Hmm. Funny that you should mention Issac Newton. Having reviewed some of his writings myself, he appears have to be suffered from a version of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Mercury exposure probably didn't help things.
That's how I feel about many of my projects lately; even thinking about debugging them is depressing. Sadly, I've found that after I finish refactoring and rewriting it, I wonder what the problem was to being with; the code looks simple, clean, and could have been written in a 200-level programming class.
I'd be more interested in the prospect of getting some of the chips, slicing them, and looking at them under an electron microscope. From there, it would be possible to reverse engineer the various control systems. Even doing it blindly (ripping out the chips, and playing with things 'manually' to see what various thing do), it may be possible to build a chip, albeit with completely different internals, that could command the drone.
While it would be consider somewhat a fantasy right now, it would be entertaining to rebuild / mod a drone to crack any drones nearby. One drone converts a swarm, or at least jams / redirects them one at a time to a predesignated landing spot, where they can be converted by hand.
Lol. Actually, I can see the repurposing of various parts of the drone for the interface.
Spinning the rotor is the equivalent of moving the wheel on the mouse, and the horizontal & verticals stabilizers act as the left & right mouse buttons, respectively.
"I would absolutely love to hear your qualifications for this statement." -> Seriously, this, on/.? It's a flying computer built by a bunch of military contractors.
Bring one to the next major computer trade show, and leave it inside over night. If it isn't outright stolen, it'll be sporting a Tux sticker on its side as a handful of attendants will stay up all night to get Linux running on the damn thing. "Dude, I've got the kernel up and running, but I can't decide: KDE or Gnome?"
The US loves the idea of using drones inside its own borders.
The US loves the idea of equipping drones with very fast, explosive missiles.
The US will, in time, find a way to patrol the interior with drones equipped with very fast, explosive missiles.
The US will come under a terrorist attack from its own weapon systems.
Reasoning -> I am fairly certain that a swarm of drones can have its firmware corrupted to follow orders from a non-legitimate source. I am also fairly certain that Hellfire missiles or some other ordinance likely to be equipped on said drones has enough destructive capacity to take out civilian aircraft, train bridges, or even make it inside the defensive perimeter of the White House.
One need only think what a dozen drones, equipped with air-to-air, could achieve if someone compromised them, and flew them to a nearby major airport, with programming to lock onto various targets. Assuming 2 missiles per drone, and 100% accuracy of unique targets, that comes out to 12 747s (which are not equipped with EM counter-measures) dropping out of the sky.
Assuming air-to-land ordinance, any bridge (train or otherwise) would make a fair target. Take out enough structural supports, and the deaths could be in the hundreds. This is, of course, assuming classical thinking. If we move off of that, than any skyscraper, chemical plant, etc. could become a target. This is, of course, assuming we are going for the most visibly destructive targets.
Assuming air-to-sea ordinance, any large tanker or cruise ship becomes a target.
As I recommended before, immediate termination of the drone programs would be in the best interest of the sane.
Indeed. And were guns outlawed, I imagine cross-bows would be back in style; they are, granted, heavier than a gun, but no less difficult to operate; as for their capacity to damage, a bullet might be preferable to a bolt.
"My definition of childhood includes a period of innocence, or a freedom from some knowledge that's usually difficult for people to make sense of." -> And as when I was younger, I fail understand what could possibly be so difficult about sex. It requires, at best, 30-60 minutes to explain that we are a species with two genders, and that it's the matching of one gender with the other, under the appropriate circumstances, that results in more of the species being made. Now, I concede, that teaching people how to actually have really enjoyable sex requires more instruction, but I digress, it's hard to know when there is too much here or too little.
"Why burden a child with something that many adults can't bear?" -> Umm, hello? 99% of all human males have masturbated by age 20. For the male gender, sex is like getting your driver's permit; not having any would be considered an 'alternate' lifestyle.' While the number of human females have masturbated by age 20 is lower, it is still an appreciable majority of them. As such, any adult that cannot bear to discuss sex, let alone have some, would find themselves in the 1% of humanity, which depending on your system of beliefs, would be a badge of honor or shame.
If you went to a standard high-school right now, or even a middle-school, the quality of information that the kids possess about sex, if questioned, would radically change your world view. Perhaps it's best to give kids the choice to decide whether or not they are 'mature' enough to learn about sex?
"On a more serious note, self-censorship or 'censorship' configured by the user (ie. you) can be a good thing." -> In much the same sense as self-flagellism can be a good thing.
"If I write a scientific paper, I only include those things that I can make a strong case for and that I feel are important to the field; again, a very useful piece of self-censorship." -> Typically a scientific paper has a focus, or topic; that you didn't stray into unconnected or at best, loosely connected topics is not self-censorship.
Yes, with the 'War on Porn' achieving results comparable to that of both the 'War on Drugs' and our legislature's ability to stay within a set budget.;-)
Taxing = slowing = the introduction of more 'hiccups' into the taxer's economy. Get enough hiccups of sufficient magnitude often enough, and there won't be an economy anymore.
The internet is designed to survive a nuclear strike. The forces of bribery, stupidity, and politics may be able to slow or damage parts of the internet, but those parts are cut-off or rerouted as soon as the damage is discovered.
It should be a bigger worry to those countries who ARE cut off from the internet when everyone else's are not.
Shhhh, don't spoil the entertainment for the rest of us. It's not often that you get advance notice that a company is going to be failing, let alone in such a splendid way.
Hmm. I've noticed a perverse kind of...obsession among management types to 'get rid of IT.' I don't know if it's inter-company politics, or pure jealousy, but the talk / attempts lately seem more...intense. There is no real reasoning behind their desire to remove IT, just a feeling.
And I say obsession, because that's what it is. You can have 30+ incidents or attempts by one group or another to outsource IT, have wasted hideous amounts of resources doing so, and have everyone know that it's a mistake to even think about it, yet someone will give it another go. I'm starting to think that some of the other departments have let the "IT is here to serve you" i.e. "they are your gophers and willing bitches" go to their heads, and think, for some odd reason, that outsourcing IT will result in better service ("Hey, if we don't like they way they treat us, we can just cancel the contract" -> "Hey Idiot, if you just imported all of the companies data to a third-party, and you don't pay, they lock you out of your own database; plus, God help you if you took advantage of their API, no one else will be able to use that software without a rewrite.").
If the mainframe goes down, all the dumb terminals are useless, and any work is lost. Specially written software that only runs on a handful of computers of the same type, and cost overruns that makes even the most outrageous licensing deals from Oracle and MS look like blue-light specials.
Not that mainframes weren't fun, or powerful, in their heyday. But there is a major reason the PC took off.
But the best part of all of this is that I get to sit back, with a box of popcorn and a large drink, and watch an entire generation of marketing / companies built around clouds commit seppuku, for free. You can't pay money for this kind of satisfaction.
And someone will have to explain to me why any sane company would want to outsource the in-house IT. I am somewhat biased, but of all the places you could start with slashing the costs thereof, you start with the one that most executives understand the least about...I suppose they've never had the wonderous experience of "if you don't know what it does, don't touch it."
Slashdot Mirror
From what I've gathered, in my many years on this earth, they want someone who is politically active and intellectually inactive.
Laziness. ;-)
Hmm. Funny that you should mention Issac Newton. Having reviewed some of his writings myself, he appears have to be suffered from a version of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Mercury exposure probably didn't help things.
Who manufactured your latest card? Manufacturers matter.
And they have said a number of other silly things, usually overturned by later courts.
begin*
Sunday mornings are worse than Monday mornings for me.
That's how I feel about many of my projects lately; even thinking about debugging them is depressing. Sadly, I've found that after I finish refactoring and rewriting it, I wonder what the problem was to being with; the code looks simple, clean, and could have been written in a 200-level programming class.
I'd be more interested in the prospect of getting some of the chips, slicing them, and looking at them under an electron microscope. From there, it would be possible to reverse engineer the various control systems. Even doing it blindly (ripping out the chips, and playing with things 'manually' to see what various thing do), it may be possible to build a chip, albeit with completely different internals, that could command the drone.
While it would be consider somewhat a fantasy right now, it would be entertaining to rebuild / mod a drone to crack any drones nearby. One drone converts a swarm, or at least jams / redirects them one at a time to a predesignated landing spot, where they can be converted by hand.
Lol. Actually, I can see the repurposing of various parts of the drone for the interface.
Spinning the rotor is the equivalent of moving the wheel on the mouse, and the horizontal & verticals stabilizers act as the left & right mouse buttons, respectively.
I believe they have, and think it's a 'how to' guide.
"I would absolutely love to hear your qualifications for this statement." -> Seriously, this, on /.? It's a flying computer built by a bunch of military contractors.
Bring one to the next major computer trade show, and leave it inside over night. If it isn't outright stolen, it'll be sporting a Tux sticker on its side as a handful of attendants will stay up all night to get Linux running on the damn thing. "Dude, I've got the kernel up and running, but I can't decide: KDE or Gnome?"
Hmm. This requires 30 seconds of thought.
The US loves the idea of using drones inside its own borders.
The US loves the idea of equipping drones with very fast, explosive missiles.
The US will, in time, find a way to patrol the interior with drones equipped with very fast, explosive missiles.
The US will come under a terrorist attack from its own weapon systems.
Reasoning -> I am fairly certain that a swarm of drones can have its firmware corrupted to follow orders from a non-legitimate source. I am also fairly certain that Hellfire missiles or some other ordinance likely to be equipped on said drones has enough destructive capacity to take out civilian aircraft, train bridges, or even make it inside the defensive perimeter of the White House.
One need only think what a dozen drones, equipped with air-to-air, could achieve if someone compromised them, and flew them to a nearby major airport, with programming to lock onto various targets. Assuming 2 missiles per drone, and 100% accuracy of unique targets, that comes out to 12 747s (which are not equipped with EM counter-measures) dropping out of the sky.
Assuming air-to-land ordinance, any bridge (train or otherwise) would make a fair target. Take out enough structural supports, and the deaths could be in the hundreds. This is, of course, assuming classical thinking. If we move off of that, than any skyscraper, chemical plant, etc. could become a target. This is, of course, assuming we are going for the most visibly destructive targets.
Assuming air-to-sea ordinance, any large tanker or cruise ship becomes a target.
As I recommended before, immediate termination of the drone programs would be in the best interest of the sane.
Indeed. And were guns outlawed, I imagine cross-bows would be back in style; they are, granted, heavier than a gun, but no less difficult to operate; as for their capacity to damage, a bullet might be preferable to a bolt.
And what? How does this compare to the numerous videos of violence (car accidents) online?
You people and your social mores; haven't you inherited anything better than a preconceived notion of how the world should operate?
"My definition of childhood includes a period of innocence, or a freedom from some knowledge that's usually difficult for people to make sense of." -> And as when I was younger, I fail understand what could possibly be so difficult about sex. It requires, at best, 30-60 minutes to explain that we are a species with two genders, and that it's the matching of one gender with the other, under the appropriate circumstances, that results in more of the species being made. Now, I concede, that teaching people how to actually have really enjoyable sex requires more instruction, but I digress, it's hard to know when there is too much here or too little.
"Why burden a child with something that many adults can't bear?" -> Umm, hello? 99% of all human males have masturbated by age 20. For the male gender, sex is like getting your driver's permit; not having any would be considered an 'alternate' lifestyle.' While the number of human females have masturbated by age 20 is lower, it is still an appreciable majority of them. As such, any adult that cannot bear to discuss sex, let alone have some, would find themselves in the 1% of humanity, which depending on your system of beliefs, would be a badge of honor or shame.
If you went to a standard high-school right now, or even a middle-school, the quality of information that the kids possess about sex, if questioned, would radically change your world view. Perhaps it's best to give kids the choice to decide whether or not they are 'mature' enough to learn about sex?
"On a more serious note, self-censorship or 'censorship' configured by the user (ie. you) can be a good thing." -> In much the same sense as self-flagellism can be a good thing.
"If I write a scientific paper, I only include those things that I can make a strong case for and that I feel are important to the field; again, a very useful piece of self-censorship." -> Typically a scientific paper has a focus, or topic; that you didn't stray into unconnected or at best, loosely connected topics is not self-censorship.
Yes, with the 'War on Porn' achieving results comparable to that of both the 'War on Drugs' and our legislature's ability to stay within a set budget. ;-)
Taxing = slowing = the introduction of more 'hiccups' into the taxer's economy. Get enough hiccups of sufficient magnitude often enough, and there won't be an economy anymore.
The internet is designed to survive a nuclear strike. The forces of bribery, stupidity, and politics may be able to slow or damage parts of the internet, but those parts are cut-off or rerouted as soon as the damage is discovered.
It should be a bigger worry to those countries who ARE cut off from the internet when everyone else's are not.
Indeed. The article is short on details.
Shhhh, don't spoil the entertainment for the rest of us. It's not often that you get advance notice that a company is going to be failing, let alone in such a splendid way.
Hmm. I've noticed a perverse kind of...obsession among management types to 'get rid of IT.' I don't know if it's inter-company politics, or pure jealousy, but the talk / attempts lately seem more...intense. There is no real reasoning behind their desire to remove IT, just a feeling.
And I say obsession, because that's what it is. You can have 30+ incidents or attempts by one group or another to outsource IT, have wasted hideous amounts of resources doing so, and have everyone know that it's a mistake to even think about it, yet someone will give it another go. I'm starting to think that some of the other departments have let the "IT is here to serve you" i.e. "they are your gophers and willing bitches" go to their heads, and think, for some odd reason, that outsourcing IT will result in better service ("Hey, if we don't like they way they treat us, we can just cancel the contract" -> "Hey Idiot, if you just imported all of the companies data to a third-party, and you don't pay, they lock you out of your own database; plus, God help you if you took advantage of their API, no one else will be able to use that software without a rewrite.").
Nonsense. They spend much of their time explaining to users why their latest machines are lacking "cup-holders."
I see cloud, and think of mainframes.
If the mainframe goes down, all the dumb terminals are useless, and any work is lost. Specially written software that only runs on a handful of computers of the same type, and cost overruns that makes even the most outrageous licensing deals from Oracle and MS look like blue-light specials.
Not that mainframes weren't fun, or powerful, in their heyday. But there is a major reason the PC took off.
But the best part of all of this is that I get to sit back, with a box of popcorn and a large drink, and watch an entire generation of marketing / companies built around clouds commit seppuku, for free. You can't pay money for this kind of satisfaction.
And someone will have to explain to me why any sane company would want to outsource the in-house IT. I am somewhat biased, but of all the places you could start with slashing the costs thereof, you start with the one that most executives understand the least about...I suppose they've never had the wonderous experience of "if you don't know what it does, don't touch it."
Surprisingly often, if past incidents are anything to go by.