Sure, I can explain. TOR originally evolved out of research by the US Navy but is now developed as an open source projects by volunteers. It has occasionally been used for secure communication by US government organizations (see main TOR project page), though there is no evidence that they used it or use it on a large scale. It is not supported or endorsed by the NSA or CIA---at least not officially.
Then again, being able to subvert a system and fearing that you might be forced to subvert it (whether or not you're successful) are two very different things, aren't they?
It is impossible to create a system that does not allow the developer(s) of the system to slip in flaws. No source code auditing can prevent that, since either the auditors can control the distribution of the executables, in case of which they could slip in a flaw, or they cannot control the distribution of the executables, in case of which one of the developers could slip in a flaw.
The best that could be done is to do all development in teams, preferably randomly assigned, and ensure that all code changes and code distribution is done in teams as well, so there is literally always someone looking over another one's shoulder. Pretty hard to get much done in that way, though.
"7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,..." is just as "random" as any other sequence.
But you can calculate the exact probability with which this sequence will be produced by a real random number generator, and if this probability is extremely low and nevertheless the sequence occurs, then that's reason enough to reject your pseudo-random number generator.
No, they don't. You have entirely ignored the facts I've laid out and just made snippy remarks to boost your ego all along, so there was and is certainly no other conclusion to make. I should also make clear that I'm not interested in arguing with you or talking to you at all. My original post was and is only intended to explain to other readers why you're wrong, and I'm sure I've succeeded in that.
Had a bad day or what? What happened to common standards of decency in the US? Too out of fashion for guys like you?
Anyway, fact is that the research projects you've mentioned must have been gone through a lengthy competition that was evaluated by experts in the field. So you should really never judge research projects from the popular summaries (which are written for people like you, though apparently not with much success). Sure, this process can go wrong sometimes but there is no better way to distribute funding. Out of a vast number of proposals a panel of scientists selects a much smaller number of projects. There is no better way to distribute research funding, because (a) if politicians or government agency would select the winning projects, this will invariably lead to corruption, and (b) guys like you or Joe the Plumber cannot judge the scientific merits (or "payoff", as you call it) of projects in algebraic topology.
But I'm guessing you belong to the category of people who thanks to misinformation and a lack of historical knowledge are not aware that practically all of modern technology was developed at publicly funded research institutes and universities and not at private companies. You couldn't post on/. and wouldn't even have a keyboard without tax-payer funded research.
But since I'm talking to a troll, my time is wasted anyway...
Much of the research you've quoted seems fairly interesting to me (interest is relative, of course) and some of it also seems to be very important (e.g. genital washing practises).
In any case, since you're not familiar with how this works, here is a rough explanation: The scientist(s) have to write a very detailed research proposal, including a long state of the art overview, precise outline of the experiments to be conducted or methodology used, have to explain why the research is important, explain exactly what questions it is supposed to answer, why it may have an impact on the field and/or society, and so on. Then they need to take various bureaucratic hurdles that may range from "easy" to "almost impossible", get signatures, fill out additional forms and get ethics clearance (if animals or humans are involved), upload their credentials, CVs and prior publications, make a timeline, milestones, expected output indicators and detailed budget proposal with justification for every item, and so on. All of this takes between weeks and months of work, depending on the size of the project. Once that is done and everything is considered correct in a first vetting phase, the proposal enters a fierce competition with hundreds or thousands of other proposals. Usually, less then ten percent can get funding, although this depends very much on the call. The are evaluated and ranked by a panel of outside experts in the field according to strict guidelines that are often so detailed that they read like a book (150 pages of evaluator guidelines is not unusual). Sometimes these contests have two phases. In that case, the few winners of the first phase evaluation are then shortlisted for a second phase in which the scientists are invited to give a talk about their research projects in front of the assessment committee and the government institution that provides the funding. Again, only a few make it through this phase. These are then usually suggested for funding only, though. Normally, that means that their projects will get funding, provided that they meet all deadlines for contracts etc., but it can also happen that funding is still declined after acceptance by the scientific panel because of other funding problems, etc. After that, an account is set up, which usually requires some close collaboration with the institutions involved and their accounting departments, and the rules for the actual accounting tend to be very strict in most countries. Then some form of monitoring of the research project starts, which may range from frequent progress reports over constant re-evaluation (sometimes even by another scientific panel) to surprise visits by external controllers, depending on the strictness of the rules and how much money is involved.
And then somebody uses the one-line title of the research project or the two-line popular summary on/. to make fun of how obviously flawed the project is, forgetting that funding agencies do not just walk around and throw money at scientists.;-)
Anyway, smart funding institutions know that research funding is very similar to investment funding. There is always a certain percentage of less or only moderately successful projects, but you take that into account because occasionally one of those projects will makes a break-through with broad impact on the field.
Also, do not under any circumstances open the box!
Seriously, I would never open a box with the letters "PANDORA" on it, and whoever had the idea of branding cheap jewellery with that name must have been a sick cynic.
Absolute poorness measures are rejected by nearly every scientist who works on this topic for a vast variety of fairly obvious reasons. They are meaningless. By the same token, Manchester capitalists could have justified child labour without any protection or health insurance by comparing the absolute standard of living of their young employees with the standards of living during of children during the Roman Empire.
Also, none of what you say has anything to do with economics. I personally know a bunch of distinguished economists who work on theories of socially just wealth distribution, for example, but apparently these people know much less about economics than geniuses like you and your parent poster...
Stephen Hawking has warned about that trend recently on reddit.
Have you thought of “technological unemployment,” where machines take all our jobs?
The outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.
I agree with him. The second option seems more likely.
Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you? Twenty years ago we didn't even know that exoplanets exist and now we find more and more of them. Since when has record breaking research in astronomy been a waste of taxpayer dollars? What kind of ignorant wouldn't want to know in what kind of universe we live?
That sounds like a reasonable description of modern US 'right-wing' libertarianism, especially because it manages to keep libertarianism somewhat distinct from 'left-wing' anarchism. But there is one thing I don't get: If taxation is theft, how on earth would a government be able to pay for anything? Police? Military? Roads? Electricity? Water lines? Dams? Food and water safety (to avoid poisoning)? Aviation safety? Disaster response? Nuclear safety? Embassies? Railroad tracks?
The list could go on and on. There is a bazillion necessities for modern society that cannot be handled at the local level and require lots of money. Where does this money come from if not from taxes? Is the idea that the government sells these things to citizens, and if you don't buy them, you can't have them? Like, if you don't pay your road toll, you can't drive with your car on public roads? How would that work and how would it be better than having taxes?
I've never heard any coherent explanation of that, hence my suspicion is that US libertarianism is either "moderate libertarianism" -- a nebulous desire to have less government interference -- or is just not well thought through.
Maybe, but who in his right mind would vote for an egomaniac narcissist billionaire in order to rebuild the party system and support the American middle class? It doesn't make sense.
Perhaps both of you got it wrong. The US election system is a free market, it's just not the voters who buy the candidates (obviously) but rather the lobbyists.
Of course you can. I once got a 'Blackborry' phone from China. I loved it (until it got some weird and rare form of screen cancer), but I'm pretty sure it did infringe the trademark of some Canadian company...
Well, one thing is sure, if everybody would change to electric cars, then the world would be a pile of toxic battery waste and renewable energy would certainly not cut it.
That's one reason why the upgrade is not free. Another reason is that you will loose many hours if not many days in productivity by botched upgrades, newly introduced bugs, features like advertisements or Cortana that slow down your PC and make you less productive, forced OS updates that come at the wrong time, and so on.
Additionally, you will likely loose the equivalent of a 30% price increase with every application purchased from the Windows store, since professional developers have to take into account the share they owe to Microsoft in their pricing as additional business expenses. (Now to be honest, I suck at these percentage calculations and believe the right way of calculating this is not as a 30% price increase, because the basis for the 30% difference should be the new price not the old one. But I'm too fucking lazy to figure this out now and therefore leave this as an exercise to the reader.)
While some physicists might disagree, I think your post shouldn't really have been modded 'funny'. Stephen Wolfram also likes the idea that the universe could be a finite automaton. Some people also claim that there is a disconnect between physical laws and the way they are formulated: If real numbers existed in physical reality, they would violate various physical laws, e.g. the laws of thermodynamics. This problem is rarely addressed by physicists, probably because it's a bit too philosophical and concerns the philosophy of mathematics to some extent as well.
Anyway, I'm skeptical about the original story based on the summary, because it doesn't mention computability and questions like logic vs. mathematics that should play a role when talking about a "language" different from our all-encompassing natural languages. Suppose this language was meant to be formal logical language, then shouldn't it have some proof theory? But then, if it has a complete proof theory, it will not be powerful enough to describe the concepts of physics, but if it is as powerful as second-order logical with standard models (as opposed to Henkin models), then it would just be the language of mathematics.
Shouldn't similar problems arise when he's talking about a programming language only?
I've read that it's the #1 indicator of guilt in police interrogations. An accused denies everything for hours, and just when he leaves the room turns around and says something like "I'm sorry I couldn't help you" to the officer.
Wow, just wow! What a sad world in which people equate the ideas of Democratic Liberalism with Stalinism and confuse Liberalism with classical Anarchism. It's as if people like John Locke, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Emmanuel Sieyes, or Adam Smith never existed...
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, I can explain. TOR originally evolved out of research by the US Navy but is now developed as an open source projects by volunteers. It has occasionally been used for secure communication by US government organizations (see main TOR project page), though there is no evidence that they used it or use it on a large scale. It is not supported or endorsed by the NSA or CIA---at least not officially.
Here is a list of current and past sponsors:
List
is backed by gobernment money
Of course, definitely. The National Science Foundation has contributed at various times, as the above list says.
Then again, being able to subvert a system and fearing that you might be forced to subvert it (whether or not you're successful) are two very different things, aren't they?
It is impossible to create a system that does not allow the developer(s) of the system to slip in flaws. No source code auditing can prevent that, since either the auditors can control the distribution of the executables, in case of which they could slip in a flaw, or they cannot control the distribution of the executables, in case of which one of the developers could slip in a flaw.
The best that could be done is to do all development in teams, preferably randomly assigned, and ensure that all code changes and code distribution is done in teams as well, so there is literally always someone looking over another one's shoulder. Pretty hard to get much done in that way, though.
"7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,..." is just as "random" as any other sequence.
But you can calculate the exact probability with which this sequence will be produced by a real random number generator, and if this probability is extremely low and nevertheless the sequence occurs, then that's reason enough to reject your pseudo-random number generator.
Does that even mean anything?
How about looking at global income distribution, poverty levels, death rates and death causes, access to education and health care, ...
No, they don't. You have entirely ignored the facts I've laid out and just made snippy remarks to boost your ego all along, so there was and is certainly no other conclusion to make. I should also make clear that I'm not interested in arguing with you or talking to you at all. My original post was and is only intended to explain to other readers why you're wrong, and I'm sure I've succeeded in that.
Had a bad day or what? What happened to common standards of decency in the US? Too out of fashion for guys like you?
Anyway, fact is that the research projects you've mentioned must have been gone through a lengthy competition that was evaluated by experts in the field. So you should really never judge research projects from the popular summaries (which are written for people like you, though apparently not with much success). Sure, this process can go wrong sometimes but there is no better way to distribute funding. Out of a vast number of proposals a panel of scientists selects a much smaller number of projects. There is no better way to distribute research funding, because (a) if politicians or government agency would select the winning projects, this will invariably lead to corruption, and (b) guys like you or Joe the Plumber cannot judge the scientific merits (or "payoff", as you call it) of projects in algebraic topology.
But I'm guessing you belong to the category of people who thanks to misinformation and a lack of historical knowledge are not aware that practically all of modern technology was developed at publicly funded research institutes and universities and not at private companies. You couldn't post on /. and wouldn't even have a keyboard without tax-payer funded research.
But since I'm talking to a troll, my time is wasted anyway...
Oh great, I should have known that you're not only an ignorant but really just trolling. :/
Much of the research you've quoted seems fairly interesting to me (interest is relative, of course) and some of it also seems to be very important (e.g. genital washing practises).
In any case, since you're not familiar with how this works, here is a rough explanation: The scientist(s) have to write a very detailed research proposal, including a long state of the art overview, precise outline of the experiments to be conducted or methodology used, have to explain why the research is important, explain exactly what questions it is supposed to answer, why it may have an impact on the field and/or society, and so on. Then they need to take various bureaucratic hurdles that may range from "easy" to "almost impossible", get signatures, fill out additional forms and get ethics clearance (if animals or humans are involved), upload their credentials, CVs and prior publications, make a timeline, milestones, expected output indicators and detailed budget proposal with justification for every item, and so on. All of this takes between weeks and months of work, depending on the size of the project. Once that is done and everything is considered correct in a first vetting phase, the proposal enters a fierce competition with hundreds or thousands of other proposals. Usually, less then ten percent can get funding, although this depends very much on the call. The are evaluated and ranked by a panel of outside experts in the field according to strict guidelines that are often so detailed that they read like a book (150 pages of evaluator guidelines is not unusual). Sometimes these contests have two phases. In that case, the few winners of the first phase evaluation are then shortlisted for a second phase in which the scientists are invited to give a talk about their research projects in front of the assessment committee and the government institution that provides the funding. Again, only a few make it through this phase. These are then usually suggested for funding only, though. Normally, that means that their projects will get funding, provided that they meet all deadlines for contracts etc., but it can also happen that funding is still declined after acceptance by the scientific panel because of other funding problems, etc. After that, an account is set up, which usually requires some close collaboration with the institutions involved and their accounting departments, and the rules for the actual accounting tend to be very strict in most countries. Then some form of monitoring of the research project starts, which may range from frequent progress reports over constant re-evaluation (sometimes even by another scientific panel) to surprise visits by external controllers, depending on the strictness of the rules and how much money is involved.
And then somebody uses the one-line title of the research project or the two-line popular summary on /. to make fun of how obviously flawed the project is, forgetting that funding agencies do not just walk around and throw money at scientists. ;-)
Anyway, smart funding institutions know that research funding is very similar to investment funding. There is always a certain percentage of less or only moderately successful projects, but you take that into account because occasionally one of those projects will makes a break-through with broad impact on the field.
Also, do not under any circumstances open the box!
Seriously, I would never open a box with the letters "PANDORA" on it, and whoever had the idea of branding cheap jewellery with that name must have been a sick cynic.
Absolute poorness measures are rejected by nearly every scientist who works on this topic for a vast variety of fairly obvious reasons. They are meaningless. By the same token, Manchester capitalists could have justified child labour without any protection or health insurance by comparing the absolute standard of living of their young employees with the standards of living during of children during the Roman Empire.
Also, none of what you say has anything to do with economics. I personally know a bunch of distinguished economists who work on theories of socially just wealth distribution, for example, but apparently these people know much less about economics than geniuses like you and your parent poster...
Stephen Hawking has warned about that trend recently on reddit.
Have you thought of “technological unemployment,” where machines take all our jobs?
The outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.
I agree with him. The second option seems more likely.
I prefer email on Linux, but I nevertheless appreciate the effort.
Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you? Twenty years ago we didn't even know that exoplanets exist and now we find more and more of them. Since when has record breaking research in astronomy been a waste of taxpayer dollars? What kind of ignorant wouldn't want to know in what kind of universe we live?
That sounds like a reasonable description of modern US 'right-wing' libertarianism, especially because it manages to keep libertarianism somewhat distinct from 'left-wing' anarchism. But there is one thing I don't get: If taxation is theft, how on earth would a government be able to pay for anything? Police? Military? Roads? Electricity? Water lines? Dams? Food and water safety (to avoid poisoning)? Aviation safety? Disaster response? Nuclear safety? Embassies? Railroad tracks?
The list could go on and on. There is a bazillion necessities for modern society that cannot be handled at the local level and require lots of money. Where does this money come from if not from taxes? Is the idea that the government sells these things to citizens, and if you don't buy them, you can't have them? Like, if you don't pay your road toll, you can't drive with your car on public roads? How would that work and how would it be better than having taxes?
I've never heard any coherent explanation of that, hence my suspicion is that US libertarianism is either "moderate libertarianism" -- a nebulous desire to have less government interference -- or is just not well thought through.
Maybe, but who in his right mind would vote for an egomaniac narcissist billionaire in order to rebuild the party system and support the American middle class? It doesn't make sense.
Perhaps both of you got it wrong. The US election system is a free market, it's just not the voters who buy the candidates (obviously) but rather the lobbyists.
Of course you can. I once got a 'Blackborry' phone from China. I loved it (until it got some weird and rare form of screen cancer), but I'm pretty sure it did infringe the trademark of some Canadian company...
Well, one thing is sure, if everybody would change to electric cars, then the world would be a pile of toxic battery waste and renewable energy would certainly not cut it.
That's one reason why the upgrade is not free. Another reason is that you will loose many hours if not many days in productivity by botched upgrades, newly introduced bugs, features like advertisements or Cortana that slow down your PC and make you less productive, forced OS updates that come at the wrong time, and so on.
Additionally, you will likely loose the equivalent of a 30% price increase with every application purchased from the Windows store, since professional developers have to take into account the share they owe to Microsoft in their pricing as additional business expenses. (Now to be honest, I suck at these percentage calculations and believe the right way of calculating this is not as a 30% price increase, because the basis for the 30% difference should be the new price not the old one. But I'm too fucking lazy to figure this out now and therefore leave this as an exercise to the reader.)
Definitely. However, if you're already using Windows 10, then there is no need to upgrade to it, isn't there?
While some physicists might disagree, I think your post shouldn't really have been modded 'funny'. Stephen Wolfram also likes the idea that the universe could be a finite automaton. Some people also claim that there is a disconnect between physical laws and the way they are formulated: If real numbers existed in physical reality, they would violate various physical laws, e.g. the laws of thermodynamics. This problem is rarely addressed by physicists, probably because it's a bit too philosophical and concerns the philosophy of mathematics to some extent as well.
Anyway, I'm skeptical about the original story based on the summary, because it doesn't mention computability and questions like logic vs. mathematics that should play a role when talking about a "language" different from our all-encompassing natural languages. Suppose this language was meant to be formal logical language, then shouldn't it have some proof theory? But then, if it has a complete proof theory, it will not be powerful enough to describe the concepts of physics, but if it is as powerful as second-order logical with standard models (as opposed to Henkin models), then it would just be the language of mathematics.
Shouldn't similar problems arise when he's talking about a programming language only?
I think Dorian Nakamoto is more scared than amused of all of this.
I've read that it's the #1 indicator of guilt in police interrogations. An accused denies everything for hours, and just when he leaves the room turns around and says something like "I'm sorry I couldn't help you" to the officer.
Wow, just wow! What a sad world in which people equate the ideas of Democratic Liberalism with Stalinism and confuse Liberalism with classical Anarchism. It's as if people like John Locke, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Emmanuel Sieyes, or Adam Smith never existed ...