Yeah, true, but the IBM commercials are for enterprise products, not home user desktop computing products. People are still largely ignorant of that side of linux.
I once let some kids into the CS lab when I was an undergrad and they ran over to the login screen. When the realized that their Windows names/passwords didn't work, one of them got a very superior tone and said, "Oh yeah, these computers SUCK! The CS department does everything in DOS!" The login screen said, "Welcome to Redhat Linux 7.0". Totally ignorant.
I wonder myself about that. It would seem to me that having a dynamically changing knock sequence would be very beneficial.
The server can basically eliminate "port knocking collisions" by arbitrarily adjusting the dynamic sequence as necessary. The message could be like, "You know the normal next port? Yeah, go one up from that."
The password challenge has three outcomes: Right pw, Wrong pw, and Wrong Port. Any legitimate user could screw up the password now and then, but no legitimate user should ever get the Wrong Port failure. To make this work, though, I'm thinking that your "profile" would have to consist of something like your username, your (human typed) password, and something that your client stores like a PGP signature. A bad guy would have to steal both your password (in your brain) and your PGP-style signature (on your computer) in order to spoof your identity to such a session. If you have an extremely high prejudice against Wrong Port failures (which isn't unreasonable, since it should be immune from human error) then your password becomes necessary, but not sufficient to gain access.
I think the port knocking has great potential but perhaps isn't quite mature. But hey, maybe I'm just missing the obvious stuff.
Right, it's like alcoholic content by weight or by volume. Doubtless the RIAA and gang will use whichever method paints the more dismal picture.
For my own part, I've downloaded probably 2-3 gigs of mp3s and programs, but I've also downloaded at least 6 gigs of linux ISOs. That's about 3000 illegal files and less than 20 linux ISOs. You know which method to use if you want to make me look like a bad guy.
(And I make ample use of MD5s when getting ISOs from P2P. It's not perfect, but I'm not doing anything critical with them and I haven't had a problem.. yet..)
I once had a superior at work tell me that she has seen "the programming code I made. Anybody could do that! It's just a bunch of typing, anyway."
I wanted to be a smart ass and say something like, "Yeah, but if you type the black magic incantations wrong, your soul is lost forever," but instead only had the courage to be a smart ass and say, "Yeah, it is just a bunch of typing." I didn't know what else to say - it was still a smart assed thing to say but I was the only one who knew it. I guess. The only positive thing is that I didn't work directly under that intellectual cheetah.
Thanks for the link. I haven't heard that stated as the broken window fallacy before, but I'm familiar with the logic.
So maybe "creating jobs" isn't entirely accurate, but "shifting jobs" to technology might be. Either way, there need to be more jobs in the American technology sector or highly educated Americans are going to leave the country for work. That's a really bad situation, in my opinion, and I'm glad that -something- is being done. I don't think it's a perfect solution, nor do I think it's nearly enough to be called hand-holding, but I'm glad that something is happening.
In response to the moon base controversy, what's the point? Building a moonbase is going to require more government money spent on the program. That involves more jobs, a longer window for the program, more research, and perhaps a moon base has some innate benefits that are entirely separate from getting to Mars. It's probably easier to launch an immediate response rescue mission from the moon than from Earth to any Earth orbit. It might take 3 days to get to Earth orbit from the moon, but the launch costs are cheaper and the dangers of a bad launch to the population are significantly less.
In any event, Bush could have set a goal to put an American on the Sun for all it really matters. This is a case where the means don't justify the ends, the means ARE the ends. His advisors picked up on the fact that the American people are willing to rally behind the prestige of the space program and won't complain too heavily about spending their tax dollars on it - turn that around and create jobs and stimulate the industry.
If, in the State of the Union, Bush had picked some industry out of a hat and announced his plan to dump money on it and create jobs, people would have been outraged at the arbitrary decision. Yet jobs need to be created around here. So yes, it was a proposal that's going to help him get elected, but I really don't see how the any amount of pseudo-science rhetoric from the President has any significance. I heard the proposal live, but by the time my ears heard it, my brain heard "Federal money to create jobs." That's the weight of the issue, in my opinion, and honestly I'm glad that the guy is doing something about the lack of jobs and subsequent brain-drain in American technology.
I have no problem with my other reply being modded flamebait, but seriously wtf are people thinking that the parent is insightful? Competition is good! (Give me my mod points please.) President Bush is trying to get reelected! (Give me my mod points please.)
I'm not voting for Bush any more than the parent poster is, but damnit how does the comment about election year politics even make sense? I suppose you'd prefer that politicians you don't like only suggest stupid and dumb programs in election years rather than spend large sums of money to create new jobs in technology? Or should Bush have proposed to give NASA tons of money before the Mars rovers landed successfully? There's nothing "insightful" here, you're simply looking at what Bush does and defining "good behavior" as the opposite.
The ESA's program doesn't sound like politics? Give me a break. If it wasn't good politics, there would be protests in the streets or rants in the newspapers, and those protests/rants would be compelling.
Like I said, I'm not voting for Bush any more than the parent poster, but if the best you can come up with is "Republican=Bad, Democrat=Good" then why bother? A politician is a politician whether he supports massive social programs or extensive protection for corporations. If the sum of your analytical thought is, "Bush said it, it is BAD," then I suggest being "insightful" enough to recognize that you haven't really put enough critical thought into who is going to get your vote.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
-Winston Churchill
So you're saying that you would support a space program proposed by Bush that helps not get elected.
What really irks me about political discussion is not disagreeing, but when I read/hear stuff that couldn't possibly be realistic.
Bush, in an evil plot to "be successful", is going to reach his sinister goals by proposals to spend thousands of millions of dollars on the American aerospace and technology industries, and you have figured out that THIS WILL BOOST HIS CHANCES OF GETTING REELECTED!!!
Holy crap! I guess it's a good idea Bush scrapped his proposal to spend $11.9 billion on a study to replace the American flag with the flag of the former USSR, because THAT WOULD HURT HIS CHANCES OF GETTING ELECTED! It's a freaking conspiracy that has gotten out of control! A politician tries to PROVIDE FOR HIS CONSTITUENTS and SPEND MONEY ON DOMESTIC INDUSTRY all in a SHAMELESS BID to get people to VOTE FOR HIM!!!
All kidding aside, I think you need to start up a website where you can inform the rest of us about this scandal. Make some really clever comparisons to the European proposal which surely has nothing to do with getting some people elected, because everybody knows that European politicians must be the dumbest humans on the planet. That, or they're just politicians too, and wouldn't you know it, everybody is trying to get elected.
I guess this is flamebait, but wtf, it's late at night and I'm loaded.
Gil-Scott Heron! He also penned the incredible "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," for which I have the MP3 (in violation of copyright, naturally). He's a clever guy, but as with everything, you have to take it in context. You'd think that man has never heard of such a thing as a poor white person, and I've got news for him on that subject.
You're modded 3, Troll at the time I'm writing this.
Normally I'm the type of guy who's all in favor of government spending on technology and science since that creates potential jobs for me or those who compete with me for a job.
While the quote you present does have a valid point, here are two flaws I have with it.
First, it is a racially polarizing quote. Now, I know, the original speaker was black. That's all well and good, but the universality of such a quote is cut off at the knees. I mean Christ on stilts, white people aren't poor? Somebody must have fscking forgot to tell me about that because I'm dying to find a job.
Secondly, your assessment of the quote is that we should be helping our people rather than spending money on rockets. There are typically two paths for such an idea: social welfare or creating jobs. Welfare has its place in America, though the system is definitely not flawless. Spending money to send a rocket to Mars, however, will create jobs in America, research in America, and build prestige for American industry. It's not a social service, but damnit if that isn't going to help the American man who has helped himself by getting an education.
I'm looking for a job. I'd rather get a job through government funding on space research than take a check from the government. The former is an investment in a sustainable increase in the economy, and the other is just a pacifier while I blame some other ethnic group for my woes.
Seriously, your quote represents a very valid point about the human condition, but it's not so useful in a public forum or for making public policy.
And I'm just glad that internet soap boxes are free.
Don't forget the fact that all these spoofed returns have spread valid email addresses all over the internet. Before MyDoom, I got 0 spam at my @vt.edu because I used it only for private correspondence and receiving from the school. I've now received a bunch of those "transaction failed" messages as a result of using my email as a fake return, and now I'm getting spam.
As others have put in their replies, this isn't perfectly correct. There is a lot of research and advance to the field of computation to be found by producing an economical computer that can compete with the best human. Consider, for example, that it takes specialized equipment (to the best of my knowledge) to play against a human grand master, but wouldn't you recognize it as a breakthrough if some refinement of the time and space requirements could place that same level of computer opponent on your desktop machine? Or a Pentium 100MHz?
That said, I agree that it is slightly disturbing to see how much attention is placed on the CPU vs. Human competitions. Being that the number of moves is indeed finite and that a computer's brain is far more capable of looking ahead, cataloging and comparing potential moves, and therefore potentially far less likely to fall for distractions or ruses, the game will become more mechanical and the machine will eventually win every contest. I really don't see how the world will benefit from that; more likely it will foster increased intimidation in people who don't really understand the nature of computation. On the other side of things, there are no computer generated paintings to be compared with the masters, no computer composed music that will be cherished by generations, and no computer generated literature that captivates the imagination. So much media attention is placed on these chess games and I don't think the non-obvious limitations and/or ramifications of the computational task is really explained well.
A 3 year old child can create a better piece of artwork for Mommy or Daddy's desk at work than the best chess supercomputer ever will, and distinctions such as that are rarely explained.
I don't know, man. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Everything has a context. This guy is probably optimistic about everything he describes. His car could be stolen and he might say, "Well, I guess I get to shop for a new car now!"
Even taking HIS comments in context, he says that everything is pretty safe and back to normal, yet everyone has an automatic weapon in his or her home, white folk don't go outside at night, and bandits are rampant.
I'm not even sure there is a distinct difference between what this reporter says and what America's admittedly heavily filtered mass media says. It's hard to report that US soldiers were blown up and put a cheerful spin on it, but it's not hard to talk about the recovery of a demolished economy and make it sound like peaches and cream.
Well, I'm just saying that I won't be a leader on day 1, not that I couldn't eventually be a leader. I'm just making the observation that I don't speak Arabic, though I'm well read on Islam I don't know the local culture, I wouldn't know where to begin, and I don't have the financial resources to kick around until I size up the situation.
I think that I am going to have a conversation with my girlfriend this afternoon about organizations like the Peace Corp (though not necessarily that exact org) where an educated yet unemployed American can see the world, do some good work, and gain employable experience. I've done extensive volunteer work in the past and am well aware of the "on a mission" philosophy. Thanks for the response though.
Not a bad idea - I had been seriously considered the US Armed Forces as a career move since you have to resurrect the dead in IBM Assembly to get a job here in the states, but have some reservations about that plan. The Peace Corps was suggested to me long ago but I had completely forgotten about it. Thanks.
Hell man, ask me what Shanghai is like. I was there. I saw the sights. I was an American in China and I can tell you exactly what it was like for me. That doesn't even imply that I'm truly representing the situation in Shanghai.
Ask me what Pittsburgh is like. I'll tell you my story, but it probably won't mesh with that from a life-long resident of Pittsburgh. Uh oh, my role as a neocon secret operative has been revealed!
I hear ya, but it sounds to me like Google has a strong argument for selling the clean interface for a monthly subscription fee and putting up an ad-laden frontpage for free. To maintain dominance in the free search engine market, they don't have to be excellent, just better than the rest of them. As far as a paid subscription to a clean (or customizable) interface, I know I'd find it easy to justify $5 per month for what Google offers.
Not that I want that to happen - I love Google as a free service. As an armchair CEO, though, I'm a little puzzled why Google resists the IPO while providing a basically free product. I know their revenue comes from partnerships and I know they would lose some popularity if they started charging money. They do have a premium product, though, and if they're so adverse to being traded publicly, it just makes sense to me that they would try to generate a little more revenue from their excellent service.
Same thought occurred to me. Anybody who has paid attention to my other posts knows that I'm a bitter grad student in CS who despises the American job market. If there was just a tiny bit of organization over there saying, "Pay for your plane ticket, we've got a room you can stay in, we'll feed you, you just volunteer to work 50 hours a week promoting linux," I would be there by the second week of May (when this semester is over.)
I'm not making any significant money here in the states and I'd leap at the opportunity to participate in such a project. What I can't handle is the uncertainty of arriving somewhere and not having a clue where to begin. I'll volunteer, but I'm not a leader on day 1.
I don't think that analogy necessarily fits, but for the case in hand, yes.
If the Chinese government takes some open source project and then modifies or uses it to meet their goals, that's horrible but the people responsible for the open source project have no investment in those crimes. In the case of proprietary software from which a profit is made, those corporations are directly benefitting from the violation of human rights. Those companies have the ability to say, "No, I don't think we need to profit from human torture," but the open source project is, and always was, available to anyone free of charge.
I'm more curious than argumentative, but if a software company can profit from selling productivity software to a government well known for violating human rights and there's not even a seed of wrongdoing...
It is likewise perfectly fine for American gun manufacturers to profit from selling guns to nations involved in bloody civil wars, right? After all, how would the gun company know that their profits are coming from the specific guns that will be shooting unarmed non-combatants?
It is also fine to profit from selling explosives to religious extremists, right? How could YOU know what they plan to do with those bombs? If they murder someone, hey, it's not your fault. You just made an honest buck.
There's nothing wrong with making a nice profit from outfitting North Korea with a nuclear power program and training their scientists to run it. I mean, wink wink, it's not really a weapons program, and besides, YOU won't be the one responsible for actually converting the nuclear power generation knowledge into weapons knowledge. You're completely blameless!
If you're a doctor who prescribes Oxycontin to someone who is clearly addicted because you make money whenever they come back for an office visit is totally A-OK. That person exercises his own free will with that prescription, so you are totally blameless if he ends up dead on the pills you prescribed.
And if you sell database, productivity, or organizational software to a government that is clearly going to use your tools to better enable themselves to violate human rights, you have NO part in the blame. Right? Just because you made a buck on some skinny-eyed foreigner being tortured or murdered doesn't mean you actually DID it. You just made money because someone else wanted to do it.
So many people seem to think that "Dur, yeah, but they could have done it with Linux too, drool drool." Yeah, who is making a profit from that? Basically nobody. Well Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, that was the point in the beginning. I'm glad we all agree that these corporations are doing something wrong.
I'm not trying to lay this entirely at Microsoft's door, nor am I saying that they're as guilty as the government who comitted the offenses. I've read tons of posts from people saying that Amnesty International is a bunch of scummy whiners, but I haven't read anybody explain why prescribing Oxycontin to an addict is a good thing to do. So AI is a bunch of scummy whiners - what do I care? - I still don't see anybody advocating the distribution of handguns to convicted felons. I don't see anybody suggesting that we go into business selling nuclear technology to schizophrenic dictators. Fact remains that AI has a point - these corporations are making a profit from the violation of human rights and some attention should be paid to that.
Hehe, the parent was moderated up as "Insightful" and "Interesting", but now it's back down as "Flamebait". If "Flamebait" were the appropriate moderation for that comment, it stands to reason that among the several replies would be a legitimate "flame". Instead I've been reading some thoughtful posts from people who do and do not agree with my perspective.
Those who moderated my post as "Flamebait" are living in denial. There is simply no way I could in good conscience encourage someone to go into computer science, and I feel that way for a very valid reason. The entry-level job market for CS could not be worse. I DID go to college to study something that I love. I'm pretty much broke, jobless, and the fact that I'm educated in something I love isn't paying the goddamn bills. If you think that's flamebait, then the simple fact is that there is a problem with your decision making skills. You have every right in the world to disagree with me, but to characterize my statement as flamebait is a clear mistake.
How much money is being made by selling open source software to the Chinese? Roughly none? Right - my point didn't "completely ignore" open source software, it was "completely aware" of it.
If selling liquor to obviously drunk people places some blame on the bartender for the automobile accident, if selling guns to mentally unstable persons places some blame on the gun merchant, if prescribing dangerous drugs to people with free will places some blame on the doctor, then some blame MUST lie with Microsoft (and others) who profit from China's disregard from human rights.
Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but I think perhaps there is a slightly more enlightened point of view.
Windows doesn't oppress people; China oppresses people. Granted. However, if it is widely known and understood that the Chinese government is better enabling themselves to violate human rights because of the increased productivity of Microsoft Excel, is Microsoft totally exonerated because all they're interested in is money?
I can see the ad campaign now: Chinese people in a dingy office with hanging lightbulbs. Suddenly a group of office workers busts into wild gyrating dance, but the film is in slow motion. Voice-over begins, "They said it couldn't be done. They told you that you couldn't monitor the forbidden thoughts of 100,000 revolutionaries with a workforce of six. But you have the power of Microsoft Office XP on your side, boosting efficiency of your workforce to never before seen levels. Good job, Ming."
Yeah, I'm milking it a little bit, but if Ming got promoted and ordered another 1,000 copies of Office for his new workforce, is Microsoft TRULY free from wrongdoing if they KNOW he's very likely using their product to violate human rights?
I'm not trying to lead a campaign of debate here, because I like most people think that AI often has their collective heads in the clouds. I don't think it's unreasonable, though, for Microsoft to share some of the responsibility for what happens when they sell their products to a government that has publicly massacred their own people.
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I once let some kids into the CS lab when I was an undergrad and they ran over to the login screen. When the realized that their Windows names/passwords didn't work, one of them got a very superior tone and said, "Oh yeah, these computers SUCK! The CS department does everything in DOS!" The login screen said, "Welcome to Redhat Linux 7.0". Totally ignorant.
The server can basically eliminate "port knocking collisions" by arbitrarily adjusting the dynamic sequence as necessary. The message could be like, "You know the normal next port? Yeah, go one up from that."
The password challenge has three outcomes: Right pw, Wrong pw, and Wrong Port. Any legitimate user could screw up the password now and then, but no legitimate user should ever get the Wrong Port failure. To make this work, though, I'm thinking that your "profile" would have to consist of something like your username, your (human typed) password, and something that your client stores like a PGP signature. A bad guy would have to steal both your password (in your brain) and your PGP-style signature (on your computer) in order to spoof your identity to such a session. If you have an extremely high prejudice against Wrong Port failures (which isn't unreasonable, since it should be immune from human error) then your password becomes necessary, but not sufficient to gain access.
I think the port knocking has great potential but perhaps isn't quite mature. But hey, maybe I'm just missing the obvious stuff.
For my own part, I've downloaded probably 2-3 gigs of mp3s and programs, but I've also downloaded at least 6 gigs of linux ISOs. That's about 3000 illegal files and less than 20 linux ISOs. You know which method to use if you want to make me look like a bad guy.
(And I make ample use of MD5s when getting ISOs from P2P. It's not perfect, but I'm not doing anything critical with them and I haven't had a problem.. yet..)
Fscking a, man. You stole my reply. Home Grown +1 Funny from me.
I wanted to be a smart ass and say something like, "Yeah, but if you type the black magic incantations wrong, your soul is lost forever," but instead only had the courage to be a smart ass and say, "Yeah, it is just a bunch of typing." I didn't know what else to say - it was still a smart assed thing to say but I was the only one who knew it. I guess. The only positive thing is that I didn't work directly under that intellectual cheetah.
So maybe "creating jobs" isn't entirely accurate, but "shifting jobs" to technology might be. Either way, there need to be more jobs in the American technology sector or highly educated Americans are going to leave the country for work. That's a really bad situation, in my opinion, and I'm glad that -something- is being done. I don't think it's a perfect solution, nor do I think it's nearly enough to be called hand-holding, but I'm glad that something is happening.
In response to the moon base controversy, what's the point? Building a moonbase is going to require more government money spent on the program. That involves more jobs, a longer window for the program, more research, and perhaps a moon base has some innate benefits that are entirely separate from getting to Mars. It's probably easier to launch an immediate response rescue mission from the moon than from Earth to any Earth orbit. It might take 3 days to get to Earth orbit from the moon, but the launch costs are cheaper and the dangers of a bad launch to the population are significantly less.
In any event, Bush could have set a goal to put an American on the Sun for all it really matters. This is a case where the means don't justify the ends, the means ARE the ends. His advisors picked up on the fact that the American people are willing to rally behind the prestige of the space program and won't complain too heavily about spending their tax dollars on it - turn that around and create jobs and stimulate the industry.
If, in the State of the Union, Bush had picked some industry out of a hat and announced his plan to dump money on it and create jobs, people would have been outraged at the arbitrary decision. Yet jobs need to be created around here. So yes, it was a proposal that's going to help him get elected, but I really don't see how the any amount of pseudo-science rhetoric from the President has any significance. I heard the proposal live, but by the time my ears heard it, my brain heard "Federal money to create jobs." That's the weight of the issue, in my opinion, and honestly I'm glad that the guy is doing something about the lack of jobs and subsequent brain-drain in American technology.
I have no problem with my other reply being modded flamebait, but seriously wtf are people thinking that the parent is insightful? Competition is good! (Give me my mod points please.) President Bush is trying to get reelected! (Give me my mod points please.)
I'm not voting for Bush any more than the parent poster is, but damnit how does the comment about election year politics even make sense? I suppose you'd prefer that politicians you don't like only suggest stupid and dumb programs in election years rather than spend large sums of money to create new jobs in technology? Or should Bush have proposed to give NASA tons of money before the Mars rovers landed successfully? There's nothing "insightful" here, you're simply looking at what Bush does and defining "good behavior" as the opposite.
The ESA's program doesn't sound like politics? Give me a break. If it wasn't good politics, there would be protests in the streets or rants in the newspapers, and those protests/rants would be compelling.
Like I said, I'm not voting for Bush any more than the parent poster, but if the best you can come up with is "Republican=Bad, Democrat=Good" then why bother? A politician is a politician whether he supports massive social programs or extensive protection for corporations. If the sum of your analytical thought is, "Bush said it, it is BAD," then I suggest being "insightful" enough to recognize that you haven't really put enough critical thought into who is going to get your vote.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
-Winston Churchill
What really irks me about political discussion is not disagreeing, but when I read/hear stuff that couldn't possibly be realistic.
Bush, in an evil plot to "be successful", is going to reach his sinister goals by proposals to spend thousands of millions of dollars on the American aerospace and technology industries, and you have figured out that THIS WILL BOOST HIS CHANCES OF GETTING REELECTED!!!
Holy crap! I guess it's a good idea Bush scrapped his proposal to spend $11.9 billion on a study to replace the American flag with the flag of the former USSR, because THAT WOULD HURT HIS CHANCES OF GETTING ELECTED! It's a freaking conspiracy that has gotten out of control! A politician tries to PROVIDE FOR HIS CONSTITUENTS and SPEND MONEY ON DOMESTIC INDUSTRY all in a SHAMELESS BID to get people to VOTE FOR HIM!!!
All kidding aside, I think you need to start up a website where you can inform the rest of us about this scandal. Make some really clever comparisons to the European proposal which surely has nothing to do with getting some people elected, because everybody knows that European politicians must be the dumbest humans on the planet. That, or they're just politicians too, and wouldn't you know it, everybody is trying to get elected.
I guess this is flamebait, but wtf, it's late at night and I'm loaded.
Gil-Scott Heron! He also penned the incredible "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," for which I have the MP3 (in violation of copyright, naturally). He's a clever guy, but as with everything, you have to take it in context. You'd think that man has never heard of such a thing as a poor white person, and I've got news for him on that subject.
Normally I'm the type of guy who's all in favor of government spending on technology and science since that creates potential jobs for me or those who compete with me for a job.
While the quote you present does have a valid point, here are two flaws I have with it.
First, it is a racially polarizing quote. Now, I know, the original speaker was black. That's all well and good, but the universality of such a quote is cut off at the knees. I mean Christ on stilts, white people aren't poor? Somebody must have fscking forgot to tell me about that because I'm dying to find a job.
Secondly, your assessment of the quote is that we should be helping our people rather than spending money on rockets. There are typically two paths for such an idea: social welfare or creating jobs. Welfare has its place in America, though the system is definitely not flawless. Spending money to send a rocket to Mars, however, will create jobs in America, research in America, and build prestige for American industry. It's not a social service, but damnit if that isn't going to help the American man who has helped himself by getting an education.
I'm looking for a job. I'd rather get a job through government funding on space research than take a check from the government. The former is an investment in a sustainable increase in the economy, and the other is just a pacifier while I blame some other ethnic group for my woes.
Seriously, your quote represents a very valid point about the human condition, but it's not so useful in a public forum or for making public policy.
And I'm just glad that internet soap boxes are free.
Don't forget the fact that all these spoofed returns have spread valid email addresses all over the internet. Before MyDoom, I got 0 spam at my @vt.edu because I used it only for private correspondence and receiving from the school. I've now received a bunch of those "transaction failed" messages as a result of using my email as a fake return, and now I'm getting spam.
That said, I agree that it is slightly disturbing to see how much attention is placed on the CPU vs. Human competitions. Being that the number of moves is indeed finite and that a computer's brain is far more capable of looking ahead, cataloging and comparing potential moves, and therefore potentially far less likely to fall for distractions or ruses, the game will become more mechanical and the machine will eventually win every contest. I really don't see how the world will benefit from that; more likely it will foster increased intimidation in people who don't really understand the nature of computation. On the other side of things, there are no computer generated paintings to be compared with the masters, no computer composed music that will be cherished by generations, and no computer generated literature that captivates the imagination. So much media attention is placed on these chess games and I don't think the non-obvious limitations and/or ramifications of the computational task is really explained well.
A 3 year old child can create a better piece of artwork for Mommy or Daddy's desk at work than the best chess supercomputer ever will, and distinctions such as that are rarely explained.
Sheesh, that's just what they told you back in prison. Nice try tossing in a reference to women. Oops, does "tossing" have a bad connotation?
(Nothing personal, just playing the innuendo game.)
Even taking HIS comments in context, he says that everything is pretty safe and back to normal, yet everyone has an automatic weapon in his or her home, white folk don't go outside at night, and bandits are rampant.
I'm not even sure there is a distinct difference between what this reporter says and what America's admittedly heavily filtered mass media says. It's hard to report that US soldiers were blown up and put a cheerful spin on it, but it's not hard to talk about the recovery of a demolished economy and make it sound like peaches and cream.
I think that I am going to have a conversation with my girlfriend this afternoon about organizations like the Peace Corp (though not necessarily that exact org) where an educated yet unemployed American can see the world, do some good work, and gain employable experience. I've done extensive volunteer work in the past and am well aware of the "on a mission" philosophy. Thanks for the response though.
Not a bad idea - I had been seriously considered the US Armed Forces as a career move since you have to resurrect the dead in IBM Assembly to get a job here in the states, but have some reservations about that plan. The Peace Corps was suggested to me long ago but I had completely forgotten about it. Thanks.
Hell man, ask me what Shanghai is like. I was there. I saw the sights. I was an American in China and I can tell you exactly what it was like for me. That doesn't even imply that I'm truly representing the situation in Shanghai.
Ask me what Pittsburgh is like. I'll tell you my story, but it probably won't mesh with that from a life-long resident of Pittsburgh. Uh oh, my role as a neocon secret operative has been revealed!
Not that I want that to happen - I love Google as a free service. As an armchair CEO, though, I'm a little puzzled why Google resists the IPO while providing a basically free product. I know their revenue comes from partnerships and I know they would lose some popularity if they started charging money. They do have a premium product, though, and if they're so adverse to being traded publicly, it just makes sense to me that they would try to generate a little more revenue from their excellent service.
I'm not making any significant money here in the states and I'd leap at the opportunity to participate in such a project. What I can't handle is the uncertainty of arriving somewhere and not having a clue where to begin. I'll volunteer, but I'm not a leader on day 1.
If the Chinese government takes some open source project and then modifies or uses it to meet their goals, that's horrible but the people responsible for the open source project have no investment in those crimes. In the case of proprietary software from which a profit is made, those corporations are directly benefitting from the violation of human rights. Those companies have the ability to say, "No, I don't think we need to profit from human torture," but the open source project is, and always was, available to anyone free of charge.
It is likewise perfectly fine for American gun manufacturers to profit from selling guns to nations involved in bloody civil wars, right? After all, how would the gun company know that their profits are coming from the specific guns that will be shooting unarmed non-combatants?
It is also fine to profit from selling explosives to religious extremists, right? How could YOU know what they plan to do with those bombs? If they murder someone, hey, it's not your fault. You just made an honest buck.
There's nothing wrong with making a nice profit from outfitting North Korea with a nuclear power program and training their scientists to run it. I mean, wink wink, it's not really a weapons program, and besides, YOU won't be the one responsible for actually converting the nuclear power generation knowledge into weapons knowledge. You're completely blameless!
If you're a doctor who prescribes Oxycontin to someone who is clearly addicted because you make money whenever they come back for an office visit is totally A-OK. That person exercises his own free will with that prescription, so you are totally blameless if he ends up dead on the pills you prescribed.
And if you sell database, productivity, or organizational software to a government that is clearly going to use your tools to better enable themselves to violate human rights, you have NO part in the blame. Right? Just because you made a buck on some skinny-eyed foreigner being tortured or murdered doesn't mean you actually DID it. You just made money because someone else wanted to do it.
So many people seem to think that "Dur, yeah, but they could have done it with Linux too, drool drool." Yeah, who is making a profit from that? Basically nobody. Well Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, that was the point in the beginning. I'm glad we all agree that these corporations are doing something wrong.
I'm not trying to lay this entirely at Microsoft's door, nor am I saying that they're as guilty as the government who comitted the offenses. I've read tons of posts from people saying that Amnesty International is a bunch of scummy whiners, but I haven't read anybody explain why prescribing Oxycontin to an addict is a good thing to do. So AI is a bunch of scummy whiners - what do I care? - I still don't see anybody advocating the distribution of handguns to convicted felons. I don't see anybody suggesting that we go into business selling nuclear technology to schizophrenic dictators. Fact remains that AI has a point - these corporations are making a profit from the violation of human rights and some attention should be paid to that.
Those who moderated my post as "Flamebait" are living in denial. There is simply no way I could in good conscience encourage someone to go into computer science, and I feel that way for a very valid reason. The entry-level job market for CS could not be worse. I DID go to college to study something that I love. I'm pretty much broke, jobless, and the fact that I'm educated in something I love isn't paying the goddamn bills. If you think that's flamebait, then the simple fact is that there is a problem with your decision making skills. You have every right in the world to disagree with me, but to characterize my statement as flamebait is a clear mistake.
If selling liquor to obviously drunk people places some blame on the bartender for the automobile accident, if selling guns to mentally unstable persons places some blame on the gun merchant, if prescribing dangerous drugs to people with free will places some blame on the doctor, then some blame MUST lie with Microsoft (and others) who profit from China's disregard from human rights.
Windows doesn't oppress people; China oppresses people. Granted. However, if it is widely known and understood that the Chinese government is better enabling themselves to violate human rights because of the increased productivity of Microsoft Excel, is Microsoft totally exonerated because all they're interested in is money?
I can see the ad campaign now: Chinese people in a dingy office with hanging lightbulbs. Suddenly a group of office workers busts into wild gyrating dance, but the film is in slow motion. Voice-over begins, "They said it couldn't be done. They told you that you couldn't monitor the forbidden thoughts of 100,000 revolutionaries with a workforce of six. But you have the power of Microsoft Office XP on your side, boosting efficiency of your workforce to never before seen levels. Good job, Ming."
Yeah, I'm milking it a little bit, but if Ming got promoted and ordered another 1,000 copies of Office for his new workforce, is Microsoft TRULY free from wrongdoing if they KNOW he's very likely using their product to violate human rights?
I'm not trying to lead a campaign of debate here, because I like most people think that AI often has their collective heads in the clouds. I don't think it's unreasonable, though, for Microsoft to share some of the responsibility for what happens when they sell their products to a government that has publicly massacred their own people.