> [...] another nation chooses to attack us by surprise (as al-Muhajir tried to do).
So you don't think presumption of innocence applies in this case either? Try "as al-Muhajir is accused of". There is significant doubt about whether he's actually guilty, (and if so, what he's actually guilty _of_). I think more people would be more accepting of harsh imprisonment conditions and so on if he were caught red-handed putting the finishing touches on some highly radioactive material. (I still don't think anyone deserves to be treated like he has been, but more people would be ok with it than is actually the case.)
Of course it _shouldn't_ matter, but apparently it does if the customs people don't like the cut of your jib. I think the AC was just pointing out how ridiculous the situation is right now.
The same applies to the concepts of software. Yeah, you know what, a lot of patents are stupid. But not all are. We can all say after the fact that "ohh, thats obvious!" - but where's the beef? Where is the proof it was obvious? How can you show it? The idea of a "taskbar" is obvious right? Then where was it before MS got the patent? Who thougt of it first? Why did it take 7 software engineers to come up with it, to make it a reality?
Bad example. That _is_ the sort of thing that, once you think about it, you can just code up. The software patent I'm _least_ opposed to is MP3. It takes a lot of time and effort fine tuning things to get a perceptual codec to sound good and get good compression. I think it's reasonable to award a patent for it. (The main thing I don't like is that Fraunhoffer let it catch on and then held the world for ransom, like Unisys with GIFs. That has nothing to do with whether the patent should have been awarded in the first place, and everything to do with people's willingness to take the bait when it was dangled in front of them. Overall, the situation really isn't too bad, unless Free software projects actually start getting shut down over it. Vorbis 1.0 is out, so who needs mp3 anyway, though:)
I'm don't have any way to prove that it didn't take work by UI experts to get a good setup for the taskbar, and I'm not familiar with the patent in question, but it would be lame to award a patent on task-bars in general, since that doesn't take any work beyond the flash of insight. If the patent is on the Windoze tb specifically, and how the buttons are arranged, then that's (slightly) different.
IIRC, you can transform the discrete log problem to the factoring problem in polynomial time. Also IIRC, Shor's algorithm (for quantum computers) can solve discrete logs as well as factor, so the problems are obviously related.
However, proving RH does not magically enable instant factoring. The best factoring algs already assume RH.
I've seen a few posts from people who sound like they know what they're talking about that say that the current best factoring algorithms ARE based on the assumption that RH and its consequences for distribution of primes are true. It's not like you can use RH to factor in O(1) time or anything.
> Reimanns Hypothesis puts an upper limit on the number of primes.
There is an infinite number of primes. If you think you've found them all, then multiply them all and add one: tada, a new prime number. Do you mean that the RH says something about what class of infinity (Aleph null vs. Aleph one, or something) of primes there are?
Authors like Robert Sawyer are writing great SF that in no way resembles space opera. Predicting the demise of SF is premature.
Re:Why are integral trees radially oriented?
on
Ask Larry Niven
·
· Score: 1
Don't ask Larry Niven, he'd just tell you to read Neutron Star.
If you know calculus: F = G*m*M/r^2 = k/r^2. dF/dr = -2*k/r^3. dF/dr is the tidal force. In 3D for a non-symmetric field, the tidal force acts along the gradiant.
> 1. It might work, and we would have a defense against missile attacks.
The Reagan-era Star Wars program was not about defence. It involves satellites that would be easy for anyone with the tech to build an ICBM to disable before launching the ballistic missle, and planes with lasers that would be similarly easy to take out in preparation for an attack. That kind of Star Wars is an offensive weapon, useful for suprise attacks when the enemy doesn't have time to work around your defenses. BTW, the G.W. Bush's current plans fall into that category as well. For more info, check out Robert Bowman, a retired Air Force dude who was on the Star Wars program before it was called that, when it was secret and was about defence, not offence.
Re:Why is there no religion in Known Space
on
Ask Larry Niven
·
· Score: 1
The fact that religion is a major part of the Dune storyline is not a counterexample to "I know most SF writers aren't big on religion". I think it's fair to say that _most_ SF stories don't include religion to any significant degree.
OTOH, Dune isn't the only story involving religion. Carl Sagan's Contact, and Robert Sawyer's Calculating God (and some of Sawyer's other books) include a lot of religion, and discuss it seriously. (In particular, actual Earth religions (e.g. some characters in both books are Christian), not Dune's made up ones.)
Anyway, if you're trying to reconcile science and religion, and decide what you believe and/or think, definitely read both those books.
Re:When and how will the tech arms race tip?
on
Ask Larry Niven
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· Score: 1
Yeah, with nobody propping them up, dictators go down. Consider this, though:
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable - JFK
I think there's hope for some parts of the world to see positive change without bloodshed.
BTW, the NATO peacekeepers in Serbia are getting ready to leave, and are passing on their duties to local police and stuff like that. Of course, it takes a lot of effort to get rid of land mines, so it still sucks to live there, compared to most western countries.
Google found a site where you can buy an e-book of it. They have an excerpt, too. Putting a line from the excerpt into google turned up a couple sites with a full copy. The first one doesn't work anymore, but google has it cached. I found another site that has all stories from the Neutron Star collection in one text file.
Not in this day and age, because everyone uses strong hashes. I suppose the error-detection code that they preserved was CRC-32, or an checksum (add up all the bytes). There is no known way to efficiently figure out how to change a file without changing its MD5 or SHA1 hash. Any cryptographically strong hash will make undetectable modification computationally infeasible.
A steg tool is its own antidote. Just run it on executable to see what comes out. If what comes out is encrypted, ship them off the Guantanamo bay and throw away the key.
BTW, you might not think of your country as a police state, because it probably isn't _for you_. For some people, it IS, now.
Hydan doesn't give you any deniability, does it? I just read the artice; I haven't tried the program, but if you use a well-known method of embedding info, it's not very steganographic anymore. The bad guys can just run hydan on your executables and see what comes out.
If you want deniability even in the face of torture, you want rubber hose crypto. You might also want to use an authentication method more complicated than a password, so they'll have to torture you in the computer room instead of the dungeon, and they can't break your fingers or damage your higher brain functions.
So you don't shoot yourself in the foot by mistake. It's a paranoia thing, but there could be a trojaned version of something in the directory you're in, and you could run it without even realizing it. This could happen after you unpack a tarball or something, or on a multi-user system root has to be careful not to have . in the path when cded to a user-owned directory. The user could have put an executable there.
Besides that, being explicit is never a bad thing when you're showing an example.
Linksys WMP11 (pci card) version 2.7 uses Intersil prism2 chipset, v2.7 uses Broadcom 4301 Same deal for the WPC11, except that the switch to Broadcom happens with v3.0.
The computer stores in Halifax, NS (Canada) all have the 2.7 version, so I was out of luck. I ended up buying a D-Link 614+ AP/router, and plugging it into my ethernet instead of my PCI bus. (The 802.11b+ that the TI chipset does uses PBCC modulation at 22Mb/s, and is an optional part of the 802.11g standard, so if I get some G hardware, it can talk to my AP at 22 (if it supports PBCC22, probably have to be another TI chipset.))
> How do you learn any of this stuff other than trial and error?
Read the source and the spoilers. If I tried to play nethack as if I were actually my @ character, well, I'd probably just get the hell out of the dungeon and live a long life telling stories about how much ass I kicked, but that I couldn't find a taxidermist to make trophies out of all the stuff I killed... What I find fun is to figure out the game and enjoy thinking about the game system and possibilities, not actually doing a lot of stuff. I also play in non-scoring discovery mode.
I don't play very much. I played a lot for a couple days, but I haven't played much since. Still, I could easily see playing some more sometime.
Baldur's Gate or Deus Ex are, to my mind, much more immersive than either NetHack or Diablo, not primarily because of the graphics, but because it's possible to do well in these games by thinking like a participant in the game world, rather than as an external player of the game.
Good point. That's something that really bugs me about some games that want to be immersive. I sometimes give up on a game when I've discovered enough things about the system that I'm just jumping through its hoops instead of feeling like I'm actually doing anything. Some games play ok without being immersive, esp. simple games like tron.
> I'm aware that some people like the NetHack style of gameplay, but frankly, they're wrong.
I suppose people who like to watch TV instead of read books are similarly wrong? (and not because of the content, just the medium.) Things don't have to be immersive to be fun.
So read the source code while you play. It's more fun that way, because you can vicariously enjoy the situations where the messages you see in the code would be printed, as well as die less so you don't piss yourself off so much.
disassemble! Are you some kind of masochist? I just read the source when I'm playing. (I like thinking about programming and design as much as just playing, so I'm consciously doing this to have more fun, not just because it makes it easier.) When "You sense a faint wave of psychic energy", you can just grep -r for it in/usr/local/src/nethack/src, and find out that there's a mind flayer on the level.
BTW, the nethack source is beautiful. Normally, C code that has to deal with lots of text looks really bad because it can't trust the string to fit in a buffer, etc. Nethack's UI paradigm seems to work really well with C, and the availalbe C library functions. I love some of the global variable names; There's code like if (u.have.amulet ) {
Stuff if you have the Amulet of Yendor }
The other great thing about reading the source code is that you can be entertained by the messages that would be printed if you did certain things, without actually having to spend a lot of time playing to do them. Some of them are corner cases that you might not think of doing. (Read the code for dealing with getting seduced by succubi/incubi. Best message printed by nethack: You sit on the sink. You feel very attracted to the incubus...:)
Yikes, I don't remember taking note of that. I wonder if he was serious, or just feeling bitter and exaggerating. It's not going to get bad enough to start much of a revolution.
People have to do something, but we both know they're not going to. They're too busy watching TV. We don't need perpetual war to keep people complacent, we just need a Hollywood that occupies most people's every idle thought. Orwell didn't see that coming.:(
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> [...] another nation chooses to attack us by surprise (as al-Muhajir tried to do).
So you don't think presumption of innocence applies in this case either? Try "as al-Muhajir is accused of". There is significant doubt about whether he's actually guilty, (and if so, what he's actually guilty _of_). I think more people would be more accepting of harsh imprisonment conditions and so on if he were caught red-handed putting the finishing touches on some highly radioactive material. (I still don't think anyone deserves to be treated like he has been, but more people would be ok with it than is actually the case.)
Of course it _shouldn't_ matter, but apparently it does if the customs people don't like the cut of your jib. I think the AC was just pointing out how ridiculous the situation is right now.
Bad example. That _is_ the sort of thing that, once you think about it, you can just code up. The software patent I'm _least_ opposed to is MP3. It takes a lot of time and effort fine tuning things to get a perceptual codec to sound good and get good compression. I think it's reasonable to award a patent for it. (The main thing I don't like is that Fraunhoffer let it catch on and then held the world for ransom, like Unisys with GIFs. That has nothing to do with whether the patent should have been awarded in the first place, and everything to do with people's willingness to take the bait when it was dangled in front of them. Overall, the situation really isn't too bad, unless Free software projects actually start getting shut down over it. Vorbis 1.0 is out, so who needs mp3 anyway, though
I'm don't have any way to prove that it didn't take work by UI experts to get a good setup for the taskbar, and I'm not familiar with the patent in question, but it would be lame to award a patent on task-bars in general, since that doesn't take any work beyond the flash of insight. If the patent is on the Windoze tb specifically, and how the buttons are arranged, then that's (slightly) different.
IIRC, you can transform the discrete log problem to the factoring problem in polynomial time. Also IIRC, Shor's algorithm (for quantum computers) can solve discrete logs as well as factor, so the problems are obviously related.
However, proving RH does not magically enable instant factoring. The best factoring algs already assume RH.
I've seen a few posts from people who sound like they know what they're talking about that say that the current best factoring algorithms ARE based on the assumption that RH and its consequences for distribution of primes are true. It's not like you can use RH to factor in O(1) time or anything.
Maybe, but it will probably be a complex number. (My karma is imaginary... :)
> Reimanns Hypothesis puts an upper limit on the number of primes.
There is an infinite number of primes. If you think you've found them all, then multiply them all and add one: tada, a new prime number. Do you mean that the RH says something about what class of infinity (Aleph null vs. Aleph one, or something) of primes there are?
I've read about nuclear-explosion-powered space ships before. Project Orion, in the '60s, was a serious attempt at this. google for more links.
> I think that a good alien psychology and sociology is actually more important than an original anatomy, and that really made the book worth reading.
Check out Illegal Alien and Calculating God, by Robert Sawyer. Great detail about well thought-out aliens.
Authors like Robert Sawyer are writing great SF that in no way resembles space opera. Predicting the demise of SF is premature.
Don't ask Larry Niven, he'd just tell you to read Neutron Star .
If you know calculus: F = G*m*M/r^2 = k/r^2. dF/dr = -2*k/r^3. dF/dr is the tidal force. In 3D for a non-symmetric field, the tidal force acts along the gradiant.
> 1. It might work, and we would have a defense against missile attacks.
The Reagan-era Star Wars program was not about defence. It involves satellites that would be easy for anyone with the tech to build an ICBM to disable before launching the ballistic missle, and planes with lasers that would be similarly easy to take out in preparation for an attack. That kind of Star Wars is an offensive weapon, useful for suprise attacks when the enemy doesn't have time to work around your defenses. BTW, the G.W. Bush's current plans fall into that category as well. For more info, check out Robert Bowman, a retired Air Force dude who was on the Star Wars program before it was called that, when it was secret and was about defence, not offence.
The fact that religion is a major part of the Dune storyline is not a counterexample to "I know most SF writers aren't big on religion". I think it's fair to say that _most_ SF stories don't include religion to any significant degree.
OTOH, Dune isn't the only story involving religion. Carl Sagan's Contact, and Robert Sawyer's Calculating God (and some of Sawyer's other books) include a lot of religion, and discuss it seriously. (In particular, actual Earth religions (e.g. some characters in both books are Christian), not Dune's made up ones.)
Anyway, if you're trying to reconcile science and religion, and decide what you believe and/or think, definitely read both those books.
Yeah, with nobody propping them up, dictators go down. Consider this, though:
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable - JFK
I think there's hope for some parts of the world to see positive change without bloodshed.
BTW, the NATO peacekeepers in Serbia are getting ready to leave, and are passing on their duties to local police and stuff like that. Of course, it takes a lot of effort to get rid of land mines, so it still sucks to live there, compared to most western countries.
Google found a site where you can buy an e-book of it. They have an excerpt, too. Putting a line from the excerpt into google turned up a couple sites with a full copy. The first one doesn't work anymore, but google has it cached. I found another site that has all stories from the Neutron Star collection in one text file.
> Those guys of SecurityFocus must be really stupid, since cavity virus have been around for ages.
ignorant != stupid
Not in this day and age, because everyone uses strong hashes. I suppose the error-detection code that they preserved was CRC-32, or an checksum (add up all the bytes). There is no known way to efficiently figure out how to change a file without changing its MD5 or SHA1 hash. Any cryptographically strong hash will make undetectable modification computationally infeasible.
A steg tool is its own antidote. Just run it on executable to see what comes out. If what comes out is encrypted, ship them off the Guantanamo bay and throw away the key.
BTW, you might not think of your country as a police state, because it probably isn't _for you_. For some people, it IS, now.
Hydan doesn't give you any deniability, does it? I just read the artice; I haven't tried the program, but if you use a well-known method of embedding info, it's not very steganographic anymore. The bad guys can just run hydan on your executables and see what comes out.
If you want deniability even in the face of torture, you want rubber hose crypto. You might also want to use an authentication method more complicated than a password, so they'll have to torture you in the computer room instead of the dungeon, and they can't break your fingers or damage your higher brain functions.
> why isn't . the default path in 2003?
So you don't shoot yourself in the foot by mistake. It's a paranoia thing, but there could be a trojaned version of something in the directory you're in, and you could run it without even realizing it. This could happen after you unpack a tarball or something, or on a multi-user system root has to be careful not to have . in the path when cded to a user-owned directory. The user could have put an executable there.
Besides that, being explicit is never a bad thing when you're showing an example.
Linksys WMP11 (pci card) version 2.7 uses Intersil prism2 chipset, v2.7 uses Broadcom 4301
Same deal for the WPC11, except that the switch to Broadcom happens with v3.0.
The computer stores in Halifax, NS (Canada) all have the 2.7 version, so I was out of luck. I ended up buying a D-Link 614+ AP/router, and plugging it into my ethernet instead of my PCI bus. (The 802.11b+ that the TI chipset does uses PBCC modulation at 22Mb/s, and is an optional part of the 802.11g standard, so if I get some G hardware, it can talk to my AP at 22 (if it supports PBCC22, probably have to be another TI chipset.))
Read the source and the spoilers. If I tried to play nethack as if I were actually my @ character, well, I'd probably just get the hell out of the dungeon and live a long life telling stories about how much ass I kicked, but that I couldn't find a taxidermist to make trophies out of all the stuff I killed... What I find fun is to figure out the game and enjoy thinking about the game system and possibilities, not actually doing a lot of stuff. I also play in non-scoring discovery mode.
I don't play very much. I played a lot for a couple days, but I haven't played much since. Still, I could easily see playing some more sometime.
Good point. That's something that really bugs me about some games that want to be immersive. I sometimes give up on a game when I've discovered enough things about the system that I'm just jumping through its hoops instead of feeling like I'm actually doing anything. Some games play ok without being immersive, esp. simple games like tron.
> I'm aware that some people like the NetHack style of gameplay, but frankly, they're wrong.
I suppose people who like to watch TV instead of read books are similarly wrong? (and not because of the content, just the medium.) Things don't have to be immersive to be fun.
> They thought of everything?
So read the source code while you play. It's more fun that way, because you can vicariously enjoy the situations where the messages you see in the code would be printed, as well as die less so you don't piss yourself off so much.
disassemble! Are you some kind of masochist? I just read the source when I'm playing. (I like thinking about programming and design as much as just playing, so I'm consciously doing this to have more fun, not just because it makes it easier.) When "You sense a faint wave of psychic energy", you can just grep -r for it in /usr/local/src/nethack/src, and find out that there's a mind flayer on the level.
... :)
BTW, the nethack source is beautiful. Normally, C code that has to deal with lots of text looks really bad because it can't trust the string to fit in a buffer, etc. Nethack's UI paradigm seems to work really well with C, and the availalbe C library functions. I love some of the global variable names; There's code like
if (u.have.amulet ) {
Stuff if you have the Amulet of Yendor
}
The other great thing about reading the source code is that you can be entertained by the messages that would be printed if you did certain things, without actually having to spend a lot of time playing to do them. Some of them are corner cases that you might not think of doing. (Read the code for dealing with getting seduced by succubi/incubi. Best message printed by nethack: You sit on the sink. You feel very attracted to the incubus
Yikes, I don't remember taking note of that. I wonder if he was serious, or just feeling bitter and exaggerating. It's not going to get bad enough to start much of a revolution.
:(
People have to do something, but we both know they're not going to. They're too busy watching TV. We don't need perpetual war to keep people complacent, we just need a Hollywood that occupies most people's every idle thought. Orwell didn't see that coming.