It was pointed out before that this is not "geek profiling".
A year or so ago, some public official on Long Island was forced out of office after he referred to a group of rowdy, mostly black teenagers as "those monkeys". Activists complained that he had called them monkeys because they were black, but he claimed that he had called them monkeys because they were acting like monkeys.
Now, I don't mean to defend this guy, since I don't remember the story too well anyway. But I always felt that it was the activists who were racist, not the official. Because they apparently believe themselves that black people are monkeys, when they saw someone call a bunch of black people "monkeys", they assumed it was because they were black.
So Mr. Katz, do you believe that being "violent" is equivalent to being a "geek"? Apparently you do, because although the MOSAIC folks have only said that the program is intended to detect violence, you assume that they're looking for "geeks".
If, in fact, a test which is designed to detect violent students happens to flag a lot of geeks, then frankly, maybe geeks are violent. But I don't think this is the case, so it is unfair to imply that this is "geek profiling".
You know, I don't mean to flame, but I have found all of Katz's recent articles to be fundamentally flawed, and apprently many/. readers have agreed. Is it time to take this guy off the payroll? (If in fact he is on the payroll?)
(Disclaimer: I think MOSAIC-2000 is a very, very, bad idea. I just disagree with this particular objection. For the real problem here, see Jerf's comment and my response to it.
Faster languages than C++ (at least, those I'm familiar enough with to say): C, Occam, LISP,
Somewhat offtopic... LISP is fast? I have very little experience with LISP, but from what I've seen, I'm amazed that it can run on real-world computers at all. For one thing, it's traditionally interpreted, although I don't know how common compiled LISP is in practice. But more importantly, the model just doesn't seem conducive to performance. I mean, extracting the nth element from a list is an O(n) operation?!?
I love thinking in LISP. But I can't see how a LISP program could be faster than C.
I doubt anyone is still reading this, given/.'s collective attention span, but I'll provide some facts here anyway:
Another poster has pointed out that VB executables can be dynamically linked to get the same effect in the right environment, which is nice, but that they are often statically linked with a large runtime and are, therefore, hogs.
I don't know what post you're referring to, but this is incorrect. VB programs are always dynamically linked. It is impossible to statically link a VB program with any other compiled code. This is something that many VB programmers have been complaining about for years, although I understand the reasoning behind it. (You haven't seen many VB programmers worried about the Y2K bug, have you? That's because MS simply distributed a patched runtime library, and most VB programs were instantly fixed.)
Getting back to the original issue, which performs better: Java or VB?
In theory, since VB compiles to machine code (by default), and Java compiles to bytecode (always, AFAIK), VB should be faster. In practice, of course, the quality of the compiler and the runtime is a much more significant factor, so YMMV.
I have to say, it looks like a pretty good idea, but I think having parts of an application appear and disappear would confuse new users.
No, it would confuse old users. New users probably wouldn't have any more trouble with toolbars that only appear when you touch the mouse, than they do with menus that only appear when you click on the menu bar, or a save dialog that only appears when you hit "Save As...", or tooltips that only appear when the pointer lingers over a control.
I think this is a marvelous idea... Toolbars generally aren't keyboard-accessible anyway, so why should they be visible if I don't have my hand on the mouse?
I'm surprised that with all the speculation going on here, no one has yet mentioned the r-strategy vs. K-strategy model of reproduction. It explains this situation nicely.
There are two different ways that a parent can increase his or her presence in the global gene pool. The obvious one is to have more children (r-strategy). Another way, though, is to work to increase your offspring's presence in the gene pool (K-strategy). Because resources are limited, it inevitably comes down to a choice between more children and "better" children.
The more an individual's success correlates with the resources that were expended on him, the more useful K-strategy is.
In "undeveloped" countries, a healthy, well-dressed, college-educated individual isn't much less likely to be eaten by a lion than one who is naked and starving. Therefore, r-strategy is preferable, and the population grows rapidly.
In "developed" countries, however, things like education and wealth do make a difference in reproductive success. So instead of having lots of children, families have one or two children, and spend a huge chunk of their income on tuition, doctor's bills, etc. The result is a lower rate of population growth.
This brings to mind an interesting question... How much can the population shrink without compromising the "reproductive fitness" of the species? What happens if college educations become so expensive, and so universal, that very few families can afford to have more than one child? I suppose the population would shrink, until the amount of resources available per person is large enough to support population growth once again.
Wow, that's an interesting idea, and it just sort of occurred to me now. If that theory really works, then we shouldn't have to worry about population growth... it will stabilize naturally. Anyone disagree?
pluging data into the continuous function 12 = 6(e)rt (where rt is the exponent and r=present continuous growth rate) solving for T reveales we will reach 12 billion around 2050.
Yes, but what is your r? (I'm afraid I don't have a calculator handy to figure it out myself.)
The rate of population growth is the average number of children per family, divided by two. White Americans, for example, are actually averaging less than two children per family these days -- in other words, their population is shrinking. Being that white Americans represent one of the wealthiest populations in the world, it is reasonable to expect that as the "wealth" of the world increases, growth rates will decrease.
This test is not dangerous because it will somehow enforce "conformance". The danger is that the test is reliable, but not reliable enough. There are four permutations of "person is violent" (assume for a moment that this is a simple boolean, for the sake of argument), and "test says person is violent." The true danger here is that a large number of people will become "diagnosed" as violent who are not, known as a "false positive". The society will then act on this false information, possibly in drastic and damaging ways. (false negatives aren't half as disturbing; few violent people shoot up schools)
Just to amplify this point:
Back at the height of the AIDS scare, clinics that did a lot of AIDS testing often had one or more full-time counselors whose primary job was to convince patients that they do not have AIDS. Many of these patients had gotten positive test results in the past, but later came up negative on more reliable tests.* What these people had trouble understanding is that when you test for something that is very rare in the general population, such as AIDS, there will be far more false positives than true positives.
So let's say that this test is supposed to flag the 1% of students with the greatest potential for violence, and let's say (very generously) that it's 90% accurate. On this test, 0.9% of those tested will be correctly marked violent. 0.1% will be marked "safe", even though they have the potential to be violent. 89.1% will be correctly marked "safe". And 9.9% will be incorrectly flagged as violent.
In other words, given this exmple, for every violent student that the test catches, more than ten "safe" students will be incorrectly "caught".
They may widen their criteria for violent students, which would make the test slightly more valid. However, it is likely that the test will be far less that 90% accurate, increasing the ratio of false positives/true positives even further.
*I'm not sure if I can back up this AIDS story, so feel free to consider it a fictional example if you wish.
I've done some more research, and it seems that it's not easy, or maybe even possible, to get the WinCE source. The product that I was referring to is the "Platform Builder" for Windows CE... I had read a few articles that said that it included the WinCE source, but other sources (including Microsoft) say that it doesn't. Perhaps the source was available for an earlier version, but it doesn't look like it is now.
WinCE is already much more open than Win98 or WinNT. You can buy a source license for WinCE at a price that real people can pay... I believe it's something like $899, give or take a digit. Similar access to the WinNT source costs a few orders of magnitude more, and usually involves someone's immortal soul.
Don't flame me, I'm not trying to equate this with Linux, it's not "free" in any sense of the word. I only mention it because it shows that Microsoft is comfortable letting outsiders see their WinCE code, unlike most of their other products. So maybe this rumor is more plausible than it initially sounds.
Before anyone gets out of shape, take a visit to the usual Mac web sites:
I'm used to people not reading the linked-to article before posting a comment. But not reading the links that you posted is a new one.
(As of 4:36 EDT, Sunday:)
http://www.macosrumors.com and http://www.macopinion.com have not been updated since the ZD story broke, and consequently they have nothing to say about this new development. (They're still reporting Apple's first reversal.)
http://www.macnn.com is the only site on your list that disputes this new information, and they only say that their "understanding" is that the ZD story is incorrect, without citing any sources, anonymous or otherwise.
The ZD story, on the other hand, does cite a source: Apple. So contrary to your assertion, it seems like a lot of people do know what the hell is going on.
it's not wise to base your judgements on something coming from ZDNet
I know that ZD is/.'s second favorite punching bag, but please save your baseless accusations and criticisms for Microsoft.
ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non-government organizations may fit here.
[devils-advocate] But Slashdot clearly does fit somewhere else:.COM [/devils-advocate]
(Totally off-topic: Has anyone figured out how to get literal angle brackets in a/. comment yet?)
Interesting that you should bring that up... It so happens that one of the first major software piracy cases had the US Department of Justice as its defendant.
Apparently, in 1982, Inslaw wrote some custom database software for the DOJ. The DOJ bought a copy for testing purposes, then informed Inslaw that they didn't want the software anymore. Then they proceeded to make at least 20 copies of it, for use in other departments. There is even evidence that they may have sold the software to other allied governments.
A lot of lawsuits were thrown around, and a lot of taxpayer dollars rightfully ended up in the pockets of various Inslaw execs. Apparently there is still litigation going on.
How is Visa to know what the card is being used for? All they can possibly know is what merchant is charging the card and for how much
Good point. I don't think the credit card companies get itemized bills, although I may be wrong.
But the law requires that businesses use reasonable common sense. If K-Mart suddenly got caught selling cocaine, they couldn't get off the hook by claiming that they thought they were selling convenient, individually wrapped flour packets. Likewise, although Visa may not have known that the $70,000 that they paid out to a gambling website was to be used for gambling, common sense should have told them that she wasn't buying a t-shirt.
First of all, I don't think it's fair to look at this as a judgement in favor of the (grossly irresponsible) woman, rather than as a judgement against Visa. The money was only returned to her because Visa wasn't entitled to it, since they offered the loan illegally.
And it was a loan. I can't think of any definition of "loan" that doesn't fit credit cards. I mean, credit cards, guys?!? You can't argue that Visa had no way of knowing that their loan was going towards gambling, either. They have a record of the transaction, they know this woman's address, and they are subject to the laws of California. So if it is in fact illegal to offer a loan for gambling in California, then Visa is legally responsible. I don't think they have a leg to stand on.
That's one thing I'm not clear about, though... The article says only that the courts "frown on" loans for gambling. That's awfully vague. Is there a law on the books, or not?
I'm certainly not defending this law. I think it's absurd, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a/. reader who'd say otherwise. But absurd laws are still laws, and Visa definitely violated this one.
This brings up an interesting chain of thought in my mind : could a game like EverQuest (a Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Game) be developed by the OpenSource community, without people trying to take advantage of the fact that they could hack the rules of the game?
On the face of it, I don't see why you couldn't just define the interface between your client and server in such a way as to prevent any deviation from the rules. If there is no me.make_invincible() message in the interface, then no amount of hacking the client can make it happen.
In practice, this doesn't seem to be the way that it works... EverQuest in particular seems to do a lot of rule-processing on the client side, to reduce lag, although most of it is double-checked by the server once the network catches up.
However, there's a bigger reason why massively multiplayer games won't be open source: Who pays for the servers? Sure, you could set up a company and charge subscription fees to access your server, even though the software is open. But so could I, and so could everyone else. Competition is nice, but it kind of defeats the purpose of a MMO game if it's hosted on 1000 different servers, each with ten people online at a time.
All of the Timothy Zahn books have been really good. Especially his latest "duology", the second part of which came out a month ago.
I usually ignore the glut of lower-quality SW books by other authors, but I was so psyched after reading Zahn's book that I picked up Salvatore's new one. Man, was it dissappointing... It felt like he had a laundry list of things that he was supposed to do (get Luke and Mara married, kill Chewie, introduce the new nemesis, create a love interest for Jacen,) and he just stitched those elements together without actually putting any story around them.
Apple's reversal only applies to folks who have already placed orders. (And I suspect that their lawyers may have had more to do with it than the public outcry.)
If you decide that you want a G4 today, you'll still be getting 50 MHz less than you would have gotten yesterday for the same price.
Maybe this was Apple's plan... They raise prices and try to screw their customers, then they announce that they're not to screw their customers after all, and everyone on Slashdot ignores the ridiculous price hikes and praises them for "doing the Right Thing."
My first reaction on seeing this story was, "Wow, what a cool idea!" I'd love to work on designing this language. (And it is possible. All of the objections that I have seen in these threads can be resolved if you understand modern linguistics. Take a course, it's worth it.)
However... Do we really need a new metalanguage? Couldn't we just as easily use an existing language as the intermediate form? It would be just as easy to translate, and you wouldn't have to learn a new language to understand the system.
There's an idea in linguistics which is similar to the Church-Turing theorem in philosophy, although it's not as well established: Every modern language is assumed to have equivalent expressivity. If you wanted, you could translate from English to Chinese using an Aborigine language as your intermediate without any problems. (Except deficiencies in vocabulary, but it's easy to make up new words.)
I suspect the real need for this meta-language has to do with this project's association with the UN: They don't want to offend any ethnic group by chosing an existing lanugage as the standard.
When corporations willingly restrain themselves, I have to ask "For how long?" What's stopping them from threatening to introduce this again in 5 years. And 5 years after that. How long before the media and people in general will ignore them doing this, because they've heard about happening so many times?
What's stopping a GPLed software producer from re-distributing their software under a proprietary license? Answer: Everyone would ignore them, and just continue to redistibute the GPLed version.
Seeds are the biotech version of free software. If Monsanto changes their mind in five years and re-introduces terminator seeds, then everyone will just use the old seeds. (It may be illegal under their "seed license", but I'd like to see them try to enforce it.)
At any rate, I don't see why terminator seeds are a so horrible. I can't grow an infinite number of TV sets from the one I just bought, luckily for Sony. Monsanto just wants to close that loophole in the seed business. Besides, although I like genetically engineered products in general, I'm not sure that I want corporations manufacturing fertile organisms.
How exactly is this any safer than using a POP mail reader? When I get a message with a malicious attachment in MS Outlook, I too laugh my ass off. Or at least ignore it. Outlook doesn't run attachments automatically when you read a message; I can't imagine that any mail reader does.
If you're thinking about Javascript, rather than executable attachments like the example that you gave, then that's a slightly different story... Javascript should be safe, but like any software, the interpreters can have bugs. However, a lot of webmail services support Javascript now anyway, and I'm sure eventually they all will.
(I know most/. readers can think of a bunch of security holes that would let you bypass the security in Outlook, at least older versions of it... but those are bugs. We're talking about design flaws here.)
I remember reading that a large number of physicists thought the first nuclear weapon would ignite the atmosphere, destroying all life on Earth. Didn't happen.
You're not giving the Manhattan Project gang enough credit. As I heard the story, they feared that setting off an atomic bomb might destroy the world only until they had explored the physics enough to prove that it wouldn't. Nobody was holding his breath when the first a-bomb was tested, at least not for that reason.
I'm sure the same thing has happened in the current situation. Unfortunately, the RHIC folks don't have the luxury of a super-duper-secret classification to protect them from the scientifically illiterate press.
Why not wire this system into Slashdot, to perform moderation?
I'm half serious... It seems to me that most offtopic, flamebait, or troll posts could be flagged by a statisical analysis pretty easily. It would be a little harder to pick out the better posts, but probably not impossible. The archive of thousands of comments that have already been moderated by humans could be used to train the system.
My apologies, I appear to have been on crack. I did check back, though, and I notice that every version of the iMac right from the original was rumored to include Bose speakers, but they never actually materialized. Mac-related rumors have a funny tendency to repeat themselves like that. (Hey, I hear Apple is going to replace the MacOS with this great multi-tasking, protected memory OS... It's being developed by Taligent, and it's light-years ahead of System 6...)
Argh... My nice, coherent response to your comment just got eaten. Since I can't stand duplication of effort, I'll just give you an outline of what I said:
There is no qualitative difference between races. There is a big, huge qualitative difference between species: members of two different species cannot produce viable offspring together.
It's bad to base morality on quantitative differences. If chimpanzees are equal to humans, what about gorillas? Lemurs? Dogs? Chickens? Fish? What about bacteria... you must have killed thousands of bacteria just in the last few days. Murderer!
Sure chickens suffer. My point is, it's not clear to me that we should care. Is causing harm intrinsically evil, or is it only evil to cause harm to a fellow human? Although the first interpretation is more common these days, the second interpretation is perfectly valid, and I think that it's the correct one.
(I have more reasons for believing that than simple distaste for quantitative rules, but I won't go into them here, especially not the second time typing this... Basically, I think that morals are interpretations of altruistic instincts that are present in every human, instincts which, of course, apply only to other humans.)
Slashdot Mirror
Now, I don't mean to defend this guy, since I don't remember the story too well anyway. But I always felt that it was the activists who were racist, not the official. Because they apparently believe themselves that black people are monkeys, when they saw someone call a bunch of black people "monkeys", they assumed it was because they were black.
So Mr. Katz, do you believe that being "violent" is equivalent to being a "geek"? Apparently you do, because although the MOSAIC folks have only said that the program is intended to detect violence, you assume that they're looking for "geeks".
If, in fact, a test which is designed to detect violent students happens to flag a lot of geeks, then frankly, maybe geeks are violent. But I don't think this is the case, so it is unfair to imply that this is "geek profiling".
You know, I don't mean to flame, but I have found all of Katz's recent articles to be fundamentally flawed, and apprently many
(Disclaimer: I think MOSAIC-2000 is a very, very, bad idea. I just disagree with this particular objection. For the real problem here, see Jerf's comment and my response to it.
I love thinking in LISP. But I can't see how a LISP program could be faster than C.
I think this is a marvelous idea... Toolbars generally aren't keyboard-accessible anyway, so why should they be visible if I don't have my hand on the mouse?
I'm surprised that with all the speculation going on here, no one has yet mentioned the r-strategy vs. K-strategy model of reproduction. It explains this situation nicely.
There are two different ways that a parent can increase his or her presence in the global gene pool. The obvious one is to have more children (r-strategy). Another way, though, is to work to increase your offspring's presence in the gene pool (K-strategy). Because resources are limited, it inevitably comes down to a choice between more children and "better" children.
The more an individual's success correlates with the resources that were expended on him, the more useful K-strategy is.
In "undeveloped" countries, a healthy, well-dressed, college-educated individual isn't much less likely to be eaten by a lion than one who is naked and starving. Therefore, r-strategy is preferable, and the population grows rapidly.
In "developed" countries, however, things like education and wealth do make a difference in reproductive success. So instead of having lots of children, families have one or two children, and spend a huge chunk of their income on tuition, doctor's bills, etc. The result is a lower rate of population growth.
This brings to mind an interesting question... How much can the population shrink without compromising the "reproductive fitness" of the species? What happens if college educations become so expensive, and so universal, that very few families can afford to have more than one child? I suppose the population would shrink, until the amount of resources available per person is large enough to support population growth once again.
Wow, that's an interesting idea, and it just sort of occurred to me now. If that theory really works, then we shouldn't have to worry about population growth... it will stabilize naturally. Anyone disagree?
The rate of population growth is the average number of children per family, divided by two. White Americans, for example, are actually averaging less than two children per family these days -- in other words, their population is shrinking. Being that white Americans represent one of the wealthiest populations in the world, it is reasonable to expect that as the "wealth" of the world increases, growth rates will decrease.
That's the logic behind this story.
Back at the height of the AIDS scare, clinics that did a lot of AIDS testing often had one or more full-time counselors whose primary job was to convince patients that they do not have AIDS. Many of these patients had gotten positive test results in the past, but later came up negative on more reliable tests.* What these people had trouble understanding is that when you test for something that is very rare in the general population, such as AIDS, there will be far more false positives than true positives.
So let's say that this test is supposed to flag the 1% of students with the greatest potential for violence, and let's say (very generously) that it's 90% accurate. On this test, 0.9% of those tested will be correctly marked violent. 0.1% will be marked "safe", even though they have the potential to be violent. 89.1% will be correctly marked "safe". And 9.9% will be incorrectly flagged as violent.
In other words, given this exmple, for every violent student that the test catches, more than ten "safe" students will be incorrectly "caught".
They may widen their criteria for violent students, which would make the test slightly more valid. However, it is likely that the test will be far less that 90% accurate, increasing the ratio of false positives/true positives even further.
*I'm not sure if I can back up this AIDS story, so feel free to consider it a fictional example if you wish.
I've done some more research, and it seems that it's not easy, or maybe even possible, to get the WinCE source. The product that I was referring to is the "Platform Builder" for Windows CE... I had read a few articles that said that it included the WinCE source, but other sources (including Microsoft) say that it doesn't. Perhaps the source was available for an earlier version, but it doesn't look like it is now.
WinCE is already much more open than Win98 or WinNT. You can buy a source license for WinCE at a price that real people can pay... I believe it's something like $899, give or take a digit. Similar access to the WinNT source costs a few orders of magnitude more, and usually involves someone's immortal soul.
Don't flame me, I'm not trying to equate this with Linux, it's not "free" in any sense of the word. I only mention it because it shows that Microsoft is comfortable letting outsiders see their WinCE code, unlike most of their other products. So maybe this rumor is more plausible than it initially sounds.
(As of 4:36 EDT, Sunday:)
http://www.macosrumors.com and http://www.macopinion.com have not been updated since the ZD story broke, and consequently they have nothing to say about this new development. (They're still reporting Apple's first reversal.)
http://www.maccentral.com and http://www.macweek.com are ZD Net sites, so they simply posted the ZD article.
http://www.macnn.com is the only site on your list that disputes this new information, and they only say that their "understanding" is that the ZD story is incorrect, without citing any sources, anonymous or otherwise.
The ZD story, on the other hand, does cite a source: Apple. So contrary to your assertion, it seems like a lot of people do know what the hell is going on.
I know that ZD is
But Slashdot clearly does fit somewhere else:
[/devils-advocate]
(Totally off-topic: Has anyone figured out how to get literal angle brackets in a
Interesting that you should bring that up... It so happens that one of the first major software piracy cases had the US Department of Justice as its defendant.
Apparently, in 1982, Inslaw wrote some custom database software for the DOJ. The DOJ bought a copy for testing purposes, then informed Inslaw that they didn't want the software anymore. Then they proceeded to make at least 20 copies of it, for use in other departments. There is even evidence that they may have sold the software to other allied governments.
A lot of lawsuits were thrown around, and a lot of taxpayer dollars rightfully ended up in the pockets of various Inslaw execs. Apparently there is still litigation going on.
But the law requires that businesses use reasonable common sense. If K-Mart suddenly got caught selling cocaine, they couldn't get off the hook by claiming that they thought they were selling convenient, individually wrapped flour packets. Likewise, although Visa may not have known that the $70,000 that they paid out to a gambling website was to be used for gambling, common sense should have told them that she wasn't buying a t-shirt.
First of all, I don't think it's fair to look at this as a judgement in favor of the (grossly irresponsible) woman, rather than as a judgement against Visa. The money was only returned to her because Visa wasn't entitled to it, since they offered the loan illegally.
/. reader who'd say otherwise. But absurd laws are still laws, and Visa definitely violated this one.
And it was a loan. I can't think of any definition of "loan" that doesn't fit credit cards. I mean, credit cards, guys?!? You can't argue that Visa had no way of knowing that their loan was going towards gambling, either. They have a record of the transaction, they know this woman's address, and they are subject to the laws of California. So if it is in fact illegal to offer a loan for gambling in California, then Visa is legally responsible. I don't think they have a leg to stand on.
That's one thing I'm not clear about, though... The article says only that the courts "frown on" loans for gambling. That's awfully vague. Is there a law on the books, or not?
I'm certainly not defending this law. I think it's absurd, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a
In practice, this doesn't seem to be the way that it works... EverQuest in particular seems to do a lot of rule-processing on the client side, to reduce lag, although most of it is double-checked by the server once the network catches up.
However, there's a bigger reason why massively multiplayer games won't be open source: Who pays for the servers? Sure, you could set up a company and charge subscription fees to access your server, even though the software is open. But so could I, and so could everyone else. Competition is nice, but it kind of defeats the purpose of a MMO game if it's hosted on 1000 different servers, each with ten people online at a time.
All of the Timothy Zahn books have been really good. Especially his latest "duology", the second part of which came out a month ago.
I usually ignore the glut of lower-quality SW books by other authors, but I was so psyched after reading Zahn's book that I picked up Salvatore's new one. Man, was it dissappointing... It felt like he had a laundry list of things that he was supposed to do (get Luke and Mara married, kill Chewie, introduce the new nemesis, create a love interest for Jacen,) and he just stitched those elements together without actually putting any story around them.
Apple's reversal only applies to folks who have already placed orders. (And I suspect that their lawyers may have had more to do with it than the public outcry.)
If you decide that you want a G4 today, you'll still be getting 50 MHz less than you would have gotten yesterday for the same price.
Maybe this was Apple's plan... They raise prices and try to screw their customers, then they announce that they're not to screw their customers after all, and everyone on Slashdot ignores the ridiculous price hikes and praises them for "doing the Right Thing."
My first reaction on seeing this story was, "Wow, what a cool idea!" I'd love to work on designing this language. (And it is possible. All of the objections that I have seen in these threads can be resolved if you understand modern linguistics. Take a course, it's worth it.)
However... Do we really need a new metalanguage? Couldn't we just as easily use an existing language as the intermediate form? It would be just as easy to translate, and you wouldn't have to learn a new language to understand the system.
There's an idea in linguistics which is similar to the Church-Turing theorem in philosophy, although it's not as well established: Every modern language is assumed to have equivalent expressivity. If you wanted, you could translate from English to Chinese using an Aborigine language as your intermediate without any problems. (Except deficiencies in vocabulary, but it's easy to make up new words.)
I suspect the real need for this meta-language has to do with this project's association with the UN: They don't want to offend any ethnic group by chosing an existing lanugage as the standard.
Seeds are the biotech version of free software. If Monsanto changes their mind in five years and re-introduces terminator seeds, then everyone will just use the old seeds. (It may be illegal under their "seed license", but I'd like to see them try to enforce it.)
At any rate, I don't see why terminator seeds are a so horrible. I can't grow an infinite number of TV sets from the one I just bought, luckily for Sony. Monsanto just wants to close that loophole in the seed business. Besides, although I like genetically engineered products in general, I'm not sure that I want corporations manufacturing fertile organisms.
What happens if you abort the launch before the rocket ignites? You've basically got a manned artillery shell...
(I'm sure they'd a way around this, but however they do it, it would be a hell of a show.)
How exactly is this any safer than using a POP mail reader? When I get a message with a malicious attachment in MS Outlook, I too laugh my ass off. Or at least ignore it. Outlook doesn't run attachments automatically when you read a message; I can't imagine that any mail reader does.
/. readers can think of a bunch of security holes that would let you bypass the security in Outlook, at least older versions of it... but those are bugs. We're talking about design flaws here.)
If you're thinking about Javascript, rather than executable attachments like the example that you gave, then that's a slightly different story... Javascript should be safe, but like any software, the interpreters can have bugs. However, a lot of webmail services support Javascript now anyway, and I'm sure eventually they all will.
(I know most
I'm sure the same thing has happened in the current situation. Unfortunately, the RHIC folks don't have the luxury of a super-duper-secret classification to protect them from the scientifically illiterate press.
Why not wire this system into Slashdot, to perform moderation?
I'm half serious... It seems to me that most offtopic, flamebait, or troll posts could be flagged by a statisical analysis pretty easily. It would be a little harder to pick out the better posts, but probably not impossible. The archive of thousands of comments that have already been moderated by humans could be used to train the system.
My apologies, I appear to have been on crack. I did check back, though, and I notice that every version of the iMac right from the original was rumored to include Bose speakers, but they never actually materialized. Mac-related rumors have a funny tendency to repeat themselves like that. (Hey, I hear Apple is going to replace the MacOS with this great multi-tasking, protected memory OS... It's being developed by Taligent, and it's light-years ahead of System 6...)
Argh... My nice, coherent response to your comment just got eaten. Since I can't stand duplication of effort, I'll just give you an outline of what I said:
There is no qualitative difference between races. There is a big, huge qualitative difference between species: members of two different species cannot produce viable offspring together.
It's bad to base morality on quantitative differences. If chimpanzees are equal to humans, what about gorillas? Lemurs? Dogs? Chickens? Fish? What about bacteria... you must have killed thousands of bacteria just in the last few days. Murderer!
Sure chickens suffer. My point is, it's not clear to me that we should care. Is causing harm intrinsically evil, or is it only evil to cause harm to a fellow human? Although the first interpretation is more common these days, the second interpretation is perfectly valid, and I think that it's the correct one.
(I have more reasons for believing that than simple distaste for quantitative rules, but I won't go into them here, especially not the second time typing this... Basically, I think that morals are interpretations of altruistic instincts that are present in every human, instincts which, of course, apply only to other humans.)