The law, although no doubt directed due to moralistic stupidity etc, is already something *most* public institutions do currently to mitigate liability. We operate as businesses in that respect, since a parent can sue for damages even more readily than a private institution and it is much easier to just block myspace than to wade through the crap to find the few gems.
The problem with poorly designed filters is supposed to be taken care of by allowing users with legitimate need the ability to bypass those filters. I see no reason, research wise, for MOST of the population to ever need to access Myspace. Other than someone on researching an anthropological paper Myspace is garbage, and a waste of time for users.
There are other venues to perform the tasks mentioned, and even walkthroughs detailed with pretty pictures that provide the information even more readily than Myspace. Libraries are for research, not for playing around. Going on a system and surfing porn, playing flash games, or posting naked pics of their boyfriend on myspace is not research and is diverting resources from others who may need to use those systems for legitimate research.
Not to mention, viewing many Myspace/Porn/Stumbleupon pages could result in the sexual harassment of people around the viewer as they are subjected to the same imagery with no other recourse but to leave.
... Liane: And my boy Eric once Had my picture on his shelf But now when I see him he tells me to fuck myself! Sheila: Well, blame Canada Everyone: Blame Canada Sheila: It seems that everything's gone wrong Since Canada came along Everyone: Blame Canada Blame Canada Copy Guy: They're not even a real country anyway...
Screen readers shine in a shell as do brail displays. This is a non-starter. The problem is with the condescending attitude and the expectation that *EVERYONE* who uses *nix should be able to perform CLI judo is the problem.
How many end users open up a command shell in Windows to do anything? Hell you can barely even install most graphics drivers in a command shell (and no I don't mean initiating the executable) as every time we rebuild our unattended windows installs means fussying through piles of doc on how the installers work.
The mastery of a system for the end user is not their goal when working on a computer. They are aiming at performing tasks, and using their computer as a tool for expediting real world tasks or for entertainment. Opening a black box and typing commands into it's innards is esoteric, unfriendly, and doesn't relate to much real world stuff. Configuration is a hassle to end users, and making it less of a hassle is the goal of a good UI developer. Ubuntu is supposed to be for real people, not just the unix trolls under the bridge. (And "just./blah-command-version.sh $args" is a fsking unix troll.) The ideal being that the environment, the GUI displayed should contain all that the average user will need to perform their common tasks. And if someone has a Graphics adapter that isn't supported and requires CLI interaction to get working, it isn't ideal.
It's worse than that (for me anyways) here's the data I pulled (each page was opened in a fresh browser eliminating the memory cache falacy of the yahoo search being 20mb or whatever earlier stated.)
They'd be better off aiming at Spyware companies as they are the #1 reason I, and my collegues, get contacted to build new computers outside the workplace. At the institution where I do work, we have had measures against spyware for over 4 years now and there are systems running XP that are twice that age in our environment.
Spyware drives upgrades. Since a user's computer is "too slow" to "open the internet" they get a new one. Not understanding a drive whipe + antispyware would do em good for what they used to do without a problem. Computers are nebulous to most users, much the way cars are to many/.ers. They don't see any of the cylinders being pushed by micro-explosions when cranking over, it's all just flashing words and pictures. When the flashing words flash slower, and the pretty pictures take longer to come up their "computer is to slow."
Good luck trying to explain it's all the flashing words and pretty pictures making their computer slower.
Now as far as the home user goes you're absolutely right. There's little reason (besides DirectX 11 or some equally abhorrant abomonation) to upgrade to Vista unless you need a certain feature only it can provide. However, microsoft has been really good about making their next release NECESSARY to compete for X reason. Now to the intelligent technologist that marketing bullshit isn't anything new, but to the devoted follower it is proof positive that shit needs to be replaced.
They'll create some *native* mode that offers *better support* for *higher end platforms* in their next iteration of domain services that requires you only run vista to get the full benefit of their management environment or some hogwash to that effect. Just wait the MCSE's eat that shit up.
I hope this guy is well protected, and doesn't have M$ source access, or his high visibility may bring code leak questions to the project. It is so damn close to being a reality it just needs a little work. Last I checked the project was so close I was able to run the executables made for ReactOS in winxp/win2k.
The problem is sometimes this cross bidding can span dozens of accounts. Especially if you are bidding on one of the 10k++ rating powerseller auctions. It might be a fun SF project to write a little (insert favorite quicky language here) (script/proggy/ui) to show the relationships between low rating bidders (less than 5% of seller's rating.) Odds are one or two people will buy from each other on occasion. But you start going beyond that and things are bound to get frigging obvious.
When doing it by hand, its hard to track down dozens, sometime hundreds of users to find relationships... Seems like a good opportunity for libwww, wget, or something equally simplistic.
It's funny because the 92 is nearly identical to the 89 except for the keyboard interface. I guess they don't care if you bring in pre-recorded answers, just as long as you can't record the current test at qwerty speeds...
I could find the reference if I really cared enough to wade through the text of the godawful sequel, but tbh it'd be a waste of my time. AFAIR Ender's awareness and the AI's sentience transcended simultaneously by destroying the Giant and subverting the rules of the Giant's game forcing them both into unknown territory. The later rapid growth of awareness achieved by the connection with the Queen mind sounds more like the induction you're talking about.
Although I suppose it's all fictional, and all up for debate unless the author chimes in.
From the wiki: Due to his extremely high aptitude for tactics and leadership and to the teachers' deadline to ready him for the coming war, Ender is advanced through his training much faster than the other students. He has just succeeded in making his first real friend, Alai, when he is yanked out of basic training and assigned straight to Salamander Army, under the command of prideful Bonzo Madrid. Battle School revolves (literally) around the Battle Room, where 41-man armies fight in a zero-gravity form of laser tag. Ender, who never got the standard training for these battles, is tutored by Petra Arkanian, but ordered by Bonzo to never fire his weapon in battle. Eventually, though, he defies these orders to save Salamander from certain defeat, earning Bonzo respect for "his" tactical brilliance. Bonzo, however, sees only defiance and trades Ender to Rat Army, whose commander, Rose de Nose, places Ender in Dink Meeker's toon. The elder Dink begins to look after Ender. Meanwhile, Ender's psychological development is monitored by the "Mind Fantasy Game", a complex computer game embedded in the school's computer network, and manipulated to a large extent by Colonel Graff. Later, Colonel Graff asks Ender's beloved sister Valentine to send an encouraging letter to Ender in response to potential psychological issues caused by the very machine designed to monitor them.
Later in the "fix the plot" books it is revealed the "Mind Fantasy Game" was a complex directed artificial intelligence which later transcended to being sentient.
Danegeld IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:-- "We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:-- "Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray, So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:--
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"
Will be? I already get spanish language telemarketing auto dialer messages on my skype account, luckily I can just "Block" but still. The idiots^H^H^H^H^Hmarketeers are out there and their numbers are growing. It's not really a question in my mind of when, but how bad it's going to get.
Re:slashdot become marketing troll
on
Wikinomics
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Don't sugar coat it, don't hide behind semantics, don't use the clever writer's alegory... You wrote this as an attempt to drive business to your product. It's quite simple economics. Now then, if you happen to help a fellow writer, who you may (or may not) have a social relationship with hey all the better.
Re:slashdot become marketing troll
on
Wikinomics
·
· Score: 1
Nah, the change isn't in the utter shite that's posted, as that's been the same crap different day as long as I've been reading/. It's the response and the metamoderation that goes on that's changed. There's bound to be a half dozen carpet-bagging grass roots shills posting any moment and a few dozen more metamods that disagree with your overly pessimistic "technical" evaluation of the obviously editorial article modding you "Over-rated."
Businesses have embraced Forums, wikis and the rest that makes "web2.0" and have flooded it with marketing hype crap. Wikipedia has it's own problems with public relations firm shills, and I'm betting there's little or no depth on this "shifting" paradigm in the afformentioned slashvertisment.
Looking around it may not seem that bad, but since I've grown up with the following expectations I'll just repeat them:
1. While enrolled in education, everything I do or say on a campus is subject to "restricted" rights 2. An animal can determine whether or not there's a 4th amendment allowance to search me 3. I can be told to take medication or be placed on the dole (if 'diagnosed' with a 'mental condition') 4. My phones are probably tapped at some point in a domestic communication, and are definitely tapped at least once on the way out of the country (have been since the 70-80's see:echelon) 5. My internet communication is probably tapped domestically (if I gotta go through Mae west etc or any SF pop there's a good chance) and internationally at least once there's a sniffer present. 6. My electricity bill is public information (used as a 4th amendment allowance to search homes) 7. The expectation of anonymity of a person is no longer allowed (you MUST provide your identity if the secret^H^H^H^H^H^H police ask for it.)
Need I continue? I'm sure I could, but it just gets depressing after that point... did I say depressing? I mean It's great that this is happening! Why wouldn't I want the world to be a "safer" place?
Nintendo is responsible as all hell, their games are too good obviously! Why else would people be hurting themselves getting all excited over a silly game! They must be using foul technology to trigger endorphine and adrenaline release to make their games more exciting and addicting!
They must take responsibility and lower the quality and excitement quotient of their games, obviously./sarcasm
FFS you shouldn't need to tell people a billion times not to chuck something. Such that when they do, and that something collides with something else the person should be thinking "OMG I'm an idiot." not "OMG sue the bastard who made that something!" I guess this is what we get for having gulgafrinchams in our midst.
A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts -- physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on -- remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!
- Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, v. 1, p. 3-10
(This lecture is also one of the six lectures featured in a book &
audio edition entitled "Six Easy Pieces")
I was reading Feyman's memoirs just before I read this, so please excuse it did affected me a little. What may be perfectly easy to understand to a game theorist and can be summed up in one dilemma can easily take a few dozen pages to describe to the uninitiated. Similarly there are years of courses to understand the basic foundation upon which theoretical mathematicians don't even have to think of consciously. And finally what to a hacker may be plain as day may be completely counterintuitive to the way the rest of the world thinks. (In this case, any output can be converted to input, and fed back out again.)
Further, because the concept is known by a vendor as a "possible" problem, doesn't mean they will address it. By creating an interface for even those unfamiliar with the theory, the concept became a reality. On top of which, there is innate skepticism from the part of the vendor (for the most part) that their product could be broken in such a "trivial" manner; or put another way big head smackers sometimes take simple examples.
Glow in the darkInsulated and the shrapnel proof bit, well that's a bit harder. But I would bet the grenades strapped along side this aren't kept to the same requirements. I would also wager IED tripwires are a much larger risk than explosive shrapnel from a small pressurized aluminum can.
Since the 90's military standards have declined disasterously anyways as well as development time for ridiculous requirements, see: the Bradly. The fight against a constantly adapting enemy requires this sort of innovation, not military industrial beurocracy.
Enforcement of CIPA (or CIPA compliance) is what gets public institutions the vaunted "Erate" monies that continues their low connection fees (+70% off phone company rates.) As such, organizations WANT to follow CIPA rules (including having a blocking filter) to maintain these monies.
COPA would be something for the courts, and legal associations to make money. Nothing more. At least with a Blocking filter on our end it's easy enough to toss a URL in that's being popularized by the media (myspace.com etc) to prevent students from sitting there all day during the business technology classes they're supposed to be working in.
On top of which, when there is good communication between the instructors and the IT staff, it's not a problem to remove a website from the blocks, or exclude it entirely from the filter. (Oblig. F/OSS ref: On top of which, the software that lets you do so is free.) What it sounds like is a few lawyers, ones with their noses in the trough and ones outside the political machine, sat down and said "hey you know, there's a whole racket we could exploit that nobody has taken advantage of... who wants write a law?"
Porn is the golden goose to the internet, everyone wants to kill it and take it apart to find out why it works so well. But to do so will kill the golden eggs it happens to lay, innovation, cheaper bandwidth, ubiquitous streaming etc. What laws like this end up doing is driving innovation on the part of pornographers (who have already shown their capacity to innovate) to avoid this unenforceable law. Inevitably it will result in more businesses going overseas to avoid the stupidity altogether and the American economy will suffer the consequences of over-regulation.
Slashdot Mirror
The law, although no doubt directed due to moralistic stupidity etc, is already something *most* public institutions do currently to mitigate liability. We operate as businesses in that respect, since a parent can sue for damages even more readily than a private institution and it is much easier to just block myspace than to wade through the crap to find the few gems.
The problem with poorly designed filters is supposed to be taken care of by allowing users with legitimate need the ability to bypass those filters. I see no reason, research wise, for MOST of the population to ever need to access Myspace. Other than someone on researching an anthropological paper Myspace is garbage, and a waste of time for users.
There are other venues to perform the tasks mentioned, and even walkthroughs detailed with pretty pictures that provide the information even more readily than Myspace. Libraries are for research, not for playing around. Going on a system and surfing porn, playing flash games, or posting naked pics of their boyfriend on myspace is not research and is diverting resources from others who may need to use those systems for legitimate research.
Not to mention, viewing many Myspace/Porn/Stumbleupon pages could result in the sexual harassment of people around the viewer as they are subjected to the same imagery with no other recourse but to leave.
Liane: And my boy Eric once
Had my picture on his shelf
But now when I see him he tells me to fuck myself!
Sheila: Well, blame Canada
Everyone: Blame Canada
Sheila: It seems that everything's gone wrong
Since Canada came along
Everyone: Blame Canada
Blame Canada
Copy Guy: They're not even a real country anyway
Screen readers shine in a shell as do brail displays. This is a non-starter. The problem is with the condescending attitude and the expectation that *EVERYONE* who uses *nix should be able to perform CLI judo is the problem.
./blah-command-version.sh $args" is a fsking unix troll.) The ideal being that the environment, the GUI displayed should contain all that the average user will need to perform their common tasks. And if someone has a Graphics adapter that isn't supported and requires CLI interaction to get working, it isn't ideal.
How many end users open up a command shell in Windows to do anything? Hell you can barely even install most graphics drivers in a command shell (and no I don't mean initiating the executable) as every time we rebuild our unattended windows installs means fussying through piles of doc on how the installers work.
The mastery of a system for the end user is not their goal when working on a computer. They are aiming at performing tasks, and using their computer as a tool for expediting real world tasks or for entertainment. Opening a black box and typing commands into it's innards is esoteric, unfriendly, and doesn't relate to much real world stuff. Configuration is a hassle to end users, and making it less of a hassle is the goal of a good UI developer. Ubuntu is supposed to be for real people, not just the unix trolls under the bridge. (And "just
David brin talked about man made miniature black holes eating the earth in EARTH in 1990 or so... And I don't think he was the first, or even close.
It's worse than that (for me anyways) here's the data I pulled (each page was opened in a fresh browser eliminating the memory cache falacy of the yahoo search being 20mb or whatever earlier stated.)
1 &toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8o gle+Search
Opera initial footprint:
21076k
Yahoo
41736k
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=test&fr=yfp-t-50
23604k
www.google.com
22108k
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=test&btnG=Go
22320k
Base footprint differential:
google mainpage to yahoo mainpage
1,032k/20,660k
google search to yahoo search:
1,244k/2,528k
They'd be better off aiming at Spyware companies as they are the #1 reason I, and my collegues, get contacted to build new computers outside the workplace. At the institution where I do work, we have had measures against spyware for over 4 years now and there are systems running XP that are twice that age in our environment.
/.ers. They don't see any of the cylinders being pushed by micro-explosions when cranking over, it's all just flashing words and pictures. When the flashing words flash slower, and the pretty pictures take longer to come up their "computer is to slow."
Spyware drives upgrades. Since a user's computer is "too slow" to "open the internet" they get a new one. Not understanding a drive whipe + antispyware would do em good for what they used to do without a problem. Computers are nebulous to most users, much the way cars are to many
Good luck trying to explain it's all the flashing words and pretty pictures making their computer slower.
Now as far as the home user goes you're absolutely right. There's little reason (besides DirectX 11 or some equally abhorrant abomonation) to upgrade to Vista unless you need a certain feature only it can provide. However, microsoft has been really good about making their next release NECESSARY to compete for X reason. Now to the intelligent technologist that marketing bullshit isn't anything new, but to the devoted follower it is proof positive that shit needs to be replaced.
They'll create some *native* mode that offers *better support* for *higher end platforms* in their next iteration of domain services that requires you only run vista to get the full benefit of their management environment or some hogwash to that effect. Just wait the MCSE's eat that shit up.
"Free Windows" doesn't have the same ring to it, even though it's more ubiquitous and works with 99% of Joe-'merica
I hope this guy is well protected, and doesn't have M$ source access, or his high visibility may bring code leak questions to the project. It is so damn close to being a reality it just needs a little work. Last I checked the project was so close I was able to run the executables made for ReactOS in winxp/win2k.
The problem is sometimes this cross bidding can span dozens of accounts. Especially if you are bidding on one of the 10k++ rating powerseller auctions. It might be a fun SF project to write a little (insert favorite quicky language here) (script/proggy/ui) to show the relationships between low rating bidders (less than 5% of seller's rating.) Odds are one or two people will buy from each other on occasion. But you start going beyond that and things are bound to get frigging obvious.
When doing it by hand, its hard to track down dozens, sometime hundreds of users to find relationships... Seems like a good opportunity for libwww, wget, or something equally simplistic.
It's funny because the 92 is nearly identical to the 89 except for the keyboard interface. I guess they don't care if you bring in pre-recorded answers, just as long as you can't record the current test at qwerty speeds...
I could find the reference if I really cared enough to wade through the text of the godawful sequel, but tbh it'd be a waste of my time. AFAIR Ender's awareness and the AI's sentience transcended simultaneously by destroying the Giant and subverting the rules of the Giant's game forcing them both into unknown territory. The later rapid growth of awareness achieved by the connection with the Queen mind sounds more like the induction you're talking about.
Although I suppose it's all fictional, and all up for debate unless the author chimes in.
From the wiki:
Due to his extremely high aptitude for tactics and leadership and to the teachers' deadline to ready him for the coming war, Ender is advanced through his training much faster than the other students. He has just succeeded in making his first real friend, Alai, when he is yanked out of basic training and assigned straight to Salamander Army, under the command of prideful Bonzo Madrid. Battle School revolves (literally) around the Battle Room, where 41-man armies fight in a zero-gravity form of laser tag. Ender, who never got the standard training for these battles, is tutored by Petra Arkanian, but ordered by Bonzo to never fire his weapon in battle. Eventually, though, he defies these orders to save Salamander from certain defeat, earning Bonzo respect for "his" tactical brilliance. Bonzo, however, sees only defiance and trades Ender to Rat Army, whose commander, Rose de Nose, places Ender in Dink Meeker's toon. The elder Dink begins to look after Ender. Meanwhile, Ender's psychological development is monitored by the "Mind Fantasy Game", a complex computer game embedded in the school's computer network, and manipulated to a large extent by Colonel Graff. Later, Colonel Graff asks Ender's beloved sister Valentine to send an encouraging letter to Ender in response to potential psychological issues caused by the very machine designed to monitor them.
Later in the "fix the plot" books it is revealed the "Mind Fantasy Game" was a complex directed artificial intelligence which later transcended to being sentient.
Danegeld
IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:--
"We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:--
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:--
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"
Will be? I already get spanish language telemarketing auto dialer messages on my skype account, luckily I can just "Block" but still. The idiots^H^H^H^H^Hmarketeers are out there and their numbers are growing. It's not really a question in my mind of when, but how bad it's going to get.
Don't sugar coat it, don't hide behind semantics, don't use the clever writer's alegory... You wrote this as an attempt to drive business to your product. It's quite simple economics. Now then, if you happen to help a fellow writer, who you may (or may not) have a social relationship with hey all the better.
Nah, the change isn't in the utter shite that's posted, as that's been the same crap different day as long as I've been reading /. It's the response and the metamoderation that goes on that's changed. There's bound to be a half dozen carpet-bagging grass roots shills posting any moment and a few dozen more metamods that disagree with your overly pessimistic "technical" evaluation of the obviously editorial article modding you "Over-rated."
Businesses have embraced Forums, wikis and the rest that makes "web2.0" and have flooded it with marketing hype crap. Wikipedia has it's own problems with public relations firm shills, and I'm betting there's little or no depth on this "shifting" paradigm in the afformentioned slashvertisment.
Looking around it may not seem that bad, but since I've grown up with the following expectations I'll just repeat them:
1. While enrolled in education, everything I do or say on a campus is subject to "restricted" rights
2. An animal can determine whether or not there's a 4th amendment allowance to search me
3. I can be told to take medication or be placed on the dole (if 'diagnosed' with a 'mental condition')
4. My phones are probably tapped at some point in a domestic communication, and are definitely tapped at least once on the way out of the country (have been since the 70-80's see:echelon)
5. My internet communication is probably tapped domestically (if I gotta go through Mae west etc or any SF pop there's a good chance) and internationally at least once there's a sniffer present.
6. My electricity bill is public information (used as a 4th amendment allowance to search homes)
7. The expectation of anonymity of a person is no longer allowed (you MUST provide your identity if the secret^H^H^H^H^H^H police ask for it.)
Need I continue? I'm sure I could, but it just gets depressing after that point... did I say depressing? I mean It's great that this is happening! Why wouldn't I want the world to be a "safer" place?
Nintendo is responsible as all hell, their games are too good obviously! Why else would people be hurting themselves getting all excited over a silly game! They must be using foul technology to trigger endorphine and adrenaline release to make their games more exciting and addicting!
/sarcasm
They must take responsibility and lower the quality and excitement quotient of their games, obviously.
FFS you shouldn't need to tell people a billion times not to chuck something. Such that when they do, and that something collides with something else the person should be thinking "OMG I'm an idiot." not "OMG sue the bastard who made that something!" I guess this is what we get for having gulgafrinchams in our midst.
A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will
probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to
be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely
enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the
twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the
reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is
a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the
secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange
array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the
ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is
found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can
discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the
cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into
the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some
convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts --
physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on -- remember that
nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting
ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it
and forget it all!
- Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, v. 1, p. 3-10
(This lecture is also one of the six lectures featured in a book &
audio edition entitled "Six Easy Pieces")
I was reading Feyman's memoirs just before I read this, so please excuse it did affected me a little. What may be perfectly easy to understand to a game theorist and can be summed up in one dilemma can easily take a few dozen pages to describe to the uninitiated. Similarly there are years of courses to understand the basic foundation upon which theoretical mathematicians don't even have to think of consciously. And finally what to a hacker may be plain as day may be completely counterintuitive to the way the rest of the world thinks. (In this case, any output can be converted to input, and fed back out again.)
Further, because the concept is known by a vendor as a "possible" problem, doesn't mean they will address it. By creating an interface for even those unfamiliar with the theory, the concept became a reality. On top of which, there is innate skepticism from the part of the vendor (for the most part) that their product could be broken in such a "trivial" manner; or put another way big head smackers sometimes take simple examples.
Glow in the dark Insulated and the shrapnel proof bit, well that's a bit harder. But I would bet the grenades strapped along side this aren't kept to the same requirements. I would also wager IED tripwires are a much larger risk than explosive shrapnel from a small pressurized aluminum can.
Since the 90's military standards have declined disasterously anyways as well as development time for ridiculous requirements, see: the Bradly. The fight against a constantly adapting enemy requires this sort of innovation, not military industrial beurocracy.
The proper URL is dansguardian.org I do apologize.
Enforcement of CIPA (or CIPA compliance) is what gets public institutions the vaunted "Erate" monies that continues their low connection fees (+70% off phone company rates.) As such, organizations WANT to follow CIPA rules (including having a blocking filter) to maintain these monies.
COPA would be something for the courts, and legal associations to make money. Nothing more. At least with a Blocking filter on our end it's easy enough to toss a URL in that's being popularized by the media (myspace.com etc) to prevent students from sitting there all day during the business technology classes they're supposed to be working in.
On top of which, when there is good communication between the instructors and the IT staff, it's not a problem to remove a website from the blocks, or exclude it entirely from the filter. (Oblig. F/OSS ref: On top of which, the software that lets you do so is free. ) What it sounds like is a few lawyers, ones with their noses in the trough and ones outside the political machine, sat down and said "hey you know, there's a whole racket we could exploit that nobody has taken advantage of... who wants write a law?"
Porn is the golden goose to the internet, everyone wants to kill it and take it apart to find out why it works so well. But to do so will kill the golden eggs it happens to lay, innovation, cheaper bandwidth, ubiquitous streaming etc. What laws like this end up doing is driving innovation on the part of pornographers (who have already shown their capacity to innovate) to avoid this unenforceable law. Inevitably it will result in more businesses going overseas to avoid the stupidity altogether and the American economy will suffer the consequences of over-regulation.