. . . especially on Sun keyboards, where my pinky hits them without me realizing it. I just pull off they key caps and cover the area with a little post-it that says "sanitized for your protection."
People at work think I'm weird, but no one who has had to use a keyboard after me has ever complained about the lack of that dreadful key.
You could write a computer virus in your house and shutdown a hospital or transportation system and kill people, too.
Networks, unlike the air within your home or the water that goes down your drain, are relatively easy to isolate from everyone else. Hospitals try to do both, but they're usually more successful isolating the networks. HCl gas leaks or Anthrax outbreaks nearby will be a lot harder to stop than incoming computer viruses or trojans.
Can you believe there are no regulations prohibiting the unqualified or politically radical from running these home cyber-weapon factories?
Again, the product of those "cyber-weapon factories" may only propagate via a medium which persons and organizations voluntarily connect themselves to, and that they can easily disconnect themselves from. Real, natural viruses can fly through the air and infect those with LAN's not connected to the internet and even those who don't have a computer. If you claim to be unable to see the difference I'd call you a liar because you're clearly smart enough to understand the significant distinction.
People with no formal security training whatsoever can simply install a C compiler. Madness!
Not on my machine, they can't, and not on the machines of (properly run and regulated) organizations upon which lives depend, such as hospitals and transportation systems. Those are regulated. See the trend yet?
See, it turns out that you're allowed to have sex without a license, you just aren't allowed to spread AIDS.
No, even if you don't manage to give anyone AIDS, if you knowingly subject someone to the risk of catching it by having sex with them without telling them you have it, you're still in trouble. It's like shooting at people -- even if you miss, you're in trouble. Again, this is as it should be.
You're allowed to program a computer unlicensed, you just aren't allowed to program viruses.
I think you can program viruses -- assuming you don't release them. Again, it's easier to control a computer virus than a real one. Computer viruses don't fly through the air or get conveyed by human contact without computers involved.
You're even allowed to possess deadly firearms and vastly more deadly automobiles (near infinitely more deadly than all terrorism combined)--but you aren't allowed to kill people with them.
And both are regulated and require licenses and registration. Had this guy done what we all do before we (legally) drive on public roads or own a firearm, he'd not be in trouble. Again, this is right and appropriate.
It's not the tools that we are supposed to ban, it's the usage of these tools.
We're not talking about banning (at least I wasn't), we're talking about regulation -- forcing people who muck with risky stuff to be adhere to some safety rules. That's not an infringement of rights, that's sane protection of public health. I support anyone's ability, even artists', to have a bio-tech lab, as long as they are as qualified and regulated as commercial labs.
Sorry, your right to paranoia about what I'm doing in my basement ends when it means we must all live in submission to Monsanto.
You really can't conclude that requiring bio-tech labs to adhere to regulations is equal to living in submission to Monsanto. Nice try, though.
However, there are some variants of this bacteria that are indeed very harful (E. coli O157:H7) but there is not a single article who reports that the bacteria in this case were deed the harmfull ones.
Some are harmful indeed -- quite an understatemennt. Kinda like saying some people got sick from the plague. Anyway, this high potential for massive and widespread harm is why places where (qualified and/or supervised) people muck about with them (in accordance with safety protocols) are registered and subject to regulation and inspection.
Such as your college probably was. But not this guy's basement -- the guy who advocates bio-terrorism as a statement about the dangers of GM foods -- he was doing it his way. But it was safe, he assures us, despite utter lack of qualification or training to say anything with certainty about the safety of his "art."
More pessimistically stated: If I miss when I shoot at you, do you carry on as normal since it's only the bullets that hit you that are of concern?
All those lines are already drawn and the effects are mostly for the common good. Misuse (or obviously intending to misuse) explosive gas or propane and you get in trouble. If you let your toilet brew feces until it creates a public health hazard, someone will come make you clean it up, or haul you off to the asylum and clean it up for you.
None of these things are unreasonable. If you run a bio-tech lab, you should be forced to adhere to public safety precautionary standards and regulations.
Also from the same website (the same page, in fact):
The creator of this page and any links it may lead to hereby takes no responsability or liability for anything that happens as a result of reading anything on this page or anything contained in subsequent pages. Users read at their own risk. It is NOT reccomended that the user do anything described in this and subsequent pages. Doing so may result in serious trouble, arrest, injury, and possibly deportation or death. Thank you.
Thanks for the clarification. I hope you can also help clarify how E. coli, Serratia and Bacillus globigii are "mainly related to some equipment used to extract dna."
Oh, and while you're at it, please reconcile:
You can't do anything harmfull with [E. coli, Serratia and Bacillus globigii]
. . . with:
Even harmless bacteria can become harmful under certain, but extremely rare, circumstances, said Richard Roberts, a leading DNA researcher.
If you have AIDS and know it, and don't tell your partner, you can't even (legally) have sex -- license or not. And that's the kind of case we're talking about.
If you're breeding Anthrax in your basement (not saying he was -- maybe his stuff was harmless, and maybe it would have remained so -- or not) I want you stopped.
Sorry, your right to pursue your interest in your home stops when that interest might get out of control and kill everyone in the neighborhood.
"something" is not as specific as "local restaurant" or "GM research building" and therefore conveniently includes legal things to blow up, such as big stumps on your property far from buildings or people.
And for you (whatever this correction makes you -- meta-retard?) -- note that the subject of this thread is a man arrested under a 15-year old statute (i.e., not Ashcroft's PATRIOT Act, nor anything to do with him) that regulates biotech labs.
Just because some non-RTFA'ing poster incorrectly dragged Ashcroft into this doesn't make it on topic.
I mean, there are plenty of organizations in America which advocate doing ridiculous things, none of which are called in to testify on charges of actually doing the things with no concrete evidence
OK, I'kll bite -- which orgs, exactly, publicly advocate lawbreaking in the same document with instructions on how to do it in new and clever ways without retribution?
If The Anarchist's Cookbook has said that the reader should use the instructions contained within it to break laws and hurt people, you'd probably never have been able to read it.
. ..charges over artwork that used samples of harmless bacteria to make a statement about . . .
. . . is so very different from:
Kurtz's work and his beliefs are more radical than those of many of his peers. He has written proposals for releasing mutant flies into restaurants, and demonstrated methods for destroying genetically modified crops.
Tests of the suspect materials at the Kurtzes' home could only have found nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, Serratia and Bacillus globigii, according to Da Costa, who contributed to the CAE's GenTerra piece.
But local and federal authorities are reacting appropriately to the discovery of a suspect biological and chemical laboratory in the Kurtzes' home, said a law enforcement analyst with the University of Maine who helped formulate protocols for responding to bioterrorism attacks in Maine's urban areas.
"Unless you know what the heck you're doing," said Richard Mears, assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Maine at Augusta, "you can get hurt playing games with microbes."
Even harmless bacteria can become harmful under certain, but extremely rare, circumstances, said Richard Roberts, a leading DNA researcher.
Today's the day. It now appears that a judge and jury will ultimately decide whether and how artists will be allowed to work with the materials that scientists are trusted with daily inside biotech laboratories. \
Just now? Today? There aren't already regulations in place to limit who can run bio-labs or what qualifications the must have, or what safety protocols they must follow? Aaaaargh!
The Department of Justice this week took steps toward charging Steven Kurtz with running an illegal biotech laboratory in the Kurtzes' home in Buffalo, New York.
Bravo, I say. Art or not, some things are (or/and) should be regulated, restricted, subject to inspection and enforcement, etc. and f'ing biotech labs is one of them, IMHO.
In space, however, there is the added complication of a weightless, friction-free environment, which can make movements harder to control. Two robots carrying separate components for assembly might easily collide, or career past each other.
Hm, can't be recession if they're career
-ing so easily.
Because Sony is NOT going to change their mind -- nor should they, because as you list their failures, I could make an equally large list of successes. Things like the Trinitron tube, the Walkman, the compact disc . . .
I'm with ya until the bold part. Sony didn't invent the CD, James Russell did, and it was popularized by Philips.
Maybe i'm missing something, but shouldn't those WMDs have been found before dropping a bunch of bombs and killing a bunch of people, rather than after?
That would be nice. Unfortunately, sometimes they don't let you find them first. Sorta like with search warrants -- they're usually given before the Bad Thing is found on account of the relative difficulty of finding it before you're allowed to try to find it. See? Probable cause is the only thing you can argue about here, I'm afraid.
anyone still remember that 'innocent until proven guilty' thing?
Yep. And 10 outstanding priors and several very reasonable arrest warrants is a damn good reason to take someone in and hold them until they get their day in court where that is decided, as will happen in this case. The fact that the suspect has an army and is the leader of a country should have no impact on this procedure.
Assuming they just capture the robot and not the operator, what would they do with it without the remote control with integrated video display and force-feedback to indicate the direction of detected motion (which I assume includes some kind of encryption)?
I guess they could hack it, or hope that BestBuy has a compatible universal remote:)
I for one would like to know just how much benefit the extra $45,845.02 gets you after being able to get something similar with this ($39.99) and this ($114.99) and maybe some duct tape or super glue.
How about (these are all in the article):
- 20 mph
- the ability to drop it from a 3-story building without damage
- the ability to throw it from a vehicle travelling 45mph without damage
- a directional microphone and sensors that can detect motion up to 30 feet away
- unified hand-held controller/view screen (with force-feedback cues to indicate direction of detected motion!)
- lots more range (the thinkGeek toy has 100ft range; the article doesn't say the range of this snooping robot, but it'd have to be a lot more to be useful in its intended application
Not to mention, the thinkgeek toy is mass-produced, while the snooper is still prototype only:
But if and when the device goes into volume production, the price is likely to drop 40 to 50 percent, Moreau said.
Mr Blix said today that the discovery of the nerve agent was not a sign that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction before the war last year.
Presumably this is because time has elapsed since then and, given the difficulty of proving a negative, any WMD found could be (and would be, by some) dismissed as having been brought in by insurgents after the fact.
That is to say, Mr. Bush can never have this war justified by finding WMDs. Opponents will just say that (1) America planted them there or (2) insurgents brought them in out of desperation after the war started.
This thing is amazing:
Dragon Runner today is a 9-pound electric vehicle about 15 inches long, a little less than a foot wide and just five inches in height. Moreau said Dragon Runner can operate in three modes:
Drive mode. The machine has a top speed of 20 mph and also can be operated slowly and deliberately. The video camera transmits color imagery to the operator, who controls it using a hand-held controller/view screen.
Sentry mode. It can operate as a stationary listening post, with a directional microphone and sensors that can detect motion up to 30 feet away. If it detects something, it can alert the operator by vibrating the hand control or sending a verbal "motion left" or "motion right" alert through an earphone.
Watch mode. Again, the vehicle would remain motionless, but would use its cameras to relay information.
You can also strap a bomb or weapon to it. This thing would definitely win the top spot in BattleBots.
Which makes me wonder how long until the only "combatants" that have to be sent into a war zone are the guys who throw these robots all over the place (or drop them from planes?) then hide in a secure place and view/control/eradicate problem. No casualties (on the side with the bots, that is), and no PR problems from increases in breadth and pervasiveness of combat coverage by the media.
Unless the media gets ahold of the video stream somehow. Better encrypt that well:)
And I'd expect more like 9-11 bits to transmit a byte, on average, due to packet overhead and error correction. 8 is optimal, which doesn't happen much. 11-14 wouldn't be shocking if there's a lot of packet loss, as it sounds like there may be.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who didn't get the reference, it is a transit of Venus
:)
OT? Maybe -- but more interesting than this story
Enjoy!
All in all, I don't use it that often, but I think there are less usefull keys on the keyboard if we want to start cutting them out.
Such as? I'm not trolling or trying to flamebait -- just wondering which keys you think are less useful. CAPS LOCK is at the bottom of my list.
hold down shift?
. . . especially on Sun keyboards, where my pinky hits them without me realizing it. I just pull off they key caps and cover the area with a little post-it that says "sanitized for your protection."
People at work think I'm weird, but no one who has had to use a keyboard after me has ever complained about the lack of that dreadful key.
You could write a computer virus in your house and shutdown a hospital or transportation system and kill people, too.
Networks, unlike the air within your home or the water that goes down your drain, are relatively easy to isolate from everyone else. Hospitals try to do both, but they're usually more successful isolating the networks. HCl gas leaks or Anthrax outbreaks nearby will be a lot harder to stop than incoming computer viruses or trojans.
Can you believe there are no regulations prohibiting the unqualified or politically radical from running these home cyber-weapon factories?
Again, the product of those "cyber-weapon factories" may only propagate via a medium which persons and organizations voluntarily connect themselves to, and that they can easily disconnect themselves from. Real, natural viruses can fly through the air and infect those with LAN's not connected to the internet and even those who don't have a computer. If you claim to be unable to see the difference I'd call you a liar because you're clearly smart enough to understand the significant distinction.
People with no formal security training whatsoever can simply install a C compiler. Madness!
Not on my machine, they can't, and not on the machines of (properly run and regulated) organizations upon which lives depend, such as hospitals and transportation systems. Those are regulated. See the trend yet?
See, it turns out that you're allowed to have sex without a license, you just aren't allowed to spread AIDS.
No, even if you don't manage to give anyone AIDS, if you knowingly subject someone to the risk of catching it by having sex with them without telling them you have it, you're still in trouble. It's like shooting at people -- even if you miss, you're in trouble. Again, this is as it should be.
You're allowed to program a computer unlicensed, you just aren't allowed to program viruses.
I think you can program viruses -- assuming you don't release them. Again, it's easier to control a computer virus than a real one. Computer viruses don't fly through the air or get conveyed by human contact without computers involved.
You're even allowed to possess deadly firearms and vastly more deadly automobiles (near infinitely more deadly than all terrorism combined)--but you aren't allowed to kill people with them.
And both are regulated and require licenses and registration. Had this guy done what we all do before we (legally) drive on public roads or own a firearm, he'd not be in trouble. Again, this is right and appropriate.
It's not the tools that we are supposed to ban, it's the usage of these tools.
We're not talking about banning (at least I wasn't), we're talking about regulation -- forcing people who muck with risky stuff to be adhere to some safety rules. That's not an infringement of rights, that's sane protection of public health. I support anyone's ability, even artists', to have a bio-tech lab, as long as they are as qualified and regulated as commercial labs.
Sorry, your right to paranoia about what I'm doing in my basement ends when it means we must all live in submission to Monsanto.
You really can't conclude that requiring bio-tech labs to adhere to regulations is equal to living in submission to Monsanto. Nice try, though.
However, there are some variants of this bacteria that are indeed very harful (E. coli O157:H7) but there is not a single article who reports that the bacteria in this case were deed the harmfull ones.
Some are harmful indeed -- quite an understatemennt. Kinda like saying some people got sick from the plague. Anyway, this high potential for massive and widespread harm is why places where (qualified and/or supervised) people muck about with them (in accordance with safety protocols) are registered and subject to regulation and inspection.
Such as your college probably was. But not this guy's basement -- the guy who advocates bio-terrorism as a statement about the dangers of GM foods -- he was doing it his way. But it was safe, he assures us, despite utter lack of qualification or training to say anything with certainty about the safety of his "art."
More pessimistically stated: If I miss when I shoot at you, do you carry on as normal since it's only the bullets that hit you that are of concern?
It's in the printed version of the text too. In my copy and every other one I've seen.
All those lines are already drawn and the effects are mostly for the common good. Misuse (or obviously intending to misuse) explosive gas or propane and you get in trouble. If you let your toilet brew feces until it creates a public health hazard, someone will come make you clean it up, or haul you off to the asylum and clean it up for you.
None of these things are unreasonable. If you run a bio-tech lab, you should be forced to adhere to public safety precautionary standards and regulations.
Also from the same website (the same page, in fact):
The creator of this page and any links it may lead to hereby takes no responsability or liability for anything that happens as a result of reading anything on this page or anything contained in subsequent pages. Users read at their own risk. It is NOT reccomended that the user do anything described in this and subsequent pages. Doing so may result in serious trouble, arrest, injury, and possibly deportation or death. Thank you.
Bzzt. Next.
Thanks for the clarification. I hope you can also help clarify how E. coli, Serratia and Bacillus globigii are "mainly related to some equipment used to extract dna."
Oh, and while you're at it, please reconcile:
You can't do anything harmfull with [E. coli, Serratia and Bacillus globigii]
. . . with:
Even harmless bacteria can become harmful under certain, but extremely rare, circumstances, said Richard Roberts, a leading DNA researcher.
Do you need a license to have sex too?
If you have AIDS and know it, and don't tell your partner, you can't even (legally) have sex -- license or not. And that's the kind of case we're talking about.
If you're breeding Anthrax in your basement (not saying he was -- maybe his stuff was harmless, and maybe it would have remained so -- or not) I want you stopped.
Sorry, your right to pursue your interest in your home stops when that interest might get out of control and kill everyone in the neighborhood.
"something" is not as specific as "local restaurant" or "GM research building" and therefore conveniently includes legal things to blow up, such as big stumps on your property far from buildings or people.
Nice try though.
And for you (whatever this correction makes you -- meta-retard?) -- note that the subject of this thread is a man arrested under a 15-year old statute (i.e., not Ashcroft's PATRIOT Act, nor anything to do with him) that regulates biotech labs.
Just because some non-RTFA'ing poster incorrectly dragged Ashcroft into this doesn't make it on topic.
I mean, there are plenty of organizations in America which advocate doing ridiculous things, none of which are called in to testify on charges of actually doing the things with no concrete evidence
OK, I'kll bite -- which orgs, exactly, publicly advocate lawbreaking in the same document with instructions on how to do it in new and clever ways without retribution?
If The Anarchist's Cookbook has said that the reader should use the instructions contained within it to break laws and hurt people, you'd probably never have been able to read it.
And that's a good thing.
. . .charges over artwork that used samples of harmless bacteria to make a statement about . . .
. . . is so very different from:
Kurtz's work and his beliefs are more radical than those of many of his peers. He has written proposals for releasing mutant flies into restaurants, and demonstrated methods for destroying genetically modified crops.
Tests of the suspect materials at the Kurtzes' home could only have found nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, Serratia and Bacillus globigii, according to Da Costa, who contributed to the CAE's GenTerra piece.
But local and federal authorities are reacting appropriately to the discovery of a suspect biological and chemical laboratory in the Kurtzes' home, said a law enforcement analyst with the University of Maine who helped formulate protocols for responding to bioterrorism attacks in Maine's urban areas.
"Unless you know what the heck you're doing," said Richard Mears, assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Maine at Augusta, "you can get hurt playing games with microbes."
Even harmless bacteria can become harmful under certain, but extremely rare, circumstances, said Richard Roberts, a leading DNA researcher.
Today's the day. It now appears that a judge and jury will ultimately decide whether and how artists will be allowed to work with the materials that scientists are trusted with daily inside biotech laboratories. \
Just now? Today? There aren't already regulations in place to limit who can run bio-labs or what qualifications the must have, or what safety protocols they must follow? Aaaaargh!
The Department of Justice this week took steps toward charging Steven Kurtz with running an illegal biotech laboratory in the Kurtzes' home in Buffalo, New York.
Bravo, I say. Art or not, some things are (or/and) should be regulated, restricted, subject to inspection and enforcement, etc. and f'ing biotech labs is one of them, IMHO.
R-word? What, recession?
From the article:
In space, however, there is the added complication of a weightless, friction-free environment, which can make movements harder to control. Two robots carrying separate components for assembly might easily collide, or career past each other.
Hm, can't be recession if they're career -ing so easily.
You don't need "Trinitron-compatible" cable from your company to use a TV tube.
No, but you can't market a TV as a Trinitron(TM) without licensing the patented technology from Sony. So you pay for it no matter.
BTW, does anyone other than Sony make a Trinitron(TM) TV?
Because Sony is NOT going to change their mind -- nor should they, because as you list their failures, I could make an equally large list of successes. Things like the Trinitron tube, the Walkman, the compact disc . . .
I'm with ya until the bold part. Sony didn't invent the CD, James Russell did, and it was popularized by Philips.
Otherwise, your good points are well made.
Maybe i'm missing something, but shouldn't those WMDs have been found before dropping a bunch of bombs and killing a bunch of people, rather than after?
That would be nice. Unfortunately, sometimes they don't let you find them first. Sorta like with search warrants -- they're usually given before the Bad Thing is found on account of the relative difficulty of finding it before you're allowed to try to find it. See? Probable cause is the only thing you can argue about here, I'm afraid.
anyone still remember that 'innocent until proven guilty' thing?
Yep. And 10 outstanding priors and several very reasonable arrest warrants is a damn good reason to take someone in and hold them until they get their day in court where that is decided, as will happen in this case. The fact that the suspect has an army and is the leader of a country should have no impact on this procedure.
Assuming they just capture the robot and not the operator, what would they do with it without the remote control with integrated video display and force-feedback to indicate the direction of detected motion (which I assume includes some kind of encryption)?
:)
I guess they could hack it, or hope that BestBuy has a compatible universal remote
Probably not, but to make them be able to go 20mph for sustained period of time might.
Good batteries and efficient motors can be very expensive.
I for one would like to know just how much benefit the extra $45,845.02 gets you after being able to get something similar with this ($39.99) and this ($114.99) and maybe some duct tape or super glue.
How about (these are all in the article):
- 20 mph
- the ability to drop it from a 3-story building without damage
- the ability to throw it from a vehicle travelling 45mph without damage
- a directional microphone and sensors that can detect motion up to 30 feet away
- unified hand-held controller/view screen (with force-feedback cues to indicate direction of detected motion!)
- lots more range (the thinkGeek toy has 100ft range; the article doesn't say the range of this snooping robot, but it'd have to be a lot more to be useful in its intended application
Not to mention, the thinkgeek toy is mass-produced, while the snooper is still prototype only:
But if and when the device goes into volume production, the price is likely to drop 40 to 50 percent, Moreau said.
Mr Blix said today that the discovery of the nerve agent was not a sign that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction before the war last year.
Presumably this is because time has elapsed since then and, given the difficulty of proving a negative, any WMD found could be (and would be, by some) dismissed as having been brought in by insurgents after the fact.
That is to say, Mr. Bush can never have this war justified by finding WMDs. Opponents will just say that (1) America planted them there or (2) insurgents brought them in out of desperation after the war started.
Interesting conundrum for W. there, no?
This thing is amazing: Dragon Runner today is a 9-pound electric vehicle about 15 inches long, a little less than a foot wide and just five inches in height. Moreau said Dragon Runner can operate in three modes:
:)
Drive mode. The machine has a top speed of 20 mph and also can be operated slowly and deliberately. The video camera transmits color imagery to the operator, who controls it using a hand-held controller/view screen.
Sentry mode. It can operate as a stationary listening post, with a directional microphone and sensors that can detect motion up to 30 feet away. If it detects something, it can alert the operator by vibrating the hand control or sending a verbal "motion left" or "motion right" alert through an earphone.
Watch mode. Again, the vehicle would remain motionless, but would use its cameras to relay information.
You can also strap a bomb or weapon to it. This thing would definitely win the top spot in BattleBots.
Which makes me wonder how long until the only "combatants" that have to be sent into a war zone are the guys who throw these robots all over the place (or drop them from planes?) then hide in a secure place and view/control/eradicate problem. No casualties (on the side with the bots, that is), and no PR problems from increases in breadth and pervasiveness of combat coverage by the media.
Unless the media gets ahold of the video stream somehow. Better encrypt that well
>>>at the number of bytes/sec != bits/sec * 8, rather a factor around 13 or 14.
;)
>>Shouldn't it be bits/sec = bytes/sec * 8?
>no... it's eight bits to a byte.
Yes. Assuming he meant (bits/sec) = (bytes/(sec * 8)). I must assume he did. It's important to me.
1 byte / 1 sec => (8 * 1 bit) / 1 sec = (8 * 1 bit) / 1 sec => 1 byte / sec = 8 bits / sec
And I'd expect more like 9-11 bits to transmit a byte, on average, due to packet overhead and error correction. 8 is optimal, which doesn't happen much. 11-14 wouldn't be shocking if there's a lot of packet loss, as it sounds like there may be.