good. Amory Lovins once said what he would think if a truly cheap, abundant and clean source of power was discovered. He said it would be a disaster.
His problem was not with the energy source itself, but with what he thought it would be put to use doing. His preference was to limit what mankind could do with it by going for only relatively limited sources of power.
I strongly disagree with him, as you could make the same point about advanced medicine leading to biowar agents. Giving up what we've learned about antibiotics and containing epidemics because that information can be (and has been) misused seems misguided to me.
But, there certainly are people who feel that way.
There are larger numbers who are willing to accept the existing level of technology, but are very nervous about further discoveries.
Again, I personally feel this is misguided. We've largely made our Faustian bargain with technology, and going back or stagnating now would lead to truly massive suffering when the current pyramid game of our fuel sources run out.
I see more advanced power sources as a possible way for the masses of the third world to raise their standard of living greatly without the massive environmental impact that more primitive power sources would bring. We can argue about what sources to use (any of several might work), but trying to bring China and India to even a fraction of the per capita energy availability of the west with coal, for example, will have a huge impact.
Sadly, this happens fairly often in research groups, and it's often hard to convince them to tighten things up. On the one hand, they say there's nothing commercially valuable on the machine, and that tightening security would lower productivity (usually false). On the other, they are often hard to convince that since much of the work and data is on the computers, they should have a good and tested backup system.
Sooooo... They get cracked, and when they do, it causes major data loss and takes a long time to return the machines to full service as there are no recent backups. And somehow, it's the fault of the security type whose advice they ignored/derided.
Been there, done that, wanted to strangle several research group leaders/members with the t-shirt.
IIRC (and this is via other scifi fan friends), Heinlein was in many cases poking fun at his own family with those characters. His wife was something of a polymath. Thus, Heinlein himself was one of the math unknowing "tolerable subhumans who have learned to not make messes on the floor"
I know enough math to keep up with a fair bit of the theory (though it's a little rusty). So, I suppose I qualify for this ones standards.
On the other hand, I don't know that much about running a pharmacy. No one disses me for not knowing that. So, why should someone who, for example, is a pharmacist be dissed as an ignoramus for not knowing advanced physics?
Well, I for one knew about them during that time. They were reported, but weren't the front page news of the US launches. I wonder how much of this is just people not remembering the story or that it wasn't page 1.
The town is only about 700 odd people. One possibility is that if this gets near fielding, there will be a call by the anti-nuke groups for people to move there and basicly take over the town in order to stop it. There will also, of course, be lawsuit after lawsuit to delay it.
It's a must win for the antinuclear movement.
They'll view with alarm the small size, and especially the very low installation cost which makes it hard for long delays to bankrupt by increasing the cost of working capital.
That no plant has been ordered in the US for decades is a huge political point for them, and they'd see this as the camel getting a nose into the tent. I expect a bitter fight by them.
It's got to be difficult as you're trying to figure out the mental mistakes the student is making and give sufficient feedback to correct them. All that without the usual cues we take for granted face to face (the momentary hesitation that says the last point wasn't fully understood for example). I've done both teaching, and also phone tech support. I can imagine what it would be like to combine them. That alone would account for an online class being more work for the instructor even without having to deal with a greater number of students.
It's pretty obvious most of those replying haven't read the draft proposal. Regardless of whether you genuflect three times to it or think it sucks pondwater, it looks kinda silly to rant about things that aren't in it as several here have done.
Automatic patching without qualifying the patches?
on
The New IT Crisis
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· Score: 1
Uh. Marc needs to live in the real world. Applying patches to servers in the "few minutes worldwide" that he talks about is the realm of fools. Far too many times on NT and various Unices, major patch tarballs or service packs still leave a significant fraction of the machines patched not working in some way. Unless it was a critical level security patch or an issue that caused work stoppage, I'd normally leave the patch set running on a backup system for a few days to verify it worked as advertised before applying it to my systems. You really expect me to apply a patch to all desktop systems before testing it? (again unless it's a critical security issue, and I have no other way of protecting them and the patch seems low risk) Sorry. I value my reputation and job too much. Applying patches automatically and simultaneously to systems across an enterprise without qualifying them with at least a rudimentary test is a recipe for disaster. Doing that for servers goes double. Even the best regression testing can't identify all problems with all the myriad system configurations out there. I'm all for windows update and other autopatch systems, but when it's high risk, such as updating several thousand machines, or business critical servers I want to be very sure before leaping off that cliff.
IIRC, there have been some ideas that quantum computers could be used to more effectively model protein folding than we can now. Perhaps even allow the reverse problem of protein engineering (given a desired protein active site structure, to either find a structure that will fold to it or show that none will) to be tackled. If course, just like everything else that would be revolutionary, the best things are those we can't think of yet. I'm dubious of this though. I'll start believing it when I see a 10 by 10 demonstrator array running at a few kilohertz. Until then, it's just a nice idea.
Wolfram is looking at a piece of the puzzle, IMHO. Though his book seems to be a tour de force of applying specific cellular automata to generate all sorts of neat things, I don't see it as being particularly new. This is more a book to bring it to the attention of people in other fields who may be able to make use of it. Rather like Mandelbrot's The Fractal Geometry of Nature.
Quick counterexample.
How many times on DVDs during logos or FBI warnings have you seen the words "Current Operation Prohibited" when you try to fast forward. Heard much griping about it?
It's only a matter of properly training the sheep.
In a city area, that's likely. In a rural area with a village of a hundred, it's not. It's a matter of anonymity, which in a small village is nil, and perceived ownership (phone cable is owned by the phone compay, not the guy next door.). Everyone knows everyone. As to the perceived ownership, the village depends on it and will keep an eye on it if there is a problem with these getting stolen. If it shows up in the next village over the hill it won't take long to be found out. If you were involved, you'll likely get thumped on. Just because the village is poor, doesn't mean they are unrealistic enough to not guard something like this if it needs it.
Because they're required to look for civilian apps for tech so they can license them? (Do a web search on CRADA)
Because DOE's charter allows for other research than just weapons?
Because most of the work had already been done in developing the compression methods for a nuclear testing related app?
Because in opening up the work to a broader group of researchers advances in it will tend to come faster?
Gee, guy... Lighten up. Did your research group just lose a grant or what? What are they feeding you guys over at Loomis Lab these days?;)
Sounds like Jaron saw the attention that Bill Joy got with his article last spring predicting techno-apocalypse, and wanted some for himself. Forecasting the next depression/World War/Judgement Day is often a good way to get some subset of people to pay attention to you. Funny how with all those predictions of doom over the centuries, we're still here.
Imitation may be a form of flattery, but it's not terribly creative.
The Usenet thing is interesting, but the IRC thing was done first. Your version is simply improving on an existing crack, which is kinda kiddie-ish, IMO.
The IRC trick is a fairly old method used often by trojan programs to report back that a box has been hacked. Nothing that new here.
Ah, the sound of a dinosaur railing against the onrushing asteroid.
The Academy is wedded to the current movie industry. What's ironic is that the Hollywood film industry went to Hollywood precisely to evade Edison's patents on motion pictures. How the wheel turns. If they don't embrace the new realities, they will be victims of them.
Slashdot Mirror
There have been indications of this sort of thing for some time, but it's very politically contentious. Kennewick man is one example. There have been some ideas that the people in Tierra Del Fuego had different origins from other groups in South America (Indicating perhaps they were remnants of a previous group coming to the Americas that were displaced by later arrivals).
The main effect is to slow down either supporting or falsifying the ideas about earlier human groups in the western hemisphere.
It's an area where peoples sense of origin and cultural place are on the line, and that's often a very sensitive spot. This leads to a lot of questioning of motives of the scientists in doing the research (i.e. They're trying to say we were just another set of invaders), and of the native groups when they want remains turned over before study (i.e. They're trying to hinder our research.).
Not everyone does think it would be good. Amory Lovins once said what he would think if a truly cheap, abundant and clean source of power was discovered. He said it would be a disaster.
His problem was not with the energy source itself, but with what he thought it would be put to use doing. His preference was to limit what mankind could do with it by going for only relatively limited sources of power.
I strongly disagree with him, as you could make the same point about advanced medicine leading to biowar agents. Giving up what we've learned about antibiotics and containing epidemics because that information can be (and has been) misused seems misguided to me.
But, there certainly are people who feel that way.
There are larger numbers who are willing to accept the existing level of technology, but are very nervous about further discoveries.
Again, I personally feel this is misguided. We've largely made our Faustian bargain with technology, and going back or stagnating now would lead to truly massive suffering when the current pyramid game of our fuel sources run out.
I see more advanced power sources as a possible way for the masses of the third world to raise their standard of living greatly without the massive environmental impact that more primitive power sources would bring. We can argue about what sources to use (any of several might work), but trying to bring China and India to even a fraction of the per capita energy availability of the west with coal, for example, will have a huge impact.
Sadly, this happens fairly often in research groups, and it's often hard to convince them to tighten things up. On the one hand, they say there's nothing commercially valuable on the machine, and that tightening security would lower productivity (usually false). On the other, they are often hard to convince that since much of the work and data is on the computers, they should have a good and tested backup system.
Sooooo... They get cracked, and when they do, it causes major data loss and takes a long time to return the machines to full service as there are no recent backups. And somehow, it's the fault of the security type whose advice they ignored/derided.
Been there, done that, wanted to strangle several research group leaders/members with the t-shirt.
IIRC (and this is via other scifi fan friends), Heinlein was in many cases poking fun at his own family with those characters. His wife was something of a polymath. Thus, Heinlein himself was one of the math unknowing "tolerable subhumans who have learned to not make messes on the floor"
I know enough math to keep up with a fair bit of the theory (though it's a little rusty). So, I suppose I qualify for this ones standards.
On the other hand, I don't know that much about running a pharmacy. No one disses me for not knowing that. So, why should someone who, for example, is a pharmacist be dissed as an ignoramus for not knowing advanced physics?
Well, I for one knew about them during that time. They were reported, but weren't the front page news of the US launches. I wonder how much of this is just people not remembering the story or that it wasn't page 1.
I think that's NZ dollars, so it's about $8400 US. Still pretty pricey.
No, we read it at 4 am, too.
Same name, different products.
The HAL that built 64 bit Sparc systems was in Silicon Valley. I used to have a friend who worked for them. They got bought up by Fujitsu, I think.
The HAL here in Champaign has been more focused on ham radio and commercial/military radio communications items.
They were two different companies.
The town is only about 700 odd people. One possibility is that if this gets near fielding, there will be a call by the anti-nuke groups for people to move there and basicly take over the town in order to stop it. There will also, of course, be lawsuit after lawsuit to delay it.
It's a must win for the antinuclear movement.
They'll view with alarm the small size, and especially the very low installation cost which makes it hard for long delays to bankrupt by increasing the cost of working capital.
That no plant has been ordered in the US for decades is a huge political point for them, and they'd see this as the camel getting a nose into the tent. I expect a bitter fight by them.
"Halp, Mr. Wizard!"
"Dwizzle, dwazzle, dwawzzle dwome. Time for this one to go home!"
It's got to be difficult as you're trying to figure out the mental mistakes the student is making and give sufficient feedback to correct them. All that without the usual cues we take for granted face to face (the momentary hesitation that says the last point wasn't fully understood for example). I've done both teaching, and also phone tech support. I can imagine what it would be like to combine them. That alone would account for an online class being more work for the instructor even without having to deal with a greater number of students.
It's pretty obvious most of those replying haven't read the draft proposal. Regardless of whether you genuflect three times to it or think it sucks pondwater, it looks kinda silly to rant about things that aren't in it as several here have done.
The draft proposal. Dry government-ese, but worth reading, yay or nay.
Uh. Marc needs to live in the real world. Applying patches to servers in the "few minutes worldwide" that he talks about is the realm of fools. Far too many times on NT and various Unices, major patch tarballs or service packs still leave a significant fraction of the machines patched not working in some way. Unless it was a critical level security patch or an issue that caused work stoppage, I'd normally leave the patch set running on a backup system for a few days to verify it worked as advertised before applying it to my systems. You really expect me to apply a patch to all desktop systems before testing it? (again unless it's a critical security issue, and I have no other way of protecting them and the patch seems low risk) Sorry. I value my reputation and job too much. Applying patches automatically and simultaneously to systems across an enterprise without qualifying them with at least a rudimentary test is a recipe for disaster. Doing that for servers goes double. Even the best regression testing can't identify all problems with all the myriad system configurations out there. I'm all for windows update and other autopatch systems, but when it's high risk, such as updating several thousand machines, or business critical servers I want to be very sure before leaping off that cliff.
IIRC, there have been some ideas that quantum computers could be used to more effectively model protein folding than we can now. Perhaps even allow the reverse problem of protein engineering (given a desired protein active site structure, to either find a structure that will fold to it or show that none will) to be tackled.
If course, just like everything else that would be revolutionary, the best things are those we can't think of yet.
I'm dubious of this though. I'll start believing it when I see a 10 by 10 demonstrator array running at a few kilohertz. Until then, it's just a nice idea.
Well thought out review
Wolfram is looking at a piece of the puzzle, IMHO. Though his book seems to be a tour de force of applying specific cellular automata to generate all sorts of neat things, I don't see it as being particularly new. This is more a book to bring it to the attention of people in other fields who may be able to make use of it. Rather like Mandelbrot's The Fractal Geometry of Nature.
Quick counterexample. How many times on DVDs during logos or FBI warnings have you seen the words "Current Operation Prohibited" when you try to fast forward. Heard much griping about it?
It's only a matter of properly training the sheep.In a city area, that's likely. In a rural area with a village of a hundred, it's not. It's a matter of anonymity, which in a small village is nil, and perceived ownership (phone cable is owned by the phone compay, not the guy next door.). Everyone knows everyone. As to the perceived ownership, the village depends on it and will keep an eye on it if there is a problem with these getting stolen. If it shows up in the next village over the hill it won't take long to be found out. If you were involved, you'll likely get thumped on. Just because the village is poor, doesn't mean they are unrealistic enough to not guard something like this if it needs it.
Jon Katz is a space alien, and he at least thinks he has rights.
Because they're required to look for civilian apps for tech so they can license them? (Do a web search on CRADA) Because DOE's charter allows for other research than just weapons? Because most of the work had already been done in developing the compression methods for a nuclear testing related app? Because in opening up the work to a broader group of researchers advances in it will tend to come faster? Gee, guy... Lighten up. Did your research group just lose a grant or what? What are they feeding you guys over at Loomis Lab these days? ;)
Sounds like Jaron saw the attention that Bill Joy got with his article last spring predicting techno-apocalypse, and wanted some for himself. Forecasting the next depression/World War/Judgement Day is often a good way to get some subset of people to pay attention to you. Funny how with all those predictions of doom over the centuries, we're still here.
Imitation may be a form of flattery, but it's not terribly creative.
The Usenet thing is interesting, but the IRC thing was done first. Your version is simply improving on an existing crack, which is kinda kiddie-ish, IMO.
The IRC trick is a fairly old method used often by trojan programs to report back that a box has been hacked. Nothing that new here.
Ah, the sound of a dinosaur railing against the onrushing asteroid.
The Academy is wedded to the current movie industry. What's ironic is that the Hollywood film industry went to Hollywood precisely to evade Edison's patents on motion pictures. How the wheel turns. If they don't embrace the new realities, they will be victims of them.