A particularly good film on the subject (which raises some interesting things to think about) is GATTACA. For those of you who haven't seen it, I would highly recommend it. (Kudos to OP for mentioning, too.)
GATTACA successfully raises some questions, but only manages to express the generic anti-progress knee-jerk rather than actually covering the real issues in any depth. Almost all the problems in the movie would have been solved by simple genetic privacy law; it's easy to make ponies, rainbows, and butterflies seem sinister if you set them in an Orwellian future.
The air waves are a public good and to avoid the "tragedy of the commons" it needs to be regulated, because we learned the hard way as the commons were already figuratively overgrazed.
That makes sense, as long as you're completely ignorant of physics and modern radio technology. Minimal regulation - even just a total transmission power cap - would be more than sufficient to avoid interference as long as the technology was given a little while to shake itself out.
What should happen: The Supreme Court rules against business method patents and manages to eliminate software patents entirely at the same time.
What will happen: The Supreme Court rules in support of business method patents and redefines "prior art" to mean "other US patents that haven't yet expired" at the same time. Lawyers rush to patent levers, gears, buttons (electrical, mechanical, and on clothing), etc.
Why would a pedophile want to do that when they can search the database where it is?
I'm pretty sure that this works the same as the corollary to Goodwin's law. When you bring up pedophiles or child molesters in an online discussion, you're an idiot, you've killed the thread, and your side loses the argument.
No. Those aren't serious idea-killing problems, those are minor engineering problems that have already been solved (each in a multitude of different ways). The problem is simply that a solid commercially viable product idea and source of funding have yet to be put together in the same room.
As a programming problem, it seems like an easy problem because it is. Thing is - it's not a programming problem. It's a security problem. As a security problem, the programmer is the most significant potential attacker. Does it still seem easy?
If the margin of victory was greater then 2 percent, then it should be non-issue as far as who is in office. But it should be fixed for the next election.
Unless you're actually serious about the importance of voting, in which case the response here is very simple: Throw out the invalid votes (all of them) and re-run the election.
"Verifiable" means you don't have to trust the implementation.
But that raises the next question: Verifiable by who?
Saying that there are some experts who can verify the proper execution of an election simply isn't good enough, at least not if you want to call that election "democratic". With paper ballots marked with pens and placed in a ballot box, any voter of normal intelligence can observe an election, understand the security properties needed at each step, and see for themselves if those security properties are maintained. Any alternate system must maintain this property.
Call me when Google uses a "small team" to convert a couple of hundred undocumented or poorly documented apps written in C and running on an old system like VMS since the mid-80s.
More keyboards makes the situation moderately more complicated, but snooping doesn't require anything especially more difficult. It's probably even possible to separate out the keystrokes based on which keyboard they came from entirely based on the characteristics of the signals.
The practice of expecting that a person's possessions go to their family and/or friends when they die is older than human civilization. It's what will happen by default unless society interferes and confiscates things. In contrast, with copyright it's every single other person in society who's being imposed on and having their ability to use their possessions constrained.
Without some sort of protection you risk there being no way for a new business, with little capital, to bring a significant idea to production.
This is the urban legend that copyright / patent proponents keep talking about, but it simply doesn't reflect reality. Getting into a new market takes a bunch of effort, and revolutionary ideas usually seem foolish to established players, so if you actually have a new good idea you've basically got nothing to worry about from anyone else until you've become established.
The best number we can get now is for the Tesla Roadster, which is pretty overpowered compared to a commuter car. According to Wikipedia, it goes 4.85 miles per kWh. Here's the chart for electricity prices: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html
Taking the price for my state, 17.74 cents / kWh, which is a high price nationally, that gives 3.7 cents per mile or 27 miles/dollar. In comparison, 30 miles per gallon at $1.75/gallon is about 17 miles/dollar.
You see - with "higher capacity / cheaper batteries in future cars" you won't need internal combustion engine in them at all.
Internal combustion engines as range extenders make a lot of sense, and they'll continue to make a lot of sense until battery technology gets *drastically* better than it is now or there stops being a gas station on every corner. ICEs are cheap, especially as range extenders. I really can't see any reason *not* to put one in an electric car in the next couple decades.
None of them did it because they were bored. They did it because they were lazy and didn't care.
What's the difference? If the material interested them rather than boring them, then they'd care. If they cared, they wouldn't be lazy.
Teaching is really simple: If the students are interested then they'll learn. If they aren't, they won't. Some teaching methods will increase student interest, others will decrease it. Making moral judgments about the student's dedication or whatever is a pointless waste of time.
The only thing it might stop is automated scans, and your application shouldn't have those holes to begin with. It'll have basically no effect on targeted attacks (attackers know about proxies), and it will annoy the hell out of the - unknown number of - visitors you would have from these countries.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't it be sufficient to use the host random pool as a seed for some sort of strong PRNG?
If we don't play god, who will?
GATTACA successfully raises some questions, but only manages to express the generic anti-progress knee-jerk rather than actually covering the real issues in any depth. Almost all the problems in the movie would have been solved by simple genetic privacy law; it's easy to make ponies, rainbows, and butterflies seem sinister if you set them in an Orwellian future.
That makes sense, as long as you're completely ignorant of physics and modern radio technology. Minimal regulation - even just a total transmission power cap - would be more than sufficient to avoid interference as long as the technology was given a little while to shake itself out.
What should happen: The Supreme Court rules against business method patents and manages to eliminate software patents entirely at the same time.
What will happen: The Supreme Court rules in support of business method patents and redefines "prior art" to mean "other US patents that haven't yet expired" at the same time. Lawyers rush to patent levers, gears, buttons (electrical, mechanical, and on clothing), etc.
If it gets granted, how much lawyer time will it take to get overturned later?
This is a setup for a denial of service attack on the budgets / legal resources of smaller companies in future legal engagements.
How about maybe... malnutrition? Or, to cheat horribly, old age?
I'm all for ripping on religion, but you've got to keep your sense of scale. Religion mostly doesn't kill people, just robs their lives of meaning.
I'm pretty sure that this works the same as the corollary to Goodwin's law. When you bring up pedophiles or child molesters in an online discussion, you're an idiot, you've killed the thread, and your side loses the argument.
No. Those aren't serious idea-killing problems, those are minor engineering problems that have already been solved (each in a multitude of different ways). The problem is simply that a solid commercially viable product idea and source of funding have yet to be put together in the same room.
Huh? I run Gnome. It does what it needs to do and keeps out of the way the rest of the time. What more could you ask for?
It sure seems like an easy problem, doesn't it.
As a programming problem, it seems like an easy problem because it is. Thing is - it's not a programming problem. It's a security problem. As a security problem, the programmer is the most significant potential attacker. Does it still seem easy?
Unless you're actually serious about the importance of voting, in which case the response here is very simple: Throw out the invalid votes (all of them) and re-run the election.
But that raises the next question: Verifiable by who?
Saying that there are some experts who can verify the proper execution of an election simply isn't good enough, at least not if you want to call that election "democratic". With paper ballots marked with pens and placed in a ballot box, any voter of normal intelligence can observe an election, understand the security properties needed at each step, and see for themselves if those security properties are maintained. Any alternate system must maintain this property.
If you're desperate, you take bad deals. It's worth a certain amount of effort to avoid being in that position.
Why would those systems need to get rewritten?
You're absolutely missing the point of paying teachers more. If teachers, in general, were paid more you might have gotten *different* teachers.
More keyboards makes the situation moderately more complicated, but snooping doesn't require anything especially more difficult. It's probably even possible to separate out the keystrokes based on which keyboard they came from entirely based on the characteristics of the signals.
You should get paid if you're working. That's how it works for everyone else. Authors and musicians aren't special.
The practice of expecting that a person's possessions go to their family and/or friends when they die is older than human civilization. It's what will happen by default unless society interferes and confiscates things. In contrast, with copyright it's every single other person in society who's being imposed on and having their ability to use their possessions constrained.
This is the urban legend that copyright / patent proponents keep talking about, but it simply doesn't reflect reality. Getting into a new market takes a bunch of effort, and revolutionary ideas usually seem foolish to established players, so if you actually have a new good idea you've basically got nothing to worry about from anyone else until you've become established.
The best number we can get now is for the Tesla Roadster, which is pretty overpowered compared to a commuter car. According to Wikipedia, it goes 4.85 miles per kWh. Here's the chart for electricity prices: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html
Taking the price for my state, 17.74 cents / kWh, which is a high price nationally, that gives 3.7 cents per mile or 27 miles/dollar. In comparison, 30 miles per gallon at $1.75/gallon is about 17 miles/dollar.
Internal combustion engines as range extenders make a lot of sense, and they'll continue to make a lot of sense until battery technology gets *drastically* better than it is now or there stops being a gas station on every corner. ICEs are cheap, especially as range extenders. I really can't see any reason *not* to put one in an electric car in the next couple decades.
What's the difference? If the material interested them rather than boring them, then they'd care. If they cared, they wouldn't be lazy.
Teaching is really simple: If the students are interested then they'll learn. If they aren't, they won't. Some teaching methods will increase student interest, others will decrease it. Making moral judgments about the student's dedication or whatever is a pointless waste of time.
This is a bad idea.
The only thing it might stop is automated scans, and your application shouldn't have those holes to begin with. It'll have basically no effect on targeted attacks (attackers know about proxies), and it will annoy the hell out of the - unknown number of - visitors you would have from these countries.
People who are always suspicious are paranoid. People who are never suspicious are fools.