I used to be in the US Marines and was trained as a Designated Marksman, which is an urban sniper, and worked with many of the Scout-Snipers which are the "classic" snipers.
My first comment is that a good sniper can hit someone at ~1500 meters with a.50 caliber rifle (A.K.A. Special Application Sniper Rifle (SASR)). This means 5 seconds until the sound is heard and means the sniper can get a decent head start running away, if they want, which they probably don't or they can just stand up, wave, and be happy they are outside the range of any weapon their target is carrying. This is assuming they don't fire from the crest of a hill and slowly back down off of it removing themselves from any danger of direct-fired weapons. Yes, indirect fire is still a problem, but it has always been a problem. If you know where the sniper is, you can always call for mortar or artillery fire. However, this is hardly cost effective, and even calling in a strike on their position does not guarantee a kill - especially if they choose their location wisely.
Second, snipers are some of the sneakiest people I have ever met. If you tell them there is a robot that will respond to the noise they make, they will just set up a booby trap a hundred meters away and have their spotter trigger it at the same time they shoot. (Snipers always work in teams.) There is no way the robot is going to hear a bullet fired when it is being over-loaded by the sound of 2 pounds of C4 being detonated. If the snipers find out that it can still hear them, they will daisy chain a couple of claymore mines together with some det cord just to make things more confusing.
Finally, on a sort-of-related-but-side note, I have seen bullets fly through the air and it is pretty cool. When standing behind a shooter, just focus on the air about half-way to their target. After a few shots, your eye will start focusing on the bullet.
First, I have always wondered how people are measuring what the human brain is capable of. It seems to me that the brain is an analog device, with each neuron cantaining a ridiculous number of chemicals that regulate its activity. In addition, there is a holistic method to how the neurons interact, meaning there is no simple way to measure the number of interconnects that a neuron has.
That said, how can it be compared to a deterministic, digital construct? I mean, if I have a simple radio, with an analog frequency shifter, how many frequencies can I listen on? It would be based on how fine an adjustment I could make to the dial. Chaos theory tells us that the little bit of difference at the least significant bits will eventually become significant. Also, since we have no real idea why people are "intelligent", how are we going to duplicate it in an A.I. or rate a computer against an unknown standard? I think it is far more likely we will come up with neural links first, but I doubt we will come up with that any time soon.
Another issue I have is with the "grey goo" scenario. First, if there are so many of these things, how do they not break when 50 more pile on top of them? Even if they don't break, how are they going to move to assemble another nanobot? Even if they could, how are they going to prevent tearing other nanobots apart for new parts? There doesn't seem to be a lot of space in a nanobot for memory or error checking. How about we stop the grey goo with some good old electric fields? Just enough to fry their small few molecules wide bodies. Maybe we could do the same with a magnetic field depending on their base materials.
With regards to nanobots being able to create anything we need, I feel that it is already possible. I call these little factories "cells" and have noticed they exist in many different places in nature already. What is the catch here? It takes a lot of time and energy to produce these conversions. This is why cows, which make milk, require food. So we will also need nanobots which create an energy source that can be utilized by these "cells". I call this energy source "sugar". While it is nice to think that we will be able to have anything we want, instantly, the amount of energy needed to convert the base products into what we want will be restrictive. The energy from the fermentation of grain inside a storage bin is enough to start a fire. (Note: A storage bin, not a brewer's vat.) How much energy would be required to create a beer in under 10 seconds?
Personally, I view the Singularity hype as just that - hype. I think there are going to be many amazing advances, but I think there are far too many areas where "Someone will come up with a solution for that pesky little problem." to be anywhere in the foreseeable future. Freeze me and wake me up in a few hundred years to see if we have reached the Singularity yet... if you can.
There is no way to prevent the rest of the world from deciding they don't like the US handling the Domain Servers and building/maintaining their own.
There is a rule of thumb that if you can't actually prevent someone from doing something they want to do, don't try - you'll only fail and lose your credibility. The only reason other countries haven't set up their own infrastructure is that it is easier to let the US do it. (Cheaper too but, to a developed country, a few million is nothing to their budget.) As soon as US control gets "annoying" to them, they will throw a few million at the problem and the US will cease being an annoyance. Then it will be the US who will have problems due to their previous big-headed postion.
Bring absolutely everything you think you might eat, drink, wear or use while you are down there. They will appreciate the help, especially the manual labor portion, but don't assume they can provide you what you need to keep going.
I would bring:
1 box of military MRE's (12 meals) per person.
2 cases of bottled water (48 bottles) per person.
If you have funding, there are some portable water purifiers like the one here.
Box of handi-wipes for helping to clean up at the end of the day.
Bottle of anti-bacterial handwash. Use before you eat.
A set of clean clothes you wear when you sleep.
Two sets of work clothes. One to dry while you wear the other ones. If you get dirty in 10 minutes, why do you need to start with clean clothes?
Plenty of gloves.
Solid footwear for working and sandals so you can air out your feet at the end of the day.
Foot powder.
As many socks as you can get your hands on.
Plenty of antiseptic for any blisters, cuts or scrapes.
Good first-aid kit
There are a thousand more things you can bring, but these should cover your own needs. (Assuming you are willing to rough it.)
The author of the article had one simple problem - he was too arrogant and got burned.
From high school he had awards and gold stars. Big deal! Consider how many high schools there are compared to the number of "SmartyPants Universities". If you are in the top 10% in your high school that MAY make you in the top 25% in SPU for all majors, not just engineering. If it is truly a nationally recognized SPU, then being in the top 10% is the minimum for getting in. Congratulations, you are in the top 100% of the freshman.
After arriving at SMU, instead of saying: "I'll take the basic courses so I have a good foundation and know what's going on.", he jumped into the genius course and complained that he didn't understand it. That isn't the engineering schools fault - it is his for not taking advice from counselors who couldn't possibly know more than him.
Boo hoo, I would be an engineer and might get laid off. Oh the horror of it! Guess what? Everyone can get laid off. Make a bad move at a brokerage house and you are gone. The bottom earner for the company? Gone. And no one at another high powered financial institution will hire you - you just made a career change. Do you think many people who go into finance think about running a small town bank? Probably not. (But I could be wrong.) But I know there are far more small banks, or small branch offices than there are huge corporate banks where you will handle millions of dollars a day.
So I think the problem with engineering education in this country isn't that the curriculum is bad, or the professors are particularily bad. I think it is with whining students who say it's "Too hard." and want to go to a major where they can BS their way through an assignment. It is hard to fake a Fourier transform, but not too hard to fake an understanding of a historical event, or at least enough to get an easy B.
For 2004, Intel had a net income of US$7.5 billion on revenue of US$34.2 billion.
Overall tax rate expected for 2005: 31%
(With 2004 earnings as a guide, taxes will be US$10.6 billion)
Their expected R&D budget for 2005 is: US$5.2 billion
Capital spending for 2005: US$4.9-5.3 billion
Overall, Intel pays 31% of their revenue in taxes. 30% in Capital spending and R&D, which leaves 39%, or US$13.4 billion, to pay salaries, benefits, cost of fabrication (not including the facility itself), cover the cost of their bad chips/wafers, and sending some cash to their stockholders.
Re:Botnets.
on
Brute Force
·
· Score: 3, Informative
You can relax. There isn't a serious danger.
Current standards such as 3-DES (triple-DES) and AES require a LOT more comuputing power than that to brute force.
The best known attack against 3-DES has a complexity of 2^113. Having 20,000 nodes is about 2^14 nodes. Heck, we'll assume 32,000 nodes. so 2^15. This still has a complexity of 2^98 for each machine to handle, or 2^42 more than DES. (2^43 if you consider the complementation property of DES which reduces the complexity of DES to 2^55.)
This means it woudl still be trillions of times longer than than it took to break DES, even if every machine could have performance equal to the custom DES cracker built. I don't know about you, but I don't have trillions of days to consider the problem.
AES is even tougher to crack than 3-DES, I'm not sure if there are any new attacks, but the key-space is 128, 196 or 256 bits. Even with the smallest key, 128 bits, this is thousands of times stronger than 3-DES. (2^128 vs. 2^113)
So relax, use the latest standards to encrypt your information, and for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, don't use a key that is a regular word! The way ciphers are broken today is by trying a variety of dictionary words or sentences as the key. Just like a password, make your keys random, or random in appearance.
You might also read the Dune series by Frank Herbert or, more specifically, the prequels starting with The Butlerian Jihad
Sure, it would be a Utopia until someone decides to use the A.I. or robots/machines in general to take over. If the computer running the waste recycler was 0wn3d what would you do? What about the one tracking food distribution? How long could we go without them before wide-spread panic and chaos?
I'll stick with less intelligent, specialized systems, thank you. I'm not even happy with many of today's systems. How can we lose power to a huge portion of the U.S. and Canada and not really be sure how it happened. (I am refering to the blackout that hit New York and other major cities in the eastern U.S. and Canada in 2003. It was later tracked to a software bug that meant information was not updated properly.) So what happens if the power grid doesn't reboot? Reinstall from scratch over the next 10 - 20 days?!?
I live in a small town (population ~800) and I can tell you that housing is dirt cheap compared to larger towns and cities. My wife and I are students at Iowa State University, and there is no comparison between housing costs in our town and in Ames, IA.
Lots in Ames were starting at $85,000. A new townhome could run you $150k. By accepting a 35 mile commute, (which can be done in 45 minutes since all but 3 miles are on state higheays or the Interstate), my wife and I bought a small house with a detached garage, a big yard, 6 large (50-100 year old) trees, and a quiet neighborhood. All for only $15k. We enjoy our 5 year mortgage, with payments less than $250/month, and property taxes under $200 a year. You can check out some of the home prices in our area here
We have a good school with no gangs. The biggest criminal activity in the town was about 15 years ago when someone in town was using their garage to hold stolen stereo equipment. (The town still talks about it.)
So I am far happier here, making far less money, than when I lived in Chicago and was a Senior Software Engineer at Motorola. (My rent for a 1 bedroom apartment was $925.) The commute is even the same since I used to live 5 miles from work and would always get stuck in traffic.
The problem at that range usually isn't the accuracy of the weapon, but the accuracy of the shooter.
At that kind of range, the only way to hit a small, say 6-12 inch target, is to be in the prone position, with proper hand position, proper eye relief to the scope/sight, and shooting between breaths AND heartbeats.
I was a Marine designated marksman and even after sniper school the biggest factor was still the shooter and not the accuracy of the weapon. There are VERY few people who possess the skill to shoot to the accuracy of a good "civilian" rifle.
The analogy breaks down in a certain way... There is only one copy of the doctor with that specific knowledge/skill. However, once a single application is created, it can be copied as many times as desired.
For example, imagine a word processing application. Once a single customer has it, they could give it away for free. Or a company like Dell could include it for free with every system. I would consider this similar to having the doctor cloned as many times as required, which is beyond current technology.
In text processing, there are two really important metrics: precision and effectiveness.
Recall is the fraction of relevant pages that exist that are returned. For example, if there are 30 pages that are relevant to your search and a search engine returns 10 of them, the recall is 1/3.
Effectiveness is the fraction of returned pages that are relevant. For example, if a search engine returns 200 pages, but only 10 of them are relevant to your search, then the effectiveness is only 1/20.
There are some other ways of looking at these metrics and combining them for an "overall usefulness" value. A link to a better description of these metrics is
here.
I'm not sure what you mean by "nuclear response time", but I recently read a book called "Day of Trinity", which was a history of the months before, and weeks after, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In response to your "What was the nuclear response time" question, there was enough nuclear material available that there was a serious discussion on dropping a third bomb before the surrender was signed.
Sure, the US wasn't capable of reducing Japan to a nuclear wasteland at that time, but even 2 or 3 more bombs would have had a devastating effect.
Also remember that at this time the US was still horrified at the "unfair" bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the nation had finished the war in Europe so huge amounts of resources were becoming available for the war in the Pacific. If someone had blind-sided you with a bat, giving you a concussion, and a few years later you had a shotgun aimed at them, (with no chance of being convicted for murder - it is war after all), there would be a lot of temptation to pull the trigger. It might not be morally right, but we are human and, historically, morally right usually takes a back seat to the fight or flight instinct.
Fortunately, Windows will always use up all of your physical memory and page the file on the HD.
This is one of the best ways to find things like passwords. They aren't explicitly saved to the HD, but thanks to the resource hog called Windows, they get put there anyway. The only way around this would be to explicitly reserve a portion of the physical RAM within the OS itself, and inform the OS to never page it out, which would be a pretty difficult task without access to the OS source.
First, it isn't so much about the weight that someone needs to carry to handle these weapons, it is the recoil. The reason a.50 cal machine gun wasn't mounted on standard Jeeps was they caused them to tip over when fired sideways. Only the HMMWV, (Humvee), can get away with it because of their wider wheel base. Also, way too much ammunition is wasted uselessly. If you don't shoot unless you can see what you are aiming at, you don't need 10,000 rounds for your M-16. This is why they took away the "automatic" setting on the M-16 after Vietnam. Shooting more bullets LOWERED the chance of a hit. Not just per round, but overall. Finally, if you can hit someone with a 5.56mm round, they are going to be dead or very injured. A 7.62 round or even a.50 caliber round isn't required.
More electronics = better chance of detection.
Infantry is supposed to be invisible. That's why they put all that fancy makeup on their faces - so they blend in. If they radiate a lot in the EM spectrum, someone is going to detect it and drop a few white phosphorus artillery rounds on them. Also, (as someone else pointed out earlier), there aren't power-ups behind every tree, and batteries weigh a LOT. Infantry is also great because they don't need much in the way of logistics. They can walk out with a heavy pack and be fine for 2 weeks. They might come back tired, dirty and hungry, but they don't need a fuel truck every 2 days to keep moving.
I agree with you that situational awareness is incredibly important, and that the best plans fall apart upon enemy contact. However, there is also a thing called information overload. If a squad leader is worried about what the rest of the platoon is doing, they aren't focused on what their squad is doing. If they are paying attention to what the individual squad members are doing, they aren't using their fire team leaders. It is a delicate balancing act. Too much info can mean the important details are missed. Not enough info can also hurt.
Personally, I think powered armor of some sort is a great idea for a Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) environment. Since there is fighting house-to-house and block-to-block, the logistics are much simpler. Also, with heavier armor, a "standard" bullet can be ignored. BTW - There is body armor out there that will stop a 7.62mm round from an AK-74 at close range (less than 10 meters), and they are pretty heavy, but not when compared to a full load on an infantryman. The real risk is keeping the wearer cool enough since no air can circulate around the torso. When considering ambient temperature during training exercises, the presence of a standard flak jacket is considered to be a +15 degree fahrenheit modifier.
For those who care, I was in the US Marine infantry for 4 years, as a rifleman and as a member of their Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team. I graduated from the Marine Security Forces school and from the Designated Marksman School (similar to a SWAT team sniper) and I graduated 3rd in my class at the Advanced Infantry School at Camp Pendelton. While I don't think I am an expert in all things military, or even infantry combat, I think I know what I am talking about.
I'm sorry, but anyone who says it is OK to write down a password is giving bad advice. Why? You might ask, well...
Writing down a password means you have 2 places that it exists - your brain (maybe) and the piece of paper. Now, in general, most people are close enough to their brain to monitor it. This doesn't hold true for your piece of paper.
Do you ever lock your wallet in a locker when you go to a gym? How about when you go to the beach? Does it stay inside your shoe? How about when you are at home? Is it on a table by the front door - even when you sleep or are working in the basement or mowing your lawn?
From the earlier article, I know that if I can get access to Ballmer's wallet for ~17 seconds, (2 to open it, 5 to find the piece of paper, 3 to unfold it, 2 to take a photo, 3 to fold it, 2 to replace the paper and wallet), I have all of his passwords. Is this worth breaking into a locker or his house? Quite possibly - depending on who I am. I know a lot of people in the financial world who have passwords for their accounts that perform electronic bank transfers. I know one who routinely authorizes transfers of $100s millions a week.
This is why we don't have passwords stored in the clear in the passwd file. We store a hash of it. So it doesn't exist anywhere except in the user's brain. In your wallet, it is as secure as a $5 padlock, than ANY locksmith can get the combination to by contacting the manufacturer with the serial number. (Yes, if you use a Medeco lock you are safe, but who buys them for their locker?) Even worse, your lock uses a key, that anyone who practices for a few days can pick, and a professional can pick in a few seconds. Now your password is compromised and you have no clue at all that it has happened.
It might be tough to come up with a good password generation scheme and remember a lot of passwords, but it isn't impossible. If you use a pattern of [abbreviation of favorite movie][couple letters of website address][abbreviation of a book][code for website use][any word or part thereof] you have a tough "random" password. This type of password was shown to be as good as a truly random password in a study that was in a fairly recent issue of IEEE Spectrum or Computer. (I don't remember which one).
Attackers go for the weakest link in the security chain. Don't make me ask: "What's in your wallet?" Ouch. That was so lame it hurt me, and I came up with it.
* - Code could be ccv for Credit Card Visa, obj for online banking, joint account, or completely unrelated like x1j for Slashdot account.
The term "Message Storm" has been around for a long time. I used to work on an event management system and we had to carefully manage our reporting rate to avoid this problem.
In a lot of cases a "catastrophic" failure will trigger a whole series of alarms. If a power supply goes, you can get a heat warning, then a voltage warning, then a backup activation warning, which shut down non-critical systems, which generate heartbeat failure messages, etc. So a single event generates multiple, (sometimes thousands), of individual alarms, informative and management messages.
You wouldn't believe the flood of errors that can happen when a TOXIC_LEAK_DETECTED alarm is generated. (This is a real standard alarm type. Check IEEE Standards.)
I don't mean to be alarmist but does this seem like the dead are coming back to life? First an extinct woodpecker is found alive, now a wildflower? What's next? A bunch of "Old West" heroes from Springfield?
I knew the world was in bad shape, but I didn't know it was this bad. Now if I could find where I left my Soul cube, BFG and chainsaw, (gotta love the chainsaw), I'd be all set.
This little bit of wisdom has been around since computers hit the home. Now if only people would follow the advice given to them this virus would be a complete non-issue. Instead, we have a bunch of users who are convinced nothing bad will happen to them, (or are completely oblivious to the dangers), complaining since they didn't do what someone told them it was important to do.
I know I am paranoid, but I make sure important files are regularly copied to 3 different systems. Gmail makes a great place to store some of data - lots of space, geographically separated and administered by people who aren't complete idiots. I also copy my important stuff every week or two and put the disk in a fireproof safe designed for computer media.
This scheme seems to work well against these sorts of viruses as well as natural disasters and harware failures.
My biggest problem with talk about turning your conciousness into a digital format is that I am not a digital construct, I am an analog construct.
In theory, if you could take a perfect snapshot of the state of my brain, then it would be possible to create a simulator that would, in effect be me. However, this suffers from a major problem - How do you get a perfect snapshot?
While I am not sure how it works in Dr. Pearson's universe, in my universe we are limited by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Planck Length. Now, IANAP (I am not a physicist), but it seems to me that no matter how good the snapshot of my brain is, some information is going to be innacurate or unmeasurable. Now, this may be incredibly small, (the Planck length is on the order of 10^-35 meters), but according to chaos theory, it will add up.
So, since we know the physical reality of the universe means some error must occur, then no matter what format we use, some data is lost, and I no longer exist. Yes, there might still be an incredibly close copy, but it is still a copy and not me. Personaly, I would rather hang around as long as possible in my analog construct as possible. If I decide I would like a digital near-copy, that would be great, but I'm not going to claim its me any more than I would claim a clone is actually the original person.
Podcasting is a fad. It is new (as in new buzzword), uses a cool technolgy (iPods) and gives people something to do. Remember (or have you heard of) the pet rock, the hula hoop, Beanie Babies and Tickle-me Elmo? People jumped on the bandwagon, spent a lot of money buying these items and then realized - "This isn't that fun, that great or that cool. Why did I think it was?"
Just put up with it for 6 more months and all the hype will die down. If it doesn't, then just make sure your own podcasts are about how podcasts are lame.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to be in the US Marines and was trained as a Designated Marksman, which is an urban sniper, and worked with many of the Scout-Snipers which are the "classic" snipers.
.50 caliber rifle (A.K.A. Special Application Sniper Rifle (SASR)). This means 5 seconds until the sound is heard and means the sniper can get a decent head start running away, if they want, which they probably don't or they can just stand up, wave, and be happy they are outside the range of any weapon their target is carrying. This is assuming they don't fire from the crest of a hill and slowly back down off of it removing themselves from any danger of direct-fired weapons. Yes, indirect fire is still a problem, but it has always been a problem. If you know where the sniper is, you can always call for mortar or artillery fire. However, this is hardly cost effective, and even calling in a strike on their position does not guarantee a kill - especially if they choose their location wisely.
My first comment is that a good sniper can hit someone at ~1500 meters with a
Second, snipers are some of the sneakiest people I have ever met. If you tell them there is a robot that will respond to the noise they make, they will just set up a booby trap a hundred meters away and have their spotter trigger it at the same time they shoot. (Snipers always work in teams.) There is no way the robot is going to hear a bullet fired when it is being over-loaded by the sound of 2 pounds of C4 being detonated. If the snipers find out that it can still hear them, they will daisy chain a couple of claymore mines together with some det cord just to make things more confusing.
Finally, on a sort-of-related-but-side note, I have seen bullets fly through the air and it is pretty cool. When standing behind a shooter, just focus on the air about half-way to their target. After a few shots, your eye will start focusing on the bullet.
First, I have always wondered how people are measuring what the human brain is capable of. It seems to me that the brain is an analog device, with each neuron cantaining a ridiculous number of chemicals that regulate its activity. In addition, there is a holistic method to how the neurons interact, meaning there is no simple way to measure the number of interconnects that a neuron has.
That said, how can it be compared to a deterministic, digital construct? I mean, if I have a simple radio, with an analog frequency shifter, how many frequencies can I listen on? It would be based on how fine an adjustment I could make to the dial. Chaos theory tells us that the little bit of difference at the least significant bits will eventually become significant. Also, since we have no real idea why people are "intelligent", how are we going to duplicate it in an A.I. or rate a computer against an unknown standard? I think it is far more likely we will come up with neural links first, but I doubt we will come up with that any time soon.
Another issue I have is with the "grey goo" scenario. First, if there are so many of these things, how do they not break when 50 more pile on top of them? Even if they don't break, how are they going to move to assemble another nanobot? Even if they could, how are they going to prevent tearing other nanobots apart for new parts? There doesn't seem to be a lot of space in a nanobot for memory or error checking. How about we stop the grey goo with some good old electric fields? Just enough to fry their small few molecules wide bodies. Maybe we could do the same with a magnetic field depending on their base materials.
With regards to nanobots being able to create anything we need, I feel that it is already possible. I call these little factories "cells" and have noticed they exist in many different places in nature already. What is the catch here? It takes a lot of time and energy to produce these conversions. This is why cows, which make milk, require food. So we will also need nanobots which create an energy source that can be utilized by these "cells". I call this energy source "sugar". While it is nice to think that we will be able to have anything we want, instantly, the amount of energy needed to convert the base products into what we want will be restrictive. The energy from the fermentation of grain inside a storage bin is enough to start a fire. (Note: A storage bin, not a brewer's vat.) How much energy would be required to create a beer in under 10 seconds?
Personally, I view the Singularity hype as just that - hype. I think there are going to be many amazing advances, but I think there are far too many areas where "Someone will come up with a solution for that pesky little problem." to be anywhere in the foreseeable future. Freeze me and wake me up in a few hundred years to see if we have reached the Singularity yet... if you can.
Here's the problem...
There is no way to prevent the rest of the world from deciding they don't like the US handling the Domain Servers and building/maintaining their own.
There is a rule of thumb that if you can't actually prevent someone from doing something they want to do, don't try - you'll only fail and lose your credibility. The only reason other countries haven't set up their own infrastructure is that it is easier to let the US do it. (Cheaper too but, to a developed country, a few million is nothing to their budget.) As soon as US control gets "annoying" to them, they will throw a few million at the problem and the US will cease being an annoyance. Then it will be the US who will have problems due to their previous big-headed postion.
I would bring:
1 box of military MRE's (12 meals) per person.
2 cases of bottled water (48 bottles) per person.
If you have funding, there are some portable water purifiers like the one here.
Box of handi-wipes for helping to clean up at the end of the day.
Bottle of anti-bacterial handwash. Use before you eat.
A set of clean clothes you wear when you sleep.
Two sets of work clothes. One to dry while you wear the other ones. If you get dirty in 10 minutes, why do you need to start with clean clothes?
Plenty of gloves.
Solid footwear for working and sandals so you can air out your feet at the end of the day.
Foot powder.
As many socks as you can get your hands on.
Plenty of antiseptic for any blisters, cuts or scrapes.
Good first-aid kit
There are a thousand more things you can bring, but these should cover your own needs. (Assuming you are willing to rough it.)
The author of the article had one simple problem - he was too arrogant and got burned.
From high school he had awards and gold stars. Big deal! Consider how many high schools there are compared to the number of "SmartyPants Universities". If you are in the top 10% in your high school that MAY make you in the top 25% in SPU for all majors, not just engineering. If it is truly a nationally recognized SPU, then being in the top 10% is the minimum for getting in. Congratulations, you are in the top 100% of the freshman.
After arriving at SMU, instead of saying: "I'll take the basic courses so I have a good foundation and know what's going on.", he jumped into the genius course and complained that he didn't understand it. That isn't the engineering schools fault - it is his for not taking advice from counselors who couldn't possibly know more than him.
Boo hoo, I would be an engineer and might get laid off. Oh the horror of it! Guess what? Everyone can get laid off. Make a bad move at a brokerage house and you are gone. The bottom earner for the company? Gone. And no one at another high powered financial institution will hire you - you just made a career change. Do you think many people who go into finance think about running a small town bank? Probably not. (But I could be wrong.) But I know there are far more small banks, or small branch offices than there are huge corporate banks where you will handle millions of dollars a day.
So I think the problem with engineering education in this country isn't that the curriculum is bad, or the professors are particularily bad. I think it is with whining students who say it's "Too hard." and want to go to a major where they can BS their way through an assignment. It is hard to fake a Fourier transform, but not too hard to fake an understanding of a historical event, or at least enough to get an easy B.
Shouldn't that be: "...too late to save the current two"?
Some numbers from their financial report...
For 2004, Intel had a net income of US$7.5 billion on revenue of US$34.2 billion.
Overall tax rate expected for 2005: 31%
(With 2004 earnings as a guide, taxes will be US$10.6 billion)
Their expected R&D budget for 2005 is: US$5.2 billion
Capital spending for 2005: US$4.9-5.3 billion
Overall, Intel pays 31% of their revenue in taxes. 30% in Capital spending and R&D, which leaves 39%, or US$13.4 billion, to pay salaries, benefits, cost of fabrication (not including the facility itself), cover the cost of their bad chips/wafers, and sending some cash to their stockholders.
You can relax. There isn't a serious danger.
Current standards such as 3-DES (triple-DES) and AES require a LOT more comuputing power than that to brute force.
I've taken the Cryptography course from Iowa State University so I have a bit of information on hand from my class notes...
The best known attack against 3-DES has a complexity of 2^113. Having 20,000 nodes is about 2^14 nodes. Heck, we'll assume 32,000 nodes. so 2^15. This still has a complexity of 2^98 for each machine to handle, or 2^42 more than DES. (2^43 if you consider the complementation property of DES which reduces the complexity of DES to 2^55.)
This means it woudl still be trillions of times longer than than it took to break DES, even if every machine could have performance equal to the custom DES cracker built. I don't know about you, but I don't have trillions of days to consider the problem.
AES is even tougher to crack than 3-DES, I'm not sure if there are any new attacks, but the key-space is 128, 196 or 256 bits. Even with the smallest key, 128 bits, this is thousands of times stronger than 3-DES. (2^128 vs. 2^113)
So relax, use the latest standards to encrypt your information, and for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, don't use a key that is a regular word! The way ciphers are broken today is by trying a variety of dictionary words or sentences as the key. Just like a password, make your keys random, or random in appearance.
You might also read the Dune series by Frank Herbert or, more specifically, the prequels starting with The Butlerian Jihad
Sure, it would be a Utopia until someone decides to use the A.I. or robots/machines in general to take over. If the computer running the waste recycler was 0wn3d what would you do? What about the one tracking food distribution? How long could we go without them before wide-spread panic and chaos?
I'll stick with less intelligent, specialized systems, thank you. I'm not even happy with many of today's systems. How can we lose power to a huge portion of the U.S. and Canada and not really be sure how it happened. (I am refering to the blackout that hit New York and other major cities in the eastern U.S. and Canada in 2003. It was later tracked to a software bug that meant information was not updated properly.) So what happens if the power grid doesn't reboot? Reinstall from scratch over the next 10 - 20 days?!?
I live in a small town (population ~800) and I can tell you that housing is dirt cheap compared to larger towns and cities. My wife and I are students at Iowa State University, and there is no comparison between housing costs in our town and in Ames, IA.
Lots in Ames were starting at $85,000. A new townhome could run you $150k. By accepting a 35 mile commute, (which can be done in 45 minutes since all but 3 miles are on state higheays or the Interstate), my wife and I bought a small house with a detached garage, a big yard, 6 large (50-100 year old) trees, and a quiet neighborhood. All for only $15k. We enjoy our 5 year mortgage, with payments less than $250/month, and property taxes under $200 a year. You can check out some of the home prices in our area here
We have a good school with no gangs. The biggest criminal activity in the town was about 15 years ago when someone in town was using their garage to hold stolen stereo equipment. (The town still talks about it.)
So I am far happier here, making far less money, than when I lived in Chicago and was a Senior Software Engineer at Motorola. (My rent for a 1 bedroom apartment was $925.) The commute is even the same since I used to live 5 miles from work and would always get stuck in traffic.
The problem at that range usually isn't the accuracy of the weapon, but the accuracy of the shooter.
At that kind of range, the only way to hit a small, say 6-12 inch target, is to be in the prone position, with proper hand position, proper eye relief to the scope/sight, and shooting between breaths AND heartbeats.
I was a Marine designated marksman and even after sniper school the biggest factor was still the shooter and not the accuracy of the weapon. There are VERY few people who possess the skill to shoot to the accuracy of a good "civilian" rifle.
I believe those are refered to as burbclaves. Such as Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong burbclave.
The analogy breaks down in a certain way... There is only one copy of the doctor with that specific knowledge/skill. However, once a single application is created, it can be copied as many times as desired.
For example, imagine a word processing application. Once a single customer has it, they could give it away for free. Or a company like Dell could include it for free with every system. I would consider this similar to having the doctor cloned as many times as required, which is beyond current technology.
In text processing, there are two really important metrics: precision and effectiveness.
Recall is the fraction of relevant pages that exist that are returned. For example, if there are 30 pages that are relevant to your search and a search engine returns 10 of them, the recall is 1/3.
Effectiveness is the fraction of returned pages that are relevant. For example, if a search engine returns 200 pages, but only 10 of them are relevant to your search, then the effectiveness is only 1/20.
There are some other ways of looking at these metrics and combining them for an "overall usefulness" value. A link to a better description of these metrics is here.
I'm not sure what you mean by "nuclear response time", but I recently read a book called "Day of Trinity", which was a history of the months before, and weeks after, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In response to your "What was the nuclear response time" question, there was enough nuclear material available that there was a serious discussion on dropping a third bomb before the surrender was signed.
Sure, the US wasn't capable of reducing Japan to a nuclear wasteland at that time, but even 2 or 3 more bombs would have had a devastating effect.
Also remember that at this time the US was still horrified at the "unfair" bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the nation had finished the war in Europe so huge amounts of resources were becoming available for the war in the Pacific. If someone had blind-sided you with a bat, giving you a concussion, and a few years later you had a shotgun aimed at them, (with no chance of being convicted for murder - it is war after all), there would be a lot of temptation to pull the trigger. It might not be morally right, but we are human and, historically, morally right usually takes a back seat to the fight or flight instinct.
Fortunately, Windows will always use up all of your physical memory and page the file on the HD.
This is one of the best ways to find things like passwords. They aren't explicitly saved to the HD, but thanks to the resource hog called Windows, they get put there anyway. The only way around this would be to explicitly reserve a portion of the physical RAM within the OS itself, and inform the OS to never page it out, which would be a pretty difficult task without access to the OS source.
Not to nitpick... well, OK, I am nitpicking...
.50 cal machine gun wasn't mounted on standard Jeeps was they caused them to tip over when fired sideways. Only the HMMWV, (Humvee), can get away with it because of their wider wheel base. Also, way too much ammunition is wasted uselessly. If you don't shoot unless you can see what you are aiming at, you don't need 10,000 rounds for your M-16. This is why they took away the "automatic" setting on the M-16 after Vietnam. Shooting more bullets LOWERED the chance of a hit. Not just per round, but overall. Finally, if you can hit someone with a 5.56mm round, they are going to be dead or very injured. A 7.62 round or even a .50 caliber round isn't required.
First, it isn't so much about the weight that someone needs to carry to handle these weapons, it is the recoil. The reason a
More electronics = better chance of detection.
Infantry is supposed to be invisible. That's why they put all that fancy makeup on their faces - so they blend in. If they radiate a lot in the EM spectrum, someone is going to detect it and drop a few white phosphorus artillery rounds on them. Also, (as someone else pointed out earlier), there aren't power-ups behind every tree, and batteries weigh a LOT. Infantry is also great because they don't need much in the way of logistics. They can walk out with a heavy pack and be fine for 2 weeks. They might come back tired, dirty and hungry, but they don't need a fuel truck every 2 days to keep moving.
I agree with you that situational awareness is incredibly important, and that the best plans fall apart upon enemy contact. However, there is also a thing called information overload. If a squad leader is worried about what the rest of the platoon is doing, they aren't focused on what their squad is doing. If they are paying attention to what the individual squad members are doing, they aren't using their fire team leaders. It is a delicate balancing act. Too much info can mean the important details are missed. Not enough info can also hurt.
Personally, I think powered armor of some sort is a great idea for a Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) environment. Since there is fighting house-to-house and block-to-block, the logistics are much simpler. Also, with heavier armor, a "standard" bullet can be ignored. BTW - There is body armor out there that will stop a 7.62mm round from an AK-74 at close range (less than 10 meters), and they are pretty heavy, but not when compared to a full load on an infantryman. The real risk is keeping the wearer cool enough since no air can circulate around the torso. When considering ambient temperature during training exercises, the presence of a standard flak jacket is considered to be a +15 degree fahrenheit modifier.
For those who care, I was in the US Marine infantry for 4 years, as a rifleman and as a member of their Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team. I graduated from the Marine Security Forces school and from the Designated Marksman School (similar to a SWAT team sniper) and I graduated 3rd in my class at the Advanced Infantry School at Camp Pendelton. While I don't think I am an expert in all things military, or even infantry combat, I think I know what I am talking about.
I'm sorry, but anyone who says it is OK to write down a password is giving bad advice. Why? You might ask, well...
Writing down a password means you have 2 places that it exists - your brain (maybe) and the piece of paper. Now, in general, most people are close enough to their brain to monitor it. This doesn't hold true for your piece of paper.
Do you ever lock your wallet in a locker when you go to a gym? How about when you go to the beach? Does it stay inside your shoe? How about when you are at home? Is it on a table by the front door - even when you sleep or are working in the basement or mowing your lawn?
From the earlier article, I know that if I can get access to Ballmer's wallet for ~17 seconds, (2 to open it, 5 to find the piece of paper, 3 to unfold it, 2 to take a photo, 3 to fold it, 2 to replace the paper and wallet), I have all of his passwords. Is this worth breaking into a locker or his house? Quite possibly - depending on who I am. I know a lot of people in the financial world who have passwords for their accounts that perform electronic bank transfers. I know one who routinely authorizes transfers of $100s millions a week.
This is why we don't have passwords stored in the clear in the passwd file. We store a hash of it. So it doesn't exist anywhere except in the user's brain. In your wallet, it is as secure as a $5 padlock, than ANY locksmith can get the combination to by contacting the manufacturer with the serial number. (Yes, if you use a Medeco lock you are safe, but who buys them for their locker?) Even worse, your lock uses a key, that anyone who practices for a few days can pick, and a professional can pick in a few seconds. Now your password is compromised and you have no clue at all that it has happened.
It might be tough to come up with a good password generation scheme and remember a lot of passwords, but it isn't impossible. If you use a pattern of [abbreviation of favorite movie][couple letters of website address][abbreviation of a book][code for website use][any word or part thereof] you have a tough "random" password. This type of password was shown to be as good as a truly random password in a study that was in a fairly recent issue of IEEE Spectrum or Computer. (I don't remember which one).
Attackers go for the weakest link in the security chain. Don't make me ask: "What's in your wallet?" Ouch. That was so lame it hurt me, and I came up with it.
* - Code could be ccv for Credit Card Visa, obj for online banking, joint account, or completely unrelated like x1j for Slashdot account.
The term "Message Storm" has been around for a long time. I used to work on an event management system and we had to carefully manage our reporting rate to avoid this problem.
In a lot of cases a "catastrophic" failure will trigger a whole series of alarms. If a power supply goes, you can get a heat warning, then a voltage warning, then a backup activation warning, which shut down non-critical systems, which generate heartbeat failure messages, etc. So a single event generates multiple, (sometimes thousands), of individual alarms, informative and management messages.
You wouldn't believe the flood of errors that can happen when a TOXIC_LEAK_DETECTED alarm is generated. (This is a real standard alarm type. Check IEEE Standards.)
So, does this mean I should pre-order Duke Nukem Forever?
Linux -IS- your Anti-Virus program.
I don't mean to be alarmist but does this seem like the dead are coming back to life? First an extinct woodpecker is found alive, now a wildflower? What's next? A bunch of "Old West" heroes from Springfield?
I knew the world was in bad shape, but I didn't know it was this bad. Now if I could find where I left my Soul cube, BFG and chainsaw, (gotta love the chainsaw), I'd be all set.
Is to back up your data on a regular basis.
This little bit of wisdom has been around since computers hit the home. Now if only people would follow the advice given to them this virus would be a complete non-issue. Instead, we have a bunch of users who are convinced nothing bad will happen to them, (or are completely oblivious to the dangers), complaining since they didn't do what someone told them it was important to do.
I know I am paranoid, but I make sure important files are regularly copied to 3 different systems. Gmail makes a great place to store some of data - lots of space, geographically separated and administered by people who aren't complete idiots. I also copy my important stuff every week or two and put the disk in a fireproof safe designed for computer media.
This scheme seems to work well against these sorts of viruses as well as natural disasters and harware failures.
My biggest problem with talk about turning your conciousness into a digital format is that I am not a digital construct, I am an analog construct.
In theory, if you could take a perfect snapshot of the state of my brain, then it would be possible to create a simulator that would, in effect be me. However, this suffers from a major problem - How do you get a perfect snapshot?
While I am not sure how it works in Dr. Pearson's universe, in my universe we are limited by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Planck Length. Now, IANAP (I am not a physicist), but it seems to me that no matter how good the snapshot of my brain is, some information is going to be innacurate or unmeasurable. Now, this may be incredibly small, (the Planck length is on the order of 10^-35 meters), but according to chaos theory, it will add up.
So, since we know the physical reality of the universe means some error must occur, then no matter what format we use, some data is lost, and I no longer exist. Yes, there might still be an incredibly close copy, but it is still a copy and not me. Personaly, I would rather hang around as long as possible in my analog construct as possible. If I decide I would like a digital near-copy, that would be great, but I'm not going to claim its me any more than I would claim a clone is actually the original person.
Podcasting is a fad. It is new (as in new buzzword), uses a cool technolgy (iPods) and gives people something to do. Remember (or have you heard of) the pet rock, the hula hoop, Beanie Babies and Tickle-me Elmo? People jumped on the bandwagon, spent a lot of money buying these items and then realized - "This isn't that fun, that great or that cool. Why did I think it was?"
Just put up with it for 6 more months and all the hype will die down. If it doesn't, then just make sure your own podcasts are about how podcasts are lame.