... if, as they claim, it's already in linux? If their code really is in linux (which they can easily check, since it's open source), then it has already been distributed, and there are no ip secrets that are not known already. While I can understand the automatic attempt to not reveal company secrets... it seems pretty illogical in this case. What exactly are they worried about revealing?
The problem being discussed is that powerpoint cannot adequately convey information on complex issues. Trying to solve this problem by not meeting to discuss the issues at all is not a solution to the problem.
That's not especially surprising since afaik Hawking is an atheist:). Anyway, although I do believe in God, the above argument is merely a tiny portion of the complete argument for the existance of God (the part that shows that the existance of the supernatural is reasonably likely). The definition of "the supernatural" is purposefully broad in the above example, because although I may believe that I know further specifics of the supernatural, the origins of the universe can only provide a broad insight. So the above argument only shows it to be reasonably likely that the universe was caused be something outside of the universe, ungoverned by the laws of reality as we know them. It doesn't necessarily prove by itself that the cause was a being that designed/created the universe. Other arguments are required to provide more detail.
Anyway, if you find this interesting I highly recommend that you look into the matter further. I find it astonishing how many people assume that no scientific evidence exists to support Christianity, especially on Slashdot. There is actually tons of evidence to support it. This is a topic that I personnally find fascinating, and I've thought about starting a website on the topic, although there are others already:). The most comprehensive site on this topic that I currently know of is this one.
-It seems unreasonable to automatically assume that quantum fluctuations can occur without space, time, or matter/energy existing.
I didn't provide enough detail in the grandparent post I guess. With our current understanding of the universe, space, time, and matter/energy are interdependent, which means that the only two possibilities in terms of existance are that none of the three exist or all of the three exist. In other words, there was no time when matter/energy did not exist, because prior to that there was no _time_. However, the universe must have had a beginning, because if it did not then according to the laws of thermodynamics (entropy), there would be no remaining energy in the universe right now. Therefore we know that space, time, and matter/energy simultaneously began at some point.
Since nothing can cause itself, it seems reasonable to conclude that a cause outside of the universe was responsible. Sure, we can consider the possibility that there was no cause, if we deny cause and effect. However, if we do deny cause and effect we are forced to question whether there is a universe. At this point we're into philosophy rather than science. Bear in mind that the grandparent post points out that the argument can only prove that it is reasonably likely that the supernatural exists; that's about as good as you can get. You can doubt anything you want.
I don't know, maybe I'm just bad at reading into what people are saying, but why was the parent modded as funny? The origin of the universe is a fundamental question of science. The big bang theory aims to explain the current state of the universe based on the sudden appearance of space/time and matter/energy, but does not get into the cause of that sudden appearance.
Interestingly, based on our current understanding of space, time, and matter/energy being interdependent, we can conclude that the cause of the universe:
a) Exists outside of time.
b) Exists outside of space.
c) Is not composed of matter or energy (at least in the forms that we understand).
d) (From a, b & c) Is unlikely to be based upon any of the known laws of physics/reality.
This is an argument that, at minimum, makes it reasonably likely that some supernatural something exists (ie. something that cannot be figured out by science, since it is outside of space/time, and not composed of matter/energy). Whether you believe this supernatural something to be God or not should be something decided by examining the evidence.
Disclaimer: I have not read the article since I don't know enough physics yet to be able to understand its significance:).
That said, I got the impression from the post that this could somehow be beneficial to quantum cryptography. If I understand correctly, the idea behind quantum cryptography is that as long as you have a direct optical line to whoever you're transmitting to, it is physically impossible for undetected eavesdropping to occur. This is because the nature of the system is such that a single observation of the signal will change it in such a way that it cannot be reconstructed. Perhaps advances in our understanding of light will allow this to function over the internet, where we don't have direct lines to everyone we want to transmit to.
Let me make an analogy. The first airports and scheduled routes for air transit were in the US (I think, not absolutely sure). Now airlines run all around the world. Now, say that the UN said that it wanted to set up some standards for air traffic. What parent posters are suggesting is that the US should say "No way! We made airplanes, if you don't like our rules go make your own aerial transit network!" This clearly lacks sense. (It should be noted that I have no idea how air traffic regulations are set up or governed, this is merely an example)
The rest of the world ALREADY has its "own" internet. For mutual benefit it is connected to that of the US. Despite the fervent sweep of nationalism in the US, it had better realize pretty soon that it actually can't survive on its own, and pissing off everyone else is not so great of a plan. International commerce drives the economy everywhere, including the US. You don't really _want_ the rest of the world to disconnect from "your" internet, because you'd be screwed.
With so many Americans in favour of guns I'll probably get modded down, but I've never understood this argument that we shouldn't ban/further control guns because we don't do the same to other things capable of causing serious harm or death. The fundamental and _obvious_ difference is that guns are designed with the purpose of seriously harming and killing people! The other items are not. Sure, you could beat someone to death with a telephone, but obviously telephones are normally used for a different, perfectly legitimate purpose. What is the primary purpose of a gun? To seriously harm or kill someone!
For the purposes of analogy, let us say that a program was designed which allowed anyone to easily hack into the CIA and NSA. Should that program be controlled? Under your logic, it should not be as long as any possible alternative mechanism exists for accomplishing the same task.
In other news, Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian and Gentoo have decided they will not merge. Strangely, the same choice has been made regarding the (im)possible merger of NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD.
Weird decisions, eh:)?
I think that the best crime to compare music 'piracy' to is probably monetary counterfeit. In the case of copying music, you can create exact copies of the original, you get/create something for nothing, and on a small scale it doesn't decrease the value of the original.
However, just as widespread monetary counterfeit would lead to economic problems if it could not be halted in some way, widespread copying of music has caused a devaluation of the legal copies of the music. If music copying reaches a certain critical mass, it could greatly reduce the number of bands producing new music as they would be unable to support themselves, thus leading to a kind of music recessation. It'll be some time before we discover one way or the other whether such problems will occur as a result of music copying.
Now I'm not trying to support the RIAA, and I realize that the big music companies rip off artists with the way they do business. However, I think everyone here knows that that isn't really a great reason in favour of copying the artists' music:P. It's a wise idea to consider the long-term consequences of our actions; forgetting to do so is how we get ourselves into messes like global warming.
Quote from story:
Kind of a scary thought with all the United States went through during the Bush/Gore election, imagine the theories should a Diebold product be used in a situation like that.
Either the article submittor or I has totally misunderstood something: I thought that the Diebold machines WERE used in the Bush/Gore election, and that was the source of many of the theories! Doesn't everyone else remember hearing of the memory card that gave Gore approximately -17k votes when added to the tally?
What about this: keep a cached copy of the original article stored on your server, but only put it up instead of the original once the original is no longer available? It would require a lot more checking/work, but I wouldn't think there should be legal problems with this.
This gives you an interesting possibility: hide important mail inside a fake spam mail. As long as the person you're sending it to has their filters set up correctly to receive your mail, they would get it while anyone monitoring your email would have it filtered out.
Slashdot Mirror
For added realism, players could have cheat codes which allow them to edit the voting machine results:).
... if, as they claim, it's already in linux? If their code really is in linux (which they can easily check, since it's open source), then it has already been distributed, and there are no ip secrets that are not known already. While I can understand the automatic attempt to not reveal company secrets... it seems pretty illogical in this case. What exactly are they worried about revealing?
The problem being discussed is that powerpoint cannot adequately convey information on complex issues. Trying to solve this problem by not meeting to discuss the issues at all is not a solution to the problem.
Anyway, if you find this interesting I highly recommend that you look into the matter further. I find it astonishing how many people assume that no scientific evidence exists to support Christianity, especially on Slashdot. There is actually tons of evidence to support it. This is a topic that I personnally find fascinating, and I've thought about starting a website on the topic, although there are others already:). The most comprehensive site on this topic that I currently know of is this one.
-It seems unreasonable to automatically assume that quantum fluctuations can occur without space, time, or matter/energy existing.
I didn't provide enough detail in the grandparent post I guess. With our current understanding of the universe, space, time, and matter/energy are interdependent, which means that the only two possibilities in terms of existance are that none of the three exist or all of the three exist. In other words, there was no time when matter/energy did not exist, because prior to that there was no _time_. However, the universe must have had a beginning, because if it did not then according to the laws of thermodynamics (entropy), there would be no remaining energy in the universe right now. Therefore we know that space, time, and matter/energy simultaneously began at some point.
Since nothing can cause itself, it seems reasonable to conclude that a cause outside of the universe was responsible. Sure, we can consider the possibility that there was no cause, if we deny cause and effect. However, if we do deny cause and effect we are forced to question whether there is a universe. At this point we're into philosophy rather than science. Bear in mind that the grandparent post points out that the argument can only prove that it is reasonably likely that the supernatural exists; that's about as good as you can get. You can doubt anything you want.
Interestingly, based on our current understanding of space, time, and matter/energy being interdependent, we can conclude that the cause of the universe:
a) Exists outside of time.
b) Exists outside of space.
c) Is not composed of matter or energy (at least in the forms that we understand).
d) (From a, b & c) Is unlikely to be based upon any of the known laws of physics/reality.
This is an argument that, at minimum, makes it reasonably likely that some supernatural something exists (ie. something that cannot be figured out by science, since it is outside of space/time, and not composed of matter/energy). Whether you believe this supernatural something to be God or not should be something decided by examining the evidence.
That said, I got the impression from the post that this could somehow be beneficial to quantum cryptography. If I understand correctly, the idea behind quantum cryptography is that as long as you have a direct optical line to whoever you're transmitting to, it is physically impossible for undetected eavesdropping to occur. This is because the nature of the system is such that a single observation of the signal will change it in such a way that it cannot be reconstructed. Perhaps advances in our understanding of light will allow this to function over the internet, where we don't have direct lines to everyone we want to transmit to.
The rest of the world ALREADY has its "own" internet. For mutual benefit it is connected to that of the US. Despite the fervent sweep of nationalism in the US, it had better realize pretty soon that it actually can't survive on its own, and pissing off everyone else is not so great of a plan. International commerce drives the economy everywhere, including the US. You don't really _want_ the rest of the world to disconnect from "your" internet, because you'd be screwed.
For the purposes of analogy, let us say that a program was designed which allowed anyone to easily hack into the CIA and NSA. Should that program be controlled? Under your logic, it should not be as long as any possible alternative mechanism exists for accomplishing the same task.
In other news, Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian and Gentoo have decided they will not merge. Strangely, the same choice has been made regarding the (im)possible merger of NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD. Weird decisions, eh:)?
Oh, is that all. Silly me, here I thought that there were dangers to the hardware:).
Isn't it more like "you MUST 'trust' us or you cannot access the internet"? That's the eventual goal, anyway.
However, just as widespread monetary counterfeit would lead to economic problems if it could not be halted in some way, widespread copying of music has caused a devaluation of the legal copies of the music. If music copying reaches a certain critical mass, it could greatly reduce the number of bands producing new music as they would be unable to support themselves, thus leading to a kind of music recessation. It'll be some time before we discover one way or the other whether such problems will occur as a result of music copying.
Now I'm not trying to support the RIAA, and I realize that the big music companies rip off artists with the way they do business. However, I think everyone here knows that that isn't really a great reason in favour of copying the artists' music:P. It's a wise idea to consider the long-term consequences of our actions; forgetting to do so is how we get ourselves into messes like global warming.
Quote from story: Kind of a scary thought with all the United States went through during the Bush/Gore election, imagine the theories should a Diebold product be used in a situation like that. Either the article submittor or I has totally misunderstood something: I thought that the Diebold machines WERE used in the Bush/Gore election, and that was the source of many of the theories! Doesn't everyone else remember hearing of the memory card that gave Gore approximately -17k votes when added to the tally?
What about this: keep a cached copy of the original article stored on your server, but only put it up instead of the original once the original is no longer available? It would require a lot more checking/work, but I wouldn't think there should be legal problems with this.
I thought Antitrust wasn't that bad. It didn't spend much time on watching him code, but it seemed reasonably realistic when that was the focus.
This gives you an interesting possibility: hide important mail inside a fake spam mail. As long as the person you're sending it to has their filters set up correctly to receive your mail, they would get it while anyone monitoring your email would have it filtered out.