Re:May free speach and free thought live on
on
Updates on War in Iraq
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· Score: 1, Insightful
So wait free, spech may suffer because the far left exploits it? Arent you supposed to exploit freee speech? And if you cannot exploit free speech than doesnt that mean that you do not have freedom of speach?
It turns out stealth airplanes are not that steakthy really. After the gulf war the pentagion admitted that iraq's chinese made radars could detect them, but there was not enough accuracy for their missles to lock on to them.
But then again once you have the general location you can always have your AAA gunners shoot there, and hope you get lucky.
I read in some articles, that the Ukraine may have smuggled a more modern radar into Iraq, which detects stealth planes. The fact that the ukraine even has such radar (their military R&D essentially stopped since they split from the soviet union) if true shows that those planes are not that stealthy after all, and can be detected with old soviet radar technology. But of course one does not know if that is true.
This a part of a worrying trend in writing books and movies on complicated subject matters in more accessible way.
It is not just science textbooks, i have noticed the same trend in documentaries and educational movies.
Well needless to say it is really annoying. First of all the proponents of this new trend all have two things in common - they think their audience is stupid, and they thing the audience does not want to know about the subject matter.
So basicly they do not teach about the subject matter at all. They teach some details that are some how connected to the subject matter, they are really easy to understand, but do not help the understanding of the subject matter at all. Usually those details are about people, somehow connected to the subject matter. That is because the writers in their belief that their readers are stupid, think the readers would be much more interested reading about people's lives (that of course are written in a way to be similar to the life of the average reader) than history, or science or whatever the subject matter is.
The quote from that woman's textbook serves the perfect example. It talks about how albert einstein was briliant, yet he hated doing homework... i am sure every high school student will feel good reading about that. I am also sure they will not learn any physics by reading about that.
The quote from the older text, teaches actual physics. It is perfect it explains an aspect of the theory of relativity in a way that a student, that is too young to be able to learn it, can at least learn how it fits in the general field of physics, and how it applies in the real world. Thus the student will be able to learn classical physics without worrying that he/she is not learning relativity.
The new and improved physics passage leaves the student with no knowledge of physics whatsoever. Now parents and teachers may be happy that the student has more fun reading this passage and maybe even remembers it better, but they are fooling themselves, the kid is not learning any physics.
Maybe passages like this have a place as background sidenotes. But in no way should they replace actual physics. And it seems to me that in that woman's books they do.
I really doubt google will ever become a monopoly. To paraphrase it will never become a monopoly that abuses its monopoly power.
That is because it is very cheap to enter that market. The moment Google starts abuse an alternative provider will enter. They may not have google's patented search engine, but other search engines are possible.
Telcos and Microsoft, on the other hand, have a lot more to keep others from entering the market.
Aspirin had also arrived in our common vocabulary but that did not prevent alternatives. Common vocabularies can change.
In real money american workers earn around as much as they did in the 70s and work much more hours than in the 70s. So those fears were not entirely overblown.
This argument is often brought up in the setting of education and i find it not convincing.
The biggest reason i find it unconvincing is that i dont think learning to be a software user is something inherently valuable. It is definately not something that one should go to college for. It is not even a valuable side skill... considering how microsoft plans to change its software every two to three years.
People should be able to just pick up software by starting to use it, or reading the manual or going to a 1 hour training course. And that is usually the case.
So software use should not be seen as part of someone's education. And it is not.
That being said open source software could be part of people's education, because it allows people to actually see how the software works, and maybe even change it...
First of all it is not very smart to try to reduce code size by putting complicated instructions in the processor architecture.
A succesfull architecture may be used for 20 years, and there is no way you can know which complex instructions will be most usefull/popular in several years. And when you start making upgraded chips for a design, these complex instructions will be a real pain in the ass.
The x86 architecture is a perfect example - it is a mess and many of its instructions are not used at all. The x86 is succesful because the way history played out - it was put on the first pcs, and the incredible numbers of precessors sold allowed intel to put more development money into that architecture than any body else was able to put into theirs. And large initial investments, and large sales numbers mean that individual chip prices can be lower.
Nevertheless, the alpha and some of sun's chips can still compete with intel in the server environment, with much smaller investments and worse production technology. That basicly shows the weakness of the x86 architecture.
When you have multiple pipelines and multiple stages per pipeline the size of your chip will grow exponentially to the number and complexity of your instuctions. Eventually adding more pipelines will be pointless and then you are reduced to adding cache as the only way you can improve your architecture.
For a Risc architecture, multiple pipelines will cost less overhead and more can be used. Processor performance can be increased by adding more pipelines without having to increase speed.
Intel has the money and the clout to make a succesful risc architecture. It is brave of them to do it, but from an engineering point of view it is the only right thing to do.
AMD will support x86 because they do not have the clout to force a new architecture on the world. It is a completely understandable policy, but then again will result in worse performance (unless their engineers are somehow much more brilliant than intel's).
Of course the real world matters and in the real world almost everyone uses x86. But if someone can change that it is intel.
alright this is my third reply to this post, but i read their website and i think i understand how it works.
Basicly the counterweight is not in the geostatic point, it is far out of it. So essentially the counterweight has to be put not in orbit but in escape velocity, and then prevcented from escaping by the ribbon. In that case whenever something comes up, it will not slow down the counterweight (if the counterweight is sufficiently heavy), because the counterweight being in escape velocity will always strech the ribbon so that is as far as possible from the surface of the earth.
I know this seems like an especially jumbled explanation. Feel free to look at their FAQ on their website.
This basicly means... the whole thing seems more exepnsive than i thought... putting things in escape velocity is, needless to say, much more expensive than putting them in orbit. And that counterweight has to be pretty heavy.
never mind . they are talking about ribbons. I have no idea how they make that work.
As the grandparent pointed out everytime you put something up you take energy away from the system, and you will cause the counterwaight to start falling.
I completely agree, if we are talking about a rope.
But I think serious space elevator proponents are wise enough not to propose the rope idea. Insetad they propose a tower.
In my opinion building a tower to geostatical orbit is as plausible way of getting to space as any of Cyrano's plans for getting to the moon were.
Even if in 20 years we do have the technology to do that, trying to find a place to start construction now, when we haven't the faintest idea what to construct, is nothing more than a silly media stunt.
I am sure the whole purpose of the thing is to bilk some clueless investors.
First I would like to say I took both of your upper level law courses at Columbia. Both of these classes were memorable, thought provoking and fun. You really changed my view on many things especially the way our society functions.
On to my questions. I know your opinions about patent law (for slashdot readers: he thinks it should be abolished). Yet patent law provides a very exciting field of work for a young lawyer that is proficient in technology. Can you suggest any other similar fields for such lawyers? Especially for lawyers that are not quite bright enough to become supreme court clerks?
My other question has to do with encryption. I agree with your belief that encryption is integral to free speech, and allows one to escape totalitarian governments. But you probably read the new proposed patriot act, which makes using encrypion to commit a crime a seperate offense that is punishable by a significantly long prison term. Do you think if that law is passed it will chill the sue of encryption. Esepcially since computer crimes are new and vaguely defined, and one can easily imagine unkowingly commiting one.
A third question about the american legal system. Is there any hope of a judiciary that is both independant and free and able to render decisions free of fear and outside pressures after what happened in the bush case, the microsoft case and the terrorist detention cases? Oh, might as well add the pledge of allegience case.
Maybe I put in too many questions... please feel free to answer only one.
If any slashdot readers are columbia law students I highly recommend mr. Moglen's upper level courses. But beware rumors of him being an easy grader are just false.
For some reason the parent poster reminds of the WW2 japanese troops that kept fighting on in the jungles of southern china even after their emperor surrendered.
Does anybody think the debris may be radioactive? I mean it is really strange how the papers keep saying shuttle debris may be extremely dangerous to you, you should not touch it, etc... when the shuttle should have been pretty much empty of fuel, and any fuel that could have remained would have certainly burned up in the atmosphere.
Nobody said these are enforceable contracts, and they arent. I think as long as you have the complete freedom to vote in secret, you can make any promises you want about how you are going to vote.
Keeping or breaking these promises is solely on your conscience. Just like voting in general.
That may actually be a good idea... California is one of those states that really gets screwed in the federal system. It is the union's most powerfull economy so the burden of paying federal wellfare to the federal wellfare states falls on its shoulders (inst it ironic that it is those federal wellfare states that say they are conservative and hate wellfare and keep complaining about hippies in san fran)
If that is not enough the fed government has allowed special interests to bilk california on goods it imports, such as power and corn. And once again conservatives from southern states that love the free market so much are not willing to allow the free market to price their agricultural products.
Of course i am not seriously suggesting this. But i think it is about time californians demanded more of the federal system.
A little known fact is that the USSR and most communist countries actually had 2 party systems. There was the communist party and some sort of an agricultural party.
The agricultural party of course always agreed with the communists.
Slashdot Mirror
So wait free, spech may suffer because the far left exploits it? Arent you supposed to exploit freee speech? And if you cannot exploit free speech than doesnt that mean that you do not have freedom of speach?
It turns out stealth airplanes are not that steakthy really. After the gulf war the pentagion admitted that iraq's chinese made radars could detect them, but there was not enough accuracy for their missles to lock on to them.
But then again once you have the general location you can always have your AAA gunners shoot there, and hope you get lucky.
I read in some articles, that the Ukraine may have smuggled a more modern radar into Iraq, which detects stealth planes. The fact that the ukraine even has such radar (their military R&D essentially stopped since they split from the soviet union) if true shows that those planes are not that stealthy after all, and can be detected with old soviet radar technology. But of course one does not know if that is true.
This a part of a worrying trend in writing books and movies on complicated subject matters in more accessible way.
... i am sure every high school student will feel good reading about that. I am also sure they will not learn any physics by reading about that.
It is not just science textbooks, i have noticed the same trend in documentaries and educational movies.
Well needless to say it is really annoying. First of all the proponents of this new trend all have two things in common - they think their audience is stupid, and they thing the audience does not want to know about the subject matter.
So basicly they do not teach about the subject matter at all. They teach some details that are some how connected to the subject matter, they are really easy to understand, but do not help the understanding of the subject matter at all. Usually those details are about people, somehow connected to the subject matter. That is because the writers in their belief that their readers are stupid, think the readers would be much more interested reading about people's lives (that of course are written in a way to be similar to the life of the average reader) than history, or science or whatever the subject matter is.
The quote from that woman's textbook serves the perfect example. It talks about how albert einstein was briliant, yet he hated doing homework
The quote from the older text, teaches actual physics. It is perfect it explains an aspect of the theory of relativity in a way that a student, that is too young to be able to learn it, can at least learn how it fits in the general field of physics, and how it applies in the real world. Thus the student will be able to learn classical physics without worrying that he/she is not learning relativity.
The new and improved physics passage leaves the student with no knowledge of physics whatsoever. Now parents and teachers may be happy that the student has more fun reading this passage and maybe even remembers it better, but they are fooling themselves, the kid is not learning any physics.
Maybe passages like this have a place as background sidenotes. But in no way should they replace actual physics. And it seems to me that in that woman's books they do.
I really doubt google will ever become a monopoly. To paraphrase it will never become a monopoly that abuses its monopoly power.
That is because it is very cheap to enter that market. The moment Google starts abuse an alternative provider will enter. They may not have google's patented search engine, but other search engines are possible.
Telcos and Microsoft, on the other hand, have a lot more to keep others from entering the market.
Aspirin had also arrived in our common vocabulary but that did not prevent alternatives. Common vocabularies can change.
Poor kid will be blown to shreds the moment the neighbor's kid comes out with his new panther or tiger.
In real money american workers earn around as much as they did in the 70s and work much more hours than in the 70s. So those fears were not entirely overblown.
This argument is often brought up in the setting of education and i find it not convincing.
... considering how microsoft plans to change its software every two to three years.
The biggest reason i find it unconvincing is that i dont think learning to be a software user is something inherently valuable. It is definately not something that one should go to college for. It is not even a valuable side skill
People should be able to just pick up software by starting to use it, or reading the manual or going to a 1 hour training course. And that is usually the case.
So software use should not be seen as part of someone's education. And it is not.
That being said open source software could be part of people's education, because it allows people to actually see how the software works, and maybe even change it...
"There are approx. 9 million dairy cows in the USA. " And only about 30% of them have been tipped.
Cant wait till the Vogons have to explode the earth to make way for the new piece of the interplanetary superhighway.
... a Blackhawk crashes over Colombia killing 20 something people on board. Hope it is not related.
First of all it is not very smart to try to reduce code size by putting complicated instructions in the processor architecture.
A succesfull architecture may be used for 20 years, and there is no way you can know which complex instructions will be most usefull/popular in several years. And when you start making upgraded chips for a design, these complex instructions will be a real pain in the ass.
The x86 architecture is a perfect example - it is a mess and many of its instructions are not used at all. The x86 is succesful because the way history played out - it was put on the first pcs, and the incredible numbers of precessors sold allowed intel to put more development money into that architecture than any body else was able to put into theirs. And large initial investments, and large sales numbers mean that individual chip prices can be lower.
Nevertheless, the alpha and some of sun's chips can still compete with intel in the server environment, with much smaller investments and worse production technology. That basicly shows the weakness of the x86 architecture.
When you have multiple pipelines and multiple stages per pipeline the size of your chip will grow exponentially to the number and complexity of your instuctions. Eventually adding more pipelines will be pointless and then you are reduced to adding cache as the only way you can improve your architecture.
For a Risc architecture, multiple pipelines will cost less overhead and more can be used. Processor performance can be increased by adding more pipelines without having to increase speed.
Intel has the money and the clout to make a succesful risc architecture. It is brave of them to do it, but from an engineering point of view it is the only right thing to do.
AMD will support x86 because they do not have the clout to force a new architecture on the world. It is a completely understandable policy, but then again will result in worse performance (unless their engineers are somehow much more brilliant than intel's).
Of course the real world matters and in the real world almost everyone uses x86. But if someone can change that it is intel.
alright this is my third reply to this post, but i read their website and i think i understand how it works.
... the whole thing seems more exepnsive than i thought ... putting things in escape velocity is, needless to say, much more expensive than putting them in orbit. And that counterweight has to be pretty heavy.
Basicly the counterweight is not in the geostatic point, it is far out of it. So essentially the counterweight has to be put not in orbit but in escape velocity, and then prevcented from escaping by the ribbon. In that case whenever something comes up, it will not slow down the counterweight (if the counterweight is sufficiently heavy), because the counterweight being in escape velocity will always strech the ribbon so that is as far as possible from the surface of the earth.
I know this seems like an especially jumbled explanation. Feel free to look at their FAQ on their website.
This basicly means
never mind . they are talking about ribbons. I have no idea how they make that work.
As the grandparent pointed out everytime you put something up you take energy away from the system, and you will cause the counterwaight to start falling.
I completely agree, if we are talking about a rope.
But I think serious space elevator proponents are wise enough not to propose the rope idea. Insetad they propose a tower.
In my opinion building a tower to geostatical orbit is as plausible way of getting to space as any of Cyrano's plans for getting to the moon were.
Even if in 20 years we do have the technology to do that, trying to find a place to start construction now, when we haven't the faintest idea what to construct, is nothing more than a silly media stunt.
I am sure the whole purpose of the thing is to bilk some clueless investors.
Try also the internet archive.
www.archive.org. It is pretty amazing but they do have pages that i remember from like 7 yrs ago.
Professor Moglen,
... please feel free to answer only one.
First I would like to say I took both of your upper level law courses at Columbia. Both of these classes were memorable, thought provoking and fun. You really changed my view on many things especially the way our society functions.
On to my questions. I know your opinions about patent law (for slashdot readers: he thinks it should be abolished). Yet patent law provides a very exciting field of work for a young lawyer that is proficient in technology. Can you suggest any other similar fields for such lawyers? Especially for lawyers that are not quite bright enough to become supreme court clerks?
My other question has to do with encryption. I agree with your belief that encryption is integral to free speech, and allows one to escape totalitarian governments. But you probably read the new proposed patriot act, which makes using encrypion to commit a crime a seperate offense that is punishable by a significantly long prison term. Do you think if that law is passed it will chill the sue of encryption. Esepcially since computer crimes are new and vaguely defined, and one can easily imagine unkowingly commiting one.
A third question about the american legal system. Is there any hope of a judiciary that is both independant and free and able to render decisions free of fear and outside pressures after what happened in the bush case, the microsoft case and the terrorist detention cases? Oh, might as well add the pledge of allegience case.
Maybe I put in too many questions
If any slashdot readers are columbia law students I highly recommend mr. Moglen's upper level courses. But beware rumors of him being an easy grader are just false.
Well Steve Jobs seems to disagree with you.
For some reason the parent poster reminds of the WW2 japanese troops that kept fighting on in the jungles of southern china even after their emperor surrendered.
It is in the title and looks really distracting.
Well if the MIT networks are at least partially hubbed, which they probably are you can use a packet sniffer.
... even though it can be thwarted with public key encryption, i think.
A packet sniffer will get you some juicy info
Does anybody think the debris may be radioactive? I mean it is really strange how the papers keep saying shuttle debris may be extremely dangerous to you, you should not touch it, etc... when the shuttle should have been pretty much empty of fuel, and any fuel that could have remained would have certainly burned up in the atmosphere.
You have the makings of a soft squishy layer that will serve to protect the roads from the tracks of A1 abrams tanks.
You know using GOTOs is considered really bad style of programming.
I dont agree.
Nobody said these are enforceable contracts, and they arent. I think as long as you have the complete freedom to vote in secret, you can make any promises you want about how you are going to vote.
Keeping or breaking these promises is solely on your conscience. Just like voting in general.
That may actually be a good idea... California is one of those states that really gets screwed in the federal system. It is the union's most powerfull economy so the burden of paying federal wellfare to the federal wellfare states falls on its shoulders (inst it ironic that it is those federal wellfare states that say they are conservative and hate wellfare and keep complaining about hippies in san fran)
If that is not enough the fed government has allowed special interests to bilk california on goods it imports, such as power and corn. And once again conservatives from southern states that love the free market so much are not willing to allow the free market to price their agricultural products.
Of course i am not seriously suggesting this. But i think it is about time californians demanded more of the federal system.
A little known fact is that the USSR and most communist countries actually had 2 party systems. There was the communist party and some sort of an agricultural party.
The agricultural party of course always agreed with the communists.