system, there is a synergy between man and machine. Our system was for a general practitioner (general diagnosis with symptoms, physical findings, history, tests, etc as input). The computer is somewhat "dumb", but it always checks all the possibilities. The doctor would be looking for the usual stuff, and sometimes miss the more exotic diseases that would turn up from time to time. The machine would flag some exotic condition with a high probability, and the doctor would go "Interesting! I hadn't thought of that, let's check it out." Dr. House probably doesn't need one:-)
"Open source" is an ambiguous term that is almost as bad as "Intellectual Property". The objection here is that the license forbids you from doing anything with the source unless you use Windows to do it. So it's "open source" only if you already use Windows and don't ever plan to use anything else.
I can see why M$ would like that license, and it's almost comically self serving, but I have to agree that it still fits the catchall "open source" designation. It certainly isn't "Free as in Freedom" software, however.
On RedHat distros, and probably others, there is a utility called 'sysctl' and a config file called '/etc/sysctl.conf'. In Redhat, the following appears in/etc/sysctl.conf:
# Controls the use of TCP syncookies net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1
The "write" activity on olpc supports collaborative editing out of the box using Jabber as a transport. I think it is a derivative of Abiword - but in any case it is open source.
I actually use it quite often, having a group document is a favorite activity among the olpc g1g1 kids - the usual take turns adding a sentence to a silly story type thing. (I never fully grew up.)
I dabble in Solaris at a customer, but run Linux on our own servers and at home. Solaris is *way* ahead of Linux in Logical Volume Management (ZFS), virtualization (xVM and Zones) and other "enterprise" features involving storage, memory, and security. However, if you want to edit video, record a MIDI performance, or use cheap consumer hardware not carefully selected for Solaris drivers, you had better be able to port the Linux driver from source - or just use Linux.
To oversimplify, between the GPL kernels, I'd say Solaris in the server room, and Linux on the Desktop. That's not to say that Solaris isn't improving its consumer desktop support - or that Linux isn't improving its LVM.
Also, Linux has had a lot of attention given to scaled down versions for mobile devices - Solaris hasn't.
I reject email that doesn't have an authenticated HELO or MAIL FROM via SPF or heuristic default policy. While this cuts down on zombie spam, there is still a steady stream of spam from fully authenticated throwaway domains. These are automatically blacklisted after 20 spam, or sooner if I do it manually. But new authenticated spam domains are registered daily (I see at least 6 new ones every day).
So while it is nice that spammers can't abuse someone elses domain to send me spam when email is authenticated, no authentication system is going to stop spam. If I required all email to be encrypted, spammers would encrypt their spam.
It is not the Blue Ray DRM itself so much as the DRM between HD components in general. The fact that BluRay movies are HD tickles the nastiness in HD monitors and sound equipment. (Refusing to play because some HD component is not authorized or incompatible and the lodef fallback is missing or broken.)
Joe six pack may not know *why* his Blu-ray player is so finicky - refusing to play for mysterious reasons having something to do with authorization failures and missing fallbacks, but he doesn't like it. Instead of uselessly ranting against DRM (or stupidly defending it), he just takes the defective equipment back to the store and cusses about the time wasted.
If media companies want their DRM accepted by Joe Sixpack - it can't get in his way. Blu-ray (and much of the HD DRM hierarchy) doesn't cut it.
Based on the conversations I overhear among my teenage daughters and their friends (from several different schools), there are apparently one or two adults in every school who actually do hit on the kids. While you would hope that the principal would be more scrutinized, I wouldn't count on it.
The rotating cylinder, while an improvement in some respects, suffers from the same limitation as all other relativity compatible time travel schemes. You can only navigate to points in space time occupied by (certain areas of) the rotating cylinder. So while it would be cool to start one of these up, and maybe someone from the future could come out of it (unless future Luddites destroy it), it won't help to go back and change history.
And of course there is the usual practical caveat - the sheer size of the mass and energy required to try it out with humans. I have always maintained that time travel researchers need to forget about macroscopic time travel for a while - and focus on nano time travel. If a nano-scale time travel device capable of conducting photons or other particles can be constructed (a big if) - it can be done within reachable energy budgets for today. And information time travel would be amazing enough. Keep it secret and play the stock market to fund future development.
Of course, how do you know you can trust whoever is communicating with you through the device from the future? Maybe they want to ruin you to prevent the catastrophe caused by your device!
I think it's the latter. Sometimes he says things *I* think are insane, and I always thought I was conservative. But he says them eloquently. In the 2000 election, I was glad he didn't get the nomination. He did a lot more good giving eloquent speeches against abortion than setting policy. I was amazed at the amount of Jim Crowe treatment he got in the south (kept out of debates he was officially invited to by security because he was black).
As I said, it is an exception allowed in some place, just like self-defense is allowed in most places. A duel is distinguished by mutual consent. If you are going to allow risky sexual behavior between consenting adults, why not a traditional duel?
Murder can usefully be outlawed, because it is a choice that an intelligent person makes. (In fact, if the killer is mentally deficient and incapable of making that choice, it is treated different legally.) A gun, knife, automobile, HCl etc, morphine, are objects of varying degrees of danger and usefulness.
Particular objects are reasonably controlled when the danger they present is not obvious to an ordinary person. Someone not familiar with chemistry may be tragically surprised by the destructiveness of a bottle of HCl (although warning labels help). Hence it makes sense to make it hard to get unless you know what you are doing.
A knife is an obvious danger. Even if you don't speak the language. Even if you just came from deepest darkest Africa and have never seen technology before. A gun is an obvious danger to someone exposed to any technology of the last 400 years. (Although apparently too many idiots don't think about the danger of it going off accidentally.)
So objects likely to result in accidental death are controlled, and hopefully still available with a license that demonstrates basic competence. (And where you draw the line depends on how stupid you think the average citizen is.) And deliberating causing death via any means is illegal - although most places allow for circumstances like duels, self-defense, etc.
Controlling an object/substance to prevent accidental death does *not* protect anyone from intentional death via that object/substance. Gun control may prevent some accidental home shootings, but it does not stop criminals from getting guns. Heck, if nothing else go back to basics and make a primitive weapon from steel rod and homemade gunpowder like they did in the 18th century. What next? Outlaw lathes? Outlaw metal cutting tools that could be attached to a homemade lathe? Outlaw fire since it could be used to forge and temper metal cutting tools?
That's because any 'real' christian (a christian that attempts to subscribe to what is actually said in the bible vs someones made up interpretation of it) cannot accept a billions of years old universe.
"In the beginning God created" doesn't exactly place creation 6000 years ago. The young earth theory is a weak extrapolation from incomplete genealogies.
I am a creationist, but the obvious problem with creation in a science context is that it is not testable. There are no experiments that can be done because it is not repeatable, and thanks to apparent age, there is no observable historic event. (Think about it - if the earth was created 6000 years ago in a 4 billion year old state, how old is it scientifically?)
Science is a world of logical positivism - "any statement that cannot in principal be verified is meaningless". Creationism is meaningless in that context because it cannot be verified. Intelligent design doesn't apply to the creation of the universe as a whole because it is a singular event. (It could apply to the creation of life or the earth - but requires experience with other worlds to have a better idea of just how special our world is.)
Now, where I diverge from your typical modernist is when they make logical positivism the end of the story. The problem is that the statement, "any statement that cannot in principal be verified is meaningless" is a statement that cannot be verified, and is therefore meaningless. When you try to make science the sole source of knowledge, you end up with meaninglessness: intelligence (literally "to choose between" i.e. free will) is an illusion, and all that.
And finally, intelligent design theory is *not* creationism in disguise. It is a general theory that is applied in many other fields. As a statistical analysis, it provides no absolute answers. But everyone should be familiar with the concepts, because they apply to forensics, archaeology, SETI, and many other other settings that need to distinguish (imperfectly) between intelligent and natural causes.
and I was pulled over for DUI after working into the wee hours to get a client back up by the next day. (Fatigue impairs driving also, and having learned my lesson I just stretch out on the carpet for such occasions.) Anyway, I also had a full paper bag on the passenger seat (with recently acquired church publications). It was a tense 15 minutes, but fortunately the adrenaline banished fatigue long enough to convince the officer that my problem wasn't substance abuse.
I worked on a secure Air Force system with similar security requirements. The secure data analysis system was locked in a steel vault with armed soldiers, alarms, and likely more stuff I had no need to know about, but had a high bandwidth mainframe channel to the outside world - that was "one way" (into the vault). The reverse handshaking data needed for reliable transfer was strictly limited. I could take any sort of media into the vault for my job - but had to leave it all there when I left. (There was a secure disposal detail that I never got to see.)
The LHC is in a similar security situation, except the one way bus should go *out* of the control computers. But I guess data has to go *in* to setup the experiments, so that makes things more difficult.
I'm not sure what you point is. Your story has a very complex entity (God) creating life. My story has something much simpler than life doing it.
Some versions of Intelligent Design have the Designer doing it all through initial conditions. But you're right in that such out of band effects are irrelevant for science.
Google owns any content you create using its Chrome browser...
I know I'm not supposed to RTFA, but I couldn't resist. And when I did, the Google Chrome EULA said (section 9.4):
Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf.
And section 11 says,
You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.
His company name and domain was his last name. When the company was bought and rebranded by a big corporation to expand their outlets, he had repeated requests to sell the domain to another family business with the same last name. I advised him to sell. He thought about it for several years, and finally forgot to renew - so the other company got it cheap. I suppose that was fitting in a way.
Slashdot Mirror
system, there is a synergy between man and machine. Our system was for a general practitioner (general diagnosis with symptoms, physical findings, history, tests, etc as input). The computer is somewhat "dumb", but it always checks all the possibilities. The doctor would be looking for the usual stuff, and sometimes miss the more exotic diseases that would turn up from time to time. The machine would flag some exotic condition with a high probability, and the doctor would go "Interesting! I hadn't thought of that, let's check it out." Dr. House probably doesn't need one :-)
"Open source" is an ambiguous term that is almost as bad as "Intellectual Property". The objection here is that the license forbids you from doing anything with the source unless you use Windows to do it. So it's "open source" only if you already use Windows and don't ever plan to use anything else.
I can see why M$ would like that license, and it's almost comically self serving, but I have to agree that it still fits the catchall "open source" designation. It certainly isn't "Free as in Freedom" software, however.
Not just Pat Robertson, J.D. Frazer also:
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20081004
On RedHat distros, and probably others, there is a utility called 'sysctl' and a config file called '/etc/sysctl.conf'. In Redhat, the following appears in /etc/sysctl.conf:
# Controls the use of TCP syncookies
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1
Just change the 1 to a 0
The "write" activity on olpc supports collaborative editing out of the box using Jabber as a transport. I think it is a derivative of Abiword - but in any case it is open source.
I actually use it quite often, having a group document is a favorite activity among the olpc g1g1 kids - the usual take turns adding a sentence to a silly story type thing. (I never fully grew up.)
Just file the patent, wait for someone else to get it working, then sue them.
I dabble in Solaris at a customer, but run Linux on our own servers and at home. Solaris is *way* ahead of Linux in Logical Volume Management (ZFS), virtualization (xVM and Zones) and other "enterprise" features involving storage, memory, and security. However, if you want to edit video, record a MIDI performance, or use cheap consumer hardware not carefully selected for Solaris drivers, you had better be able to port the Linux driver from source - or just use Linux.
To oversimplify, between the GPL kernels, I'd say Solaris in the server room, and Linux on the Desktop. That's not to say that Solaris isn't improving its consumer desktop support - or that Linux isn't improving its LVM.
Also, Linux has had a lot of attention given to scaled down versions for mobile devices - Solaris hasn't.
I reject email that doesn't have an authenticated HELO or MAIL FROM via SPF or heuristic default policy. While this cuts down on zombie spam, there is still a steady stream of spam from fully authenticated throwaway domains. These are automatically blacklisted after 20 spam, or sooner if I do it manually. But new authenticated spam domains are registered daily (I see at least 6 new ones every day).
So while it is nice that spammers can't abuse someone elses domain to send me spam when email is authenticated, no authentication system is going to stop spam. If I required all email to be encrypted, spammers would encrypt their spam.
It is not the Blue Ray DRM itself so much as the DRM between HD components in general. The fact that BluRay movies are HD tickles the nastiness in HD monitors and sound equipment. (Refusing to play because some HD component is not authorized or incompatible and the lodef fallback is missing or broken.)
Joe six pack may not know *why* his Blu-ray player is so finicky - refusing to play for mysterious reasons having something to do with authorization failures and missing fallbacks, but he doesn't like it. Instead of uselessly ranting against DRM (or stupidly defending it), he just takes the defective equipment back to the store and cusses about the time wasted.
If media companies want their DRM accepted by Joe Sixpack - it can't get in his way. Blu-ray (and much of the HD DRM hierarchy) doesn't cut it.
Based on the conversations I overhear among my teenage daughters and their friends (from several different schools), there are apparently one or two adults in every school who actually do hit on the kids. While you would hope that the principal would be more scrutinized, I wouldn't count on it.
The rotating cylinder, while an improvement in some respects, suffers from the same limitation as all other relativity compatible time travel schemes. You can only navigate to points in space time occupied by (certain areas of) the rotating cylinder. So while it would be cool to start one of these up, and maybe someone from the future could come out of it (unless future Luddites destroy it), it won't help to go back and change history.
And of course there is the usual practical caveat - the sheer size of the mass and energy required to try it out with humans. I have always maintained that time travel researchers need to forget about macroscopic time travel for a while - and focus on nano time travel. If a nano-scale time travel device capable of conducting photons or other particles can be constructed (a big if) - it can be done within reachable energy budgets for today. And information time travel would be amazing enough. Keep it secret and play the stock market to fund future development.
Of course, how do you know you can trust whoever is communicating with you through the device from the future? Maybe they want to ruin you to prevent the catastrophe caused by your device!
I think it's the latter. Sometimes he says things *I* think are insane, and I always thought I was conservative. But he says them eloquently. In the 2000 election, I was glad he didn't get the nomination. He did a lot more good giving eloquent speeches against abortion than setting policy. I was amazed at the amount of Jim Crowe treatment he got in the south (kept out of debates he was officially invited to by security because he was black).
At the other end of the political spectrum, I think Alan Keyes is at least in the same league at Obama as a gifted speaker.
As I said, it is an exception allowed in some place, just like self-defense is allowed in most places. A duel is distinguished by mutual consent. If you are going to allow risky sexual behavior between consenting adults, why not a traditional duel?
So in the one instance where you *clearly* are not planning to drink and drive, you can't buy the liquor? Kafka lives on!
Murder can usefully be outlawed, because it is a choice that an intelligent person makes. (In fact, if the killer is mentally deficient and incapable of making that choice, it is treated different legally.) A gun, knife, automobile, HCl etc, morphine, are objects of varying degrees of danger and usefulness.
Particular objects are reasonably controlled when the danger they present is not obvious to an ordinary person. Someone not familiar with chemistry may be tragically surprised by the destructiveness of a bottle of HCl (although warning labels help). Hence it makes sense to make it hard to get unless you know what you are doing.
A knife is an obvious danger. Even if you don't speak the language. Even if you just came from deepest darkest Africa and have never seen technology before. A gun is an obvious danger to someone exposed to any technology of the last 400 years. (Although apparently too many idiots don't think about the danger of it going off accidentally.)
So objects likely to result in accidental death are controlled, and hopefully still available with a license that demonstrates basic competence. (And where you draw the line depends on how stupid you think the average citizen is.) And deliberating causing death via any means is illegal - although most places allow for circumstances like duels, self-defense, etc.
Controlling an object/substance to prevent accidental death does *not* protect anyone from intentional death via that object/substance. Gun control may prevent some accidental home shootings, but it does not stop criminals from getting guns. Heck, if nothing else go back to basics and make a primitive weapon from steel rod and homemade gunpowder like they did in the 18th century. What next? Outlaw lathes? Outlaw metal cutting tools that could be attached to a homemade lathe? Outlaw fire since it could be used to forge and temper metal cutting tools?
I didn't say they were allegoric. I just said there is nothing in there about 6000 years.
That's because any 'real' christian (a christian that attempts to subscribe to what is actually said in the bible vs someones made up interpretation of it) cannot accept a billions of years old universe.
"In the beginning God created" doesn't exactly place creation 6000 years ago. The young earth theory is a weak extrapolation from incomplete genealogies.
I am a creationist, but the obvious problem with creation in a science context is that it is not testable. There are no experiments that can be done because it is not repeatable, and thanks to apparent age, there is no observable historic event. (Think about it - if the earth was created 6000 years ago in a 4 billion year old state, how old is it scientifically?)
Science is a world of logical positivism - "any statement that cannot in principal be verified is meaningless". Creationism is meaningless in that context because it cannot be verified. Intelligent design doesn't apply to the creation of the universe as a whole because it is a singular event. (It could apply to the creation of life or the earth - but requires experience with other worlds to have a better idea of just how special our world is.)
Now, where I diverge from your typical modernist is when they make logical positivism the end of the story. The problem is that the statement, "any statement that cannot in principal be verified is meaningless" is a statement that cannot be verified, and is therefore meaningless. When you try to make science the sole source of knowledge, you end up with meaninglessness: intelligence (literally "to choose between" i.e. free will) is an illusion, and all that.
And finally, intelligent design theory is *not* creationism in disguise. It is a general theory that is applied in many other fields. As a statistical analysis, it provides no absolute answers. But everyone should be familiar with the concepts, because they apply to forensics, archaeology, SETI, and many other other settings that need to distinguish (imperfectly) between intelligent and natural causes.
and I was pulled over for DUI after working into the wee hours to get a client back up by the next day. (Fatigue impairs driving also, and having learned my lesson I just stretch out on the carpet for such occasions.) Anyway, I also had a full paper bag on the passenger seat (with recently acquired church publications). It was a tense 15 minutes, but fortunately the adrenaline banished fatigue long enough to convince the officer that my problem wasn't substance abuse.
I worked on a secure Air Force system with similar security requirements. The secure data analysis system was locked in a steel vault with armed soldiers, alarms, and likely more stuff I had no need to know about, but had a high bandwidth mainframe channel to the outside world - that was "one way" (into the vault). The reverse handshaking data needed for reliable transfer was strictly limited. I could take any sort of media into the vault for my job - but had to leave it all there when I left. (There was a secure disposal detail that I never got to see.)
The LHC is in a similar security situation, except the one way bus should go *out* of the control computers. But I guess data has to go *in* to setup the experiments, so that makes things more difficult.
I'm not sure what you point is. Your story has a very complex entity (God) creating life. My story has something much simpler than life doing it.
Some versions of Intelligent Design have the Designer doing it all through initial conditions. But you're right in that such out of band effects are irrelevant for science.
I know I'm not supposed to RTFA, but I couldn't resist. And when I did, the Google Chrome EULA said (section 9.4):
And section 11 says,
His company name and domain was his last name. When the company was bought and rebranded by a big corporation to expand their outlets, he had repeated requests to sell the domain to another family business with the same last name. I advised him to sell. He thought about it for several years, and finally forgot to renew - so the other company got it cheap. I suppose that was fitting in a way.