In my opinion, the completely vapid nature of the paper gets in the way of answering the question posed. But, then, I think the question is a useless one to ask in the first place. From the conclusion of TFA:
The beauty of this argument is... the fact that ultimately it does not really matter.
You know it's a great paper when your conclusion is that your argument is completely irrelevant.
And it is, too. Why does it matter whether hacking is classified as art or science? What effect would it have on the way hacking is perceived? Who cares?
Now, if you just wanted to talk about computer science (in terms of applied math, not engineering), I think the art/science question is better suited. Of all the schools in the world that teach CS, how many locate their CS department in the school of engineering, and how many in the school of letters and sciences? Why? Does the context of the CS program affect the quality of its graduates?
Thing is, most academic researchers don't rely on popular media for either distributing their research or for learning about other people's. Wilson doesn't care about "publicity," at least not the kind that he gets from places like The Guardian. He's presented his findings in a peer-reviewed academic journal and at conferences attended by other researchers interested in his field. That's the only way that researchers are taken seriously by their peers.
From TFA:
[Gates:] In those areas where somebody else has done well, that's great. We'll match what they do, we'll bring new things to it, do it better and integrate it in with other things. And so it's very healthy for the consumer. We see that in search, we see it in music. It's not new at all that that's out there.
It seems like Gates is specifically crediting competition as a driving force behind Microsoft's success. Sure, they're still high and mighty about it, but they don't seem to be claiming that their recent developments just come out of a vacuum.
You could have made almost exactly the same comment when Microsoft was struggling to come up with a web browser that could compete with Netscape, the application that most new computer users thought of as "The Internet" at the time. Sure, it may scare them, but they've shown themselves to be quite capable of displacing their competition when it matters. I'm not saying that MS will inevitably win, but I *am* saying that while they may be worried about Google's industry presence, I doubt very much that they're not confident in the plan that they're working on to come out on top.
The article is a bit sparse on technical details. Are they talking about using log files from web servers that distribute.torrent files? Because downloading the.torrent file, itself, isn't proof that a user has gone any further than that, which means no infringement is demonstrated.
Or is there a log file, somewhere, like the tracker, that keeps track of who's connecting and what they're getting? What if you don't succeed in downloading the entire movie? Are you still infringeing, even if the data that you've got is unuseable without the parts you haven't got?
Submarines can surface for routine communications and such, but if they're deeply submerged, we can still communicate with them in the extremely low frequency and ultra low frequency bands. The low frequency waves are much better at penetrating seawater than higher frequencies.
The cool thing about Chaucer is that with just a little bit of study of some of the characters that he uses that we don't anymore, and remembering that in English in his time one generally pronounced every letter in a word, you can read it pretty easily if you do it out loud:
Whan that Aprille with his shoores soote
Becomes, easily, "When that April with his showers sweet"
Beowulf, however, in its original language, is considerably more challenging, though still technically "English".
I work in a GIS shop for the state right now. I have a feeling that the GIS people in the city probably weren't too worried about this; it was probably the city attourneys that were trying to restrict the data.
It's really easy to make a computer map, if you want to. All you need to do is get a reasonably up-to-date city map and scan it in to the computer. From there, with a simple GPS unit, you can determine the latitude and longitude of landmarks in the city (which could be as simple as street intersections, buildings that are easy to pick out on the map, like airports, etc.) and, with any good GIS software, you can georeference the map and have a GIS map that's nearly as good as whatever the city has.
The city's objections are frivolous. I haven't heard of a lot of terrorists with smart bombs that work better with GIS maps. Do you need computers to load up a truck with fertilizer and drive it into a government building? The trade secrets avenue apparently didn't work, but in my state, we have hired a company to create georeferenced aerial photographs, and those are copyrighted by the company. We can only release that data to other state agencies. Fortunately, that data is currently being replaced by open data that the government is generating, so everyone will have access to it.
And little wonder. In Russia, the authorities can appear at times to be more interested in protecting cybercrooks than in prosecuting them. In 2000, the FBI lured two Russian hackers to Seattle with job offers, then arrested them. Agents involved in the case later downloaded data from the duo's computers, located in Chelyabinsk, Russia, over the Web. Two years after that, Russia filed charges against the FBI sleuths for hacking -- alleging the downloads were illegal. "When you have a case that involves servers in Russia, you can almost hear the law-enforcement officials sigh," says Hypponen.
So... this sounds a lot like they're talking about Skylarov, here. Gimme a break. They're comparing the guy who decrypted e-books to people who stole millions of credit card numbers, but they're glossing over the whole thing to make it sound like something worse. Talk about sensational. Blech.
Another useless tidbit: "The Undiscovered Country" was the title that Nicholas Meyer originally intended for Star Trek II. It was kind of a cool title, given that Hamlet was referring to death when he spoke the phrase. I'm sure you can draw the whole Spock/Genesis Planet metaphor thingy.
In Star Trek VI, the phrase referred to the future, and the metaphor still applies, but it kind of a different way that I like, too.
I have virtually no interest. I keep all of my data in one place, it's all organized into various subdirectories, and at any given time I can navigate to the file I want within seconds. I have never used the Google desktop thing, the Windows search applet has without a doubt the worst user interface I have ever witnessed, and searching the file system is just so damn slow!
At the same time, I do see the benefit in having a well-indexed file system that allows the user to search on metadata and file contents. I just want access to submit queries to the file system index via SQL. Fast, precise, and useful for the average user as well as the power user.
I agree with you, to a point. I mean, I've got a directory on my hard disk that has all of my stuff in it--documents, code, digital pictures, & etc., and I certainly don't want my applications to be saving stuff all over the place. When I get a new computer, it's a simple matter to move that one directory over and not worry about anything else.
At the same time, it seems like it might be nice for most people to have an extra layer of abstraction. I mean, it takes a true computer geek to actually know where a file *physically exists* on the hard disk. Even when we know what directory things are in, we're just thinking in terms of a logical abstraction. In my mind, as long as the OS is responsible enough to keep track of everything and makes it easy to do things like transfer all user data to a new computer, most people really won't care where the data is. It's on the computer. Just another abstraction layer.
It's not something I want, or you want, or probably most people here want, but I bet it's something that most people would be just fine with.
A lot of people are saying yes, it was foolish to quit a job without something lined up beforehand. But it all depends on how long you can get along without a job, and what you're willing to do in the meantime until you can get the job you really want. I quit a tech job that I loathed and ended up back in school to get a BA degree in writing. It turns out that I was just filling time--true, I know how to write better now, but my current job is in GIS programming.
In my view, as long as you're capable of living on little or no money, which may involve tightening your belt for a while, it's definitely worth it to leave a job that you hate.
Please put your response in the form of a question
on
Adieu to Ken Jennings
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The person who submitted this doesn't seem to watch much Jeopardy!. Otherwise, it would be clear that "Most of this firm's 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year" is really the *answer* and not the question.
So now, when I see a stack of AOL CDs at the grocery store or a restaurant, I pick them up and put them into the garbage.
Uh... way to stick it to 'em? Or something? Sorry, I'm not quite sure what this accomplishes. Isn't it just possible that someone who comes after you might actually want one of these CDs? Isn't it better for AOL to be putting their CDs out somewhere where a person can pick one up of their own choice, instead of getting an endless barrage of them in their mail box?
"Straight from Yahoo News on the other side of the pond comes a story about Samsung's latest creation: a five-slice toaster phone. This is pretty cool considering it's a pretty big jump from the toaster phones that are currently available (many max out around 1.5 slices). It's expected to be available by the end of the year, but only in South Korea. I doubt it'll take long for a domestic carrier to pick up on this hot new toy."
Um. Who cares? I don't want a telephone that makes toast, or takes pictures, or washes my dog. I just want to call people, and have other people call me. And maybe some people *do* want to make toast with their phone. But, really, given the circumstances, wouldn't 1 or 2 slices be enough for most people?
"There has to be...a $100 computer to go down-market in some of these countries. We have to engineer (PCs) to be lighter and cheaper," he said.' Does he think that cheaper hardware will make copying software harder to do?"
I believe a sillier question is, "Does he think that lighter hardware will make copying software harder to do?"
But, really, it seems to me that I'm not bent on piracy... iTunes works for me because it makes it easy enough to get music that I want, without breaking any laws. I don't have to go looking on whatever file sharing network is popular today, I don't have to search the web, I just have to click on a couple of links in iTunes. I believe that stopping piracy is most easily accomplished by making it easier to get what you're looking for legally.
Isn't that a really odd editorial comment? Kinda like, "This is only vaguely interesting, and everyone knows it already, but here..."
Why post it at all, if you're going to turn your nose up at it?
Actually, since the exemplar of great literature in this discussion seems to be Tom Clancy, maybe melodrama and fantasy *are* necessary. Odd, though, that the review begins with a random Thoreau quote (of questionable applicability), but his literature isn't considered or compared anywhere else. I mean, given Clancy or Thoreau, I would be more likely to consider Thoreau to be the great writer.
True, but in this case, the manufacturer is claiming that your data *will* be secure even if you lose physical control of the device. From their website: "Lost or stolen, your data is safe." Since they're making such a show of security, they should try to see that they're protecting your data against more than just the casual snoop who plugs it in to see what's on it.
> I assume everyone means exactly what they say.
I assume that what you assume is that everyone means exactly what *he says*. Or, if you'd like to make it more gender neutral, "I assume that we all mean what we say."
It's very early in the morning. Apparently, I'm begging for enemies.
Slashdot Mirror
The .NET alternative, which comes as a part of .NET 2.0/Visual Studio 2005, is Atlas.
Here's an overview.
In my opinion, the completely vapid nature of the paper gets in the way of answering the question posed. But, then, I think the question is a useless one to ask in the first place. From the conclusion of TFA:
... the fact that ultimately it does not really matter.
The beauty of this argument is
You know it's a great paper when your conclusion is that your argument is completely irrelevant.
And it is, too. Why does it matter whether hacking is classified as art or science? What effect would it have on the way hacking is perceived? Who cares?
Now, if you just wanted to talk about computer science (in terms of applied math, not engineering), I think the art/science question is better suited. Of all the schools in the world that teach CS, how many locate their CS department in the school of engineering, and how many in the school of letters and sciences? Why? Does the context of the CS program affect the quality of its graduates?
Thing is, most academic researchers don't rely on popular media for either distributing their research or for learning about other people's. Wilson doesn't care about "publicity," at least not the kind that he gets from places like The Guardian. He's presented his findings in a peer-reviewed academic journal and at conferences attended by other researchers interested in his field. That's the only way that researchers are taken seriously by their peers.
From TFA: [Gates:] In those areas where somebody else has done well, that's great. We'll match what they do, we'll bring new things to it, do it better and integrate it in with other things. And so it's very healthy for the consumer. We see that in search, we see it in music. It's not new at all that that's out there. It seems like Gates is specifically crediting competition as a driving force behind Microsoft's success. Sure, they're still high and mighty about it, but they don't seem to be claiming that their recent developments just come out of a vacuum.
You could have made almost exactly the same comment when Microsoft was struggling to come up with a web browser that could compete with Netscape, the application that most new computer users thought of as "The Internet" at the time. Sure, it may scare them, but they've shown themselves to be quite capable of displacing their competition when it matters. I'm not saying that MS will inevitably win, but I *am* saying that while they may be worried about Google's industry presence, I doubt very much that they're not confident in the plan that they're working on to come out on top.
The article is a bit sparse on technical details. Are they talking about using log files from web servers that distribute .torrent files? Because downloading the .torrent file, itself, isn't proof that a user has gone any further than that, which means no infringement is demonstrated.
Or is there a log file, somewhere, like the tracker, that keeps track of who's connecting and what they're getting? What if you don't succeed in downloading the entire movie? Are you still infringeing, even if the data that you've got is unuseable without the parts you haven't got?
Great link. Thanks.
Here is a bit of a writeup.
Still, since wi-fi operates in the GHz range, your useful communication depth would be quite limited.
Whan that Aprille with his shoores soote
Becomes, easily, "When that April with his showers sweet"
Beowulf, however, in its original language, is considerably more challenging, though still technically "English".
It's really easy to make a computer map, if you want to. All you need to do is get a reasonably up-to-date city map and scan it in to the computer. From there, with a simple GPS unit, you can determine the latitude and longitude of landmarks in the city (which could be as simple as street intersections, buildings that are easy to pick out on the map, like airports, etc.) and, with any good GIS software, you can georeference the map and have a GIS map that's nearly as good as whatever the city has.
The city's objections are frivolous. I haven't heard of a lot of terrorists with smart bombs that work better with GIS maps. Do you need computers to load up a truck with fertilizer and drive it into a government building? The trade secrets avenue apparently didn't work, but in my state, we have hired a company to create georeferenced aerial photographs, and those are copyrighted by the company. We can only release that data to other state agencies. Fortunately, that data is currently being replaced by open data that the government is generating, so everyone will have access to it.
TFA made reference to women's fingers being "smaller and defter" or somesuch.
And little wonder. In Russia, the authorities can appear at times to be more interested in protecting cybercrooks than in prosecuting them. In 2000, the FBI lured two Russian hackers to Seattle with job offers, then arrested them. Agents involved in the case later downloaded data from the duo's computers, located in Chelyabinsk, Russia, over the Web. Two years after that, Russia filed charges against the FBI sleuths for hacking -- alleging the downloads were illegal. "When you have a case that involves servers in Russia, you can almost hear the law-enforcement officials sigh," says Hypponen.
So... this sounds a lot like they're talking about Skylarov, here. Gimme a break. They're comparing the guy who decrypted e-books to people who stole millions of credit card numbers, but they're glossing over the whole thing to make it sound like something worse. Talk about sensational. Blech.
In Star Trek VI, the phrase referred to the future, and the metaphor still applies, but it kind of a different way that I like, too.
</nerd-out>
At the same time, I do see the benefit in having a well-indexed file system that allows the user to search on metadata and file contents. I just want access to submit queries to the file system index via SQL. Fast, precise, and useful for the average user as well as the power user.
At the same time, it seems like it might be nice for most people to have an extra layer of abstraction. I mean, it takes a true computer geek to actually know where a file *physically exists* on the hard disk. Even when we know what directory things are in, we're just thinking in terms of a logical abstraction. In my mind, as long as the OS is responsible enough to keep track of everything and makes it easy to do things like transfer all user data to a new computer, most people really won't care where the data is. It's on the computer. Just another abstraction layer.
It's not something I want, or you want, or probably most people here want, but I bet it's something that most people would be just fine with.
In my view, as long as you're capable of living on little or no money, which may involve tightening your belt for a while, it's definitely worth it to leave a job that you hate.
The person who submitted this doesn't seem to watch much Jeopardy!. Otherwise, it would be clear that "Most of this firm's 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year" is really the *answer* and not the question.
Uh... way to stick it to 'em? Or something? Sorry, I'm not quite sure what this accomplishes. Isn't it just possible that someone who comes after you might actually want one of these CDs? Isn't it better for AOL to be putting their CDs out somewhere where a person can pick one up of their own choice, instead of getting an endless barrage of them in their mail box?
Um. Who cares? I don't want a telephone that makes toast, or takes pictures, or washes my dog. I just want to call people, and have other people call me. And maybe some people *do* want to make toast with their phone. But, really, given the circumstances, wouldn't 1 or 2 slices be enough for most people?
I believe a sillier question is, "Does he think that lighter hardware will make copying software harder to do?"
But, really, it seems to me that I'm not bent on piracy... iTunes works for me because it makes it easy enough to get music that I want, without breaking any laws. I don't have to go looking on whatever file sharing network is popular today, I don't have to search the web, I just have to click on a couple of links in iTunes. I believe that stopping piracy is most easily accomplished by making it easier to get what you're looking for legally.
Isn't that a really odd editorial comment? Kinda like, "This is only vaguely interesting, and everyone knows it already, but here..." Why post it at all, if you're going to turn your nose up at it?
That's silly. Why not just keep it under your tin foil hat? Or are you trying to accessorize? Maybe aluminum foil is the fashion of the future...
Actually, since the exemplar of great literature in this discussion seems to be Tom Clancy, maybe melodrama and fantasy *are* necessary. Odd, though, that the review begins with a random Thoreau quote (of questionable applicability), but his literature isn't considered or compared anywhere else. I mean, given Clancy or Thoreau, I would be more likely to consider Thoreau to be the great writer.
True, but in this case, the manufacturer is claiming that your data *will* be secure even if you lose physical control of the device. From their website: "Lost or stolen, your data is safe." Since they're making such a show of security, they should try to see that they're protecting your data against more than just the casual snoop who plugs it in to see what's on it.
> I assume everyone means exactly what they say. I assume that what you assume is that everyone means exactly what *he says*. Or, if you'd like to make it more gender neutral, "I assume that we all mean what we say." It's very early in the morning. Apparently, I'm begging for enemies.