These are points where the gravitational pull of two bodies, such as the Earth and the Moon, cancel each other out, providing a stable location to position spacecraft.
I am very surprised The New Scientist makes such a mistake. These points are stable mainly because of rotation. In a nonrotating system, there is only one equilibrium point, and that is unstable.
Actually I don't think GPL is a good choice for releasing software in scientific community, but I will admit there isn't a much better choice. I wish there was a way to add to GPL something like "if you make improvements to this software and publish the results of those, you must also publish the improved version of the software'. However once you use a GPL software, eg. GSL, you cannot add such a term.
It should be noted though in scientific community a license is not really necessary, asking politely is more than enough in almost all cases.
I think what is meant is, if the number of pieces is finite then finding a configuration for putting them without gaps is not polinomial in number of pieces.
himm... there is something I can't understand here. a contract is void by default if it violates a law, so doesn't this invalidate the appropiate part of the EULA, if the purchaser makes it clear that the software will be used in an environment where privacy is mandated by the law?
i wonder if some sort of equal oppurtunity law would mandate microsoft to provide the software and updates with a licence and a method suitable for banks, hospitals etc.
It is not a book you can read but a very good reference to look up formulae etc.
For physical insight, the standard reference would be "Feynman lectures on physics". You cannot beat that. For fun stuff "Mr. Tompkins in paperback", try to find the original edition though. It won't make you think tigers are worthless, don't worry.
I think you are missing the point. This is more of a theoretical argument than a real threat. I am pretty sure none of the compilers I had used had this kind of bug. It is a very clever and sophisticated attack. And of course, it is hard to implement. The very interesting conclusion is, opensourcing cannot help this kind of attack. This attack moves the broken link in security chain out of the source.
It is not impossible though. Realize that if you are actually planning to attack someone by this method you must be a trusted party by your victim-to-be. You must be the party that provides the compiler, so you probably also have the manpower to implement this.
Your suggestion of discovering this during a patch can be bypassed very simply by putting the trojan code into initialization or cleanup part of the code which nobody would dare to change because it would break compatibilities.Also probably we are talking about a well established compiler that comes as the standard compiler with the OS itself. Those compilers have huge areas which are (believed to be) bug-free so will typically never be patched.
This kind of attack can be prevented though, by monitoring. "Secrets and Lies" by Bruce Schneier deals with this issue. If you cannot stop someone at the gates, you can always catch them inside:-)
Re:A primer on Casimir Effect
on
The Casimir Effect
·
· Score: 2, Informative
One small correction: photons do form virtual electron positron pairs. They are not observable but when you need to calculate the effects of a photon you need to take this into account. Lookup any QED book for "photon propogator" and fermion loop corrections. Its effect does depend on the energy of the photon, but it's always there.
I'm afraid it might be a little late for this comment, or someone might have said something along these lines already, but here it goes:
Wouldn't you buy a book easier if you knew it would also be easier to sell it, in case you do not want to keep it? So, wouldn't making reselling easier would also have a positive effect on book sales. Maybe, this sounds farfetched, but imagine you want to buy a book which is somewhat expensive. You check your library and see a couple of books you might live without, you sell them and get the book you want. I wouldn't sell my books for dining outside, but I would feel OK if I am selling them to buy new books.
The online reference manual for glib is definetely a good resource. However, I would appreciate a comparison with traditional libc, especially one based on real life experience. Also, as many people pointed out, I would like to hold the book, take it to bed, and pencil notes on the margin.
Here's a suggestion: if you don't like the system and don't feel like changing the system, take your bombs and move to Columbia or the middle east.
Neither Columbia nor middle east nor any other country or any other region in the world is the trash-dump-yard of USA or any other country.
Nobody and I mean nobody likes to have a bomber as their neighbour or friend or enemy. The rich nations in the world are directly responsible for what's happening in the underdeveloped poor nations. You cannot ignore this and you most certainly should not treat the people of those nations as if they are responsible for their poverty and uneducatedness.
I think seperating the world as the good guys (who usually happen to be ``developed'' ones) and bad guys will solve nothing. If you want globalism, embrace the other nations with the intent of making their lives better, then everyone's life will be better. If you approach other people as second degree, if you see them as resources to exploit, or some disturbances in your ideal life, those disturbances will never go away.
The definition of people should be Homo Sapiens.
I apologize since this is off-topic, but I did not open the door.
for one thing CPU is not the only part of hardware you buy. eg. if you are building a cluster, and need a certain computing power having a performance increase of 10% might be significant since it will save you 10% of nodes which might include a gigabit ethernet card or a myrinet card which cost ~$1500 (i am not sure about the price, but it is in the right ballpark). and, this is not counting all other things that go in a cluster node. that is why dual processors are not such a bad idea in clusters:)
Meanwhile, the second barrel of the Philips shotgun is CD burning. In a Reuters interview Gerry Wirtz, general manager of Philips' copyright office, said that the company would be building CD burners that can read and burn copy protected CDs. He argues that the protection system is not a protection system as such, but simply a mechanism for stopping the playback of music. This interesting claim allows him to contend that the protection systems are not covered by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and lays the ground for the mother of all sue-fests with the number of large and rich companies who are most certainly not going to agree with him.
I think this is awesome! Changing the definition rather than changing the law. Is this not similar to the idea in Asimov's "Foundation and Earth"? I think I am buying a Phillips product next time I buy CD player/driver/writer/whatever.
I think the number of DVD players has to be compared to number of windows XP installations. If windows XP offers playback capability of DVDs written in mediaplayer format, people will not need to buy new DVD players. It is an inconvenience, but if people are already using their PCs as home theatres, then not a big problem. Of course, I have no clue if decoding of the data on DVD can be made at software level; if not, I apologize for wasting your time...
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These are points where the gravitational pull of two bodies, such as the Earth and the Moon, cancel each other out, providing a stable location to position spacecraft.
I am very surprised The New Scientist makes such a mistake. These points are stable mainly because of rotation. In a nonrotating system, there is only one equilibrium point, and that is unstable.
It should be noted though in scientific community a license is not really necessary, asking politely is more than enough in almost all cases.
I think what is meant is, if the number of pieces is finite then finding a configuration for putting them without gaps is not polinomial in number of pieces.
himm... there is something I can't understand here. a contract is void by default if it violates a law, so doesn't this invalidate the appropiate part of the EULA, if the purchaser makes it clear that the software will be used in an environment where privacy is mandated by the law?
i wonder if some sort of equal oppurtunity law would mandate microsoft to provide the software and updates with a licence and a method suitable for banks, hospitals etc.
I hope this is not repeat:
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/
It is not a book you can read but a very good reference to look up formulae etc.
For physical insight, the standard reference would be "Feynman lectures on physics". You cannot beat that. For fun stuff "Mr. Tompkins in paperback", try to find the original edition though. It won't make you think tigers are worthless, don't worry.
I think you are missing the point. This is more of a theoretical argument than a real threat. I am pretty sure none of the compilers I had used had this kind of bug. It is a very clever and sophisticated attack. And of course, it is hard to implement. The very interesting conclusion is, opensourcing cannot help this kind of attack. This attack moves the broken link in security chain out of the source.
It is not impossible though. Realize that if you are actually planning to attack someone by this method you must be a trusted party by your victim-to-be. You must be the party that provides the compiler, so you probably also have the manpower to implement this.
Your suggestion of discovering this during a patch can be bypassed very simply by putting the trojan code into initialization or cleanup part of the code which nobody would dare to change because it would break compatibilities.Also probably we are talking about a well established compiler that comes as the standard compiler with the OS itself. Those compilers have huge areas which are (believed to be) bug-free so will typically never be patched.
This kind of attack can be prevented though, by monitoring. "Secrets and Lies" by Bruce Schneier deals with this issue. If you cannot stop someone at the gates, you can always catch them inside :-)
One small correction: photons do form virtual electron positron pairs. They are not observable but when you need to calculate the effects of a photon you need to take this into account. Lookup any QED book for "photon propogator" and fermion loop corrections. Its effect does depend on the energy of the photon, but it's always there.
If I can get a patent on spoofing files. Fighting fire with fire...
I think this should be modded down before rms sees the second answer and starts shouting "Linux is not OS it is only the kerneeeeel!!"
I'm afraid it might be a little late for this comment, or someone might have said something along these lines already, but here it goes:
Wouldn't you buy a book easier if you knew it would also be easier to sell it, in case you do not want to keep it? So, wouldn't making reselling easier would also have a positive effect on book sales. Maybe, this sounds farfetched, but imagine you want to buy a book which is somewhat expensive. You check your library and see a couple of books you might live without, you sell them and get the book you want. I wouldn't sell my books for dining outside, but I would feel OK if I am selling them to buy new books.
I agree but there is also Brooks' quote:
"plan to throw one away, you will anyhow."
this is of course a good example of making money with open source software. However, apache is distributed under their own license not GPL.
The online reference manual for glib is definetely a good resource. However, I would appreciate a comparison with traditional libc, especially one based on real life experience. Also, as many people pointed out, I would like to hold the book, take it to bed, and pencil notes on the margin.
Here's a suggestion: if you don't like the system and don't feel like changing the system, take your bombs and move to Columbia or the middle east.
Neither Columbia nor middle east nor any other country or any other region in the world is the trash-dump-yard of USA or any other country.
Nobody and I mean nobody likes to have a bomber as their neighbour or friend or enemy. The rich nations in the world are directly responsible for what's happening in the underdeveloped poor nations. You cannot ignore this and you most certainly should not treat the people of those nations as if they are responsible for their poverty and uneducatedness.
I think seperating the world as the good guys (who usually happen to be ``developed'' ones) and bad guys will solve nothing. If you want globalism, embrace the other nations with the intent of making their lives better, then everyone's life will be better. If you approach other people as second degree, if you see them as resources to exploit, or some disturbances in your ideal life, those disturbances will never go away.
The definition of people should be Homo Sapiens.
I apologize since this is off-topic, but I did not open the door.
for one thing CPU is not the only part of hardware you buy. eg. if you are building a cluster, and need a certain computing power having a performance increase of 10% might be significant since it will save you 10% of nodes which might include a gigabit ethernet card or a myrinet card which cost ~$1500 (i am not sure about the price, but it is in the right ballpark). and, this is not counting all other things that go in a cluster node. that is why dual processors are not such a bad idea in clusters :)
so, IMHO it is pretty relevant.
Meanwhile, the second barrel of the Philips shotgun is CD burning. In a Reuters interview Gerry Wirtz, general manager of Philips' copyright office, said that the company would be building CD burners that can read and burn copy protected CDs. He argues that the protection system is not a protection system as such, but simply a mechanism for stopping the playback of music. This interesting claim allows him to contend that the protection systems are not covered by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and lays the ground for the mother of all sue-fests with the number of large and rich companies who are most certainly not going to agree with him.
I think this is awesome! Changing the definition rather than changing the law. Is this not similar to the idea in Asimov's "Foundation and Earth"? I think I am buying a Phillips product next time I buy CD player/driver/writer/whatever.
Himm,
I think the number of DVD players has to be compared to number of windows XP installations. If windows XP offers playback capability of DVDs written in mediaplayer format, people will not need to buy new DVD players. It is an inconvenience, but if people are already using their PCs as home theatres, then not a big problem. Of course, I have no clue if decoding of the data on DVD can be made at software level; if not, I apologize for wasting your time...