Physics is only difficult, because it tends to not be "common sense". But, in reality, that's a problem with "common sense", not physics. So long as a person is willing to discard -all- preconceived notions, and look at the world the same way an inquisitive child might, it's really all quite simple. You stop assuming iron balls should fall faster than feathers, because of their weight, and start seeing what's happening.
Well, that's not that simple. First of all, if you discard all common sense, there is nothing to prevent you from jumping off a tall building to see what happens (answer: a big splat). Or, for example, why don't you assemble a big pile of explosive and detonate it -- to see what would happen, of course.
Second, if you start dropping iron balls and feathers and looking at them, I can assure you that you will see that iron balls drop faster. There is this little thing of air resistance which messes up the nice and clean law of gravity.
By sticking to worlds of plasticine houses and marmalade skies, where "everyday experience" simply isn't important and seeing what's going on -is-, physics actually becomes rather trivial.
It is quite clear that you haven't tried hard thinking about quantum physics. It does not become trivial even if you get into the world of marmalade skies (a bit of acid will help you there). Dropping preconcieved notions might help, but you would need to do it at a very deep level (language and thinking constructs level) which in itself is remarkably hard. For an example try reading a German philosopher by the name of Heidegger who did struggle very much with the fact that language was inadequate for what he wanted to express, and tell me if it's easy.
There is software I will not use because of its license.
Example?
Furthermore, I am well aware that the software I am installing is a copyrighted work, subject to the terms and limitations of the copyright holder.
Nobody is saying you thought it was in public domain. The real question is whether it is subject to copyright law (including fair use provisions) or subject to a contract between you and the copyright holder where you give up some of your rights under the copyright law.
Finally, there is nothing about a "normal" contract that requires it to be "negotiable".
Oh yes, there is. The courts (who are asked to enforce contracts) make a clear distinction between contracts that were negotiated between the parties and contracts that were forced upon one party without it being able to negotiate the terms.
Most contracts in the real world are of the non-negotiable take-it-or-leave-it variety. I can't "negotiate" with my grocery store to get a cheaper loaf of bread.
Not true. First of all, buying stuff is not entering a contract. There is no contract between you and the grocery store. Second, you can negotiate -- this is called haggling (though it still doesn't have anything to do with contracts).
Did you sleep through Business Law or have you just not signed up for the course yet?
IANAL, but your imitation of a lawyer is much worse than mine. There is no "Business Law" course, that's too wide a subject. What you probably had in mind is a standard first-year course called "Contracts".
I think you meant to say that the way to make sure that the littering crime rate is zero is to have a police state
Please do not put words into my mouth. Thank you. I am perfectly capable of saying what I mean to say.
To reiterate my point, there is a trade-off between freedom and safety. In Big Brother kinds of countries crime is harder, sentences are harsher, and police's life is easier. All this works to make common people's life safer, and not from littering, but from crimes like murder, rape, etc. No, a police state is not the only way to reduce crime, but taking away some freedoms (anonymity and privacy included) is often the easiest way.
Case in point: some locations in Great Britain installed video cameras at basically every street corner. As a result, street crime dropped dramatically. Of course, now you have the dubious pleasure of knowing that a cop probably watches you as you walk along the street. This is a fairly clear example of a safety vs. freedom trade-off. Some people (you, probably, among them) would say that this is a good trade-off, other people would disagree. Of course, when (not if) we have a good automated face recognition system, plugging it into this camera network will radically change the terms of the original trade-off, but that's a different discussion altogether. I am not saying that there is a one-size-fits-all answer -- some people need more freedom, and some people need more safety. However, the answer is clearly not as simple as saying "let's allow the police to do their work".
By the time a cybercrime has taken place, it is too late to traceroute: logs are required
And your point being? Sure, mandating universal global tracing/authentication/logging/etc will make the police's life easier and reduce the crime rate. But mandating that everyone wears an electronic anklet that transmits its location once a minute to a central police station will reduce the crime rate even more, much more. So why don't we pass a law forcing everyone to wear these? Because there is a trade-off, and one should at least carefully examine what one is giving up before jumping to defend some proposal.
lets talk about how to stop the abuse
Let's. I believe the best way to stop the abuse is to construct the system in such a way as to make the abuse impossible. I would recommend a book by Lessig "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" for a very good treatment of the topic.
Governments have all sorts of interests in promoting the interests of their citizens
I think you are confusing "have" and "should have". In any case, this statement is way too broad to be meaningful.
The question is how do we balance the individual's interests against the group's, and this is what governments do, and they do a pretty good job of it, at least in Western countries
You are confused. The question is indeed how to balance the individual's rights against group rights, but the governments are exactly those groups against which the individual's right have to be balanced. This means, of course, that if the balancing is left to the government, it will tilt the scale in it's own favor. It is a well-accepted historical fact that bureacracies, governments among them, tend to accumulate as much power as they can get away with. YMMV, of course, but from my point of view, the governments, including the Western ones, are doing a very lousy job of balancing.
If I can't abide by a shrinkwrap software license, I don't use the software.
Bullshit. Did you read that license? I don't think so. If you haven't, how do you know you are going to abide by it?
Besides, if a click-shrink license is a "normal" contract, I'd like the ability to negotiate it and opt-out of certain of its provisions. Please tell me how to do it.
Crime is a Bad Thing, being safe, secure and protected are Good Things.
Yes, of course, but TANSTAAFL. The simplest way to be safe, secure, and protected is to live in a police state. Nazi Germany had very low crime rates. Moscow, before the Soviet Union imploded, was a very safe city to live in (anybody convicted of a crime was forbidden to live closer than 100 km to Moscow). The issue is not whether being safe and secure is a Good Thing. The issue is the price you are willing to pay for it.
But don't stick your head in the sand. Just like they trace phone calls of people who phone in bomb threats, they're going to be tracerouting packets of people who download other people's credit cards.
Sure. No problem with that. But, again, you are putting up a strawman. Nobody is arguing that the police should never, ever be able to trace a packet across the 'net. The issue is completely different -- it has to do with the major shifts in the ease/cost of monitoring and storing information. These shifts affect the balance of power between the government and the individual. How this balance of power should look on the 'net is a big and complicated question. Saying "police keep me safe and sound, great job, Janet" doesn't cut it.
work with you to make sure that people's privacy is in fact protected.
Government has no interest in promoting the privacy of the individuals. In fact, quite the opposite is true (cf. anti-encryption efforts). Government wants people's lives to be easily monitorable and checkable. It is willing to take some measures to curb the ability of corporations to gather data (as a smokescreen and to prevent competition), but just try suggesting measures that will prevent *anyone* from getting data on people, and see how far you get.
I just have to ask why? Why do we need Linux on a PDA? I am completly happy with PalmOS on a PDA. I want my PDA to be a PDA and not a handheld computer.
Well, maybe you are completely happy with PalmOS, but that doesn't make it so for the rest of us. Different people have different needs and different tastes.
I, for one, am unhappy with Palms and I do want my PDA to be a handheld computer. I think Palms are way too simple and limited. If a phone/appointment book is all you need, they are fine. Unfortunately, I want much more from my PDA. Latest Casio goes into the right direction, even though it is hobbled by WinCE (bletch).
For me (and I am not making any claims about the rest of humanity) Palms are inadequate. I don't need an appointment book and my watch functions as a phone book perfectly well. I really want something like a Psion in a Palm form factor (hey, Psion, hint, hint).
I don't see what's the big problem. You have the piece of software that does the decrypting sitting right here on your machine. Fire up a decent debugger, watch it in action, and grab that key from RAM. Warez guys do stuff like that all the time. I understand that a good knowledge of assembler is needed for this to work, but again, any guy/team that cracks copy protection should be able to grab the key without much trouble.
to cut back on tacky signs hanging all over the place
No, no! Because the real-physical-world ads can now be replaced digitally, these ads will become cheaper and your ballpark will need to put up MORE of them.
You mean to tell me that you've never seen a bar fight resulting from the interaction of a female and two males?
That's not social discord. That's a testosterone-triggered mating ritual. The effect of laws on preventing such behaviour will be zilch. Besides, that not really a society's problem.
The 'need to know' was both social and personal. Society as a whole has no wish to pay to raise someone else's children, especially in times past when it was so much more difficult to do so.
In time past society did NOT pay to raise anybody's children, illegitimate or not.
Perhaps the law can relieve you of the responsibility of children produced from such an occurance?
It already does. This is called a paternity suit. If you belive a child is not yours, and you can prove it (easy nowadays with DNA testing) no sane judge will force child support on you.
A law against adultery will not eliminate it entirely. But it WILL have a chilling effect.
No, it will not. AFAIK until recently a bunch of US states did have laws against adultery (New York comes to mind) and the effect of those was, again, zilch. All these laws did was undermine (whatever left) respect for law.
Besides, you would want to consider whether government is justified in regulating private affairs of its citizens. It is generally held that just because there is a perceived (by somebody) public good, it does not follow that the government can or should legislate it.
That it takes two to make a baby, and statistically at least, the baby has a much better chance of growing out of welfare with two parents.
I'll believe it when I see data fully adjusted for socioeconomic status.
My personal wish is for men to have responsibility for children they foster
That would be a good thing, along with peace on earth, eradication of world hunger, and what not. I still see no reason to get additional legislation involved. In the current system it is perfectly possible to force an unmarried male to pay child support.
As to deciding whether government should regulate sexuality, the question is not whether certain sexual behaviour is more beneficial to society than some other one. The question is whether the government can and should regulate it at all.
Examples? Remember that increase in, say, spousal abuse statistics, does not constitute social discord.
Laws against adultery originally arose because of the need to know without question the father of a child.
Bullshit. Laws against adultery arose because men tended to treat their wives as property and wanted legal protection for their property. Besides, what's that "need to know without question"? Is it a social need or just personal desire?
If you're married or even have a girlfriend, but would you be totally unphased if you learn that she's been sleeping around behind your back?
And a law is going to help me with that??? Er, man, I'd like some of that stuff you are smoking...
But what happens to the children born out of wedlock? How many end up on the welfare roles?
If you look at born-out-of-wedlock children of upper-middle class people, you'll find that almost none ends up on welfare. If you look at born-to-married-parents children of people who live in inner-city ghettoes, a lot of them will end up on welfare. And your point is?
Some of the ancient laws actually have a purpose.
Sure they do. It's just that this purpose is not relevant any more, or looks really silly.
I have an incorporated company (for taxes purposes when I invoice clients). I guess therefore I have no ethics.
You, as a person, has ethical standarts (hopefully, that is). Your company doesn't. Since you, as a person, control your company, you can make this company do ethical things. This does not mean that the company has ethics.
Hm, I do think some kind of fingerprint could be created for each compiled kernel
The question wasn't kernel fingerprinting. Basically, it's the same old argument: if 90% of the world's computers run Windows, then a single flaw in Windows makes 90% of the world's computers vulnerable. As far as I understood, Forrest was arguing for internal differences in operating systems that would confuse a virus, or a root kit. Checksum are irrelevant here.
I haven't read the white papers (yet), just looked through the article. What is there seem interesting, but hardly earthshattering. This is basically a straightforward application of genetic algorithms to computer security. Matching concatenated sender's address, receiver's address, and the port is really only useful for smallish relatively self-contained networks where any non-regular "outside" connection is automatically suspicious. This wouldn't work at all for an e-commerce site, for example.
The suggestion that no two operating systems are to be exactly alike is also an interesting one, but hardly practical. First of all, most security holes occur in applications, not operating systems per se. The dangers of monoculture are real, but purposefully avoiding popular software (1) leads to suboptimal solutions to problems (do you want to avoid Apache just because it is the most popular web server?); and (2) strongly smells of security through obscurity. Besides, think of technical support nightmares: does anybody really want to support hundreds and thousands of "slightly different" operating systems?
I feel that the biological metaphors are somewhat overblown and could be misleading. On the other hand, they journalists like them...
Why has this guy been moderated down? What he says here is the Truth
Well, what he says is standard Slashdot fare, so maybe it does not deserve the Troll status, but Truth it definitely ain't. One, of course, is entitled to hold any opinions one likes, but this guy's views on history will not survive any serious (hell, even cursory) rational examination.
All that these hackers are, are extremely intelligent individuals who have become bored with life around them.
And that's why the army (including Air Force and the Navy) is exactly the wrong place for them to be. Historically, military is about taking a mass of peasants and organizing them into a somewhat controllable killing mechanism. The army organization is basically a holdover from the feudal times. Note that anybody higher in rank than you is automatically considered to be smarter, know better, and can order you to do whatever he deems necessary.
I would bet that the army would be extremely uncomfortable with hackers, and hackers would feel completely out of place in the army.
The internet depends a lot on phone lines to be what it is today
You are confusing Internet with consumer access to it.
Yes, I understand that "people make the Internet what it is" and all that, but keep in mind that the great majority of people using the Internet nowadays are consumers, that is to say, they do not add anything to the 'net, but just consume what's available: just like watching TV.
you may be as well in bad need of taking a look through your lab's window,
Lab? Window? I don't need no steenking window near my desk (and the nice doctors who feed me my medications think it's not a good idea to let me near a window anyway).
Well, lessee, let's profile geeks. How do we know they are geeks? Take the steretype: male programmers, low social skills, spend 16+ hours plugged into the computer, sleep till noon, code till dawn, caffeine is a basic food group, etc. etc. Pick the people that match the stereotype and now profile them. Surprise! It turns out that geeks tend to be male programmers, low social skills, spend 16+ hours..... etc.
I'll define a geek as a person who can think cleanly and can deal with very complicated systems. If you start from this point, the profiles are probably going to look very different. For example, in my limited experience, the best and smartest geeks (besides, the Slashdot crowd, of course;) are lawyers. Not all lawyers, though -- not litigation lawyers and not small-office lawyers. But corporate lawyers working for big law firms tend to be very very smart people, and very geeky as well. Tax people are the geekiest, by the way.
Yes, but when? History shows that computers and electronics seized as evidence stick to the government's fingers for several years at least.
"Mr.Ramsey? You remember that stuff we seized from you six years ago? We have some crates in a federal warehouse in Montana that seem to be yours. You can pick them up at your convenience".
It is rather interesting that the base human desires seem to dominate new technology
It's really simple. Those who were not obsessed with sex didn't survive -- they didn't breed fast enough or often enough. Darwinian evolution, survival of the fittest, you know...
Er, bucko, you seem to think that if a router at MAE East wants to send some packets to a router at MAE West, it just picks up the phone and dials a number. Sorry to disappoint you, but the 'net doesn't work this way. Never has, actually, except for the UUCP connections which I'll bet you've never heard about.
At any bookstore you can find a couple of shelves of books about Internet. Please treat them as a clue dispenser. You are in a bad need of one.
Slashdot Mirror
Physics is only difficult, because it tends to not be "common sense". But, in reality, that's a problem with "common sense", not physics. So long as a person is willing to discard -all- preconceived notions, and look at the world the same way an inquisitive child might, it's really all quite simple. You stop assuming iron balls should fall faster than feathers, because of their weight, and start seeing what's happening.
Well, that's not that simple. First of all, if you discard all common sense, there is nothing to prevent you from jumping off a tall building to see what happens (answer: a big splat). Or, for example, why don't you assemble a big pile of explosive and detonate it -- to see what would happen, of course.
Second, if you start dropping iron balls and feathers and looking at them, I can assure you that you will see that iron balls drop faster. There is this little thing of air resistance which messes up the nice and clean law of gravity.
By sticking to worlds of plasticine houses and marmalade skies, where "everyday experience" simply isn't important and seeing what's going on -is-, physics actually becomes rather trivial.
It is quite clear that you haven't tried hard thinking about quantum physics. It does not become trivial even if you get into the world of marmalade skies (a bit of acid will help you there). Dropping preconcieved notions might help, but you would need to do it at a very deep level (language and thinking constructs level) which in itself is remarkably hard. For an example try reading a German philosopher by the name of Heidegger who did struggle very much with the fact that language was inadequate for what he wanted to express, and tell me if it's easy.
Kaa
Articles like the Wired piece are a waste of bits.
And did you notice there was NO fine print saying "No bits were harmed during the production of this article"?
Kaa
You cannot begin to imagine how uninterested I am in your vapid arguments.
Uninterested enough to reply, probably?
In any case, on Usenet and Slashdot such statements are usually a clear sign of having nothing substantive to say.
Kaa
There is software I will not use because of its license.
Example?
Furthermore, I am well aware that the software I am installing is a copyrighted work, subject to the terms and limitations of the copyright holder.
Nobody is saying you thought it was in public domain. The real question is whether it is subject to copyright law (including fair use provisions) or subject to a contract between you and the copyright holder where you give up some of your rights under the copyright law.
Finally, there is nothing about a "normal" contract that requires it to be "negotiable".
Oh yes, there is. The courts (who are asked to enforce contracts) make a clear distinction between contracts that were negotiated between the parties and contracts that were forced upon one party without it being able to negotiate the terms.
Most contracts in the real world are of the non-negotiable take-it-or-leave-it variety. I can't "negotiate" with my grocery store to get a cheaper loaf of bread.
Not true. First of all, buying stuff is not entering a contract. There is no contract between you and the grocery store. Second, you can negotiate -- this is called haggling (though it still doesn't have anything to do with contracts).
Did you sleep through Business Law or have you just not signed up for the course yet?
IANAL, but your imitation of a lawyer is much worse than mine. There is no "Business Law" course, that's too wide a subject. What you probably had in mind is a standard first-year course called "Contracts".
Kaa
I think you meant to say that the way to make sure that the littering crime rate is zero is to have a police state
Please do not put words into my mouth. Thank you. I am perfectly capable of saying what I mean to say.
To reiterate my point, there is a trade-off between freedom and safety. In Big Brother kinds of countries crime is harder, sentences are harsher, and police's life is easier. All this works to make common people's life safer, and not from littering, but from crimes like murder, rape, etc. No, a police state is not the only way to reduce crime, but taking away some freedoms (anonymity and privacy included) is often the easiest way.
Case in point: some locations in Great Britain installed video cameras at basically every street corner. As a result, street crime dropped
dramatically. Of course, now you have the dubious pleasure of knowing that a cop probably watches you as you walk along the street. This is
a fairly clear example of a safety vs. freedom trade-off. Some people (you, probably, among them) would say that this is a good trade-off, other people would disagree. Of course, when (not if) we have a good automated face recognition system, plugging it into this camera network will radically change the terms of the original trade-off, but that's a different discussion altogether. I am not saying that there is a one-size-fits-all answer -- some people need more freedom, and some people need more safety. However, the answer is clearly not as simple as saying "let's allow the police to do their work".
By the time a cybercrime has taken place, it is too late to traceroute: logs are required
And your point being? Sure, mandating universal global tracing/authentication/logging/etc will make the police's life easier and reduce the crime rate. But mandating that everyone wears an electronic anklet that transmits its location once a minute to a central police station will reduce the crime rate even more, much more. So why don't we pass a law forcing everyone to wear these? Because there is a trade-off, and one should at least carefully examine what one is giving up before jumping to defend some proposal.
lets talk about how to stop the abuse
Let's. I believe the best way to stop the abuse is to construct the system in such a way as to make the abuse impossible. I would recommend a book by Lessig "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" for a very good treatment of the topic.
Governments have all sorts of interests in promoting the interests of their citizens
I think you are confusing "have" and "should have". In any case, this statement is way too broad to be meaningful.
The question is how do we balance the individual's interests against the group's, and this is what governments do, and they do a pretty
good job of it, at least in Western countries
You are confused. The question is indeed how to balance the individual's rights against group rights, but the governments are exactly those groups against which the individual's right have to be balanced. This means, of course, that if the balancing is left to the government, it will tilt the scale in it's own favor. It is a well-accepted historical fact that bureacracies, governments among them, tend to accumulate as much power as they can get away with. YMMV, of course, but from my point of view, the governments, including the Western ones, are doing a very lousy job of balancing.
Kaa
If I can't abide by a shrinkwrap software license, I don't use the software.
Bullshit. Did you read that license? I don't think so. If you haven't, how do you know you are going to abide by it?
Besides, if a click-shrink license is a "normal" contract, I'd like the ability to negotiate it and opt-out of certain of its provisions. Please tell me how to do it.
Kaa
Crime is a Bad Thing, being safe, secure and protected are Good Things.
Yes, of course, but TANSTAAFL. The simplest way to be safe, secure, and protected is to live in a police state. Nazi Germany had very low crime rates. Moscow, before the Soviet Union imploded, was a very safe city to live in (anybody convicted of a crime was forbidden to live closer than 100 km to Moscow). The issue is not whether being safe and secure is a Good Thing. The issue is the price you are willing to pay for it.
But don't stick your head in the sand. Just like they trace phone calls of people who phone in bomb threats, they're going to be tracerouting packets of people who download other people's credit cards.
Sure. No problem with that. But, again, you are putting up a strawman. Nobody is arguing that the police should never, ever be able to trace a packet across the 'net. The issue is completely different -- it has to do with the major shifts in the ease/cost of monitoring and storing information. These shifts affect the balance of power between the government and the individual. How this balance of power should look on the 'net is a big and complicated question. Saying "police keep me safe and sound, great job, Janet" doesn't cut it.
work with you to make sure that people's privacy is in fact protected.
Government has no interest in promoting the privacy of the individuals. In fact, quite the opposite is true (cf. anti-encryption efforts). Government wants people's lives to be easily monitorable and checkable. It is willing to take some measures to curb the ability of corporations to gather data (as a smokescreen and to prevent competition), but just try suggesting measures that will prevent *anyone* from getting data on people, and see how far you get.
Kaa
I just have to ask why? Why do we need Linux on a PDA? I am completly happy with PalmOS on a PDA. I want my PDA to be a PDA and not a handheld computer.
Well, maybe you are completely happy with PalmOS, but that doesn't make it so for the rest of us. Different people have different needs and different tastes.
I, for one, am unhappy with Palms and I do want my PDA to be a handheld computer. I think Palms are way too simple and limited. If a phone/appointment book is all you need, they are fine. Unfortunately, I want much more from my PDA. Latest Casio goes into the right direction, even though it is hobbled by WinCE (bletch).
For me (and I am not making any claims about the rest of humanity) Palms are inadequate. I don't need an appointment book and my watch functions as a phone book perfectly well. I really want something like a Psion in a Palm form factor (hey, Psion, hint, hint).
Kaa
[Re cracking the encrypted block lists]
I don't see what's the big problem. You have the piece of software that does the decrypting sitting right here on your machine. Fire up a decent debugger, watch it in action, and grab that key from RAM. Warez guys do stuff like that all the time. I understand that a good knowledge of assembler is needed for this to work, but again, any guy/team that cracks copy protection should be able to grab the key without much trouble.
Kaa
to cut back on tacky signs hanging all over the place
No, no! Because the real-physical-world ads can now be replaced digitally, these ads will become cheaper and your ballpark will need to put up MORE of them.
Kaa
You mean to tell me that you've never seen a bar fight resulting from the interaction of a female and two males?
That's not social discord. That's a testosterone-triggered mating ritual. The effect of laws on preventing such behaviour will be zilch. Besides, that not really a society's problem.
The 'need to know' was both social and personal. Society as a whole has no wish to pay to raise someone else's children, especially in times past when it was so much more difficult to do so.
In time past society did NOT pay to raise anybody's children, illegitimate or not.
Perhaps the law can relieve you of the responsibility of children produced from such an occurance?
It already does. This is called a paternity suit. If you belive a child is not yours, and you can prove it (easy nowadays with DNA testing) no sane judge will force child support on you.
A law against adultery will not eliminate it entirely. But it WILL have a chilling effect.
No, it will not. AFAIK until recently a bunch of US states did have laws against adultery (New York comes to mind) and the effect of those was, again, zilch. All these laws did was undermine (whatever left) respect for law.
Besides, you would want to consider whether government is justified in regulating private affairs of its citizens. It is generally held that just because there is a perceived (by somebody) public good, it does not follow that the government can or should legislate it.
That it takes two to make a baby, and statistically at least, the baby has a much better chance of growing out of welfare with two parents.
I'll believe it when I see data fully adjusted for socioeconomic status.
My personal wish is for men to have responsibility for children they foster
That would be a good thing, along with peace on earth, eradication of world hunger, and what not. I still see no reason to get additional legislation involved. In the current system it is perfectly possible to force an unmarried male to pay child support.
As to deciding whether government should regulate sexuality, the question is not whether certain sexual behaviour is more beneficial to society than some other one. The question is whether the government can and should regulate it at all.
Kaa
too much open sexuality CAN breed social discord
Examples? Remember that increase in, say, spousal abuse statistics, does not constitute social discord.
Laws against adultery originally arose because of the need to know without question the father of a child.
Bullshit. Laws against adultery arose because men tended to treat their wives as property and wanted legal protection for their property. Besides, what's that "need to know without question"? Is it a social need or just personal desire?
If you're married or even have a girlfriend, but would you be totally unphased if you learn that she's been sleeping around behind your back?
And a law is going to help me with that??? Er, man, I'd like some of that stuff you are smoking...
But what happens to the children born out of wedlock? How many end up on the welfare roles?
If you look at born-out-of-wedlock children of upper-middle class people, you'll find that almost none ends up on welfare. If you look at born-to-married-parents children of people who live in inner-city ghettoes, a lot of them will end up on welfare. And your point is?
Some of the ancient laws actually have a purpose.
Sure they do. It's just that this purpose is not relevant any more, or looks really silly.
Kaa
I have an incorporated company (for taxes purposes when I invoice clients). I guess therefore I have no ethics.
You, as a person, has ethical standarts (hopefully, that is). Your company doesn't. Since you, as a person, control your company, you can make this company do ethical things. This does not mean that the company has ethics.
Kaa
It's time for us to redefine a new word for ourselves
You may define a new word for yourself. I am not going to.
Kaa
As someone much wiser than I once said:
"Any significant advance in technology is indistinquishable from magic."
That someone was Arthur Clark, and I belive the correct quote is "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".
If you put a caveman in front of an Imac, he's going to insist it's a deity
Until he finds a heavy blunt object.
Kaa
Hm, I do think some kind of fingerprint could be created for each compiled kernel
The question wasn't kernel fingerprinting. Basically, it's the same old argument: if 90% of the world's computers run Windows, then a single flaw in Windows makes 90% of the world's computers vulnerable. As far as I understood, Forrest was arguing for internal differences in operating systems that would confuse a virus, or a root kit. Checksum are irrelevant here.
Kaa
I haven't read the white papers (yet), just looked through the article. What is there seem interesting, but hardly earthshattering. This is basically a straightforward application of genetic algorithms to computer security. Matching concatenated sender's address, receiver's address, and the port is really only useful for smallish relatively self-contained networks where any non-regular "outside" connection is automatically suspicious. This wouldn't work at all for an e-commerce site, for example.
The suggestion that no two operating systems are to be exactly alike is also an interesting one, but hardly practical. First of all, most security holes occur in applications, not operating systems per se. The dangers of monoculture are real, but purposefully avoiding popular software (1) leads to suboptimal solutions to problems (do you want to avoid Apache just because it is the most popular web server?); and (2) strongly smells of security through obscurity. Besides, think of technical support nightmares: does anybody really want to support hundreds and thousands of "slightly different" operating systems?
I feel that the biological metaphors are somewhat overblown and could be misleading. On the other hand, they journalists like them...
Kaa
Why has this guy been moderated down? What he says here is the Truth
Well, what he says is standard Slashdot fare, so maybe it does not deserve the Troll status, but Truth it definitely ain't. One, of course, is entitled to hold any opinions one likes, but this guy's views on history will not survive any serious (hell, even cursory) rational examination.
Kaa
All that these hackers are, are extremely intelligent individuals who have become bored with life around them.
And that's why the army (including Air Force and the Navy) is exactly the wrong place for them to be. Historically, military is about taking a mass of peasants and organizing them into a somewhat controllable killing mechanism. The army organization is basically a holdover from the feudal times. Note that anybody higher in rank than you is automatically considered to be smarter, know better, and can order you to do whatever he deems necessary.
I would bet that the army would be extremely uncomfortable with hackers, and hackers would feel completely out of place in the army.
Kaa
The internet depends a lot on phone lines to be what it is today
You are confusing Internet with consumer access to it.
Yes, I understand that "people make the Internet what it is" and all that, but keep in mind that the great majority of people using the Internet nowadays are consumers, that is to say, they do not add anything to the 'net, but just consume what's available: just like watching TV.
you may be as well in bad need of taking a look through your lab's window,
Lab? Window? I don't need no steenking window near my desk (and the nice doctors who feed me my medications think it's not a good idea to let me near a window anyway).
Kaa
Well, lessee, let's profile geeks. How do we know they are geeks? Take the steretype: male programmers, low social skills, spend 16+ hours plugged into the computer, sleep till noon, code till dawn, caffeine is a basic food group, etc. etc. Pick the people that match the stereotype and now profile them. Surprise! It turns out that geeks tend to be male programmers, low social skills, spend 16+ hours..... etc.
;) are lawyers. Not all lawyers, though -- not litigation lawyers and not small-office lawyers. But corporate lawyers working for big law firms tend to be very very smart people, and very geeky as well. Tax people are the geekiest, by the way.
I'll define a geek as a person who can think cleanly and can deal with very complicated systems. If you start from this point, the profiles are probably going to look very different. For example, in my limited experience, the best and smartest geeks (besides, the Slashdot crowd, of course
Kaa
They will get their stuff back.
Yes, but when? History shows that computers and electronics seized as evidence stick to the government's fingers for several years at least.
"Mr.Ramsey? You remember that stuff we seized from you six years ago? We have some crates in a federal warehouse in Montana that seem to be yours. You can pick them up at your convenience".
Kaa
It is rather interesting that the base human desires seem to dominate new technology
It's really simple. Those who were not obsessed with sex didn't survive -- they didn't breed fast enough or often enough. Darwinian evolution, survival of the fittest, you know...
Kaa
Er, bucko, you seem to think that if a router at MAE East wants to send some packets to a router at MAE West, it just picks up the phone and dials a number. Sorry to disappoint you, but the 'net doesn't work this way. Never has, actually, except for the UUCP connections which I'll bet you've never heard about.
At any bookstore you can find a couple of shelves of books about Internet. Please treat them as a clue dispenser. You are in a bad need of one.
Kaa
Your Russian sucks so muchE
It's not Russian. Does "Mehanicheskij Apel'sin" mean anything to you?
Kaa