I agree. I'd rate The Dosadi Experiment as his best. They might have to pull in some background from Whipping Star, though. I do see a couple of potential pitfalls for a movie version (among them being how the Gowachin are represented, and the conspiracies within conspiracies nature of their civilization), but it would be tremendous if done right.
I wish that Herbert had written more in the BuSab universe, rather than the somewhat tiresome later Dune sequels.
Another interesting movie adaptation would be The Godmakers. That one is shorter, and could be told fairly well in two hour movie format.
Good analogy. I think that the basic principle should be that you can protect the expression (copyright) or the implementation (patent) of an idea, but you can't protect the idea itself. This is why "one-click ordering" was a bad patent. Sure, protect Amazon's implementation, but if anyone else wants to build their own, they should be free to do so.
Yes, that was Texas. And yes, the stupid law is still on the books. The reason that she got in trouble was that she sold them as marital aids, and gave advice on how to use them. If you sell them as "novelties", you're fine. Dallas has its share of "Condoms to Go" stores, and I'd guess that it would be illegal to sell much of their inventory for its obvious purpose.
Uh, not that I would, uh, ever go in there... (Looks over shoulder):-)
Thanks for the information. It's always important to get more than one view on things. I did catch a couple of references to Control Room when I was googling.
In regard to Roosevelt's foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack, could you point me at some reading on the subject (or the names of some of these younger historians)? My impression was that it was a fringe theory, predicated on either anti-semitism or an effort by neoconservative to smear the patron saint of the modern Democratic party (not an exact quote, but I've been unable to locate the source).
There's definitely something to be said for going to primary sources without preconceptions. I was privileged to have access to the original diaries of John Wilkes (circa 1765) and the original correspondence of Sen. Robert LaFolette (in the Library of Congress) in the course of earning a history degree. One must also be aware of the limitations of such sources, however. Despite being in the historical period of interest, they are hardly omniscient. And it is frequently incorrect to attribute motives, or even modes of action/response, from one time period to actors in another.
Your evaluation of Aljazeera does not mesh with what I have read (primarily Internet articles; the US press seems fairly useless if one is looking for good information on this subject). My impression is that actual hate for them is confined pretty much to authoritarian regimes, where an uncontrolled media voice stands to upset the applecart. Among the bulk of the populace, feelings range from identification with it as an Arab viewpoint to indifference to impatience (that is, not radical enough). I'd be interested in reading your source on this.
Perhaps Gmail has changed the text of their invitation. Using the text of the message at the link above, I sent three messages (one unchanged, one with a single edit, and one with four edits) to my Yahoo address. All of them ended up in the Bulk folder. Do you have Yahoo's "spamguard" feature turned on?
I tried from my Gmail address as well. The unchanged message went straight to the Bulk folder. If I deleted a paragraph, it went to the inbox.
If they want to make the OS try and spot suspicious activity and alert the user...
This is a really good idea. When I caught the virus that we did get, it was because ZoneAlarm told me that something was trying to make an outgoing connection that was not authorized. Unfortunately, the WinXP firewall does not seem to have that capability, which makes it somewhat substandard. The logs should at least be there, in case someone knowledgeable wants to look at them.
Yes, that goes without saying. But badly-behaved software is a fact of life. The fact the others are running Outlook decreases the security of my computer, so a preventative in the OS might be helpful. But it also (as I said above) introduces a single point of attack, which is a bad thing from a security analysis point of view.
Educating developers would also help, but - even in the present climate - I really don't see much of a push for that.
According to the article, MS bought this anti-virus technology from a Romanian company. Hmmm.... Don't a lot of viruses originate in Eastern Europe? Perhaps old Bill has bought himself a gigantic Trojan Horse.
While I'm not certain that I completely trust Microsoft on this, it might make sense to have the antivirus scanner as a part of the OS. Better low-level access, as well as being able to intercept attempts by something like Outlook to execute arbitrary files. Having a unified place to control such actions might help security.
On the other hand, the major effect might just be to introduce a single point of failure/attack. It's certainly possible to argue that the variety of security software in use makes it harder to attack any given system. For evidence, look at the list of processes that the more sophisticated viruses try to stop.
Background: I do not customarily use an on-demand scanner. On occasion, I have loaded up a scanner because of suspicious behavior. My Windows box (patched up to date, firewalled) has had only one virus, a backdoor program that was installed when my daughter clicked a "video clip" that she received in an e-mail, before she understood what a spoofed address was. So I'm not convinced that antivirus software is as necessary as it is built up to be.
The ability to concentrate on one thing (attention span) is highly useful. I learned to apply it to schoolwork, so I was quite successful in high school. Find something that interests you, that you can obsess about. You can use that to train your attention span to more conscious control.
In the short run, I'd suggest that you read Paul Graham's essays Why Nerds Are Unpopular and Hackers And Painters, from his book that was reviewed on Slashdot this past Tuesday. The first has some insight on why you probably were not interested in school, and the second speaks somewhat to your gifts.
Which actually states that any sufficiently powerful formal system can express true propositions which cannot be proven. Typically, "sufficiently powerful" means self-referential to some degree; the system must be able to refer to a propostion within it, and the truth/falsehood of that proposition.
I am not a mathematician, though, so this may not be completely accurate. However, I am fairly sure that it is not difficult to compose a formal system which is provably complete.
My point was not that a camera in a public place is comparable to a camera in your home, only that your argument could be used equally well to justify a camera in your living room. My point was that the cameras transgress a specific principle that governs police information collection in a free society.
Whether or not the cameras are a good thing remains to be seen. I don't believe that they are justfied, on the grounds of principle, cost-effectiveness, and functional effectiveness. Aside from fact that these cameras are essentially being installed under false pretenses (terrorism prevention, as opposed to general crime prevention). I understand what you're saying, but I don't believe that it constitutes sufficient reason to install cameras. I respect your conclusion, based on your values, that it does.
For certain crimes, names and photographs are already being published. Note that these are people who have been arrested, not tried and convicted. I'd expect that the odds of being seen by anyone that you know on a police atation video monitor would be about the same as being physically observed being handcuffed and put into a police car, unless you had friends who were obsessive about watching the video feeds. Just because the feeds exist, it does not mean that everyone will sit there watching them.
In any case, that suggestion was ironic, not serious.
The principal is that, in general, police agencies are not supposed to collect information on citizens unless they have reason to believe that a crime has been committed. Body searches of random individuals are not permitted in public places. Your vehicle cannot be searched arbitrarily, even on a public highway. Now, it's not unreasonable to have enhanced security in some public venues, but this type of system implies that it's appropriate in all public places.
If you don't break the law, you will not have a problem.
The same could be said for any invasion of privacy. Camera inside your house or apartment? You're not committing a crime, why should you have a problem with it? That would be an extreme example, but this particular argument is specious.
Yes, I think that you've hit the nail on the head:
The network is part of a comprehensive strategy in the Baltimore area to spend $25 million in homeland security grants this year and next...
I'm still not sure that it's justified, though, and the way that they talked about expanding the system seems misconceived. There would seem to be a limited number of areas in which this sort of thing would really be cost-effective. City centers and heavily urbanized areas would be about it.
It's hard to quantify the deterrent effect, as opposed to simply moving the crime out of range of the cameras. A few extra police officers on the ground could prevent crime, rather than just observing it, and would likely have a far greater deterrent effect. For the cost of the system and the people to monitor it, you could likely put 15 extra officers in the area. I think that would be a better tradeoff.
If this is paid for by public funds, the video feeds should be available to everyone. In fact, we should also have a network of cameras monitoring the interiors of police stations, so that we (their employers) can monitor their performance. Same for elected officials.
Seriously, though, can anyone document a case in which surveillance cameras resulted in a terrorist attack being stopped? I presume that most airports have surveillance systems; they certainly didn't stop the 9/11 hijackers. So exactly what kind of activity are these cameras supposed to detect and stop? Unauthorized assemblies? Hmmmm, sounds like a dubious exercise of authority to me.
And here's the justification:
"We're at war," Schrader said.
Sounds more like a war on privacy to me. Of course, I suppose I could be wrong, and Baltimore's Inner Harbor area could be a strategic target for terrorists. These cameras will no doubt capture great images of an airliner crashing into a populated area, or a car bomb going off. We will be able to do a great job of locking the barn door after the horse has fled to the next county.
Slashdot Mirror
You rang? :-)
I agree. I'd rate The Dosadi Experiment as his best. They might have to pull in some background from Whipping Star, though. I do see a couple of potential pitfalls for a movie version (among them being how the Gowachin are represented, and the conspiracies within conspiracies nature of their civilization), but it would be tremendous if done right. I wish that Herbert had written more in the BuSab universe, rather than the somewhat tiresome later Dune sequels. Another interesting movie adaptation would be The Godmakers. That one is shorter, and could be told fairly well in two hour movie format.
Where do you buy your beer? At $10.50 apiece, I think that you're being cheated.
The Preview button is your friend.
Good analogy. I think that the basic principle should be that you can protect the expression (copyright) or the implementation (patent) of an idea, but you can't protect the idea itself. This is why "one-click ordering" was a bad patent. Sure, protect Amazon's implementation, but if anyone else wants to build their own, they should be free to do so.
Yes, that was Texas. And yes, the stupid law is still on the books. The reason that she got in trouble was that she sold them as marital aids, and gave advice on how to use them. If you sell them as "novelties", you're fine. Dallas has its share of "Condoms to Go" stores, and I'd guess that it would be illegal to sell much of their inventory for its obvious purpose.
:-)
Uh, not that I would, uh, ever go in there... (Looks over shoulder)
Thanks for the information. It's always important to get more than one view on things. I did catch a couple of references to Control Room when I was googling.
In regard to Roosevelt's foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack, could you point me at some reading on the subject (or the names of some of these younger historians)? My impression was that it was a fringe theory, predicated on either anti-semitism or an effort by neoconservative to smear the patron saint of the modern Democratic party (not an exact quote, but I've been unable to locate the source).
There's definitely something to be said for going to primary sources without preconceptions. I was privileged to have access to the original diaries of John Wilkes (circa 1765) and the original correspondence of Sen. Robert LaFolette (in the Library of Congress) in the course of earning a history degree. One must also be aware of the limitations of such sources, however. Despite being in the historical period of interest, they are hardly omniscient. And it is frequently incorrect to attribute motives, or even modes of action/response, from one time period to actors in another.
Your evaluation of Aljazeera does not mesh with what I have read (primarily Internet articles; the US press seems fairly useless if one is looking for good information on this subject). My impression is that actual hate for them is confined pretty much to authoritarian regimes, where an uncontrolled media voice stands to upset the applecart. Among the bulk of the populace, feelings range from identification with it as an Arab viewpoint to indifference to impatience (that is, not radical enough). I'd be interested in reading your source on this.
There's a support list on Yahoo Groups, which is also available through Gmane; the group address there is gmane.comp.windows.wtl.
Perhaps Gmail has changed the text of their invitation. Using the text of the message at the link above, I sent three messages (one unchanged, one with a single edit, and one with four edits) to my Yahoo address. All of them ended up in the Bulk folder. Do you have Yahoo's "spamguard" feature turned on?
I tried from my Gmail address as well. The unchanged message went straight to the Bulk folder. If I deleted a paragraph, it went to the inbox.
It's freeware, source is available, and the lists are stored in XML format.
If they want to make the OS try and spot suspicious activity and alert the user...
This is a really good idea. When I caught the virus that we did get, it was because ZoneAlarm told me that something was trying to make an outgoing connection that was not authorized. Unfortunately, the WinXP firewall does not seem to have that capability, which makes it somewhat substandard. The logs should at least be there, in case someone knowledgeable wants to look at them.
The Reuters article does mention GeCAD.
Yes, that goes without saying. But badly-behaved software is a fact of life. The fact the others are running Outlook decreases the security of my computer, so a preventative in the OS might be helpful. But it also (as I said above) introduces a single point of attack, which is a bad thing from a security analysis point of view.
Educating developers would also help, but - even in the present climate - I really don't see much of a push for that.
According to the article, MS bought this anti-virus technology from a Romanian company. Hmmm.... Don't a lot of viruses originate in Eastern Europe? Perhaps old Bill has bought himself a gigantic Trojan Horse.
While I'm not certain that I completely trust Microsoft on this, it might make sense to have the antivirus scanner as a part of the OS. Better low-level access, as well as being able to intercept attempts by something like Outlook to execute arbitrary files. Having a unified place to control such actions might help security.
On the other hand, the major effect might just be to introduce a single point of failure/attack. It's certainly possible to argue that the variety of security software in use makes it harder to attack any given system. For evidence, look at the list of processes that the more sophisticated viruses try to stop.
Background: I do not customarily use an on-demand scanner. On occasion, I have loaded up a scanner because of suspicious behavior. My Windows box (patched up to date, firewalled) has had only one virus, a backdoor program that was installed when my daughter clicked a "video clip" that she received in an e-mail, before she understood what a spoofed address was. So I'm not convinced that antivirus software is as necessary as it is built up to be.
The ability to concentrate on one thing (attention span) is highly useful. I learned to apply it to schoolwork, so I was quite successful in high school. Find something that interests you, that you can obsess about. You can use that to train your attention span to more conscious control.
In the short run, I'd suggest that you read Paul Graham's essays Why Nerds Are Unpopular and Hackers And Painters, from his book that was reviewed on Slashdot this past Tuesday. The first has some insight on why you probably were not interested in school, and the second speaks somewhat to your gifts.
Cool. Thanks for that link - very interesting.
Which actually states that any sufficiently powerful formal system can express true propositions which cannot be proven. Typically, "sufficiently powerful" means self-referential to some degree; the system must be able to refer to a propostion within it, and the truth/falsehood of that proposition.
I am not a mathematician, though, so this may not be completely accurate. However, I am fairly sure that it is not difficult to compose a formal system which is provably complete.
My point was not that a camera in a public place is comparable to a camera in your home, only that your argument could be used equally well to justify a camera in your living room. My point was that the cameras transgress a specific principle that governs police information collection in a free society.
Whether or not the cameras are a good thing remains to be seen. I don't believe that they are justfied, on the grounds of principle, cost-effectiveness, and functional effectiveness. Aside from fact that these cameras are essentially being installed under false pretenses (terrorism prevention, as opposed to general crime prevention). I understand what you're saying, but I don't believe that it constitutes sufficient reason to install cameras. I respect your conclusion, based on your values, that it does.
Thanks, this is exactly the kind of information that I'm interested in. It sounds like the data protection act is well-conceived.
For certain crimes, names and photographs are already being published. Note that these are people who have been arrested, not tried and convicted. I'd expect that the odds of being seen by anyone that you know on a police atation video monitor would be about the same as being physically observed being handcuffed and put into a police car, unless you had friends who were obsessive about watching the video feeds. Just because the feeds exist, it does not mean that everyone will sit there watching them.
In any case, that suggestion was ironic, not serious.
The principal is that, in general, police agencies are not supposed to collect information on citizens unless they have reason to believe that a crime has been committed. Body searches of random individuals are not permitted in public places. Your vehicle cannot be searched arbitrarily, even on a public highway. Now, it's not unreasonable to have enhanced security in some public venues, but this type of system implies that it's appropriate in all public places.
If you don't break the law, you will not have a problem.
The same could be said for any invasion of privacy. Camera inside your house or apartment? You're not committing a crime, why should you have a problem with it? That would be an extreme example, but this particular argument is specious.
Yes, I think that you've hit the nail on the head:
The network is part of a comprehensive strategy in the Baltimore area to spend $25 million in homeland security grants this year and next...
I'm still not sure that it's justified, though, and the way that they talked about expanding the system seems misconceived. There would seem to be a limited number of areas in which this sort of thing would really be cost-effective. City centers and heavily urbanized areas would be about it.
It's hard to quantify the deterrent effect, as opposed to simply moving the crime out of range of the cameras. A few extra police officers on the ground could prevent crime, rather than just observing it, and would likely have a far greater deterrent effect. For the cost of the system and the people to monitor it, you could likely put 15 extra officers in the area. I think that would be a better tradeoff.
If this is paid for by public funds, the video feeds should be available to everyone. In fact, we should also have a network of cameras monitoring the interiors of police stations, so that we (their employers) can monitor their performance. Same for elected officials.
Seriously, though, can anyone document a case in which surveillance cameras resulted in a terrorist attack being stopped? I presume that most airports have surveillance systems; they certainly didn't stop the 9/11 hijackers. So exactly what kind of activity are these cameras supposed to detect and stop? Unauthorized assemblies? Hmmmm, sounds like a dubious exercise of authority to me.
And here's the justification:
"We're at war," Schrader said.
Sounds more like a war on privacy to me. Of course, I suppose I could be wrong, and Baltimore's Inner Harbor area could be a strategic target for terrorists. These cameras will no doubt capture great images of an airliner crashing into a populated area, or a car bomb going off. We will be able to do a great job of locking the barn door after the horse has fled to the next county.
Good point. The hysteria over music on the net has made the climate very chilling. (Of course, the DMCA is part of that hysteria)