I don't think it's possible to call the emergency numbers across countries so that's not really an issue. But for any other system using dialup for operators to control equipment it would be.
Also all the machines would have to be in the same area as the physical-attach if the intention was to delay/hinder a response to it.
would also be fairly easy to find the offending/trojaned machines and shut them down
But then the damage would already have been done
The point I was trying to make was that while the slashdot article's poster doubts that AQ is capable of cyber-terrorism, they probably are since it doesn't have to be very advanced or subtle to have an effect
Another example: blow up a gas line, have computers constantly call the system that control valves on the line (assuming they are dialup and you can get the number) preventing operators from connecting to order the valves to close. Low tech but probably effective
I do hope that the FBI CIA an other TLA-agencies monitor these forums so that they realize the vulnerabilities
I'm having a hard time believing that Al Qaeda is capable of anything along these lines.
The poster seems to think that Terrorst == Stupid. Unfortunately this is not so, if all terrorists were stupid they would be easier to catch
Al Quaeda certainly have the possibilities to learn the skills nessesary, if they haven't already. If what I hear is correct then pulling of a DoS attack wouldn't be that hard. How much skill would it take to take control of a few thousand computers with modems, and set them up with a program to repeteadly call 911?
This threat should be taken seriously, but how much should we allow it to change our lives?
The best thing to do would be for the USA to change it's foreign policy to one that doesn't create as many enemies.
They believe that since they are right and pirates are wrong they should be allowed to change the rules, no matter if legal use of P2P gets hurt in the process. Since they can't make any money from legal file-sharing they couldn't care less if they kill it as long as they sell more CDs.
There has been discussions about the legality of caching material that is copyrighted, do you have any thoughts of this?
Have you considered any technical solutions to this problem?
eg: a cache.txt file that tells robots if their allowed to cache a site as opposed to robots.txt that tells if they're allowed to index the site.
Or perhaps the other way around that people can have a cache.txt that tells robots that they are allowed to cache a site. This would let people opt-in instead of opt-out and would also eliminate a lot of unnessesary pages. (I wouldn't mind if you cached my homepage but I won't expect anyone to be interested in the cached copy)
Well it seems perfectly clear that the intention of the scientists is to eventually create robots that will be taking over
I want to work for them. Beeing responsible for the destruction of mankind is a small price to pay for having the future race of robots worship me as their creator/god
There is actually a help link. "php regular expression" + "tutorial" would have given you what you wanted. If you want to compare two tools you should at least use enough time to see if you have to use the two differently, and then see what is best at getting the job done.
Damn I hate replying to myself, but I thought of a fews other interesting points
What wold be the meaning of suicide - killing yourself when there is more than one yourself?
Also since the two bodies can't be at exactly the same place they will experience things differently, how much before they should be considered separate persons?
Like the other reply said it seems to be nessesary to destroy the original in order to make an atom by atom copy
But no matter the process by original point stands, I would not trust them to get it right, of course if I had grown up with it, everyone did it then I'd probably accept the risk of the odd glitch in the same manner as I accept the risk of a car accident whenever I drive to the store
Now assuming it's possible to make an exact copy atom by atom without destroying the original. Then they will both be you, and unless someone slapped a sticker on the original to prevent a mix up there would be no way to tell the difference. Both original and copy would think they were the original since the last memory would be stepping into some machine to be copied
If this was possible it would be very interesting to observe. Will the 'clones' accept each other, try to kill each other, stay together, agree to stay away from each other(devide the land).
What if there is a significant other involved? Jealousy anyone? Would the SO choose one/both/none ?
Oh by the way, morally: If we ever can I think we better not. But it's an interesting thought experiment
Yes, and if you break the laws of physics in a work of fiction you have to at least make a semi-believable explanation.
The point is that when you read/watch science fiction and get to the "but that's not possible" point they should give some kiund of explanation even if it's all mumbo jumbo
The interesting thing in S/F (after a while) is what the writers can imagine about societies. What would the world be like if we had faster-than-light-travel, hyperspace, real AIs.
I can accept a book or movie breaking laws of physics, but if the society built around the tecnology doesn't seem believable the story dies
It thinks it is you, it is indistinguishable from you, then for all intents and purposes it is you. Unless of cource you believe in the existence of the soul
Still I wouldn't step into that machine either, but that has more to do with me not believing it's possible to make a perfect copy all the time:
Oops it seems we switchd a few of the atoms of this guys dna, never mind he won't notice in a few years anyway...
Oops the recreator malfunctioned and we lost a guy, never mind I'll just fix the logs and nobody will know, if there is no body there is no crime
Go to a bullshit "tech institute" if you need the professor to spoon-feed you and forcibly retain your interest.
There is nothing wrong in trying to make the assignments interesting. Any assignment that encourages the students to experiment and go beyond the actual text of the assignment is good. The goal of a teacher has to be to make his students learn more, if they do that by having interesting assignments thats the way to go. Of cource if you cant make an interesting assignment to teach a particular thing then they have to take a boring one. But you can always add a little competition to the mix, eg sorting: all the algorithms are in the book, who can make the one that will run fastest, everyone should be able to finish the assignment but if people spen a little extra time fine tuning their code to beat the other person/group then they'll learn more
One excellent assignment we had was pac-man in java, using inheritance for the ghost we could easily replace the 'AI', using inheritance for the walls we could make 'one way' walls, invicible walls, walls that opened/closed on a timer etc The 'board' was read from a file so we even made a 'level editor'. We never actually implemented all the extra ideas we had, but i Think I've got the source lying around somewhere so I might pick it up again
This is probaly not stuff for the first C/C++ class. But if you can make the game yourself with a 'go in random direction' AI for the ghosts. Assignment: Replace the AI with one that goes in the direction of pacman unless there is a wall in the way. Bonus: Make a better AI, promise extra points for those that makes the one that is hardest to get away from, promise extra points to the one that is most fun to play.
Second Assignment: Add 'power pill' make ghosts run away when pac man has power pill.
Yep, and it would most likely be completely different from us, as in no dna perhaps not even anything dna-like
Problem there is a good posibility that their bacteria-things (if they have anything like bacteria that is) would kill us, and our would kill them. (sorry about that all you guys raving over the possibilities of sex with aliens:)
The degree of difference would be comparable to the difference between planets, on an earth like planet the chemistry-of-life would be similar to our own, probably have somethign similar to photosynthesis. But how about on a very different planet, sci-fi writers often write about non-carbon-based life forms, if these are possible then what would they be like
Another thing is that even in an earth-like (in terms of athmosphere and average temperature) planet life could differ incredebly from ours. If the days where a lot longer than ours (wich means longer and colder nights) how would life evolve to cope with it?
The biggest question is: for how long will humans be able to not interfere. We might want to colonize a planet. Heck even landing to look around could change everything on an alien world.
What if there is life thats intelligent but less advanced than ours? (think stone age) Will we try to 'play god' and force our ide of good and bad upon them? How would they react to us?
What if there is life that's more intelligent then us? Will they do the smart thing and wipe us out? Will we try to wipe them out? How would we as a species cope with not being superior. (If you look at Nazis Racists etc you will see that humans has a basic need to feel better than someone, so when we're not we make ourselves believe that another group is inferior)
Is there any law that prevents the banks from consistently not giving out loans to people that doesnt sign the opt in paper? How long would it take before people realize that "If I don't give them what they want they wont give me what I want". The best you can hope for is to only get worse terms
And expect this to happen. If I was a bank manager my thinking would go something like "This guy won't let me ask the other banks if about his credit history, he must have something to hide, better not give him anything!"
If people can't do without the service you provide simply deny it to anyone that doesn't opt in. If you provide something that people doesn't really need you'll se customers leaving if they are forced to opt in.
And with banks you're not very likely to se one bank letting people not opt in (for free), because then it'll get all the high risk customers
Well this is obviously a very well thought out joke. Thankfully the person that moderated it as Troll instead of Funny won't procreate, as girls don't like men with no sense of humour (if the moderator is a girl we have a problem since boys like anything female)
The interesting thing is that while joking the poster has (unknowingly?) actally made a few good points. Requiring a programmer to manipulate blocks of memory is a tedious way to program Garbage-collection will save lives (by preventing programmers from going insane and shooting around wildly with an AK-47). Java's references instead of C's pointers also makes life easier. Most of the things that can be done in C/C++ can be done in Java. If all you need is a simple GUI and no fancy stuff in the background, VB is fine (if you program for windows that is). VB.net might make the fancy stuff posssible too I am told.
Ofcourse if execution speed is the only thing that matters C (or assembly if you can do it) is the way to go. But if developement time matters C is no longer (IMHO) the best choice.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think it's possible to call the emergency numbers across countries so that's not really an issue. But for any other system using dialup for operators to control equipment it would be.
Also all the machines would have to be in the same area as the physical-attach if the intention was to delay/hinder a response to it.
would also be fairly easy to find the offending/trojaned machines and shut them down
But then the damage would already have been done
The point I was trying to make was that while the slashdot article's poster doubts that AQ is capable of cyber-terrorism, they probably are since it doesn't have to be very advanced or subtle to have an effect
Another example: blow up a gas line, have computers constantly call the system that control valves on the line (assuming they are dialup and you can get the number) preventing operators from connecting to order the valves to close. Low tech but probably effective
I do hope that the FBI CIA an other TLA-agencies monitor these forums so that they realize the vulnerabilities
I don't know what you'll do when you find out that you do have an internet connection
Or are you posting through the "slashdot by snail mail so that echelon doesn't see you" subscription that was announced a while back=
I'm having a hard time believing that Al Qaeda is capable of anything along these lines.
The poster seems to think that Terrorst == Stupid. Unfortunately this is not so, if all terrorists were stupid they would be easier to catch
Al Quaeda certainly have the possibilities to learn the skills nessesary, if they haven't already. If what I hear is correct then pulling of a DoS attack wouldn't be that hard. How much skill would it take to take control of a few thousand computers with modems, and set them up with a program to repeteadly call 911?
This threat should be taken seriously, but how much should we allow it to change our lives?
The best thing to do would be for the USA to change it's foreign policy to one that doesn't create as many enemies.
So where are you from?
I dare you to mention one country that hasn't killed innocents. He who is without sin, etc etc
Yeah what they did was horrible, but that doesn't mean they'd do it again, there are different people in power now.
If they haven't patented the consept you could make an open source program that do exactly the same thing, no reverse engineering required
After all, all men are created equal
But some are more equal than others
They believe that since they are right and pirates are wrong they should be allowed to change the rules, no matter if legal use of P2P gets hurt in the process. Since they can't make any money from legal file-sharing they couldn't care less if they kill it as long as they sell more CDs.
suprA ?
If you mean the next step after a supercomputer that should be a hypercomputer
But you know hypercomputers are all hype, I'll take a trusty old supercomputer instead any day.
May we imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?
From the article:
Green destiny belongs to a class of makeshift supercomputers called Beowulf Clusters.
A beowulf cluster of beuwulf clusters? We'll I sertainlu could imagine one (nothing wrong with my imagination at least) but what would be the point
Perhaps he got his diploma from one of those 'non acreddited universities' that I keep getting mails about
There has been discussions about the legality of caching material that is copyrighted, do you have any thoughts of this?
Have you considered any technical solutions to this problem?
eg: a cache.txt file that tells robots if their allowed to cache a site as opposed to robots.txt that tells if they're allowed to index the site. Or perhaps the other way around that people can have a cache.txt that tells robots that they are allowed to cache a site. This would let people opt-in instead of opt-out and would also eliminate a lot of unnessesary pages. (I wouldn't mind if you cached my homepage but I won't expect anyone to be interested in the cached copy)
Open source doesn't mean non-commercial
Most linux distros can be bought on a CD, that's commercial and they can't include anything that has a clause like this
Any business that uses Apache as a webserver for e.g a webshop is using it for commercial purposes.
If you have a private hompage running on apache but have a banner ad on it that pays you, you are using apache for commercial purposes
just yet
Well it seems perfectly clear that the intention of the scientists is to eventually create robots that will be taking over
I want to work for them. Beeing responsible for the destruction of mankind is a small price to pay for having the future race of robots worship me as their creator/god
My mistake, I thought telco was just a shorter form of the (already shortned) word telecom, for telecommunications
And Thanks for not beeing an ass about it, but correcting me politely
So actually making hardware and software essential to telecom doesn't make them telecom companies?
So the companies that make TV programs aren't in the TV buisness, neither is the companies that make the actual tv sets? Only the cable company is?
what's needed, then, is a /distributed/ modeeration system
And how do you intend to stop them from 'spamming' this distributed system with fake moderations?
There is actually a help link. "php regular expression" + "tutorial" would have given you what you wanted. If you want to compare two tools you should at least use enough time to see if you have to use the two differently, and then see what is best at getting the job done.
Damn I hate replying to myself, but I thought of a fews other interesting points
What wold be the meaning of suicide - killing yourself when there is more than one yourself?
Also since the two bodies can't be at exactly the same place they will experience things differently, how much before they should be considered separate persons?
Like the other reply said it seems to be nessesary to destroy the original in order to make an atom by atom copy
But no matter the process by original point stands, I would not trust them to get it right, of course if I had grown up with it, everyone did it then I'd probably accept the risk of the odd glitch in the same manner as I accept the risk of a car accident whenever I drive to the store
Now assuming it's possible to make an exact copy atom by atom without destroying the original. Then they will both be you, and unless someone slapped a sticker on the original to prevent a mix up there would be no way to tell the difference. Both original and copy would think they were the original since the last memory would be stepping into some machine to be copied
If this was possible it would be very interesting to observe. Will the 'clones' accept each other, try to kill each other, stay together, agree to stay away from each other(devide the land).
What if there is a significant other involved? Jealousy anyone? Would the SO choose one/both/none ?
Oh by the way, morally: If we ever can I think we better not. But it's an interesting thought experiment
Yes, and if you break the laws of physics in a work of fiction you have to at least make a semi-believable explanation.
The point is that when you read/watch science fiction and get to the "but that's not possible" point they should give some kiund of explanation even if it's all mumbo jumbo
The interesting thing in S/F (after a while) is what the writers can imagine about societies. What would the world be like if we had faster-than-light-travel, hyperspace, real AIs.
I can accept a book or movie breaking laws of physics, but if the society built around the tecnology doesn't seem believable the story dies
It thinks it is you, it is indistinguishable from you, then for all intents and purposes it is you. Unless of cource you believe in the existence of the soul
Still I wouldn't step into that machine either, but that has more to do with me not believing it's possible to make a perfect copy all the time:
Oops it seems we switchd a few of the atoms of this guys dna, never mind he won't notice in a few years anyway...
Oops the recreator malfunctioned and we lost a guy, never mind I'll just fix the logs and nobody will know, if there is no body there is no crime
Go to a bullshit "tech institute" if you need the professor to spoon-feed you and forcibly retain your interest.
There is nothing wrong in trying to make the assignments interesting. Any assignment that encourages the students to experiment and go beyond the actual text of the assignment is good. The goal of a teacher has to be to make his students learn more, if they do that by having interesting assignments thats the way to go. Of cource if you cant make an interesting assignment to teach a particular thing then they have to take a boring one. But you can always add a little competition to the mix, eg sorting: all the algorithms are in the book, who can make the one that will run fastest, everyone should be able to finish the assignment but if people spen a little extra time fine tuning their code to beat the other person/group then they'll learn more
One excellent assignment we had was pac-man in java, using inheritance for the ghost we could easily replace the 'AI', using inheritance for the walls we could make 'one way' walls, invicible walls, walls that opened/closed on a timer etc The 'board' was read from a file so we even made a 'level editor'. We never actually implemented all the extra ideas we had, but i Think I've got the source lying around somewhere so I might pick it up again
This is probaly not stuff for the first C/C++ class. But if you can make the game yourself with a 'go in random direction' AI for the ghosts. Assignment: Replace the AI with one that goes in the direction of pacman unless there is a wall in the way. Bonus: Make a better AI, promise extra points for those that makes the one that is hardest to get away from, promise extra points to the one that is most fun to play.
Second Assignment: Add 'power pill' make ghosts run away when pac man has power pill.
Yep, and it would most likely be completely different from us, as in no dna perhaps not even anything dna-like
Problem there is a good posibility that their bacteria-things (if they have anything like bacteria that is) would kill us, and our would kill them. (sorry about that all you guys raving over the possibilities of sex with aliens :)
The degree of difference would be comparable to the difference between planets, on an earth like planet the chemistry-of-life would be similar to our own, probably have somethign similar to photosynthesis. But how about on a very different planet, sci-fi writers often write about non-carbon-based life forms, if these are possible then what would they be like
Another thing is that even in an earth-like (in terms of athmosphere and average temperature) planet life could differ incredebly from ours. If the days where a lot longer than ours (wich means longer and colder nights) how would life evolve to cope with it?
The biggest question is: for how long will humans be able to not interfere. We might want to colonize a planet. Heck even landing to look around could change everything on an alien world.
What if there is life thats intelligent but less advanced than ours? (think stone age) Will we try to 'play god' and force our ide of good and bad upon them? How would they react to us?
What if there is life that's more intelligent then us? Will they do the smart thing and wipe us out? Will we try to wipe them out? How would we as a species cope with not being superior. (If you look at Nazis Racists etc you will see that humans has a basic need to feel better than someone, so when we're not we make ourselves believe that another group is inferior)
Is there any law that prevents the banks from consistently not giving out loans to people that doesnt sign the opt in paper? How long would it take before people realize that "If I don't give them what they want they wont give me what I want". The best you can hope for is to only get worse terms
And expect this to happen. If I was a bank manager my thinking would go something like "This guy won't let me ask the other banks if about his credit history, he must have something to hide, better not give him anything!"
If people can't do without the service you provide simply deny it to anyone that doesn't opt in. If you provide something that people doesn't really need you'll se customers leaving if they are forced to opt in.
And with banks you're not very likely to se one bank letting people not opt in (for free), because then it'll get all the high risk customers
Well this is obviously a very well thought out joke. Thankfully the person that moderated it as Troll instead of Funny won't procreate, as girls don't like men with no sense of humour (if the moderator is a girl we have a problem since boys like anything female)
The interesting thing is that while joking the poster has (unknowingly?) actally made a few good points.
Requiring a programmer to manipulate blocks of memory is a tedious way to program
Garbage-collection will save lives (by preventing programmers from going insane and shooting around wildly with an AK-47). Java's references instead of C's pointers also makes life easier. Most of the things that can be done in C/C++ can be done in Java. If all you need is a simple GUI and no fancy stuff in the background, VB is fine (if you program for windows that is). VB.net might make the fancy stuff posssible too I am told.
Ofcourse if execution speed is the only thing that matters C (or assembly if you can do it) is the way to go. But if developement time matters C is no longer (IMHO) the best choice.
Now why would you want to tell us that? You know there are microsuxx spies around every corner, now you've probably cost the guy his job
I'm only paranoid because they are all after me