Hmm - what reasons could there be to legitimately do these kinds of searches?
- checking whether something seen on some crime drama actually makes sense
- checking whether a stupid newspaper story makes sense
- checking whether an outrageous story from a neighbour makes any sense
- looking for ideas to write a crime novel
- learning about the effects of certain things, say, for medical interests (medical students)
Either way - what people do should be what people do on their own; locking people up because they MIGHT do something is a very bad precedent. And where will you stop?
Will you allow someone to a gas station and fill up their car after they had a bad fight with their partner, whom they know will have to cross a road somewhere in the next hour? Or should you lock them up after the fight? (independently of whether you or your partner started the fight)?
How about filling your car, and going for drinks later - having a car with a full tank of gas at your disposal afterwards? Time to lock you up?
Sure, at a guess, looking up 'ways to kill people in their sleep' I would also think makes you more likely a potential murderer than filling up your car. But, where do you draw the line on what's legitimate and what isn't?
Also, maybe after you read how painful or possibly difficult your goal is - who's to say that reading about it might not actually lead you to give up the thought? And then you still get locked up because of something you looked up, where the result of the search itself already deterred you (though, obviously, that can't be seen in any google search strings - you just stop searching)...
Also, the only goal you'd reach is that now a potential murderer has to break in somewhere only to look up how to murder someone - and then the wrong person would get arrested... (...which might give the best possible version - look it up on the victim's computer - get them arrested!)
There are so many ways to screw this up - as bad as it is, until someone _actually_ tries to go through with it, don't interfere...
The pre-cog route will just make things a LOT worse for civil liberties / personal freedom.
I'd wish they'd update the Rado Cerix with a self-winding mechanism. Unfortunately, Rado has stopped manufacturing them.
The only thing you need to watch out with some Rado watches is that some of their watches are using a ceramic wristband - which is great in that it still retains its shine after 10 odd years that I've had the watch by now - but the ceramic while scratch-proof is not 100% shockproof - I broke a couple of chain links when I fell off my bike onto the street (accident involving a car driver that didn't quite watch where he was going). But I could get them replaced, and I can't even distinguish the old and new links (again - the ceramics don't "age")...
While I would agree with that take on the US, I would also add - it's nothing specific to the US.
Much like politicians say 'bullying' is wrong in school yards, they just do it themselves as far as smaller or economically weaker countries are involved.
The US do it to Germany (like in this case), Germany do it to the Swiss (re tax law; despite there being tax havens INSIDE the EU, or outside of Europe - they target Switzerland; or noise pollution at airports - Germans should suffer noise from German airports, but not from a Swiss one),...
I'm not saying wikipedia is the "source of my argument" - I'm saying, it's not just the media who get this wrong, if even wikipedia (a site nerds CAN help editing) uses that terminology.
I'm also absolutely getting the misuse of the word "hacked" here - prominently featured even in the article here on slashdot. Again - the problem is not that you or I understand that the word 'hacked' is wrong. The problem is the point you're admitting yourself: "Again, I never said they were good at this", or "Anonymous don't exactly send out press releases (they should though)".
I think up until Anonymous and potentially similar groups get their act together in also managing how things appear OUTSIDE of their own activities, their plans will more likely than not backfire. If the field is left to political pundits, Anonymous is providing them with all the fodder they need to demand MORE surveillance.
And even if Anonymous would come up now and say "the 'disruption' here was meant as a protest", it will sound bad like their backpedalling / asscovering, like they got caught doing something bad (even if you feel they didn't do anything bad).
If you go on a stage completely unprepared - you will likely NOT get out what you want. And as I pointed out earlier:
" Right now, I don't know what the right course of action is to convince the governments that more and more surveillance is a bad thing. I wish I knew what the right course of action would be.
What I do know, though, is that attacking government websites is the WRONG way. "
only just let me add - coming out a few days later trying to tell people "it wasn't an ATTACK, it was just a legitimate PROTEST" is not going to work. These are issues you need to plan for BEFORE you protest/attack/do...
The media may be partially to blame - but the problem is that even journalists aren't necessarily the most tech-savvy bunch.
And look at this - even wikipedia calls it "Denial-of-service attack" - maybe because in most cases, DDOS attacks were actual attacks on companies or websites, and most of them didn't find the kind of publicity then, that DDOSing the government finds now.
Besides, why would it be the medias fault for calling it attacks when you see the ones causing it using the exact same language?
Note how the purported chat didn't say "peaceful Internet demonstration", but rather "aim", "fire", and "keep firing" ?
If you stage a demonstration, people hold up banners to make clear what they are demonstrating for. Even if the DDOS packets that overwhelmed the government sites contained the words "we want our civil liberties back" - it still is nothing that could be seen by outsiders.
So, if you can't do the same thing with the banners in your 'Internet protest' - then you need to find a way to explain to people what you're trying to do - OR you leave that turf to politicians who will gladly fill in the blanks on how this is basically cyber-terrorism and how we need more surveillance to stop it. (And remember - if the press won't know where to find you to answer questions about what's going on; because you want to stay "anonymous" - they will HAVE to go and ask the other side, i.e. the government, what the whole thing is about.
And guess who will end up being the losers if you let the government explain those "attacks"? And rest assured - politicians will NOT call this a "peaceful demonstration", if it would harm their case -- they WILL call it "attacks" as it would bolster their positions!
Again - it's good that YOU see that this way. Many non-nerds will not see that difference. So, whenever the media covers these kinds of events, note how the say "denial of service ATTACKS", not "denial of service DEMONSTRATION".
Can you see how this might make an important (and negative) difference in the minds of your parent's/grandparent's generation?
And importantly, noone calls these things 'demonstrations' - look at the linked zdnet article headline "hacks UK government sites". It's the same kind of language you also get with articles that then continue something along the lines of 'millions of credit card/social security records stolen'. And the 'demonstrators' own language?
Really - is "Charge your laz0rs and aim!", "Fire! Fire!! Fire!!!" the kind of language that will make non-technical folk see that this is 'just the same as a demonstration'?
It's all well and good for you that YOU "know" this to be a demonstration, not an attack. But to a large majority of people outside of the net, words like "attack" and "fire" sound more like the kind of things politicians SHOULD protect us all from.
I'm not sure whether either the Anonymous attacks or the funny quips will help the case of civil liberties.
Sure, you and I know that the way civil liberties have been eroded in the past decade is a bad thing. Unfortunately, most voters really haven't. And if people attack government websites, it will only strengthen THEIR case, not the case of those who want civil liberties restored.
You taking the liberty of bringing down websites to ask for more liberties is roughly the same as if someone started to randomly shoot people proclaiming that he will continue killing people until murder will finally become legal.
It's entirely irrelevant whether your point is a valid one (as, in my opinion, it is in the case of civil liberties -- for most bystanders that really don't have a clue on why this is even important. To them, the government is doing the right thing, seeing that that kind of surveillance would actually be needed to prevent further attacks on government websites.
Right now, I don't know what the right course of action is to convince the governments that more and more surveillance is a bad thing. I wish I knew what the right course of action would be.
What I do know, though, is that attacking government websites is the WRONG way.
From TFA: In a statement sent to legislators, eight members of the National Academy of Science said that, in practice, the bill will likely [...] harm the state's national reputation[...]
The scientists got it wrong as well - thanks to blogging, like the publication here on Slashdot, the bill harms the state's INTERnational reputation...;-)
"This is the 14th meteorite that's been found in Norway, and only the second that crashed through a roof. "
Who wrote this?
Have you got any idea how "densely" populated Norway is?
Sure, people won't be monitoring all of the countryside for meteorite impacts; but even then, I'm sure they get to see easily more than 7* the roof space area in non-roofed area during their day-to-day activities.
So, among 14 meteorites, 1/7th has hit a house...?
As a software developer, I can see where the call for that comes from - but it's just about as misplaced as it could be. Software developers aren't the 'standard' the rest of the world should orient themselves by.
Developing software is a great skill to have if you're a software engineer -- not sure whether it's a waste of time if you plan to become, say, a doctor, a plumber, etc...
There are very few skills that _everybody_ needs to have for their normal day to day lives - developing software isn't one of them. Giving kids an idea of what is part of it may be a good idea, i.e. a basic understanding of how computers work. Coding skills on the other hand - not so sure; particularly - who knows what language and what paradigm will be 'state of the art' by the time the kid finally gets to use his/her development skills on. Picture it from this side - when I went to school, programming courses looked at BASIC and Pascal. Nice languages - for teaching - but I'm not sure whether it will really prepare you for coding C/C++, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby,...
Do you really think that it makes sense giving someone much of a development course in something that may be outdated a few years later? I didn't really like history lessons, biology lessons,... But I'm sure most of the history being taught is still the same; most of the principles of biology are still intact,... On the other hand - one of the things we learned about in school was some of the hardware: anyone still remember what a ULA is? Or the practical knowledge of how to hook up a tape deck to a computer?... punch cards?
Development classes and paradigms are too specific a skill for a mandatory course to be forced on everyone.
People have been talking for decades about the sort of application that a cure for cancer could have...
Will that prevent patenting one, once you would come up with a way to _actually_ make one _work_?
The patent never revolves around the idea of putting a fuel cell into a laptop - it's about the HOW you do it... You may not like that Apple files for a patent for this, but the problem is that Apple, like all companies needs to also look after the interests of its shareholders - if you create a solution and NOT attempt to monetize it, how will your shareholders react? May you even run the dangers of running into a liability for not pursuing profits (after all - that's what _for profit_ companies are for).
For what it's worth - seeing how Apple, Motorola, and other companies are cross-suing each other for patent violations, we should end up with far more attention on how to solve the patent crisis (and, no, I don't think just ditching patents is the way to go - just like there are bad reasons for patents (trolling readily springs to mind), there are also good ones (like preventing a large company from wiping out a small start-up who came up and patented a brilliant solution to a problem).
The wayback machine is a wonderful thing, yes... But a positive example doesn't negate a negative one.
Guns are a good thing - they really helped that one time in the forest when a bear attacked you. They just sucked badly, when a good friend got shot.
Cigarettes are a good thing, because they make you look 'cool' - until lung cancer sets in, at which case, cigarettes probably weren't quite as cool.
The wayback machine is nice to look at some of your old work - but the wayback machine also allows you to remove your site from it - not an individual page or version, yes, but at least it does give you _some_ way to keep a lid on your data.
But picture the bad side - you post something bad about a friend (after a fight you've had). Later you feel sorry for it - and you want to remove it; and you find, you can't.
Another bad side may also be when you change opinions on something over time, and people find pages of you arguing 'the other side' - maybe you were against abortion at some point, now your pro abortion - and some of your pro-abortion friends might find pages of you advocating against (or vice versa).
There are certainly things I argued 20 years back (_on the net_) that are still visible, but that I now see fallacies of. And I have no chance of removing the old comments. If you discuss something just among friends, you can, at least, hope that they'll forget it over time - or that they will also see how your change of heart comes about and therefore ignore what you said before. On the net, you don't have that choice.
You may now argue, that people should think better before they post - but how often do you read the "How to avoid beginner's mistakes on XYZ", _before_ making some of them? In my case, 20 years ago, I wouldn't have thought that that data would still be around now; at least, not publicly - at the time, I just didn't think it was feasible storage-wise to keep it all. Now I know different.
Today you might be thinking - well, whatever I post, I don't think anyone will be able to find it 10 years from now - but you're basing that thinking on technology that you see today; and you might think google will not have an easy time finding what you said 10 years ago, so it will not manage to do that 10 years from now, either. On the other hand, in those 10 years, technology will grow leaps and bounds - maybe in 10 years, you can just click on a photo of someone on the internet, and just right-click and select 'personal history' and the future google dredges up _all_ it can find on that person: from the 'more informed' comments that person might be making then, to childish comments uttered in the early 2000s.
60% of the energy is being used by the 90% living in the third world countries... 40% of energy consumption is by us 10% of the people in the 'developed' world.
Interesting how this looks when you start adding numbers of people...
Indeed obvious, where we need to start, isn't it?
And that is before trying to calculate energy consumption in third world countries to have them produce stuff for 'us'...
As long as people will agree that the earth is warming up - will a long discussion about whether man caused it really serve any useful purpose?
Here's how I see it:
Picture yourself as a passenger of the Quantas A380 plane whose engine exploded mid-flight. The moment the engine exploded, what would you look at first:
a) trying to figure out what CAN be done?
b) trying to figure out whether it was caused by humans or not (terrorists or material faults vs. meteor or lightning strikes)?
Think that you will have to decide what to focus on, while the plane is having trouble staying in the air.
My guess is, that getting to land safely ANYWHERE was the top priority... But - it's just my guess... Maybe you want to fund a study into the event asking everyone on board to see what they did first...
_OR_ we might try and focus on how to get the situation under control as safely as possible - by reducing the number of maneuvers that could contribute or increase the problem, and thinking about counter-maneuvers.
I bet you, even if the wing of that A380 would have gone, and even if chances of the pilot making ANY difference AT ALL - I bet you, they would have tried EVERYTHING to even minimally increase the chances of ANYONE surviving.
Then wait half an hour, insert your thumbdrive to be mounted to the proper location; open a completely harmless (but non-work document) from it, say - an invitation to a garden party, and print it -- all the while leaving the thumbdrive mounted, so that the sleep-job can write the document in the background after in the next hour...
Then ensure the thumbdrive is only ejected once more than an hour has passed and the file has been written.
Nothing untoward will ever have been on your screen in the half hour before the thumb-drive access. The worst they'll see on screen is you opening a private garden party invitation to print it at the office...
Dear anonymous coward: Am I really an idiot for asking whether something is being researched?
If there are pathogens that can jump species - like bird flu - why should it be impossible to make the opposite work, a vaccine that can jump species?
Look at the various plans that are being discussed in different places:
- vaccination of humans - doesn't solve the problem in the long term, as it would require constant re-vaccination of new generations of children.
- there's Myrvold's mosquito-zapping laser - is it a permanent solution? No - only permanent in that it will take permanent sales of new units over time, once the old ones die. (Perfect moneyspinner, though - for the "long" term). - exterminating the mosquitoes - possible, but unlikely that that will succeed, and incalculable in terms of further damage to the ecosystems (what about animals that might live off mosquitoes, and animals living of those? Or is the mosquito really the top-of-the-line predator)?
The best solution, it seems would most likely be to eradicate the disease itself - which will also require that the pathogen be purged from mosquitoes as well. This is not a quick fix, but it will take a very long time - still somehow I think developing a vaccine that might work on mosquitoes will be very, very difficult, but it might just open a good possibility of getting rid of the disease.
Vaccinating mosquitoes themselves is going to be very difficult - I doubt you'll find a way of getting them to line up for the vaccine; so is there a possibility of making a vaccine that might jump from one of the mosquitoes prey (humans or animals) to the mosquitoes as carriers? If we find a single species with a 'manageable' number of creatures to be vaccinated that would in turn over time help to vaccinate all the mosquitoes as well?
This may be sci-fi right now, but given that we have both
- vaccinations that can be delivered orally (like polio vaccines), and
- pathogens that CAN jump species
IS there a way that both could be combined, to make a vaccine that will make it up the food chain, to get mosquitoes to suck up the vaccine WITH the blood of its prey?
However unlikely it may be - has such a way been investigated as a possibility?
Unlikely, but, would it be possible to design it in a way that it works in mosquitoes as well? (So, that the mosquito might possibly get the antibodies as well?)
If oral vaccination works for polio in humans - would it be possible to design an oral vaccination that might help eradicate the Malaria pathogens in mosquitoes? (i.e. can we 'cure' the mosquitoes before they bite us again?)
The difference in voice control almost seems to resemble the text adventure games of the 80s - most games, like the Windows 7 feature today, basically used 2-word parsers, all instructions were just plain ' ' (open door, n, kill goblin).
Infocom adventures at the time understood almost plain text sentences; and stood far above the others...
It seems far too much like aether, i.e. something made up to fill a gap in knowledge without much evidence backing it up. "Look, my equations don't work out in every situation. EUREKA! If I just make some shit up like say, invisible matter that doesn't interact with other matter except through gravity, I can make my equations work!".
[...]
It must be that the model needs additional generalization rather than inventing magic stuff.
You've heard of the Einstein quote “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” - have you ever thought that your statement may also make stuff 'simpler' than it is?
For long in human history, it was posed that the earth was flat - until someone 'made up some shit' called gravity that allows us living on a ball shaped earth, without us sliding off the side or making people in Oz simply fall off the planet...
How about hydrogen? For long in history, hydrogen wasn't known to us - until someone 'made up some shit' called atoms and molecules -- in the process picking the name 'atom' (something indivisible), until some other shit was made up (protons, neutrons, electrons), which is the smallest that exists -- well, apart from some other shit stuff that was subsequently made up (quarks).
Obviously, some of this stuff was 'discovered' first, and not made up - but all of it would simply have been some 'invented some shit' had someone just posited its existence before.
Many of Einstein's ideas (frame dragging, time dilation) might still fall (partially) into the same category - it's something that must exist for some formula to work.
Note - this is not saying all of the above would be fictitious, but saying that sometimes you need to posit things that you can't observe, so you have something you can go and look for and finally discover and prove, or simply disprove.
Superstring theory is not yet proven, yet it's a useful concept to talk about among people trying to prove its existence, and it allows making the whole 'matter' thing even simpler -- yet, it may still fall apart. Or - maybe there already is a new theory for it or something else.
Just discrediting any hypothesis as 'making shit up' is stupid, and not helpful to any science. Discrediting making up a theory (and for it to work some as of yet unobservable force/matter), sounds more like religious dogma to me. Sure, many theories turn out to be wrong, but positing a theory (and all it requires) allows people to talk about and test an idea, and may give other people ideas on how some of it could be tested in order to prove or disprove it.
And another point - if dark matter / dark energy existed, it would make some models and some understanding simpler, than by introducing something else different.
In the end, we will see whether "dark energy", or "gravitational polarization of the quantum vacuum", or even both go the way of the "Phlogiston"...
Question for the pricing breakdown - can the e-paper be printed on on both sides?
If not, the usable pages go up to 10.000...
Also, trying to print a 50 page document, and your either US$50 (double-sided print) or US$100 (single-sided print) out of pocket - and you need to buy enough paper for the longest document you might want to print.
Besides, reprinted 260 times only really works, if you treat the epaper fairly carefully... Once it has been folded a few times / crumpled /... I'm not sure you can still go that often. Besides - when you add the ink to the cost of the individual pages, have you added the extra cost of re-arranging the paper, carefully aligning it, (possibly having to worry about which side is up), and then putting it back into the printer, as opposed to just putting another stack of paper into the printer?
What about marking, noting, drawing on the printout? Will that damage the epaper, or will it handle that cleanly?
Finally, what's the environmental impact of 260 pages of (recycled) paper + ink vs. the environmental impact of disposing the epaper (and its chemicals)?
I'm all for the idea of epaper, but I think there is still a fair number of issues left with it...
Well - they're already the largest power importer in Europe - because they went out of nuclear power after Chernobyl...
Remember this one? A storm felled a tree that cut one of the power lines transporting power to Italy - this tripped of a cascading effect cutting off all of mainland Italy:
But - even when you say 'This differs from Germany in that the Italian decision was made by a public vote, rather than a government mandated shutdown.' - this is only part of it. Germany had already decided on a nuclear exit before - it was the current government that extended the runtimes of nuclear reactors, causing public outrage. They mostly reverted back to the original targets now, since they increasingly find themselves becoming more and more unelectable, keeping to nuclear power. The governments stance pro nuclear power might have carried for a while longer, if it wasn't for Fukushima. Basically, the pro nuclear lobby said something like Chernobyl couldn't happen in Germany as our plants are safer than the Russian ones -- they couldn't convincingly say that they're safer than Japans...
Am I really the ONLY person who thought of House M.D. Epic Fail (season six) when the initial story made it to slashdot?
It's the episode with the guy who posts all new symptoms on the internet, resulting in the hospital phones, faxes, emails getting overwhelmed by people sending 'their suggestions'...
So many people complain about Apple's 'walled garden', and the 'necessity' to jailbreak your iPhone if you want to be able to do more - at the risk that an update might brick your jail-broken phone.
Now - Microsoft is giving you the (more or less) open phone - no walled garden - and all that without having to give up the thrill of bricking your phone on an upgrade...
So far - we are not quite certain, whether wikileaks will aid peace, or actually _cause_ wars.
Think about it - some of the diplomatic papers released were embarrassing (like US diplomats takes on the German foreign minister, or the comments about Putin) - do these aid peace? No.
Some more diplomatic papers seem to reveal some arab states actually urged the US to attack Iran - hmm - is that helping peace along in ANY way? I think it makes conflict between those states MORE likely, not LESS.
Don't get me wrong - wikileaks has done good things - like releasing the helicopter attack videos. These are clear whistleblowing activities, highlighting criminal behaviour. But it seems to me that some of the papers that were released were chosen by the potential size of the print run (i.e. tabloid style), rather than serious and responsible journalism.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm - what reasons could there be to legitimately do these kinds of searches?
- checking whether something seen on some crime drama actually makes sense
- checking whether a stupid newspaper story makes sense
- checking whether an outrageous story from a neighbour makes any sense
- looking for ideas to write a crime novel
- learning about the effects of certain things, say, for medical interests (medical students)
Either way - what people do should be what people do on their own; locking people up because
they MIGHT do something is a very bad precedent. And where will you stop?
Will you allow someone to a gas station and fill up their car after they had a bad fight with their
partner, whom they know will have to cross a road somewhere in the next hour? Or should you lock
them up after the fight? (independently of whether you or your partner started the fight)?
How about filling your car, and going for drinks later - having a car with a full tank of gas at
your disposal afterwards? Time to lock you up?
Sure, at a guess, looking up 'ways to kill people in their sleep' I would also think makes you
more likely a potential murderer than filling up your car. But, where do you draw the line on
what's legitimate and what isn't?
Also, maybe after you read how painful or possibly difficult your goal is - who's to say that
reading about it might not actually lead you to give up the thought? And then you still get
locked up because of something you looked up, where the result of the search itself already
deterred you (though, obviously, that can't be seen in any google search strings - you just
stop searching)...
Also, the only goal you'd reach is that now a potential murderer has to break in somewhere
only to look up how to murder someone - and then the wrong person would get arrested...
(...which might give the best possible version - look it up on the victim's computer - get them arrested!)
There are so many ways to screw this up - as bad as it is, until someone _actually_ tries
to go through with it, don't interfere...
The pre-cog route will just make things a LOT worse for civil liberties / personal freedom.
I'd wish they'd update the Rado Cerix with a self-winding mechanism. Unfortunately, Rado has stopped manufacturing them.
The only thing you need to watch out with some Rado watches is that some of their watches are using a ceramic wristband - which is great in that it still retains its shine after 10 odd years that I've had the watch by now - but the ceramic while scratch-proof is not 100% shockproof - I broke a couple of chain links when I fell off my bike onto the street (accident involving a car driver that didn't quite watch where he was going). But I could get them replaced, and I can't even distinguish the old and new links (again - the ceramics don't "age")...
Sorry, is this company _asking_ people to be "asleep at the job"?
While I would agree with that take on the US, I would also add - it's nothing specific to the US.
Much like politicians say 'bullying' is wrong in school yards, they just do it themselves as far as smaller or economically weaker countries are involved.
The US do it to Germany (like in this case), Germany do it to the Swiss (re tax law; despite there being tax havens INSIDE the EU, or outside of Europe - they target Switzerland; or noise pollution at airports - Germans should suffer noise from German airports, but not from a Swiss one), ...
I'm not saying wikipedia is the "source of my argument" - I'm saying, it's not just the media who get this wrong, if even wikipedia (a site nerds CAN help editing) uses that terminology.
I'm also absolutely getting the misuse of the word "hacked" here - prominently featured even in the article here on slashdot.
Again - the problem is not that you or I understand that the word 'hacked' is wrong. The problem is the point you're admitting yourself: "Again, I never said they were good at this", or "Anonymous don't exactly send out press releases (they should though)".
I think up until Anonymous and potentially similar groups get their act together in also managing how things appear OUTSIDE of their own activities, their plans will more likely than not backfire. If the field is left to political pundits, Anonymous is providing them with all the fodder they need to demand MORE surveillance.
And even if Anonymous would come up now and say "the 'disruption' here was meant as a protest", it will sound bad like their backpedalling / asscovering, like they got caught doing something bad (even if you feel they didn't do anything bad).
If you go on a stage completely unprepared - you will likely NOT get out what you want.
And as I pointed out earlier:
"
Right now, I don't know what the right course of action is to convince the governments that more and more surveillance is a bad thing. I wish I knew what the right course of action would be.
What I do know, though, is that attacking government websites is the WRONG way.
"
only just let me add - coming out a few days later trying to tell people "it wasn't an ATTACK, it was just a legitimate PROTEST" is not going to work. These are issues you need to plan for BEFORE you protest/attack/do...
The media may be partially to blame - but the problem is that even journalists aren't necessarily the most tech-savvy bunch.
And look at this - even wikipedia calls it "Denial-of-service attack" - maybe because in most cases, DDOS attacks were actual attacks on companies or websites, and most of them didn't find the kind of publicity then, that DDOSing the government finds now.
Besides, why would it be the medias fault for calling it attacks when you see the ones causing it using the exact same language?
Note how the purported chat didn't say "peaceful Internet demonstration", but rather "aim", "fire", and "keep firing" ?
If you stage a demonstration, people hold up banners to make clear what they are demonstrating for. Even if the DDOS packets that overwhelmed the government sites contained the words "we want our civil liberties back" - it still is nothing that could be seen by outsiders.
So, if you can't do the same thing with the banners in your 'Internet protest' - then you need to find a way to explain to people what you're trying to do - OR you leave that turf to politicians who will gladly fill in the blanks on how this is basically cyber-terrorism and how we need more surveillance to stop it. (And remember - if the press won't know where to find you to answer questions about what's going on; because you want to stay "anonymous" - they will HAVE to go and ask the other side, i.e. the government, what the whole thing is about.
And guess who will end up being the losers if you let the government explain those "attacks"? And rest assured - politicians will NOT call this a "peaceful demonstration", if it would harm their case -- they WILL call it "attacks" as it would bolster their positions!
Again - it's good that YOU see that this way. Many non-nerds will not see that difference. So, whenever the media covers these kinds of events, note how the say "denial of service ATTACKS", not "denial of service DEMONSTRATION".
Can you see how this might make an important (and negative) difference in the minds of your parent's/grandparent's generation?
And importantly, noone calls these things 'demonstrations' - look at the linked zdnet article headline "hacks UK government sites". It's the same kind of language you also get with articles that then continue something along the lines of 'millions of credit card/social security records stolen'. And the 'demonstrators' own language?
" #OpTrialAtHome — Target: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ | ETA: 7 MINS! Charge your laz0rs and aim! #Anonymous #UK
#OpTrialAtHome — Target: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ | Fire! Fire!! Fire!!! Fire!!!! Soundtrack- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKTpWi5itOM #Anonymous #UK Pew Pew Pew
#OpTrialAtHome : Tango Down: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ | Keep Firing!!!! Keep it down! Make them hear you! #Anonymous #UK
"
Really - is "Charge your laz0rs and aim!", "Fire! Fire!! Fire!!!" the kind of language that will make non-technical folk see that this is 'just the same as a demonstration'?
It's all well and good for you that YOU "know" this to be a demonstration, not an attack. But to a large majority of people outside of the net, words like "attack" and "fire" sound more like the kind of things politicians SHOULD protect us all from.
And there go even more of your civil liberties.
I'm not sure whether either the Anonymous attacks or the funny quips will help the case of civil liberties.
Sure, you and I know that the way civil liberties have been eroded in the past decade is a bad thing. Unfortunately, most voters really haven't. And if people attack government websites, it will only strengthen THEIR case, not the case of those who want civil liberties restored.
You taking the liberty of bringing down websites to ask for more liberties is roughly the same as if someone started to randomly shoot people proclaiming that he will continue killing people until murder will finally become legal.
It's entirely irrelevant whether your point is a valid one (as, in my opinion, it is in the case of civil liberties -- for most bystanders that really don't have a clue on why this is even important. To them, the government is doing the right thing, seeing that that kind of surveillance would actually be needed to prevent further attacks on government websites.
Right now, I don't know what the right course of action is to convince the governments that more and more surveillance is a bad thing. I wish I knew what the right course of action would be.
What I do know, though, is that attacking government websites is the WRONG way.
From TFA:
In a statement sent to legislators, eight members of the National Academy of Science said that, in practice, the bill will likely [...] harm the state's national reputation[...]
The scientists got it wrong as well - thanks to blogging, like the publication here on Slashdot, the bill harms the state's INTERnational reputation... ;-)
"This is the 14th meteorite that's been found in Norway, and only the second that crashed through a roof. "
Who wrote this?
Have you got any idea how "densely" populated Norway is?
Sure, people won't be monitoring all of the countryside for meteorite impacts; but even then, I'm sure they get to see easily more than 7* the roof space area in non-roofed area during their day-to-day activities.
So, among 14 meteorites, 1/7th has hit a house...?
How many meteorites does the country get???
As a software developer, I can see where the call for that comes from - but it's just about as misplaced as it could be. Software developers aren't the 'standard' the rest of the world should orient themselves by.
Developing software is a great skill to have if you're a software engineer -- not sure whether it's a waste of time if you plan to become, say, a doctor, a plumber, etc...
There are very few skills that _everybody_ needs to have for their normal day to day lives - developing software isn't one of them. Giving kids an idea of what is part of it may be a good idea, i.e. a basic understanding of how computers work. Coding skills on the other hand - not so sure; particularly - who knows what language and what paradigm will be 'state of the art' by the time the kid finally gets to use his/her development skills on. Picture it from this side - when I went to school, programming courses looked at BASIC and Pascal. Nice languages - for teaching - but I'm not sure whether it will really prepare you for coding C/C++, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, ...
Do you really think that it makes sense giving someone much of a development course in something that may be outdated a few years later? I didn't really like history lessons, biology lessons, ... But I'm sure most of the history being taught is still the same; most of the principles of biology are still intact, ... On the other hand - one of the things we learned about in school was some of the hardware: anyone still remember what a ULA is? Or the practical knowledge of how to hook up a tape deck to a computer? ... punch cards?
Development classes and paradigms are too specific a skill for a mandatory course to be forced on everyone.
People have been talking for decades about the sort of application that a cure for cancer could have...
Will that prevent patenting one, once you would come up with a way to _actually_ make one _work_?
The patent never revolves around the idea of putting a fuel cell into a laptop - it's about the HOW you do it...
You may not like that Apple files for a patent for this, but the problem is that Apple, like all companies needs to also look after the interests of its shareholders - if you create a solution and NOT attempt to monetize it, how will your shareholders react? May you even run the dangers of running into a liability for not pursuing profits (after all - that's what _for profit_ companies are for).
For what it's worth - seeing how Apple, Motorola, and other companies are cross-suing each other for patent violations, we should end up with far more attention on how to solve the patent crisis (and, no, I don't think just ditching patents is the way to go - just like there are bad reasons for patents (trolling readily springs to mind), there are also good ones (like preventing a large company from wiping out a small start-up who came up and patented a brilliant solution to a problem).
The wayback machine is a wonderful thing, yes... But a positive example doesn't negate a negative one.
Guns are a good thing - they really helped that one time in the forest when a bear attacked you. They just sucked badly, when a good friend got shot.
Cigarettes are a good thing, because they make you look 'cool' - until lung cancer sets in, at which case, cigarettes probably weren't quite as cool.
The wayback machine is nice to look at some of your old work - but the wayback machine also allows you to remove your site from it - not an individual page or version, yes, but at least it does give you _some_ way to keep a lid on your data.
But picture the bad side - you post something bad about a friend (after a fight you've had). Later you feel sorry for it - and you want to remove it; and you find, you can't.
Another bad side may also be when you change opinions on something over time, and people find pages of you arguing 'the other side' - maybe you were against abortion at some point, now your pro abortion - and some of your pro-abortion friends might find pages of you advocating against (or vice versa).
There are certainly things I argued 20 years back (_on the net_) that are still visible, but that I now see fallacies of. And I have no chance of removing the old comments. If you discuss something just among friends, you can, at least, hope that they'll forget it over time - or that they will also see how your change of heart comes about and therefore ignore what you said before.
On the net, you don't have that choice.
You may now argue, that people should think better before they post - but how often do you read the "How to avoid beginner's mistakes on XYZ", _before_ making some of them?
In my case, 20 years ago, I wouldn't have thought that that data would still be around now; at least, not publicly - at the time, I just didn't think it was feasible storage-wise to keep it all. Now I know different.
Today you might be thinking - well, whatever I post, I don't think anyone will be able to find it 10 years from now - but you're basing that thinking on technology that you see today; and you might think google will not have an easy time finding what you said 10 years ago, so it will not manage to do that 10 years from now, either. On the other hand, in those 10 years, technology will grow leaps and bounds - maybe in 10 years, you can just click on a photo of someone on the internet, and just right-click and select 'personal history' and the future google dredges up _all_ it can find on that person: from the 'more informed' comments that person might be making then, to childish comments uttered in the early 2000s.
Exactly!
60% of the energy is being used by the 90% living in the third world countries...
40% of energy consumption is by us 10% of the people in the 'developed' world.
Interesting how this looks when you start adding numbers of people...
Indeed obvious, where we need to start, isn't it?
And that is before trying to calculate energy consumption in third world countries to have them produce stuff for 'us'...
As long as people will agree that the earth is warming up - will a long discussion about whether man caused it really serve any useful purpose?
Here's how I see it:
Picture yourself as a passenger of the Quantas A380 plane whose engine exploded mid-flight. The moment the engine exploded, what would you look at first:
a) trying to figure out what CAN be done?
b) trying to figure out whether it was caused by humans or not (terrorists or material faults vs. meteor or lightning strikes)?
Think that you will have to decide what to focus on, while the plane is having trouble staying in the air.
My guess is, that getting to land safely ANYWHERE was the top priority... But - it's just my guess...
Maybe you want to fund a study into the event asking everyone on board to see what they did first...
_OR_ we might try and focus on how to get the situation under control as safely as possible - by reducing the number of maneuvers that could contribute or increase the problem, and thinking about counter-maneuvers.
I bet you, even if the wing of that A380 would have gone, and even if chances of the pilot making ANY difference AT ALL - I bet you, they would have tried EVERYTHING to even minimally increase the chances of ANYONE surviving.
From the article:
the analyst might push a button and watch a screen video of the officer's last hour of work
Hmmm, so it would need 'cleverness' like a closed shell window:
$ sleep 3600 ; cp /path/to/secret.file /mnt/thumbdrive
Then wait half an hour, insert your thumbdrive to be mounted to the proper location; open a completely harmless (but non-work document) from it, say - an invitation to a garden party, and print it -- all the while leaving the thumbdrive mounted, so that the sleep-job can write the document in the background after in the next hour...
Then ensure the thumbdrive is only ejected once more than an hour has passed and the file has been written.
Nothing untoward will ever have been on your screen in the half hour before the thumb-drive access. The worst they'll see on screen is you opening a private garden party invitation to print it at the office...
Stupid system...
Dear anonymous coward: Am I really an idiot for asking whether something is being researched?
If there are pathogens that can jump species - like bird flu - why should it be impossible to make the opposite work, a vaccine that can jump species?
Look at the various plans that are being discussed in different places:
- vaccination of humans - doesn't solve the problem in the long term, as it would require constant re-vaccination of new generations of children.
- there's Myrvold's mosquito-zapping laser - is it a permanent solution? No - only permanent in that it will take permanent sales of new units over time, once the old ones die. (Perfect moneyspinner, though - for the "long" term).
- exterminating the mosquitoes - possible, but unlikely that that will succeed, and incalculable in terms of further damage to the ecosystems (what about animals that might live off mosquitoes, and animals living of those? Or is the mosquito really the top-of-the-line predator)?
The best solution, it seems would most likely be to eradicate the disease itself - which will also require that the pathogen be purged from mosquitoes as well. This is not a quick fix, but it will take a very long time - still somehow I think developing a vaccine that might work on mosquitoes will be very, very difficult, but it might just open a good possibility of getting rid of the disease.
Vaccinating mosquitoes themselves is going to be very difficult - I doubt you'll find a way of getting them to line up for the vaccine; so is there a possibility of making a vaccine that might jump from one of the mosquitoes prey (humans or animals) to the mosquitoes as carriers? If we find a single species with a 'manageable' number of creatures to be vaccinated that would in turn over time help to vaccinate all the mosquitoes as well?
This may be sci-fi right now, but given that we have both
- vaccinations that can be delivered orally (like polio vaccines), and
- pathogens that CAN jump species
IS there a way that both could be combined, to make a vaccine that will make it up the food chain, to get mosquitoes to suck up the vaccine WITH the blood of its prey?
However unlikely it may be - has such a way been investigated as a possibility?
Unlikely, but, would it be possible to design it in a way that it works in mosquitoes as well? (So, that the mosquito might possibly get the antibodies as well?)
If oral vaccination works for polio in humans - would it be possible to design an oral vaccination that might help eradicate the Malaria pathogens in mosquitoes? (i.e. can we 'cure' the mosquitoes before they bite us again?)
The difference in voice control almost seems to resemble the text adventure games of the 80s -
most games, like the Windows 7 feature today, basically used 2-word parsers, all instructions were just plain ' ' (open door, n, kill goblin).
Infocom adventures at the time understood almost plain text sentences; and stood far above the others...
It seems far too much like aether, i.e. something made up to fill a gap in knowledge without much evidence backing it up. "Look, my equations don't work out in every situation. EUREKA! If I just make some shit up like say, invisible matter that doesn't interact with other matter except through gravity, I can make my equations work!".
[...]
It must be that the model needs additional generalization rather than inventing magic stuff.
You've heard of the Einstein quote “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” - have you ever thought that your statement may also make stuff 'simpler' than it is?
For long in human history, it was posed that the earth was flat - until someone 'made up some shit' called gravity that allows us living on a ball shaped earth, without us sliding off the side or making people in Oz simply fall off the planet...
How about hydrogen? For long in history, hydrogen wasn't known to us - until someone 'made up some shit' called atoms and molecules -- in the process picking the name 'atom' (something indivisible), until some other shit was made up (protons, neutrons, electrons), which is the smallest that exists -- well, apart from some other shit stuff that was subsequently made up (quarks).
Obviously, some of this stuff was 'discovered' first, and not made up - but all of it would simply have been some 'invented some shit' had someone just posited its existence before.
Many of Einstein's ideas (frame dragging, time dilation) might still fall (partially) into the same category - it's something that must exist for some formula to work.
Note - this is not saying all of the above would be fictitious, but saying that sometimes you need to posit things that you can't observe, so you have something you can go and look for and finally discover and prove, or simply disprove.
Superstring theory is not yet proven, yet it's a useful concept to talk about among people trying to prove its existence, and it allows making the whole 'matter' thing even simpler -- yet, it may still fall apart. Or - maybe there already is a new theory for it or something else.
Just discrediting any hypothesis as 'making shit up' is stupid, and not helpful to any science. Discrediting making up a theory (and for it to work some as of yet unobservable force/matter), sounds more like religious dogma to me. Sure, many theories turn out to be wrong, but positing a theory (and all it requires) allows people to talk about and test an idea, and may give other people ideas on how some of it could be tested in order to prove or disprove it.
And another point - if dark matter / dark energy existed, it would make some models and some understanding simpler, than by introducing something else different.
In the end, we will see whether "dark energy", or "gravitational polarization of the quantum vacuum", or even both go the way of the "Phlogiston"...
Question for the pricing breakdown - can the e-paper be printed on on both sides?
If not, the usable pages go up to 10.000...
Also, trying to print a 50 page document, and your either US$50 (double-sided print) or US$100 (single-sided print) out of pocket - and you need to buy enough paper for the longest document you might want to print.
Besides, reprinted 260 times only really works, if you treat the epaper fairly carefully... Once it has been folded a few times / crumpled / ... I'm not sure you can still go that often. Besides - when you add the ink to the cost of the individual pages, have you added the extra cost of re-arranging the paper, carefully aligning it, (possibly having to worry about which side is up), and then putting it back into the printer, as opposed to just putting another stack of paper into the printer?
What about marking, noting, drawing on the printout? Will that damage the epaper, or will it handle that cleanly?
Finally, what's the environmental impact of 260 pages of (recycled) paper + ink vs. the environmental impact of disposing the epaper (and its chemicals)?
I'm all for the idea of epaper, but I think there is still a fair number of issues left with it...
Well - they're already the largest power importer in Europe - because they went out of nuclear power after Chernobyl...
Remember this one? A storm felled a tree that cut one of the power lines transporting power to Italy - this tripped of a cascading effect cutting off all of mainland Italy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Italy_blackout
But - even when you say 'This differs from Germany in that the Italian decision was made by a public vote, rather than a government mandated shutdown.' - this is only part of it. Germany had already decided on a nuclear exit before - it was the current government that extended the runtimes of nuclear reactors, causing public outrage. They mostly reverted back to the original targets now, since they increasingly find themselves becoming more and more unelectable, keeping to nuclear power. The governments stance pro nuclear power might have carried for a while longer, if it wasn't for Fukushima. Basically, the pro nuclear lobby said something like Chernobyl couldn't happen in Germany as our plants are safer than the Russian ones -- they couldn't convincingly say that they're safer than Japans...
Am I really the ONLY person who thought of House M.D. Epic Fail (season six) when the initial story made it to slashdot?
It's the episode with the guy who posts all new symptoms on the internet, resulting in the hospital phones, faxes, emails getting overwhelmed by people sending 'their suggestions'...
All you cynics!
Don't you realize what Microsoft is doing?
So many people complain about Apple's 'walled garden', and the 'necessity' to jailbreak your iPhone if you want to be able to do more - at the risk that an update might brick your jail-broken phone.
Now - Microsoft is giving you the (more or less) open phone - no walled garden - and all that without having to give up the thrill of bricking your phone on an upgrade...
A nobel peace prize for Wikileaks?
So far - we are not quite certain, whether wikileaks will aid peace, or actually _cause_ wars.
Think about it - some of the diplomatic papers released were embarrassing (like US diplomats takes on the German foreign minister, or the comments about Putin) - do these aid peace? No.
Some more diplomatic papers seem to reveal some arab states actually urged the US to attack Iran - hmm - is that helping peace along in ANY way? I think it makes conflict between those states MORE likely, not LESS.
Don't get me wrong - wikileaks has done good things - like releasing the helicopter attack videos. These are clear whistleblowing activities, highlighting criminal behaviour. But it seems to me that some of the papers that were released were chosen by the potential size of the print run (i.e. tabloid style), rather than serious and responsible journalism.