I can't understand people who think that to find life on other planets we have to look for conditions similar to Earth. All of the hubbub over liquid water seems so silly to me.
While I agree with you about the main argument, I would like to make a case for liquid water. First, we are looking for carbon-based life. Why ? Because carbon-based chemistry (dubbed organic chemistry) provides an array of possible molecules that is larger than any other element. It allows the most complex strutures and arbitrarily long molecule chains.
Why liquids ? Because liquids can flow and mix liquid and solid materials, that is a prerequisite to make most chemical reactions happen. Solids are a big no. Gases could theorically fulfill this role, but we don't know enough things about the gas giants composition to be sure about this, hence we have absolutely no clues about what we are looking for.
Why water ? This is one of the most common liquids out there. And the most common with a liquid phase compatible with most carbon-based reactions.
Okay, I'll go deeper into details. The European Patent Office is regulated at the EU level. According to the European law, it cannot deliver software patents, algorithms are considered as "mathematical formulas" and can't be patented while programs themselves have other protections meanisms : copyright laws. The law is fairly clear.
But the EPO still delivers plain software patents. Usually you have to disguise them using the gimmick you describe. I know this also works in France. But it is interesting to note that nobody has ever used such a patent in a court of law. Legal opinions are divided, a lot of people think that these patents couldn't stand up in court.
To my opinion, these kind of paradox are symptomatic of the European heavy bureaucracy.
The "issue" of this law would be that the EU commission doesn't accept the number of patents as a metrics for innovation ? Considering that software patents are not recognize in EU I only see a coherent decision and a good law.
There are also laws in some EU countries about interoperability that aim at forbidding a company to abuse a dominant position to prevent third-party interoperability. Call it socialist if you will, but I only see this as a way to guarantee a free competition in a free market (an objective which is harldy socialist)
The EU cannot overstep their mandate where Microsoft is concerned.
Well considering that software patents are forbidden in EU, I don't see why EU should take the number of patents MS owns as a metric for innovation.
That sounds benign, but I think a lot of people fail to see the reach of this claim : an expert EU commission just stated that the number of software patents is completly uncorrelated to the amount of innovation a company carries. If investors and shareholders finally manage to understand this, the patent system could fall.
What makes you think paper ballots are more secure than computers? It's not computers that steal your votes, it's people. And the same people can steal or miscount them when using the paper version.
A lot of people asked me that when I proposed them to sign my petition. They told me that fraud was very old and couldn't be prevented entirely. I agree. In fact most of the frauds possible with a paper ballot are still possible with electronic machines. But now, there is another possibility to fraud : you only need collusion between two or three people in a private company manufacturing the machines in order to hijack votes in a whole country. I can agree to have a minimal trust in the government body organizing the elections, they are overwatched by people from a lot of different organizations, but I can't trust an IT company that does not publish any informations about their machines and that has been consistently been lying about some technical informations. Citizens should be able to certify by themselves the validity of the elections. Otherwise, it won't stay a democratic state very long.
Well from my experience, 30% of the people who have gone voting are interested into the issue. And this year we had a record participation : nearly 90%.
I really think the article is misleading and/or didn't make his study correctly. I am a fervent opponent to electronic voting machines and I had to use these in my French town. So I decided to use them anyway but then I spent the day making people sign the paper version of the petition for maintaining paper ballots. I was outside a voting office and talked to every people coming out that had voted and asked them how they felt about that.
First surprise : 30% of the people I talked to signed the petition, based on their worries about the trust one can have in the system. In these 30%, there are two categories : people with a technical background who already knew the fundamental issues and also old people, who, contrary to popular belief, weren't afraid at all of a new machine but really had a problem with trust.
I have seen a lot of this shocking belief : "If it was not secure, computer people would tell us so". So I did, but most people are ready to hand over control to a small portion of the population. I also had a discussion with an official from the mayor's office telling me that these machines were totally secure because they were not computers but totally electronic machines (which is either nonsense or plain lie)
Well, it is worthwhile to point out that Vista is the first Microsoft OS that people don't want. While w2k and XP were welcomed with apathy by new PC buyers, Vista actually is met with a rejection reaction. That becomes really interesting.
Commercial people from my company usually use a webmail for personal mails but outlook or thunderbird for their professional mail. Why ? because they use laptops and cannot depend on web connectivity to write emails.
More important : Can we buy it ? Even at a 30,000 $ price tag, is it available for civilian applications ? My company would be very interested. Has anyone any informations ?
Carrying a gun and having a rationnal debate with someone over conflictuous issues is, unfortunately, not possible in most case.
That and I don't have room for a shotgun in my laptop case.
Not sure about the level of sarcasm nesting you are using, but just in case:
Legalized prostitution and hashish is only in Netherlands. Monty Python is not very well known outside UK.
Well what is being discussed here are the rules of engagement for an autonomous weapon systems. Calling it a robotic law is only a change of point of view.
As TFA states in its introduction, the doctrine of "everything is fair game as long as we win" dates from Napoleonic times and have been changed after the use of nukes in Japan and the heavy protests about the Vietnam war. Now there is a doctrine taken very seriously by armies that when you want to achieve victory, that also means to achieve durable peace after the conflict.
Political trolls aside, there are rules of engagement in modern armies. Soldiers cannot do anything to their enemies, even if it would make them win the war more easily. There are already autonomous weapon systems used in US Army, like missile-interception systems that cannot wait for a human operator to take the decision of firing.
Now some systems in the work could target human soldiers and ground based equipment. Deciding of rules of engagement for autonomous system is a good thing to do now, BEFORE such systems are deployed, IMHO.
Well from TFA I understand that this cause a heap overflow, right now it just crashes the box but a better crafted file could possibly use this to work as a virus and propagate through mail as an attachment. They don't have enough information about the Workd configuration they used but if this behaviors also happens when macros and scripts and all these nastiness are disabled, then this could lead to a new virus vector.
And about data collection : They are not collecting data. People are happily giving data to them and they are taking really the minimum amount that they could. We should not trust them, but for now, they have really not been evil to the people who gave them datas without asking questions.
you still have firms and webmasters who do not erase accounts when requested
Yes, but here, the threat to attack them in trial is usually enough to make them comply, because if you really go to court, you will win.
Well, the parent is also insightful. Maybe it is time for us to get used to TV taking a larger field of view in our vision. And for directors and programs to adapt to this.
Let's be chauvinist again !
In France we have a law called Informatique et Libertés which basically states that any file where records exist allowing to recognize a person, must be declared to the CNIL, a public comitee (this is only notification, you don't have to require authorization). It also states that before submitting information to these files, consumers must be informed of their right to consult, correct or erase the data about them.
That's sad. That is called evolution. You can blame piracy on it, you could also blame iTunes. The former is illegal, the latter is legal. Are both immoral ?
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I can't understand people who think that to find life on other planets we have to look for conditions similar to Earth. All of the hubbub over liquid water seems so silly to me.
While I agree with you about the main argument, I would like to make a case for liquid water. First, we are looking for carbon-based life. Why ? Because carbon-based chemistry (dubbed organic chemistry) provides an array of possible molecules that is larger than any other element. It allows the most complex strutures and arbitrarily long molecule chains.
Why liquids ? Because liquids can flow and mix liquid and solid materials, that is a prerequisite to make most chemical reactions happen. Solids are a big no. Gases could theorically fulfill this role, but we don't know enough things about the gas giants composition to be sure about this, hence we have absolutely no clues about what we are looking for.
Why water ? This is one of the most common liquids out there. And the most common with a liquid phase compatible with most carbon-based reactions.
Okay, I'll go deeper into details. The European Patent Office is regulated at the EU level. According to the European law, it cannot deliver software patents, algorithms are considered as "mathematical formulas" and can't be patented while programs themselves have other protections meanisms : copyright laws. The law is fairly clear.
But the EPO still delivers plain software patents. Usually you have to disguise them using the gimmick you describe. I know this also works in France. But it is interesting to note that nobody has ever used such a patent in a court of law. Legal opinions are divided, a lot of people think that these patents couldn't stand up in court.
To my opinion, these kind of paradox are symptomatic of the European heavy bureaucracy.
The "issue" of this law would be that the EU commission doesn't accept the number of patents as a metrics for innovation ? Considering that software patents are not recognize in EU I only see a coherent decision and a good law.
There are also laws in some EU countries about interoperability that aim at forbidding a company to abuse a dominant position to prevent third-party interoperability. Call it socialist if you will, but I only see this as a way to guarantee a free competition in a free market (an objective which is harldy socialist)
The EU cannot overstep their mandate where Microsoft is concerned.
Well considering that software patents are forbidden in EU, I don't see why EU should take the number of patents MS owns as a metric for innovation.
That sounds benign, but I think a lot of people fail to see the reach of this claim : an expert EU commission just stated that the number of software patents is completly uncorrelated to the amount of innovation a company carries. If investors and shareholders finally manage to understand this, the patent system could fall.
That could be the plan for the next election if nothing changes :-)
What makes you think paper ballots are more secure than computers? It's not computers that steal your votes, it's people. And the same people can steal or miscount them when using the paper version.
A lot of people asked me that when I proposed them to sign my petition. They told me that fraud was very old and couldn't be prevented entirely. I agree. In fact most of the frauds possible with a paper ballot are still possible with electronic machines. But now, there is another possibility to fraud : you only need collusion between two or three people in a private company manufacturing the machines in order to hijack votes in a whole country. I can agree to have a minimal trust in the government body organizing the elections, they are overwatched by people from a lot of different organizations, but I can't trust an IT company that does not publish any informations about their machines and that has been consistently been lying about some technical informations. Citizens should be able to certify by themselves the validity of the elections. Otherwise, it won't stay a democratic state very long.
Well from my experience, 30% of the people who have gone voting are interested into the issue. And this year we had a record participation : nearly 90%.
I really think the article is misleading and/or didn't make his study correctly. I am a fervent opponent to electronic voting machines and I had to use these in my French town. So I decided to use them anyway but then I spent the day making people sign the paper version of the petition for maintaining paper ballots. I was outside a voting office and talked to every people coming out that had voted and asked them how they felt about that.
First surprise : 30% of the people I talked to signed the petition, based on their worries about the trust one can have in the system. In these 30%, there are two categories : people with a technical background who already knew the fundamental issues and also old people, who, contrary to popular belief, weren't afraid at all of a new machine but really had a problem with trust.
I have seen a lot of this shocking belief : "If it was not secure, computer people would tell us so". So I did, but most people are ready to hand over control to a small portion of the population. I also had a discussion with an official from the mayor's office telling me that these machines were totally secure because they were not computers but totally electronic machines (which is either nonsense or plain lie)
Well, it is worthwhile to point out that Vista is the first Microsoft OS that people don't want. While w2k and XP were welcomed with apathy by new PC buyers, Vista actually is met with a rejection reaction. That becomes really interesting.
Commercial people from my company usually use a webmail for personal mails but outlook or thunderbird for their professional mail. Why ? because they use laptops and cannot depend on web connectivity to write emails.
More important : Can we buy it ? Even at a 30,000 $ price tag, is it available for civilian applications ? My company would be very interested. Has anyone any informations ?
Because they're living there ?
Democracy is valued in some countries you know...
How could they ?
Microsoft does not even act to make desktop windows attractive at all !
Carrying a gun and having a rationnal debate with someone over conflictuous issues is, unfortunately, not possible in most case.
That and I don't have room for a shotgun in my laptop case.
Not sure about the level of sarcasm nesting you are using, but just in case :
Legalized prostitution and hashish is only in Netherlands. Monty Python is not very well known outside UK.
Well what is being discussed here are the rules of engagement for an autonomous weapon systems. Calling it a robotic law is only a change of point of view.
As TFA states in its introduction, the doctrine of "everything is fair game as long as we win" dates from Napoleonic times and have been changed after the use of nukes in Japan and the heavy protests about the Vietnam war. Now there is a doctrine taken very seriously by armies that when you want to achieve victory, that also means to achieve durable peace after the conflict.
Political trolls aside, there are rules of engagement in modern armies. Soldiers cannot do anything to their enemies, even if it would make them win the war more easily. There are already autonomous weapon systems used in US Army, like missile-interception systems that cannot wait for a human operator to take the decision of firing.
Now some systems in the work could target human soldiers and ground based equipment. Deciding of rules of engagement for autonomous system is a good thing to do now, BEFORE such systems are deployed, IMHO.
My connection works just fine
That's what 1 billion users say today.
The goal is to make sure that 4 billion users will still say the same thing.
Well from TFA I understand that this cause a heap overflow, right now it just crashes the box but a better crafted file could possibly use this to work as a virus and propagate through mail as an attachment. They don't have enough information about the Workd configuration they used but if this behaviors also happens when macros and scripts and all these nastiness are disabled, then this could lead to a new virus vector.
As Englishmen like to remind, in UK, even the Queen stops at the red light.
And about data collection : They are not collecting data. People are happily giving data to them and they are taking really the minimum amount that they could. We should not trust them, but for now, they have really not been evil to the people who gave them datas without asking questions.
you still have firms and webmasters who do not erase accounts when requested
Yes, but here, the threat to attack them in trial is usually enough to make them comply, because if you really go to court, you will win.
Well, the parent is also insightful. Maybe it is time for us to get used to TV taking a larger field of view in our vision. And for directors and programs to adapt to this.
Let's be chauvinist again !
In France we have a law called Informatique et Libertés which basically states that any file where records exist allowing to recognize a person, must be declared to the CNIL, a public comitee (this is only notification, you don't have to require authorization). It also states that before submitting information to these files, consumers must be informed of their right to consult, correct or erase the data about them.
This is not a federal budget. It is a state budget.
That's sad. That is called evolution. You can blame piracy on it, you could also blame iTunes. The former is illegal, the latter is legal. Are both immoral ?