There have been a few BSG books written lately. In one they explain the reason they call them "toasters". Apparently, an appliance company started manufacturing self-maintaining appliances, that could monitor their own workings, call for service, etc. To make the manufacturing process easier, they standardized on a single processing platform across all of the machines. A hacker who wanted to test his AI algorithms on a LOT of machines figured out how to worm them into all of these appliances. It worked, a little too well. His distributed AI got enough horsepower to go sentient, and when they tried to shut it down it got mean. Before they knew it, all of their machines were going haywire, and any that could attack them did. The books aren't entirely clear, but it appears that the original soldier Cylons were actual maintanance droids, and didn't have sentience themselves, but the newbown AI used them as waldoes. And the rest is BSG history...
The kids may have Facebook, but we have Blackberry. My BB has all of the "right now" of Facebook and IM, plus email everywhere.
When they grow up a little, and see what you can do when you move beyond the browser, they'll see Facebook, MySpace, et al. as the primitive time sinks they are.
Given the large percentage of the population that is being cited, I think it's unlikely they are all below-average in intelligence.
Actually, approximately 49.9% of the population has "below average" intelligence. That is more or less the very definition of below average; either side of 50%. Given that 48% believe in religious fairy tales, it would appear to show that fundamentalism fits solidly on the lower end of the Bell Curve...
I live in Homestead, Florida, which is several hundred miles from Titusville. On night launches, you can watch from my house as a bright ball of fire rises into the sky. On a clear day, you can see it as well, depending on where the Sun is in relationship to the launch.
If you are anywhere even remotely close you are going to have a great view. If you want to hear the launch, I suspect that anywhere within 50-75 miles you'd be able to hear it.
Of course, HDNet is now broadcasting the launches in HD, so I will be watching all the launches from my living room from now on...
I believe that one of the Apollo Command Modules was photographed by the Lunar Lander while orbiting the Moon. Or vice versa. As they were in orbit around the Moon, and not Terra, I think that should count as the first time.
The general belief is that Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and eat of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. God smote them, and banished them from Eden and made Eve feel pain during childbirth as punishment, etc.
I believe that this common belief is all wrong.
In this parable, God gave Adam and Eve a choice. They could remain in Eden for all of Eternity, so long as they denied themselves knowledge. Eve chose Knowledge, and shared it with Adam. As _REWARD_, God set them free from Eden, and allowed them the to explore the world around them.
If God really wanted to punish Adam and Eve, he would have struck them dead and started over. He didn't, and instead all of humanity has the opportunity to explore the Universe He created.
"...if you are hoping for a noticeable performance gain in regular computing tasks are in for a disappointment. Dual core microprocessors are for those who like to do multitasking or work on multithreaded applications."
This is just plain wrong.
First, take a look at the number of tasks running on your system (taskmgr for windows, top for unix systems) On any given Windows box, you are going to have at least a dozen processes running from the moment you logon forward.
Each of those processes is its own thread.
That means on virtually _any_ modern operating system, adding a processor will have a decisive impact on the speed of the system. Even if every one of those processes were single threaded within themselves, you still have multiple threads for the operating system and user applications, and the system distributes those threads across as many processors as it can get its hands on.
So far, there have been like 8 posts on this article, and the article itself seems to have been slashdotted. If they have Four Processors per Poster, you'd think they could keep the page up...
As the owner of a Siemens Series 65 phone, you have the responsibility to care for it. If you didn't feed your child, it would cry loudly, would it not?
That the Siemens Series 65 phone emits an ear bleeding shreak when starved for energy (and obviously attention as well) is just survival of the fittest. Other phones may be regularly left to starve until shutdown, but with the Siemens, that is likely to never happen a second time.
I for one welcome our ear destroying, power requiring, attention demanding Cellular Overlord®.
Sorry, but you don't seem to understand what the hash function is doing. A hash takes a message of arbitrary size, and creates a fixed length message of much smaller size. The attributes of this smaller message are: 1. For a given input message, you will always receive the same output hash. 2. For a given hash, it is not possible to determine the input message.
If you look closely, you will see that there is no requirement THREE regarding an absence of collisions. First, collisions are mathematically impossible to avoid when you have a hash function that produces an output hash of smaller length than the original message. For a message of length X, and a hash of length Y, 2^x > 2^y. There are always going to be more message possibilities than hash possiblities.
This is not a flaw though; in fact, collisions are NECESSARY to meet requirement TWO. For a given hash, there MUST be collisions; if collisions were impossible, then it would be possible to take a hash value and calculate the one and only unique message which was capable of creating it.
A hash function that creates hashes of the same length as the message would be LESS secure; it would essentially be a two way encryption algorithm with a hard coded key.
As for the news that they found a collision, I say big deal. Show me an algorithm that allows me to generate meaningful messages that have hash values of my choosing, and then I will be concerned. Showing me that two gibberish messages happen to have the same hash is a non-event.
Slashdot Mirror
Second Life: For those who've already failed their first life.
There have been a few BSG books written lately. In one they explain the reason they call them "toasters". Apparently, an appliance company started manufacturing self-maintaining appliances, that could monitor their own workings, call for service, etc. To make the manufacturing process easier, they standardized on a single processing platform across all of the machines. A hacker who wanted to test his AI algorithms on a LOT of machines figured out how to worm them into all of these appliances. It worked, a little too well. His distributed AI got enough horsepower to go sentient, and when they tried to shut it down it got mean. Before they knew it, all of their machines were going haywire, and any that could attack them did. The books aren't entirely clear, but it appears that the original soldier Cylons were actual maintanance droids, and didn't have sentience themselves, but the newbown AI used them as waldoes. And the rest is BSG history...
The kids may have Facebook, but we have Blackberry. My BB has all of the "right now" of Facebook and IM, plus email everywhere.
When they grow up a little, and see what you can do when you move beyond the browser, they'll see Facebook, MySpace, et al. as the primitive time sinks they are.
We measure in NASCAR race tracks hereabout these days.
Using Homestead Speedway as a baseline at 600 acres,
that there solar plant will take 1.5 Nascars of space.
Given the large percentage of the population that is being cited, I think it's unlikely they are all below-average in intelligence.
Actually, approximately 49.9% of the population has "below average" intelligence. That is more or less the very definition of below average; either side of 50%. Given that 48% believe in religious fairy tales, it would appear to show that fundamentalism fits solidly on the lower end of the Bell Curve...
Arthur wrote: "God said, 'Cancel Program GENESIS.' The universe ceased to exist."
I write:
God:\> logout
Delete Universe? [Yes]/No
I live in Homestead, Florida, which is several hundred miles from Titusville.
On night launches, you can watch from my house as a bright ball of fire rises into the sky.
On a clear day, you can see it as well, depending on where the Sun is in relationship to the launch.
If you are anywhere even remotely close you are going to have a great view. If you want to hear the launch, I suspect that anywhere within 50-75 miles you'd be able to hear it.
Of course, HDNet is now broadcasting the launches in HD, so I will be watching all the launches from my living room from now on...
Uhm... Bitter are we?
Maybe if they washed their uncut limey cocks every once in a while they wouldn't need the high tech underwear...
I believe that one of the Apollo Command Modules was photographed by the Lunar Lander while orbiting the Moon. Or vice versa. As they were in orbit around the Moon, and not Terra, I think that should count as the first time.
The general belief is that Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and eat of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. God smote them, and banished them from Eden and made Eve feel pain during childbirth as punishment, etc.
I believe that this common belief is all wrong.
In this parable, God gave Adam and Eve a choice. They could remain in Eden for all of Eternity, so long as they denied themselves knowledge. Eve chose Knowledge, and shared it with Adam. As _REWARD_, God set them free from Eden, and allowed them the to explore the world around them.
If God really wanted to punish Adam and Eve, he would have struck them dead and started over. He didn't, and instead all of humanity has the opportunity to explore the Universe He created.
Doesn't sound like punishment to me...
(Tape storage started with metal-wire recorders, but esentially they're the same idea, only it's harder to strangle someone with magtape.)
Well clearly, you just aren't properly motivated.
Wait until your department head deletes the shared workgroup directory a couple of times, and magtape garroting becomes surprisingly easy...
BAD reporter - she completely forgot to mention where to send my resume...
"...if you are hoping for a noticeable performance gain in regular computing tasks are in for a disappointment. Dual core microprocessors are for those who like to do multitasking or work on multithreaded applications."
This is just plain wrong.
First, take a look at the number of tasks running on your system (taskmgr for windows, top for unix systems) On any given Windows box, you are going to have at least a dozen processes running from the moment you logon forward.
Each of those processes is its own thread.
That means on virtually _any_ modern operating system, adding a processor will have a decisive impact on the speed of the system. Even if every one of those processes were single threaded within themselves, you still have multiple threads for the operating system and user applications, and the system distributes those threads across as many processors as it can get its hands on.
More processors = good, even for regular users...
Personally, I found that removing my pinky fingers and toes achieved the same effect...
Now when I call someone that, it might actually be true...
How's that for an email address?
So far, there have been like 8 posts on this article, and the article itself seems to have been slashdotted. If they have Four Processors per Poster, you'd think they could keep the page up...
As the owner of a Siemens Series 65 phone, you have the responsibility to care for it. If you didn't feed your child, it would cry loudly, would it not?
That the Siemens Series 65 phone emits an ear bleeding shreak when starved for energy (and obviously attention as well) is just survival of the fittest. Other phones may be regularly left to starve until shutdown, but with the Siemens, that is likely to never happen a second time.
I for one welcome our ear destroying, power requiring, attention demanding Cellular Overlord®.
Can I get a license that is good, say, within my home state? A guy's got to roam, you know...
Why do I get the feeling that fully half the people commenting on this article have been kill-filed by the sci.astro newsgroup?
> No two files are meant to share the same hash
Sorry, but you don't seem to understand what the hash function is doing. A hash takes a message of arbitrary size, and creates a fixed length message of much smaller size. The attributes of this smaller message are: 1. For a given input message, you will always receive the same output hash. 2. For a given hash, it is not possible to determine the input message.
If you look closely, you will see that there is no requirement THREE regarding an absence of collisions. First, collisions are mathematically impossible to avoid when you have a hash function that produces an output hash of smaller length than the original message. For a message of length X, and a hash of length Y, 2^x > 2^y. There are always going to be more message possibilities than hash possiblities.
This is not a flaw though; in fact, collisions are NECESSARY to meet requirement TWO. For a given hash, there MUST be collisions; if collisions were impossible, then it would be possible to take a hash value and calculate the one and only unique message which was capable of creating it.
A hash function that creates hashes of the same length as the message would be LESS secure; it would essentially be a two way encryption algorithm with a hard coded key.
As for the news that they found a collision, I say big deal. Show me an algorithm that allows me to generate meaningful messages that have hash values of my choosing, and then I will be concerned. Showing me that two gibberish messages happen to have the same hash is a non-event.
iSalary = LIVING_WAGE - 1
While Not bReadyToQuit
Salary = Salary - 1
Wend
Salary = Salary +
Wardriving - It's not just a euphemism anymore...
I don't report most of my Internet purchases to my spouse, much less the IRS.
Besides, last time I checked, 1040 didn't have a way to itemize cyberporn...