Yeah, well the cops down here think this blurry picture of you using the post office matches this blurry stoplight picture of someone putting five rounds into another car at an intersection.
The government can do whatever it wants to in public places. They've established that, we've established that.
It's when the government starts using these things in ways that no rational human being would support that it becomes a problem.
A 1 degree miscalculation in a compass reading over 500 miles can be measured in miles off course.
In which case the terrorst goes "shit, I'm lost. Hey look, there's an apartment complex over there! Let's hit that!"
You're making the assumption that the terrorist's primary goal is to hit some specific target. It isn't. A terrorist's primary goal is to kill people in a spectacular or terrifying way so as to cause terror.
So after the attack, Bush is going to shut down the GPS system? How does that help anyone? Making it stronger against jamming is certainly a worthwhile pursuit, but shutting it down in response to a terrorist attack is just liable to have people wandering around lost, if not actively hindering rescue operations in fly-by-instrument situations.
You pay to go to a movie. During the movie you fall asleep, snore loudly, and are removed from the theater.
Congratulations, you completely missed the point of this thread. The guy is talking about the professors cancelling classes or the cheap classes where theres no point in going (I had an AI class taught by a visiting prof who was leaving and openly stated he didn't give a damn. Two assignments and one test the whole semester, and we never got past path finding algorithms. The textbook was far more entertaining than the professor).
So, lets try this again. You pay to go to a movie. The projectionist is asleep and snoring loudly, and the movie never starts.
have an investment in lenses that they can use in DSLRs that they can't use in P&S cameras.
Why?
Why do the lenses require a little flappy mirror or expensive prism? Do they break into a billion tiny shards if they don't have $900 of hardware to direct their precious light into a $15 CCD array?
Why not build a plain digital camera, with a chassis with *gasp* a swappable lens using *shock* *horror* a compatible locking mechanism?
Or does "SLR" now just mean "interchangeable lenses"?
as far as I can tell, SLR is an excuse to really pump up the cost of a digital camera with expensive mechanical parts, so that people have to pay a lot just to get interchangable lenses.
Or is the jiggle from mirror slap a "feature" these days?
I guess people who have used analog cameras for years find it hard to squint through the LCD to line up their shot just so. (To be fair, even though you'd think that the LCD and the image taken would match, some cameras have LCDs with "issues" that don't quite work out that way, typically incorrect aspect ratio or just the way the image is scaled down to the lower resolution LCD)
He went fishing while legislators balanced the budget, and golfing as they trudged through the last day of session.
Tell him to move to Texas and pretend to be conservative. Half the people here would vote for him because he says he's conservative, the other half would vote for him for not meddling in their affairs.
When I was younger, I tuned into some movie on TV about a nuclear bomb going off in some harbor on the coast. It had a very realistic news thing, and I remember it freaking me out for a few minutes until I realized that we didnt have a channel numbered whatever the fake newschannel was.
Wish I could remember what that movie was (all I really remember was that the bomb was in a boat and some people tried to disarm it but it went off anyway, and the news report of it going off). Don't even remember when it was I saw it.
None of this encoding my life history on the card, or letting my card broadcast my identification to everyone sitting on the bus with me. This state has it right. If the cop wants my information, he can stop me and ask me for it. The things on the computer readable portion are on the card anyway, so it lets the cop scan me in and let me go on my merry way faster, without the hassle of having my DL number mistyped and coming up as some wanted murderer.
What is the failure mode for a collapsed fusuion capable magnetic field?
The reaction stops. No, seriously, current fusion reactor designs require the magentic field to cause the fusion to happen. Thats why its currently so expensive, most of the time it takes more electricity to power the magnet than you can get from the fusion.
Current nuclear reactors have a GREAT track record, by any other industry standard. However, those who worked on the years of clean up at three mile island
Guess what, the reactor there wasn't a current design. In fact, I believe none of the reactors in operation in the US is a current design, since instead of replacing them with better designs that have been in use for almost a decade now, little "know it alls" like you complain and prevent new plants from being built to replace the old.
The situation with nuclear power has not changed just becuase we are looking at 'new and improved' fusion.
The situation with nuclear power changed decades ago with the invention of reactors that could burn fuel that would have otherwise been considered "spent", reducing the need for disposal. It changed years ago with the invention of better fission reactors that are resistant to meltdown in emergency situations, and it will change yet again with the invention of fusion reactors that operate by converting small atoms (Helium) into slightly larger ones, rather than using heavy metals like uranium and plutonium.
I thought scientific method is just choosing the most probable explanation
That is just one step. You then perform experiments to see if you explanation is disprovable. You're right, macroevolution, black holes, etc. are unproven. However, scientists have developed theories that are borne out by observation and experimentation (hence proven observed microevolution; observed objects in space that repeatedly exhibit similar light-bending properties, x-ray flares, etc that indicate a number of similar bodies in space which behave in a similar, predictable way).
There is nothing un-scientific about macroevolution, except when people claim it is proven truth. I wish more textbooks would emphasize that macroevolution is unproven (and not really provable). Bible thumpers can point this out all they want until they start telling me that my science book should preach creationism as truth while lacking that same proof.
It doesn't say they sold any modded boxes with games on them
It says
"They were burning games onto the hard drive and equipping the hard drive with copying software so that the average consumer could just go ahead and copy the software themselves," she said.
Now, you tell me whether they were selling it like that to the "consumer"? (BTW, even if you want to go with your "OoOoOOo strangely missing" crap, take a look at the other posts here from people who have been to the store and seen what Pandora's Box has for sale. They did, in fact, sell these babies fully loaded.)
Carl Sagan was a great guy and all, but you seem to not understand the basics of the scientific method.
The scientific method is a process for proving something as definitely untrue or possibly true. You observe a phenomenon, form a hypothesis that you believe explains this phenomenon, use that hypothesis to predict the outcome of experiments designed to recreate this phenomenon with a minimum of variables, perform experiments designed to see if your prediction is correct, and thats it.
At no time is anything "extraordinary" in the scientific method. Lets say that we observe that a person is able to guess what is written on a card with uncanny accuracy. We produce a hypothesis that this person is able to predict the outcome of selecting a random card. We predict that if we perform an experiment consisting of shuffling a deck of cards, then asking for the name of the top card, then drawing the card to see if it matches, then shuffling the deck again, that this person will name the card correctly 100% of the time.
Then we perform the experiment, and either our predictions are right or our predictions and hypothesis are wrong. Nothing "extraordinary" happens in this process because to the scientific method, everything is either false or maybe true.
Every day it gets more obvious that the difference between votes for Bush and votes for Kerry in Florida and Ohio is enough that it would take widespread and rampant fraud in both states to have "stolen" the presidency from Kerry. Bush won, I accept that.
Now, what about US Congressional, State, and Local elections? I'd argue that to the people affected (those actually disenfranchised by fraud, if any actually occurred), those elections are far more important to their lives than who the president is. To say its not worth looking into because it won't change the presidency is outright wrong.
Actually, its pretty easy. Given the same compilation environment, the same sourcecode will produce the same executable (with the exception of time-based constants like "date compiled", which can be checked by hand in a hex editor).
Now the tinfoil hat question is, how many weeks ago did the companies finish re-flashing all the machines with the "proper" software?
Tell you what, why don't you ignore this case, because it probably isn't "as true" as you hope it is. Certainly a prototype was produced and handed over, and apparently the people who requested it did so for dishonorable reasons, but whether or not the intended actions were ever carried out is up in the air.
Instead, focus on the cases where it really is true, like Volusia County's egregarious records tampering this year. (kind of puts their "computer error" negative vote for Gore in 2000 in a new light, doesn't it? Odd that the same people were involved both times.)
I could claim that I flew like Superman above the Vatican and used my X-ray vision to see the Pope eating babies. I could make a press release to that effect, too.
But would you enter a sworn affidavit to this effect into Congress's Judiciary Committee?
You can say all the absurd things you want, but until you say something under oath, you and everyone else here like you are just blowing hot wind and comparing it to this guy's sworn statement.
Ah clearly he's ripping off the Aztecs who, over a thousand years ago, perfected the art of using magnifying glasses to melt rock into whatever shapes are needed to build buildings.
Having a lot of experience in filtering data like this, I agree with the others. You should consider these rules as filters which are read as data, not as code. They should be loaded as data so that changes to these filters can be made as easy as possible.
That said, I think you are wrong about audit filters needing to be secret. I think that unless the IRS has some minimum audit quota it has to meet, there is no reason why people shouldn't have access to this information to be able to produce fully legal tax returns without being harassed.
I think I'd rather have my equipment tell me when theres a problem, so that I can evaluate the risk (do I have redundant systems to handle the failure when it happens) vs. the alternatives (can I repair this myself) vs. the cost (how much does it cost to have a field tech show up unannounced, perform some voodoo on my server, then tell me that whatever is wrong was fixed and won't be a problem? Or is that covered in my support contract?)
The sad thing is that it probably wasn't the MPAA or the RIAA. I've seen this over and over on several IRC networks (dalnet especially). Some idiot gets banned from their favorite channel, and instead of taking it like a man or going home and crying themselves to sleep, they get pissed off and start DDoSing the entire network. Since they got kicked, they have to ruin the fun for everyone.
I'm sure that in the end it will be something along these lines: someone in the forum started flaming, words were exchanged, feelings were hurt, and some pimply-faced 14 year old decided to get even.
Probably because the US Government does a huge amount of business with these companies. Or did you think that they handed out grants and loans to random people without even a basic financial background check?
I'd be willing to bet that the law could be worded such that any credit scoring company willing to partake of the government's big bucks would have to obey, or lose out to another company that will obey.
Now, if you wanted to be prissy about it, libel laws could have been amended to require that the credit reporting companies send copies of the reports every time its updated, or be faced with libel charges when an error is made. How would that be for within the bounds of Congress's power, or would you rather that companies be able to exercise the right to "free speech" as in telling random lies to destroy people's lives?
1) Military jobs, if you think that AI is going to be good enough
Of course not. But I suspect that remote control will be good enough that a small platoon could be controlled by someone raised on Starcraft.
As for the rest of them (except maybe drug testing, not sure what its here for), Machines could be built that climbed I-beams and welded and/or riveted where any two beams met. Machines already build a lot of the average car, with one person running/monitoring several robots at once.
I doubt that robots in service positions will meet the kind of riot-level resistance that they did in some Asimov books. Rich people don't get rich by spending their money, if they'll save enough money, they'll have their pizza delivered by an automatic delivery truck. Poor people will afford to eat from the vending-machine-store which employs a security guard or two, and the delivery people stock the machines themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, well the cops down here think this blurry picture of you using the post office matches this blurry stoplight picture of someone putting five rounds into another car at an intersection.
The government can do whatever it wants to in public places. They've established that, we've established that.
It's when the government starts using these things in ways that no rational human being would support that it becomes a problem.
A 1 degree miscalculation in a compass reading over 500 miles can be measured in miles off course.
In which case the terrorst goes "shit, I'm lost. Hey look, there's an apartment complex over there! Let's hit that!"
You're making the assumption that the terrorist's primary goal is to hit some specific target. It isn't. A terrorist's primary goal is to kill people in a spectacular or terrifying way so as to cause terror.
So after the attack, Bush is going to shut down the GPS system? How does that help anyone? Making it stronger against jamming is certainly a worthwhile pursuit, but shutting it down in response to a terrorist attack is just liable to have people wandering around lost, if not actively hindering rescue operations in fly-by-instrument situations.
So in other words, you've found a remote exploit for the specific copy of NASM on your TA's machine, only when used by the TA's account.
I'd love to see your patch:
You pay to go to a movie. During the movie you fall asleep, snore loudly, and are removed from the theater.
Congratulations, you completely missed the point of this thread. The guy is talking about the professors cancelling classes or the cheap classes where theres no point in going (I had an AI class taught by a visiting prof who was leaving and openly stated he didn't give a damn. Two assignments and one test the whole semester, and we never got past path finding algorithms. The textbook was far more entertaining than the professor).
So, lets try this again. You pay to go to a movie. The projectionist is asleep and snoring loudly, and the movie never starts.
Is that your fault or the theaters?
My personal choice would be not to commit any crimes that might place me in such a situation.
I hope you don't live in Texas.
There, anyone, even you, could be a sex offender, and not even know it.
When the corruption of the system is so flagrant, I wonder if your personal choice holds any weight at all.
have an investment in lenses that they can use in DSLRs that they can't use in P&S cameras.
Why?
Why do the lenses require a little flappy mirror or expensive prism? Do they break into a billion tiny shards if they don't have $900 of hardware to direct their precious light into a $15 CCD array?
Why not build a plain digital camera, with a chassis with *gasp* a swappable lens using *shock* *horror* a compatible locking mechanism?
Or does "SLR" now just mean "interchangeable lenses"?
as far as I can tell, SLR is an excuse to really pump up the cost of a digital camera with expensive mechanical parts, so that people have to pay a lot just to get interchangable lenses.
Or is the jiggle from mirror slap a "feature" these days?
I guess people who have used analog cameras for years find it hard to squint through the LCD to line up their shot just so. (To be fair, even though you'd think that the LCD and the image taken would match, some cameras have LCDs with "issues" that don't quite work out that way, typically incorrect aspect ratio or just the way the image is scaled down to the lower resolution LCD)
He went fishing while legislators balanced the budget, and golfing as they trudged through the last day of session.
Tell him to move to Texas and pretend to be conservative. Half the people here would vote for him because he says he's conservative, the other half would vote for him for not meddling in their affairs.
When I was younger, I tuned into some movie on TV about a nuclear bomb going off in some harbor on the coast. It had a very realistic news thing, and I remember it freaking me out for a few minutes until I realized that we didnt have a channel numbered whatever the fake newschannel was.
Wish I could remember what that movie was (all I really remember was that the bomb was in a boat and some people tried to disarm it but it went off anyway, and the news report of it going off). Don't even remember when it was I saw it.
None of this encoding my life history on the card, or letting my card broadcast my identification to everyone sitting on the bus with me. This state has it right. If the cop wants my information, he can stop me and ask me for it. The things on the computer readable portion are on the card anyway, so it lets the cop scan me in and let me go on my merry way faster, without the hassle of having my DL number mistyped and coming up as some wanted murderer.
Maybe I should look into moving.
What is the failure mode for a collapsed fusuion capable magnetic field?
The reaction stops. No, seriously, current fusion reactor designs require the magentic field to cause the fusion to happen. Thats why its currently so expensive, most of the time it takes more electricity to power the magnet than you can get from the fusion.
Current nuclear reactors have a GREAT track record, by any other industry standard. However, those who worked on the years of clean up at three mile island
Guess what, the reactor there wasn't a current design. In fact, I believe none of the reactors in operation in the US is a current design, since instead of replacing them with better designs that have been in use for almost a decade now, little "know it alls" like you complain and prevent new plants from being built to replace the old.
The situation with nuclear power has not changed just becuase we are looking at 'new and improved' fusion.
The situation with nuclear power changed decades ago with the invention of reactors that could burn fuel that would have otherwise been considered "spent", reducing the need for disposal. It changed years ago with the invention of better fission reactors that are resistant to meltdown in emergency situations, and it will change yet again with the invention of fusion reactors that operate by converting small atoms (Helium) into slightly larger ones, rather than using heavy metals like uranium and plutonium.
I thought scientific method is just choosing the most probable explanation
That is just one step. You then perform experiments to see if you explanation is disprovable. You're right, macroevolution, black holes, etc. are unproven. However, scientists have developed theories that are borne out by observation and experimentation (hence proven observed microevolution; observed objects in space that repeatedly exhibit similar light-bending properties, x-ray flares, etc that indicate a number of similar bodies in space which behave in a similar, predictable way).
There is nothing un-scientific about macroevolution, except when people claim it is proven truth. I wish more textbooks would emphasize that macroevolution is unproven (and not really provable). Bible thumpers can point this out all they want until they start telling me that my science book should preach creationism as truth while lacking that same proof.
It says Now, you tell me whether they were selling it like that to the "consumer"? (BTW, even if you want to go with your "OoOoOOo strangely missing" crap, take a look at the other posts here from people who have been to the store and seen what Pandora's Box has for sale. They did, in fact, sell these babies fully loaded.)
Carl Sagan was a great guy and all, but you seem to not understand the basics of the scientific method.
The scientific method is a process for proving something as definitely untrue or possibly true. You observe a phenomenon, form a hypothesis that you believe explains this phenomenon, use that hypothesis to predict the outcome of experiments designed to recreate this phenomenon with a minimum of variables, perform experiments designed to see if your prediction is correct, and thats it.
At no time is anything "extraordinary" in the scientific method. Lets say that we observe that a person is able to guess what is written on a card with uncanny accuracy. We produce a hypothesis that this person is able to predict the outcome of selecting a random card. We predict that if we perform an experiment consisting of shuffling a deck of cards, then asking for the name of the top card, then drawing the card to see if it matches, then shuffling the deck again, that this person will name the card correctly 100% of the time.
Then we perform the experiment, and either our predictions are right or our predictions and hypothesis are wrong. Nothing "extraordinary" happens in this process because to the scientific method, everything is either false or maybe true.
Ok, lets step back a second.
Every day it gets more obvious that the difference between votes for Bush and votes for Kerry in Florida and Ohio is enough that it would take widespread and rampant fraud in both states to have "stolen" the presidency from Kerry. Bush won, I accept that.
Now, what about US Congressional, State, and Local elections? I'd argue that to the people affected (those actually disenfranchised by fraud, if any actually occurred), those elections are far more important to their lives than who the president is. To say its not worth looking into because it won't change the presidency is outright wrong.
Actually, its pretty easy. Given the same compilation environment, the same sourcecode will produce the same executable (with the exception of time-based constants like "date compiled", which can be checked by hand in a hex editor).
Now the tinfoil hat question is, how many weeks ago did the companies finish re-flashing all the machines with the "proper" software?
Tell you what, why don't you ignore this case, because it probably isn't "as true" as you hope it is. Certainly a prototype was produced and handed over, and apparently the people who requested it did so for dishonorable reasons, but whether or not the intended actions were ever carried out is up in the air.
Instead, focus on the cases where it really is true, like Volusia County's egregarious records tampering this year. (kind of puts their "computer error" negative vote for Gore in 2000 in a new light, doesn't it? Odd that the same people were involved both times.)
I could claim that I flew like Superman above the Vatican and used my X-ray vision to see the Pope eating babies. I could make a press release to that effect, too.
But would you enter a sworn affidavit to this effect into Congress's Judiciary Committee?
You can say all the absurd things you want, but until you say something under oath, you and everyone else here like you are just blowing hot wind and comparing it to this guy's sworn statement.
it's not as if he invented doing things this way.
Ah clearly he's ripping off the Aztecs who, over a thousand years ago, perfected the art of using magnifying glasses to melt rock into whatever shapes are needed to build buildings.
OK this is a cheap jibe
Yes, yes it is.
Having a lot of experience in filtering data like this, I agree with the others. You should consider these rules as filters which are read as data, not as code. They should be loaded as data so that changes to these filters can be made as easy as possible.
That said, I think you are wrong about audit filters needing to be secret. I think that unless the IRS has some minimum audit quota it has to meet, there is no reason why people shouldn't have access to this information to be able to produce fully legal tax returns without being harassed.
I think I'd rather have my equipment tell me when theres a problem, so that I can evaluate the risk (do I have redundant systems to handle the failure when it happens) vs. the alternatives (can I repair this myself) vs. the cost (how much does it cost to have a field tech show up unannounced, perform some voodoo on my server, then tell me that whatever is wrong was fixed and won't be a problem? Or is that covered in my support contract?)
The sad thing is that it probably wasn't the MPAA or the RIAA. I've seen this over and over on several IRC networks (dalnet especially). Some idiot gets banned from their favorite channel, and instead of taking it like a man or going home and crying themselves to sleep, they get pissed off and start DDoSing the entire network. Since they got kicked, they have to ruin the fun for everyone.
I'm sure that in the end it will be something along these lines: someone in the forum started flaming, words were exchanged, feelings were hurt, and some pimply-faced 14 year old decided to get even.
Probably because the US Government does a huge amount of business with these companies. Or did you think that they handed out grants and loans to random people without even a basic financial background check?
I'd be willing to bet that the law could be worded such that any credit scoring company willing to partake of the government's big bucks would have to obey, or lose out to another company that will obey.
Now, if you wanted to be prissy about it, libel laws could have been amended to require that the credit reporting companies send copies of the reports every time its updated, or be faced with libel charges when an error is made. How would that be for within the bounds of Congress's power, or would you rather that companies be able to exercise the right to "free speech" as in telling random lies to destroy people's lives?
1) Military jobs, if you think that AI is going to be good enough
Of course not. But I suspect that remote control will be good enough that a small platoon could be controlled by someone raised on Starcraft.
As for the rest of them (except maybe drug testing, not sure what its here for), Machines could be built that climbed I-beams and welded and/or riveted where any two beams met. Machines already build a lot of the average car, with one person running/monitoring several robots at once.
I doubt that robots in service positions will meet the kind of riot-level resistance that they did in some Asimov books. Rich people don't get rich by spending their money, if they'll save enough money, they'll have their pizza delivered by an automatic delivery truck. Poor people will afford to eat from the vending-machine-store which employs a security guard or two, and the delivery people stock the machines themselves.