Just for the record, Reagan wasn't the only guy to try to put weapons in space. There was an article in Popular Science last year (or was it Popular Mechanics? I'm not sure,) about the USSR's own plans for space weaponry. They had plans to mount anti-sat missles and defensive lasers on Mir, among other things. I think they might have actually flown some of them, but I don't remember the article well enough.
2)It still takes idiot windows2000 30+ seconds to boot up on my machine with 256 megs of RAM.
That's right, it's pretty bad. (And don't forget, you still have to POST, which takes a good 15 or 20 seconds on my machine.)
But Windows also supports suspend-to-RAM, which is much more useful. Waking up from suspend-to-RAM only takes about three seconds. As long as you're confident that the machine will have power while it's suspended, there's no reason to hibernate.
This is really more of a motherboard/chipset feature than an OS feature, by the way. Windows 98/2000 is just the only x86 OS that implements it.
IMHO, SOURCE code is not executable. It can do nothing.
What, and binaries can? I've yet to see a CD-ROM leap into my computer and offer to install itself. (Although I'm sure they're working on it.)
Computers, as we use them today, are simply machines that read in data representing a list of instructions (i.e. "notepad.exe"), and take action based on those instructions. The data doesn't do anything at all, it's just a blueprint.
The only difference between source code and machine code is that source code is intended to be read by humans (but can be read by a computer, with some difficulty), whereas machine code is intended to be read by computers (but can be read by humans, with some difficulty.) In my opinion, they're both speech... although I'd defend the right to free source code more vigorously that the right to free binaries.
I think 90% of the confusion about computers that one finds among the general public (including the less academic techies, like IT people) is due to the misconception that software actually does something. That needs to be fixed.
But, Section 1201, Paragraph 2 has no such fair use exemption.
That's an interesting twist. If your interpretation is correct, it would pretty much render the fair use exception moot, because we can't expect every consumer to individually develop his own DeCSS (or whatever.)
Maybe "a work protected under this title" does not include such works to which the fair use exception applies? It's a stretch, but I can't imagine the law was really intended to say what it seems to be saying.
Are there any legal types out there who could offer a better interpretation?
Lessig is right. DMCA does not prohibit fair use. But (and this is a really big BUT) DMCA does prohibit unauthorized access for whatever purpose, be it fair use or not.
Where does it say that in the law? The anti-circumvention portion, which I quoted from, specifically says that it is not illegal to circumvent protection measures, if such circumvention is necessary to allow "fair use". That supersedes the anti-circumvention provision itself.
The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) [anti-circumvention] shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title...
In other words, Lessig was wrong, the DMCA does not prohibit fair use.
Of course, it goes on to say that it's up to the Librarian of Congress (?!) to decide, in advance, what constitutes circumvention for the purpose of fair use. That hasn't happened yet. But then again, as others have pointed out, the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA haven't taken effect yet anyway -- not until October.
I know this isn't a software player, but if your goal is to play movies (rather than make a political statement,) it should work fine. (Not that I disagree with the political statement.)
Illegally copying a copyrighted MP3 file (which I don't condone, BTW) might cost the artist or studio a few bucks.
So let's say I hack into your bank's computer and, as the legend goes, insert a program that skims one penny off of each account, and transfers it all to me. Assume for the sake of argument that the program is never discovered. The account owners only lose a few cents... So it's all right then?
(Aside: You can't really say "crack into," can you? I hate to misuse "hack," but...)
This sounds like an extension of contract law, where contracts can't simply be one-sided -- each party has to give the other party something. I could pay you a dollar for GPLing your code, and you would not be able to undo that GPLing without my consent. (You could, however, undo it *with* my consent.)
If this is true, maybe we could kill two birds with one stone in a future version of the GPL... Add a clause stating that, in return for being granted use of the software under the GPL, the licensee agrees to report any bugs that they happen to find, in the course of normal use. (The language would have to be much more precise.)
That way, the GPL could be viewed as two-way contract -- one party provides software, the other party provides testing services. (Which would certainly be of value to the author.)
This is all assuming that the GPL is, in fact, revocable. That still sounds kind of fishy to me.
I hate to be off-topic, but hasn't anyone noticed that the above post is nothing more than a copy of a link that was in the very first line of the article, yet it was moderated up to 5? Obviously the poster was trying to be funny, but all of the moderation was "Informative".
Is the moderation system working?
Re:you make the same mistake!
on
The Mind of God
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· Score: 2
"Our existence is pointless" is not the default position in the absence of evidence for or against whether or not we have a purpose here in the universe!
As the original poster pointed out, the burden of proof is on Davies. Roughly speaking, we've got two hypotheses about human existence here: That humanity is the result of continuing application of mindless physical laws and an occasional dose of chance, or that humanity has "a purpose." The former hypothesis can be supported entirely by conventional science. The latter cannot. (And I suspect that many people would argue that it cannot be supported by any science, conventional or otherwise.)
All other things being equal, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, Occam's Razor applies, and the "default" conclusion is the former. Davies provides no evidence to change that.
I'm not sure if this would have been legal a few years ago, but it is definitely illegal now, thanks to the DMCA: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
Remember, the principle of fair use says that it is not illegal to make "backups" of a copyrighted work. It does not say that you have a right to make backups. In this case, it is still legal to make backup copies of your DVDs; it is just illegal to circumvent copy-protection measures in the process.
Apparently the Librarian of Congress (?!) can declare exceptions to the above, but I'm sure we'd have heard about it by now if such an exception had been made. Until that happens, it's illegal to break Macrovision. (At least, after the provision takes effect in October -- why hasn't anyone brought that point up yet?)
... that the obstacle to Linux viruses, that the security model prevents them from infecting most programs, is also present in Windows 2000. I notice that on my Win2K machine, by default, pretty darn near everything but documents is tagged read-only to users.
Of course, I never noticed this before, because I run with administrator priveleges all the time... The biggest problem with Windows these days, IMHO, is that installing new software is too invasive. Anyone who has enough access to install software has enough access to spread a virus. (Whereas in UNIX, any user can just stick an executable in his own directory, without affecting anyone else.)
As I understand it, Turing's machine is purely deterministic.
In some forms, yes. But you can construct nondeterministic Turing machines too, and it turns out that everything a that a nondeterministic Turing machine can do can also be done by a deterministic Turing machine. Think about it... All a deterministic machine would have to do is follow each of the possible paths in turn. There will always be a finite number of possible paths, because of the "digital" nature of symbol systems.
Incidentally, I should have referred to the conjecture that no computer is more powerful than a Turing machine as "Church's thesis", although it comes out of Turing's work just as easily.
The "Halting Problem" is a misnomer, it depends on the requirement of Turing machines having infinite memory. No computational machine has infinite memory, so no real (as opposed to abstract) machine suffers from the halting problem.
You're making a subtle but important mistake. Turing machines don't have infinite memory, they have unlimited memory. Computers with unlimited memory can be built (although they usually aren't.) Your computer has a diskette drive, right? If you wanted to perfectly simulate a Turing machine with your computer, all you have to do is keep feeding it disks whenever it needs to swap out data. Sure, there are only so many floppy disks in the universe (even counting AOL disks,) but that doesn't make the computation any less valid.
That doesn't help with the halting problem, though. The problem is that there is no way to predict how much memory you will need to compute an operation until you actually try it... in the example I gave above, you could keep feeding your computer fresh disks until kingdom come (literally), and you still couldn't prove that the operation does not halt.
As far as real machines, it is true that they are not strictly Turing machines. (In fact, they're not even push-down automata, they're finite state machines.) But the question is, is my PC a perfect FSM, or an imperfect Turing machine? I'm inclined to think that it's the latter. Notice that modern computer programs treat the computer as if it has an infinite supply of memory; if they run out of memory, that's an exception, which typically causes the program to crash. It may sound a little like voodoo, but I think that the intent of the programmers (who program as though for a Turing machine) actually makes the computer a Turing machine, regardless of its physical design.
That's actually quite a leap, even from the limb that Penrose is out on. First of all, don't conflate the halting problem with the ability to determine whether a specific program halts. To prove that a machine solves the halting problem, you need to prove that it can determine whether any program you feed it will halt.
I was speaking somewhat tongue-in-cheek, so I may not have put my propsal clearly enough. You're right, I would need to determine whether there exists any instance of the halting problem that your machine cannot solve, out of an infinite number of possible runs. Answering that question is itself an instance of the halting problem... but since this whole thought experiment is based on Penrose's premise, I'm assuming that humans should be able to solve this particular halting problem, thereby proving that the machine is conscious.
If Penrose is wrong, then this method would not work... but then it would be moot, because the test wouldn't be valid in the first place. I only bring this up to point out that in some respects, it would be handy if Penrose were right.
Furthermore, Penrose argues that human minds are capable of deciding undecidable problems (which TMs are not) and therefore that human minds are not TMs. He does not claim that a machine that could decide undecidable problems would necessarily be conscious.
Absolutely right, that was sloppy of me. However, if machines exist that can overcome the halting problem, that would be a very compelling evidence that those machines are conscious, even though it would not be proof. There aren't that many different kinds of computers in our universe; perhaps three or four, in current thinking. If we were to discover a fifth kind, the law of parsimony suggests that that would explain consciousness.
Having dabbled in mathematics, I am equally certain that I cannot determine whether arbitrary mathematical statements are true or false. Thus, by your statement of Penrose's thesis, I am not conscious. I claim that I am conscious, but by your argument I am not. Now prove I am not.
Brings to mind an interesting question... What if any particular human might not be able to solve all undecidable problems, but the human race as a whole can? Certainly there are people out there who would never even be willing to make the attempt. Do we need to talk about every single human, or just a hypothetical "average taxpayer" case?
At any rate, how can you prove that your hardware is incapable of solving all instances of the halting problem, in the right situation, with the right insights, and the right motivations? You can't, just as Penrose can't prove that you're wrong.
PS: Yes, I know you are taking a devil's advocate position.
PS: Absolutely. I just think that Penrose's argument can't be dismissed that easily. (Particularly since it cannot be proven wrong... unless it is correct. Dagnabbit...)
Believe it or not, according to Turing, nothing can make a computer more "powerful," past a certain point. RAM and MIPS and parallelism are nice, but the most advanced computer the world has ever seen has exactly the same limitations as the simple Turing machine. (It just runs faster.)
Unfortunately, like so much of the work in this area, Turing's conjecture can't be proven.
Just set up a second machine that successively feeds undecidable problems to the first machine, and see if the combined operation halts.
Damn, I've already posted four replies to this article, but I really should clarify this: I'm assuming the operation would halt if and when the second machine generates a problem that the first machine could not solve, thereby proving that it is not conscious (according to Penrose.) If the operation does not halt, then the machine is conscious (according to Penrose.)
(Say I built a machine that was conscious. How would I know I had succeeded?)
Ironically, one of the nice things about Penrose's argument is that it answers that question. Just set up a second machine that successively feeds undecidable problems to the first machine, and see if the combined operation halts. If Penrose is right, that should be no problem for us humans, right?
But, I'll bet I can give you a randomly generated 8 state turing machine and you'll never guess whether or not it terminates.
I doubt that. If I watched it play out on a simulator for a few weeks, I'm pretty sure I'd figure it out eventually. (That's assuming it doesn't halt, of course... we're talking about a semi-decidable problem here.)
Incidentally, it occurred to me a month or two ago that the following problem is equivalent to the halting problem: "Construct a program of a size no greater than N, which runs as long or longer than any other programs of equal or lesser size (except those that run forever, of course.)" Personally, I think it's even harder to believe that the human mind can't solve all problems of this form... but if brains are equivalent to computers, that must be the case.
I think Penrose is wrong. But I also think that he's got the most compelling argument against strong AI that's out there. (In fact, his is the only objection that hasn't been settled to my satisfaction.)
What if the human conscious mind is no more than a massively massively massively parallel computer and that consciousness is simply the emergent property of a complex system? And that any large system where several billion nodes simultaneously pass information to other nodes embodies a consciousness of some sort?
Good idea, but it doesn't refute Penrose's particular argument. The Godel theorem / Church-Turing theorem applies to any computer, present or future, with any architecture, any amount of RAM, any number of CPUs, etc. (Along with computers so exotic that they have no concept of "RAM" or "CPU")
It's a pretty neat trick. Basically, the moment you specify a system, i.e. write out the source code or draft blueprints, you guarantee that it is incomplete (or inconsistent.) So hypothetically, the only algorithms that might be able to solve the halting problem are those that can't be written down. If you find any algorithms that can't be written down, please be sure to send me a copy.;-)
Having said all that, Penrose is probably still wrong, because he hasn't proven to my satisfaction that the human mind is not subject to the limitations of the Godel theorem. (And of course, any such proof also couldn't be written down...)
I post this every time there's a cookie article, and it's probably redundant, but it might help some people...
I set my "Internet Zone" security settings to prompt before accepting cookies. Whenever somebody tries to send me a cookie, the cookie dialog comes up. If it's coming from the site that I'm actually visiting, I accept it (and I never have to see it again.) If it's coming from doubleclick.net or the like, I refuse it, and then I add that domain to the "Restricted Zone". From then on, IE automatically refuses cookies from that domain (and also disables Javascript, ActiveX, etc.)
My only complaint is that adding the domain to my "restricted" list is a separate step; it would be nice if I could just click "No, and block all future cookies," and be done with it. But if you're using IE anyway, and you don't want to mess with third party programs, this method works pretty well.
More importantly, they could revoke Apex's CSS player key. All future DVDs would be mastered without an Apex key, so they could not be played on an Apex player.
That's the way it was supposed to work, anyway. Given all the developments since then (particularly the CSS crack,) I doubt the MPAA would follow through on the "DVD player death penalty."
Well, just food for thought... I don't have the energy to think it through right now.
Why not limit the number of domains that a single company can own? Corporations can't pay off the USPS to give them thousands of different vanity mailing addresses; why should they be able to have unlimited domains?
As a bonus, this would also increase public awareness of just who actually runs the sites they're visiting... i.e., people would notice that everything ends in aol.com.
Pretty far off topic, but something that/.ers would probably like to know... Jerry Doyle, who played Garibaldi on Babylon 5, is running for congress as a Republican in California's 24th district. As most geeks already know, when it comes to realistic depictions of space exploration, Babylon 5 made Mission to Mars look like... well, Mission to Mars. NASA folks loved it. Doyle, who has a degree in Aeronautics, is a huge booster of both fictional and real space technology.
Details about the campaign are sketchy. (www.jerrydoyleforcongress.com is a placeholder right now.) My guess is, he doesn't have a chance. But it's a pretty safe bet that he'd be one of NASA's loudest supporters if he made it.
Slashdot Mirror
Just for the record, Reagan wasn't the only guy to try to put weapons in space. There was an article in Popular Science last year (or was it Popular Mechanics? I'm not sure,) about the USSR's own plans for space weaponry. They had plans to mount anti-sat missles and defensive lasers on Mir, among other things. I think they might have actually flown some of them, but I don't remember the article well enough.
But Windows also supports suspend-to-RAM, which is much more useful. Waking up from suspend-to-RAM only takes about three seconds. As long as you're confident that the machine will have power while it's suspended, there's no reason to hibernate.
This is really more of a motherboard/chipset feature than an OS feature, by the way. Windows 98/2000 is just the only x86 OS that implements it.
Computers, as we use them today, are simply machines that read in data representing a list of instructions (i.e. "notepad.exe"), and take action based on those instructions. The data doesn't do anything at all, it's just a blueprint.
The only difference between source code and machine code is that source code is intended to be read by humans (but can be read by a computer, with some difficulty), whereas machine code is intended to be read by computers (but can be read by humans, with some difficulty.) In my opinion, they're both speech... although I'd defend the right to free source code more vigorously that the right to free binaries.
I think 90% of the confusion about computers that one finds among the general public (including the less academic techies, like IT people) is due to the misconception that software actually does something. That needs to be fixed.
Maybe "a work protected under this title" does not include such works to which the fair use exception applies? It's a stretch, but I can't imagine the law was really intended to say what it seems to be saying.
Are there any legal types out there who could offer a better interpretation?
Is there another clause that says otherwise?
Of course, it goes on to say that it's up to the Librarian of Congress (?!) to decide, in advance, what constitutes circumvention for the purpose of fair use. That hasn't happened yet. But then again, as others have pointed out, the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA haven't taken effect yet anyway -- not until October.
I know this isn't a software player, but if your goal is to play movies (rather than make a political statement,) it should work fine. (Not that I disagree with the political statement.)
(Aside: You can't really say "crack into," can you? I hate to misuse "hack," but...)
That way, the GPL could be viewed as two-way contract -- one party provides software, the other party provides testing services. (Which would certainly be of value to the author.)
This is all assuming that the GPL is, in fact, revocable. That still sounds kind of fishy to me.
I hate to be off-topic, but hasn't anyone noticed that the above post is nothing more than a copy of a link that was in the very first line of the article, yet it was moderated up to 5? Obviously the poster was trying to be funny, but all of the moderation was "Informative".
Is the moderation system working?
All other things being equal, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, Occam's Razor applies, and the "default" conclusion is the former. Davies provides no evidence to change that.
(In response to all the posts in this thread...)
I'm not sure if this would have been legal a few years ago, but it is definitely illegal now, thanks to the DMCA: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
Remember, the principle of fair use says that it is not illegal to make "backups" of a copyrighted work. It does not say that you have a right to make backups. In this case, it is still legal to make backup copies of your DVDs; it is just illegal to circumvent copy-protection measures in the process.
Apparently the Librarian of Congress (?!) can declare exceptions to the above, but I'm sure we'd have heard about it by now if such an exception had been made. Until that happens, it's illegal to break Macrovision. (At least, after the provision takes effect in October -- why hasn't anyone brought that point up yet?)
Disclaimer: I don't like the DMCA.
... that the obstacle to Linux viruses, that the security model prevents them from infecting most programs, is also present in Windows 2000. I notice that on my Win2K machine, by default, pretty darn near everything but documents is tagged read-only to users.
Of course, I never noticed this before, because I run with administrator priveleges all the time... The biggest problem with Windows these days, IMHO, is that installing new software is too invasive. Anyone who has enough access to install software has enough access to spread a virus. (Whereas in UNIX, any user can just stick an executable in his own directory, without affecting anyone else.)
Incidentally, I should have referred to the conjecture that no computer is more powerful than a Turing machine as "Church's thesis", although it comes out of Turing's work just as easily.
That doesn't help with the halting problem, though. The problem is that there is no way to predict how much memory you will need to compute an operation until you actually try it... in the example I gave above, you could keep feeding your computer fresh disks until kingdom come (literally), and you still couldn't prove that the operation does not halt.
As far as real machines, it is true that they are not strictly Turing machines. (In fact, they're not even push-down automata, they're finite state machines.) But the question is, is my PC a perfect FSM, or an imperfect Turing machine? I'm inclined to think that it's the latter. Notice that modern computer programs treat the computer as if it has an infinite supply of memory; if they run out of memory, that's an exception, which typically causes the program to crash. It may sound a little like voodoo, but I think that the intent of the programmers (who program as though for a Turing machine) actually makes the computer a Turing machine, regardless of its physical design.
If Penrose is wrong, then this method would not work... but then it would be moot, because the test wouldn't be valid in the first place. I only bring this up to point out that in some respects, it would be handy if Penrose were right.
Absolutely right, that was sloppy of me. However, if machines exist that can overcome the halting problem, that would be a very compelling evidence that those machines are conscious, even though it would not be proof. There aren't that many different kinds of computers in our universe; perhaps three or four, in current thinking. If we were to discover a fifth kind, the law of parsimony suggests that that would explain consciousness.
Brings to mind an interesting question... What if any particular human might not be able to solve all undecidable problems, but the human race as a whole can? Certainly there are people out there who would never even be willing to make the attempt. Do we need to talk about every single human, or just a hypothetical "average taxpayer" case?
At any rate, how can you prove that your hardware is incapable of solving all instances of the halting problem, in the right situation, with the right insights, and the right motivations? You can't, just as Penrose can't prove that you're wrong.
PS: Absolutely. I just think that Penrose's argument can't be dismissed that easily. (Particularly since it cannot be proven wrong... unless it is correct. Dagnabbit...)
Believe it or not, according to Turing, nothing can make a computer more "powerful," past a certain point. RAM and MIPS and parallelism are nice, but the most advanced computer the world has ever seen has exactly the same limitations as the simple Turing machine. (It just runs faster.)
Unfortunately, like so much of the work in this area, Turing's conjecture can't be proven.
Incidentally, it occurred to me a month or two ago that the following problem is equivalent to the halting problem: "Construct a program of a size no greater than N, which runs as long or longer than any other programs of equal or lesser size (except those that run forever, of course.)" Personally, I think it's even harder to believe that the human mind can't solve all problems of this form... but if brains are equivalent to computers, that must be the case.
I think Penrose is wrong. But I also think that he's got the most compelling argument against strong AI that's out there. (In fact, his is the only objection that hasn't been settled to my satisfaction.)
It's a pretty neat trick. Basically, the moment you specify a system, i.e. write out the source code or draft blueprints, you guarantee that it is incomplete (or inconsistent.) So hypothetically, the only algorithms that might be able to solve the halting problem are those that can't be written down. If you find any algorithms that can't be written down, please be sure to send me a copy.
Having said all that, Penrose is probably still wrong, because he hasn't proven to my satisfaction that the human mind is not subject to the limitations of the Godel theorem. (And of course, any such proof also couldn't be written down...)
I post this every time there's a cookie article, and it's probably redundant, but it might help some people...
I set my "Internet Zone" security settings to prompt before accepting cookies. Whenever somebody tries to send me a cookie, the cookie dialog comes up. If it's coming from the site that I'm actually visiting, I accept it (and I never have to see it again.) If it's coming from doubleclick.net or the like, I refuse it, and then I add that domain to the "Restricted Zone". From then on, IE automatically refuses cookies from that domain (and also disables Javascript, ActiveX, etc.)
My only complaint is that adding the domain to my "restricted" list is a separate step; it would be nice if I could just click "No, and block all future cookies," and be done with it. But if you're using IE anyway, and you don't want to mess with third party programs, this method works pretty well.
More importantly, they could revoke Apex's CSS player key. All future DVDs would be mastered without an Apex key, so they could not be played on an Apex player.
That's the way it was supposed to work, anyway. Given all the developments since then (particularly the CSS crack,) I doubt the MPAA would follow through on the "DVD player death penalty."
Well, just food for thought... I don't have the energy to think it through right now.
Why not limit the number of domains that a single company can own? Corporations can't pay off the USPS to give them thousands of different vanity mailing addresses; why should they be able to have unlimited domains?
As a bonus, this would also increase public awareness of just who actually runs the sites they're visiting... i.e., people would notice that everything ends in aol.com.
Pretty far off topic, but something that /.ers would probably like to know... Jerry Doyle, who played Garibaldi on Babylon 5, is running for congress as a Republican in California's 24th district. As most geeks already know, when it comes to realistic depictions of space exploration, Babylon 5 made Mission to Mars look like... well, Mission to Mars. NASA folks loved it. Doyle, who has a degree in Aeronautics, is a huge booster of both fictional and real space technology.
Details about the campaign are sketchy. (www.jerrydoyleforcongress.com is a placeholder right now.) My guess is, he doesn't have a chance. But it's a pretty safe bet that he'd be one of NASA's loudest supporters if he made it.