As everyone knows, spacetime is like a great black ocean criss-crossed with a bright blue grid, save only that this representation is in two dimensions (plus time), while the actual process happens in three(plus time). Significant masses float and bob on this ocean's surface, sending out ripples which distort the blue grid. These masses also happen to vibrate at the frequency of their mass, the accumulated harmonics of thier myriad energetic constituents and inertial qualities.
Just like a ripple on the surface of a liquid, by the effect we call gravity there is a trough-and-ridge structure surrounding the object in space time. These structural feature effects on spacetime are governed by such factors as the surface tension (E=mc^2), viscosity (planck constant) and temperature (CMB limit of ~3 Kelvin) of the continuum, the bouyancy(mass), size(volume) and speed (velocity) of the object thus placed.
The trough represents gravitational attraction, but the ridge describes a net negative effect (in other words, "anti-gravity").
Both the trough and the ridge have an average 'height' equal to the actual surface level of the surrounding medium, but the trough seems much deeper than the ripple seems tall- that is to say, the apparent gravitational attraction is far greater than the anti-gravital effect of the ridge. This is a very simple function to describe, it is commonly understood as the inverse square law of proportions (Newton). The main trough has much less area to find expression, being confined to the immediate area surrounding the object, while the ridge has the greater area to affect distortion, thus the appearing much weaker.
This effect seems almost invisible at our local scale (though numerous experiments have confirmed it), namely because of significant local interference (turbulence), which appears mainly as slight variations of gravitic potential, though which also lay in the trough of our host star, thus loosing again a significant proportion of inherent amplitude. It is curious to note that these ripples have heretofor been attributed to such things as 'groundwater storage' and 'ice coverage' on the surface of the planet Earth, a reasonable supposition about the variance in planetary mass, but a ridiculous consideration regarding system-wide gravity effects).
As these probes wend their way starward, they must cross over the features created and accumulated by the disturbance of our solar system. Just like watching a piece of driftwood tossed around by the tide, the probes must express curious responses to these forces.
By way of a final note, let me just say that there is much yet to be said on the secondary effects of this phenomenon, namely the interference patterns created by a large system in motion, the cumulative effects at scale, the 'apparent' expansion of our universe and the ramifications of the structure known as a 'black hole'
hasn't anyone ever tried to write a validated webpage that works in mozilla/firefox? it's nigh impossible, if you expect to use all of the features of html4.01 transitional or css1.0
have a look here: Mozilla's quirks mode. It's actually necessary to trick the browser into getting even somewhat close to standards compliant, and even then the formatting is all screwy by half.
No problems in ie 4, 5 or 6. no problems in Opera or with khtml. I have no trouble testing sandards-validated pages QNX browser, mac OS/X, netscape 4 or with any other damn browser. Just the unholy troika of moz-firebrid-netscape.
Disposable Income of a "geek" taking on a "project" and complaining about missing his "lunch" so he could post about it on his "personal website" and obtain "geek cred" when he gets linked on "slashdot":
Congratulations. You just blew 62% of the annual wage of the poor saps that have to make this electronic gizmo shit, sitting all day in closed rooms full of mercury vapor and pain, all on a pile of crap you'll likely toss in the trash inside of a year or two.
If they really want to get serious about this, it's obvious that they should be working on limiting how long people are allowed to remember the intellectual property they've consumed, much less how long they are allowed to keep it available.
I know that if I were still in the driver's seat, I would be ordering up plans on how to reliably blank the memories of the stinking mass of sheeple that suck the generous teat of mass media. Not only would it allow us to sell the same thing over and over, none of you bastards would even remember enough to care about 'fair use' and all that malarky. sheesh.
read the comments, even the +5 buggers make it clear that the writeup and the source article were complete rancid crap, even perhaps outright fabrications!
the story got posted the way it did simply because it was sensational and slammed microsoft in a super-snotty manner. so hey, my point still stands, whaddya know.
Momocrome writes "So did Slashdotters call this one? Kerberos seems not to be so secure after all. An MIT student goes in depth to find out just how unsafe a fresh install is. He provides a list of which dangerous bugs are left open and which protocols are vulnerable by default. I guess now we know why Open Software's security procedure is haphazard and undisciplined." Reader ack154 writes "Slashdot is reporting that many Cisco VPN3300 users are reporting an extreme security threat since bothering to trust the loud mouthed braggarts of the 'many eyes' principle - threats as much as from DoS as from Remote Code Execution. Cisco claims no responsibility, claiming it is 'externally created, open-source software' and they don't support it. In the mean time there has been a fix posted on MIT's FTP site, which disables this crucial protocol."
lol. i bet this gets modded down just because of the nasty tone. even though i copied it verbatim from a nasty anti-microsoft writeup from yesterday, and only replaced things like 'XP SP2' with 'Kerberos'.
just a case of not being able to swallow what you blokes dish out. so sad.
I said nothing disparaging about girls, girls in summer camps, girls in CS or women. I hope you aren't missing my point.
I merely find it hillarious, the idea of some pasty faced nerds concocting this scheme. Think 'Revenge of the Nerds' part(N)'s potential plotline.
Hell, the real camp would probably be run by some of the women in the CS industries overseeing the cirriculm. I wouldn't know. It is still funny to imagine the hard-up geeks scheming up a captive audience like that.
We all know how unattractive CS people can be, especially the ones getting red in the face over frequent online arguments about KDE vs. Gnome.
To imagine these hard-up saps actually trying to pull off a frickin SUMMER CAMP to ATTRACT some TEENAGE GIRLS into the sorry world of the code monkey, why that's the most cock-eyed, half baked plan I ever heard of!
Maybe when this fails to play out (and it will, seeing as how anyone with a brain can see right through the scheme), perhaps they can regroup and try to trick these girls into the backs of their vans, with some candy bars.
sheesh. this is why there are marketing departments, people. You just can't let the code monkey crowd interact with the public.
Yesterday you removed some spyware. It was 297 items, mostly cookies from doubleclick. I see it all the time.
If you'll recall, yesterday there were also a flurry of exploits announced with libpng. I want you to tell me, with a straight face, that it is easier for joe sixpack to fix this on a linux box, than it is for him to reboot XP when automatic updates tells him to. Remember, joe sixpack has to:
1) read the security bulliten 2) locate and download the specific files that patch or replace the library 3) install them with what will likely be a CLI package manager 4) determine and re-compile each app that has a dependancy on that library 5)(optional) take the time it takes to apply the 'many eyes' principal to the resulting patched source and contribute any fixes he writes.
on xp: 1)reboot when automatic updates tells you to 2)re-install the latest mozilla
You certainly can't tell me anything about FOSS superiority in this instance. You just might try, but it'd be lies and distortions from an open source apologist desperately seeking validation of his allegience. nothing more. the sooner you admit that to yourself, the sooner we can get down to brass tacks and lift this sorry mess up into the 21st century.
Some other guy from another retailer with a mere 21 stores in the same market is talking about 'firing customers'. The guy from best buy went out of his way to say that they won't give up on 'problem' customers.
Can't you see the fundamental wrongness of the bias presented here?
I mean, the write-up clearly soft-peddles the advocate review and downplays the consumer-oriented review. I think it is because the first review panders to the satisfaction unix-monkeys get in knowing the arcane and counter-intuitive technologia extremis of Linux, and condemn the consumer oriented approach for its simple, direct perspective of coming at Linux with no pre-conceived notions. The things they mention in the Washington Post article are quite accurate, if you are new to the Unix system layout paradigms.
The thing that bothers me is that there is an undercurrent of hysterical hatred for anyone speaking frankly about Linux and her Unix derived cousins. It's as if the question of OS somehow meant something deeper than what you have installed on your computer. All sorts of strident idealism and contempt for different opinions grip this community, and the community welcomes it!
This same undercurrent pops up from time to time through history, and it is quite dangerous! Consider all the book burning, witch hunting and other such miserable episodes in our collective past, and realize that what drove (and drives today) those awful episodes is the same contempt for difference that lies at the heart of the slashdot bias.
Now, I certainly don't want to conflate the relatively benign Linux over-advocacy problem and the tragedy of those horrible times in the past, but you people should realize that if you start allowing yourself to act like this here and now, indulging in what amounts to simple-minded bigotry, what is to stop you from carrying through with that thinking in realms more directly related to personal liberties, civic safety and common decency?
It's high time some of you stepped up to the plate and decry such flagrant ill manners along with me. It's not a matter of MSFT or APPL vs. Linux, it's a matter of being a decent human being. This sort of indulgent wankery is not decent at all.
The founding fathers of the United States clearly had such liberties in mind when they drafted and ratified our constitution. It's not that they felt pr0n and such to be good, they were simply responding to power's natural urge to despotically control the higher capacities of the citizenry. They were desperately concerned with providing an enduring institution that would constantly self-correct and adapt to new and exciting forms of...
what was I talking about again? I got distracted with this here picture of a purty wommin.
stock options should be free as in speech, and free as in beer, too. everyone knows those PHBs are BOFHs. if these companies knew what was good for them, they'd keep track of these options on a secure, reliable, open-source platform like mysql + apache. I for one am not about to let our new corporate masters bludgeon our rights with stock option rights management legislation.
I heard over on groklaw that MSFT was unfairly leveraging their mid-level business software unit for stock option dispersal in the MSFT-centric labor segment.
I mean, come on. this is just not the story to post on slashdot. what the hell?
break in to their systems. i'm going to compromise their physical infrastructure and take command of their critical communications resources. I am going to chat with them briefly, and determine their passwords.
There are hundreds of example of drivers recovering from tire blowouts and suspension failures at that speed. (usually on a straightaway, though). I've done it myself at ~150 mph.
The effects of a tire blowout at that speed are intense, but within the capabilities of even the top end street-legal sports cars, a $10 M formula 1 racing system. driven by alert and experienced drivers.
There are also plenty of examples of fatal crashes at 55 mph, so i don't know what to make of that.
But the point remains: if you can react against a damn blowout at 200mph, you can definately snake your thumb over to click a button on the steering wheel.
the scarcity is in improved functionality / new features. that's why the traditional developers steer towards the vicious upgrade cycle as a business model.
foss takes advantage of this (or rather, undermines it) with the practice of feature stealing and reverse engineering. No R&D expenses, no paying designers and architects, and no price on the software.
For those of you who simply can't see how this threatens the stability of our tech sector, I don't know what to say. My supposition is that FOSS will gut the current software industry, flounder without direction for a while, and companies will spring up to resume some semblance of 'progress' when they can find a way to secure their interests.
I know you guys want to believe the idealism of shared source, in whatever form, and on paper it sure sounds good, but seriously, there's much more to software than the coder and the app. FOSS necessarily eats into that.
You probably don't give much credence to accountants, CEOs, testers, artists and even the humble secretary, but the fact of the matter is that progress is much more viable with a large disciplined organization with support staff, specialization and market pressures to drive the managment. Rather than the floundering about, hunting and pecking at sourceforge, forking a project t o add an email client, skins or an mp3 player, etc.
you didn't listen to a word I said, did you? and by the looks of it, you didn't read their paper, either. oh well. it's slashdot after all. silly of me to expect reasonable discourse. i suppose the only thing to do is try again:
1) this is a thought experiment about a 'black box' that will probably show up sooner or later, in one form or another, using this technique or that.
2) they offer a plausible scenario or two, link to some exciting research in 'mechanochemistry', but explicitly state that the threat could arrive in other forms, using other techniques.
3) the authors of the original site aren't saying WORD ONE about your work or other work like it. they have a simple premise: the threat of such a device is immense, and how should it be approached?
about the only thing i'm hearing from you is "i'm smarter than everyone else" and it is clear by your follow-up points that you didn't even read the damn story! what gives? are you some sort of troll? you really gloss over a few points and draw conclusions? i guess i really should be worried, considering how pathetic and presumptious our so called 'scientists' can be. especially your crack about Neil Stephenson and fantasty. try reading the article, then read through this thread again. you are the only one hopping up and down with derision and contempt. prideful arrogance, I call it, and hardly conducive to civil discourse.
As it seems that the theme of the site in question is more about the sudden arrival of a fabricator than the groundwork leading to it. At no point did I see the authors of the site denegrate or otherwise diminish the efforts of current researchers.
Rather, it seems to me that they are discussing the suddenness of the arrival of a human-scale fabricator, a thought experiment concerning a 'black box' that is quite reasonable to expect in the near future, and the impact such a device would have.
There are several key points being glossed over in the comments, including yours, so maybe I can point them out for your review:
The arrival of the device is inevitable. It's a simple matter of 'if we don't, someone else will'. this is sustained by the simple fact that TSMs are widely available and easilly attainable on the gov't/corporate level. These are also the only thing needed to get the process started.
The Fabricator only requires a few, basic diamondoid shapes to start with. Regardless of the wide number of sophisticated nano-scale devices and the subtle applications (such as the sytems you claim to work on), just a few simple building blocks are enough to start the avalanche.
Once a device like this is available, as it inevitably will be, the social and economic pressures of our current civilisation will absolutely drive others to create and control such devices. No amount of greed or evil will keep it locked down.
Any attempts to curtail dissemination of such a device will lead to a black market. Any attempt at careful regulation will result in hacking and cracking. Any attempt at universiality will lead to misuse by the psychologically unstable. What the hell should we do?
Discussion of the consequences of such a 'black box' in no way belittles your High and Mighty Science approach. The problems still exist, at least in theory, whether you are going to stick up your lab-tech nose or not.
I hope this helps ease the discussion and bring it back around to some semblance of sensibility.
That no-one, save a few high-minded slashdot moderators, is impressed with your miserly, no-car having ways.
Especially the auto manufacturers and car lots.
Ah, but instead of flaming you and just walking away, I am at least decent enough to try and tell you why: Simple Math.
The manufacturers are presented with a supply problem: they can ship N cars/day, and those cars have to represent the spectrum of most likely requested features.
These numbers must be statistically derived from previous sales- and projections of competitor's sales, suspicions about which way the overall population is leaning on these 'package' issues (if things are looking up, people tend to get fully loaded vehicles) and so forth.
Non auto purchasing households that are 'outraged' that a ridiculously unpopular trim level isn't immediately available are so far down on the "give a shit" list for these guys that to suppose they might ever change their ways is the sheerest idiocy. I suppose it also never occured to you that you could order a specific set of options and wait for delivery. whatever.
We haven't even come to the part where we must consider that the auto manufacturers must make these calculations outside the 3-6 months it takes from the first spot weld to populating the dealer lots, yet any of the factors involved might change in a matter of weeks.
Face it-- you are an aberation and your opinion in this matter is worth next to nothing. You aren't even close to describing a 'problem' that the industry might or will 'fix'. The fickle nature of consumer-land is a harsh mistress, and freaks and misfits are the first ones subtracted out of the equation.
Slashdot Mirror
As everyone knows, spacetime is like a great black ocean criss-crossed with a bright blue grid, save only that this representation is in two dimensions (plus time), while the actual process happens in three(plus time). Significant masses float and bob on this ocean's surface, sending out ripples which distort the blue grid. These masses also happen to vibrate at the frequency of their mass, the accumulated harmonics of thier myriad energetic constituents and inertial qualities.
Just like a ripple on the surface of a liquid, by the effect we call gravity there is a trough-and-ridge structure surrounding the object in space time. These structural feature effects on spacetime are governed by such factors as the surface tension (E=mc^2), viscosity (planck constant) and temperature (CMB limit of ~3 Kelvin) of the continuum, the bouyancy(mass), size(volume) and speed (velocity) of the object thus placed.
The trough represents gravitational attraction, but the ridge describes a net negative effect (in other words, "anti-gravity").
Both the trough and the ridge have an average 'height' equal to the actual surface level of the surrounding medium, but the trough seems much deeper than the ripple seems tall- that is to say, the apparent gravitational attraction is far greater than the anti-gravital effect of the ridge. This is a very simple function to describe, it is commonly understood as the inverse square law of proportions (Newton). The main trough has much less area to find expression, being confined to the immediate area surrounding the object, while the ridge has the greater area to affect distortion, thus the appearing much weaker.
This effect seems almost invisible at our local scale (though numerous experiments have confirmed it), namely because of significant local interference (turbulence), which appears mainly as slight variations of gravitic potential, though which also lay in the trough of our host star, thus loosing again a significant proportion of inherent amplitude. It is curious to note that these ripples have heretofor been attributed to such things as 'groundwater storage' and 'ice coverage' on the surface of the planet Earth, a reasonable supposition about the variance in planetary mass, but a ridiculous consideration regarding system-wide gravity effects).
As these probes wend their way starward, they must cross over the features created and accumulated by the disturbance of our solar system. Just like watching a piece of driftwood tossed around by the tide, the probes must express curious responses to these forces.
By way of a final note, let me just say that there is much yet to be said on the secondary effects of this phenomenon, namely the interference patterns created by a large system in motion, the cumulative effects at scale, the 'apparent' expansion of our universe and the ramifications of the structure known as a 'black hole'
Signed,
Professor MOMOCROME
"Mozilla/Gecko ...mature, powerful rendering engine"
hasn't anyone ever tried to write a validated webpage that works in mozilla/firefox? it's nigh impossible, if you expect to use all of the features of html4.01 transitional or css1.0
have a look here: Mozilla's quirks mode. It's actually necessary to trick the browser into getting even somewhat close to standards compliant, and even then the formatting is all screwy by half.
No problems in ie 4, 5 or 6. no problems in Opera or with khtml. I have no trouble testing sandards-validated pages QNX browser, mac OS/X, netscape 4 or with any other damn browser. Just the unholy troika of moz-firebrid-netscape.
I'm like, wtf?
Disposable Income of a "geek" taking on a "project" and complaining about missing his "lunch" so he could post about it on his "personal website" and obtain "geek cred" when he gets linked on "slashdot":
Price of a Rio Carbon Mp3 player: ($225) x2 $450
Price of a Nikon d70 6 mega-pixel camera: $999.95 (without lenses)
Price of his Digital SLR Zoom Lens: $974.95
Total for just this one disgusting wankoff: $2424.90
Compared to the Average Annual Wage in Indonesia: $3,971
Congratulations. You just blew 62% of the annual wage of the poor saps that have to make this electronic gizmo shit, sitting all day in closed rooms full of mercury vapor and pain, all on a pile of crap you'll likely toss in the trash inside of a year or two.
Happy 9/11 day, motherfuckers.
If they really want to get serious about this, it's obvious that they should be working on limiting how long people are allowed to remember the intellectual property they've consumed, much less how long they are allowed to keep it available.
I know that if I were still in the driver's seat, I would be ordering up plans on how to reliably blank the memories of the stinking mass of sheeple that suck the generous teat of mass media. Not only would it allow us to sell the same thing over and over, none of you bastards would even remember enough to care about 'fair use' and all that malarky. sheesh.
signed,
Ted Turner
read the comments, even the +5 buggers make it clear that the writeup and the source article were complete rancid crap, even perhaps outright fabrications!
the story got posted the way it did simply because it was sensational and slammed microsoft in a super-snotty manner. so hey, my point still stands, whaddya know.
Momocrome writes "So did Slashdotters call this one? Kerberos seems not to be so secure after all. An MIT student goes in depth to find out just how unsafe a fresh install is. He provides a list of which dangerous bugs are left open and which protocols are vulnerable by default. I guess now we know why Open Software's security procedure is haphazard and undisciplined." Reader ack154 writes "Slashdot is reporting that many Cisco VPN3300 users are reporting an extreme security threat since bothering to trust the loud mouthed braggarts of the 'many eyes' principle - threats as much as from DoS as from Remote Code Execution. Cisco claims no responsibility, claiming it is 'externally created, open-source software' and they don't support it. In the mean time there has been a fix posted on MIT's FTP site, which disables this crucial protocol."
lol. i bet this gets modded down just because of the nasty tone. even though i copied it verbatim from a nasty anti-microsoft writeup from yesterday, and only replaced things like 'XP SP2' with 'Kerberos'.
just a case of not being able to swallow what you blokes dish out. so sad.
i gurantee that canadians will pee.
that's the #1 way for humans to heat up lake water.
I said nothing disparaging about girls, girls in summer camps, girls in CS or women. I hope you aren't missing my point.
I merely find it hillarious, the idea of some pasty faced nerds concocting this scheme. Think 'Revenge of the Nerds' part(N)'s potential plotline.
Hell, the real camp would probably be run by some of the women in the CS industries overseeing the cirriculm. I wouldn't know.
It is still funny to imagine the hard-up geeks scheming up a captive audience like that.
you've got to be kidding me.
We all know how unattractive CS people can be, especially the ones getting red in the face over frequent online arguments about KDE vs. Gnome.
To imagine these hard-up saps actually trying to pull off a frickin SUMMER CAMP to ATTRACT some TEENAGE GIRLS into the sorry world of the code monkey, why that's the most cock-eyed, half baked plan I ever heard of!
Maybe when this fails to play out (and it will, seeing as how anyone with a brain can see right through the scheme), perhaps they can regroup and try to trick these girls into the backs of their vans, with some candy bars.
sheesh. this is why there are marketing departments, people. You just can't let the code monkey crowd interact with the public.
you spin some shameless FUD, my boy.
:
Yesterday you removed some spyware. It was 297 items, mostly cookies from doubleclick. I see it all the time.
If you'll recall, yesterday there were also a flurry of exploits announced with libpng. I want you to tell me, with a straight face, that it is easier for joe sixpack to fix this on a linux box, than it is for him to reboot XP when automatic updates tells him to. Remember, joe sixpack has to
1) read the security bulliten
2) locate and download the specific files that patch or replace the library
3) install them with what will likely be a CLI package manager
4) determine and re-compile each app that has a dependancy on that library
5)(optional) take the time it takes to apply the 'many eyes' principal to the resulting patched source and contribute any fixes he writes.
on xp:
1)reboot when automatic updates tells you to
2)re-install the latest mozilla
You certainly can't tell me anything about FOSS superiority in this instance. You just might try, but it'd be lies and distortions from an open source apologist desperately seeking validation of his allegience. nothing more. the sooner you admit that to yourself, the sooner we can get down to brass tacks and lift this sorry mess up into the 21st century.
Introducing the Creative Labs (tm) 3DO Blaster.
This device was pretty awesome for the time. I worked at 3DO then, and thought it was tres groovy.
Wish I'd thought to shell out the mere $HUNNERTS it cost at the time. Production ended almost as soon as it had begun.
it's extremely rare now, and worth a purdy penny to collectors.
RTFA.
Some other guy from another retailer with a mere 21 stores in the same market is talking about 'firing customers'. The guy from best buy went out of his way to say that they won't give up on 'problem' customers.
C'mon people, follow the narrative.
Can't you see the fundamental wrongness of the bias presented here?
I mean, the write-up clearly soft-peddles the advocate review and downplays the consumer-oriented review. I think it is because the first review panders to the satisfaction unix-monkeys get in knowing the arcane and counter-intuitive technologia extremis of Linux, and condemn the consumer oriented approach for its simple, direct perspective of coming at Linux with no pre-conceived notions. The things they mention in the Washington Post article are quite accurate, if you are new to the Unix system layout paradigms.
The thing that bothers me is that there is an undercurrent of hysterical hatred for anyone speaking frankly about Linux and her Unix derived cousins. It's as if the question of OS somehow meant something deeper than what you have installed on your computer. All sorts of strident idealism and contempt for different opinions grip this community, and the community welcomes it!
This same undercurrent pops up from time to time through history, and it is quite dangerous! Consider all the book burning, witch hunting and other such miserable episodes in our collective past, and realize that what drove (and drives today) those awful episodes is the same contempt for difference that lies at the heart of the slashdot bias.
Now, I certainly don't want to conflate the relatively benign Linux over-advocacy problem and the tragedy of those horrible times in the past, but you people should realize that if you start allowing yourself to act like this here and now, indulging in what amounts to simple-minded bigotry, what is to stop you from carrying through with that thinking in realms more directly related to personal liberties, civic safety and common decency?
It's high time some of you stepped up to the plate and decry such flagrant ill manners along with me. It's not a matter of MSFT or APPL vs. Linux, it's a matter of being a decent human being. This sort of indulgent wankery is not decent at all.
The founding fathers of the United States clearly had such liberties in mind when they drafted and ratified our constitution. It's not that they felt pr0n and such to be good, they were simply responding to power's natural urge to despotically control the higher capacities of the citizenry. They were desperately concerned with providing an enduring institution that would constantly self-correct and adapt to new and exciting forms of...
what was I talking about again? I got distracted with this here picture of a purty wommin.
stock options should be free as in speech, and free as in beer, too. everyone knows those PHBs are BOFHs. if these companies knew what was good for them, they'd keep track of these options on a secure, reliable, open-source platform like mysql + apache. I for one am not about to let our new corporate masters bludgeon our rights with stock option rights management legislation.
I heard over on groklaw that MSFT was unfairly leveraging their mid-level business software unit for stock option dispersal in the MSFT-centric labor segment.
I mean, come on. this is just not the story to post on slashdot. what the hell?
break in to their systems. i'm going to compromise their physical infrastructure and take command of their critical communications resources. I am going to chat with them briefly, and determine their passwords.
i bet they press charges.
There are hundreds of example of drivers recovering from tire blowouts and suspension failures at that speed. (usually on a straightaway, though). I've done it myself at ~150 mph.
The effects of a tire blowout at that speed are intense, but within the capabilities of even the top end street-legal sports cars, a $10 M formula 1 racing system.
driven by alert and experienced drivers.
There are also plenty of examples of fatal crashes at 55 mph, so i don't know what to make of that.
But the point remains: if you can react against a damn blowout at 200mph, you can definately snake your thumb over to click a button on the steering wheel.
i rock.
By revoking his doctorate, they are saying 'this guy can't be trusted with this stuff'.
If he claims to have the doctorate, and someone calls to verify, the Uni can say 'we revoked it for he does suck'.
or second. maybe third. take my karma, like how they took that one guy's phd.
the scarcity is in improved functionality / new features. that's why the traditional developers steer towards the vicious upgrade cycle as a business model.
foss takes advantage of this (or rather, undermines it) with the practice of feature stealing and reverse engineering. No R&D expenses, no paying designers and architects, and no price on the software.
For those of you who simply can't see how this threatens the stability of our tech sector, I don't know what to say. My supposition is that FOSS will gut the current software industry, flounder without direction for a while, and companies will spring up to resume some semblance of 'progress' when they can find a way to secure their interests.
I know you guys want to believe the idealism of shared source, in whatever form, and on paper it sure sounds good, but seriously, there's much more to software than the coder and the app. FOSS necessarily eats into that.
You probably don't give much credence to accountants, CEOs, testers, artists and even the humble secretary, but the fact of the matter is that progress is much more viable with a large disciplined organization with support staff, specialization and market pressures to drive the managment. Rather than the floundering about, hunting and pecking at sourceforge, forking a project t o add an email client, skins or an mp3 player, etc.
i can totally accept this. too bad we had to butt heads about it. have a good weekend.
you didn't listen to a word I said, did you? and by the looks of it, you didn't read their paper, either. oh well. it's slashdot after all. silly of me to expect reasonable discourse. i suppose the only thing to do is try again:
1) this is a thought experiment about a 'black box' that will probably show up sooner or later, in one form or another, using this technique or that.
2) they offer a plausible scenario or two, link to some exciting research in 'mechanochemistry', but explicitly state that the threat could arrive in other forms, using other techniques.
3) the authors of the original site aren't saying WORD ONE about your work or other work like it. they have a simple premise: the threat of such a device is immense, and how should it be approached?
about the only thing i'm hearing from you is "i'm smarter than everyone else" and it is clear by your follow-up points that you didn't even read the damn story! what gives? are you some sort of troll? you really gloss over a few points and draw conclusions? i guess i really should be worried, considering how pathetic and presumptious our so called 'scientists' can be. especially your crack about Neil Stephenson and fantasty. try reading the article, then read through this thread again. you are the only one hopping up and down with derision and contempt. prideful arrogance, I call it, and hardly conducive to civil discourse.
Rather, it seems to me that they are discussing the suddenness of the arrival of a human-scale fabricator, a thought experiment concerning a 'black box' that is quite reasonable to expect in the near future, and the impact such a device would have.
There are several key points being glossed over in the comments, including yours, so maybe I can point them out for your review:
I hope this helps ease the discussion and bring it back around to some semblance of sensibility.
That no-one, save a few high-minded slashdot moderators, is impressed with your miserly, no-car having ways.
Especially the auto manufacturers and car lots.
Ah, but instead of flaming you and just walking away, I am at least decent enough to try and tell you why: Simple Math.
The manufacturers are presented with a supply problem: they can ship N cars/day, and those cars have to represent the spectrum of most likely requested features.
These numbers must be statistically derived from previous sales- and projections of competitor's sales, suspicions about which way the overall population is leaning on these 'package' issues (if things are looking up, people tend to get fully loaded vehicles) and so forth.
Non auto purchasing households that are 'outraged' that a ridiculously unpopular trim level isn't immediately available are so far down on the "give a shit" list for these guys that to suppose they might ever change their ways is the sheerest idiocy. I suppose it also never occured to you that you could order a specific set of options and wait for delivery. whatever.
We haven't even come to the part where we must consider that the auto manufacturers must make these calculations outside the 3-6 months it takes from the first spot weld to populating the dealer lots, yet any of the factors involved might change in a matter of weeks.
Face it-- you are an aberation and your opinion in this matter is worth next to nothing. You aren't even close to describing a 'problem' that the industry might or will 'fix'. The fickle nature of consumer-land is a harsh mistress, and freaks and misfits are the first ones subtracted out of the equation.