Relies on Jailbreaking Root access is there anything it can't do?
Jailbreaking and root access can't do squat if things are properly encrypted.
The entire point of the is story is that the iPhone's encryption is done improperly. The encryption is done with a key sitting on the device, without involving your password at all. The iPhone is stupidly programmed to check if you entered the right password and then simply use the stored key to decrypt your data.
If you jailbreak you can skip the password check and directly use the decryption key. This is a massive case of D'oh! This is a perfect case of why "jail locking" devices or using DRM are powerful threats against security. Jail locking and DRM and Trusted Computing inherently involve invalid security assumptions. Any security model built on top of invalid security assumptions WILL fail rapidly, and it will fail badly.
Your goal is irrelevant if the means themselves are invalid. It doesn't matter if you're "for" curing cancer, that obviously doesn't make it valid to kidnap people to work as slaves in a research lab. Some people dreamed up the idea of DRM with the valid goal of preventing copyright infringement, but their goal does not mean their means of pursuing that goal are valid, doesn't mean those means will actually work, doesn't mean they it's valid to expect those means to actually work. It doesn't matter what purpose Microsoft advertises for Rights Management Services if the means themselves are invalid, if it is invalid to expect them to actually work. It doesn't matter what purposes Microsoft advertises for Network Access Protection if the means themselves are invalid, if it is invalid to expect them to actually work.
DRM is fundamentally the notion that people don't down their computers. The notion that people cannot or should not look at the data or hardware inside their own computers. The notion that people cannot or should be able to look at the keys inside their own computers. The notion that people cannot or should not be able to know, control, or alter the instructions/computations being done by their own computer.
Is there anything in the above paragraph that is not obviously false? DRM is the opposite of security. It's the notion of "securing" a computer against the owner.
AD Rights Management and Network Access Protection are simply DRM with fancy wrapping paper and fancy advertising claims.
The idea that DRM, AD Rights Management, or Network Access Protection can or should work are obviously false. People own their computers, people can look inside their computers, people have every right to look inside and change their own computers. The most that can be done is to make it a pain in the ass for people in the hope of discouraging most people from doing so. However it is obviously false to expect people cannot, it is obviously false to expect people should not, and it is obviously false to claim or expect people are doing anything wrong if they do.
If I buy a record player it would obviously be insane for anyone to claim I'm doing anything wrong if I open it up, examine it, and flip the drive belt to play songs backwards if I want. It is equally obviously insane for anyone to claim I'm doing anything wrong if look inside my computer, examine it, and write my own software to play a music file backwards. It doesn't matter if the DRM on the music is "for" preventing copyright infringement - because I'm not committing copyright infringement!!! It doesn't matter what DRM is "for", it doesn't matter what AD Rights Management is "for", it doesn't matter what Network Access Protection is "for", they are all based upon obviously false assumptions. They are all based on obviously invalid means, none of them can actually work, it is obviously false to expect any of them to work. It is obviously false to expect someone else's computer to be "secure" against the owner. If someone is not committing copyright infringement or something, then there is absolutely nothing wrong or illegitimate when people "break" DRM, AD Rights Management, or Network Access Protection. It's like a printer manufacturer claiming you're doing something wrong if you buy a printer and alter the ink-slot to fit cheaper ink cartridges. It's a like a car manufacturer claiming you're doing something wrong if you buy a car and then pick a lock on the hood to replace the oil filter yourself.
The idea that computers or other objects can - or should be "secure" against their owners is wildly absurd. DRM, AD Rights Management, and Network Access Protection are all wildly absurd. A company securing their own computers and their own software is security. DRM, AD Rights Management, and Network Access Protection are all absurd and invalid because they are all based on the notion that other people's co
An individual voluntarily requests a smart identity card from her home state. The individual chooses to use the card to authenticate herself for a variety of online services, including:
Credit card purchases,
Online banking,
Accessing electronic health care records,
Securely accessing her personal laptop computer, Anonymously posting blog entries, and
Logging onto Internet email services using a pseudonym.
Anyone who envisions people using Identity Cards to authenticate "anonymous" posting on the internet is dangerous, either evil and dangerous or stupid and dangerous or both.
Many parts of the draft make it implicit that this Identity System is built on top of Trusted Computing, and page 15 explicitly says that hardware and software "also require rigorous identification, authentication, and authorization" and provides an example explicitly naming the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) in this role. For those not familiar with Trusted Computing and Trusted Platform Modules, it means that each computer or other device is embedded with a unique identifier number (the PUBEK). Each computer or other device is also given a pair of master keys, the PRIVEK and RSK. The core idea of Trusted Computing is that the owner is FORBIDDEN to know or fully control these master keys locking down his computer. These keys are used to secure the computer AGAINST THE OWNER. That is the meaning of "Trust" in Trusted Computing and in the Trust chip - they mean that other people can "Trust" that you do not know your own master security keys and therefore other people can "Trust" that your computer is secure AGAINST YOU. They can "Trust" that you cannot alter or override the security on your computer because you do not know your own master security keys.
Page 22 says the Federal government must establish new laws to enforce this system.
Page 23 explicitly names Intellectual Property protection as a purpose of the system.
Page 24 says "the scope of this strategy extends beyond national boundaries" and that Governance is required at the international level to create this Identity system. It complains that the Federal Government has not focused sufficient resources pushing this sort of system through international standards bodies. Continuing into page 25 is says this policy "is becoming a matter of diplomacy".
The Federal government is already giving away many tens of millions of dollars a year in grants to develop this stuff, and still page 25 calls for more aggressive focused R&D to promote this system and "promote the transfer of the government's sponsored R&D results related to the Identity Ecosystem to the commercial sector".
All throughout the draft are listed all sorts of ways to force this Identity system upon us, from implementing it in government services to your electric company requiring it to access your account. However page 29-30 is particularly notable in how it identifies "Other Means to Drive Adoption of the Identity Ecosystem Across the Nation". It suggests tax breaks for those who adopt the system, which is inherently a shift of the tax burden onto those who who refuse or decline to adopt the Identity system. But I think the really fun part is where it suggests regulatory changes to critical infrastructure sectors to drive adoption. In particular it proposes new regulations be placed upon all credit card transactions as a means to drive this Identity system down our throats.
As opposed to anybody in Saudi Arabia sending content to his cousin in Europe to post to an offshore host?
Giving the content to someone to publish for you is likely treated no differently from directly doing it yourself. I doubt there's a legal system anywhere on earth that will let you get away with murder simply because you hired someone to pull the trigger for you.
The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
Sure. But we're not discussing the technical or practical aspects of the internet. We're discussing a government passing a law to oppress speech. A stupid and/or evil government can and will run around imprisoning people, and it certainly won't care about tricks like sending the content to your cousin to post for you. If catch you they'll lock you up. Such a government only "cares" about the internet's anti-censorship aspects in that it generally just makes them frustrated and more angry and more oppressive attempting to "fix" the problem that their censorship didn't work.
As I read the article, the law applies to the act of publishing itself. (Where "publishing" is pretty much a glorified term for "posting on the internet".) It seems obvious to me that anyone in Saudi Arabia using an offshore host, without registering for a license, would be a criminal in violation of this law.
I wonder if the typical Saudi can hear the same grotesque irony I hear when the Minister of Information said the rules do not include any clauses restricting freedom of speech. If not, then maybe it would help if we find an Arabic language edition of the book 1984 and airdrop a million copies all across the Mideast.
Tides Foundation German Marshall Fund of the United States Ford Foundation Oak Foundation Compton Foundation Rockefeller Foundation Carnegie Corporation JEHT Foundation Benton Foundation Ben and Jerry's Foundation University of Maryland Foundation Secure World Foundation Circle Foundation Oak Foundation Ploughshares Fund Rockefeller Brothers Fund Calvert Foundation Stanley Foundation United States Institute of Peace
It's so UnAmerican that it's even the French the spelling of Georje! Oh look! Now we've also got proof that the Oak Foundation provided funding twice!
No way should they be required to maintain 1:1 subscription/bandwidth
Of course not. Most customers are offline most of the time. It is easy to use statistics and records of actual usage to determine what your actual subscription-to-bandwidth ratio is. It is perfectly legitimate to not-buy what you know that you won't need. It is reasonable not-to-buy what you know you won't need 99% of the time. We may even say that it's reasonable not-to-buy what you know you won't need 90% of the time. One may even argue it's reasonable to deliberately target a lower percentage of anticipated needs, if one makes the argument of deliberately under provisioning for anticipated needs for cost-benefit reasons.
They are prepared.
No they're not. They knew or should have known what their normal anticipated bandwidth needs would be. For twelve hours out of the day they were under provisioned, and for simplicity lets guess it as 50% of the anticipated usage. But note that from the viewpoint of customer-hours of usage, about 75% of all customer usage was during those under provisioned hours. About 75% of actual customer usage was subject to under provisioning.
It is difficult to credibly imagine that Comcast management could be so incompetent and ignorant of their own business to be unaware that they were grossly under provisioning their actual routine bandwith usage. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, but there does come a point where the ignorance/stupidity does become an unlikely or inadequate explanation.
I am just pushing back on all the monopoly/conspiracy/neutrality nutjobs and their ridiculous "theories". If you don't want their service, don't pay for it.
Greed is hardly ridiculous, nor does it require any sort of conspiracy.
For a significant percentage of the population, there is a de facto monopoly for broadband service. This is particularly true for Comcast customers. And where there isn't a de facto monopoly, millions more people face a duopoly.
And it's not like there is any market freedom here. In almost every instance broadband providers are in fact a government imposed monopoly/duopoly or a government supported monopoly/duopoly. Cable networks are almost entirely built using public land and public facilities, often with public subsidies and legislatively established monopolies on service areas and access rights.
I often agree with not wanting the government to get involved in things, but that ship left the building long ago. When it comes to something like Net Neutrality, the government has the right and obligation to place public interest conditions upon the usage of public land and resources. When the government legislates monopoly access rights then it is incumbent upon the government to regulate it's own establishment and grant of those monopoly rights in the public interest.
To turn around you "If you don't want their service, don't pay for it", if some company doesn't like Net Neutrality then don't build your networks based on privileged access to public property, don't build it using public funds, and don't engage in legislatively established regional monopolies.
But as far as the current issue of bandwidth provisioning, I see two issues. *If* the article is right about Comcast's purpose for under provisioning (which I admit I have insufficient information on), then that raises issues of monopoly law. Comcast has a de facto monopoly in many regions, and it is illegal to abuse a monopoly in certain ways. In my opinion the issue is vastly multiplied when the government is involved in establishing or enforcing that monopoly over regions. But even setting aside their uncertain intent, setting aside any monopoly issue, I see an FTC issue in their under provisioning. False or deceptive advertising is illegal. There is nothing new or unusual about that. The primary advertising characteristic of internet access is speed. When they advertise speed they should have to advertise the
Arguing with an athiest about God's existence is like a 16th century man arguing with a man blind from birth about the existence of color.
No. Your example is a perfect illustration of power of reason, as well as rational objective reality. Assuming rational blind people and rational color-seeing people, they can and would very quickly come to agreement on the objective truth. To illustrate a simple example, the blind people could agree on some objects such as squares of paper or pingpong balls that are identical, identical except that some people assert they see different colors in them. The blind people can secretly number the objects and log what colors they supposedly are. They could then present them to the color-people one at a time in random order asking what color they are. If colors exist then the color-seeing people will name the correct color with essentially 100% accuracy. Even more significantly different color-seeing people will independently report the same colors for objects with essentially 100% accuracy, given reasonable allowances for color-synonyms and shades and some overlap for adjacent colors, factors which can be reliably confirmed with appropriate tests.
As the House quote goes "Rational arguments don’t usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be religious people."
Absense of proof is not proof of absense.
Ghosts goblins and gods. Zeus exists because there is an absence of evidence he doesn't exist? You consider that rational?
Actually in most cases absence of evidence IS INDEED powerful evidence of absence. For example if I open my mailbox and look inside and have an absence of seeing mail, that is for all practical purposes absolute proof that I don't have any mail in my mailbox. If one preforms a thorough search for evidence that should exist for a certain think, and that evidence is absent, then that is indeed powerful evidence of absence.
Almost all definitions of "God" do indeed entail some objective evidence that should exist, and when a proper search for that evidence is undertaken and that evidence is found to be absent, that is indeed evidence of absence of that God. For example according to many people prayer is supposed to actually work, at least sometimes. All searches and all tests show that prayer has zero effect. For example praying for the health and recovery of heart patients has zero effect on their outcome. To the extent anyone defines God as sometimes answering prayers, this is indeed evidence of absence. And to the extent there could be a God-who-doesn't-answer-prayers it still establishes prayer as pointless.
I mentioned that most definitions of God do entail some objective testable evidence that should exist. In order to escape the absence of evidence = evidence of absence issue you are forced to define God into a very small very cramped very ineffectual box. If you define God as inherently lacking any existence that he ever existed at all, define God as inherently lacking any evidence of ever doing anything at all, you are defining God into meaninglessness. You are defining a God who makes no difference. You are defining a God who in effect does not exist.
In your other post you mention credible religious experiences. I do not dispute the existence of anyone's religious experiences. I have experienced a number of very unusual things myself, none of which had any basis in external reality. People experience all sorts of unusual things for all sorts of perfectly ordinary non-supernatural reasons. However you said credible religious experiences, which are rather lacking. Just look back to your example about color and blind men. It perfectly illustrates how credible experiences are objectively confirmable experiences. By claiming "credible experiences" that fail all objective confirmation you are in fact basing your argument on NON-credible experiences. We know that the brain, the mind, can have strange and vivid subjective experiences for countless perfectly ordinary reasons. For rational people that's no problem because they generally have no problem distinguishing internal abnormal subjective experiences from external objective confirmable reality.
The phrase "separation of Church and State" does not exist in the Constitution.
Neither does the word "gun". That argument is obviously silly.
The constitution does say "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", which in not nearly as catchy and clear to modern ears as "separation of Church and State". In order to effectively protect the freedom of religion the phrase "Congress shall make no law" must incorporate administrative orders and all other acts and powers of government. "respecting" is a broadly encompassing anything-relating-to. "establishment of" doesn't mean buildings, it means putting-into-place. "religion" doesn't just mean Christianity/Islam/Judaism or other entire religion, it means part of religion and anything of a religious nature. It means we have a guaranteed right of religious freedom. It is a right that protects us from ANY form of government meddling in our private religious lives and religious beliefs. The one and only way to protect our freedom of religion is separation of church and state.
Thomas Jefferson to the Baptist Association of Danbury
Yes, that's where the phrase came from Jefferson is often quoted because he had quite a knack for boiling rich ideas down into short clear very quotable phrases. However you are wrong to imply that is where the idea came from. Jefferson was hardly alone among the founders in discussing the concept. Other founders discussed it, and they made it perfectly clear that they did not mean any sort of silly "one way wall".
If there is one founding farther we should be looking to to understand the constitution and the Bill of Rights, to help us understand exactly what the words are supposed to mean, that person is without a doubt James Madison. Madison is widely acknowledged as Father of the Constitution. He was the primary author who WRITING the Bill of Rights. One would kinda expect he's know what it was supposed to mean. Well, lets take a look at what Madison wrote:
"total separation of the church from the state" (1819 letter to Robert Walsh) "perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters" (1822 letter to Edward Livingston), "line of separation between the rights of religion and the civil authority... entire abstinence of the government" (1832 letter Rev. Jasper Adams Spring) "practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States" (1811 letter to Baptist Churches) "Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history." (Detached Memoranda circa 1817) "The settled opinion here is, that religion is essentially distinct from civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both" (Letter to Edward Everett, Montpellier, March 18, 1823).
Madison's words may not be as catchy as Jefferson's phrase "separation of Church and State", however Madison repeatedly wrote of "total" or "perfect" separation in various forms. The Detached Memoranda quote could not POSSIBLY by more clear that the separation between Religion & Govt was strongly guarded by the Constitution, and making absolutely explicit that there was no "one way wall" as it also guarded against the "danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies".
Wannabe theocrats are blatantly re-writing history when they deny the meaning of the First Amendment. They simply don't like the fact that it denies them the ability to hijack governmental force and powers as a weapon to violate other people's Constitutional Right of Freedom of Religion.
Government now oppresses religion freely.
The only "oppression" is that officials and employees of the government are forbidden from abusing their governmental powers and authority for religious p
According to the article this does not appears to be a "tax break".
It appears that the government will be collecting taxes "tax paid by visitors on admission tickets, food, gift sales and lodging costs" and handing that money over to the developers. This religious theme park might legitimately be able to benefit from the generic theme park law, but I do think it needs close scrutiny. This comes disturbingly close to the government funding promotion of particular religious beliefs. The fact that this "theme park" primarily intends to promote fraudulent garbage under the label "science" is grossly abhorrent, although unfortunately that likely has no relevance to whether they can legitimately collect this tax money.
The Big Bang does not violate nor "suspend" thermodynamics.
Are you one of those fundies who thinks they can label science as religion any time science conflicts with your particular religious beliefs? Just because something conflicts with a particular religious belief does not make the thing itself into religion. When science says the moon is made out of rock that science does not become "religion" just because some person's religion says the moon is made out of green cheese.
The result was a "mess" because the vacuum evaporation process served to concentrate the random impurities within the gold sample.
If you look at the article you'll see a few examples of the random junk found in the remaining reside. Based on mass spectroscopy just a few of the contaminants were identified as 133Cs128Te, 197Au64Zn, 209Bi52Cr, 238U23Na, and 138Th(14N2)1H. That's merely the stuff in mess that was close to the target mass.
I'm not an expert on mass spectroscopy, but I do have a pretty good understand of how they work. It precisely weighs components of your sample. Each isotope of each element has a precise known weight, and a molecule will be a sum of the weights of the atoms within it. If you have a strong signal (multiple detections) you can pretty much ignore rare isotopes and easily get a yes/no answer whether a low (but non-singular) quantity of some specific element or molecule exists in your sample. Based on the graph image he appears to be operating at a level of singular atom/molecule detection. He appears to have detected a single molecule of each of the contaminants listed above, along with a single detection that he claims represents a single atom of this super heavy element. Dealing with a singular detection is much more troublesome. You have to rule out EVERY possible combination of elements and isotopes that could sum to that weight in a molecular unit, plus the slim chance that some stray event triggered a random-value false detection.
If we ignore isotopes for a moment, there are 92 normal natural elements. There are 92*92=8,462 possible weights for a 2 atom combination. There are 92*92*92=778,688 possible weights for a 2 atom combination. There are 71,639,296 possible weights for a 3 atom combination. Note that one of his detections - 138Th(14N2)1H - was attributed as a 4 atom combination. There are 6,590,815,232 possible weights for a 4 atom combination. The possible weight-sums explode geometrically if you consider a 5 atom combination, and it explodes geometrically when you factoring in the weights of different isotopes of the various elements.
It seems to be a statistical certainty that there exists some combination of atoms that would have added up to this particular weight, a group of atoms that would mimic the detection of a single super heavy atom.
Assuming that his paper backs up his report with good scientific methods then this probably warrants further independent investigation. However at this point I'd say there is a very low chance that this claim will pan out. It is almost certain that what he detected was actually a multi-atom cluster of random contaminants that just happened to match the expected weight of a super heavy atom.
There are certain super-heavy elements that we have good reason to suspect may exist - the theorized island of stability. However this claimed element lies well outside that island of stability. For example even numbers are generally more stable because particles can pair up in a more stable quantum mechanical way. This is supposedly element 111 - it has an odd number of protons. It is expected to be generally less stable than element 110 or 112. The claimed mass also has an unusually low number of neutrons. Neutrons act as sort of a glue helping to bind the protons together. For this reason as well this atom is not expected to be a stable element. The chances of this paper being a valid result are wildly remote.
Papers appearing on Arxiv are really cool for giving us a peek into scientific research as it's happening, but it also means we're getting a peek into lots of weak or flawed results. We're looking at papers before they have been critically examined by the scientific peer review process. Arxiv papers must be cautiously taken as "interesting maybes" at best, and much be taken with a very skeptical eye when the results are anything other than mere experimental confirmation of things that scientists already expected to be true.
Intel engineers reported obtaining a 12% speed up for Windows running on this CPU, but testing had to be halted when one of the programs crashed and several employees received a near fatal overdose of blue.
"A poodle and a great dane are physically incapable of mating." You're wrong.
Obviously I was implying small breed when I said poodle. Toy breed poodles are 6 inches tall and Great danes about 3 foot at the shoulder. Pardon my humorous tone, but I can't imagine what you had in mind. Were you picturing the male poodles flying through the air and head-first entering the female danes? Or were you picturing the male dane bellyflopping into the female poodle and stuffing 6 inches of equipment into a 6 inch body?
"If we simply killed off all other breeds dogs, poodles and great danes would instantly qualify as separate species" Wrong. They'd still both be the same species.
What do you think the definition of species is? As far as I'm aware the scientific basis of "species" is when there is some genetic basic inhibiting gene flow (interbreeding) between two populations. When the cannot or *do not* interbreed. One population having a (genetically based) spring breeding season and another population having a fall breeding season is enough to do it.
The point is that once genetic intermingling stops their genetics can only diverge. All adaption and genetic drift within either population can only serve to move it further away from the common origin and further away from the other population. Over times the differences must increase. Eventually the genetic differences get so big that even artificial insemination cannot produce viable offspring.
Do you consider lions and tigers to be two species or one?
When captively cross breed lions and tigers can produce offspring. They are called ligers or tigons based upon the gender roles of the lion and tiger. Those offspring are *almost* always infertile because lion and tiger genetics have developed differently over the last 25 million years, and those differences have led to genetic incompatibilities. However in very rare cases a liger or tigon is born with a very lucky set of still-compatible genes, it is fertile and can breed with lions and/or tigers.
You tell me, are lions and tigers two species because they are almost completely incompatible genes, or do you think they are one species because there have been rare cases of successful offspring?
And what about horses and donkeys? Do you define them as two species or as one? They are genetically incompatible, they can produce offspring but only sterile mules. There are no recorded cases of a fertile mule. Do you say they are one species because they can produce mules, ignoring the fact that genetic incompatibilities render all offspring sterile? Or do you define them as two species, but then re-write them as one species if some day we do see a fertile mule?
Science has no problem with this because science says there's no magic line. Everything happens smoothly through shades of gray. There's no magic line when a wolf "turns into" a dog, and there is no "magic line" when one species becomes two. There is simply the fact that they become increasingly incompatible over time. The scientific dividing line is when actual practical genetic mixing drops or negligible levels and the populations inherently become increasingly different over time. Infertile mules and almost-always-infertile ligers and tigons fit perfectly in that understanding.
Second, if it changes enough so that it's no longer in the same species, then it's no longer a Great Dane. That makes absolutely zero sense.
Is a great dane still a wolf? No. Did a wolf change into a great dane? No.
Wolves had puppies, and children are always slightly different from the parent. You have two lines of puppies from the same parent, and generation after generation down two separate family lines. We started with two almost identical puppies from the same mother, and 15,000 years later the differences down those two lines added up. At some point we decided we want to call one modern puppy "wolf", and we decided to name the other modern puppy "great dane". Just 15,000 ye
Slashdot Mirror
"this article is an extraordinary piece of shit"
No it's not.
It's an ordinary Fox piece of shit.
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"If Glen Beck didn't rape and kill that girl in 1990, why won't he just come out and deny it?
What is he hiding?"
Maybe it was a boy.
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Relies on Jailbreaking Root access is there anything it can't do?
Jailbreaking and root access can't do squat if things are properly encrypted.
The entire point of the is story is that the iPhone's encryption is done improperly. The encryption is done with a key sitting on the device, without involving your password at all. The iPhone is stupidly programmed to check if you entered the right password and then simply use the stored key to decrypt your data.
If you jailbreak you can skip the password check and directly use the decryption key. This is a massive case of D'oh! This is a perfect case of why "jail locking" devices or using DRM are powerful threats against security. Jail locking and DRM and Trusted Computing inherently involve invalid security assumptions. Any security model built on top of invalid security assumptions WILL fail rapidly, and it will fail badly.
It's probably good that I'm not in charge of setting these people straight, I'd have a horde of monkeys trying to lynch me.
Oh, they very rarely do that.
Usually they just start screeching uncontrollably and throw fecal matter.
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what AD Rights management is for
Your goal is irrelevant if the means themselves are invalid. It doesn't matter if you're "for" curing cancer, that obviously doesn't make it valid to kidnap people to work as slaves in a research lab. Some people dreamed up the idea of DRM with the valid goal of preventing copyright infringement, but their goal does not mean their means of pursuing that goal are valid, doesn't mean those means will actually work, doesn't mean they it's valid to expect those means to actually work. It doesn't matter what purpose Microsoft advertises for Rights Management Services if the means themselves are invalid, if it is invalid to expect them to actually work. It doesn't matter what purposes Microsoft advertises for Network Access Protection if the means themselves are invalid, if it is invalid to expect them to actually work.
DRM is fundamentally the notion that people don't down their computers. The notion that people cannot or should not look at the data or hardware inside their own computers. The notion that people cannot or should be able to look at the keys inside their own computers. The notion that people cannot or should not be able to know, control, or alter the instructions/computations being done by their own computer.
Is there anything in the above paragraph that is not obviously false? DRM is the opposite of security. It's the notion of "securing" a computer against the owner.
AD Rights Management and Network Access Protection are simply DRM with fancy wrapping paper and fancy advertising claims.
The idea that DRM, AD Rights Management, or Network Access Protection can or should work are obviously false. People own their computers, people can look inside their computers, people have every right to look inside and change their own computers. The most that can be done is to make it a pain in the ass for people in the hope of discouraging most people from doing so. However it is obviously false to expect people cannot, it is obviously false to expect people should not, and it is obviously false to claim or expect people are doing anything wrong if they do.
If I buy a record player it would obviously be insane for anyone to claim I'm doing anything wrong if I open it up, examine it, and flip the drive belt to play songs backwards if I want. It is equally obviously insane for anyone to claim I'm doing anything wrong if look inside my computer, examine it, and write my own software to play a music file backwards. It doesn't matter if the DRM on the music is "for" preventing copyright infringement - because I'm not committing copyright infringement!!! It doesn't matter what DRM is "for", it doesn't matter what AD Rights Management is "for", it doesn't matter what Network Access Protection is "for", they are all based upon obviously false assumptions. They are all based on obviously invalid means, none of them can actually work, it is obviously false to expect any of them to work. It is obviously false to expect someone else's computer to be "secure" against the owner. If someone is not committing copyright infringement or something, then there is absolutely nothing wrong or illegitimate when people "break" DRM, AD Rights Management, or Network Access Protection. It's like a printer manufacturer claiming you're doing something wrong if you buy a printer and alter the ink-slot to fit cheaper ink cartridges. It's a like a car manufacturer claiming you're doing something wrong if you buy a car and then pick a lock on the hood to replace the oil filter yourself.
The idea that computers or other objects can - or should be "secure" against their owners is wildly absurd. DRM, AD Rights Management, and Network Access Protection are all wildly absurd. A company securing their own computers and their own software is security. DRM, AD Rights Management, and Network Access Protection are all absurd and invalid because they are all based on the notion that other people's co
What's your mother's maiden name? - kashiqewnchkdhsflakjshflvkdsvhpexiojnasdjlna
Whoa, freaky! That's the combination on my luggage!
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All my life when asked what my sign was, I've always answered Neon.
Now I'm lost.... what the hell am I now? An Argon?
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You can find the draft version PDF here.
From the draft, page 4:
Envision It!
An individual voluntarily requests a smart identity card from
her home state. The individual chooses to use the card to
authenticate herself for a variety of online services, including:
Credit card purchases,
Online banking,
Accessing electronic health care records,
Securely accessing her personal laptop computer,
Anonymously posting blog entries, and
Logging onto Internet email services using a pseudonym.
Anyone who envisions people using Identity Cards to authenticate "anonymous" posting on the internet is dangerous, either evil and dangerous or stupid and dangerous or both.
Many parts of the draft make it implicit that this Identity System is built on top of Trusted Computing, and page 15 explicitly says that hardware and software "also require rigorous identification, authentication, and authorization" and provides an example explicitly naming the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) in this role. For those not familiar with Trusted Computing and Trusted Platform Modules, it means that each computer or other device is embedded with a unique identifier number (the PUBEK). Each computer or other device is also given a pair of master keys, the PRIVEK and RSK. The core idea of Trusted Computing is that the owner is FORBIDDEN to know or fully control these master keys locking down his computer. These keys are used to secure the computer AGAINST THE OWNER. That is the meaning of "Trust" in Trusted Computing and in the Trust chip - they mean that other people can "Trust" that you do not know your own master security keys and therefore other people can "Trust" that your computer is secure AGAINST YOU. They can "Trust" that you cannot alter or override the security on your computer because you do not know your own master security keys.
Page 22 says the Federal government must establish new laws to enforce this system.
Page 23 explicitly names Intellectual Property protection as a purpose of the system.
Page 24 says "the scope of this strategy extends beyond national boundaries" and that Governance is required at the international level to create this Identity system. It complains that the Federal Government has not focused sufficient resources pushing this sort of system through international standards bodies. Continuing into page 25 is says this policy "is becoming a matter of diplomacy".
The Federal government is already giving away many tens of millions of dollars a year in grants to develop this stuff, and still page 25 calls for more aggressive focused R&D to promote this system and "promote the transfer of the government's sponsored R&D results related to the Identity Ecosystem to the commercial sector".
All throughout the draft are listed all sorts of ways to force this Identity system upon us, from implementing it in government services to your electric company requiring it to access your account. However page 29-30 is particularly notable in how it identifies "Other Means to Drive Adoption of the Identity Ecosystem Across the Nation". It suggests tax breaks for those who adopt the system, which is inherently a shift of the tax burden onto those who who refuse or decline to adopt the Identity system. But I think the really fun part is where it suggests regulatory changes to critical infrastructure sectors to drive adoption. In particular it proposes new regulations be placed upon all credit card transactions as a means to drive this Identity system down our throats.
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As opposed to anybody in Saudi Arabia sending content to his cousin in Europe to post to an offshore host?
Giving the content to someone to publish for you is likely treated no differently from directly doing it yourself. I doubt there's a legal system anywhere on earth that will let you get away with murder simply because you hired someone to pull the trigger for you.
The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
Sure. But we're not discussing the technical or practical aspects of the internet. We're discussing a government passing a law to oppress speech. A stupid and/or evil government can and will run around imprisoning people, and it certainly won't care about tricks like sending the content to your cousin to post for you. If catch you they'll lock you up. Such a government only "cares" about the internet's anti-censorship aspects in that it generally just makes them frustrated and more angry and more oppressive attempting to "fix" the problem that their censorship didn't work.
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As I read the article, the law applies to the act of publishing itself. (Where "publishing" is pretty much a glorified term for "posting on the internet".) It seems obvious to me that anyone in Saudi Arabia using an offshore host, without registering for a license, would be a criminal in violation of this law.
I wonder if the typical Saudi can hear the same grotesque irony I hear when the Minister of Information said the rules do not include any clauses restricting freedom of speech. If not, then maybe it would help if we find an Arabic language edition of the book 1984 and airdrop a million copies all across the Mideast.
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Arkansas - America's Somalia.
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Tides Foundation
German Marshall Fund of the United States
Ford Foundation
Oak Foundation
Compton Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
Carnegie Corporation
JEHT Foundation
Benton Foundation
Ben and Jerry's Foundation
University of Maryland Foundation
Secure World Foundation
Circle Foundation
Oak Foundation
Ploughshares Fund
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Calvert Foundation
Stanley Foundation
United States Institute of Peace
It's so UnAmerican that it's even the French the spelling of Georje!
Oh look! Now we've also got proof that the Oak Foundation provided funding twice!
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No way should they be required to maintain 1:1 subscription/bandwidth
Of course not. Most customers are offline most of the time. It is easy to use statistics and records of actual usage to determine what your actual subscription-to-bandwidth ratio is. It is perfectly legitimate to not-buy what you know that you won't need. It is reasonable not-to-buy what you know you won't need 99% of the time. We may even say that it's reasonable not-to-buy what you know you won't need 90% of the time. One may even argue it's reasonable to deliberately target a lower percentage of anticipated needs, if one makes the argument of deliberately under provisioning for anticipated needs for cost-benefit reasons.
They are prepared.
No they're not. They knew or should have known what their normal anticipated bandwidth needs would be. For twelve hours out of the day they were under provisioned, and for simplicity lets guess it as 50% of the anticipated usage. But note that from the viewpoint of customer-hours of usage, about 75% of all customer usage was during those under provisioned hours. About 75% of actual customer usage was subject to under provisioning.
It is difficult to credibly imagine that Comcast management could be so incompetent and ignorant of their own business to be unaware that they were grossly under provisioning their actual routine bandwith usage. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, but there does come a point where the ignorance/stupidity does become an unlikely or inadequate explanation.
I am just pushing back on all the monopoly/conspiracy/neutrality nutjobs and their ridiculous "theories". If you don't want their service, don't pay for it.
Greed is hardly ridiculous, nor does it require any sort of conspiracy.
For a significant percentage of the population, there is a de facto monopoly for broadband service. This is particularly true for Comcast customers. And where there isn't a de facto monopoly, millions more people face a duopoly.
And it's not like there is any market freedom here. In almost every instance broadband providers are in fact a government imposed monopoly/duopoly or a government supported monopoly/duopoly. Cable networks are almost entirely built using public land and public facilities, often with public subsidies and legislatively established monopolies on service areas and access rights.
I often agree with not wanting the government to get involved in things, but that ship left the building long ago. When it comes to something like Net Neutrality, the government has the right and obligation to place public interest conditions upon the usage of public land and resources. When the government legislates monopoly access rights then it is incumbent upon the government to regulate it's own establishment and grant of those monopoly rights in the public interest.
To turn around you "If you don't want their service, don't pay for it", if some company doesn't like Net Neutrality then don't build your networks based on privileged access to public property, don't build it using public funds, and don't engage in legislatively established regional monopolies.
But as far as the current issue of bandwidth provisioning, I see two issues. *If* the article is right about Comcast's purpose for under provisioning (which I admit I have insufficient information on), then that raises issues of monopoly law. Comcast has a de facto monopoly in many regions, and it is illegal to abuse a monopoly in certain ways. In my opinion the issue is vastly multiplied when the government is involved in establishing or enforcing that monopoly over regions. But even setting aside their uncertain intent, setting aside any monopoly issue, I see an FTC issue in their under provisioning. False or deceptive advertising is illegal. There is nothing new or unusual about that. The primary advertising characteristic of internet access is speed. When they advertise speed they should have to advertise the
If you're even considering the possibility of getting pregnant when your boss rides your ass, You're Doing It Wrong.
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Arguing with an athiest about God's existence is like a 16th century man arguing with a man blind from birth about the existence of color.
No. Your example is a perfect illustration of power of reason, as well as rational objective reality. Assuming rational blind people and rational color-seeing people, they can and would very quickly come to agreement on the objective truth. To illustrate a simple example, the blind people could agree on some objects such as squares of paper or pingpong balls that are identical, identical except that some people assert they see different colors in them. The blind people can secretly number the objects and log what colors they supposedly are. They could then present them to the color-people one at a time in random order asking what color they are. If colors exist then the color-seeing people will name the correct color with essentially 100% accuracy. Even more significantly different color-seeing people will independently report the same colors for objects with essentially 100% accuracy, given reasonable allowances for color-synonyms and shades and some overlap for adjacent colors, factors which can be reliably confirmed with appropriate tests.
As the House quote goes "Rational arguments don’t usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be religious people."
Absense of proof is not proof of absense.
Ghosts goblins and gods.
Zeus exists because there is an absence of evidence he doesn't exist? You consider that rational?
Actually in most cases absence of evidence IS INDEED powerful evidence of absence. For example if I open my mailbox and look inside and have an absence of seeing mail, that is for all practical purposes absolute proof that I don't have any mail in my mailbox. If one preforms a thorough search for evidence that should exist for a certain think, and that evidence is absent, then that is indeed powerful evidence of absence.
Almost all definitions of "God" do indeed entail some objective evidence that should exist, and when a proper search for that evidence is undertaken and that evidence is found to be absent, that is indeed evidence of absence of that God. For example according to many people prayer is supposed to actually work, at least sometimes. All searches and all tests show that prayer has zero effect. For example praying for the health and recovery of heart patients has zero effect on their outcome. To the extent anyone defines God as sometimes answering prayers, this is indeed evidence of absence. And to the extent there could be a God-who-doesn't-answer-prayers it still establishes prayer as pointless.
I mentioned that most definitions of God do entail some objective testable evidence that should exist. In order to escape the absence of evidence = evidence of absence issue you are forced to define God into a very small very cramped very ineffectual box. If you define God as inherently lacking any existence that he ever existed at all, define God as inherently lacking any evidence of ever doing anything at all, you are defining God into meaninglessness. You are defining a God who makes no difference. You are defining a God who in effect does not exist.
In your other post you mention credible religious experiences. I do not dispute the existence of anyone's religious experiences. I have experienced a number of very unusual things myself, none of which had any basis in external reality. People experience all sorts of unusual things for all sorts of perfectly ordinary non-supernatural reasons. However you said credible religious experiences, which are rather lacking. Just look back to your example about color and blind men. It perfectly illustrates how credible experiences are objectively confirmable experiences. By claiming "credible experiences" that fail all objective confirmation you are in fact basing your argument on NON-credible experiences. We know that the brain, the mind, can have strange and vivid subjective experiences for countless perfectly ordinary reasons. For rational people that's no problem because they generally have no problem distinguishing internal abnormal subjective experiences from external objective confirmable reality.
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Laughing out loud would be the best part of visiting the place.
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The phrase "separation of Church and State" does not exist in the Constitution.
Neither does the word "gun". That argument is obviously silly.
The constitution does say "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", which in not nearly as catchy and clear to modern ears as "separation of Church and State". In order to effectively protect the freedom of religion the phrase "Congress shall make no law" must incorporate administrative orders and all other acts and powers of government. "respecting" is a broadly encompassing anything-relating-to. "establishment of" doesn't mean buildings, it means putting-into-place. "religion" doesn't just mean Christianity/Islam/Judaism or other entire religion, it means part of religion and anything of a religious nature. It means we have a guaranteed right of religious freedom. It is a right that protects us from ANY form of government meddling in our private religious lives and religious beliefs. The one and only way to protect our freedom of religion is separation of church and state.
Thomas Jefferson to the Baptist Association of Danbury
Yes, that's where the phrase came from Jefferson is often quoted because he had quite a knack for boiling rich ideas down into short clear very quotable phrases. However you are wrong to imply that is where the idea came from. Jefferson was hardly alone among the founders in discussing the concept. Other founders discussed it, and they made it perfectly clear that they did not mean any sort of silly "one way wall".
If there is one founding farther we should be looking to to understand the constitution and the Bill of Rights, to help us understand exactly what the words are supposed to mean, that person is without a doubt James Madison. Madison is widely acknowledged as Father of the Constitution. He was the primary author who WRITING the Bill of Rights. One would kinda expect he's know what it was supposed to mean. Well, lets take a look at what Madison wrote:
"total separation of the church from the state" (1819 letter to Robert Walsh)
"perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters" (1822 letter to Edward Livingston),
"line of separation between the rights of religion and the civil authority... entire abstinence of the government" (1832 letter Rev. Jasper Adams Spring)
"practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States" (1811 letter to Baptist Churches)
"Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history." (Detached Memoranda circa 1817)
"The settled opinion here is, that religion is essentially distinct from civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both" (Letter to Edward Everett, Montpellier, March 18, 1823).
Madison's words may not be as catchy as Jefferson's phrase "separation of Church and State", however Madison repeatedly wrote of "total" or "perfect" separation in various forms. The Detached Memoranda quote could not POSSIBLY by more clear that the separation between Religion & Govt was strongly guarded by the Constitution, and making absolutely explicit that there was no "one way wall" as it also guarded against the "danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies".
Wannabe theocrats are blatantly re-writing history when they deny the meaning of the First Amendment. They simply don't like the fact that it denies them the ability to hijack governmental force and powers as a weapon to violate other people's Constitutional Right of Freedom of Religion.
Government now oppresses religion freely.
The only "oppression" is that officials and employees of the government are forbidden from abusing their governmental powers and authority for religious p
According to the article this does not appears to be a "tax break".
It appears that the government will be collecting taxes "tax paid by visitors on admission tickets, food, gift sales and lodging costs" and handing that money over to the developers. This religious theme park might legitimately be able to benefit from the generic theme park law, but I do think it needs close scrutiny. This comes disturbingly close to the government funding promotion of particular religious beliefs. The fact that this "theme park" primarily intends to promote fraudulent garbage under the label "science" is grossly abhorrent, although unfortunately that likely has no relevance to whether they can legitimately collect this tax money.
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The Big Bang does not violate nor "suspend" thermodynamics.
Are you one of those fundies who thinks they can label science as religion any time science conflicts with your particular religious beliefs? Just because something conflicts with a particular religious belief does not make the thing itself into religion. When science says the moon is made out of rock that science does not become "religion" just because some person's religion says the moon is made out of green cheese.
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The result was a "mess" because the vacuum evaporation process served to concentrate the random impurities within the gold sample.
If you look at the article you'll see a few examples of the random junk found in the remaining reside. Based on mass spectroscopy just a few of the contaminants were identified as 133Cs128Te, 197Au64Zn, 209Bi52Cr, 238U23Na, and 138Th(14N2)1H. That's merely the stuff in mess that was close to the target mass.
I'm not an expert on mass spectroscopy, but I do have a pretty good understand of how they work. It precisely weighs components of your sample. Each isotope of each element has a precise known weight, and a molecule will be a sum of the weights of the atoms within it. If you have a strong signal (multiple detections) you can pretty much ignore rare isotopes and easily get a yes/no answer whether a low (but non-singular) quantity of some specific element or molecule exists in your sample. Based on the graph image he appears to be operating at a level of singular atom/molecule detection. He appears to have detected a single molecule of each of the contaminants listed above, along with a single detection that he claims represents a single atom of this super heavy element. Dealing with a singular detection is much more troublesome. You have to rule out EVERY possible combination of elements and isotopes that could sum to that weight in a molecular unit, plus the slim chance that some stray event triggered a random-value false detection.
If we ignore isotopes for a moment, there are 92 normal natural elements. There are 92*92=8,462 possible weights for a 2 atom combination. There are 92*92*92=778,688 possible weights for a 2 atom combination. There are 71,639,296 possible weights for a 3 atom combination. Note that one of his detections - 138Th(14N2)1H - was attributed as a 4 atom combination. There are 6,590,815,232 possible weights for a 4 atom combination. The possible weight-sums explode geometrically if you consider a 5 atom combination, and it explodes geometrically when you factoring in the weights of different isotopes of the various elements.
It seems to be a statistical certainty that there exists some combination of atoms that would have added up to this particular weight, a group of atoms that would mimic the detection of a single super heavy atom.
Assuming that his paper backs up his report with good scientific methods then this probably warrants further independent investigation. However at this point I'd say there is a very low chance that this claim will pan out. It is almost certain that what he detected was actually a multi-atom cluster of random contaminants that just happened to match the expected weight of a super heavy atom.
There are certain super-heavy elements that we have good reason to suspect may exist - the theorized island of stability. However this claimed element lies well outside that island of stability. For example even numbers are generally more stable because particles can pair up in a more stable quantum mechanical way. This is supposedly element 111 - it has an odd number of protons. It is expected to be generally less stable than element 110 or 112. The claimed mass also has an unusually low number of neutrons. Neutrons act as sort of a glue helping to bind the protons together. For this reason as well this atom is not expected to be a stable element. The chances of this paper being a valid result are wildly remote.
Papers appearing on Arxiv are really cool for giving us a peek into scientific research as it's happening, but it also means we're getting a peek into lots of weak or flawed results. We're looking at papers before they have been critically examined by the scientific peer review process. Arxiv papers must be cautiously taken as "interesting maybes" at best, and much be taken with a very skeptical eye when the results are anything other than mere experimental confirmation of things that scientists already expected to be true.
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I have a trademark on "Brain" for usages in "Governmental services, namely, registering trademarks".
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Intel engineers reported obtaining a 12% speed up for Windows running on this CPU, but testing had to be halted when one of the programs crashed and several employees received a near fatal overdose of blue.
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They need more funding to protect you from the 1337nuclear e-Communist iCybersovietmatrixunion.
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"A poodle and a great dane are physically incapable of mating."
You're wrong.
Obviously I was implying small breed when I said poodle. Toy breed poodles are 6 inches tall and Great danes about 3 foot at the shoulder. Pardon my humorous tone, but I can't imagine what you had in mind. Were you picturing the male poodles flying through the air and head-first entering the female danes? Or were you picturing the male dane bellyflopping into the female poodle and stuffing 6 inches of equipment into a 6 inch body?
"If we simply killed off all other breeds dogs, poodles and great danes would instantly qualify as separate species"
Wrong. They'd still both be the same species.
What do you think the definition of species is?
As far as I'm aware the scientific basis of "species" is when there is some genetic basic inhibiting gene flow (interbreeding) between two populations. When the cannot or *do not* interbreed. One population having a (genetically based) spring breeding season and another population having a fall breeding season is enough to do it.
The point is that once genetic intermingling stops their genetics can only diverge. All adaption and genetic drift within either population can only serve to move it further away from the common origin and further away from the other population. Over times the differences must increase. Eventually the genetic differences get so big that even artificial insemination cannot produce viable offspring.
Do you consider lions and tigers to be two species or one?
When captively cross breed lions and tigers can produce offspring. They are called ligers or tigons based upon the gender roles of the lion and tiger. Those offspring are *almost* always infertile because lion and tiger genetics have developed differently over the last 25 million years, and those differences have led to genetic incompatibilities. However in very rare cases a liger or tigon is born with a very lucky set of still-compatible genes, it is fertile and can breed with lions and/or tigers.
You tell me, are lions and tigers two species because they are almost completely incompatible genes, or do you think they are one species because there have been rare cases of successful offspring?
And what about horses and donkeys? Do you define them as two species or as one? They are genetically incompatible, they can produce offspring but only sterile mules. There are no recorded cases of a fertile mule. Do you say they are one species because they can produce mules, ignoring the fact that genetic incompatibilities render all offspring sterile? Or do you define them as two species, but then re-write them as one species if some day we do see a fertile mule?
Science has no problem with this because science says there's no magic line. Everything happens smoothly through shades of gray. There's no magic line when a wolf "turns into" a dog, and there is no "magic line" when one species becomes two. There is simply the fact that they become increasingly incompatible over time. The scientific dividing line is when actual practical genetic mixing drops or negligible levels and the populations inherently become increasingly different over time. Infertile mules and almost-always-infertile ligers and tigons fit perfectly in that understanding.
Second, if it changes enough so that it's no longer in the same species, then it's no longer a Great Dane. That makes absolutely zero sense.
Is a great dane still a wolf? No.
Did a wolf change into a great dane? No.
Wolves had puppies, and children are always slightly different from the parent. You have two lines of puppies from the same parent, and generation after generation down two separate family lines. We started with two almost identical puppies from the same mother, and 15,000 years later the differences down those two lines added up. At some point we decided we want to call one modern puppy "wolf", and we decided to name the other modern puppy "great dane". Just 15,000 ye
That's amazing! I've got the same password on my luggage!
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