Speaking from 2 years experiences with rejecting 11000+ spams a day, publishing SPF records helps, but not enough folks reject mail with SPF fail for it to help a lot with spam bounces. The real solution to spam bounces is to "sign" your MAIL FROM, using SRS for example. (SRS is not just good for forwarding.) Then you just reject bounces without a proper signature. After signing, your MAIL FROM would look like this:
<SRS0=WHEtL=GU==user@example.com>
The current main benefit to SPF is that when you get an SPF PASS, you can be reasonably sure that the MAIL FROM wasn't forged. This is comforting when I get mail from online banks and vendors (that I actually use). Also, I reject not only on SPF fail, but on softfail for selected domains (e.g. ebay.com). Getting an SPF pass is a two edged sword for a spammer. I track reputation (using pygossip) for validated MAIL FROM and HELO domains. So after a few trips through the content filter, they get rejected in SMTP envelope:
The better COBOL implementations run in a virtual machine. So the program binaries can simply be copied from 68k to 88k to PPC to i386 running Unix or Linux or Windows or System 36. In a modern network environment, CORBA supports COBOL just fine. So keep the legacy business logic, and integrate it with your favorite modern language to web enable or whatever you need to do. Business logic is *very* *very* tricky, and generally has evolved over years of tweaking in response to real life situations. Don't even think about "rewriting" it. For smaller modules, sometimes you can get away with a relatively mechanical syntax translation so it can be conveniently "wrapped" in a new language.
I've never supported COBOL, but I've supported my share of legacy business logic written in 1960s era languages.
There are many legitimate horror stories, and "it just worked" stories for both XP and recent Linux distros. To me, that says they are comparable. To objectively compare them, you would have to take a random sample and measure what percentage of installs were "horror story" vs "it just worked". It would be a tricky study to do right and keep the conditions similar on both sides (i.e. - I wouldn't trust a Microsoft funded version of it).
But even if such a study showed that XP "just worked" more often than Ubuntu (which I personally suspect to be the case), the two would still be in the same ballpark. So the claim that Linux distros are "not ready" for the desktop is just not true. There may be differences in the "just works" batting average for non-techies, but you have a good chance of it "just working" with any modern Linux distro or XP.
The real clincher, however, is that you have an almost %100 chance of everything "just working" if you buy a preinstalled system. These are available for linux distros as well as the ubiquitos XP. Unlike with XP, linux distros actually have a choice of software vendors for preinstalls.
I've bought dozens of CFLs over 12 years (hoping they'll improve). The *bulbs* last a long time. Unfortunately, the electronic adapters that screw into a standard light socket last about 6 months before dying. I now have a shelf full of perfectly good bulbs from dead CFL sockets. Of *course*, no one sells just the bare adapters so that I can use the bulbs.
A much better use of my money has been to buy *real* flourescent ballast and good old fashioned flourescent tubes. The oldest ballast came with the house and is 30 years old. The oldest ballast I've installed is 12 years and counting. The tube bulbs last nearly 10 years. The CFL stuff, on the other hand, is junk.
The CFL products need to cost *more* and put more quality into the mini electronic ballast so that it lasts as long as the bulb. Or maybe this isn't really possible, and the only reliable way to do flourescent is with magnetic ballast. I've noticed a similar problem with LCD panels. I have an LCD monitor sitting behind my desk with perfectly good a LCD and perfectly good flourescent backlights - but the electronic ballast (high voltage supply) is shot (died the day after 1 year warranty expired). I've replaced the ballast, and the monitor runs another 6 months before the high voltage dies again. After a while, you can't even buy replacement ballast for the LCD because they use some funky custom job for every model. What a waste. I can't bring myself yet to throw out a perfectly good LCD monitor for lack of a decent ballast. I'm sitting at a CRT because it has kept working for 7 years.
I wish I had mod points. There are beef companies trying to do it right. Look for "range fed" or "grass fed" beef. Here are things to look for in a beef supplier (or rather verify that they *don't* do them):
Non-therapuetic antibiotics used as growth enhancers - increases risk of antibiotic resistent pathogens for everyone, not just beef eaters.
Feed "enhanced" with rendered carcases (cannabalistic cows) - causes mad cow disease. Outlawed most places, but feed companies can cheat or make mistakes.
Corn feeding - gives cows highly acid stomachs, making the natural E-Coli deadly to humans. This not only affects beef, but nearby fruits and vegetables exposed to manure. Apples have been infected by flies carrying germs from nearby manure.
The market for "green" beef seems to be rather small. Range feed beef is not as tender and marbled as corn-fed, penned up, growth enhanced beef. It is healthier, however.
The problem is that using any DRM anywhere in the system will trigger the interference. So, for instance, if you play music off the net in the background, and accidentally pull a DRMed tune, it can trigger the secure channel features. Moving to the hypothetical, the future holds more peril. Applications may include DRMed images, etc, so it will be harder and harder to "just not use DRM".
There is an easy way to deal with the problem that I doubt will be implemented, knowing Microsoft. Provide a "no DRM" mode where the system simply refuses to play any DRM content (including refusing to display DRMed images in applications) rather than degrading all non-DRM output.
Actually, most theists (at least Christian non-believers in evolution) object to theistic evolution on two grounds:
It contradicts the story of creation in Genesis.
Given widely differing interpretations of the creation story for more than 1000 years prior to Darwin, (e.g. St Augustine held to an allegorical interpretation), I think you mean certain theists object to evolution because it contradicts their own pet interpretation - likely a highly literal one. Sometimes people forget that a forced literal interpretation is just as bad as "spiritualizing" everything - as anyone with a kid with "literal disease" can testify.
Why are you using the term "theistic evolution" after having redefined evolution to be exclusive of theistic influence? Your argument has just been made to fall flat on its face by your own use of the adjective "theistic" to describe a form of "evolution" in what would be an oxymoron under your terms.
Because terms are qualified to create new terms - often opposed in meaning to the original word. The unqualified word "evolution" usually refers to a mix of natural selection and macro evolution - with perhaps some origin of life thrown in. But throughout secular textbooks, the unqualified term is carefully explained to mean "without design or guidance".
There are at least three qualified variations on "evolution":
micro evolution - Natural Selection, which selects or mixes optimal traits from preexisting genetic material.
macro evolution - creation of new genetic material by an unguided process of random mutations and Natural Selection.
theistic or guided evolution - creation of new genetic material by a carefully designed process of random mutations and Natural Selection. This is what is used in "genetic algorithms" or "evolutionary algorithms", for instance. Some genetic algorithms are pure Natural Selection (all traits are designed beforehand).
"Macro evolution" is the only kind subject to any controversy, since it has not been directly observed.
(Also, most supporters of the theory called "Intelligent Design" and packaged to schools as an alternative to the teaching of evolution reject the possibility of theistic evolution as well as that of nontheistic evolution, even though theistic evolution would be a perfectly valid form of intelligent design as the term would seem to be defined at face value.)
You are absolutely correct. Guided evolution is perfectly compatible with Intelligent Design theory. Theists object to theistic evolution on (somewhat shaky) moral grounds - a god that creates via a process as apparently harsh and cruel as evolution seems somehow abhorrent (although you could say it is "worth it all in the end"). Also, secularist object to theistic evolution on "materialist" grounds - "The Universe is All There Is". But, again, I agree, it is a Really Bad Move for Intelligent Design supporters to reject the possibility of guided evolution. Note that this is not across the board. Michael Behe, for instance, in "Darwin's Black Box" suggests a "big bang of life" (all genetic material designed and put mostly dormant in a single super cell) followed by Natural Selection (species evolve by activating, deactivating, and discarding material).
Note that the Catholic / Protestant split essentially began over the unqualified use of the word "faith". Did "Sola Fide" mean "Sola Fide Informis" (as the Catholic Hierachy thought), or "Sola Fide Formata" (as Luther apparently intended). There are way too many conflicts rooted in ambiguities of language combined with a lack of charity.
In Wright's Spore, which is being developed by Maxis, the player guides a species through the grand process of evolution -- from a single-cell organism to star-hopping superbeings. Everything the user creates will be compiled into a giant database and shared among all the game's online players.
Evolution is defined as unguided. The above is a description of Intelligent Design, not evolution. The player is essentially the god of a universe built via Theistic Evolution, and every game play decision is a miracle. In a game based on true Evolution, you would just watch everything unfold randomly according to the game rules after perhaps tweaking some initial conditions (you are allowed some Initial Design of the rules / state at the Big Bang, since that doesn't involve any god/world interaction).
If climate change is already in motion, "doing something" should mean investing in the changes needed to adapt - not wasting resources on futile attempts to delay the inevitable. Regardless of where the blame is assigned by more objective future observers, global warming is here to stay for hundreds of years at least. Some relocation may be necessary. How can it be done equitably? If it gets at least as warm as the medieval warming, Greenland and Siberia are good investments (keeping in mind they will eventually cool off again). I would be going over dyke engineering very carefully in the Netherlands to make sure it can keep up with the sea level rise (try not to follow the example of New Orleans - squandering all the levee money for 40 years). I would not make long term investments in beachfront property. Polar bears survived despite massive retreating of the northern ice cap 800 years ago. I suspect civilization is a greater threat than having less ice - they, like grizzlies, need lots of space.
Something else to think about: 1000 years from now, we will be going through the natural warming cycle again. If our energy habits have truly made it significantly worse, it would be real helpful if what we have learned was still available, and not so politicized as to be useless. It would be nice if it wasn't recorded in some secret encrypted Microsoft digital format. It would be nice if we didn't have the equivalent of the burning of the library of Alexandria (interesting that Islam was on the rise during the last warming as well).
Disclaimer: I have never owned a hummer, ride my bicycle to work, and generally agree with the sentiment that we have way too many cars - but not because of global warming.
When people in this thread say "determinism", they mean "strictly within the cause and effect framework of our universe". Note that causes can be random. In computer science, "deterministic" can also mean "non-random" - making things easier to debug. Often, we substitute a pseudo-random input for the real input for testing - allowing us to repeat the same "random" inputs, modifying the program until it gets it right.
But whether the input comes from a quantum noise source, a pseudo-random generator, or a script, the program response is completely deterministic. Even if its response invokes a quantum noise source to make "decisions", it is still completely "deterministic", i.e. cause and effect driven.
The concept of free will says that *some* (not all) of our responses did not have their source in the cause and effect chains of this universe - random or otherwise. Note that just as we cannot change the world, but only a smart part of it, so our free will does not control our entire mind and body - only a small part of it. Most of what our mind and body does is involuntary and automatic. (And thankfully so - I have enough to do without managing my digestion.)
Note that free will is not the same thing as your desires. Part of the concept of "original sin" is that our mind and body are broken, so that our will does not have as much control as it should. Disease can rob us of mental control, just as losing a leg inhibits our ability to walk. We cannot always tell whether a crime was a choice, or uncontrollable - as in the case of the man with a brain tumor. Sometimes, a bad choice leads to loss of free will - as happens with addictive substances. Traumatic experiences, or brainwashing can erode free will. The fact that free will can be lost, does not mean that it didn't exist in the first place.
It is certainly scary to hear people deny the existence of free will, "I'm sorry to do this to you, old chap, but I can't really help it. It's the result of my genes and my upbringing." The nanny state leads inevitably to a totalitarian state by gradually removing responsibility. If the common folk are still aware of any free will they have left, they have forgotten how to use it. As C.S. Lewis pointed out in "The Abolition of Man", it is ironic how Man's conquest of Nature leads to Nature's conquest of Man - men without free will, controlled entirely by natural processes.
I saw a huge increase in spam stats also. I currently get around 11000 messages a day. But I only have to manually delete 1 or 2 a day. My customers enjoy the same convenience despite 100000+ spams a day to their company. There is no administration of filter rules. I run my own filter software (pymilter) on a 600Mhz celeron with 256M ram. My content filter is quite old (dspam-2.5.6.2 with pydspam).
The secret is that I reject all but a few hundred of those 11000 spams in SMTP envelope. Correspondents must have some form of id, currently one of:
If you can't get one of the three right, you should fire your email admin.
That gets 3/4 of the garbage. Next, SPF FAIL is rejected, including for HELO. You'd be surprised at how much spam has my own domain for the HELO! For SPF SOFTFAIL, since the sender is requesting debugging info, I send a DSN to the purported sender reporting the SOFTFAIL. For senders with no SPF, I match domains with HELO and rDNS, and look at MX to try to get a match - which is then treated like and SPF pass. For SPF neutral, I do a CBV, and blacklist the sender if it fails.
This reduces the spam from 11000 to several hundred. The content filter is auto trained. A honeypot mailbox provides spam training. Messages from (verified by SPF PASS) senders that users reply to provide ham training. Users have a web interface to the quarantine.
The false positive from content filtering is extrememly low. The biggest problem is VIP correspondents with clueless email admins who are unwilling to educate or fire them. (E.g. one admin insisted I didn't know what I was talking about and "JUPITER" was a valid HELO name...) In these cases, I have extensions to the sendmail access database to provide policy exceptions. I can also provide local SPF records for correspondents to get them a PASS.
One customer had to resort to spamsoap.com because they were getting 2 million spam connection attempts a day, and my python based filter could only process 80000 or so on his 400Mhz server.
There is probably not enough though given to it, what with getting the laptop designed and produced, but I think the idea is to get a few people trained (which should start now), who will then be part of a snowball effect. I contribute to the "Five Talents" program, where people are given micro loans ($100-$500) to start small businesses. Once someone gets established, they hire other people, and make loans themselves - it is a snowball effect. Now the OLPC program is a lot more specialized than cash, but it could enable information based small businesses.
If lessons from Five Talents can be applied, the OLPC program should *not* distribute the laptops all at once. They should be given to a small number of individuals in widely scattered areas, who can then obtain more laptops for the people they train.
So I guess I keep thinking of young adults. Maybe I agree with you that giving them to children might not be the most effective approach. Definitely needs some pilot programs to see how/whether it works.
The OLPC project is NOT aimed at every poor person. They are targetting people who have food, water, basic education, but little else. There are a lot of such people, just as there are lots of people in the conditions you describe. Everyone has different needs and gifts. Don't disparage someone just because their gifts, and the people who need them, are different from yours.
It is not enough to have just food, clothing, and shelter. The US is full of inner city kids with (too much) food, clothing, shelter, and basic education (such as you get in public schools). Yet they are trapped in a life of despair, with seemingly no way out. Welfare by itself, without motivation and opportunities to make something of yourself, does that to people. "Give a man a fish..." and all that.
and by the time 1TB DVD-Rs are available, you'll need dozens of them to backup your Windows system. Not that it will matter much, since none of your documents or media will be readable on another system anyway.
I support copyright. Copyright protects open source software. Perhaps you mean you don't support the new DMCA style copyright laws that take away fair use (what do you mean I can't watch the movie I just bought?). Even so, publishing copyrighted works that you don't own online is NOT fair use.
So? "Squirt" in the lewd sense is *still* a rapid data transfer. Works better for the intended purpose, however, when one end is a responder - rather than both ends being initiators.
The saving grace of the BSD license is that as long as someone (e.g. the original authors) keeps the source publicly available, you have alternatives to getting trivially enhanced binaries from EvilCorp. The alternative could even be binaries from LessEvilCorp on better terms. That is why the advertising clause in BSD license is important. It makes it easier to know where the software came from, so you can get the source and make rude gestures at EvilCorp. BSD license copyright holders need to be vigilant about enforcing the advertising clause to preserve user freedoms.
GPL license is more attractive to a for profit open source business, because it is essentially a form of barter. "Yes, you can use/distribute/sell our code with no license fee, BUT, we get to use/distribute/sell any
enhancements you distribute." Endusers buy service and packaging. (I miss the RedHat CD retail packages.)
BSD license is more of an out and out donation.
We have customers running ancient software from 16-bit mini-computers before the IBM XT. But we run it on modern computers under emulation. We also run ancient Xenix programs on modern Linux. Or are you afraid of getting sued by SCO? Other than the learning curve for anyone needing to do maintenance (and the old software is very stable), there really is no drawback. You can integrate everything via database, rpc, orb, etc. When major changes are required for an ancient module, you have the option of rewriting in your favorite language (currently Java for us and sometimes python for ease of changing hardware).
That is a pretty good summary of Christian doctrine within the simulation analogy. However, it is just an analogy with weak points. For instance, in Christian doctrine, the AI units are not strictly in the simulation. They are actually intelligent beings in the outer reality, whose primary mode of interaction is through the simulation. Intelligence is not strictly natural, and human beings exist in two realms at once. Also, "simulations" imply a certain lack of instrinsic worth - they are discardable. The creator of our universe (through His avatar) claims to have a vested interest in our reality - and his enemies seem to find our universe surprisingly important also. Some theologians think this is only because our creator's interest makes our fate a good way to "get back" at the creator.
A false history is a metaphysical concept. Any scientific investigation would see the "false" history. Indeed, the "false" history is the true physical history seen by honest scientists - except when viewed from outside the system. There is no sense even bringing it up in a scientific discussion.
An analogy would be a computer simulation. You have a gigantic computer simulating a universe. You don't want to run the simulation from the big bang, so you load a precomputed state which includes 14 billion years already simulated. Now, this is important to know for discussions of the reality in which the giant computer exists. But it is meaningless for any discussion or investigation of the simulation rules for the universe being simulated.
BTW, your simulation has a "cheat" function called "miracle" used for, ah, errr, "debugging". The AI units in your simulation can't reliably tell which events are miracles, and which are normal operation of the simulation. This is because they cannot know the full state of the simulation, and likely won't even know the full rule set - due to being part of the simulation themselves.
So you're suggesting that event B is likely to have been a deliberate choice made by an intelligence, and not the normal result of business ebb and flow? I'm sorry, but on slashdot, we don't believe in ID. (Or was that only ID from certain intelligences?)
BTW, you gave evidence of the complexity (probability) of the juxtaposition of events. To suggest ID, you need to also show significance - i.e. specified according to predetermined criterion. Otherwise, you are "cherry picking" or painting the bullseye around the arrow. To reliably recognize intelligence requires an interactive process. Significance is difficult to judge after the fact, but it can be done. In the case of Novell, the "prior" criterion is "competition with Microsoft". I would like to know what projects Novell has been starting and defunding all along before deciding that event B is unusual. Businesses do that all the time. But if defunding MS competition is suddenly a larger proportion, that would be suspicious.
Remember the Java ring? It had a processor and stored the private key in a tamper resistant case (erases instantly when case is compromised). PC programs would ask the Java ring to sign things. A virus could get bogus signatures while it was connected, but couldn't compromise the key. Unfortunately, it used a funky "One Wire" adaptor to get power and talk to a PC. If only they would reintroduce it in a USB format!
The main industrial use of the Farnsworth Fusor is as a neutron source. Anyone trying this at home needs to understand that the neutron flux near the reactor can be deadly. (Wikipedia says amateur Fusors generate about 3x10^5 neutrons / sec.) Fortunately, they escape in all directions, so the density falls with the square of the distance. Just don't get too close while it's running. It's a good idea to have a detector for ionizing radiation and be familiar with exposure levels humans can tolerate. (Any good links?) Remember the neutron bomb? Killed people - not things.
Slashdot Mirror
The current main benefit to SPF is that when you get an SPF PASS, you can be reasonably sure that the MAIL FROM wasn't forged. This is comforting when I get mail from online banks and vendors (that I actually use). Also, I reject not only on SPF fail, but on softfail for selected domains (e.g. ebay.com). Getting an SPF pass is a two edged sword for a spammer. I track reputation (using pygossip) for validated MAIL FROM and HELO domains. So after a few trips through the content filter, they get rejected in SMTP envelope:
I've never supported COBOL, but I've supported my share of legacy business logic written in 1960s era languages.
But even if such a study showed that XP "just worked" more often than Ubuntu (which I personally suspect to be the case), the two would still be in the same ballpark. So the claim that Linux distros are "not ready" for the desktop is just not true. There may be differences in the "just works" batting average for non-techies, but you have a good chance of it "just working" with any modern Linux distro or XP.
The real clincher, however, is that you have an almost %100 chance of everything "just working" if you buy a preinstalled system. These are available for linux distros as well as the ubiquitos XP. Unlike with XP, linux distros actually have a choice of software vendors for preinstalls.
The LCD monitor has always been on a UPS (a cheap APC, granted).
A much better use of my money has been to buy *real* flourescent ballast and good old fashioned flourescent tubes. The oldest ballast came with the house and is 30 years old. The oldest ballast I've installed is 12 years and counting. The tube bulbs last nearly 10 years. The CFL stuff, on the other hand, is junk.
The CFL products need to cost *more* and put more quality into the mini electronic ballast so that it lasts as long as the bulb. Or maybe this isn't really possible, and the only reliable way to do flourescent is with magnetic ballast. I've noticed a similar problem with LCD panels. I have an LCD monitor sitting behind my desk with perfectly good a LCD and perfectly good flourescent backlights - but the electronic ballast (high voltage supply) is shot (died the day after 1 year warranty expired). I've replaced the ballast, and the monitor runs another 6 months before the high voltage dies again. After a while, you can't even buy replacement ballast for the LCD because they use some funky custom job for every model. What a waste. I can't bring myself yet to throw out a perfectly good LCD monitor for lack of a decent ballast. I'm sitting at a CRT because it has kept working for 7 years.
- Non-therapuetic antibiotics used as growth enhancers - increases risk of antibiotic resistent pathogens for everyone, not just beef eaters.
- Feed "enhanced" with rendered carcases (cannabalistic cows) - causes mad cow disease. Outlawed most places, but feed companies can cheat or make mistakes.
- Corn feeding - gives cows highly acid stomachs, making the natural E-Coli deadly to humans. This not only affects beef, but nearby fruits and vegetables exposed to manure. Apples have been infected by flies carrying germs from nearby manure.
The market for "green" beef seems to be rather small. Range feed beef is not as tender and marbled as corn-fed, penned up, growth enhanced beef. It is healthier, however.There is an easy way to deal with the problem that I doubt will be implemented, knowing Microsoft. Provide a "no DRM" mode where the system simply refuses to play any DRM content (including refusing to display DRMed images in applications) rather than degrading all non-DRM output.
Given widely differing interpretations of the creation story for more than 1000 years prior to Darwin, (e.g. St Augustine held to an allegorical interpretation), I think you mean certain theists object to evolution because it contradicts their own pet interpretation - likely a highly literal one. Sometimes people forget that a forced literal interpretation is just as bad as "spiritualizing" everything - as anyone with a kid with "literal disease" can testify.
Because terms are qualified to create new terms - often opposed in meaning to the original word. The unqualified word "evolution" usually refers to a mix of natural selection and macro evolution - with perhaps some origin of life thrown in. But throughout secular textbooks, the unqualified term is carefully explained to mean "without design or guidance".
There are at least three qualified variations on "evolution":
- micro evolution - Natural Selection, which selects or mixes optimal traits from preexisting genetic material.
- macro evolution - creation of new genetic material by an unguided process of random mutations and Natural Selection.
- theistic or guided evolution - creation of new genetic material by a carefully designed process of random mutations and Natural Selection. This is what is used in "genetic algorithms" or "evolutionary algorithms", for instance. Some genetic algorithms are pure Natural Selection (all traits are designed beforehand).
"Macro evolution" is the only kind subject to any controversy, since it has not been directly observed.(Also, most supporters of the theory called "Intelligent Design" and packaged to schools as an alternative to the teaching of evolution reject the possibility of theistic evolution as well as that of nontheistic evolution, even though theistic evolution would be a perfectly valid form of intelligent design as the term would seem to be defined at face value.)
You are absolutely correct. Guided evolution is perfectly compatible with Intelligent Design theory. Theists object to theistic evolution on (somewhat shaky) moral grounds - a god that creates via a process as apparently harsh and cruel as evolution seems somehow abhorrent (although you could say it is "worth it all in the end"). Also, secularist object to theistic evolution on "materialist" grounds - "The Universe is All There Is". But, again, I agree, it is a Really Bad Move for Intelligent Design supporters to reject the possibility of guided evolution. Note that this is not across the board. Michael Behe, for instance, in "Darwin's Black Box" suggests a "big bang of life" (all genetic material designed and put mostly dormant in a single super cell) followed by Natural Selection (species evolve by activating, deactivating, and discarding material).
Note that the Catholic / Protestant split essentially began over the unqualified use of the word "faith". Did "Sola Fide" mean "Sola Fide Informis" (as the Catholic Hierachy thought), or "Sola Fide Formata" (as Luther apparently intended). There are way too many conflicts rooted in ambiguities of language combined with a lack of charity.
Evolution is defined as unguided. The above is a description of Intelligent Design, not evolution. The player is essentially the god of a universe built via Theistic Evolution, and every game play decision is a miracle. In a game based on true Evolution, you would just watch everything unfold randomly according to the game rules after perhaps tweaking some initial conditions (you are allowed some Initial Design of the rules / state at the Big Bang, since that doesn't involve any god/world interaction).
Something else to think about: 1000 years from now, we will be going through the natural warming cycle again. If our energy habits have truly made it significantly worse, it would be real helpful if what we have learned was still available, and not so politicized as to be useless. It would be nice if it wasn't recorded in some secret encrypted Microsoft digital format. It would be nice if we didn't have the equivalent of the burning of the library of Alexandria (interesting that Islam was on the rise during the last warming as well).
Disclaimer: I have never owned a hummer, ride my bicycle to work, and generally agree with the sentiment that we have way too many cars - but not because of global warming.
But whether the input comes from a quantum noise source, a pseudo-random generator, or a script, the program response is completely deterministic. Even if its response invokes a quantum noise source to make "decisions", it is still completely "deterministic", i.e. cause and effect driven.
The concept of free will says that *some* (not all) of our responses did not have their source in the cause and effect chains of this universe - random or otherwise. Note that just as we cannot change the world, but only a smart part of it, so our free will does not control our entire mind and body - only a small part of it. Most of what our mind and body does is involuntary and automatic. (And thankfully so - I have enough to do without managing my digestion.)
Note that free will is not the same thing as your desires. Part of the concept of "original sin" is that our mind and body are broken, so that our will does not have as much control as it should. Disease can rob us of mental control, just as losing a leg inhibits our ability to walk. We cannot always tell whether a crime was a choice, or uncontrollable - as in the case of the man with a brain tumor. Sometimes, a bad choice leads to loss of free will - as happens with addictive substances. Traumatic experiences, or brainwashing can erode free will. The fact that free will can be lost, does not mean that it didn't exist in the first place.
It is certainly scary to hear people deny the existence of free will, "I'm sorry to do this to you, old chap, but I can't really help it. It's the result of my genes and my upbringing." The nanny state leads inevitably to a totalitarian state by gradually removing responsibility. If the common folk are still aware of any free will they have left, they have forgotten how to use it. As C.S. Lewis pointed out in "The Abolition of Man", it is ironic how Man's conquest of Nature leads to Nature's conquest of Man - men without free will, controlled entirely by natural processes.
The secret is that I reject all but a few hundred of those 11000 spams in SMTP envelope. Correspondents must have some form of id, currently one of:
- a valid rDNS
- a valid RFC 2822 HELO that resolves to connect IP
- an RFC 4408 sender policy (SPF) with a PASS
If you can't get one of the three right, you should fire your email admin.That gets 3/4 of the garbage. Next, SPF FAIL is rejected, including for HELO. You'd be surprised at how much spam has my own domain for the HELO! For SPF SOFTFAIL, since the sender is requesting debugging info, I send a DSN to the purported sender reporting the SOFTFAIL. For senders with no SPF, I match domains with HELO and rDNS, and look at MX to try to get a match - which is then treated like and SPF pass. For SPF neutral, I do a CBV, and blacklist the sender if it fails.
This reduces the spam from 11000 to several hundred. The content filter is auto trained. A honeypot mailbox provides spam training. Messages from (verified by SPF PASS) senders that users reply to provide ham training. Users have a web interface to the quarantine.
The false positive from content filtering is extrememly low. The biggest problem is VIP correspondents with clueless email admins who are unwilling to educate or fire them. (E.g. one admin insisted I didn't know what I was talking about and "JUPITER" was a valid HELO name...) In these cases, I have extensions to the sendmail access database to provide policy exceptions. I can also provide local SPF records for correspondents to get them a PASS.
One customer had to resort to spamsoap.com because they were getting 2 million spam connection attempts a day, and my python based filter could only process 80000 or so on his 400Mhz server.
If lessons from Five Talents can be applied, the OLPC program should *not* distribute the laptops all at once. They should be given to a small number of individuals in widely scattered areas, who can then obtain more laptops for the people they train.
So I guess I keep thinking of young adults. Maybe I agree with you that giving them to children might not be the most effective approach. Definitely needs some pilot programs to see how/whether it works.
It is not enough to have just food, clothing, and shelter. The US is full of inner city kids with (too much) food, clothing, shelter, and basic education (such as you get in public schools). Yet they are trapped in a life of despair, with seemingly no way out. Welfare by itself, without motivation and opportunities to make something of yourself, does that to people. "Give a man a fish ..." and all that.
and by the time 1TB DVD-Rs are available, you'll need dozens of them to backup your Windows system. Not that it will matter much, since none of your documents or media will be readable on another system anyway.
I support copyright. Copyright protects open source software. Perhaps you mean you don't support the new DMCA style copyright laws that take away fair use (what do you mean I can't watch the movie I just bought?). Even so, publishing copyrighted works that you don't own online is NOT fair use.
So? "Squirt" in the lewd sense is *still* a rapid data transfer. Works better for the intended purpose, however, when one end is a responder - rather than both ends being initiators.
GPL license is more attractive to a for profit open source business, because it is essentially a form of barter. "Yes, you can use/distribute/sell our code with no license fee, BUT, we get to use/distribute/sell any enhancements you distribute." Endusers buy service and packaging. (I miss the RedHat CD retail packages.) BSD license is more of an out and out donation.
We have customers running ancient software from 16-bit mini-computers before the IBM XT. But we run it on modern computers under emulation. We also run ancient Xenix programs on modern Linux. Or are you afraid of getting sued by SCO? Other than the learning curve for anyone needing to do maintenance (and the old software is very stable), there really is no drawback. You can integrate everything via database, rpc, orb, etc. When major changes are required for an ancient module, you have the option of rewriting in your favorite language (currently Java for us and sometimes python for ease of changing hardware).
That is a pretty good summary of Christian doctrine within the simulation analogy. However, it is just an analogy with weak points. For instance, in Christian doctrine, the AI units are not strictly in the simulation. They are actually intelligent beings in the outer reality, whose primary mode of interaction is through the simulation. Intelligence is not strictly natural, and human beings exist in two realms at once. Also, "simulations" imply a certain lack of instrinsic worth - they are discardable. The creator of our universe (through His avatar) claims to have a vested interest in our reality - and his enemies seem to find our universe surprisingly important also. Some theologians think this is only because our creator's interest makes our fate a good way to "get back" at the creator.
An analogy would be a computer simulation. You have a gigantic computer simulating a universe. You don't want to run the simulation from the big bang, so you load a precomputed state which includes 14 billion years already simulated. Now, this is important to know for discussions of the reality in which the giant computer exists. But it is meaningless for any discussion or investigation of the simulation rules for the universe being simulated.
BTW, your simulation has a "cheat" function called "miracle" used for, ah, errr, "debugging". The AI units in your simulation can't reliably tell which events are miracles, and which are normal operation of the simulation. This is because they cannot know the full state of the simulation, and likely won't even know the full rule set - due to being part of the simulation themselves.
BTW, you gave evidence of the complexity (probability) of the juxtaposition of events. To suggest ID, you need to also show significance - i.e. specified according to predetermined criterion. Otherwise, you are "cherry picking" or painting the bullseye around the arrow. To reliably recognize intelligence requires an interactive process. Significance is difficult to judge after the fact, but it can be done. In the case of Novell, the "prior" criterion is "competition with Microsoft". I would like to know what projects Novell has been starting and defunding all along before deciding that event B is unusual. Businesses do that all the time. But if defunding MS competition is suddenly a larger proportion, that would be suspicious.
Remember the Java ring? It had a processor and stored the private key in a tamper resistant case (erases instantly when case is compromised). PC programs would ask the Java ring to sign things. A virus could get bogus signatures while it was connected, but couldn't compromise the key. Unfortunately, it used a funky "One Wire" adaptor to get power and talk to a PC. If only they would reintroduce it in a USB format!
The main industrial use of the Farnsworth Fusor is as a neutron source. Anyone trying this at home needs to understand that the neutron flux near the reactor can be deadly. (Wikipedia says amateur Fusors generate about 3x10^5 neutrons / sec.) Fortunately, they escape in all directions, so the density falls with the square of the distance. Just don't get too close while it's running. It's a good idea to have a detector for ionizing radiation and be familiar with exposure levels humans can tolerate. (Any good links?) Remember the neutron bomb? Killed people - not things.