My point was more that certain specific characteristics seem to make unguided evolution more improbable (though not impossible). (For example organisms that have two characteristics that are not beneficial to an organism unless both are present.)
There are two related points addressing that. Say a meteor falls to earth and hits Bob's house. What's the probability fort a falling meteor to hit his house? Basically zero. But what is the probability for a falling meteor to hit any house? It's still rather unlikely, but the chances of a "hit" start to become vastly more reasonable when there are about a billion valid targets for it to hit.
One of the most misleading "probability illusions" is that we're always looking at the house that got hit, and even more importantly all of the houses that didn't get hit are completely invisible. It's generally pretty much impossible to even guess at how many beneficial evolution-targets exist that didn't randomly hit. What's the probability two or more neutral characteristics would come together for fireflies to evolve their glow ability? Zero. What's probability two neutral characteristics would come together to create something interesting and useful? Vastly higher, considering that there's an almost infinite range of possible things that would qualify as "interesting and useful" targets to hit.
It's the difference between looking at probabilities going forwards in time, and looking at probabilities backwards in time after they happen. Looking forwards, evolution merely needs a reasonable chance to find anything new and beneficial. Looking backwards after the fact, only the target that got hit is visible. It gives a false impression that something almost magically improbable happened.
The forwards probability of evolution working and creating new beneficial things is effectively 100%, the backwards probability that a particular good result would have evolved is a misleading zero.
But the "multiple unseen targets that could get it" is only half the answer. The second half is that there are a mind-exploding number of meteors raining down trying to hit those beneficial targets. Lets completely rule out individually beneficial mutations, and just look at neutral or mildly negative mutations. (Strongly harmful mutations tend to kill the host or die out within a few generations, so we'll discard those as well.) I'm going to use some ballpark numbers, but as you'll see it won't matter even if my numbers are pretty far off.
Humans have about four billion letters of DNA, and even with highly accurate DNA copying each person is born with around a hundred brand new mutations. That hundred is on top of all the new mutations that cropped up in all his generations of ancestors. If we look back a hundred generations, a person is going to be carrying at least 10,000 neutral or mildly negative mutations. So, how many PAIRS of particular mutations are being combines and tested in this person? That number is roughly 10,000^2. More specifically it's 50,000,000. This person is testing fifty million possible combinations of two mutations. But this person is also testing out combinations of neutral-mutation triples. There are on the order of 10,000 ^3 sets of three-mutations. And how many four-mutation-combinations are there? 10,000^4. The numbers get Really Big Really Fast.When you consider every conceivable set of mutation-combinations being tested in this person, the final result is 3^10,000. (It's base 3 because each mutation can be specifically "present" in a combination, specifically "absent" from a combination, or "don't care/irrelevant" for a combination.) A lot of that is fairly redundant or involves combinations of absurdly large numbers of mutations with negligible chance of representing a unique benefit, but I assume you recognize how stupid-large 3^10,000 is. A person with 10,000 mutations is implicitly testing, in parallel, the potential value of each of 3^10,000 mutation-combination sets. Even if there
Dealing with willfully-blind creationists can be extremely frustrating, especially having to deal with all of the misinformation they spew in public. It's a pleasure and a bit of sunshine to answer honest sincere questions on evolution with someone who is actually interested in information and understanding.
Creationists quite often ask challenge "questions" against evolution, but trying to answer those phony questions is like pounding your head against a brick wall. It's impossible to explain something to somebody who has a powerful desire not to understand it.
If you can find the links, I'm sure it would be a cool read
I just found the links. The first two are rather technical science papers on particular 44 chromosome cases. Here and here. Note for reading them: "Robertson translocation" is the technical term for two chromosomes glued together. I also just found a mostly non-technical article on an additional Chinese man discovered with 44 chromosomes.
That article cites a 2/3 difficulty in fertility, and I now realize my mistake when I said 50% fertility. Still, 2/3 isn't as harsh as it sounds because a failure costs a lot less time than the full-year involved in a successful pregnancy. Of course that's little consolation for a woman who might endure two early miscarriages for each successful childbirth.
I still have some issues with the probabilities of some characteristic's evolving completely unguided
I have personally preformed experiments, I've witnessed first hand the creative power of unguided evolution:)
I realize my last statement was a big a claim to make, and it definitely warrants explaination. But first I need to explain the concept of the evolution process. Evolution is fundamentally about information. Everything about species lies in the information in their DNA, and evolution is fundamentally about processing that information. Evolution is about children inheriting that information, it's about mutations in that information, and it's about selection killing off the "least good" copies of information. The process simply repeats the cycle using the survivors, using the surviving copies of information.
The evolution process is in essence: (1) Reproduction with (2) inheritance and (3) mutation. (4) Selection. Those are the four necessary and sufficient criteria for evolution to happen.
Reproduction of information, with inheritance of information, mutation of information, along with selection of information to repeat the cycle.
Note that the only "information input" going on in that cycle is that some individuals (some copies of information) get killed off. There is also random noise input from mutation, but that in itself cannot add constructive information. The only constructive information input is to delete the worst copies of information.
Consider for a moment the simplest possible case of flipping coins. Merely by deleting all of the tails the result is completely non-random, the end result is perfect heads. Random noise + selective deletion = highly directed result. In a more subtle sense, deleting "bad information DNA" is sufficient to force the highly directed result that the remaining DNA is inherently enriched with good or useful information.
Note that different species experience different kinds of selection. For example for birds, the laws of aerodynamics pretty much define what is a good-bird and what is a bad-bird. The DNA information defines the bird's body, so in essence the laws of aerodynamics are killing off the bad-information DNA. Over generations the mutating DNA is increasingly enriched in exactly the right information
Obviously it takes more positive actions for a pinky cell to develop into a person, but it's fundamentally no different. Just to the most simple ordinary example of BOTH positive actions and inactions required for any of those possibilities to become actualities: If the woman doesn't eat certain foods then she will be perfectly healthy but there will be no development due to lack of specific nutrients. If the woman does eat certain other foods she will be perfectly healthy, but there will be no development due to the presence of (normally non-toxic) substances in that food.
No person exists where there is no functioning brain, and a wide range of specific positive actions and specific inactions would need to occur (or not occur) before any particular cell (or cluster of cells) actually does develop into a person.
Again, time displacement is applicable.
If I get a vasectomy then "time displacement" says I've murdered a million unborn descendants. That is metaphysical nonsense.
This person's status has to be considered in total.
I did consider the status. The status is "does not exist". There is no person there.
We already have the definition for human life. We already have the definition to determine whether a "person" is present or not. The definition of personhood lies in a mind. A functioning mind-bearing brain is a person.
An adult with no little-or-no functioning brain tissue the status is "no person present". A fetus with little-or-no functioning brain tissue the status is "no person present".
It's the same at both before-and-after you have a person. The status is empty brain-dead tissue.
--------
I disagree that an early fetus is a person, disagree that abortion is killing a person, but I can understand and respect that as valid logic for criminalizing all abortion. But I want make sure whether that really is your argument, I want to make sure I understand exactly what your position is.
It's impossible to actually stop abortions. Many women will choose to abort, regardless. If you merely propose waging your finger at them and saying "don't do that", then I say we're already in agreement and that we're both effectively Pro-Choice. I'm guessing that's not your position. The only thing that can be done is to criminalize abortion and to imprison those women who go ahead and do it anyway.
Imprisoning women who do abort is, as I see it, the very definition of the argument and the very definition of the two sides. Not imprisoning women who abort is, in all effects and in all results, ultimately Pro-Choice. Imprisoning women who abort, for all practical and functional purposes, the only meaningful definition of an opposing Pro-Life side.
I'm pretty much assuming your position is to imprison women who continue to abort, but there are differing views in cases of rape. I don't want to make any false assumptions about what your position might be.
If a woman is raped and deliberately aborts, do you propose imprisoning her? First degree premeditated murder? If a 16 year old girl is statutory-raped and deliberately aborts, do you charge her as an adult for murder? If an 11 year old is raped and deliberately aborts, do you charge her, as a child in the juvenile system, for murder? And just to be sure we cover all the bases lets add incest in there too: If an 11 year old is raped by her father and deliberately aborts, do you charge her, as a child in the juvenile system, for murder?
I have basically postulated, "God could exist, and I believe he does." But instead of people agreeing or disagreeing, or simply not commenting, I'm flamed left-and-right with comments that say I have no evidence, and therefore I'm a liar, or part of the problem, or not a scientist.
Perhaps I can explain some of the reaction you're getting. What you intended, and what you actually wrote, and what other people heard, can be three very different things.
The earliest post I saw from you (possibly not your first post) was basically challenging evolution and implicitly siding with the evolution-denialists. You then moved on to an evolution-based discussion of the existence or non-existence of God.
Now, just to clarify what some people were hearing I'm going to substitute "chemistry" in place of "evolution"...
What some people are hearing sounds basically like you siding with chemistry-denialists and their mindset "God and Chemistry are contradictory, God exists therefore Chemistry is an Atheist fraud, and proving Chemistry to be a fraud therefore proves God". And their hysterical claims that Chemistry is a conspiracy persecuting them.
Evolution really is no different than other major areas of science. It really is as valid and as evidence-based and as the rest of science. If you check the evidence, denying evolution is about as absurd as denying chemistry.
There is a huge built up frustration level against creationists who believe God and evolution are mutually exclusive, and who have gone to outrageous lengths blindly denying science and denying all evidence because it conflicts with their narrow view of God. And THEY are the ones pushing the line that one disproves the other, THEY are claiming that evolution is an attack on God, and THEY are manufacturing the fiction that they (and God) are victims of persecution from Evolution.
If you make an issue of tying together evolution and God then you're going to draw heat.
If you are fine with the idea that God and evolution can both be true then no problem. If you have honest questions of what evidence exists backing up evolution, questions about how evolution works and why scientists believe it's correct, then there are plenty of Christian-Science-Geeks and Atheist-Science-Geeks who would be equally happy to answer those questions. Just be sure you aren't the one turning evolution into a religious conflict. That seriously sets off a lot of raw nerves.
just because evolution is proven true, doesn't mean God is proven false.
Agreed. All it establishes is either (1) there is no God or (2) there is a God and evolution&chemistry&physics simply describe how God chose to create and run His universe.
Yet many "scientists" know God does not exist just like they know the sun will rise. Why is that?
First I'd note that the question doesn't really have anything to do with scientists in particular. Scientists are people, and some people are Christian and some are Muslim and some are Hindu and some are Native American and some are Atheists.
Now, if I may ask, do you know Zeus doesn't exist? Or do you believe that Zeus doesn't exist? Either way you should have your answer. There are a thousand gods that you don't believe in. The only difference between you and an Atheist is that the Atheist doesn't believe in a thousand-and-one gods.
I "know" that Zeus and Loki and Shiva and Jehovah and the rest of the invisible-sky-wizards don't exist the same way I "know" that goblins and elves don't exist. I will gladly change my mind and believe in ghosts or goblins or gods if and when there is reasonable evidence for existence.
There are an infinite number of things that don't exist. There must be evidence for something before it's reasonable to make a positive assertion that it exists. If there is no evidence for the existence of goblins then the only reasonable position is to presume that they don't exist.
To the best of my knowledge, we have never been able to observe a creature producing a functional offspring with a different number of chromosomes than it's predecessor
Actually it has been observed.... in fact it has been observed in modern humans in multiple independent cases.
There is a kind of mutation called a fusion. Two chromosomes basically get glued together end-to-end. They still have a full set of genes, no lost genes and no duplicated genes, so they are perfectly healthy. Instead of having 46 chromosomes (23 matched pairs), they have 45 chromosomes with one being two-glued-together.
This is actually a fairly common mutation. Approximately 1-in-900 people have it, and most never know it. There is only one notable effect from having 45 chromosomes like this, slightly reduced fertility. I'll skip the details and just jump to the end result - when an egg and sperm merge there will be a 25% chance the fertilized egg will inherit a "normal" 46 chromosomes , a 25% chance it will inherit the 45 chromosome mutation, and a 25% chance the egg will inherit some duplicated genes, and a 25% chance the egg will be entirely missing certain genes. Those last two categories produce an abnormal and almost invariably fatal gene-set. For a person with 45 chromosomes HALF of all conceptions will fail.
A 50% successful fertility rate sounds severe, but in most cases it's actually almost unnoticeable. Imagine there's a conception and it's in the 50% fail category. It will fail to develop and will get flushed out generally within a month or two. Even if two conceptions fail in a row it only works out to a few month delay in before a successful pregnancy is achieved. A "normal" couple can produce (at most) one child every 12 months or so. A couple where one person has 45 chromosomes would, trying just as hard, average one child every 14 months or so. The "50% fertility rate" turns out to have very little impact on the number of children produced.
But now we get to the really cool part. Imagine a child inherits a chromosome fusion from one parent, and inherits a matching chromosome fusion from the other parent. That child would have 44 chromosomes. Not only is that child perfectly healthy (having a full set of genes), but that child has a perfectly healthy 22 matched pairs of chromosomes. That child would would have a normal 100% fertility rate when having children with a "normal" 46-chromosome person, although all of those children would have 45 chromosomes and the 50% fertility issue. However two 44 chromosome people having children together would have a normal 100% fertility rate and would produce 100% healthy children who inherit the exact same 22-matched-pairs of chromosomes. An entire population of 44-chromosome-people would be perfectly normal and healthy, they would have no fertility issues, and they would produce more healthy children exactly like themselves - a stable 44 chromosomes. It's only people with an odd number of chromosomes that run into the minor fertility issue. Apes have 48 chromosomes, normal humans have 46 chromosomes, and 44 chromosomes would work just as well. And the cool thing is that scientists have documented finding 44 chromosome people in at least two independent cases. One case was in the U.S., and the other case was in I think India. And when you consider the fact that most people never get genetically tested and that these cases were discovered accidentally when genetically testing people for other reasons, it is obvious that many more undetected cases certainly exist as well.
This is exactly how 46 chromosome humans evolved from 48 chromosome apes. We could trivially change to a 44 chromosome species simply by killing off all the 46 chromosome humans and letting several 44 chromosome people found a new pure 44-chromosome generation.
I had a bookmark on the science documenting the two known cases, but the link appears to be dead. If you're really interested I can probably google up a working link on it.
In other words, if God is unfalsifiable, then why do people assume that evolution being true falsifies God?
Because some people presume themselves to have an infallible knowledge of God and presume themselves to have infallible understanding of scripture (the Bible or the Koran or the Torah or whatever else), and because evolution conflicts with how they believe God Did Things. In their mind they believe in the One True God, and if their One True God does not exist exactly as they believe and if God didn't do things exactly as they believe God did things, then by their logic no God exists at all.
They believe their argument is based on the infallibility of God or the infallibility of scripture, and they completely miss the fact that they are presuming themselves infallible in their understanding of God and scripture.
I have seen the "evolution being true falsifies God" thing from a hundred or more religious fundamentalist evolution deniers. I have seen exactly one person on the evolution side say anything like that. When I called him on it he immediately and profusely apologized for misspeaking.
The whole "evolution refutes God" thing is false as you noted, and it is a falsehood coming from the evolution denialists.
That is a poor argument. You are merely trying to "hide" what you are doing by time-displacement. This clump of cells "right now" is not a person. Therefore it is okay to kill it. Unfortunately, if you did not kill it now it would become a person, so you have effectively killed that person.
Wow. And if I'm having sex with a woman and I pull out I have "killed" the imaginary person would would have otherwise existed in the future. And every time I see a woman on the street and I don't rape her, I have again "killed" the imaginary person would would have otherwise existed in the future.
When I take action to move a carton of milk back in the refrigerator I am "killing" the imaginary colony of bacteria that otherwise have grown in that milk as it would have spoiled.
That's not just a poor argument, that's not just a bad argument, that is taking a metaphysical walk into absurdity. Every action (or inaction) of every moment of our lives affects what will or will not exist in the future. You can't blame people for 'murdering' people who may-or-may-not exist in the future based on the imagined outcome of some action-or-inaction now.
I would equate it with turning off the life-support machinery of a person in a coma.
I see the point you're trying to make, but I would equate someone in a coma with someone who fell asleep or was otherwise knocked unconscious. I think there is a huge categorical difference between an imagined-person-who-doesn't-exist-&-never-existed and a person who-already-exists-but-doesn't-happen-to-be-awake-at-the-moment.
I would like to counter with a similar logical argument on abortion. What is the defining criteria for when a person is dead? The definition is brain-death. The live-or-dead state of the rest of the body is completely irrelevant. If you have a live brain on life support and the rest of the body is dead-and-gone then you have a person, a live person. If you have an entire body on life support but the brain is dead-and-gone then you have empty human tissue, not a live person.
Well, I say that definition for the presence-or-absence of a person pretty well applies at both ends. The definition of a person, a live person, is a sufficiently functional brain to support a sentient mind. There is indeed a gray area at each end where it's difficult to say with certainty if you have a sufficiently functional living brain with a mind, however the existence of that gray area does not diminish non-gray situations. An adult body with little-or-none functioning brain tissue is not a person. It's warm empty human tissue. It is clearly and solidly outside any possible gray zone. And at the other end a "mass of cells" or a fetus with little-or-none functioning brain tissue is not a person. It is clearly and solidly outside any possible gray zone.
An undeveloped fetus equates with a warm corpse. Both are empty warm-human-tissue. Neither one can be 'murdered'. Whether it is a cancerous kidney, a brain-dead patient, or an undeveloped fetus, I see nothing wrong with disposing of empty human tissue.
What marketing twit at Intel was watching all the Charlie Sheen coverage on TV and thought it would be hot hip and cool to say it had Tiger Blood?
Maybe I can get a job at Intel marketing too! Remember when Lady Gaga was all over the news for her Meat Dress? Instead of shipping CPUs in cardboard boxes they could have shipped them in Boxes Made of Meat!
Pfft! There are two time zones in the US, New York and LA. Only an idiot would adjust his watch in three separate one-hour increments while flying between them.
I understand that they're cryptographically signed however that still doesn't answer the previous posts' point about why spoofing the correct authentication that the chip should provide the server with wouldn't work.
That is difficult but possible with a hardware hack in between the Trust chip and the CPU, but it won't work if the Trust chip is inside the CPU. There are a lot of layers and technical details, but I'll try to boil it down to the key steps. I'm going to gloss over a lot.
First step: The Trust chip watches the software that gets loaded. It logs the BIOS, the operating system, and drivers. Microsoft or some Third Party examines that list and certifies your system as Trusted, and they set up a secret key that's locked inside the chip. You basically do this once. If you make any unapproved system changes then the Chip sees those changes when the system starts up, and it refuses to use that secret key. You're dead in the water because you can't decrypt or sign anything.
Next, you run an application. The Chip watches this application get loaded and generates a hash for it. Any attempt to modify the application will generate a different hash. This hash gets signed by the chip and transmitted. If you send the wrong hash the computer at the other end drops the connection. So you MUST be running the exact unmodified software that the other person wants you to be running, or you're dead in the water.
The Trust chip uses the application hash to generate an internal crypto key. If you make any change to your Trusted operating system, or if you try to substitute a different piece of software, or if you attempt to modify the specific program, the Trust chip generates a different (and useless) key. That key can only be used by that exact unmodified piece of software on an approved Trusted system. The Trust chip will only permit that exact unmodified program to use that key to decrypt or sign data related to that program.
A website can check if you have a Trusted system, and it can ask exactly what web browser you are running. They can check that you're not running an ad-blocker and check that the browser is properly DRM-enforcing. If you pass those checks, the website sends an encrypted version of the webpage. The page can only be decrypted by that exact key inside that exact chip while running that exact webbrowser. If the Trust chip is inside the CPU, then the webpage only gets decrypted inside the CPU. In fact a Trusted CPU can even encrypt RAM, meaning that even a hardware hack to access memory gets you nothing but encrypted garbage. They also plan to have Trust chips built into monitors, and the main computer Trust chip sets up a secret key with the monitor Trust chip. So the webpage only gets decrypted and processed inside the CPU itself, and then the CPU re-encrypts the text+video image going to the monitor.
Trying to work on a normal system while using a Trusted system to authenticate for you gets you nothing. The Trusted system will not authenticate just because you ask it to - it will only authenticate when it's actually running a Trusted webbrowser, and it will only authenticate web-requests coming from that Trusted webbrowser, and the webpage you receive will only be decrypted inside the CPU, and then reencrypted to send to the monitor. It won't authenticate any web requests coming from your other computer, and your other computer can't fake and requests, and your other computer can't decrypt any of the incoming data.
The most you can do is have your other computer robotically punch keys on the Trusted keyboard for you, robotically move the Trusted mouse for you, and then use a video camera pointed at the Trusted monitor to capture an image of the rendered webpage. Trying to use two computers achieves zero.
If your ISP does Health Check to get internet access, well then your ISP owns your computer and everything depends upon the Health Check software they make you run. That software can serve as a firewall/gateway decrypting a
if one wants to claim that the punishment for circumventing DRM *can* be worse than the punishment for raping someone or worse than being a rape victim, that's quite a different (and strange) discussion. However, that's not a discussion about DRM itself.
Yes, it is a discussion of DRM itself. "DRM" is effectively meaningless without the punishment for circumventing DRM. "DRM" effectively ceases to exist without the punishment for circumventing DRM.
DRM music files? Within a matter of hours or days someone will start selling a 99 cent app to remove the DRM. DRM e-books? Same thing, and people will also go into business selling software or mod services to fix any DRM crippled features on reader devices. DVD players that lock out the fast-forward button to force unskippable commercials and unskippable FBI warnings before playing the movie? DVD players that refuse to play disks tagged with a different region code? Companies will manufacture and sell properly designed DVD players that work the way the customer wants because crippled products can't compete on the free market against uncrippled products, and/or people will go into business modding DVD players to work the way the owner wants, and/or some company will simply buy ten thousand crippled DVD players and mod them to work properly and then resell them. Starforce and other DRM schemes on computer games? Removal or fix software will be available even faster than it already is, and companies can go into business selling it. DRM locked gaming consoles? Mod chip and mod services would be a very profitable business fixing the deliberately crippled consoles. Someone can go into business buying ten thousand consoles wholesale, upgrading away all the DRM crap, and resell the better product at a profit. And the mass market of unlocked consoles would open the floodgates of independent game development and sales for unlocked consoles.
In most cases no one will bother trying to sell the DRM crippled crap in the first place, knowing that a commercial service will immediately spring up to remove it. There is little point is screwing customers over selling DRM music tracks when you know the DRM can and will be removed almost immediately. There is little point in screwing customers over with DRM crippled game consoles when you know that commercial services will immediately start unlocking the consoles.
A DRM product is a crippled product. One or both of two points apply: (1) Crippled products cannot compete against uncrippled products in a free market (2) crippled products create free market demand and free market profit opportunity to FIX the product the way the customer wants.
DRM cannot meaningfully exist in a free market. DRM does not meaningfully exist without a prison sentence attached.
Without the prison sentence, go back to the real world before anyone ever used the term DRM. Before the prison sentence the only term was "copy protected", and "copy protected" merely meant a 5 minute hassle to grab a freely available no-CD patch or a freely available utility. There was no expectation that "copy protected" was actually going to "work" or be enforceable. Companies were free to used whatever silly "protection" schemes they wanted if they saw some benefit in doing so, but the free market inherently limited how much hassle or damage could be caused by such protection schemes. The moment a protection scheme created significant troubles for consumers there is an inherent free market profit opportunity for someone else to FIX the problem for consumers.
There was no such thing as "DRM" before the prison sentence was created, and "DRM" goes back to nonexistence when the prison sentence ceases to exist.
For all practical purposes the prison sentence is the very existence of DRM, the prison sentence is the very definition of DRM.
Inherent with the "Play" command on your DVD player is that it will honor flags that mark a track as unskippable. By commanding it to play, you command it to do everything that play button entails.
they are commanding the program to do whatever it does when you press that button. What they *want* is simply to play the movie, and they are doing it with the restrictions that the movie studios have requested.
You are wrong. When I buy a product, and I dislike some aspect of how that item functions, it is not uncommon for me to fix my property to do what I want. If I press play I am "commanding" it to play, period. If it does something other than that then there is something wrong with it, it needs to be fixed. I have every right to fix it, I can and will fix it.
When I push use the print function in a computer program it does exactly what I want it to do.
No it doesn't. You do not specifically want a particular window layout to come up, you accept the window that comes up.
No, in fact I DON'T ACCEPT it. Just because some software originally comes programmed to behave in a certain way does NOT mean imply any sort of ACCEPTANCE of anything. There have been numerous times I've been sufficiently motivated to look inside piece of software and change it to do what I want it to do.
This is entirely voluntary. The studios do not take control over your computer.
Bullshit, it's not voluntary. DRM is an brain-damaged and evil notion based exactly on "taking over" other people's property. It is built on a brain-damaged and evil law, the DMCA, revoking people's ownership of their own computers or other devices.
This is nothing like raping someone
No, it's arguably worse. The whole idea of DRM, the whole expectation that DRM is supposed to "work", the whole idea that people "accept" something just because that's how a seller had the object set up before they sold it, the whole idea that I CANNOT or SHOULD NOT change how it works after I bought it, the idea of denying people ownership to control of modify their own property, it is all based on and backed up by an evil law and an evil FIVE YEAR PRISON SENTENCE. And just to be perfectly clear here - I'm talking about a five year DRM prison sentence for someone who has NOT committed copyright infringement. The prison sentence is for the "crime" of modifying your own property to work properly, without any "piracy" or copyright infringement at all.
Not to diminish the seriousness and trauma of rape, but generally I'd rank someone losing five years of their life as worse than a rape.
You are aware that every released brand of standalone TPM has successful attacks against it, right?
Yes, which is why I wrote what I wrote in my post.
I stated it requires a hardware attack to really beat the Trust system. I also said they are moving the Trust chip inside the CPU, and I raised that point exactly because it effectively kills of the (relatively easy) attacks that exist against the stand-alone chips. Once the TPM is inside the CPU we're pretty well fucked. As I explained, at that point you need to physically rip open the CPU chip and read out the microscopic keys coded into the circuitry. You need a some fairly sophisticated lab equipment and expertise to pull that one off, and even then you are going to need to rip a new chip for each computer you want unlocked. And you have to deal with buying and ripping a new chip if they ever detect that you can do stuff you're not supposed to be able to do, and at some point you're probably going to have to give your your actual name and ID to a Certificate Authority to fully activate a chip. If you're lucky they'll simply refuse to let you activate a new chip after you've cracked old ones, and if you're not so lucky they Feds will show up and put you in prison.
Yeah! We'll make out own internet! With blackjack and hookers! Well, no hookers. But one page will be a blackjack bot. The other page will be the complete works of Shakespeare, in Klingon.
Which makes it impossible to read any of the new Trust-locked files, impossible to run any of the new Trust-based software, leaves you unable to view any Trust-using websites, locks you out of Trust-based internet protocols, locks you out of Trust-secured government services, possibly denies you the ability to buy anything online if new credit card regulations require Trusted transactions, and it potentially bans you from the internet entirely if ISPs start doing Trust-based "health checks" to make sure you're not infected with a virus.
Trusted Computing is a "voluntary opt-in", but if you opt-out you and your computer get cut off from the world and dropped into a pit all alone. You are perfectly free run any software you like while sitting alone in a pit.
If Trusted Computing does go forward and it gets fully deployed then we're all fucked.
Microsoft can put me on the untrusted database
That's sorta backwards. By default everyone is untrusted. In order to qualify as Trusted you need to have a Trust chip in your computer, and the Trust chip needs to transmit a secure spy-report of all the hardware and software running on your computer. A Certificate Authority then scans that spy report to see if all your hardware and software is known and approved (any unrecognized software is by default unTrusted). If you have the chip and your entire system is approved as Trust-secure and DRM-secure, then your computer becomes Trusted. (*You* never become Trusted, it's your computer that becomes Trusted as secure against you.)
The only way you get on an unTrusted list is if your computer once did qualify as Trusted and then they discover that you cracked your system. Then your Master Key goes on a revocation list, your key and your Trust chip effectively drop dead.
You seem to be missing a fundamental point. What you're suggesting *does not work*. It's impossible to make a "fake implementation" when you don't know the cryptographic keys. If you don't know those keys it's impossible to decrypt any incoming messages. If you don't know those keys it's impossible to put the required crypto-signatures onto outgoing messages.
The only way to get the keys is to physically break open a microchip and manage to read out the keys locked inside the circuitry. The Trust chip is currently a separate chip, but they are moving it inside the CPU. You have to physically rip open a CPU and read out microscopic data. And they are making the chips to be tamper-resistant. It will take advanced skills and advanced hardware to rip open a chip and successfully read out the keys. Further more if anyone ever detects that you can do stuff you're not supposed to be able to do, then that key goes on a revocation list and those keys effectively drop dead. You then need to go out and buy a new CPU - you may even need to buy an entire motherboard with CPU - and start from scratch extracting a new key to use.
Which outcome bears more loss of their profits: accepting the risks, or losing their clients?
Perhaps you missed the part where the GOVERNMENT was proposing new regulations governing credit card transactions. This is not a risk-based choice by the banks, this not for the benefit of the banks, this is not for the benefit of you or me. It would be a law for the purpose of driving people into the Trust system. Any credit card company failing to obey the law would get shut down by law enforcement.
Some how I can't see how this trusted computing platform is going to be compatible with Hillary's new vision of cyber-democracy sweeping out the despotic evil right-wing governments throughout the world when any dictator can specifically and uniquely identify any of their malcontents
Don't worry, the US government will have no trouble overlooking that little detail while everyone is running around calling Trusted Computing the Holy Grail of securing the National Information Infrastructure and creating a new Internet Economy and Doing Something to stop the evilz piratez and protecting the children from the badz stuffz on the innerwebs.
The fact that petty dictators can abuse Trusted Computing is insignificant compared to their desire to use and abuse it themselves.
The fact that oppressive governments drool over this stuff only helps establish international consensus for a new Internet Governance to lock everything down. It massively helps avoid international backlash against a US or US+EU led change "taking over" the internet. Under Trusted Computing each government will get it's own Root Control over computers in their country, and they will be so enamored with that that they will completely miss the fact that there's also a Big Red Button to shut off their entire country from the internet and even to remotely switch off pretty much all of the software on all of their computers.
That simply means you need a "trusted" box to reply to the challenge. It doesn't have to be THE box. This sounds like something a Windows VM and some packet sniffing/injection could very easily defeat
Nope. The entire point of Trusted Computing is to make exactly that sort of thing impossible. It's impossible to virtualize the Trust chip unless you know the master keys locked inside the silicon. No amount of packet sniffing/injection will enable you to forge a Trusted communication. They are cryptographically signed by keys inside the chip. Trying to run a normal computer plus a second box to reply to challenges generally does you no good because everything gets encrypted or signed. The second box won't sign the stuff you need signed, and it won't decrypt what you need decrypted. The master keys are locked inside the silicon, and the lower level keys are generally encrypted before they leave the chip and only decrypted when they are loaded back into the Trust chip.
Trying to use a two-box setup would be extremely difficult and it wouldn't achieve much. Lets say your ISP wants a Trusted Health Check on your computer before giving you a connection. You use the Trust box to authenticate. During the authentication the ISP sends an encrypted internet session key. It is encrypted in such a way that it can only be decrypted by the Trust chip, INSIDE the Trust chip, using the a decryption key locked inside the Trust chip. You can't sniff the internet session key because it's been encrypted with the Trust chip's key, which you don't know. You now connect your "real" box and try to use your internet connection. Except now your ISP expects some or all of your outbound packets to have a validation code embedded. These validations codes can only be generated using the secret internet session key. You can't send packets because your "real" box doesn't know the internet session key needed to validate those packets, and your secondary Trust box refuses to validate them for you.
Do not underestimate Trusted Computing. I'm a programmer, I've read the 300+ page technical specification on this chip, I know DRM is impossible and the reasons it Always Fails. Trust me, software attacks are almost completely nullified. Any successful software attack is generally confined to temporarily exploiting localized bug affecting specific data belonging to that specific affected program, and they can FORCE down patches fixing the bug. It is essentially impossible to fundamentally defeat the system with any software attack. Only a hardware attack will truly defeat the system, and they are moving the Trust chip INSIDE THE CPU ITSELF. Not even the god of all modchips and motherboard hacks can do squat when the Trust chip is inside the CPU.
The only way to break the system is to literally rip open the CPU itself. That will indeed blow the Trust system wide ope, but then there's another problem. You have to be insanely careful never to allow them to detect that you have beaten the system and that you can do stuff you're not supposed to be able to do. Almost anything you do can be traced back to the the specific Trust identity code involved. If they ever detect you doing anything you shouldn't, then that identity code goes on a revocation list. You can still access the data you've already broken, but for all practical purposes that computer is dead. It can no longer access any new Trusted data, and all other Trusted devices will refuse to speak to it.
By revoking the hacked identity key they can make it cost you (up to) the price of an entire new computer, plus the difficulty of physically dissecting the new CPU chip to extract a new set of keys. You have to do this each and every time they catch anything anomalous relating to your cracked system.
And you're really screwed if you have to use your real identity during the Certificate Authority process required to enable a new chip. They may refuse to let you activate a new system, or they may send the feds to arrest you for violating the DMCA o
"So, this guy wants to run a program on an untrusted machine, which will report back to a website on whether or not the machine should be trusted?"
No, you're missing what they are actually proposing.
They are proposing that everyone must have a Trust chip locking down their computer. This Trust chip is most commonly known as a Trusted Platform Module or TPM. The Trust chip contains a unique identity code (PubEK) that can be used to securely track your computer and your identity. The Trust chip contains a master key (PrivEK) to lock down identity control. You are FORBIDDEN to know your own master key locking down your identity. This key is REQUIRED to be securely locked down inside the chip to deny the owner knowledge or control of this key. The chip also contains a key (RSK) to lock down files on your computer. You are FORBIDDEN to know your own master storage key. This key is REQUIRED to be securely locked down inside the chip to deny the owner the ability to read or modify his own files, except as permitted by the Trust chip. The Trust chip also scans the software you run on your computer, and it does this for two purposes: (1) It spies on and logs the software running on your computer in order to send over the internet Trusted spy reports (Remote Attestation) telling other people exactly what hardware and software you are running. For example a website can ask for a Remote Attestation spy report to check if you're running any sort of Ad Blocker. If you have any sort of Ad Blocker, or if you're running an unapproved web browser, or if you are runing an unapproved operating system, or if you don't have a Trust chip, or if you refuse to send the spy report, then you are blocked from viewing the web pages. (2) It logs exactly what software you are running in order to DENY YOU THE ABILITY TO READ OR MODIFY YOUR OWN FILES unless you are running the exact unmodified software that is APPROVED for reading or modifying the files. For example the Trust chip can make it impossible to play music downloads unless you play them with the exact unmodified RIAA Approved DRM-enforcing music player. The Trust chip can also make it impossible to view streaming video unless you are running the exact unmodified MPAA Approved DRM-enforcing web browser. Other people can store and modify data on your computer, but it's impossible for you to read or modify that data except to outright delete it. Of course, deleting the files will cause stuff on your computer to stop working.
This is the "Security System" Microsoft originally codenamed Palladium. This is the "Security System" the government has been talking about for the last several years to secure the National Information Infrastructure. This is the "Security System" that underlies the Trusted Identity System that the White House has been talking about for the last several years. This is the "Security System" that Microsoft has been promoting to secure corporate networks. This is the "Security System" that the copyright industries have been pushing to lock down music and video and book and websites and to enable a "rental" model for software.
The subject of the article is that Microsoft is backing off on the idea of having ISP's DENY YOU INTERNET ACCESS unless you have a Trust chip and run an Approved operating system along with Mandatory Approved software to "secure" your computer. The argument is that this is a "Health Check", and that if you fail the "health Check" then you computer might be infected by a virus, and that it is appropriate for ISPs to shut off your internet access if you have an infected or vulnerable machine. See? Doesn't that sound wonderful? The system comes wrapped in a bright shiny box advertising it as a GOOD thing to protect you and everyone else on the internet against viruses.
The article here is merely saying that Microsoft noticed that some people (like me) have been calling out this evil Trust chip plan, in particular pointing out the blatantly evil step of having ISPs deny you internet access if you resist. The ar
Slashdot Mirror
by Kittenman (971447)
Ok, I can imagine how it would work with sheep, but wouldn't kittens burst or something?
Wait.... no.... Please don't answer that.
-
My point was more that certain specific characteristics seem to make unguided evolution more improbable (though not impossible). (For example organisms that have two characteristics that are not beneficial to an organism unless both are present.)
There are two related points addressing that. Say a meteor falls to earth and hits Bob's house. What's the probability fort a falling meteor to hit his house? Basically zero. But what is the probability for a falling meteor to hit any house? It's still rather unlikely, but the chances of a "hit" start to become vastly more reasonable when there are about a billion valid targets for it to hit.
One of the most misleading "probability illusions" is that we're always looking at the house that got hit, and even more importantly all of the houses that didn't get hit are completely invisible. It's generally pretty much impossible to even guess at how many beneficial evolution-targets exist that didn't randomly hit. What's the probability two or more neutral characteristics would come together for fireflies to evolve their glow ability? Zero. What's probability two neutral characteristics would come together to create something interesting and useful? Vastly higher, considering that there's an almost infinite range of possible things that would qualify as "interesting and useful" targets to hit.
It's the difference between looking at probabilities going forwards in time, and looking at probabilities backwards in time after they happen. Looking forwards, evolution merely needs a reasonable chance to find anything new and beneficial. Looking backwards after the fact, only the target that got hit is visible. It gives a false impression that something almost magically improbable happened.
The forwards probability of evolution working and creating new beneficial things is effectively 100%, the backwards probability that a particular good result would have evolved is a misleading zero.
But the "multiple unseen targets that could get it" is only half the answer. The second half is that there are a mind-exploding number of meteors raining down trying to hit those beneficial targets. Lets completely rule out individually beneficial mutations, and just look at neutral or mildly negative mutations. (Strongly harmful mutations tend to kill the host or die out within a few generations, so we'll discard those as well.) I'm going to use some ballpark numbers, but as you'll see it won't matter even if my numbers are pretty far off.
Humans have about four billion letters of DNA, and even with highly accurate DNA copying each person is born with around a hundred brand new mutations. That hundred is on top of all the new mutations that cropped up in all his generations of ancestors. If we look back a hundred generations, a person is going to be carrying at least 10,000 neutral or mildly negative mutations. So, how many PAIRS of particular mutations are being combines and tested in this person? That number is roughly 10,000^2. More specifically it's 50,000,000. This person is testing fifty million possible combinations of two mutations. But this person is also testing out combinations of neutral-mutation triples. There are on the order of 10,000 ^3 sets of three-mutations. And how many four-mutation-combinations are there? 10,000^4. The numbers get Really Big Really Fast.When you consider every conceivable set of mutation-combinations being tested in this person, the final result is 3^10,000. (It's base 3 because each mutation can be specifically "present" in a combination, specifically "absent" from a combination, or "don't care /irrelevant" for a combination.) A lot of that is fairly redundant or involves combinations of absurdly large numbers of mutations with negligible chance of representing a unique benefit, but I assume you recognize how stupid-large 3^10,000 is. A person with 10,000 mutations is implicitly testing, in parallel, the potential value of each of 3^10,000 mutation-combination sets. Even if there
Wow, thanks for that wonderful response.
My pleasure :)
Dealing with willfully-blind creationists can be extremely frustrating, especially having to deal with all of the misinformation they spew in public. It's a pleasure and a bit of sunshine to answer honest sincere questions on evolution with someone who is actually interested in information and understanding.
Creationists quite often ask challenge "questions" against evolution, but trying to answer those phony questions is like pounding your head against a brick wall. It's impossible to explain something to somebody who has a powerful desire not to understand it.
If you can find the links, I'm sure it would be a cool read
I just found the links. The first two are rather technical science papers on particular 44 chromosome cases. Here and here. Note for reading them: "Robertson translocation" is the technical term for two chromosomes glued together. I also just found a mostly non-technical article on an additional Chinese man discovered with 44 chromosomes.
That article cites a 2/3 difficulty in fertility, and I now realize my mistake when I said 50% fertility. Still, 2/3 isn't as harsh as it sounds because a failure costs a lot less time than the full-year involved in a successful pregnancy. Of course that's little consolation for a woman who might endure two early miscarriages for each successful childbirth.
I still have some issues with the probabilities of some characteristic's evolving completely unguided
I have personally preformed experiments, I've witnessed first hand the creative power of unguided evolution :)
I realize my last statement was a big a claim to make, and it definitely warrants explaination. But first I need to explain the concept of the evolution process. Evolution is fundamentally about information. Everything about species lies in the information in their DNA, and evolution is fundamentally about processing that information. Evolution is about children inheriting that information, it's about mutations in that information, and it's about selection killing off the "least good" copies of information. The process simply repeats the cycle using the survivors, using the surviving copies of information.
The evolution process is in essence: (1) Reproduction with (2) inheritance and (3) mutation. (4) Selection. Those are the four necessary and sufficient criteria for evolution to happen.
Reproduction of information, with inheritance of information, mutation of information, along with selection of information to repeat the cycle.
Note that the only "information input" going on in that cycle is that some individuals (some copies of information) get killed off. There is also random noise input from mutation, but that in itself cannot add constructive information. The only constructive information input is to delete the worst copies of information.
Consider for a moment the simplest possible case of flipping coins. Merely by deleting all of the tails the result is completely non-random, the end result is perfect heads. Random noise + selective deletion = highly directed result. In a more subtle sense, deleting "bad information DNA" is sufficient to force the highly directed result that the remaining DNA is inherently enriched with good or useful information.
Note that different species experience different kinds of selection. For example for birds, the laws of aerodynamics pretty much define what is a good-bird and what is a bad-bird. The DNA information defines the bird's body, so in essence the laws of aerodynamics are killing off the bad-information DNA. Over generations the mutating DNA is increasingly enriched in exactly the right information
A brain-dead person isn't coming back
And a brain-dead fetus isn't a person.
A fetus will become a baby.
No, a fetus can become a baby.
Each of a womans eggs can become a baby.
In fact a skin cell from your little pinky can become a baby.
Obviously it takes more positive actions for a pinky cell to develop into a person, but it's fundamentally no different. Just to the most simple ordinary example of BOTH positive actions and inactions required for any of those possibilities to become actualities:
If the woman doesn't eat certain foods then she will be perfectly healthy but there will be no development due to lack of specific nutrients.
If the woman does eat certain other foods she will be perfectly healthy, but there will be no development due to the presence of (normally non-toxic) substances in that food.
No person exists where there is no functioning brain, and a wide range of specific positive actions and specific inactions would need to occur (or not occur) before any particular cell (or cluster of cells) actually does develop into a person.
Again, time displacement is applicable.
If I get a vasectomy then "time displacement" says I've murdered a million unborn descendants. That is metaphysical nonsense.
This person's status has to be considered in total.
I did consider the status.
The status is "does not exist".
There is no person there.
We already have the definition for human life.
We already have the definition to determine whether a "person" is present or not.
The definition of personhood lies in a mind.
A functioning mind-bearing brain is a person.
An adult with no little-or-no functioning brain tissue the status is "no person present".
A fetus with little-or-no functioning brain tissue the status is "no person present".
It's the same at both before-and-after you have a person.
The status is empty brain-dead tissue.
--------
I disagree that an early fetus is a person, disagree that abortion is killing a person, but I can understand and respect that as valid logic for criminalizing all abortion. But I want make sure whether that really is your argument, I want to make sure I understand exactly what your position is.
It's impossible to actually stop abortions. Many women will choose to abort, regardless. If you merely propose waging your finger at them and saying "don't do that", then I say we're already in agreement and that we're both effectively Pro-Choice. I'm guessing that's not your position. The only thing that can be done is to criminalize abortion and to imprison those women who go ahead and do it anyway.
Imprisoning women who do abort is, as I see it, the very definition of the argument and the very definition of the two sides. Not imprisoning women who abort is, in all effects and in all results, ultimately Pro-Choice. Imprisoning women who abort, for all practical and functional purposes, the only meaningful definition of an opposing Pro-Life side.
I'm pretty much assuming your position is to imprison women who continue to abort, but there are differing views in cases of rape. I don't want to make any false assumptions about what your position might be.
If a woman is raped and deliberately aborts, do you propose imprisoning her? First degree premeditated murder?
If a 16 year old girl is statutory-raped and deliberately aborts, do you charge her as an adult for murder?
If an 11 year old is raped and deliberately aborts, do you charge her, as a child in the juvenile system, for murder?
And just to be sure we cover all the bases lets add incest in there too:
If an 11 year old is raped by her father and deliberately aborts, do you charge her, as a child in the juvenile system, for murder?
-
I have basically postulated, "God could exist, and I believe he does." But instead of people agreeing or disagreeing, or simply not commenting, I'm flamed left-and-right with comments that say I have no evidence, and therefore I'm a liar, or part of the problem, or not a scientist.
Perhaps I can explain some of the reaction you're getting. What you intended, and what you actually wrote, and what other people heard, can be three very different things.
The earliest post I saw from you (possibly not your first post) was basically challenging evolution and implicitly siding with the evolution-denialists. You then moved on to an evolution-based discussion of the existence or non-existence of God.
Now, just to clarify what some people were hearing I'm going to substitute "chemistry" in place of "evolution"...
What some people are hearing sounds basically like you siding with chemistry-denialists and their mindset "God and Chemistry are contradictory, God exists therefore Chemistry is an Atheist fraud, and proving Chemistry to be a fraud therefore proves God". And their hysterical claims that Chemistry is a conspiracy persecuting them.
Evolution really is no different than other major areas of science. It really is as valid and as evidence-based and as the rest of science. If you check the evidence, denying evolution is about as absurd as denying chemistry.
There is a huge built up frustration level against creationists who believe God and evolution are mutually exclusive, and who have gone to outrageous lengths blindly denying science and denying all evidence because it conflicts with their narrow view of God. And THEY are the ones pushing the line that one disproves the other, THEY are claiming that evolution is an attack on God, and THEY are manufacturing the fiction that they (and God) are victims of persecution from Evolution.
If you make an issue of tying together evolution and God then you're going to draw heat.
If you are fine with the idea that God and evolution can both be true then no problem. If you have honest questions of what evidence exists backing up evolution, questions about how evolution works and why scientists believe it's correct, then there are plenty of Christian-Science-Geeks and Atheist-Science-Geeks who would be equally happy to answer those questions. Just be sure you aren't the one turning evolution into a religious conflict. That seriously sets off a lot of raw nerves.
-
just because evolution is proven true, doesn't mean God is proven false.
Agreed.
All it establishes is either (1) there is no God or (2) there is a God and evolution&chemistry&physics simply describe how God chose to create and run His universe.
Yet many "scientists" know God does not exist just like they know the sun will rise. Why is that?
First I'd note that the question doesn't really have anything to do with scientists in particular. Scientists are people, and some people are Christian and some are Muslim and some are Hindu and some are Native American and some are Atheists.
Now, if I may ask, do you know Zeus doesn't exist? Or do you believe that Zeus doesn't exist? Either way you should have your answer. There are a thousand gods that you don't believe in. The only difference between you and an Atheist is that the Atheist doesn't believe in a thousand-and-one gods.
I "know" that Zeus and Loki and Shiva and Jehovah and the rest of the invisible-sky-wizards don't exist the same way I "know" that goblins and elves don't exist. I will gladly change my mind and believe in ghosts or goblins or gods if and when there is reasonable evidence for existence.
There are an infinite number of things that don't exist. There must be evidence for something before it's reasonable to make a positive assertion that it exists. If there is no evidence for the existence of goblins then the only reasonable position is to presume that they don't exist.
-
To the best of my knowledge, we have never been able to observe a creature producing a functional offspring with a different number of chromosomes than it's predecessor
Actually it has been observed.... in fact it has been observed in modern humans in multiple independent cases.
There is a kind of mutation called a fusion. Two chromosomes basically get glued together end-to-end. They still have a full set of genes, no lost genes and no duplicated genes, so they are perfectly healthy. Instead of having 46 chromosomes (23 matched pairs), they have 45 chromosomes with one being two-glued-together.
This is actually a fairly common mutation. Approximately 1-in-900 people have it, and most never know it. There is only one notable effect from having 45 chromosomes like this, slightly reduced fertility. I'll skip the details and just jump to the end result - when an egg and sperm merge there will be a 25% chance the fertilized egg will inherit a "normal" 46 chromosomes , a 25% chance it will inherit the 45 chromosome mutation, and a 25% chance the egg will inherit some duplicated genes, and a 25% chance the egg will be entirely missing certain genes. Those last two categories produce an abnormal and almost invariably fatal gene-set. For a person with 45 chromosomes HALF of all conceptions will fail.
A 50% successful fertility rate sounds severe, but in most cases it's actually almost unnoticeable. Imagine there's a conception and it's in the 50% fail category. It will fail to develop and will get flushed out generally within a month or two. Even if two conceptions fail in a row it only works out to a few month delay in before a successful pregnancy is achieved. A "normal" couple can produce (at most) one child every 12 months or so. A couple where one person has 45 chromosomes would, trying just as hard, average one child every 14 months or so. The "50% fertility rate" turns out to have very little impact on the number of children produced.
But now we get to the really cool part. Imagine a child inherits a chromosome fusion from one parent, and inherits a matching chromosome fusion from the other parent. That child would have 44 chromosomes. Not only is that child perfectly healthy (having a full set of genes), but that child has a perfectly healthy 22 matched pairs of chromosomes. That child would would have a normal 100% fertility rate when having children with a "normal" 46-chromosome person, although all of those children would have 45 chromosomes and the 50% fertility issue. However two 44 chromosome people having children together would have a normal 100% fertility rate and would produce 100% healthy children who inherit the exact same 22-matched-pairs of chromosomes. An entire population of 44-chromosome-people would be perfectly normal and healthy, they would have no fertility issues, and they would produce more healthy children exactly like themselves - a stable 44 chromosomes. It's only people with an odd number of chromosomes that run into the minor fertility issue. Apes have 48 chromosomes, normal humans have 46 chromosomes, and 44 chromosomes would work just as well. And the cool thing is that scientists have documented finding 44 chromosome people in at least two independent cases. One case was in the U.S., and the other case was in I think India. And when you consider the fact that most people never get genetically tested and that these cases were discovered accidentally when genetically testing people for other reasons, it is obvious that many more undetected cases certainly exist as well.
This is exactly how 46 chromosome humans evolved from 48 chromosome apes. We could trivially change to a 44 chromosome species simply by killing off all the 46 chromosome humans and letting several 44 chromosome people found a new pure 44-chromosome generation.
I had a bookmark on the science documenting the two known cases, but the link appears to be dead. If you're really interested I can probably google up a working link on it.
-
In other words, if God is unfalsifiable, then why do people assume that evolution being true falsifies God?
Because some people presume themselves to have an infallible knowledge of God and presume themselves to have infallible understanding of scripture (the Bible or the Koran or the Torah or whatever else), and because evolution conflicts with how they believe God Did Things. In their mind they believe in the One True God, and if their One True God does not exist exactly as they believe and if God didn't do things exactly as they believe God did things, then by their logic no God exists at all.
They believe their argument is based on the infallibility of God or the infallibility of scripture, and they completely miss the fact that they are presuming themselves infallible in their understanding of God and scripture.
I have seen the "evolution being true falsifies God" thing from a hundred or more religious fundamentalist evolution deniers. I have seen exactly one person on the evolution side say anything like that. When I called him on it he immediately and profusely apologized for misspeaking.
The whole "evolution refutes God" thing is false as you noted, and it is a falsehood coming from the evolution denialists.
-
That is a poor argument. You are merely trying to "hide" what you are doing by time-displacement. This clump of cells "right now" is not a person. Therefore it is okay to kill it. Unfortunately, if you did not kill it now it would become a person, so you have effectively killed that person.
Wow. And if I'm having sex with a woman and I pull out I have "killed" the imaginary person would would have otherwise existed in the future. And every time I see a woman on the street and I don't rape her, I have again "killed" the imaginary person would would have otherwise existed in the future.
When I take action to move a carton of milk back in the refrigerator I am "killing" the imaginary colony of bacteria that otherwise have grown in that milk as it would have spoiled.
That's not just a poor argument, that's not just a bad argument, that is taking a metaphysical walk into absurdity. Every action (or inaction) of every moment of our lives affects what will or will not exist in the future. You can't blame people for 'murdering' people who may-or-may-not exist in the future based on the imagined outcome of some action-or-inaction now.
I would equate it with turning off the life-support machinery of a person in a coma.
I see the point you're trying to make, but I would equate someone in a coma with someone who fell asleep or was otherwise knocked unconscious. I think there is a huge categorical difference between an imagined-person-who-doesn't-exist-&-never-existed and a person who-already-exists-but-doesn't-happen-to-be-awake-at-the-moment.
I would like to counter with a similar logical argument on abortion. What is the defining criteria for when a person is dead? The definition is brain-death. The live-or-dead state of the rest of the body is completely irrelevant. If you have a live brain on life support and the rest of the body is dead-and-gone then you have a person, a live person. If you have an entire body on life support but the brain is dead-and-gone then you have empty human tissue, not a live person.
Well, I say that definition for the presence-or-absence of a person pretty well applies at both ends. The definition of a person, a live person, is a sufficiently functional brain to support a sentient mind. There is indeed a gray area at each end where it's difficult to say with certainty if you have a sufficiently functional living brain with a mind, however the existence of that gray area does not diminish non-gray situations. An adult body with little-or-none functioning brain tissue is not a person. It's warm empty human tissue. It is clearly and solidly outside any possible gray zone. And at the other end a "mass of cells" or a fetus with little-or-none functioning brain tissue is not a person. It is clearly and solidly outside any possible gray zone.
An undeveloped fetus equates with a warm corpse. Both are empty warm-human-tissue. Neither one can be 'murdered'. Whether it is a cancerous kidney, a brain-dead patient, or an undeveloped fetus, I see nothing wrong with disposing of empty human tissue.
-
Yeah, seriously?
What marketing twit at Intel was watching all the Charlie Sheen coverage on TV and thought it would be hot hip and cool to say it had Tiger Blood?
Maybe I can get a job at Intel marketing too! Remember when Lady Gaga was all over the news for her Meat Dress? Instead of shipping CPUs in cardboard boxes they could have shipped them in Boxes Made of Meat!
-
P.S.
There's also a Europe timezone and a China timezone, but nobody really uses them.
-
Pfft! There are two time zones in the US, New York and LA.
Only an idiot would adjust his watch in three separate one-hour increments while flying between them.
-
I understand that they're cryptographically signed however that still doesn't answer the previous posts' point about why spoofing the correct authentication that the chip should provide the server with wouldn't work.
That is difficult but possible with a hardware hack in between the Trust chip and the CPU, but it won't work if the Trust chip is inside the CPU. There are a lot of layers and technical details, but I'll try to boil it down to the key steps. I'm going to gloss over a lot.
First step: The Trust chip watches the software that gets loaded. It logs the BIOS, the operating system, and drivers. Microsoft or some Third Party examines that list and certifies your system as Trusted, and they set up a secret key that's locked inside the chip. You basically do this once. If you make any unapproved system changes then the Chip sees those changes when the system starts up, and it refuses to use that secret key. You're dead in the water because you can't decrypt or sign anything.
Next, you run an application. The Chip watches this application get loaded and generates a hash for it. Any attempt to modify the application will generate a different hash. This hash gets signed by the chip and transmitted. If you send the wrong hash the computer at the other end drops the connection. So you MUST be running the exact unmodified software that the other person wants you to be running, or you're dead in the water.
The Trust chip uses the application hash to generate an internal crypto key. If you make any change to your Trusted operating system, or if you try to substitute a different piece of software, or if you attempt to modify the specific program, the Trust chip generates a different (and useless) key. That key can only be used by that exact unmodified piece of software on an approved Trusted system. The Trust chip will only permit that exact unmodified program to use that key to decrypt or sign data related to that program.
A website can check if you have a Trusted system, and it can ask exactly what web browser you are running. They can check that you're not running an ad-blocker and check that the browser is properly DRM-enforcing. If you pass those checks, the website sends an encrypted version of the webpage. The page can only be decrypted by that exact key inside that exact chip while running that exact webbrowser. If the Trust chip is inside the CPU, then the webpage only gets decrypted inside the CPU. In fact a Trusted CPU can even encrypt RAM, meaning that even a hardware hack to access memory gets you nothing but encrypted garbage. They also plan to have Trust chips built into monitors, and the main computer Trust chip sets up a secret key with the monitor Trust chip. So the webpage only gets decrypted and processed inside the CPU itself, and then the CPU re-encrypts the text+video image going to the monitor.
Trying to work on a normal system while using a Trusted system to authenticate for you gets you nothing. The Trusted system will not authenticate just because you ask it to - it will only authenticate when it's actually running a Trusted webbrowser, and it will only authenticate web-requests coming from that Trusted webbrowser, and the webpage you receive will only be decrypted inside the CPU, and then reencrypted to send to the monitor. It won't authenticate any web requests coming from your other computer, and your other computer can't fake and requests, and your other computer can't decrypt any of the incoming data.
The most you can do is have your other computer robotically punch keys on the Trusted keyboard for you, robotically move the Trusted mouse for you, and then use a video camera pointed at the Trusted monitor to capture an image of the rendered webpage. Trying to use two computers achieves zero.
If your ISP does Health Check to get internet access, well then your ISP owns your computer and everything depends upon the Health Check software they make you run. That software can serve as a firewall/gateway decrypting a
if one wants to claim that the punishment for circumventing DRM *can* be worse than the punishment for raping someone or worse than being a rape victim, that's quite a different (and strange) discussion. However, that's not a discussion about DRM itself.
Yes, it is a discussion of DRM itself.
"DRM" is effectively meaningless without the punishment for circumventing DRM. "DRM" effectively ceases to exist without the punishment for circumventing DRM.
DRM music files? Within a matter of hours or days someone will start selling a 99 cent app to remove the DRM.
DRM e-books? Same thing, and people will also go into business selling software or mod services to fix any DRM crippled features on reader devices.
DVD players that lock out the fast-forward button to force unskippable commercials and unskippable FBI warnings before playing the movie? DVD players that refuse to play disks tagged with a different region code? Companies will manufacture and sell properly designed DVD players that work the way the customer wants because crippled products can't compete on the free market against uncrippled products, and/or people will go into business modding DVD players to work the way the owner wants, and/or some company will simply buy ten thousand crippled DVD players and mod them to work properly and then resell them.
Starforce and other DRM schemes on computer games? Removal or fix software will be available even faster than it already is, and companies can go into business selling it.
DRM locked gaming consoles? Mod chip and mod services would be a very profitable business fixing the deliberately crippled consoles. Someone can go into business buying ten thousand consoles wholesale, upgrading away all the DRM crap, and resell the better product at a profit. And the mass market of unlocked consoles would open the floodgates of independent game development and sales for unlocked consoles.
In most cases no one will bother trying to sell the DRM crippled crap in the first place, knowing that a commercial service will immediately spring up to remove it. There is little point is screwing customers over selling DRM music tracks when you know the DRM can and will be removed almost immediately. There is little point in screwing customers over with DRM crippled game consoles when you know that commercial services will immediately start unlocking the consoles.
A DRM product is a crippled product. One or both of two points apply: (1) Crippled products cannot compete against uncrippled products in a free market (2) crippled products create free market demand and free market profit opportunity to FIX the product the way the customer wants.
DRM cannot meaningfully exist in a free market.
DRM does not meaningfully exist without a prison sentence attached.
Without the prison sentence, go back to the real world before anyone ever used the term DRM. Before the prison sentence the only term was "copy protected", and "copy protected" merely meant a 5 minute hassle to grab a freely available no-CD patch or a freely available utility. There was no expectation that "copy protected" was actually going to "work" or be enforceable. Companies were free to used whatever silly "protection" schemes they wanted if they saw some benefit in doing so, but the free market inherently limited how much hassle or damage could be caused by such protection schemes. The moment a protection scheme created significant troubles for consumers there is an inherent free market profit opportunity for someone else to FIX the problem for consumers.
There was no such thing as "DRM" before the prison sentence was created, and "DRM" goes back to nonexistence when the prison sentence ceases to exist.
For all practical purposes the prison sentence is the very existence of DRM, the prison sentence is the very definition of DRM.
-
Inherent with the "Play" command on your DVD player is that it will honor flags that mark a track as unskippable. By commanding it to play, you command it to do everything that play button entails.
they are commanding the program to do whatever it does when you press that button. What they *want* is simply to play the movie, and they are doing it with the restrictions that the movie studios have requested.
You are wrong. When I buy a product, and I dislike some aspect of how that item functions, it is not uncommon for me to fix my property to do what I want. If I press play I am "commanding" it to play, period. If it does something other than that then there is something wrong with it, it needs to be fixed. I have every right to fix it, I can and will fix it.
When I push use the print function in a computer program it does exactly what I want it to do.
No it doesn't. You do not specifically want a particular window layout to come up, you accept the window that comes up.
No, in fact I DON'T ACCEPT it. Just because some software originally comes programmed to behave in a certain way does NOT mean imply any sort of ACCEPTANCE of anything. There have been numerous times I've been sufficiently motivated to look inside piece of software and change it to do what I want it to do.
This is entirely voluntary. The studios do not take control over your computer.
Bullshit, it's not voluntary. DRM is an brain-damaged and evil notion based exactly on "taking over" other people's property. It is built on a brain-damaged and evil law, the DMCA, revoking people's ownership of their own computers or other devices.
This is nothing like raping someone
No, it's arguably worse.
The whole idea of DRM, the whole expectation that DRM is supposed to "work", the whole idea that people "accept" something just because that's how a seller had the object set up before they sold it, the whole idea that I CANNOT or SHOULD NOT change how it works after I bought it, the idea of denying people ownership to control of modify their own property, it is all based on and backed up by an evil law and an evil FIVE YEAR PRISON SENTENCE. And just to be perfectly clear here - I'm talking about a five year DRM prison sentence for someone who has NOT committed copyright infringement. The prison sentence is for the "crime" of modifying your own property to work properly, without any "piracy" or copyright infringement at all.
Not to diminish the seriousness and trauma of rape, but generally I'd rank someone losing five years of their life as worse than a rape.
-
if you take a video of a laser and play it backward
Little known fact: Lasers are tools of the Devil. They generate hidden satanic images that can only be seen when you play the video backwards.
-
You are aware that every released brand of standalone TPM has successful attacks against it, right?
Yes, which is why I wrote what I wrote in my post.
I stated it requires a hardware attack to really beat the Trust system. I also said they are moving the Trust chip inside the CPU, and I raised that point exactly because it effectively kills of the (relatively easy) attacks that exist against the stand-alone chips. Once the TPM is inside the CPU we're pretty well fucked. As I explained, at that point you need to physically rip open the CPU chip and read out the microscopic keys coded into the circuitry. You need a some fairly sophisticated lab equipment and expertise to pull that one off, and even then you are going to need to rip a new chip for each computer you want unlocked. And you have to deal with buying and ripping a new chip if they ever detect that you can do stuff you're not supposed to be able to do, and at some point you're probably going to have to give your your actual name and ID to a Certificate Authority to fully activate a chip. If you're lucky they'll simply refuse to let you activate a new chip after you've cracked old ones, and if you're not so lucky they Feds will show up and put you in prison.
-
Yeah! We'll make out own internet! With blackjack and hookers!
Well, no hookers. But one page will be a blackjack bot.
The other page will be the complete works of Shakespeare, in Klingon.
-
I'm so building my next computer from scratch.
Which makes it impossible to read any of the new Trust-locked files, impossible to run any of the new Trust-based software, leaves you unable to view any Trust-using websites, locks you out of Trust-based internet protocols, locks you out of Trust-secured government services, possibly denies you the ability to buy anything online if new credit card regulations require Trusted transactions, and it potentially bans you from the internet entirely if ISPs start doing Trust-based "health checks" to make sure you're not infected with a virus.
Trusted Computing is a "voluntary opt-in", but if you opt-out you and your computer get cut off from the world and dropped into a pit all alone. You are perfectly free run any software you like while sitting alone in a pit.
If Trusted Computing does go forward and it gets fully deployed then we're all fucked.
Microsoft can put me on the untrusted database
That's sorta backwards. By default everyone is untrusted. In order to qualify as Trusted you need to have a Trust chip in your computer, and the Trust chip needs to transmit a secure spy-report of all the hardware and software running on your computer. A Certificate Authority then scans that spy report to see if all your hardware and software is known and approved (any unrecognized software is by default unTrusted). If you have the chip and your entire system is approved as Trust-secure and DRM-secure, then your computer becomes Trusted. (*You* never become Trusted, it's your computer that becomes Trusted as secure against you.)
The only way you get on an unTrusted list is if your computer once did qualify as Trusted and then they discover that you cracked your system. Then your Master Key goes on a revocation list, your key and your Trust chip effectively drop dead.
-
You seem to be missing a fundamental point. What you're suggesting *does not work*. It's impossible to make a "fake implementation" when you don't know the cryptographic keys. If you don't know those keys it's impossible to decrypt any incoming messages. If you don't know those keys it's impossible to put the required crypto-signatures onto outgoing messages.
The only way to get the keys is to physically break open a microchip and manage to read out the keys locked inside the circuitry. The Trust chip is currently a separate chip, but they are moving it inside the CPU. You have to physically rip open a CPU and read out microscopic data. And they are making the chips to be tamper-resistant. It will take advanced skills and advanced hardware to rip open a chip and successfully read out the keys. Further more if anyone ever detects that you can do stuff you're not supposed to be able to do, then that key goes on a revocation list and those keys effectively drop dead. You then need to go out and buy a new CPU - you may even need to buy an entire motherboard with CPU - and start from scratch extracting a new key to use.
-
Which outcome bears more loss of their profits: accepting the risks, or losing their clients?
Perhaps you missed the part where the GOVERNMENT was proposing new regulations governing credit card transactions. This is not a risk-based choice by the banks, this not for the benefit of the banks, this is not for the benefit of you or me. It would be a law for the purpose of driving people into the Trust system. Any credit card company failing to obey the law would get shut down by law enforcement.
-
Some how I can't see how this trusted computing platform is going to be compatible with Hillary's new vision of cyber-democracy sweeping out the despotic evil right-wing governments throughout the world when any dictator can specifically and uniquely identify any of their malcontents
Don't worry, the US government will have no trouble overlooking that little detail while everyone is running around calling Trusted Computing the Holy Grail of securing the National Information Infrastructure and creating a new Internet Economy and Doing Something to stop the evilz piratez and protecting the children from the badz stuffz on the innerwebs.
The fact that petty dictators can abuse Trusted Computing is insignificant compared to their desire to use and abuse it themselves.
The fact that oppressive governments drool over this stuff only helps establish international consensus for a new Internet Governance to lock everything down. It massively helps avoid international backlash against a US or US+EU led change "taking over" the internet. Under Trusted Computing each government will get it's own Root Control over computers in their country, and they will be so enamored with that that they will completely miss the fact that there's also a Big Red Button to shut off their entire country from the internet and even to remotely switch off pretty much all of the software on all of their computers.
-
That simply means you need a "trusted" box to reply to the challenge. It doesn't have to be THE box. This sounds like something a Windows VM and some packet sniffing/injection could very easily defeat
Nope. The entire point of Trusted Computing is to make exactly that sort of thing impossible. It's impossible to virtualize the Trust chip unless you know the master keys locked inside the silicon. No amount of packet sniffing/injection will enable you to forge a Trusted communication. They are cryptographically signed by keys inside the chip. Trying to run a normal computer plus a second box to reply to challenges generally does you no good because everything gets encrypted or signed. The second box won't sign the stuff you need signed, and it won't decrypt what you need decrypted. The master keys are locked inside the silicon, and the lower level keys are generally encrypted before they leave the chip and only decrypted when they are loaded back into the Trust chip.
Trying to use a two-box setup would be extremely difficult and it wouldn't achieve much. Lets say your ISP wants a Trusted Health Check on your computer before giving you a connection. You use the Trust box to authenticate. During the authentication the ISP sends an encrypted internet session key. It is encrypted in such a way that it can only be decrypted by the Trust chip, INSIDE the Trust chip, using the a decryption key locked inside the Trust chip. You can't sniff the internet session key because it's been encrypted with the Trust chip's key, which you don't know. You now connect your "real" box and try to use your internet connection. Except now your ISP expects some or all of your outbound packets to have a validation code embedded. These validations codes can only be generated using the secret internet session key. You can't send packets because your "real" box doesn't know the internet session key needed to validate those packets, and your secondary Trust box refuses to validate them for you.
Do not underestimate Trusted Computing. I'm a programmer, I've read the 300+ page technical specification on this chip, I know DRM is impossible and the reasons it Always Fails. Trust me, software attacks are almost completely nullified. Any successful software attack is generally confined to temporarily exploiting localized bug affecting specific data belonging to that specific affected program, and they can FORCE down patches fixing the bug. It is essentially impossible to fundamentally defeat the system with any software attack. Only a hardware attack will truly defeat the system, and they are moving the Trust chip INSIDE THE CPU ITSELF. Not even the god of all modchips and motherboard hacks can do squat when the Trust chip is inside the CPU.
The only way to break the system is to literally rip open the CPU itself. That will indeed blow the Trust system wide ope, but then there's another problem. You have to be insanely careful never to allow them to detect that you have beaten the system and that you can do stuff you're not supposed to be able to do. Almost anything you do can be traced back to the the specific Trust identity code involved. If they ever detect you doing anything you shouldn't, then that identity code goes on a revocation list. You can still access the data you've already broken, but for all practical purposes that computer is dead. It can no longer access any new Trusted data, and all other Trusted devices will refuse to speak to it.
By revoking the hacked identity key they can make it cost you (up to) the price of an entire new computer, plus the difficulty of physically dissecting the new CPU chip to extract a new set of keys. You have to do this each and every time they catch anything anomalous relating to your cracked system.
And you're really screwed if you have to use your real identity during the Certificate Authority process required to enable a new chip. They may refuse to let you activate a new system, or they may send the feds to arrest you for violating the DMCA o
a cult
L, N, whatever.
-
"So, this guy wants to run a program on an untrusted machine, which will report back to a website on whether or not the machine should be trusted?"
No, you're missing what they are actually proposing.
They are proposing that everyone must have a Trust chip locking down their computer. This Trust chip is most commonly known as a Trusted Platform Module or TPM. The Trust chip contains a unique identity code (PubEK) that can be used to securely track your computer and your identity. The Trust chip contains a master key (PrivEK) to lock down identity control. You are FORBIDDEN to know your own master key locking down your identity. This key is REQUIRED to be securely locked down inside the chip to deny the owner knowledge or control of this key. The chip also contains a key (RSK) to lock down files on your computer. You are FORBIDDEN to know your own master storage key. This key is REQUIRED to be securely locked down inside the chip to deny the owner the ability to read or modify his own files, except as permitted by the Trust chip. The Trust chip also scans the software you run on your computer, and it does this for two purposes:
(1) It spies on and logs the software running on your computer in order to send over the internet Trusted spy reports (Remote Attestation) telling other people exactly what hardware and software you are running. For example a website can ask for a Remote Attestation spy report to check if you're running any sort of Ad Blocker. If you have any sort of Ad Blocker, or if you're running an unapproved web browser, or if you are runing an unapproved operating system, or if you don't have a Trust chip, or if you refuse to send the spy report, then you are blocked from viewing the web pages.
(2) It logs exactly what software you are running in order to DENY YOU THE ABILITY TO READ OR MODIFY YOUR OWN FILES unless you are running the exact unmodified software that is APPROVED for reading or modifying the files. For example the Trust chip can make it impossible to play music downloads unless you play them with the exact unmodified RIAA Approved DRM-enforcing music player. The Trust chip can also make it impossible to view streaming video unless you are running the exact unmodified MPAA Approved DRM-enforcing web browser. Other people can store and modify data on your computer, but it's impossible for you to read or modify that data except to outright delete it. Of course, deleting the files will cause stuff on your computer to stop working.
This is the "Security System" Microsoft originally codenamed Palladium. This is the "Security System" the government has been talking about for the last several years to secure the National Information Infrastructure. This is the "Security System" that underlies the Trusted Identity System that the White House has been talking about for the last several years. This is the "Security System" that Microsoft has been promoting to secure corporate networks. This is the "Security System" that the copyright industries have been pushing to lock down music and video and book and websites and to enable a "rental" model for software.
The subject of the article is that Microsoft is backing off on the idea of having ISP's DENY YOU INTERNET ACCESS unless you have a Trust chip and run an Approved operating system along with Mandatory Approved software to "secure" your computer. The argument is that this is a "Health Check", and that if you fail the "health Check" then you computer might be infected by a virus, and that it is appropriate for ISPs to shut off your internet access if you have an infected or vulnerable machine. See? Doesn't that sound wonderful? The system comes wrapped in a bright shiny box advertising it as a GOOD thing to protect you and everyone else on the internet against viruses.
The article here is merely saying that Microsoft noticed that some people (like me) have been calling out this evil Trust chip plan, in particular pointing out the blatantly evil step of having ISPs deny you internet access if you resist. The ar