It is an unfortunate man who counts another as an enemy--the more you hate 'em, the more you risk becoming like 'em.
Referring to scientific facts in terms of 'faith' and 'belief' is rather an unfortunate choice of terminology. There's no need to believe in facts. There's no need to 'have faith' in random mutations--you can prove to yourself that such things happen, and thus have no need for 'faith'.
Yes, yes, I do get the joke--but I'd like to note that said argument is an offshoot of a misstatement of evolution as being "purely the result of random chance" and that any sort of 'direction' must necessarily be divinely inspired, rather than being a thermodynamic inevitability.
This says nothing about the way in which a trait arise--merely that the selection process that determines which traits are likely to be passed on is not random.
Also, there's no reason to have faith in this. Leave faith to the religious folks--these are facts, which are true whether or not you 'believe' them.
Is it 'deterministic' or 'random' that a positively charged object is attracted to a negatively charged object, or is it merely a consequence of the way things are?
Hopefully this will be an effective means of shutting up the old saw of "there's no way that 'simple random chance' could produce the creatures of today from the creatures of yesterday!" and all that other nonsense.
O'course, it'll probably be misquoted endlessly by the 'intelligent design' folks, given that--at least superficially--it could be seen to "endorse" the concept of a directed design, rather than being an inevitable consequence of the process.
However, isn't MS removing support for that? Seems to me that I'd rather use a "child's toy" for the next 30 years rather than an unsupported bit of nonsense that'll be replaced ten or fifteen times by then.
It's my understanding that walmart habitually insists on lower prices from its suppliers than they provide to others--inducing a corresponding reduction in quality of the product at times, e.g. using plastic rather than metal gears in power tools and the like. I'd not be surprised if HP cut corners for the 'Walmart edition' of its computers.
That "made specially for walmart" logo on the box is more a warning than an endorsement in my mind.
That's really the only way it could be useful at all; as a method of detection, there's no real way that one could find anything useful with that sort of shotgun approach at all.
But if the government really wants your hide, then they'll have it whether they have any real evidence or not--witness Cardinal Richelieu's words: "Give me four lines written by the most innocent of men, and in them I will find something to hang him." That was just as true then as now.
Which is only a scratch on the surface of the amount of data that is generated and transmitted daily. Above and beyond the web pages searched and indexed, there's the vast morass of Usenet, Email, P2P and other media traffic, and the various and sundry other things that are on protocols other than http.
Other respondents have pointed out the arms race between spam and spam filtering; I had that in mind when I made my response. In essence, as a detection tool, this is going to be more or less useless, outside of the occasional one in a million lucky strike; really, the only way to use it would be to go mining it once you've already detected something nefarious and you want a more solid case--something that could easily be handled by a warrant and seizure of the suspect's computing assets.
If they're really trying to tap all that nonsense, it'll end up being a bit of a pain trying to pull the noise out of the signal at that point. It'd be relatively trivial to generate vast quantities of legit-looking noise to hide a small covert signal--and while data analysis algorithms and computer speeds have been steadily increasing, it's a bit of an arms race to keep up with the regular legitimate traffic, much less any obfuscation attempts.
In the end, it's probably a lot more trouble than it's worth to go about things this way, rather than doing the 'traditional' sort of real-life investigation leading to a warrant &c.
What are these 'ethics' you speak of, and are they legally enforcable?
All facetiousness aside, the investors -can- sue the board of directors etc. for malfeasance if M$ does not take every effort to make the maximum possible profit--so that's not really so much 'ethics' as 'staying on the investors' good side'
The probe isn't meant to be an analysis of ethics--because, yes, frankly, M$ has all the ethics of a kitten-and-puppy sausage maker. It's meant to figure out if they can bring a case against 'em for contravening the anti-monopoly laws; the only ethics involved are those which the legislators considered when passing the anti-monopoly laws in the first place.
Really, the only corporations that are bound by ethical practices are those of whose members are part of some body that concerns itself with ethics--e.g. lawyers, doctors, and the like.
Microsoft has a bit of a juggling act to do. On one hand, they're bound to make the maximum possible profit for their investors as a corporation. On the other side, they have to do so in a way that keeps various governments off their backs, and keeps from being -overtly- anti-competitive--because, let's face it, the maximum possible profit will be made by M$ being a monopoly.
I do rather wish, though, that it was the QC department rather than the legal department that got all the funding for these ventures; the strategy of 'sue everyone and who cares about the product' didn't seem to work too well for SCO, and with the rather notable--especially in Europe--rejection of Vista, M$ would do well to take note of the problems with their product. Legal muscle and dominance of the marketplace will take you far, but such things are no excuse for honest innovation (or, if you can't do it honestly, buying it or stealing it from someone else--anyone heard of any actual production plans for those nifty tabletop computers from a few months back yet?)
That'd be a big heatsink indeed if you need to open the door to get to it...is it just in the next room, or are you keeping it outside the building altogether?
And besides, they can arrest you for 'public drunkenness' if you're walking. Cabs are bloody expensive, but that would be an option--but really, it's just too much inconvenience. I'll just stay home and enjoy my whiskey in peace.
What's the point anymore? What with insane DUI penalties and rabid 'enforcement' bordering on entrapment, not to mention the publicity campaigns (posters all over town here saying, in big letters, "TWO DRINKS could MAKE YOU A FELON"), I've no desire to go to a bar. If I want to drink, I'll buy my liquor at a grocery store with a couple of $20s from my weekly 'petty cash' and I'll invite a couple friends over, or just drink alone. Sure, there's no playing pool or being hit on by drunk chicks, but there's also no loud, smelly football players drinking piss beer--that, and the prices are a lot better when I mix my own drinks.
First thing I thought of, what with that article about $1/watt solar cells from a week or so back.
CPU/GPU wouldn't be that great a source, I shouldn't think; best you could hope for is a slight offset of the power consumed. However, if they have a decent R-value, layer 'em in the attic under the insulation, and use the house heat--that might be workable.
I like the idea of a sealed unit without any moving (mechanical, anyway; I'm fairly sure the hydrogen gas moves about inside) parts powered by heat, but I'll be waiting until I see a working unit before I'd consider investing or whatnot.
2nd Thermodynamics seems to be something that'd need to be carefully considered, as this almost seems like a corollary of the Steorn business from a few months back.
Got it in one. My first idea was 'air' but then I remembered that there was already precedent for a water-based economy with which many/.ers would be familiar.
I must disagree. There are any number of ways in which a 'gold-based' currency could be rendered completely valueless, not the least of which (but the one that would make the best movie, in my opinion) would be the forcible removal of said gold from whatever repository it was being held in. In addition, the currency will be a fiat currency de facto in that it will be the world of the government in question (or organization, if it is a non-governmentally issued currency) that:
A) There is enough gold to 'cover' it (because really, how can you be -sure- that there's really a dollar's worth of gold in there?) and
B) Said currency or gold will be accepted as a valid form of payment by anyone within the country. Fiat currencies are at least honest about this: there are various laws on the books that state that the currency is to be considered valid payment for debt. Legally, in the US, I must accept a dollar as valid payment; I need not accept any amount of gold as payment, as there is no legal requirement that I do so--I might choose to deal only in platinum, or iridium, or some schist or other.
The word you want is 'currencies'--and aluminum is just as shiny. 'matter of fact, at one point, aluminum (or 'aluminium' for our foreign friends) was worth -more- than gold.
In the end, currency is only worth what people agree it is worth. It bears repeating: Currency is only worth as much as someone else will give you for it. It's a symbol--it's like a variable, as it were.
I find gold to be more or less worthless in my life, save only as a plating agent for electrical contacts. I don't see any reason why a currency should be based on something that's pretty much useless outside the electronics and jewelery industries. If you want to base a currency on something intrinsically valuable to a large number of people, how about, say, fresh water? Sure, it's not worth that much, but if you don't have it you'll certainly notice it.
Do not mistake the symbol for the thing. Currency of any sort--even gold--is only a symbol for a certain amount of a product or service that you can trade it for with someone else.
Slashdot Mirror
The expression "I wish I was a fly on the wall when $EVENT happened" is soon to become reality...
It is an unfortunate man who counts another as an enemy--the more you hate 'em, the more you risk becoming like 'em.
Referring to scientific facts in terms of 'faith' and 'belief' is rather an unfortunate choice of terminology. There's no need to believe in facts. There's no need to 'have faith' in random mutations--you can prove to yourself that such things happen, and thus have no need for 'faith'.
Yes, yes, I do get the joke--but I'd like to note that said argument is an offshoot of a misstatement of evolution as being "purely the result of random chance" and that any sort of 'direction' must necessarily be divinely inspired, rather than being a thermodynamic inevitability.
This says nothing about the way in which a trait arise--merely that the selection process that determines which traits are likely to be passed on is not random.
Also, there's no reason to have faith in this. Leave faith to the religious folks--these are facts, which are true whether or not you 'believe' them.
To be fair, they are related, and most laymen can't really tell the difference, given the extremely sad state of science reporting and whatnot.
Is it 'deterministic' or 'random' that a positively charged object is attracted to a negatively charged object, or is it merely a consequence of the way things are?
Hopefully this will be an effective means of shutting up the old saw of "there's no way that 'simple random chance' could produce the creatures of today from the creatures of yesterday!" and all that other nonsense.
O'course, it'll probably be misquoted endlessly by the 'intelligent design' folks, given that--at least superficially--it could be seen to "endorse" the concept of a directed design, rather than being an inevitable consequence of the process.
Must be. Dang thing never works properly on Tuesdays.
However, isn't MS removing support for that? Seems to me that I'd rather use a "child's toy" for the next 30 years rather than an unsupported bit of nonsense that'll be replaced ten or fifteen times by then.
It's my understanding that walmart habitually insists on lower prices from its suppliers than they provide to others--inducing a corresponding reduction in quality of the product at times, e.g. using plastic rather than metal gears in power tools and the like. I'd not be surprised if HP cut corners for the 'Walmart edition' of its computers.
That "made specially for walmart" logo on the box is more a warning than an endorsement in my mind.
That's really the only way it could be useful at all; as a method of detection, there's no real way that one could find anything useful with that sort of shotgun approach at all.
But if the government really wants your hide, then they'll have it whether they have any real evidence or not--witness Cardinal Richelieu's words: "Give me four lines written by the most innocent of men, and in them I will find something to hang him." That was just as true then as now.
Which is only a scratch on the surface of the amount of data that is generated and transmitted daily. Above and beyond the web pages searched and indexed, there's the vast morass of Usenet, Email, P2P and other media traffic, and the various and sundry other things that are on protocols other than http.
Other respondents have pointed out the arms race between spam and spam filtering; I had that in mind when I made my response. In essence, as a detection tool, this is going to be more or less useless, outside of the occasional one in a million lucky strike; really, the only way to use it would be to go mining it once you've already detected something nefarious and you want a more solid case--something that could easily be handled by a warrant and seizure of the suspect's computing assets.
If they're really trying to tap all that nonsense, it'll end up being a bit of a pain trying to pull the noise out of the signal at that point. It'd be relatively trivial to generate vast quantities of legit-looking noise to hide a small covert signal--and while data analysis algorithms and computer speeds have been steadily increasing, it's a bit of an arms race to keep up with the regular legitimate traffic, much less any obfuscation attempts.
In the end, it's probably a lot more trouble than it's worth to go about things this way, rather than doing the 'traditional' sort of real-life investigation leading to a warrant &c.
What are these 'ethics' you speak of, and are they legally enforcable?
All facetiousness aside, the investors -can- sue the board of directors etc. for malfeasance if M$ does not take every effort to make the maximum possible profit--so that's not really so much 'ethics' as 'staying on the investors' good side'
The probe isn't meant to be an analysis of ethics--because, yes, frankly, M$ has all the ethics of a kitten-and-puppy sausage maker. It's meant to figure out if they can bring a case against 'em for contravening the anti-monopoly laws; the only ethics involved are those which the legislators considered when passing the anti-monopoly laws in the first place.
Really, the only corporations that are bound by ethical practices are those of whose members are part of some body that concerns itself with ethics--e.g. lawyers, doctors, and the like.
Microsoft has a bit of a juggling act to do. On one hand, they're bound to make the maximum possible profit for their investors as a corporation. On the other side, they have to do so in a way that keeps various governments off their backs, and keeps from being -overtly- anti-competitive--because, let's face it, the maximum possible profit will be made by M$ being a monopoly.
I do rather wish, though, that it was the QC department rather than the legal department that got all the funding for these ventures; the strategy of 'sue everyone and who cares about the product' didn't seem to work too well for SCO, and with the rather notable--especially in Europe--rejection of Vista, M$ would do well to take note of the problems with their product. Legal muscle and dominance of the marketplace will take you far, but such things are no excuse for honest innovation (or, if you can't do it honestly, buying it or stealing it from someone else--anyone heard of any actual production plans for those nifty tabletop computers from a few months back yet?)
That'd be a big heatsink indeed if you need to open the door to get to it...is it just in the next room, or are you keeping it outside the building altogether?
It looks like he's got good karma, so snag the account now and ebay it in a few years. Should be worth a few bucks. ;-p
What public transport?
And besides, they can arrest you for 'public drunkenness' if you're walking. Cabs are bloody expensive, but that would be an option--but really, it's just too much inconvenience. I'll just stay home and enjoy my whiskey in peace.
What's the point anymore? What with insane DUI penalties and rabid 'enforcement' bordering on entrapment, not to mention the publicity campaigns (posters all over town here saying, in big letters, "TWO DRINKS could MAKE YOU A FELON"), I've no desire to go to a bar. If I want to drink, I'll buy my liquor at a grocery store with a couple of $20s from my weekly 'petty cash' and I'll invite a couple friends over, or just drink alone. Sure, there's no playing pool or being hit on by drunk chicks, but there's also no loud, smelly football players drinking piss beer--that, and the prices are a lot better when I mix my own drinks.
Yes, but what's your /. password?
First thing I thought of, what with that article about $1/watt solar cells from a week or so back. CPU/GPU wouldn't be that great a source, I shouldn't think; best you could hope for is a slight offset of the power consumed. However, if they have a decent R-value, layer 'em in the attic under the insulation, and use the house heat--that might be workable.
I like the idea of a sealed unit without any moving (mechanical, anyway; I'm fairly sure the hydrogen gas moves about inside) parts powered by heat, but I'll be waiting until I see a working unit before I'd consider investing or whatnot. 2nd Thermodynamics seems to be something that'd need to be carefully considered, as this almost seems like a corollary of the Steorn business from a few months back.
Got it in one. My first idea was 'air' but then I remembered that there was already precedent for a water-based economy with which many /.ers would be familiar.
I must disagree. There are any number of ways in which a 'gold-based' currency could be rendered completely valueless, not the least of which (but the one that would make the best movie, in my opinion) would be the forcible removal of said gold from whatever repository it was being held in. In addition, the currency will be a fiat currency de facto in that it will be the world of the government in question (or organization, if it is a non-governmentally issued currency) that:
A) There is enough gold to 'cover' it (because really, how can you be -sure- that there's really a dollar's worth of gold in there?) and
B) Said currency or gold will be accepted as a valid form of payment by anyone within the country. Fiat currencies are at least honest about this: there are various laws on the books that state that the currency is to be considered valid payment for debt. Legally, in the US, I must accept a dollar as valid payment; I need not accept any amount of gold as payment, as there is no legal requirement that I do so--I might choose to deal only in platinum, or iridium, or some schist or other.
The word you want is 'currencies'--and aluminum is just as shiny. 'matter of fact, at one point, aluminum (or 'aluminium' for our foreign friends) was worth -more- than gold.
In the end, currency is only worth what people agree it is worth. It bears repeating: Currency is only worth as much as someone else will give you for it. It's a symbol--it's like a variable, as it were.
I find gold to be more or less worthless in my life, save only as a plating agent for electrical contacts. I don't see any reason why a currency should be based on something that's pretty much useless outside the electronics and jewelery industries. If you want to base a currency on something intrinsically valuable to a large number of people, how about, say, fresh water? Sure, it's not worth that much, but if you don't have it you'll certainly notice it.
Do not mistake the symbol for the thing. Currency of any sort--even gold--is only a symbol for a certain amount of a product or service that you can trade it for with someone else.