I'm sick of people touting Intelligent Design when they don't even understand Evolution.
Evolution is NOT about "random mutations". There is nothing at all RANDOM about evolution. Sure, there are random mutations going on all the time, but that's not what evolution is about. Evolution is about NATURAL SELECTION which is definitely NOT a random process.
There is a very specific rule that is applied to the "random mutations" to see which ones move forward and that is (more or less) this: Those mutations that tend to make a creature at least slightly more successful will tend to spread throughout a population. And "successful" means (essentially) living long enough to reproduce and raise young.
This is NOT random at all. Most (nearly all) mutations are either BAD and cause damage, or effectively do nothing. Only a few rare mutations actually pass the natural selection test of being positive and therefore spread through successive generations.
In a given context a mutation is either going to tend to be helpful to the survival of the creature or not. So I say once again Evolution is NOT random.
I could go on and on and explain how natural selection often leads to results that APPEAR to look "planned", even though they were not planned with any intelligent forethought, but that would be a whole book. Instead, read Richard Dawkins "The Blind Watchmaker".
It seems to me that the logs from SuperNova can contain two things:
1) The IP addresses of people hosting bittorrents and 2) The IP addresses of people being redirected to download from the above people
In both cases I fail to see how there can be any effective legal case. Unless the MPAA actually went to the sites in question and downloaded the files, they can't prove that "Matrix.avi" was actually the movie Matrix. And they certainly can't prove that the downloaders ever actually completed their downloads, regardless.
I call "bullshit". No way any guilty verdicts can ever be reached here.
UNFORTUNATELY, however, with the FUCKED UP legal system in the U.S., some people might not have the resources to actually hire a lawyer to point this out, even though doing so would guarantee an innocent verdict. So expect a few po' folk to negotiate settlements...
Ahh, I see now. Bush is actually a progressive with a keen understanding of science.
He is abusing his power as President in a clever ploy to show how ridiculous policies such as his are. When he says that contrasting ideas on the origin of species should be taught, what he is really advocating is that schools teach just how unscientific Creationism is.
Bush's ultimate goal is to finally expose Christianity and all other religions for the fraud they are! His entire Iraq War is meant to be an instructive lesson on the dangers of religious fanatacism.
A quick google of "HDMI analog converter" yields several interesting links, one of which is a device that removes HDCP encryption from an HDMI/DVI signal:
The thesis of the research appears to be that, (1) if they can get away with it, some programmers will write implementations of the bittorrent protocal that are designed to "cheat" in such a way that they can have a higher ratio of downloading to uploading than they can currently get away with, and (2) it is the multiple swarms created by a lack of a central search engine that stops this.
The research is very unsatisfying to me for several reasons. First, its not even necessary to "cheat". On every bittorrent I've ever downloaded, my download has completed *way* before my ratio has reached 1:1, and it is only because I choose not to end the session that I continue seeding (or, more often than not, because I'm asleep, so the choice to continue seeding is made for me).
Second, the example they give of a strategy that beats tit-for-tat is one in which several cooperating strategies are used at the same time, with some taking on a "master" roll and some taking on a "slave" roll. This may make their point on some academic level, but as a realistic example is fails utterly. Who in their right mind would start ten different bittorrent sessions, with some acting as slaves and some acting as masters? The overall download speed would be awful from having multiple sessiosn running over the same wire. Its just stupid. At least come up with a better example of a strategy that can best tit-for-tat.
Third, I don't see evidence that people would use a bittorrent program that was designed to cheat. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't... the article assumes people would. My bet is that not enough people would use such a program that it would make a difference. Its not like this is evolution, where the successful cheaters "pass on their genes" to create more cheaters.
Overall, I think the research is a lot of academic mumbo-jumbo that may sound good on paper, but has very little, if any, connection to reality.
My own simpler thesis would be this: bittorrent works so well because a lot of the downloaders fall asleep and end up seeding longer than they otherwise might.
I have a serious question about all of these anonymous dark-net systems. In each case that I know of they hide IP addresses by bouncing content around from node to node so that a spectator sniffing the traffic at a particular node would not be able to determine if the traffic coming to and from that node is actually destined for it or some other node. There is then "plausible deniability" if someone tries to pin a particular upload or download on you.... you can claim some other party was just relaying through your node.
My question is this: is this fundamentally a REAL defense? Couldn't a case be made that the participants in the network are ALL participating in a conspiracy to knowingly fascilitate piracy / child porn / terrorism / whatever? I've so far not managed to find any Chinese dissident content on Freenet, so I'm not sure to what extent that line of defense would do any good.
Keep in mind that the government doesn't even need to make a GOOD case that they can "win". Just making the case at all means they get to confiscate all the computer equipment and run up legal expenses for the dark-net participants in such a way that most would probably settle just to get their lives back to normal.
Every now and then individuals get a clue: the Buddha, various monks in following in his footsteps, Jesus, etc.
On what basis do you make this declaration? On your own opinion of what is correct? On what "feels" right to you? Certainly not on any scientific basis, because there isn't one shred of scientific evidence that Buddha, Jesus or any of your 20th century metaphysical writers / philosophers understand the mechanics of human consciousness.
At this point there is no reason to believe that our consciousness is anything more than our physical bodies, because that is the simplest explanation (Occam's razor and all that).
Due to your ego and DESIRE for there to be something more to your consciousness than your physical body (and perhaps a desire to re-unite with lost loved ones), it is certainly easy to understand why you are so quick to believe that there must be "something more" that will "live on for eternity", but that doesn't make it true.
Anyway, from a scientific perspective, consciousness is only "not completely understood" only in the sense that we can not yet duplicate it experimentally. This isn't to say that there isn't a broad and growing knowledge base of scientific information about consciousness -- none of which implies that there is "something more" than our physical bodies involved.
Just to be clear, I didn't say that "any deviation and the thing dies", I said that "any deviation that does not work dies". Some rare deviations do work, and in fact work better than before. This is where we get evolution.
But onto your point. You're basically asking "So where did DNA come from in the first place?" This is quite a good question, as DNA in its current form is highly complex in itself. To suggest that it just randomly came about is absurd.
However, it is quite possible that DNA as it exists today is itself a process of evolution from a more primitive form of replication.
So what is this most basic form of replication? Several ideas are presented in the book, none of which may necessarily be the correct answer. But they are all at least conceivably correct answers, so they serve to demonstrate that the first replicators could have come about without any intelligent design.
One of the several ideas (just to throw one out there) is that the very first form of replication may have been a form of crystaline structures. In the same way that crystals replicate themselves, perhaps a similar process (maybe with proteins filling in the cracks) took place and at some point resulted in a very primitive form of DNA.
There's more info on this in the thread above.
Keep in mind that none of this serves as some sort of proof that God does not exist. A belief in God really has nothing to do with this at all. All this argument says is that complex life forms do not prove that God does exist... you just have to take that on faith as always (if you're so inclined).
Since recorded history only goes back thousands of years and evolution has been at work for MILLIONS of years I could simply say "your reference frame is too short" and leave it at that. Or I could say "look at the fossil record" which shows plenty of evolution.
However, in fact there are plenty of readily observable cases where mutations are beneficial. Viruses and bacteria are constantly mutating and evolving to more successfully compete in their environments. Plants have also been observed to mutate to better deal with changes in their environments.
And this is just the stuff we can see before our eyes. Heck, you can experimentally cause bacteria to mutate in just a few days.
Multiply this by MILLIONS of years. Do we expect to see some amazing new mutation to appear in humans or other animals over a short thousand year time frame? Of course not. Most (in fact, nearly all) mutations are detrimental. But the few that are helpful (ie, give the lifeform a slightly higher chance of survival) get passed onto future generations. The detrimental mutations do not. Over MILLIONS of years, lots of complexity can evolve through this weeding out process.
*ALL* science is theories. Why should evolution be singled out as the one theory that gets a sticker pointing out that ITS A THEORY??
How about we attach another sticker to your "evolution is a theory" sticker that says "A theory that has withstood over 100 years of peer review can essentially regarded as fact until proven wrong"?
The word "theory" as it is used on these stickers is intended to convey some sense of "uncertainty". This is a complete misuse of the word. We only have theories to explain how electricity passing through tungsten results in light, but that doesn't mean that we are not pretty damn certain the theories are correct.
Same with evolution. It is "just" a theory, but we are pretty damn certain it is correct. If you want to put a sticker on a textbook about evolution, you might as well put one on there for the theories of electromagnetism as well.
An amazing book on this subject is "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. I read it because Douglas Adams recommended it in some of his writings.
The subtitle of the book is "Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design". It explains in great detail and clarity how in the long run natural selection allows only the mutations that are beneficial to continue to exist, leading to lifeforms that might *APPEAR* to have been designed, even though they were not.
One of the cases he looks at is the eye, with all of its complexity. Someone naively looking at it might easily assume that it is a clear example of something that must have been designed by a creator in advance. Dawkins shows how, over millions of years, tiny incremental advances could allow the eye to develop without any creator.
The only things required are 1) that whatever mutation that started as the eye, as simple as it may have been (perhaps a cell with the ability to detect light, for which brain cells have been shown to have the potential), gave at least a slight competitive advantage to the lifeform and 2) each additional mutation that took place over millions of years gave some slight advantage to the lifeform. Over a long time, in an environment with light, development of the eye becomes almost assured.
Complex biological systems work not because someone designed them to work, but because any deviation that does not work DIES. This naturally and inevitably leads to greater and greater complexity.
Several of the criticisms made in the review may be a bit extreme, but the reviewer made one important observation which unfortunately seems to be confirmed by your reply.
I'm talking about his opinion (which I share) that what truly made Hitchhiker's classic was Adams' use of language. Nothing else. Some of his imagery was a great bonus, the plots were interesting enough, and the character development wasn't too bad, but what really brought it home was his finely crafted use of language.
And the observation made by the reviewer was that the creator's of the movie just did not "get" this. His very very long (tediously so, to be honest) review gives many examples where this greatest aspect of Adams' work was expunged from the screenplay.
The reviewers complaints about the plot making no sense are minor compared to this. I could forgive almost anything as long as the hallmark use of language were still present. But in your reply you basically said that it would be impossible to squeeze the language into a motion picture.
You may be right, though I think the TV series did a nice enough job with its use of narration. I'm not sure why that approach couldn't work in a big budget movie as well. But who knows, if you are right, maybe Hitchhiker's just should never have been made into a movie. Maybe it just doesn't fit. Perhaps Adams just didn't have the sense to realize this himself.... but actually I think he could have found a way (perhaps through the use of narration).
I concur that in most adaptations of books, it really doesn't matter much if the exact words find their way into the screenplay. The imagery and plot and characters make the movie. But in this case the words really do matter. Its not the situations, its not the imagery, its not the characters. Its the words. And if you don't agree with that, then I side with the reviewer: you just don't get it.
That said, I'll almost certainly see the movie, and I'll probably enjoy it. Even if it doesn't match up to what I think it could have been, it'll probably still be funnier than most movies, and the eye candy you refer to may, at least, be interesting to watch.
Not necessarily. Hey, I've heard some people claim that Jesus is the love of their life, and that doesn't mean they're having sex with him (at least I don't think so....).
Methinks you completely missed the point of what I was saying.
From the article they appear to be romantically in love (ie, exchanging flowers), but does this make them homosexual?
I guess it depends on what you mean by homosexual, but I would define it as being *sexually* attracted to one another. Which may or may not be the case here.
One could perhaps even hypothesize that due to their diminished emotional capabilities, women simply confuse the hell out of them, and therefore they find solace in each other as emotional compatibles.
Not that it matters one way or the other whether they are homosexual or not... but thought I'd point out that, from the article, we don't really know exactly what the nature of their relationship is.
This doesn't really count as an interesting SSID, but I think its a good idea at least:
I use "PUBLIC" as part of the SSID for my public hotspots. So, for instance, one of them is "SYMBIO-PUBLIC". That is to make it clear that it is a public hotspot that I have freely made open and available to anyone to use.
My ISP allows me to share my bandwidth, and I've taken precautions to limit the use of my public hotspots to low-priority bandwidth levels as well as limiting access to safe ports and such (don't need anyone setting up a spam machine via wifi!).
If everyone with the intention of giving away free bandwidth did this then it would help clarify whether open-hotspots are that way intentionally or (as is much more often the case) the hotspot provider is just a clueless newbie.
I probably shouldn't have invoked Atlas Shrugged as I did, only because it detracts from the overall point.
To be clear, I don't agree with Ayn Rands "reasoning". She definitely needed to reassess her own motivations and assumptions. But regardless of the many flaws in the logic of the book, the image of the intelligent productive people leaving the idiots behind to deal with their own problems is useful.
So I was intending to invoke her imagery *without* her theoretical underpinnings. Probably not a good idea, as you point out, but there it is.
Your greatest fear has already been realized. Progressives lost, Bush will get to appoint his radical conservative judges to the Supreme Court, his wealthy supporters will continue to rape the country (while they invest their own money in what they know to be the future: other countries). Its done.
The idiots that supported Bush won't know what hit them. Fifty years from now when the U.S. is an ex-superpower they can all wonder just what happened, and maybe then they'll realize that they were sold out to make a buck. The wealthy families will all have shifted their wealth elsewhere by then.
I'm no idiot.. I'm not sticking around to watch this happen. Face it, America is no longer carrying the banner of freedom. I started making plans for this contingency a while back, and I'm all ready to go as soon as mid-January.
I fought the good fight, donated a heck of a lot of time and money to getting Bush out of office... and lost. This was the war. The damage that Bush will continue to do over the next four years WILL NOT BE UNDOABLE BY THE NEXT DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT.
Spend some time in Europe (if you haven't already) and you'll realize just how backwards America is becoming. Don't be foolish and fight a losing battle here.
Hell, the democrats are already figuring that they have to do some "soul searching", and they'll probably be far less progressive in the future, just so they'll have a chance of winning. So even supporting the democrats won't mean supporting the progressive values you believe in.
As far as I'm concerned, we can play this out like in Atlas Shrugged: all the intelligent productive people can leave, and all the idiots that are left over can wonder why they're suddenly up to their necks in crap.
Re:Why I think Kerry is a better choice than Bush
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Pre-Election Discussion
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Your attack on Kerry's position on Iraq basically comes down to the assertion that Kerry's policy would have been to use the military option only as a bluff.
This is simply false. Kerry has said that Bush rushed into war, but Kerry has not ruled out that he might have eventually taken the nation into war himself.
The difference is this: Kerry would have continued the diplomatic and economic pressure and given the inspectors the time to finish their job. Yes, it was a long arduous process (18 resolutions, blah blah blah), but so is this war that we're not stuck in.
The rest of your comments about the war are basically moot. Yes, we all know Saddam was a threat, and we all thought he had WMD. Points conceded. But Bush rushed us to war without properly verifying our suspicions, rallying a real coalition, or preparing for the aftermath.
I'm not sure what your source is when you say most troops in Iraq support Bush. I knows many people over in Iraq right now. To a man they were all gung-ho to get over there. And they are now, to a man, all gung-ho to get back. They suppport their fellow troops and will stay there to finish the job as long as their brothers are in harms way, but that's because of loyalty. Not because they agree with Bush's policies. But these are just the people I know... I have no idea what the overall feeling of most troops over there is.
As far as economics go, I suppose one would expect me to support Bush. I make over $200K, and my family also has a trust. One would think I'd be smiling all the way to the bank with the tax cuts.
But I'm not. I see the shrinking middle class as a threat, because in the long run it destabilizes the country. If the middle class disappears we end up in a situation where revolution is not only possible, but likely. And I don't see that as benefitting my long term prospects at all.
The cost of living has also gone up in ways that have made the tax cut almost meaningless, as well. Yes, tax cuts can help the economy, but if they are mostly offset by cost of living increases then the net affect is nil. Thost $300 checks that everyone received evaporated in the face of higher insurance premiums.
Further, antagonizing the rest of the world has hurt local business. Boeing now finds it difficult to compete worldwide. Given largely similar offerings between Airbus and Boeing, most foreign buyers would now prefer to buy from Airbus instead of from an American company. American brand names are taking a beating overseas. And the dollar has dropped about 30%, meaning that even if I am a bit wealthier in the U.S., I'm poorer overall when the whole world is considered.
Getting the rest of the world pissed off at us is something that could have been avoided. I'll concede that no president might have been able to keep the dollar strong, though Bush certainly didn't help.
Now for a point you didn't mention:
I'll be damned if I'm going to vote for some born-again refry who will more than likely try to appoint radically conservative judges to the supreme court. He claims there will be no litmus test, but his reference to Dred Scott is well known code that says exactly the opposite: he will do his utmost to appoint judges who will overturn Roe V Wade.
I also feel strongly about the constant attacks on civil liberties by this administration. Bush would make Jefferson spin in his grave, I am sure. In fact, this election has interesting parallels to the election of 1800 as far as setting the tone for the future of liberty.
And to follow the rule of three I should throw something else in here... but I've typed enough already and probably no one will read this anyway so I'll just stop here. But that video that strongly suggests Bush may be going senile is pretty damn frightening (and believable).
It may also be worth noting that your boss going in and making undocumented changes may very well be illegal now, under Sarbanes-Oxley (assuming you're in the U.S.).
Re:Update TCP, don't add new protocol
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Replacing TCP?
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· Score: 1
With policing, a router decides either to pass, drop, or mark a packet based on if it exceeds certain bandwidth constraints. Shaping, on the other hand, will buffer packets and introduce additional latency, thus helping TCP find the sweet spot.
Er.. what?
Your description of policing is correct, but your description of shaping is limited in scope at best.
Shaping can involve buffering packets, but it can also include dropping packets, just as with policing.
The difference is that when you drop packets before they are transmitted (shaping) you are preventing them from ever being sent over the connection, whereas when you drop packets after they have been received (policing) the data has *already* come across the connection.
Policing basically has no affect on UDP traffic because the sending application generally couldn't care less whether or not the packet made it across. However, policing does impact TCP because when the sender realizes that packets are being dropped the rate at which packets are being sent will be lowered.
So shaping directly affects the bandwidth usage, whereas policing can only do so implicitly, assuming a well behaved transmission protocol like TCP.
As far as changing TCP, I agree. I'd like TCP to have an option to NOT resend dropped packets so that the rate control would still be active, but otherwise TCP would be more like UDP.
Re:UDP... is drwining the internet.
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Replacing TCP?
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· Score: 1
There are already many applications that don't use TCP, such as real-time multiplayer games, streaming media and VoIP, and the Internet isn't suffering because of that.
Actually, UDP causes me enormous headaches already. Let me explain.
I have three primary uses of UDP:
1) Running two Americas Army servers
2) VoIP
3) VPN (one of my big clients is only configured to use UDP VPN)
If I attempt to do all three things at once (or sometimes even just two) without taking special precautions my internet connection becomes completely useless. And this is even with all of the traffic shaping & policing that I do at my router.
The reason is that UDP applications just tend to send data no matter whether they are creating congestion or even completely flooding the whole link to death. And while I can control what is transmitted FROM my side of the connection, I ultimately can not control what is transmitted TO my side (though I have some *implied* control where TCP is concerned since it is so well behaved).
The only way to *try* to deal with this is to control the bandwidth on an applications by application basis. So, on my AA servers I specifically set a maximum rate that clients are allowed to send & receive data (though this unfortunately limits the players to the "worst case scenario" bandwidth at all times). And I build my VoIP usage into my bandwith estimates.
But does this completely solve the problem? No! Whenever I connect to one of my client's VPNs via UDP, there is no way to set the maximum rate it should transmit at, so it ends up flooding my internet connection. My only solution is to turn off my game servers temporarily and let the VPN use my whole bandwidth.
Personally I wish there were an option in TCP that would tell the stack to NOT re-send lost packets. This way TCP could optionally have the quick response time of UDP, but still maintain the the rate control.
From the perspective of managing scarce bandwidth, let me tell you from experience that UDP *sucks*. TCP's built-in rate control lets me affect the rate packets are being sent to me by policing the packets that have already been sent. Wheras dropping UDP packets with policing does nothing to slow the rate at which packets are being sent.
Ignoring for the moment that this question can best be answered by just going to CNET (or some such) and looking at the reviews, I will put in a good word about my HP compaq nc6000.
I still can't quite believe that I actually bought an HP laptop (I mean... its HP!) but after reading some very positive reviews I gave it a shot. Not only did I get a decent sized 14" LCD, 512MB, Pentium M, DVD CR/RW, 60GB HD (enough to bring entire MP3 collection to work), bluetooth, wifi a+b+g.... but it also has excellent battery life.
Battery life was my first criteria as I started looking for a laptop computer, and this HP made it through the first cut. Several times I have accidentally forgotten to plug in the laptop at work in the morning, and only realized that I was running off of battery power well after lunch.
Beyond the excellent battery life, I've been absolutely thrilled with this laptops layout and features. I can use wifi when its available, and I can use my phone's GPRS via bluetooth as my last resort for internet connectivity.
And I was very much relieved that HP did not preload all the JUNK onto this laptop that they load onto their consumer PCs (which has to then be manually uninstalled and deleted!!). I guess they don't want to piss off their business customers. It came with a nice clean fresh install of Windows that I was able to customize to my taste.
So, for a great mix of power *AND* great battery life, I recommend the HP compaq nc6000.
Many years ago while I was in college, the hard drive on my laptop died, and I couldn't afford a new one. Knowing full well that a hard drive should never be opened in a non-cleanroom environment, I popped it open and decided to tinker.
With the hard drive open, I booted the laptop and watched the hard drive spin up and the heads zip back and forth. After watching this for a while, and witnessing the heads making a clicking sound as they hit one end of the unit, I decided that the problem had something to do with the rubber bumper at that end losing its elasticity.
This was a long time ago so I can't remember exactly what I did to remedy this, but one way or another I took some corrective action. I think I might have just rotated the bumper so that a more "fresh" section of rubber was exposed to the head mechanism.
I then rebooted the laptop and... voila! The hard drive worked again! So I closed up the hard drive and called it fixed.
I must say that I was completely surprised that I was able to successfully repair a hard drive. I had thought that opening the unit in a non-cleanroom environment would only put the nails in the coffin of the already dead drive, so I was astonished that I was actually able to fix it.
I must note, however, that there were a few bad sectors found when I did a check of the disk with Norton, but I didn't lose any data that I ever noticed.
I'm not sure if this is a better or worse story than the time I replaced the broken rubber belt on a cassette deck with the ring of rubber at the base of a condom... that one got applause from the folks in the dorm.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sick of people touting Intelligent Design when they don't even understand Evolution.
Evolution is NOT about "random mutations". There is nothing at all RANDOM about evolution. Sure, there are random mutations going on all the time, but that's not what evolution is about. Evolution is about NATURAL SELECTION which is definitely NOT a random process.
There is a very specific rule that is applied to the "random mutations" to see which ones move forward and that is (more or less) this: Those mutations that tend to make a creature at least slightly more successful will tend to spread throughout a population. And "successful" means (essentially) living long enough to reproduce and raise young.
This is NOT random at all. Most (nearly all) mutations are either BAD and cause damage, or effectively do nothing. Only a few rare mutations actually pass the natural selection test of being positive and therefore spread through successive generations.
In a given context a mutation is either going to tend to be helpful to the survival of the creature or not. So I say once again Evolution is NOT random.
I could go on and on and explain how natural selection often leads to results that APPEAR to look "planned", even though they were not planned with any intelligent forethought, but that would be a whole book. Instead, read Richard Dawkins "The Blind Watchmaker".
It seems to me that the logs from SuperNova can contain two things:
1) The IP addresses of people hosting bittorrents
and
2) The IP addresses of people being redirected to download from the above people
In both cases I fail to see how there can be any effective legal case. Unless the MPAA actually went to the sites in question and downloaded the files, they can't prove that "Matrix.avi" was actually the movie Matrix. And they certainly can't prove that the downloaders ever actually completed their downloads, regardless.
I call "bullshit". No way any guilty verdicts can ever be reached here.
UNFORTUNATELY, however, with the FUCKED UP legal system in the U.S., some people might not have the resources to actually hire a lawyer to point this out, even though doing so would guarantee an innocent verdict. So expect a few po' folk to negotiate settlements...
Ahh, I see now. Bush is actually a progressive with a keen understanding of science.
He is abusing his power as President in a clever ploy to show how ridiculous policies such as his are. When he says that contrasting ideas on the origin of species should be taught, what he is really advocating is that schools teach just how unscientific Creationism is.
Bush's ultimate goal is to finally expose Christianity and all other religions for the fraud they are! His entire Iraq War is meant to be an instructive lesson on the dangers of religious fanatacism.
Brilliant! Fucking brilliant!
A quick google of "HDMI analog converter" yields several interesting links, one of which is a device that removes HDCP encryption from an HDMI/DVI signal:
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12115
The thesis of the research appears to be that, (1) if they can get away with it, some programmers will write implementations of the bittorrent protocal that are designed to "cheat" in such a way that they can have a higher ratio of downloading to uploading than they can currently get away with, and (2) it is the multiple swarms created by a lack of a central search engine that stops this.
The research is very unsatisfying to me for several reasons. First, its not even necessary to "cheat". On every bittorrent I've ever downloaded, my download has completed *way* before my ratio has reached 1:1, and it is only because I choose not to end the session that I continue seeding (or, more often than not, because I'm asleep, so the choice to continue seeding is made for me).
Second, the example they give of a strategy that beats tit-for-tat is one in which several cooperating strategies are used at the same time, with some taking on a "master" roll and some taking on a "slave" roll. This may make their point on some academic level, but as a realistic example is fails utterly. Who in their right mind would start ten different bittorrent sessions, with some acting as slaves and some acting as masters? The overall download speed would be awful from having multiple sessiosn running over the same wire. Its just stupid. At least come up with a better example of a strategy that can best tit-for-tat.
Third, I don't see evidence that people would use a bittorrent program that was designed to cheat. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't... the article assumes people would. My bet is that not enough people would use such a program that it would make a difference. Its not like this is evolution, where the successful cheaters "pass on their genes" to create more cheaters.
Overall, I think the research is a lot of academic mumbo-jumbo that may sound good on paper, but has very little, if any, connection to reality.
My own simpler thesis would be this: bittorrent works so well because a lot of the downloaders fall asleep and end up seeding longer than they otherwise might.
I have a serious question about all of these anonymous dark-net systems. In each case that I know of they hide IP addresses by bouncing content around from node to node so that a spectator sniffing the traffic at a particular node would not be able to determine if the traffic coming to and from that node is actually destined for it or some other node. There is then "plausible deniability" if someone tries to pin a particular upload or download on you.... you can claim some other party was just relaying through your node.
My question is this: is this fundamentally a REAL defense? Couldn't a case be made that the participants in the network are ALL participating in a conspiracy to knowingly fascilitate piracy / child porn / terrorism / whatever? I've so far not managed to find any Chinese dissident content on Freenet, so I'm not sure to what extent that line of defense would do any good.
Keep in mind that the government doesn't even need to make a GOOD case that they can "win". Just making the case at all means they get to confiscate all the computer equipment and run up legal expenses for the dark-net participants in such a way that most would probably settle just to get their lives back to normal.
Every now and then individuals get a clue: the Buddha, various monks in following in his footsteps, Jesus, etc.
On what basis do you make this declaration? On your own opinion of what is correct? On what "feels" right to you? Certainly not on any scientific basis, because there isn't one shred of scientific evidence that Buddha, Jesus or any of your 20th century metaphysical writers / philosophers understand the mechanics of human consciousness.
At this point there is no reason to believe that our consciousness is anything more than our physical bodies, because that is the simplest explanation (Occam's razor and all that).
Due to your ego and DESIRE for there to be something more to your consciousness than your physical body (and perhaps a desire to re-unite with lost loved ones), it is certainly easy to understand why you are so quick to believe that there must be "something more" that will "live on for eternity", but that doesn't make it true.
Anyway, from a scientific perspective, consciousness is only "not completely understood" only in the sense that we can not yet duplicate it experimentally. This isn't to say that there isn't a broad and growing knowledge base of scientific information about consciousness -- none of which implies that there is "something more" than our physical bodies involved.
Just to be clear, I didn't say that "any deviation and the thing dies", I said that "any deviation that does not work dies". Some rare deviations do work, and in fact work better than before. This is where we get evolution.
But onto your point. You're basically asking "So where did DNA come from in the first place?" This is quite a good question, as DNA in its current form is highly complex in itself. To suggest that it just randomly came about is absurd.
However, it is quite possible that DNA as it exists today is itself a process of evolution from a more primitive form of replication.
So what is this most basic form of replication? Several ideas are presented in the book, none of which may necessarily be the correct answer. But they are all at least conceivably correct answers, so they serve to demonstrate that the first replicators could have come about without any intelligent design.
One of the several ideas (just to throw one out there) is that the very first form of replication may have been a form of crystaline structures. In the same way that crystals replicate themselves, perhaps a similar process (maybe with proteins filling in the cracks) took place and at some point resulted in a very primitive form of DNA.
There's more info on this in the thread above.
Keep in mind that none of this serves as some sort of proof that God does not exist. A belief in God really has nothing to do with this at all. All this argument says is that complex life forms do not prove that God does exist... you just have to take that on faith as always (if you're so inclined).
Since recorded history only goes back thousands of years and evolution has been at work for MILLIONS of years I could simply say "your reference frame is too short" and leave it at that. Or I could say "look at the fossil record" which shows plenty of evolution.
However, in fact there are plenty of readily observable cases where mutations are beneficial. Viruses and bacteria are constantly mutating and evolving to more successfully compete in their environments. Plants have also been observed to mutate to better deal with changes in their environments.
And this is just the stuff we can see before our eyes. Heck, you can experimentally cause bacteria to mutate in just a few days.
Multiply this by MILLIONS of years. Do we expect to see some amazing new mutation to appear in humans or other animals over a short thousand year time frame? Of course not. Most (in fact, nearly all) mutations are detrimental. But the few that are helpful (ie, give the lifeform a slightly higher chance of survival) get passed onto future generations. The detrimental mutations do not. Over MILLIONS of years, lots of complexity can evolve through this weeding out process.
*ALL* science is theories. Why should evolution be singled out as the one theory that gets a sticker pointing out that ITS A THEORY??
How about we attach another sticker to your "evolution is a theory" sticker that says "A theory that has withstood over 100 years of peer review can essentially regarded as fact until proven wrong"?
The word "theory" as it is used on these stickers is intended to convey some sense of "uncertainty". This is a complete misuse of the word. We only have theories to explain how electricity passing through tungsten results in light, but that doesn't mean that we are not pretty damn certain the theories are correct.
Same with evolution. It is "just" a theory, but we are pretty damn certain it is correct. If you want to put a sticker on a textbook about evolution, you might as well put one on there for the theories of electromagnetism as well.
An amazing book on this subject is "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. I read it because Douglas Adams recommended it in some of his writings.
The subtitle of the book is "Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design". It explains in great detail and clarity how in the long run natural selection allows only the mutations that are beneficial to continue to exist, leading to lifeforms that might *APPEAR* to have been designed, even though they were not.
One of the cases he looks at is the eye, with all of its complexity. Someone naively looking at it might easily assume that it is a clear example of something that must have been designed by a creator in advance. Dawkins shows how, over millions of years, tiny incremental advances could allow the eye to develop without any creator.
The only things required are 1) that whatever mutation that started as the eye, as simple as it may have been (perhaps a cell with the ability to detect light, for which brain cells have been shown to have the potential), gave at least a slight competitive advantage to the lifeform and 2) each additional mutation that took place over millions of years gave some slight advantage to the lifeform. Over a long time, in an environment with light, development of the eye becomes almost assured.
Complex biological systems work not because someone designed them to work, but because any deviation that does not work DIES. This naturally and inevitably leads to greater and greater complexity.
Several of the criticisms made in the review may be a bit extreme, but the reviewer made one important observation which unfortunately seems to be confirmed by your reply.
I'm talking about his opinion (which I share) that what truly made Hitchhiker's classic was Adams' use of language. Nothing else. Some of his imagery was a great bonus, the plots were interesting enough, and the character development wasn't too bad, but what really brought it home was his finely crafted use of language.
And the observation made by the reviewer was that the creator's of the movie just did not "get" this. His very very long (tediously so, to be honest) review gives many examples where this greatest aspect of Adams' work was expunged from the screenplay.
The reviewers complaints about the plot making no sense are minor compared to this. I could forgive almost anything as long as the hallmark use of language were still present. But in your reply you basically said that it would be impossible to squeeze the language into a motion picture.
You may be right, though I think the TV series did a nice enough job with its use of narration. I'm not sure why that approach couldn't work in a big budget movie as well. But who knows, if you are right, maybe Hitchhiker's just should never have been made into a movie. Maybe it just doesn't fit. Perhaps Adams just didn't have the sense to realize this himself.... but actually I think he could have found a way (perhaps through the use of narration).
I concur that in most adaptations of books, it really doesn't matter much if the exact words find their way into the screenplay. The imagery and plot and characters make the movie. But in this case the words really do matter. Its not the situations, its not the imagery, its not the characters. Its the words. And if you don't agree with that, then I side with the reviewer: you just don't get it.
That said, I'll almost certainly see the movie, and I'll probably enjoy it. Even if it doesn't match up to what I think it could have been, it'll probably still be funnier than most movies, and the eye candy you refer to may, at least, be interesting to watch.
like any Mandriva, they won't stop to ask for directions.
(sorry)
Love of life = sexually attracted?
Not necessarily. Hey, I've heard some people claim that Jesus is the love of their life, and that doesn't mean they're having sex with him (at least I don't think so....).
Methinks you completely missed the point of what I was saying.
From the article they appear to be romantically in love (ie, exchanging flowers), but does this make them homosexual?
I guess it depends on what you mean by homosexual, but I would define it as being *sexually* attracted to one another. Which may or may not be the case here.
One could perhaps even hypothesize that due to their diminished emotional capabilities, women simply confuse the hell out of them, and therefore they find solace in each other as emotional compatibles.
Not that it matters one way or the other whether they are homosexual or not... but thought I'd point out that, from the article, we don't really know exactly what the nature of their relationship is.
This doesn't really count as an interesting SSID, but I think its a good idea at least:
I use "PUBLIC" as part of the SSID for my public hotspots. So, for instance, one of them is "SYMBIO-PUBLIC". That is to make it clear that it is a public hotspot that I have freely made open and available to anyone to use.
My ISP allows me to share my bandwidth, and I've taken precautions to limit the use of my public hotspots to low-priority bandwidth levels as well as limiting access to safe ports and such (don't need anyone setting up a spam machine via wifi!).
If everyone with the intention of giving away free bandwidth did this then it would help clarify whether open-hotspots are that way intentionally or (as is much more often the case) the hotspot provider is just a clueless newbie.
Your post should be modded up as funny.
I probably shouldn't have invoked Atlas Shrugged as I did, only because it detracts from the overall point.
To be clear, I don't agree with Ayn Rands "reasoning". She definitely needed to reassess her own motivations and assumptions. But regardless of the many flaws in the logic of the book, the image of the intelligent productive people leaving the idiots behind to deal with their own problems is useful.
So I was intending to invoke her imagery *without* her theoretical underpinnings. Probably not a good idea, as you point out, but there it is.
Your greatest fear has already been realized. Progressives lost, Bush will get to appoint his radical conservative judges to the Supreme Court, his wealthy supporters will continue to rape the country (while they invest their own money in what they know to be the future: other countries). Its done.
The idiots that supported Bush won't know what hit them. Fifty years from now when the U.S. is an ex-superpower they can all wonder just what happened, and maybe then they'll realize that they were sold out to make a buck. The wealthy families will all have shifted their wealth elsewhere by then.
I'm no idiot.. I'm not sticking around to watch this happen. Face it, America is no longer carrying the banner of freedom. I started making plans for this contingency a while back, and I'm all ready to go as soon as mid-January.
I fought the good fight, donated a heck of a lot of time and money to getting Bush out of office... and lost. This was the war. The damage that Bush will continue to do over the next four years WILL NOT BE UNDOABLE BY THE NEXT DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT.
Spend some time in Europe (if you haven't already) and you'll realize just how backwards America is becoming. Don't be foolish and fight a losing battle here.
Hell, the democrats are already figuring that they have to do some "soul searching", and they'll probably be far less progressive in the future, just so they'll have a chance of winning. So even supporting the democrats won't mean supporting the progressive values you believe in.
As far as I'm concerned, we can play this out like in Atlas Shrugged: all the intelligent productive people can leave, and all the idiots that are left over can wonder why they're suddenly up to their necks in crap.
Your attack on Kerry's position on Iraq basically comes down to the assertion that Kerry's policy would have been to use the military option only as a bluff.
This is simply false. Kerry has said that Bush rushed into war, but Kerry has not ruled out that he might have eventually taken the nation into war himself.
The difference is this: Kerry would have continued the diplomatic and economic pressure and given the inspectors the time to finish their job. Yes, it was a long arduous process (18 resolutions, blah blah blah), but so is this war that we're not stuck in.
The rest of your comments about the war are basically moot. Yes, we all know Saddam was a threat, and we all thought he had WMD. Points conceded. But Bush rushed us to war without properly verifying our suspicions, rallying a real coalition, or preparing for the aftermath.
I'm not sure what your source is when you say most troops in Iraq support Bush. I knows many people over in Iraq right now. To a man they were all gung-ho to get over there. And they are now, to a man, all gung-ho to get back. They suppport their fellow troops and will stay there to finish the job as long as their brothers are in harms way, but that's because of loyalty. Not because they agree with Bush's policies. But these are just the people I know... I have no idea what the overall feeling of most troops over there is.
As far as economics go, I suppose one would expect me to support Bush. I make over $200K, and my family also has a trust. One would think I'd be smiling all the way to the bank with the tax cuts.
But I'm not. I see the shrinking middle class as a threat, because in the long run it destabilizes the country. If the middle class disappears we end up in a situation where revolution is not only possible, but likely. And I don't see that as benefitting my long term prospects at all.
The cost of living has also gone up in ways that have made the tax cut almost meaningless, as well. Yes, tax cuts can help the economy, but if they are mostly offset by cost of living increases then the net affect is nil. Thost $300 checks that everyone received evaporated in the face of higher insurance premiums.
Further, antagonizing the rest of the world has hurt local business. Boeing now finds it difficult to compete worldwide. Given largely similar offerings between Airbus and Boeing, most foreign buyers would now prefer to buy from Airbus instead of from an American company. American brand names are taking a beating overseas. And the dollar has dropped about 30%, meaning that even if I am a bit wealthier in the U.S., I'm poorer overall when the whole world is considered.
Getting the rest of the world pissed off at us is something that could have been avoided. I'll concede that no president might have been able to keep the dollar strong, though Bush certainly didn't help.
Now for a point you didn't mention:
I'll be damned if I'm going to vote for some born-again refry who will more than likely try to appoint radically conservative judges to the supreme court. He claims there will be no litmus test, but his reference to Dred Scott is well known code that says exactly the opposite: he will do his utmost to appoint judges who will overturn Roe V Wade.
I also feel strongly about the constant attacks on civil liberties by this administration. Bush would make Jefferson spin in his grave, I am sure. In fact, this election has interesting parallels to the election of 1800 as far as setting the tone for the future of liberty.
And to follow the rule of three I should throw something else in here... but I've typed enough already and probably no one will read this anyway so I'll just stop here. But that video that strongly suggests Bush may be going senile is pretty damn frightening (and believable).
It may also be worth noting that your boss going in and making undocumented changes may very well be illegal now, under Sarbanes-Oxley (assuming you're in the U.S.).
With policing, a router decides either to pass, drop, or mark a packet based on if it exceeds certain bandwidth constraints. Shaping, on the other hand, will buffer packets and introduce additional latency, thus helping TCP find the sweet spot.
Er.. what?
Your description of policing is correct, but your description of shaping is limited in scope at best.
Shaping can involve buffering packets, but it can also include dropping packets, just as with policing.
The difference is that when you drop packets before they are transmitted (shaping) you are preventing them from ever being sent over the connection, whereas when you drop packets after they have been received (policing) the data has *already* come across the connection.
Policing basically has no affect on UDP traffic because the sending application generally couldn't care less whether or not the packet made it across. However, policing does impact TCP because when the sender realizes that packets are being dropped the rate at which packets are being sent will be lowered.
So shaping directly affects the bandwidth usage, whereas policing can only do so implicitly, assuming a well behaved transmission protocol like TCP.
As far as changing TCP, I agree. I'd like TCP to have an option to NOT resend dropped packets so that the rate control would still be active, but otherwise TCP would be more like UDP.
There are already many applications that don't use TCP, such as real-time multiplayer games, streaming media and VoIP, and the Internet isn't suffering because of that.
Actually, UDP causes me enormous headaches already. Let me explain.
I have three primary uses of UDP:
1) Running two Americas Army servers
2) VoIP
3) VPN (one of my big clients is only configured to use UDP VPN)
If I attempt to do all three things at once (or sometimes even just two) without taking special precautions my internet connection becomes completely useless. And this is even with all of the traffic shaping & policing that I do at my router.
The reason is that UDP applications just tend to send data no matter whether they are creating congestion or even completely flooding the whole link to death. And while I can control what is transmitted FROM my side of the connection, I ultimately can not control what is transmitted TO my side (though I have some *implied* control where TCP is concerned since it is so well behaved).
The only way to *try* to deal with this is to control the bandwidth on an applications by application basis. So, on my AA servers I specifically set a maximum rate that clients are allowed to send & receive data (though this unfortunately limits the players to the "worst case scenario" bandwidth at all times). And I build my VoIP usage into my bandwith estimates.
But does this completely solve the problem? No! Whenever I connect to one of my client's VPNs via UDP, there is no way to set the maximum rate it should transmit at, so it ends up flooding my internet connection. My only solution is to turn off my game servers temporarily and let the VPN use my whole bandwidth.
Personally I wish there were an option in TCP that would tell the stack to NOT re-send lost packets. This way TCP could optionally have the quick response time of UDP, but still maintain the the rate control.
From the perspective of managing scarce bandwidth, let me tell you from experience that UDP *sucks*. TCP's built-in rate control lets me affect the rate packets are being sent to me by policing the packets that have already been sent. Wheras dropping UDP packets with policing does nothing to slow the rate at which packets are being sent.
Ignoring for the moment that this question can best be answered by just going to CNET (or some such) and looking at the reviews, I will put in a good word about my HP compaq nc6000.
I still can't quite believe that I actually bought an HP laptop (I mean... its HP!) but after reading some very positive reviews I gave it a shot. Not only did I get a decent sized 14" LCD, 512MB, Pentium M, DVD CR/RW, 60GB HD (enough to bring entire MP3 collection to work), bluetooth, wifi a+b+g.... but it also has excellent battery life.
Battery life was my first criteria as I started looking for a laptop computer, and this HP made it through the first cut. Several times I have accidentally forgotten to plug in the laptop at work in the morning, and only realized that I was running off of battery power well after lunch.
Beyond the excellent battery life, I've been absolutely thrilled with this laptops layout and features. I can use wifi when its available, and I can use my phone's GPRS via bluetooth as my last resort for internet connectivity.
And I was very much relieved that HP did not preload all the JUNK onto this laptop that they load onto their consumer PCs (which has to then be manually uninstalled and deleted!!). I guess they don't want to piss off their business customers. It came with a nice clean fresh install of Windows that I was able to customize to my taste.
So, for a great mix of power *AND* great battery life, I recommend the HP compaq nc6000.
Many years ago while I was in college, the hard drive on my laptop died, and I couldn't afford a new one. Knowing full well that a hard drive should never be opened in a non-cleanroom environment, I popped it open and decided to tinker.
With the hard drive open, I booted the laptop and watched the hard drive spin up and the heads zip back and forth. After watching this for a while, and witnessing the heads making a clicking sound as they hit one end of the unit, I decided that the problem had something to do with the rubber bumper at that end losing its elasticity.
This was a long time ago so I can't remember exactly what I did to remedy this, but one way or another I took some corrective action. I think I might have just rotated the bumper so that a more "fresh" section of rubber was exposed to the head mechanism.
I then rebooted the laptop and... voila! The hard drive worked again! So I closed up the hard drive and called it fixed.
I must say that I was completely surprised that I was able to successfully repair a hard drive. I had thought that opening the unit in a non-cleanroom environment would only put the nails in the coffin of the already dead drive, so I was astonished that I was actually able to fix it.
I must note, however, that there were a few bad sectors found when I did a check of the disk with Norton, but I didn't lose any data that I ever noticed.
I'm not sure if this is a better or worse story than the time I replaced the broken rubber belt on a cassette deck with the ring of rubber at the base of a condom... that one got applause from the folks in the dorm.
Boycotting the RIAA by not buying any CDs might be the "ideal" answer, but its unrealistic for most people.
So as an alternative, consider donating an amount equal the what you spend on CDs to the EFF. And tell your friends to do this too.
Personally, I make sure I donate at least TWICE what I spend on CDs to the EFF.