it is done by the 9th court of appeals the most over turned court in the land.
Because they HANDLE the most cases in the land. Adjusted for case volume, they are NOT overturned more.
from a Federal 9th Circuit judge: In the calendar year 2001, the Ninth Circuit terminated 10,372 cases, and was reversed in 14, with a correction rate of 1.35 per thousand. The Fourth Circuit, reputedly the most conservative circuit and the circuit with the second-largest number of cases reviewed by the Supreme Court, terminated 5,078 cases and was reversed in 7, making a correction rate of 1.38 per thousand.
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at all times during a warrant less search you always.. always! have the right to stop the search
What??? YOU DO NOT - that's precisely what the court addressed - a border search doesn't require a warrant, so you can't claim they can't search without one. A traveler says "I agree to you searching me" when he presents himself at the U.S. border, and in addition BCP has the right to search you without a warrant. If you refuse, they will search you anyway before denying entry and sending you back to where you came from. I suppose you might count that as 'saying no', but not me.
I agree - stand up for your rights. However, in this case, you don't have any to stand up for. You can protest and say that you should, but that's not the same thing.
At its core, sovereignty is the ability to defend territory - which includes allowing people and things in, and more importantly, keeping them out.
If a nation CAN'T control who and what enters the country, then it's not a sovereignty. At least, I would argue it isn't. In that sense, it is one view, but a very well accepted view.
(true, there are few countries that could literally keep the US military from occupying their soil for at least a little while, but I don't count lack of relative military power in the normal course of current semi-peaceful global affairs as showing lack of sovereignty. Now, a lack of strong military in the middle of a continental war zone, where your borders are constantly being overrun by outside forces - that would seem to indicate that the old government no longer has sovereign control over that (ex-) country.)
Do you believe in God? If you answer "No", we both share the same position, but just use different labels.
But labels ARE important; semantics are important. This is such a nuanced discussion that one can't throw around words without rigorously defining them first. We may both answer "No", but exactly what we mean is very different. That IS semantics. Agnosticisim vs. positive atheism vs. negative atheism are not the same, and they shouldn't be used as such.
As you stated, the true meaning of agnosticism is not "I don't know", but that "The answer is unknowable in this world, so the question itself doesn't make sense."
A positive claim of agnosticism is more rational than a claim of atheism, because in the absence of evidence the former says that the answer is "With no evidence, it is impossible tell one way or the other", while the latter says "With no evidence of existence, I will assume non-existence." To me, the former is more rational that the latter.
Atheism and theism are both faith, in that they are positive statements of belief in the face of no evidence and unprovable facts. They are both less rational than saying "how can we ever know" with a shrug of the shoulders.
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For more fun, spend some time of Wikipedia in this area: "positive" atheism = "I believe there is no god"; "negative" atheism = "I do not believe there is a god". Gnostics and their repudiators, the Agnostics. Theism & Deism. Many hours of fun!
how is this different from any other person organization requesting removal of copyrighted material?
It's not any different. This article isn't making fun of the LDS Church for being Mormom, or for the contents of the book - it is making fun of them for tilting at copyright windmills.
It's just another example of a copyright holder who, though validly defending their copyright, just doesn't understand the internet.
Their copyrighted material has been turned into a digital bits, and they can't stuff those back into a bottle. Their actions are absolutely ineffective, which is why this is of interest - "look at the pointlessness of it all! and carried out by lawyers that should know they barely have a claim ! (snicker)"
U.S. law is unclear - maybe a hyperlink on Wikinews to infringing material on Wikileaks is contributory infringement: see DeCSS, and the 1990s action in this very LDS case. Maybe it's not: see most other cases, and the lack of follow-up action when the DeCSS links were simply changed from hyperlinks to text. But it just doesn't matter - that LDS book is going to be available on the internet forever.
This legal area is interesting in a way similar to the SCO/Linux IP cases - interesting framing out of novel legal issues, development of new legal theories and case law, and then boring repetition of the same matters over and over again. I'm not sure we're to that last point yet, unlike the SCO/Linux IP matters, or GPL cases. You may already be, however.
I'd probably get a little squeamish about vivisecting a copy of me that had a working brain, but I'd have few problems receiving the heart and lungs and liver from a headless incubator and having a barbecue with the leftovers.
Bullshit.
I'm sure a lot of people would like to think that's how they would react, but I bet most would act otherwise when the time came.
Only a little squeamish about killing your sentient clone?
You think you could harvesting lungs and a rump roast from an adult-sized version of you that had intentional hydroencephalopathy so that biological systems would work and develop, but not sentient brain functions? Minimal sentience? Mind of a cow? Monkey? Would you feel more 'squeamish' the more consciousness was left intact?
Do you hunt? If not, I'd say you have no real idea of whether you could kill a deer, much less a clone of yourself.
>>Wouldn't that mean they were murdered? That is if you accept the religious side of the house...
>I think not. Most people can differentiate between the potential for life (semen and eggs) and actual life itself (autonomous life including self-replicating cells that may or may not have certain dependencies for life; don't we all?).
You really think so?! In the Unites States (if you're here)?!?!
Anyway, this isn't that. The embryo being destroyed in the article already IS your second type - that's EXACTLY what some people are upset about.
(note: rest of post intended to be NPOV)
The article is talking about a genetically-modified human embryo being destroyed - a fertilized human egg, your "self replicating cells". Not gametes, or reproductive cells. A complete, viable set of DNA with 23 pairs of chromosomes, generated from 2 people - tend to it a bit and you've almost got a baby:)
The strict pro-life position, and that of the Catholic Church, is that life beings at conception, at fertilization - not at implantation, spinal fusion, viability, or live birth. The destruction of any embryo (egg fertilized by sperm) in order to get embryonic stem cells is viewed by a non-insignificant (potentially even majority) portion of the U.S. population as the destruction of a potential human life, a human life, a human being, or even murder.
Destruction of frozen embryos with 50 cells, produced in the course of petri-dish fertilization and immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen, is viewed by some as destruction of human life. Legal custody battles have been fought over such embryos.
Opponents of the emergency contraceptive Plan B (Levonelle, NorLevo) which is taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, even argue that because the drug, which prevents implantation, may instead cause a newly-implanted embryo to be immediately shed, it is an abortifacient, rather than birth control. Destruction of life, rather than prevention of it.
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This announcement seems a bit underwhelming, given it's significance. Granted, it's easy to lose sight in the face of weekly news articles about advances in cloning, DNA research, stem cells, genetic modification, etc. But HOLY SHIT - they've MADE A GENETICALLY MODIFIED HUMAN EMBRYO. We went from animal GM embryos to live GM births to cloned embryos to cloned GM animals in a decade or two. We could probably do significant GM changes resulting in live human births in 5 years, and this is a major first step. Wow. Post-human Singularity, here we come !
The University of Mississippi School of Law "offers the only dedicated aerospace law curriculum in the nation from an American Bar Association-accredited law school, and requires courses on U.S. space and aviation law, international space and aviation law, and remote sensing; participation in the publication of the Journal of Space Law; and independent research. The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law was founding in 1999."
The faculty and staff look very well experienced: international treaties, UN, regulatory exp.; aerospace, aviation, & remote sensing legal work; governmental, public policy groups and private sector.
Remote Sensing Law: "Remote sensing is a valuable technology in science, foreign policy, national security, and commerce. This course provides an overview of international and domestic remote sensing law and identifies issues in the United States and the international community."
U.S. Domestic Space Law: "This course covers the most developed body of domestic space law in the world: that of the United States. It addresses the nation's civil and military programs and offers a wide variety of commercial activites: launches, remote sensing, and satellite communications, among others."
International Space Law: "This course provides an overview of current international space law in U.N. resolutions and treaties and customary law. It identifies legal theory and principles used in the advancement of civil, military, and commercial space activities."
Journal of Space Law (practical): "The Journal of Space Law is an academic review of national and international scope, focusing on the many aspects of space, remote sensing, and aerospace law. Research, writing, and editing assignments, and other duties necessary to the operation of the Journal of Space Law. One hour credited for each term of participation to maximum of 4 hours. Limitation: credit not available if enrolled in the Mississippi Law Journal."
Those military computers may be geographically far-flung, but I'd be surprised if they were as dispersed on a network diagram. It's not like the US military dials into local POPs, or gets a routed network connection from Okinawa ISP Inc. or Riyahd Wireless.
A military botnet hosted on a military network defeats the point - now they know where it's coming from, and how to stop it: get upstream to not route. However, if the botnet attack is coming from every network at once (true distributed botnet), then it's harder to respond effectively.
Authoritarian regimes can get a lot done in a very short period...Stalin, for example, built Russia back up from the brink of disaster...He did that AND he oppressed the people he ruled over....When the strong leader dies, those who inherit his power often do tremendous damage simply bickering with each other over who gets to rule exactly what.
This concept is explored in The J Curve - A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall, which graphs the openness of the nation on the X-axis, and national stability on the Y-axis. The resulting curve is shaped like a J, with some national stability able to be maintained within a closed society, and more national stability able to be mantained by an open society. But the transition from a closed to an open society will be marked by a decrease in the stability of the nation/society.
A dictator can rule over a stable state (but not always), as can a effective democracy. But what about an country trying to move from a dictatorship to an elected government? Way more often than not, the net stability of the country DECREASES as the central authority is removed from power, with nothing standing by to replace that authority.
Your example of Stalin is a good one of a stable dictarships - the far left of the graph. Another is recent Iraq: Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, who kept the made-up state of Iraq together, and functioning relatively well, despite the political suppression, death squads, and mass slayings. He was a sociopath, but there was no doubt who was in charge, and society functioned to a pretty good degree. But see how that's changed in the last 5 years.
Upon removal of the dictator and his power structure (Baathist military), chaos and anarchy filled that space for long enough that people returned to ethnic, and then tribal, power structures. Stability decreases. Ethnic cleansing and the creation of homogeneous neighborhoods, cities and regions shows the bottom of the J-curve. In the eyes of an average Iraqi, stability has plummeted. Polls of Iraqis within the last few years show, particularly when the neighborhood-level violence has increased, that a lot would prefer going back to Saddam, as at least he kept the streets somewhat safe. The trains running on time, and all of that.
People choose personal safety over elections, particularly en masse. A dictator keep gangs from terrorizing neighborhoods (well, OTHER gangs). And the counter-balance to a rational dictator is the need of that dictator to keep the brutalization and societal stranglehold at a level beneath that which triggers a revolt. So if the dictator's brutalization is less than the anarchy that might follow a revolution, it is understandable that peoples may stay on the far left of the curve (stable dictator), rather than risk the transition through (unstable quasi-open-government, tribal warfare, anarchy) to the right side (stable democracy)
A less-clear example is Kim Jong-Il of North Korea - as closed/non-representative of a society as I can imagine, but at a global scale, the 'nation' has been fairly stable, in that the government-vs-people power dynamic hasn't shifted much in 50 years. But internally, thought, the stability just isn't there - 1 million people dying in a preventable famine isn't effective governance, even if you are a dictator. Mass famine shouldn't count as 'stable', even if that is the routine state of affairs.
I think I see your point - it might be just a semantic one, but an interesting point anyway.
True, the gravitation attraction of the earth still exists in orbit. In fact, it is what keeps the fast-moving ISS from flying off into space, because gravity keeps pulling the sideways-moving ISS down towards the Earth's center. This constant falling-but-never-landing state is called orbit.
But can anyone please explain how this gravitation system affects experiments onboard the ISS? Common sense seems to indicate that from the ISS's frame of reference, there is no effective gravity. Not that it doesn't exist, but just that it doesn't matter.
But is that really true? Would an experiment on the ISS in orbit around Earth, result in the same findings as the same experiment carried out in deep, non-galactic space, far way from large masses and stationary to distance reference objects? Although the only real difference is that the second frame of reference is just much larger than the first, as both still exist within the large structures of the universe which are whizzing around an inflationary space-time bubble.
Even in orbit/'weightlessness', there is still the large mass of the nearby Earth. Does the presence of this large mass, around which the experiment is orbiting, have actual effects on the experiment? Is it just that it is such a small effect to be insignificant vs. sea-based-experiments? (But parent's calculation of relative strength of the gravitation attraction at 400km high vs. sea level = 88% might be relevant).
Or it is entirely about the POV from inside the frame of reference of the experiment?
(1)(a) "allocate all connections to servers $EnergyEfficient_1 thru $EnergyEfficient_9 (in a particular order due to their decreasing "EnergyStar rating") as long as their average load is less than 80%"
(b) "meanwhile, PowerMonsterServers are in [no-op, CPUhalt, powerd'ed down, spindown, standy, Wake-on-LAN] mode, thus saving total energy over having all of these machines idle at 15% load and consuming 100W each "
(c) "then if total systems load >95% and avg. response time sucks, wake up PowerMonsters to handle during short time they're needed, then powered down agin."
as opposed to
(2) my impression of your comment, which is that the F5 does load montioring of the downstream servers and can allocate/stop_allocating new connections based on feedback from the downstream servers about how it's doing under the currently_allocated load. This results in a dynamic adding/removing of servers from the available pool, but doesn't do so based on a "how much net load do we need?; let's only turn on the minimal $/load unit that can supply at least 1200 bogomips, for now; keep all other machines in S3 Wake-on-LAN mode"
Granted, under loads that are not TOO volatile, with a system that is made up of energy-homogeneous hardware, you should be able to spec your server infrastucture so that a good load-balancer, like the one you mentioned, does a pretty good job with equalizing load that results in minimal wasted Kw/hr on CPU loops and HALTs.
Better yet, virtualize the entire load-balanced system, or at least all of the component machines, and leverage up one more time - you should be able to keep driving down total wasted resources (KW/h of non-productive bogomips) if you keep consolidating.
Does your setup allocate ZERO connections to certain servers over some length time, which are set up to reduce energy use upon such zero connections? If not, this looks like it might help.
They're claiming real-world energy efficiency gains, so it looks like it's an improvement somehow.
I would assume it's because this now adds dynamic adjustment, which could be based on total system-stack metrics of peak_load_capability, energy_minimization, acceptable_response_time, etc. Something that seems to be lacking in the current load-balancing system that you describe.
Future:
- Allow for tuning based on diverse hardware, each with different energy and load capability profiles.
- Smart managing of a large population of these systems, based on varying load.
- Add real-time upstream energy cost data into the mix
- Dynamic scheduling of administrative tasks based on energy efficiency vs. hard deadlines.
- If energy starts becoming a significant cost of hosting, go back to selling system time based, in part, on total energy used - track CPU, disk, network energy requirements by watt/hr, by user. Add those to account plans, side-by-side with Mb/s and GB/month. Serving.cn? Host your site out of a data center in Iceland and take advantage of cheap, midnight power!
True, based on current exchange rates, £600 = US$1,168. No wait, $1,173...uh, $1,195. Whoops - now $1,225.
But for a Londonder, £600 today is basically the same as £600 two months ago, or from now. £600 hasn't 'gone up' for THEM, only for people wanting to use US$ to pay that £600.
This illustrates Purchasing Power Parity, a concept that is similar to foreign currency exchange, but that looks at the long-term relative purchasing power of a currency.
Not "how many Pounds Sterling can I buy with 1 UD$", but "how many units of ProductX can I buy with 1% of local per capita annual GDP." Theory says that goods should have identical relative prices in every market, or else there are arbitrage opportunities that people will take advantage of until the prices in all markets are the same (after accounting for transport, etc.)
What happens, however, is that identical goods are NOT priced at the same relative level after currency conversion, because a lot of short-term change in the ForEx markets is due to market movements, not underlying fundamental changes in purchasing power.
So a Big Mac costs 4GBP in London, and based on the exchange rate, it looks like it costs US$8.00. But it really doesn't, because Londoners aren't paying US$, but with GBP, and the Big Mac costs the same to them that it did a year ago, even though a year ago exchange rates would have said the Big Mac costs $6.50.
Did the price of a Big Mac go up? The price of a Big Mac in the U.K. didn't go up for a Londoner, but did for a U.S. visitor. The price of a Big Mac in the U.S. didn't go up for a Floridian, but fell for a U.K. visitor. But in each case, the cost in the local currency was and is 1/10,000th of per capita income. That is purchasing power parity, and shows that shows changes in exchange rates are not the same thing as changes in relative purchasing power. On a PPP basis, U.S-U.K. currencies haven't moved against each other even close to the amount suggested by market currency exchange rates.
You can rent a car, but that's hassle-prone and expensive.
It is? I fly (passenger) and rent cars at airports all of the time - not many problems. In fact, I just rented a car from the private GA terminal in San Diego - couldn't have been easier, quicker or cheaper, IMO.
Rental cars are around $30/day - if you're flying a private plane several hours there and again back, $30 in order to do something once you've landed doesn't seem that excessive. Particularly given that the alternative, this car-plane, is estimated to cost >$150,000. That's a few thousand $ per month to lease/finance, more than enough to fund rental cars, or even a car service.
Although, from the article: "The third barrier was the fact that only about one third of the nation's small, general-aviation airports have rental-car facilities or cab stands--meaning that once you fly in, you're stuck."
You are stuck in that situation. But if you go to that airport more than occasionally, it'd be cheaper to just buy a used car and store it at that airport for you to use when you fly in, or timeshare a ground vehicle with other local pilots. Hell, even if you buy 5 cars and pre-place them at your 5 most-frequented airports, you'd come out ahead.
You're also stuck if a blizzard hits while you're at your destination, and can't fly home. But instead, you'd drive 3 hours on the highway in a blizzard, in a marginally-road-worthy car with airfoils strapped to it? I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that in a normal car, much less a lightweight body with folded up wings.
Nothing in this post contradicts the coolness of owning a flying car, though.
Excellent post! Informed, pragmatic rationalism based on facts - uncommon in/. discussions about international affairs.
See also a very informative article from the Atlantic Monthly: How We Would Fight China by Robert Kaplan, an experienced journalist covering U.S. foreign affairs and the military. Detailed description of China's current military, with short- and long-term views of their military growth.
A tiny exceprt: (please keep in mind that Kaplan isn't advocating for confrontation, but doing a thorough analysis of what might happen if foolish politicians get us into such a mess).
" At the moment the challenges posed by a rising China may seem slight, even nonexistent. The U.S. Navy's warships have a collective "full-load displacement" of 2.86 million tons; the rest of the world's warships combined add up to only 3.04 million tons. The Chinese navy's warships have a full-load displacement of only 263,064 tons. The United States deploys twenty-four of the world's thirty-four aircraft carriers; the Chinese deploy none (a principal reason why they couldn't mount a rescue effort after the tsunami)."
"China has committed itself to significant military spending, but its navy and air force will not be able to match ours for some decades. The Chinese are therefore not going to do us the favor of engaging in conventional air and naval battles, like those fought in the Pacific during World War II...Instead the Chinese will approach us asymmetrically...But the Chinese are poised to show us the high end of the art. That is the threat."
"There are many ways in which the Chinese could use their less advanced military to achieve a sort of political-strategic parity with us. According to one former submarine commander and naval strategist I talked to, the Chinese have been poring over every detail of our recent wars in the Balkans and the Persian Gulf, and they fully understand just how much our military power depends on naval projection--that is, on the ability of a carrier battle group to get within proximity of, say, Iraq, and fire a missile at a target deep inside the country. To adapt, the Chinese are putting their fiber-optic systems underground and moving defense capabilities deep into western China, out of naval missile range--all the while developing an offensive strategy based on missiles designed to be capable of striking that supreme icon of American wealth and power, the aircraft carrier. The effect of a single Chinese cruise missile's hitting a U.S. carrier, even if it did not sink the ship, would be politically and psychologically catastrophic, akin to al-Qaeda's attacks on the Twin Towers. China is focusing on missiles and submarines as a way to humiliate us in specific encounters. Their long-range-missile program should deeply concern U.S. policymakers."
In addition to keeping with the spirit of Linux distributions circa 1995, Slack seems to keep actual documentation from that era as well. The system requirements you list, plus:
The only answer involves using LOADLIN to jump into a linux kernel from DOS. Wow! I appreciate the simplicity of Slack, but their main FAQ could include at least reference bootable CDs - it has been 14 years.
Vernor Vinge...suggested that after the leveling off, we'd be living in a pretty comfortable world, close to some visions of Utopia. If the natural limits of technology fall short of self-replicating interstellar probes, then the answer to "Where are they?" is "They're enjoying themselves on their garden planet".
Your example is plausible, but that would have to be the case for EVERY SINGLE ONE of the millions of civilizations that some logic says must have existed over the last billions of years.
As the article mentions, it all comes down statistics: small probabilities multiplied by millions of opportunities = improbability that it hasn't happened.
I'll quote from another comment:
"Sure, that might explain why a PARTICULAR spacefaring civilization hasn't shown up in our neighborhood."
"But the question we have to ask isn't "Why hasn't spacefaring civilization X set up shop in our neighborhood?"
"The question is "Why is it that, out of the hundreds of billions of solar systems that exist or have existed since the beginning of the Milky Way, not a SINGLE ONE has produced a spacefaring civilization with a detectable presence in our corner of the galaxy?" "
Even if most civilizations never develop an interest in space travel, it only takes ONE civilization to decided to not stay on their their home planet, in order for a civilization to colonize the galaxies over billions of years.
If, to Vinge's point, there is some technological restriction that keeps ANY civilization from developing interstellar probes, then that is the Great Filter that the author is discussing. If that is true, that would explain why we don't have contact from interstellar civilizations, but it would also imply that the human race is bound to the solar system forever, which is a sad thought to the author.
[Hans]...should never have been permitted, by his attorney, to take the stand.
According to the article, Hans' attorney DIDN'T want him to take the stand, but Hans did so anyway.
In addition (in the U.S.), the attorney simply couldn't keep Hans from taking the stand - it isn't up to the attorney. The attorney offers advice, which the client is free to disregard.
Criminal defendants can also represent themselves, and not even HAVE an attorney (although in those cases, the judge will often appoint a public defender to make sure the defedant gets some advice, mostly about court procedure and to advise on not making mistakes that will result in a totally skewed trial).
Just wanted to let you know that the attorney couldn't have prevented Hans from taking the stand.
The only argument that I can think of for the other side would look to the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment. But there is a fatal flaw in that argument. A violation of copyright is not a taking of property. If you violate someone's copyright, they are still the copyright holder. A copyright violation is NOT a taking of property. Without a taking of life, liberty, or property, Due Process is not required, and the 14th Amendment is not implicated.
It's easy to argue that copyright violation IS a taking of property, and in fact, with regard to patent rights, the U.S. federal government has and does pay infringement royalties under the theory of eminent domain.
The 'property' inherent in both copyright and patent grants is not the piece of paper that you still possess after the government has infringed on the rights, but rather the underlying right to keep other people, including those in the government, from using your ideas without your consent or profit. Those rights ARE potentially being infringed, even though you still have the piece of paper that grants you the copyright/patent, and even if you can still assert those rights against other parties.
So, the government has taken away your ability to control the use of the copyright/patent, and that is the property they must pay for. You then apply established commercial criteria for valuing the infringement (FMV/reasonable rates for copyright licenses and royalties), in order to calculate damages the government would have to pay.
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While the below references apply to patent rights, the legal analysis re: copyrights would be similar, I think.
The author finds that, under the current statutory scheme, unauthorized government appropriations of private patent rights should be treated as eminent domain takings, compensable at the level required by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Moreover, the author determines that Fifth Amendment compensation for patent takings is properly calculated by the same rules employed to assess non-punitive, actual damages in private infringement actions.
"American law is very clear: when the United States government needs a patented product, any official authorized to make purchases can ignore the patent and license someone else to make it."
''Any employee of the United States government can authorize a compulsory license for the product without even holding a hearing,'' said James P. Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, part of Ralph Nader's organization pushing for lower drug prices. ''The company can't even sue to enjoin the government from doing it. All they can do is sue for compensation.''
"That compensation, Mr. Love said, is based on eminent domain, the principle used when the government seizes land for a highway or military base. A judge picks an amount based on lost value, but not necessarily the highest price that could have been charged. The government uses the law fairly frequently, Mr. Love said."
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"Pretty sad that two different sites with "Tech" in the name and the Slashdot readership haven't managed to figure out this trickery yet. There are no magic 404s here."
On the contrary, I think those articles, and most comments here, get it right. What is being said in the articles or here that you disagree with?
"When you set up your DNS with Network Solutions, a wildcard DNS entry is created. It defaults to an ad page (just like every other DNS record with them does).
That's exactly what I've understood from reading the articles and the/. discussion. And that appears to be what people are complaining about. It shouldn't default to an ad page, it should default to a 404.
"While it might not be the most feel-good thing Network Solutions could do with your DNS, don't attribute to their malice what is easily attributed to user laziness."
Isn't the point of the article and the/. comments? That this is "not the most feel-good thing", that it is in fact "a feel-bad thing", and that users SHOULDN'T HAVE to opt out of something that most wouldn't turn on in the first place?
Someone goes to my domain, digs into the URL structure, and through their bad typing or mine and unknowing to me, gets a page full of ads on my domain. This might be allowed under the TOS, but that doesn't mean that the customer shouldn't be rightly upset about that stupid provision being in the TOS to begin with.
And to bring your quote around to its original source, I won't attribute this action to NetSol's malice, but I will attribute it to NetSol's incompetence, and lack of consideration in thinking of how their customers might react. They're not acting with ill-will, but with bad business judgment. Maybe that's better, but not by much.
Seriously - I'm curious. I'm not a hacker, but do understand things a bit. I get how you compiled a vulnerable version of ping, and copied it to your now-available $USER shell. I assume this would mean the ping executable is at most UID/GID User:User, rwx 777.
How do get from there to root? A local buffer overflow in a non-privileged ping executable allows you to get access to privileged memory ranges not controlled by ping, but rather by some privileged process, and you use that access to that privileged memory area to get to root?
If that is somewhat correct, it seems like the memory manager is to blame, not a bad ping programmer. Why should ANY non-privileged application be allowed to do that by the MMU? If not a buggy ping, then what's to keep you from downloading a purposely-written overflow app from a website and breaking out with a that?
Is that what NX fixes? But wouldn't some non-kernel privileged memory still need to be marked executable for root and setuid apps? Does NX thus have some policy mechanism for what program and/or memory range is and isn't vulnerable to overflows?
I understand the 50,000 foot view of SELinux and AppArmor - do they operate in this domain, or more at the file-and-kernel-ABI access permission level (rather than in this memory-range level)?
12% = 1200 basis points. They announce on the U.S. news that the Fed lowered rates by 75 basis points, where a basis point is 1/100 of a percentage point, which is 1/100 of the whole. 75 basis points is the difference between 5.00% and 5.75%. And is three-quarters of a "point". Confusing, to be sure.
"Points" are used in lending to indicate 1% of the loan value - known from their use in calculating the origination fee ("pay 1 point"), or as a metric for determining the cost to buy down the interest rate ("it costs half a point to buy down the rate from 6.75% to 6.40%"). It is short for "percentage point".
"Basis points" are commonly known from their use in monitoring small, constant movements in the yield of debentures - e.g. "an 20 bp move in the 2 year treasury which lowered the yield from 2.24% to 2.06%."
Slashdot Mirror
it is done by the 9th court of appeals the most over turned court in the land.
Because they HANDLE the most cases in the land. Adjusted for case volume, they are NOT overturned more.
from a Federal 9th Circuit judge: In the calendar year 2001, the Ninth Circuit terminated 10,372 cases, and was reversed in 14, with a correction rate of 1.35 per thousand. The Fourth Circuit, reputedly the most conservative circuit and the circuit with the second-largest number of cases reviewed by the Supreme Court, terminated 5,078 cases and was reversed in 7, making a correction rate of 1.38 per thousand.
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at all times during a warrant less search you always.. always! have the right to stop the search
What??? YOU DO NOT - that's precisely what the court addressed - a border search doesn't require a warrant, so you can't claim they can't search without one. A traveler says "I agree to you searching me" when he presents himself at the U.S. border, and in addition BCP has the right to search you without a warrant. If you refuse, they will search you anyway before denying entry and sending you back to where you came from. I suppose you might count that as 'saying no', but not me.
I agree - stand up for your rights. However, in this case, you don't have any to stand up for. You can protest and say that you should, but that's not the same thing.
h/t: this prior /. posting
>>"Any sovereign nation has the right to control who and what enters the country."
That is one view.
Actually, THAT IS THE DEFINITION of sovereignty. "Sovereignty is the exclusive right to have control over an area of governance, people, or oneself."
At its core, sovereignty is the ability to defend territory - which includes allowing people and things in, and more importantly, keeping them out.
If a nation CAN'T control who and what enters the country, then it's not a sovereignty. At least, I would argue it isn't. In that sense, it is one view, but a very well accepted view.
(true, there are few countries that could literally keep the US military from occupying their soil for at least a little while, but I don't count lack of relative military power in the normal course of current semi-peaceful global affairs as showing lack of sovereignty. Now, a lack of strong military in the middle of a continental war zone, where your borders are constantly being overrun by outside forces - that would seem to indicate that the old government no longer has sovereign control over that (ex-) country.)
Do you believe in God? If you answer "No", we both share the same position, but just use different labels.
But labels ARE important; semantics are important. This is such a nuanced discussion that one can't throw around words without rigorously defining them first. We may both answer "No", but exactly what we mean is very different. That IS semantics. Agnosticisim vs. positive atheism vs. negative atheism are not the same, and they shouldn't be used as such.
As you stated, the true meaning of agnosticism is not "I don't know", but that "The answer is unknowable in this world, so the question itself doesn't make sense."
A positive claim of agnosticism is more rational than a claim of atheism, because in the absence of evidence the former says that the answer is "With no evidence, it is impossible tell one way or the other", while the latter says "With no evidence of existence, I will assume non-existence." To me, the former is more rational that the latter.
Atheism and theism are both faith, in that they are positive statements of belief in the face of no evidence and unprovable facts. They are both less rational than saying "how can we ever know" with a shrug of the shoulders.
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For more fun, spend some time of Wikipedia in this area: "positive" atheism = "I believe there is no god"; "negative" atheism = "I do not believe there is a god". Gnostics and their repudiators, the Agnostics. Theism & Deism. Many hours of fun!
how is this different from any other person organization requesting removal of copyrighted material?
It's not any different. This article isn't making fun of the LDS Church for being Mormom, or for the contents of the book - it is making fun of them for tilting at copyright windmills.
It's just another example of a copyright holder who, though validly defending their copyright, just doesn't understand the internet.
Their copyrighted material has been turned into a digital bits, and they can't stuff those back into a bottle. Their actions are absolutely ineffective, which is why this is of interest - "look at the pointlessness of it all! and carried out by lawyers that should know they barely have a claim ! (snicker)"
U.S. law is unclear - maybe a hyperlink on Wikinews to infringing material on Wikileaks is contributory infringement: see DeCSS, and the 1990s action in this very LDS case. Maybe it's not: see most other cases, and the lack of follow-up action when the DeCSS links were simply changed from hyperlinks to text. But it just doesn't matter - that LDS book is going to be available on the internet forever.
This legal area is interesting in a way similar to the SCO/Linux IP cases - interesting framing out of novel legal issues, development of new legal theories and case law, and then boring repetition of the same matters over and over again. I'm not sure we're to that last point yet, unlike the SCO/Linux IP matters, or GPL cases. You may already be, however.
I'd probably get a little squeamish about vivisecting a copy of me that had a working brain, but I'd have few problems receiving the heart and lungs and liver from a headless incubator and having a barbecue with the leftovers.
Bullshit.
I'm sure a lot of people would like to think that's how they would react, but I bet most would act otherwise when the time came.
Only a little squeamish about killing your sentient clone?
You think you could harvesting lungs and a rump roast from an adult-sized version of you that had intentional hydroencephalopathy so that biological systems would work and develop, but not sentient brain functions? Minimal sentience? Mind of a cow? Monkey? Would you feel more 'squeamish' the more consciousness was left intact?
Do you hunt? If not, I'd say you have no real idea of whether you could kill a deer, much less a clone of yourself.
>>Wouldn't that mean they were murdered? That is if you accept the religious side of the house...
>I think not. Most people can differentiate between the potential for life (semen and eggs) and actual life itself (autonomous life including self-replicating cells that may or may not have certain dependencies for life; don't we all?).
You really think so?! In the Unites States (if you're here)?!?!
Anyway, this isn't that. The embryo being destroyed in the article already IS your second type - that's EXACTLY what some people are upset about.
(note: rest of post intended to be NPOV)
The article is talking about a genetically-modified human embryo being destroyed - a fertilized human egg, your "self replicating cells". Not gametes, or reproductive cells. A complete, viable set of DNA with 23 pairs of chromosomes, generated from 2 people - tend to it a bit and you've almost got a baby :)
The strict pro-life position, and that of the Catholic Church, is that life beings at conception, at fertilization - not at implantation, spinal fusion, viability, or live birth. The destruction of any embryo (egg fertilized by sperm) in order to get embryonic stem cells is viewed by a non-insignificant (potentially even majority) portion of the U.S. population as the destruction of a potential human life, a human life, a human being, or even murder.
Destruction of frozen embryos with 50 cells, produced in the course of petri-dish fertilization and immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen, is viewed by some as destruction of human life. Legal custody battles have been fought over such embryos.
Opponents of the emergency contraceptive Plan B (Levonelle, NorLevo) which is taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, even argue that because the drug, which prevents implantation, may instead cause a newly-implanted embryo to be immediately shed, it is an abortifacient, rather than birth control. Destruction of life, rather than prevention of it.
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This announcement seems a bit underwhelming, given it's significance. Granted, it's easy to lose sight in the face of weekly news articles about advances in cloning, DNA research, stem cells, genetic modification, etc. But HOLY SHIT - they've MADE A GENETICALLY MODIFIED HUMAN EMBRYO. We went from animal GM embryos to live GM births to cloned embryos to cloned GM animals in a decade or two. We could probably do significant GM changes resulting in live human births in 5 years, and this is a major first step. Wow. Post-human Singularity, here we come !
Don't critique that which you do not know.
The University of Mississippi School of Law "offers the only dedicated aerospace law curriculum in the nation from an American Bar Association-accredited law school, and requires courses on U.S. space and aviation law, international space and aviation law, and remote sensing; participation in the publication of the Journal of Space Law; and independent research. The National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law was founding in 1999."
The faculty and staff look very well experienced: international treaties, UN, regulatory exp.; aerospace, aviation, & remote sensing legal work; governmental, public policy groups and private sector.
Curriculum from the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law :
Remote Sensing Law: "Remote sensing is a valuable technology in science, foreign policy, national security, and commerce. This course provides an overview of international and domestic remote sensing law and identifies issues in the United States and the international community."
U.S. Domestic Space Law: "This course covers the most developed body of domestic space law in the world: that of the United States. It addresses the nation's civil and military programs and offers a wide variety of commercial activites: launches, remote sensing, and satellite communications, among others."
International Space Law: "This course provides an overview of current international space law in U.N. resolutions and treaties and customary law. It identifies legal theory and principles used in the advancement of civil, military, and commercial space activities."
Journal of Space Law (practical): "The Journal of Space Law is an academic review of national and international scope, focusing on the many aspects of space, remote sensing, and aerospace law. Research, writing, and editing assignments, and other duties necessary to the operation of the Journal of Space Law. One hour credited for each term of participation to maximum of 4 hours. Limitation: credit not available if enrolled in the Mississippi Law Journal."
RTFA before uninformed commentary. HTH.
Those military computers may be geographically far-flung, but I'd be surprised if they were as dispersed on a network diagram. It's not like the US military dials into local POPs, or gets a routed network connection from Okinawa ISP Inc. or Riyahd Wireless.
A military botnet hosted on a military network defeats the point - now they know where it's coming from, and how to stop it: get upstream to not route. However, if the botnet attack is coming from every network at once (true distributed botnet), then it's harder to respond effectively.
Authoritarian regimes can get a lot done in a very short period...Stalin, for example, built Russia back up from the brink of disaster...He did that AND he oppressed the people he ruled over....When the strong leader dies, those who inherit his power often do tremendous damage simply bickering with each other over who gets to rule exactly what.
This concept is explored in The J Curve - A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall, which graphs the openness of the nation on the X-axis, and national stability on the Y-axis. The resulting curve is shaped like a J, with some national stability able to be maintained within a closed society, and more national stability able to be mantained by an open society. But the transition from a closed to an open society will be marked by a decrease in the stability of the nation/society.
A dictator can rule over a stable state (but not always), as can a effective democracy. But what about an country trying to move from a dictatorship to an elected government? Way more often than not, the net stability of the country DECREASES as the central authority is removed from power, with nothing standing by to replace that authority.
Your example of Stalin is a good one of a stable dictarships - the far left of the graph. Another is recent Iraq: Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, who kept the made-up state of Iraq together, and functioning relatively well, despite the political suppression, death squads, and mass slayings. He was a sociopath, but there was no doubt who was in charge, and society functioned to a pretty good degree. But see how that's changed in the last 5 years.
Upon removal of the dictator and his power structure (Baathist military), chaos and anarchy filled that space for long enough that people returned to ethnic, and then tribal, power structures. Stability decreases. Ethnic cleansing and the creation of homogeneous neighborhoods, cities and regions shows the bottom of the J-curve. In the eyes of an average Iraqi, stability has plummeted. Polls of Iraqis within the last few years show, particularly when the neighborhood-level violence has increased, that a lot would prefer going back to Saddam, as at least he kept the streets somewhat safe. The trains running on time, and all of that.
People choose personal safety over elections, particularly en masse. A dictator keep gangs from terrorizing neighborhoods (well, OTHER gangs). And the counter-balance to a rational dictator is the need of that dictator to keep the brutalization and societal stranglehold at a level beneath that which triggers a revolt. So if the dictator's brutalization is less than the anarchy that might follow a revolution, it is understandable that peoples may stay on the far left of the curve (stable dictator), rather than risk the transition through (unstable quasi-open-government, tribal warfare, anarchy) to the right side (stable democracy)
A less-clear example is Kim Jong-Il of North Korea - as closed/non-representative of a society as I can imagine, but at a global scale, the 'nation' has been fairly stable, in that the government-vs-people power dynamic hasn't shifted much in 50 years. But internally, thought, the stability just isn't there - 1 million people dying in a preventable famine isn't effective governance, even if you are a dictator. Mass famine shouldn't count as 'stable', even if that is the routine state of affairs.
I think I see your point - it might be just a semantic one, but an interesting point anyway.
True, the gravitation attraction of the earth still exists in orbit. In fact, it is what keeps the fast-moving ISS from flying off into space, because gravity keeps pulling the sideways-moving ISS down towards the Earth's center. This constant falling-but-never-landing state is called orbit.
But can anyone please explain how this gravitation system affects experiments onboard the ISS? Common sense seems to indicate that from the ISS's frame of reference, there is no effective gravity. Not that it doesn't exist, but just that it doesn't matter.
But is that really true? Would an experiment on the ISS in orbit around Earth, result in the same findings as the same experiment carried out in deep, non-galactic space, far way from large masses and stationary to distance reference objects? Although the only real difference is that the second frame of reference is just much larger than the first, as both still exist within the large structures of the universe which are whizzing around an inflationary space-time bubble.
Even in orbit/'weightlessness', there is still the large mass of the nearby Earth. Does the presence of this large mass, around which the experiment is orbiting, have actual effects on the experiment? Is it just that it is such a small effect to be insignificant vs. sea-based-experiments? (But parent's calculation of relative strength of the gravitation attraction at 400km high vs. sea level = 88% might be relevant).
Or it is entirely about the POV from inside the frame of reference of the experiment?
I'm thinking that this is more like:
(1)(a) "allocate all connections to servers $EnergyEfficient_1 thru $EnergyEfficient_9 (in a particular order due to their decreasing "EnergyStar rating") as long as their average load is less than 80%"
(b) "meanwhile, PowerMonsterServers are in [no-op, CPUhalt, powerd'ed down, spindown, standy, Wake-on-LAN] mode, thus saving total energy over having all of these machines idle at 15% load and consuming 100W each "
(c) "then if total systems load >95% and avg. response time sucks, wake up PowerMonsters to handle during short time they're needed, then powered down agin."
as opposed to
(2) my impression of your comment, which is that the F5 does load montioring of the downstream servers and can allocate/stop_allocating new connections based on feedback from the downstream servers about how it's doing under the currently_allocated load. This results in a dynamic adding/removing of servers from the available pool, but doesn't do so based on a "how much net load do we need?; let's only turn on the minimal $/load unit that can supply at least 1200 bogomips, for now; keep all other machines in S3 Wake-on-LAN mode"
Granted, under loads that are not TOO volatile, with a system that is made up of energy-homogeneous hardware, you should be able to spec your server infrastucture so that a good load-balancer, like the one you mentioned, does a pretty good job with equalizing load that results in minimal wasted Kw/hr on CPU loops and HALTs.
Better yet, virtualize the entire load-balanced system, or at least all of the component machines, and leverage up one more time - you should be able to keep driving down total wasted resources (KW/h of non-productive bogomips) if you keep consolidating.
More smarts, I think.
Does your setup allocate ZERO connections to certain servers over some length time, which are set up to reduce energy use upon such zero connections? If not, this looks like it might help.
They're claiming real-world energy efficiency gains, so it looks like it's an improvement somehow.
I would assume it's because this now adds dynamic adjustment, which could be based on total system-stack metrics of peak_load_capability, energy_minimization, acceptable_response_time, etc. Something that seems to be lacking in the current load-balancing system that you describe.
Future: .cn? Host your site out of a data center in Iceland and take advantage of cheap, midnight power!
- Allow for tuning based on diverse hardware, each with different energy and load capability profiles.
- Smart managing of a large population of these systems, based on varying load.
- Add real-time upstream energy cost data into the mix
- Dynamic scheduling of administrative tasks based on energy efficiency vs. hard deadlines.
- If energy starts becoming a significant cost of hosting, go back to selling system time based, in part, on total energy used - track CPU, disk, network energy requirements by watt/hr, by user. Add those to account plans, side-by-side with Mb/s and GB/month. Serving
True, based on current exchange rates, £600 = US$1,168. No wait, $1,173...uh, $1,195. Whoops - now $1,225.
But for a Londonder, £600 today is basically the same as £600 two months ago, or from now. £600 hasn't 'gone up' for THEM, only for people wanting to use US$ to pay that £600.
This illustrates Purchasing Power Parity, a concept that is similar to foreign currency exchange, but that looks at the long-term relative purchasing power of a currency.
Not "how many Pounds Sterling can I buy with 1 UD$", but "how many units of ProductX can I buy with 1% of local per capita annual GDP." Theory says that goods should have identical relative prices in every market, or else there are arbitrage opportunities that people will take advantage of until the prices in all markets are the same (after accounting for transport, etc.)
What happens, however, is that identical goods are NOT priced at the same relative level after currency conversion, because a lot of short-term change in the ForEx markets is due to market movements, not underlying fundamental changes in purchasing power.
The Economist magazine publishes the 'Big Mac Index', which humorously uses the Big Mac as the good to compare relative purchasing power around the world.
So a Big Mac costs 4GBP in London, and based on the exchange rate, it looks like it costs US$8.00. But it really doesn't, because Londoners aren't paying US$, but with GBP, and the Big Mac costs the same to them that it did a year ago, even though a year ago exchange rates would have said the Big Mac costs $6.50.
Did the price of a Big Mac go up? The price of a Big Mac in the U.K. didn't go up for a Londoner, but did for a U.S. visitor. The price of a Big Mac in the U.S. didn't go up for a Floridian, but fell for a U.K. visitor. But in each case, the cost in the local currency was and is 1/10,000th of per capita income. That is purchasing power parity, and shows that shows changes in exchange rates are not the same thing as changes in relative purchasing power. On a PPP basis, U.S-U.K. currencies haven't moved against each other even close to the amount suggested by market currency exchange rates.
You can rent a car, but that's hassle-prone and expensive.
It is? I fly (passenger) and rent cars at airports all of the time - not many problems. In fact, I just rented a car from the private GA terminal in San Diego - couldn't have been easier, quicker or cheaper, IMO.
Rental cars are around $30/day - if you're flying a private plane several hours there and again back, $30 in order to do something once you've landed doesn't seem that excessive. Particularly given that the alternative, this car-plane, is estimated to cost >$150,000. That's a few thousand $ per month to lease/finance, more than enough to fund rental cars, or even a car service.
Although, from the article: "The third barrier was the fact that only about one third of the nation's small, general-aviation airports have rental-car facilities or cab stands--meaning that once you fly in, you're stuck."
You are stuck in that situation. But if you go to that airport more than occasionally, it'd be cheaper to just buy a used car and store it at that airport for you to use when you fly in, or timeshare a ground vehicle with other local pilots. Hell, even if you buy 5 cars and pre-place them at your 5 most-frequented airports, you'd come out ahead.
You're also stuck if a blizzard hits while you're at your destination, and can't fly home. But instead, you'd drive 3 hours on the highway in a blizzard, in a marginally-road-worthy car with airfoils strapped to it? I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that in a normal car, much less a lightweight body with folded up wings.
Nothing in this post contradicts the coolness of owning a flying car, though.
Excellent post! Informed, pragmatic rationalism based on facts - uncommon in /. discussions about international affairs.
See also a very informative article from the Atlantic Monthly: How We Would Fight China by Robert Kaplan, an experienced journalist covering U.S. foreign affairs and the military. Detailed description of China's current military, with short- and long-term views of their military growth.
A tiny exceprt: (please keep in mind that Kaplan isn't advocating for confrontation, but doing a thorough analysis of what might happen if foolish politicians get us into such a mess).
" At the moment the challenges posed by a rising China may seem slight, even nonexistent. The U.S. Navy's warships have a collective "full-load displacement" of 2.86 million tons; the rest of the world's warships combined add up to only 3.04 million tons. The Chinese navy's warships have a full-load displacement of only 263,064 tons. The United States deploys twenty-four of the world's thirty-four aircraft carriers; the Chinese deploy none (a principal reason why they couldn't mount a rescue effort after the tsunami)."
"China has committed itself to significant military spending, but its navy and air force will not be able to match ours for some decades. The Chinese are therefore not going to do us the favor of engaging in conventional air and naval battles, like those fought in the Pacific during World War II...Instead the Chinese will approach us asymmetrically...But the Chinese are poised to show us the high end of the art. That is the threat."
"There are many ways in which the Chinese could use their less advanced military to achieve a sort of political-strategic parity with us. According to one former submarine commander and naval strategist I talked to, the Chinese have been poring over every detail of our recent wars in the Balkans and the Persian Gulf, and they fully understand just how much our military power depends on naval projection--that is, on the ability of a carrier battle group to get within proximity of, say, Iraq, and fire a missile at a target deep inside the country. To adapt, the Chinese are putting their fiber-optic systems underground and moving defense capabilities deep into western China, out of naval missile range--all the while developing an offensive strategy based on missiles designed to be capable of striking that supreme icon of American wealth and power, the aircraft carrier. The effect of a single Chinese cruise missile's hitting a U.S. carrier, even if it did not sink the ship, would be politically and psychologically catastrophic, akin to al-Qaeda's attacks on the Twin Towers. China is focusing on missiles and submarines as a way to humiliate us in specific encounters. Their long-range-missile program should deeply concern U.S. policymakers."
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Also from the Atlantic Monthly:
Superiority Complex - Why America's growing nuclear supremacy may make war with China more likely Again, detailed anaylsis of possible flashpoints and the resulting warfare. Section title: "Strategic Implications of the Nuclear Imbalance"
From ARRL, a 18MB downloadable presentation tutorial about basics of electronics: Basic Electronics for the New Ham
Outline:
-The Elements of Electricity
-Volt-Ohm-Meter Basics (Measuring Electricity)
-Circuit Diagrams Basics (Electronic Roadmaps)
-The Resistor
-Ohm's Law
-The Capacitor
-The Inductor
-The Diode
-The Transistor (Electronic Valve)
I'm pretty sure it's criminally negligent to fail to disclose your whereabouts to people who are likely to worry and file a missing persons' report.
Source, please? I've never heard of such a thing in the U.S.
From the article: "Missing persons cases present an unusual problem for police -- it's not a crime to disappear."
It may be thoughtless and even cruel, but it's not criminal, and probably not even civilly actionable.
No, you don't need a floppy. The ISOs are bootable.
In addition to keeping with the spirit of Linux distributions circa 1995, Slack seems to keep actual documentation from that era as well. The system requirements you list, plus:
Q11: Is it possible to install this operating system without a floppy drive?
The only answer involves using LOADLIN to jump into a linux kernel from DOS. Wow! I appreciate the simplicity of Slack, but their main FAQ could include at least reference bootable CDs - it has been 14 years.
Vernor Vinge...suggested that after the leveling off, we'd be living in a pretty comfortable world, close to some visions of Utopia. If the natural limits of technology fall short of self-replicating interstellar probes, then the answer to "Where are they?" is "They're enjoying themselves on their garden planet".
Your example is plausible, but that would have to be the case for EVERY SINGLE ONE of the millions of civilizations that some logic says must have existed over the last billions of years.
As the article mentions, it all comes down statistics: small probabilities multiplied by millions of opportunities = improbability that it hasn't happened.
I'll quote from another comment:
"Sure, that might explain why a PARTICULAR spacefaring civilization hasn't shown up in our neighborhood."
"But the question we have to ask isn't "Why hasn't spacefaring civilization X set up shop in our neighborhood?"
"The question is "Why is it that, out of the hundreds of billions of solar systems that exist or have existed since the beginning of the Milky Way, not a SINGLE ONE has produced a spacefaring civilization with a detectable presence in our corner of the galaxy?" "
Even if most civilizations never develop an interest in space travel, it only takes ONE civilization to decided to not stay on their their home planet, in order for a civilization to colonize the galaxies over billions of years.
If, to Vinge's point, there is some technological restriction that keeps ANY civilization from developing interstellar probes, then that is the Great Filter that the author is discussing. If that is true, that would explain why we don't have contact from interstellar civilizations, but it would also imply that the human race is bound to the solar system forever, which is a sad thought to the author.
I realize this comment is 2 days late...
[Hans]...should never have been permitted, by his attorney, to take the stand.
According to the article, Hans' attorney DIDN'T want him to take the stand, but Hans did so anyway.
In addition (in the U.S.), the attorney simply couldn't keep Hans from taking the stand - it isn't up to the attorney. The attorney offers advice, which the client is free to disregard.
Criminal defendants can also represent themselves, and not even HAVE an attorney (although in those cases, the judge will often appoint a public defender to make sure the defedant gets some advice, mostly about court procedure and to advise on not making mistakes that will result in a totally skewed trial).
Just wanted to let you know that the attorney couldn't have prevented Hans from taking the stand.
The only argument that I can think of for the other side would look to the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment. But there is a fatal flaw in that argument. A violation of copyright is not a taking of property. If you violate someone's copyright, they are still the copyright holder. A copyright violation is NOT a taking of property. Without a taking of life, liberty, or property, Due Process is not required, and the 14th Amendment is not implicated.
It's easy to argue that copyright violation IS a taking of property, and in fact, with regard to patent rights, the U.S. federal government has and does pay infringement royalties under the theory of eminent domain.
The 'property' inherent in both copyright and patent grants is not the piece of paper that you still possess after the government has infringed on the rights, but rather the underlying right to keep other people, including those in the government, from using your ideas without your consent or profit. Those rights ARE potentially being infringed, even though you still have the piece of paper that grants you the copyright/patent, and even if you can still assert those rights against other parties.
So, the government has taken away your ability to control the use of the copyright/patent, and that is the property they must pay for. You then apply established commercial criteria for valuing the infringement (FMV/reasonable rates for copyright licenses and royalties), in order to calculate damages the government would have to pay.
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While the below references apply to patent rights, the legal analysis re: copyrights would be similar, I think.
"Treating the Legal Side Effects of Cipro(R): A Reevaluation of Compensation Rules for Government Takings of Patent Rights"
The author finds that, under the current statutory scheme, unauthorized government appropriations of private patent rights should be treated as eminent domain takings, compensable at the level required by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Moreover, the author determines that Fifth Amendment compensation for patent takings is properly calculated by the same rules employed to assess non-punitive, actual damages in private infringement actions.
---
NY Times article
"American law is very clear: when the United States government needs a patented product, any official authorized to make purchases can ignore the patent and license someone else to make it."
''Any employee of the United States government can authorize a compulsory license for the product without even holding a hearing,'' said James P. Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, part of Ralph Nader's organization pushing for lower drug prices. ''The company can't even sue to enjoin the government from doing it. All they can do is sue for compensation.''
"That compensation, Mr. Love said, is based on eminent domain, the principle used when the government seizes land for a highway or military base. A judge picks an amount based on lost value, but not necessarily the highest price that could have been charged. The government uses the law fairly frequently, Mr. Love said."
From http://www.linkedin.com/in/espiegel
Eric Spiegel -- Washington D.C. Metro Area
CEO, XTS, Inc.
Current
* CEO at XTS, Inc.
* Freelance Columnist (Self-employed)
Past
* Director, Customer Services at Agentsmith
* Consulting Manager at Extreme Logic
* Vice President at Sequoia Software
* Sr. Consultant at Ciber
* Sr. Programmer at Integrated Health Services
* Senior Engineer at Rite Aid
* Programmer Analyst at USF&G
* Consultant at American Management Systems (AMS)
Education
* Johns Hopkins University
* University of Pittsburgh
Summary
- Executive experienced in technology start-up operations, such as sales, marketing and raising capital.
- Leader of top-performing software development and professional service organizations.
- Manager skilled in all aspects of information technology management, including business planning, project management, customer services, quality initiatives and staffing.
- Consultant with strong background in selling, planning and delivering enterprise software implementations.
- Columnist providing articles on information technology management topics.
Eric Spiegel's Specialties: executive management, project management, team management, sales, product marketing, freelance writing, start-up operations, outsourcing, business process improvement
"Pretty sad that two different sites with "Tech" in the name and the Slashdot readership haven't managed to figure out this trickery yet. There are no magic 404s here."
On the contrary, I think those articles, and most comments here, get it right. What is being said in the articles or here that you disagree with?
"When you set up your DNS with Network Solutions, a wildcard DNS entry is created. It defaults to an ad page (just like every other DNS record with them does).
That's exactly what I've understood from reading the articles and the /. discussion. And that appears to be what people are complaining about. It shouldn't default to an ad page, it should default to a 404.
"While it might not be the most feel-good thing Network Solutions could do with your DNS, don't attribute to their malice what is easily attributed to user laziness."
Isn't the point of the article and the /. comments? That this is "not the most feel-good thing", that it is in fact "a feel-bad thing", and that users SHOULDN'T HAVE to opt out of something that most wouldn't turn on in the first place?
Someone goes to my domain, digs into the URL structure, and through their bad typing or mine and unknowing to me, gets a page full of ads on my domain. This might be allowed under the TOS, but that doesn't mean that the customer shouldn't be rightly upset about that stupid provision being in the TOS to begin with.
And to bring your quote around to its original source, I won't attribute this action to NetSol's malice, but I will attribute it to NetSol's incompetence, and lack of consideration in thinking of how their customers might react. They're not acting with ill-will, but with bad business judgment. Maybe that's better, but not by much.
Seriously - I'm curious. I'm not a hacker, but do understand things a bit. I get how you compiled a vulnerable version of ping, and copied it to your now-available $USER shell. I assume this would mean the ping executable is at most UID/GID User:User, rwx 777.
How do get from there to root? A local buffer overflow in a non-privileged ping executable allows you to get access to privileged memory ranges not controlled by ping, but rather by some privileged process, and you use that access to that privileged memory area to get to root?
If that is somewhat correct, it seems like the memory manager is to blame, not a bad ping programmer. Why should ANY non-privileged application be allowed to do that by the MMU? If not a buggy ping, then what's to keep you from downloading a purposely-written overflow app from a website and breaking out with a that?
Is that what NX fixes? But wouldn't some non-kernel privileged memory still need to be marked executable for root and setuid apps? Does NX thus have some policy mechanism for what program and/or memory range is and isn't vulnerable to overflows?
I understand the 50,000 foot view of SELinux and AppArmor - do they operate in this domain, or more at the file-and-kernel-ABI access permission level (rather than in this memory-range level)?
Thanks for the info....
12% = 1200 basis points. They announce on the U.S. news that the Fed lowered rates by 75 basis points , where a basis point is 1/100 of a percentage point, which is 1/100 of the whole. 75 basis points is the difference between 5.00% and 5.75%. And is three-quarters of a "point". Confusing, to be sure.
"Points" are used in lending to indicate 1% of the loan value - known from their use in calculating the origination fee ("pay 1 point"), or as a metric for determining the cost to buy down the interest rate ("it costs half a point to buy down the rate from 6.75% to 6.40%"). It is short for "percentage point".
"Basis points" are commonly known from their use in monitoring small, constant movements in the yield of debentures - e.g. "an 20 bp move in the 2 year treasury which lowered the yield from 2.24% to 2.06%."