Schneier is a pretty clever person. From my reading of some of his cryptography books, he knows a lot of tricks.
Open WiFi because it's a security risk? That sounds supportable on the surface, but it's just asking for trouble, and Bruce Schneier ought to be the first person to tell you so.
Then why is he espousing the controversial option of an open network? The answer may be obtained by following the money. Schneier propaganda leads to more open WiFi everywhere leads to ISP's raising cain and justifying higher prices leads to closed WiFi but the prices stay high. After all, it's sad world with a poor investment market of an election year coupled with skyrocketing fuel costs, weakened currency, war costs, and unemployment so a price increase was in the works. Throwing the issue of too many open WiFis in the face of consumers is a simple strategy to spike the bill across the board without fearing cancellations.
A fresh divot would expose deeper soils and rocks that have not previously been exposed to the atmosphere.
Way to catch the interest of the golfing crowd. Every time someone tees off they might remember to slam the club an extra couple of inches deeper into the ground.
Speaking of which, if a deadly intergalactic ray was ever pointed at us, our best bet for immediate survival would be to move to the moon, the poles, or into orbit and constantly move to the side opposite the ray.
Since the ray is disruptive of the magnetic field, a generator might be constructed to counteract the disruption, at a risk of messing up the earth's magnetic generator.
How long before laptop batteries get classified as "munitions"?
This idea is really on to something. Consider the amount of energy that a small bit of explosives can release. Can nanotechnology slow the release of this energy to the point that it can be used as a portable energy supply?
All the same, forewarned is forearmed. Do not even be in the same room, building, or postal code with these new laptop batteries until we know they cannot be detonated by ordinary means such as shorting, heat, force, electricity, wetting, magnetic fields, sharp objects, etc. The energy per unit volume has been increased by an order of magnitude, and this may be comparable to a mini-grenade.
Perhaps society will be finally persuaded to provide enough wall outlets while I power my computer up to 2 hours with just 2 AA cells.
The solution is to make your password so complex that you can't remember it fully under duress or distress. I'll leave it to someone to devise a technique.
it does seem that every 5 years the trend switches from centralization to decentralization and back again
Wondering how software affects mainframe usage... If software was originally written to run on PCs, it can't be an instant switch to mainframes. Also, the entire staff mindset may have to be changed. Perhaps there is a middle-of-the-road approach of using a multiprocessor server that can reduce power to underutilized chips.
How easy is it to scale up with mainframes? As business grows, the mainframes become fully loaded. If I wanted to run some new software, I would rather try it out on a few servers than another massive mainframe. Software availability from third parties may also hinder mainframe adoption.
Watching Ducky wasn't all that ducky. It leaves a lot of things unexplained, such as why strings, and why would they have such different properties based on just vibrations.
Certainly, the video forces one to think and appreciate the idea of strings as a viable candidate to explain what we experience as nature. For example, string theory actually presents an explanation for time. Suppose there isn't actually anything such as time as we think it is. That may very well be, but if everything is made of vibrating strings, or actually, strings that change shape, then time is explainable as synchronicity to the shape changes. This is what happens in our computers--the clock simulates time, and if there was no real-time clock built into the computer, it would not know how to calculate the time of day, but it could still tell the difference between past, present, and future.
Why didn't they have some provision to cut power to the weapon?
My dear Mr. Watson, there was a provision. The problem was the confusion between programming for MS-DOS versus Unix.
The clues have told us exactly what happened. From "Robotic Cannon Kills 9", we see clearly the command kill -9 was issued but the weapon was DOS based and did its job all too well.
I was wondering though, is it possible that a black hole of this mass could me produces in a trinary solar system
Could you? I doubt it.
merge
There have been times that extraordinarily powerful outbursts occurred. A merger could have done. I bet the upper limit of 10 solar masses is not quite right though and a much higher mass is possible.
Now you don't suppose it's an artificial construct? Anything not explained by nature alone is a suspect for intelligent intervention.
Someone has a cellphone without a camera, but is it really? Business's may be well advised to ban personal electronics, but who can do business without a cell phone and still rub shoulders with people with valuable secrets?
This artificial technology sounds pretty impressive. My oh my, a trillion per second....
But if you want to handle 10^60, you need real technology, which nips through a septillion positions in each yoctosecond until the job is done.
So a common game of modest construction accessible to people worldwide would be solved, and the joy reduced to a lookup table. The poor will have to construct even more complex amusements. Can't say it's nice to be poor.
Birds are damn smart, like that talking parrot who just died
It doesn't take a big mechanism to be powerful, does it? Intelligence can be implemented in a small volume, and I suppose we had all better be careful. A camera doesn't have to be large at all, and someone can be spying on you remotely.
Unfortunately, the lowest priced hardware tends to be the hardest to get working with Linux
Yes, but the idea is not about the cheapest crap, but rather the falling prices of hardware.
If people find that hardware is more affordable, they can go buy more and experiment with less fear. We will have to see how the market forces will change the landscape. Will enthusiasts get more attention from hardware makers who see sales go to Linux-ready devices? Will Windows prices drop to match hardware prices? Will Windows sell better when affordable hardware makes it easier to use?
Hardware cost reductions will help Linux adoption. Many people who buy computers do not want to buy Windows incompatible machines. So they figure they may as well use Windows. If they can buy enough performance though, they can install Linux on a virtual machine and learn it. People figure they have to spend more just to be able to run Windows well, and then even more to run Linux and Windows together.
The Internet is making the world a better place, and as an Internet user, I feel the energy is well spent.
There is balance in energy consumption. People are staying at their computers more, rather than driving around for amusement. Fewer trees die for paper since information is available electronically.
One factor is if you want your home heated or not. That waste heat from the edge servers is heating homes and thus is an equivalent savings on the energy needed to heat homes. The opposite is true if you had the AC on.
I, and a good many others, used to joke around about using computers for cooking. Perhaps a server farm should be located beside a restaurant and the waste heat be used to heat the french fry oil, which will ultimately go into some fool's diesel car.
Someone at NASA also worked out that you could build a tower 100km tall by using highly pressurized boron balloon tanks as columns
That sounds wonderful for the first 100 km.
A couple of problems arise. If something hits the tower, even gusts of wind, it will break from its anchor and fly away. The other problem is going higher.
Pardon the pun, but defying gravity cannot be done lightly. The ultimate solution may be to build an enormous structure that itself does not rest on the geologically shifting ground but rather wraps around the globe.
Space elevators also require "Unobtanium" with unattainably high tensile strengths. But if we combine the two, we get something which is both technically feasible and capable of dirt-cheap earth to orbit. Basically, have an aircraft capable of very high altitude, and about half orbital velocity rendevous with a rotating tether (Rotovator) that can take a cargo the rest of the way to orbit.
Here's an idea, very unlikely to work: use more than one rotovator rather than a big, long one. Each rotovator extends to its limited length, at the working limit of its strength. Each rotovator suspends another, except the bottom one has a hook for the cargo. Of course, the higher rotovators have to carry more weight, but simply use the block and tackle idea of hanging from many different loops.
Of course, the force of gravity increases as an item is lowered so ultimately the centre of gravity also descends. When the thingy reaches the ground, the centre of gravity may be so low that the entire contraption is practically on the ground. Not to mention, it probably would have the mass of several Brooklyn Bridges.
A better idea: make monster towers that reach into space. These would resemble mountains at the base but can be much skinnier as the effects of gravity decrease a few thousand kilometres above sea level. Of course, the base might be as wide as the Sahara Desert, and several of these may have to be built around the equator for balance. Another problem is the solar wind, which might wear away the surfaces, though this is a problem with a suspended cable too.
It's not a wonder that Borg ships are cubical. The pyramid points around a circumscribed sphere allow gravity to be defied.
Actually, many police departments will settle to the tune of tens of thousands than to let matters go to court. The thing to do is not make a big fuss and just let the lawyers go to work.
Ok..so anything that isn't in a pretty, professional package...is considered a possible bomb?
In the third world, the bomb looks like an ugly hack but homeland security had better look for the packaged bombs. What better disguise? The operative phrase is don't bark up the wrong tree.
Airplanes are known to be great terrorist weapons. Targeting funky obvious looking people doesn't catch terrorists though. Sneaky people caused 9/11. This airport incident shows just how smart or demented the security is. Fly at your own risk and don't visit tall buildings for a hobby.
The stigma on flying and on passengers is one of the lingering victims of 9/11. Flight security is actually really lax. If they had a clue about preventing terrorists from getting on board, they should spy for a couple of weeks on anyone who will get on a plane, train, or bus. There are only 7 billion people to watch, and that may be tractable in the years to come. What fun!
Whereas algorithms are instantly aware of their own prowess.
Is management starting to wonder (again) whether a computer can really do a better job making the important decisions? But can it yet? There is so much data that needs to be acquired in order to return a meaningful answer.
Some of the most powerful organizations are probably making deals to combine as many databases as possible. Interesting to see (if they would let us see) if that will give them the answers they're looking for. As data acquisition becomes more accurate and less expensive, there will be less privacy but more creative computer output, a trade-off in the value of personal information leading to the possible marginalization of humanity.
I doubt the FDA would allow for Open Source Drug development in our own homes. So, your only source for such curing chemical compounds is through the drug companies.
A life saving cure may be found a lot sooner thanks to this folding research. And I would rather have my life saved when in need than be bitter over who's CEO pockets I will be lining.
Maybe open source drug development isn't such a scary thing. If the formula obtained from a publicly run computer system becomes public domain knowledge, the profit-killing competition would make drug companies very reluctant to invest in developing a drug regardless of the good it does. Government should step up by paying competing drug companies to develop drugs based on useful knowledge that has been obtained on a public computer.
The world is ia big place so there's still a good chance some company won't let the knowledge go to waste.
Slashdot Mirror
As Bill Gates is leaving Microsoft, it's a good time to never look back. What kind of non-Microsoft software can be built to be backwards compatible?
Anyways, I always found VBA brutally slow in Office so it will be a blessing to have a new language.
Schneier is a pretty clever person. From my reading of some of his cryptography books, he knows a lot of tricks.
Open WiFi because it's a security risk? That sounds supportable on the surface, but it's just asking for trouble, and Bruce Schneier ought to be the first person to tell you so.
Then why is he espousing the controversial option of an open network? The answer may be obtained by following the money. Schneier propaganda leads to more open WiFi everywhere leads to ISP's raising cain and justifying higher prices leads to closed WiFi but the prices stay high. After all, it's sad world with a poor investment market of an election year coupled with skyrocketing fuel costs, weakened currency, war costs, and unemployment so a price increase was in the works. Throwing the issue of too many open WiFis in the face of consumers is a simple strategy to spike the bill across the board without fearing cancellations.
Don't be fooled.
A fresh divot would expose deeper soils and rocks that have not previously been exposed to the atmosphere.
Way to catch the interest of the golfing crowd. Every time someone tees off they might remember to slam the club an extra couple of inches deeper into the ground.
moon
Speaking of which, if a deadly intergalactic ray was ever pointed at us, our best bet for immediate survival would be to move to the moon, the poles, or into orbit and constantly move to the side opposite the ray.
Since the ray is disruptive of the magnetic field, a generator might be constructed to counteract the disruption, at a risk of messing up the earth's magnetic generator.
How long before laptop batteries get classified as "munitions"?
This idea is really on to something. Consider the amount of energy that a small bit of explosives can release. Can nanotechnology slow the release of this energy to the point that it can be used as a portable energy supply?
All the same, forewarned is forearmed. Do not even be in the same room, building, or postal code with these new laptop batteries until we know they cannot be detonated by ordinary means such as shorting, heat, force, electricity, wetting, magnetic fields, sharp objects, etc. The energy per unit volume has been increased by an order of magnitude, and this may be comparable to a mini-grenade.
Perhaps society will be finally persuaded to provide enough wall outlets while I power my computer up to 2 hours with just 2 AA cells.
The solution is to make your password so complex that you can't remember it fully under duress or distress. I'll leave it to someone to devise a technique.
> If you are waiting a long time when no traffic is on the highway then the implementation is flawed
The flaw is simple: the feedback is not taking into account the number of cars lined up at the light.
Not In My Back Yard
and I like it to stay that way
it does seem that every 5 years the trend switches from centralization to decentralization and back again
Wondering how software affects mainframe usage... If software was originally written to run on PCs, it can't be an instant switch to mainframes. Also, the entire staff mindset may have to be changed. Perhaps there is a middle-of-the-road approach of using a multiprocessor server that can reduce power to underutilized chips.
How easy is it to scale up with mainframes? As business grows, the mainframes become fully loaded. If I wanted to run some new software, I would rather try it out on a few servers than another massive mainframe. Software availability from third parties may also hinder mainframe adoption.
Mainframes are just a whole new can of worms.
The way I love my computers, a handheld supercomputer is made for incessant fondling.
Watching Ducky wasn't all that ducky. It leaves a lot of things unexplained, such as why strings, and why would they have such different properties based on just vibrations.
Certainly, the video forces one to think and appreciate the idea of strings as a viable candidate to explain what we experience as nature. For example, string theory actually presents an explanation for time. Suppose there isn't actually anything such as time as we think it is. That may very well be, but if everything is made of vibrating strings, or actually, strings that change shape, then time is explainable as synchronicity to the shape changes. This is what happens in our computers--the clock simulates time, and if there was no real-time clock built into the computer, it would not know how to calculate the time of day, but it could still tell the difference between past, present, and future.
Why didn't they have some provision to cut power to the weapon?
My dear Mr. Watson, there was a provision. The problem was the confusion between programming for MS-DOS versus Unix.
The clues have told us exactly what happened. From "Robotic Cannon Kills 9", we see clearly the command kill -9 was issued but the weapon was DOS based and did its job all too well.
I was wondering though, is it possible that a black hole of this mass could me produces in a trinary solar system
Could you? I doubt it.
merge
There have been times that extraordinarily powerful outbursts occurred. A merger could have done. I bet the upper limit of 10 solar masses is not quite right though and a much higher mass is possible.
Now you don't suppose it's an artificial construct? Anything not explained by nature alone is a suspect for intelligent intervention.
In Soviet Russia, LCDs watch YOU!!
Might be anywhere, in the coming times.
Someone has a cellphone without a camera, but is it really? Business's may be well advised to ban personal electronics, but who can do business without a cell phone and still rub shoulders with people with valuable secrets?
This artificial technology sounds pretty impressive. My oh my, a trillion per second....
But if you want to handle 10^60, you need real technology, which nips through a septillion positions in each yoctosecond until the job is done.
So a common game of modest construction accessible to people worldwide would be solved, and the joy reduced to a lookup table. The poor will have to construct even more complex amusements. Can't say it's nice to be poor.
Birds are damn smart, like that talking parrot who just died
It doesn't take a big mechanism to be powerful, does it? Intelligence can be implemented in a small volume, and I suppose we had all better be careful. A camera doesn't have to be large at all, and someone can be spying on you remotely.
Unfortunately, the lowest priced hardware tends to be the hardest to get working with Linux
Yes, but the idea is not about the cheapest crap, but rather the falling prices of hardware.
If people find that hardware is more affordable, they can go buy more and experiment with less fear. We will have to see how the market forces will change the landscape. Will enthusiasts get more attention from hardware makers who see sales go to Linux-ready devices? Will Windows prices drop to match hardware prices? Will Windows sell better when affordable hardware makes it easier to use?
Hardware cost reductions will help Linux adoption. Many people who buy computers do not want to buy Windows incompatible machines. So they figure they may as well use Windows. If they can buy enough performance though, they can install Linux on a virtual machine and learn it. People figure they have to spend more just to be able to run Windows well, and then even more to run Linux and Windows together.
The Internet is making the world a better place, and as an Internet user, I feel the energy is well spent.
There is balance in energy consumption. People are staying at their computers more, rather than driving around for amusement. Fewer trees die for paper since information is available electronically.
One factor is if you want your home heated or not. That waste heat from the edge servers is heating homes and thus is an equivalent savings on the energy needed to heat homes. The opposite is true if you had the AC on.
I, and a good many others, used to joke around about using computers for cooking. Perhaps a server farm should be located beside a restaurant and the waste heat be used to heat the french fry oil, which will ultimately go into some fool's diesel car.
Someone at NASA also worked out that you could build a tower 100km tall by using highly pressurized boron balloon tanks as columns
That sounds wonderful for the first 100 km.
A couple of problems arise. If something hits the tower, even gusts of wind, it will break from its anchor and fly away. The other problem is going higher.
Pardon the pun, but defying gravity cannot be done lightly. The ultimate solution may be to build an enormous structure that itself does not rest on the geologically shifting ground but rather wraps around the globe.
Space elevators also require "Unobtanium" with unattainably high tensile strengths. But if we combine the two, we get something which is both technically feasible and capable of dirt-cheap earth to orbit. Basically, have an aircraft capable of very high altitude, and about half orbital velocity rendevous with a rotating tether (Rotovator) that can take a cargo the rest of the way to orbit.
Here's an idea, very unlikely to work: use more than one rotovator rather than a big, long one. Each rotovator extends to its limited length, at the working limit of its strength. Each rotovator suspends another, except the bottom one has a hook for the cargo. Of course, the higher rotovators have to carry more weight, but simply use the block and tackle idea of hanging from many different loops.
Of course, the force of gravity increases as an item is lowered so ultimately the centre of gravity also descends. When the thingy reaches the ground, the centre of gravity may be so low that the entire contraption is practically on the ground. Not to mention, it probably would have the mass of several Brooklyn Bridges.
A better idea: make monster towers that reach into space. These would resemble mountains at the base but can be much skinnier as the effects of gravity decrease a few thousand kilometres above sea level. Of course, the base might be as wide as the Sahara Desert, and several of these may have to be built around the equator for balance. Another problem is the solar wind, which might wear away the surfaces, though this is a problem with a suspended cable too.
It's not a wonder that Borg ships are cubical. The pyramid points around a circumscribed sphere allow gravity to be defied.
than for the city to actually admit it screwed up
Actually, many police departments will settle to the tune of tens of thousands than to let matters go to court. The thing to do is not make a big fuss and just let the lawyers go to work.
Ok..so anything that isn't in a pretty, professional package...is considered a possible bomb?
In the third world, the bomb looks like an ugly hack but homeland security had better look for the packaged bombs. What better disguise? The operative phrase is don't bark up the wrong tree.
Airplanes are known to be great terrorist weapons. Targeting funky obvious looking people doesn't catch terrorists though. Sneaky people caused 9/11. This airport incident shows just how smart or demented the security is. Fly at your own risk and don't visit tall buildings for a hobby.
The stigma on flying and on passengers is one of the lingering victims of 9/11. Flight security is actually really lax. If they had a clue about preventing terrorists from getting on board, they should spy for a couple of weeks on anyone who will get on a plane, train, or bus. There are only 7 billion people to watch, and that may be tractable in the years to come. What fun!
Whereas algorithms are instantly aware of their own prowess.
Is management starting to wonder (again) whether a computer can really do a better job making the important decisions? But can it yet? There is so much data that needs to be acquired in order to return a meaningful answer.
Some of the most powerful organizations are probably making deals to combine as many databases as possible. Interesting to see (if they would let us see) if that will give them the answers they're looking for. As data acquisition becomes more accurate and less expensive, there will be less privacy but more creative computer output, a trade-off in the value of personal information leading to the possible marginalization of humanity.
I doubt the FDA would allow for Open Source Drug development in our own homes. So, your only source for such curing chemical compounds is through the drug companies.
A life saving cure may be found a lot sooner thanks to this folding research. And I would rather have my life saved when in need than be bitter over who's CEO pockets I will be lining.
Maybe open source drug development isn't such a scary thing. If the formula obtained from a publicly run computer system becomes public domain knowledge, the profit-killing competition would make drug companies very reluctant to invest in developing a drug regardless of the good it does. Government should step up by paying competing drug companies to develop drugs based on useful knowledge that has been obtained on a public computer.
The world is ia big place so there's still a good chance some company won't let the knowledge go to waste.