There is more, one of the problems is possible mutation.
The way the article ended was scary --
It's also possible that HIV and the therapeutic virus could mutate around each other and recombine to make an altogether new virus.
"I can't say now it won't make it worse," Arkin said.
Well, now that would be bad, wouldn't it? What if this virus mutates with other some other virus, too, that they have not studied about? And what if it mutates on itself into something far more harmful?
Those are the scary possibilities.
Like you said, HIV has all the makings of a badass virus -- now, this virus will too. Just because it kills HIV does not mean that it's all that good in itself -- it may cause some harm on its own that could be far worse than HIV.
Since you did not bother reading the article, I'll tell you why they said that it's unfortunate that it could be done so cheaply.
It's not what's been done, it's that it could be done at all, with so much ease and so cheaply.
Now imagine what would happen if someone decides to come up with a virus that is made out of common cold, that does something that it's not supposed to.
How does contracting Hepatitis through common cold sound?
That's exactly the reason they are scared -- if this becomes commonplace, anyone can come up with cheap ways of messing around with genetics.
Now, the article also mentions how the effects are usually not known and sometimes ineffective, so we may not know for quite a while what ELSE this virus does, and what else such cures may do in the future.
It's like making a pact with the enemy's enemy -- sure, you are saved for the day. But what about down the road?
It's just a scary precedent -- I refrain from using the word bad, because we do not yet know what is going to happen. But it's always helpful to think of the worst possible scenarios, too. Especially in sensitive areas like bio-tech.
Heh! It's not even funny when it happens in real life.
I had some documents to be sent to New Mexico, and the person at the post office gave me a bunch of custom forms and what not.
For a while, I thought maybe she was asking me to fill all this since I was applying to a US Govt national laboratory, and so it was a pre-requisite of sorts.
Then I realized that she was sending it to Mexico. And it took her a while to realize I was referring to a state within the US.
And these are the people who work in the post office (I can understand *so many* other places having people who would not know this, but a post office?).
And it was Clarke who put forward the idea that Geostationary orbits would be ideal for satellite communication.
Asimov and Clarke wrote science fiction as a broad genre - space operas, speculative fiction and the like, and was not tied to any science per-se.
And Gibson sure as hell has won quite a lot of accolades, and some of his books have been made into movies, too (Matrix is based on some of his ideas, Johnny Mnemonic is also a book by him).
It's just that in this context, Gibson fits in as one of the very few authors who would deserve to have their names up there.
The only other author I can think of (and no, Stephenson does not count) who could be up there is Ray Kurzweil.
Well, sure. But that's probably not the *only* reason he's there.
He's considered by many to be one of the pioneers of cyberpunk, and Neuromancer certainly did help popularise the genre. And that definitely is something. Cyberpunk ties in very closely with the hacker culture, and adding Gibson is a nice way of saying Thank You.
What's given there is merely an excerpt of the achievements, and is definitely not all of the reasons why those people are in the list.
That said, I should say that the list is pretty damned cool. They've added a whole lot of really cool people whom most people would not know/care about (Nelson, Noyce, Mauchley,Zuse, Philbrick, Tomlinson and the like).
And interestingly enough, RMS is missing from the list:) (am not complaining, though).
It seems generally true that as a website becomes popular, a certain group of dickheads (usually males in the 12-16 age group) turn up with the goal of ruining it for everyone.
Not really. The point is, they have their own world, just like the rest of the community.
Think of it as the equivalent of graffiti - sure, it ruins walls and what not, but hey it's a creative outlet and a means of expressing themselves. And better this than anything else.
And more importantly, it's called Freedom of Speech - and I really like the way Slashdot handles this.
The point is, almost everyone feel like trolling at some point of time or the other, or atleast on some topic or the other. And when you do, you inevitably fall into the so-called fuckwit category that you mentioned.
And quite honestly, I take offence at your choice of words - fuckwit factor? What is that supposed to mean?
It's a forum, and people can discuss just about anything that pleases them - and on a place like Slashdot, you are given the choice of seeing what you like. Despite everything, I would not like anyone messing with the posts, no matter how shitty they are.
There are times when I read at -1 (and quite honestly, enjoyed the trolls) and there are times when I read at +3.
There is no one-size fits all.
And that's one of the many reasons I like Slashdot (well, Kuro5hin is better in some respects when it comes to tolerating trolls, but I digress). Your fuckwit tolerance level changes, and you have the choice of choosing how tolerant you are.
And finally, to answer your question - RTFA. They do not.
Re:Better idea - 2 accounts in one card?
on
RFID MasterCard
·
· Score: 1
Hmmm, maybe the reason they have smaller transactions is to prevent misuse of technology?
Worst case, you get $25 wiped off your card, not more.
Therefore, you will not pay much attention to a $25 RFID credit card, but you would be careful with your normal mag-swipe credit cards. And there is a distinct possibility that they probably want to study how well this is accepted and adopted, and how people use this, before getting into it with guns blazing.
They may have it separate from the magnetic stripe because they treat this with baby-gloves since its a new technology.
If tomorrow, they decide that its not a worthy technology and want to pull back, it would be far more easier than if they had combined it with a mag-swipe card -- not to mention the costs they would incur in combining it in the first place.
Also, think anti-hacker insurance - when people decide to do cool shit and blow up your RFID card, all you lose is that card - on the other hand, if you had your mag-swipe on it, you would lose that too.
(a) controlling the borders to prevent influx is hard (b) strict profiling and controlling of legal immigrants is hard and maybe construed wrong
Therefore, the only way to prevent any suspected people of entering the US is to enforce a very strong background checking of people who are already coming in (which already happens, and is not looked upon well by the rest of the world).
Maybe because real threats are likely to come from within rather from outside?
Its almost impossible to enforce complete border regulation, and making it strict only flies in the face of the US policy of being open to immigrants.
Most of the real threats come from people who have entered US through legal means, or are already inside the US. And the reason they questioned this guy is not because he sought some information, its the kind of information that he sought - they merely thought that kind of information could be used for other purposes, and were careful.
Well, it's most likely that they have certain types of information that act as trigger points - you seek those and someone might just take notice.
The point is that they perhaps figure that it is better to be prudent and be careful, rather than let be swept under the Freedom of Information act.
He was just interrogated - if his freedom were taken away, or if he was warned or if something along those lines had happened, I can understand your reaction.
However, he was interrogated because the law enforcement is being careful (and maybe justifiably so), or maybe they are acting on the basis of some kind of information that we do not know about (who knows, they may have received threats or information of such a possibility) and over-reacted because of that.
The truth is, we will never know. I'm not saying that what they did was right, but it was not wrong either. Its just being cautious, and I do not see anything wrong in law enforcement being careful.
You assume that I made that reference to myself as being a bad programmer.
The reason I made that statement was because just last week I was at Redmond for an interview for internship at Microsoft, and I was interviewed by the team that was trying to prevent just this sort of thing from happening.
The idea was to design heuristics-enabled compilers that would effectively detect any "bad-code" and help make managed code and pseudo-managed code the norm, or convert existing code into managed code.
I did not say that I was using a programming language that had such protections, merely that such programming languages have their own advantages. I was interviewed for creating compilers, linkers and OS-level protection that did not allow those troublesome things to exist - not use them - and hence my justification:)
That said, you may knowingly or unknowingly use a language designed for bad programmers even when you program C or C++ in upcoming versions of compilers that insist on managed code - they may just wrap up your code in a nice wrapper to prevent mishaps and hand it over to the linker after having taken care of your holes.
Contrary to popular belief, managed code environments do optimize code a whole lot more than you would think!
Joe Beda, the guy from Microsoft behind Avalon, had a discussion on Channel9 where he talked about why managed code is not that bad a thing afterall.
Like I mentioned in an earlier post, managed code helps optimize the code for some of the bad programmers out there who cannot do it themselves, and takes care of a lot of exceptions and other "troublesome" things:) So, in the long run, it may not be that bad a thing afterall.
There are two facets to optimization - one is optimization of the code per se, and the other is the optimization of the project productivity - and I think managed code environments do a fairly good job of the former and a very good job of the latter.
However, I will dispute the claim that performance gains happen only at the hardware level - although programmers cannot really optimize every tiny bit, there is no harm in encouraging good programming.
The thing is that a lot of programmers today have grown NOT to respect the need for performance - they just assume that the upcoming systems would have really fast processors and infinite amounts of RAM and diskspace, and write shitty code.
I agree that like Knuth said, premature optimization is the root of all evil. However, writing absolutely non-optimized code is evil in itself - when a simple problem can be simplified in order and time, it's criminal not to:)
A lot of times, programmers (mostly the non-CS folks who jumped the programming bandwagon) write really bad code, leaving a lot of room for optimization. IMHO, this is a very bad practice, something that we have not really been paying much attention to because we always have faster computers coming up.
Maybe we never will hit the hardware barrier, I'm sure this will show through.
Slashdot Mirror
There is more, one of the problems is possible mutation.
The way the article ended was scary --
It's also possible that HIV and the therapeutic virus could mutate around each other and recombine to make an altogether new virus.
"I can't say now it won't make it worse," Arkin said.
Well, now that would be bad, wouldn't it? What if this virus mutates with other some other virus, too, that they have not studied about? And what if it mutates on itself into something far more harmful?
Those are the scary possibilities.
Like you said, HIV has all the makings of a badass virus -- now, this virus will too. Just because it kills HIV does not mean that it's all that good in itself -- it may cause some harm on its own that could be far worse than HIV.
Since you did not bother reading the article, I'll tell you why they said that it's unfortunate that it could be done so cheaply.
It's not what's been done, it's that it could be done at all, with so much ease and so cheaply.
Now imagine what would happen if someone decides to come up with a virus that is made out of common cold, that does something that it's not supposed to.
How does contracting Hepatitis through common cold sound?
That's exactly the reason they are scared -- if this becomes commonplace, anyone can come up with cheap ways of messing around with genetics.
Now, the article also mentions how the effects are usually not known and sometimes ineffective, so we may not know for quite a while what ELSE this virus does, and what else such cures may do in the future.
It's like making a pact with the enemy's enemy -- sure, you are saved for the day. But what about down the road?
It's just a scary precedent -- I refrain from using the word bad, because we do not yet know what is going to happen. But it's always helpful to think of the worst possible scenarios, too. Especially in sensitive areas like bio-tech.
Dude, you should have used one of the_mad_poster's AC Auto form responses :-p
There is something prophetic about having references to deadly and undeadly in a *BSD review :-p
For a second there, I was under the impression that this was a study on the intelligence of humans.
*whew*
Now all we need are the mac morons offline and, the net is ours again!
:-p
Why do you repeat yourself?
Heh! It's not even funny when it happens in real life.
I had some documents to be sent to New Mexico, and the person at the post office gave me a bunch of custom forms and what not.
For a while, I thought maybe she was asking me to fill all this since I was applying to a US Govt national laboratory, and so it was a pre-requisite of sorts.
Then I realized that she was sending it to Mexico. And it took her a while to realize I was referring to a state within the US.
And these are the people who work in the post office (I can understand *so many* other places having people who would not know this, but a post office?).
Oh well.
You have a weird nick, a relatively low UID, Groklaw for your home page and a crypto-geekish signature making fun of Gates.
;-)
And then you come up with something like that.
Dude, who *are* you? And stop scaring me
First off, it's spelt Asimov.
And it was Clarke who put forward the idea that Geostationary orbits would be ideal for satellite communication.
Asimov and Clarke wrote science fiction as a broad genre - space operas, speculative fiction and the like, and was not tied to any science per-se.
And Gibson sure as hell has won quite a lot of accolades, and some of his books have been made into movies, too (Matrix is based on some of his ideas, Johnny Mnemonic is also a book by him).
It's just that in this context, Gibson fits in as one of the very few authors who would deserve to have their names up there.
The only other author I can think of (and no, Stephenson does not count) who could be up there is Ray Kurzweil.
I don't see the NSA, either :-p
Well, sure. But that's probably not the *only* reason he's there.
:) (am not complaining, though).
He's considered by many to be one of the pioneers of cyberpunk, and Neuromancer certainly did help popularise the genre. And that definitely is something. Cyberpunk ties in very closely with the hacker culture, and adding Gibson is a nice way of saying Thank You.
What's given there is merely an excerpt of the achievements, and is definitely not all of the reasons why those people are in the list.
That said, I should say that the list is pretty damned cool. They've added a whole lot of really cool people whom most people would not know/care about (Nelson, Noyce, Mauchley,Zuse, Philbrick, Tomlinson and the like).
And interestingly enough, RMS is missing from the list
In Soviet Russia.... ;-)
It seems generally true that as a website becomes popular, a certain group of dickheads (usually males in the 12-16 age group) turn up with the goal of ruining it for everyone.
Not really. The point is, they have their own world, just like the rest of the community.
Think of it as the equivalent of graffiti - sure, it ruins walls and what not, but hey it's a creative outlet and a means of expressing themselves. And better this than anything else.
And more importantly, it's called Freedom of Speech - and I really like the way Slashdot handles this.
The point is, almost everyone feel like trolling at some point of time or the other, or atleast on some topic or the other. And when you do, you inevitably fall into the so-called fuckwit category that you mentioned.
And quite honestly, I take offence at your choice of words - fuckwit factor? What is that supposed to mean?
It's a forum, and people can discuss just about anything that pleases them - and on a place like Slashdot, you are given the choice of seeing what you like. Despite everything, I would not like anyone messing with the posts, no matter how shitty they are.
There are times when I read at -1 (and quite honestly, enjoyed the trolls) and there are times when I read at +3.
There is no one-size fits all.
And that's one of the many reasons I like Slashdot (well, Kuro5hin is better in some respects when it comes to tolerating trolls, but I digress). Your fuckwit tolerance level changes, and you have the choice of choosing how tolerant you are.
And finally, to answer your question - RTFA. They do not.
You mean this guy ? :)
Here is Reuter's take on this and the news release at Biz Ink.
Hmmm, maybe the reason they have smaller transactions is to prevent misuse of technology?
Worst case, you get $25 wiped off your card, not more.
Therefore, you will not pay much attention to a $25 RFID credit card, but you would be careful with your normal mag-swipe credit cards. And there is a distinct possibility that they probably want to study how well this is accepted and adopted, and how people use this, before getting into it with guns blazing.
They may have it separate from the magnetic stripe because they treat this with baby-gloves since its a new technology.
If tomorrow, they decide that its not a worthy technology and want to pull back, it would be far more easier than if they had combined it with a mag-swipe card -- not to mention the costs they would incur in combining it in the first place.
Also, think anti-hacker insurance - when people decide to do cool shit and blow up your RFID card, all you lose is that card - on the other hand, if you had your mag-swipe on it, you would lose that too.
No. You end up with something that Domino's calls Pizza. ;-)
Is there a mod for +5, Dream On? :)
I should have made myself clearer.
I meant that -
(a) controlling the borders to prevent influx is hard
(b) strict profiling and controlling of legal immigrants is hard and maybe construed wrong
Therefore, the only way to prevent any suspected people of entering the US is to enforce a very strong background checking of people who are already coming in (which already happens, and is not looked upon well by the rest of the world).
Maybe because real threats are likely to come from within rather from outside?
Its almost impossible to enforce complete border regulation, and making it strict only flies in the face of the US policy of being open to immigrants.
Most of the real threats come from people who have entered US through legal means, or are already inside the US. And the reason they questioned this guy is not because he sought some information, its the kind of information that he sought - they merely thought that kind of information could be used for other purposes, and were careful.
Well, it's most likely that they have certain types of information that act as trigger points - you seek those and someone might just take notice.
The point is that they perhaps figure that it is better to be prudent and be careful, rather than let be swept under the Freedom of Information act.
He was just interrogated - if his freedom were taken away, or if he was warned or if something along those lines had happened, I can understand your reaction.
However, he was interrogated because the law enforcement is being careful (and maybe justifiably so), or maybe they are acting on the basis of some kind of information that we do not know about (who knows, they may have received threats or information of such a possibility) and over-reacted because of that.
The truth is, we will never know. I'm not saying that what they did was right, but it was not wrong either. Its just being cautious, and I do not see anything wrong in law enforcement being careful.
Dude, that cracked me upto no end!
Just friended you, thanks for a good laugh!
You assume that I made that reference to myself as being a bad programmer.
:)
The reason I made that statement was because just last week I was at Redmond for an interview for internship at Microsoft, and I was interviewed by the team that was trying to prevent just this sort of thing from happening.
The idea was to design heuristics-enabled compilers that would effectively detect any "bad-code" and help make managed code and pseudo-managed code the norm, or convert existing code into managed code.
I did not say that I was using a programming language that had such protections, merely that such programming languages have their own advantages. I was interviewed for creating compilers, linkers and OS-level protection that did not allow those troublesome things to exist - not use them - and hence my justification
That said, you may knowingly or unknowingly use a language designed for bad programmers even when you program C or C++ in upcoming versions of compilers that insist on managed code - they may just wrap up your code in a nice wrapper to prevent mishaps and hand it over to the linker after having taken care of your holes.
Contrary to popular belief, managed code environments do optimize code a whole lot more than you would think!
:) So, in the long run, it may not be that bad a thing afterall.
Joe Beda, the guy from Microsoft behind Avalon, had a discussion on Channel9 where he talked about why managed code is not that bad a thing afterall.
Like I mentioned in an earlier post, managed code helps optimize the code for some of the bad programmers out there who cannot do it themselves, and takes care of a lot of exceptions and other "troublesome" things
There are two facets to optimization - one is optimization of the code per se, and the other is the optimization of the project productivity - and I think managed code environments do a fairly good job of the former and a very good job of the latter.
My 0.02.
Well said.
:)
However, I will dispute the claim that performance gains happen only at the hardware level - although programmers cannot really optimize every tiny bit, there is no harm in encouraging good programming.
The thing is that a lot of programmers today have grown NOT to respect the need for performance - they just assume that the upcoming systems would have really fast processors and infinite amounts of RAM and diskspace, and write shitty code.
I agree that like Knuth said, premature optimization is the root of all evil. However, writing absolutely non-optimized code is evil in itself - when a simple problem can be simplified in order and time, it's criminal not to
A lot of times, programmers (mostly the non-CS folks who jumped the programming bandwagon) write really bad code, leaving a lot of room for optimization. IMHO, this is a very bad practice, something that we have not really been paying much attention to because we always have faster computers coming up.
Maybe we never will hit the hardware barrier, I'm sure this will show through.