I understand your very well presented point. I'll focus on one bit, if you don't mind: "...someone lacking extensive training in biochemistry/virology would not be able to reproduce the virus from this work from the experimental section of the their paper."
The problem comes in when you have people are are extensively trained in biochemistry/virology who might be able to do something with the information under discussion.
Similarly, it's not beyond believe to think that the organizations (in Mexico for example) making meth might be able to take your research and do something with it, even if the home brewers couldn't.
1) All information does not end up in the public domain and to think so implies a level of naivete a bit beyond belief. 2) 'The common man' does not need to know how to make nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. I'd just as soon that organizations that want to attack my society also not know how to make such weapons. 3) Where some few governments have succeeded, with the help of other governments, I'm sure there are a lot of people and organizations, not to mention countries, who have been very determined to make a nuclear weapon who have obviously failed or we'd know about it.
All military research is funded with public money and is not going to put into the public domain. This is research that has a military application and as such should perhaps have been more restrictive to start with.
I am not pro government and I am not at all against the sharing of information to further the good of human-kind.
I am, however, fully against the spread of weapon technology be it nuclear, chemical or as in this case, biological.
Now that the whole world knows what it is about and since some of the results (if not all) have already been presented at public events, it seems likely that the information will anyway percolate to the scientific community at large in the years to come. Moreover, the virus does not seem like a very good weapon to me as it is simply impossible to control or contain its propagation once released. This is the reason why modern armies do not use gas for instance. The Germans tried it during the first world war and it proved to be rather unpredictable making it in effect useless.
That is a valid point that you're making, perhaps without quite meaning to. Fear of a virus spreading uncontrollably would not deter people who are willing to blow themselves up to make a point or to get to their enemies.
There is arguably some science that we don't want in the public domain. Weapons tech comes to mind, of which this is an excellent example - particularly if the methods involved (and I am completely ignorant on this subject but generally speaking) don't require much to duplicate (ie easier to replicate than a nuclear bomb).
This is not for people who keep their car for 8-12 years. It's for people who have money to burn or who aren't paying for it themselves, i.e. corporate execs driving, or being driven in, company cars that are generally only kept for a year.
From TFA: The panel said conclusions should be published, but not “experimental details and mutation data that would enable replication of the experiments.”
Have the "experimental details and mutation data" already been presented at these conferences, or only the conclusions?
I've noticed a few things from all the news footage available of Kim Jong-Il:
1. Kim is generally doing one of three things: pointing/gesturing at something, watch someone pointing/gesturing at something, or clapping. Never speaking, never doing something actually interesting.
2. People in North Korea LOVE clapping for some reason. All the political footage involving Kim tends to involve a shitload of clapping. If the leader is clapping at something, everyone else is that's for sure. Maybe everyone's really happy over there?
Either the guy has never bothered to speak on camera, or the regime was afraid he'd say something stupid.
Maybe Bush should have followed the same policy...
(4) The digital divide will cease to exist. Mobile phones will make it easy for even the poorest of poor to get connected.
The poorest of the poor don't have enough food to eat, never mind portable phones and dataplans to allow them on the net.
The digital divide also isn't only about accessing the Internet. The limitations of a mobile with regard to screen size, input speed and capacities will keep it from being used in any serious way.
I'm guessing this is more of a list of what IBM hopes to promote the next year or two.
Legally (IANAL) you might also be due overtime pay if your employer requires you to be available outside of working ours, especially if they actually expect to be able to reach you.
Contractors (or their agencies of which they are employees) also get paid more than employees in order to cover such costs themselves. I know because I've been doing this since 1990.
My vote is with the 'This is cost reduction by the companies and nothing more' opinion.
Logically speaking, if I were an employee my attitude would be 'You give me a shit computer and that's what I'll use and you'll get whatever I can provide with it. If you want want to provide me with something better then you'll get more out of me'.
You employees who are buying such things yourself should be thinking about what that money could buy you and your families.
This is actually not a welcome event, the heir apparent is only 29 years old and hasn't really integrated himself into the communist party and army power structures. Compare that to his father who was 52 when Kim Il Sung died and had been filling various senior posts for at least a few decades by that point. A power struggle within the army/party could be bad as it could destabilize the country and/or convince the struggling powers to do something rash with the military in an attempt to curry favor. Guess we will have to wait and see.
A power struggle could end up with someone in power who isn't chosen by a complete fucking lunatic either. It's quite possible the end result could be better for the people of the country.
In addition to propagation delays the normal DNS infrastructure can't work as the ISP themselves can block lookups to a given domain name by putting entries in their own servers, which is why I was thinking alternate DNS with only a relatively short list of 'sensitive' name resolution entries allowing very few servers to serve the entire net, eliminating the propagation delay.
I agree with you about the potential blocking of the alternate servers so perhaps a new mechanism is needed where the alternative DNS is tunneled in http(s) and thus can use any proxy to avoid being blocked. Should work anywhere a local proxy isn't forced I would think, and even then it would be easy enough to set up many mirrors to avoid local proxy blocking.
It would be interesting to know:
- what percentage of the $9bn is/was actually spent on US made products (ie robotics)
- what percentage of the new jobs are actually high tech and what percentage are low to no skill level
- how many of the new high skill and management jobs are to be filled by Americans
Not that I'm criticizing. I think that manufacturing needs to return to the US before the economy can truly begin to recover.
On the other hand, if most of the jobs are low to no skill part time low pay no benefits I'm not sure how much long term good this project will bring.
"And they'll have a built-in market, with all those people in the U.S. who are flush with cash."
The US is not the only market these products will be sold in. The parent's argument is completely valid that the previous export of jobs, now followed by lowered domestic labor costs, only benefits the rich though I don't think that destroying the economy was done with any actual deliberate planning.
Not fast enough. My point is to have something that could be updated in, say, five minutes if the previous result IP had been blocked by the ISP or government.
This may already exist but if not, how possible would it be to add an additional DNS that has rapidly updated IPs for politically (or otherwise) blocked servers? So long as the user could add this DNS to the ISP provided DNS server list it would be able to more rapidly react to such blocking based on DNS names.
The ISPs would of course block the alternate DNS unless it provided primarily non-pirate related alternative DNS services.
China wants to exert pressure on the rest of the world, when they want and where they want. So long as they don't have the military to back it up then they're restricted to economic maneuvering. They won't need to actually fight wars when they are strong enough to threaten anyone with a lesser military capacity.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand your very well presented point. I'll focus on one bit, if you don't mind: "...someone lacking extensive training in biochemistry/virology would not be able to reproduce the virus from this work from the experimental section of the their paper."
The problem comes in when you have people are are extensively trained in biochemistry/virology who might be able to do something with the information under discussion.
Similarly, it's not beyond believe to think that the organizations (in Mexico for example) making meth might be able to take your research and do something with it, even if the home brewers couldn't.
1) All information does not end up in the public domain and to think so implies a level of naivete a bit beyond belief.
2) 'The common man' does not need to know how to make nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. I'd just as soon that organizations that want to attack my society also not know how to make such weapons.
3) Where some few governments have succeeded, with the help of other governments, I'm sure there are a lot of people and organizations, not to mention countries, who have been very determined to make a nuclear weapon who have obviously failed or we'd know about it.
All military research is funded with public money and is not going to put into the public domain. This is research that has a military application and as such should perhaps have been more restrictive to start with.
I am not pro government and I am not at all against the sharing of information to further the good of human-kind.
I am, however, fully against the spread of weapon technology be it nuclear, chemical or as in this case, biological.
Now that the whole world knows what it is about and since some of the results (if not all) have already been presented at public events, it seems likely that the information will anyway percolate to the scientific community at large in the years to come. Moreover, the virus does not seem like a very good weapon to me as it is simply impossible to control or contain its propagation once released. This is the reason why modern armies do not use gas for instance. The Germans tried it during the first world war and it proved to be rather unpredictable making it in effect useless.
That is a valid point that you're making, perhaps without quite meaning to. Fear of a virus spreading uncontrollably would not deter people who are willing to blow themselves up to make a point or to get to their enemies.
There is arguably some science that we don't want in the public domain. Weapons tech comes to mind, of which this is an excellent example - particularly if the methods involved (and I am completely ignorant on this subject but generally speaking) don't require much to duplicate (ie easier to replicate than a nuclear bomb).
This is not for people who keep their car for 8-12 years. It's for people who have money to burn or who aren't paying for it themselves, i.e. corporate execs driving, or being driven in, company cars that are generally only kept for a year.
From TFA: The panel said conclusions should be published, but not “experimental details and mutation data that would enable replication of the experiments.”
Have the "experimental details and mutation data" already been presented at these conferences, or only the conclusions?
NPR has this most excellent (IMHO) flowchart of the 100 best science fiction books:
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011/09/flowchart-for-navigating-nprs-top-100-sff-books/
I've noticed a few things from all the news footage available of Kim Jong-Il:
1. Kim is generally doing one of three things: pointing/gesturing at something, watch someone pointing/gesturing at something, or clapping. Never speaking, never doing something actually interesting.
2. People in North Korea LOVE clapping for some reason. All the political footage involving Kim tends to involve a shitload of clapping. If the leader is clapping at something, everyone else is that's for sure. Maybe everyone's really happy over there?
Either the guy has never bothered to speak on camera, or the regime was afraid he'd say something stupid.
Maybe Bush should have followed the same policy...
(4) The digital divide will cease to exist. Mobile phones will make it easy for even the poorest of poor to get connected.
The poorest of the poor don't have enough food to eat, never mind portable phones and dataplans to allow them on the net.
The digital divide also isn't only about accessing the Internet. The limitations of a mobile with regard to screen size, input speed and capacities will keep it from being used in any serious way.
I'm guessing this is more of a list of what IBM hopes to promote the next year or two.
Legally (IANAL) you might also be due overtime pay if your employer requires you to be available outside of working ours, especially if they actually expect to be able to reach you.
Contractors (or their agencies of which they are employees) also get paid more than employees in order to cover such costs themselves. I know because I've been doing this since 1990.
My vote is with the 'This is cost reduction by the companies and nothing more' opinion.
Logically speaking, if I were an employee my attitude would be 'You give me a shit computer and that's what I'll use and you'll get whatever I can provide with it. If you want want to provide me with something better then you'll get more out of me'.
You employees who are buying such things yourself should be thinking about what that money could buy you and your families.
This is actually not a welcome event, the heir apparent is only 29 years old and hasn't really integrated himself into the communist party and army power structures. Compare that to his father who was 52 when Kim Il Sung died and had been filling various senior posts for at least a few decades by that point. A power struggle within the army/party could be bad as it could destabilize the country and/or convince the struggling powers to do something rash with the military in an attempt to curry favor. Guess we will have to wait and see.
A power struggle could end up with someone in power who isn't chosen by a complete fucking lunatic either. It's quite possible the end result could be better for the people of the country.
In addition to propagation delays the normal DNS infrastructure can't work as the ISP themselves can block lookups to a given domain name by putting entries in their own servers, which is why I was thinking alternate DNS with only a relatively short list of 'sensitive' name resolution entries allowing very few servers to serve the entire net, eliminating the propagation delay.
I agree with you about the potential blocking of the alternate servers so perhaps a new mechanism is needed where the alternative DNS is tunneled in http(s) and thus can use any proxy to avoid being blocked. Should work anywhere a local proxy isn't forced I would think, and even then it would be easy enough to set up many mirrors to avoid local proxy blocking.
And I do try and do so but strangely enough the ones who replace them aren't any better in the long run....
It would be interesting to know:
- what percentage of the $9bn is/was actually spent on US made products (ie robotics)
- what percentage of the new jobs are actually high tech and what percentage are low to no skill level
- how many of the new high skill and management jobs are to be filled by Americans
Not that I'm criticizing. I think that manufacturing needs to return to the US before the economy can truly begin to recover.
On the other hand, if most of the jobs are low to no skill part time low pay no benefits I'm not sure how much long term good this project will bring.
"And they'll have a built-in market, with all those people in the U.S. who are flush with cash."
The US is not the only market these products will be sold in. The parent's argument is completely valid that the previous export of jobs, now followed by lowered domestic labor costs, only benefits the rich though I don't think that destroying the economy was done with any actual deliberate planning.
It's 'inshoring'...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inshoring
9. your local city counselor, alderman, mayor, or whatever
Yes I'm sure that would be spent well.
Frankly, I'm not for ignoring local needs (ie schools) but there are people elsewhere who need it a lot more.
I support MSF (Doctors Without Borders) but of course you should choose who you prefer as it's your money at the end of the day,
Not fast enough. My point is to have something that could be updated in, say, five minutes if the previous result IP had been blocked by the ISP or government.
This may already exist but if not, how possible would it be to add an additional DNS that has rapidly updated IPs for politically (or otherwise) blocked servers? So long as the user could add this DNS to the ISP provided DNS server list it would be able to more rapidly react to such blocking based on DNS names.
The ISPs would of course block the alternate DNS unless it provided primarily non-pirate related alternative DNS services.
China wants to exert pressure on the rest of the world, when they want and where they want. So long as they don't have the military to back it up then they're restricted to economic maneuvering. They won't need to actually fight wars when they are strong enough to threaten anyone with a lesser military capacity.
They would buy one from us, copy it and start selling copies to anyone who would pay for them.
One would think their (idiotic) policy will change the first time they get conned by a group of hackers who all vouch for each other.
Couldn't be much worse than S&P and Moody's evaluation of subprime (aka supershit let the 99% die) AAA rated debt.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/subprime-mortgage-bonds-getting-aaa-rating-s-p-denies-to-u-s-treasuries.html