Gates told the Homeland Security folks all about how Palladium and other 'secure computing' initiatives will actually prevent the kind of scenario presented in Orwell's classic.
When asked by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge exactly how Palladium "relates to that one really neat Super Bowl commercial, the one with the running and throwing the hammer at the tv", Gates got a little red in the face and mumbled something about how that was the "wrong company."
but you should indeed fear their bed buddy the MPAA... i'm sure you're name will come up during some pillow talk.
My name, for the record, is George W. Bush. I live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC. My email address is president@whitehouse.gov and my ISP is the federal government. The MPAA/RIAA/MADD/NAMBLA can have my file sharing programs when they pry them from my cold, dead hands. Until then, they can all (in the words of Dennis Miller) go fuckerize themselves.
Oddly enough, I just recently rid myself of all the remaining warez which I didn't have. Don't need it (not that I had it) anymore now that I've switched the last Windows box over to Linux and all the software I could ever want is free. Yeah, I kept a small Windows partition around for games, but all of those I actually paid for. Go figure.
It was the collapse of Communism that did for Buran...
I seem to recall that Buran program never progressed beyond a few aerodynamic trials and an unmanned test flight that went twice around the earth. Seems I was told at the time that the frame of the orbiter was bent so far out of whack during reentry that they couldn't have launched it again if they'd wanted to.
And there's the difference between science in religion. Religion wants to preserve a tradition, so its adherents stick to their story regardless of what the evidence says. Science wants to understand the universe, so it goes whereever the evidence demands.
While it's true that religions tend to stick to their stories regardless of the evidence, the same tendency has been observed among scientists as well. If you had asked Einstein about non-local effects in quantum physics, I imagine you'd have gotten the same kind of response you'd get by asking Jerry Falwell about evolution.
Big f***ing deal. What's a non-programmer going to say about code? That's like going to a farmer and asking him how to fly an airplane, or a pilot, and asking him when the best time is to plant the corn.
I'd say it's more like asking an airplane pilot if two cows look the same.
Even more like asking a farmer if two planes look the same. They're designed to perform the same function (fly) with basically the same equipment (wings) so there will be some similarities and a lot of the differences will be in the technical details (the camber of the wing and the hydraulics that move the control surfaces) that an observer not fluent in airplane design might miss.
Granted, if the comments in question all contain the programmer's initials (something not uncommon where I work), then that would be pretty damning.
<satire>This is obviously a step in the wrong direction. Postal mail and package delivery won't be an efficient, user-friendly system until addresses, like phone-numbers, become portable. We need to get beyond the paradigm of delivering mail to a place and start delivering mail to a person. That's the future of mail, man.</satire>
After all, the more stations a company owns in a given market, the more variety of programming it will provide. Let's look at a contrived example:
The town of Example, TX, has 10,000 residents and 5 licensed commercial broadcast frequencies. 70% of the population like pop, 20% like country, 7% like rap, 2% like disco, and the final 1% like ska. With 5 companies owning the frequencies, we'll get 3 rock and 2 country stations, because that gives everybody the largest possible audience. If we go to 2 companies (we'll call them Clueless and Cheap Channel), we'll get 2 rock, 2 country, and 1 rap. If Cheap Channel buys out Clueless, we'll get 1 station of every type and everyone in town will be happy.
So, as you can see, consolidation is good for variety. And besides, it's not like there were ever any dissenting voices or minority opinions on commercial radio. Those always have been and always will be found below 92 MHz on your FM dial.
If I claim that I saw a mouse in your bedroom, you wouldn't require much evidence to believe me.
I would simply want to see the mouse, or some physical evidence like mouse tracks or mouse droppings.
If I claim that I saw a fully-grown African elephant in your bedroom, you would require significantly more evidence before you would believe me.
Once again, I'd want to see the elephant, or some physical evidence like elephant tracks or elephant droppings. This seems like the same amount of proof to me.
Saying that some claims require an extraordinary amount of proof is just a convenient way for "skeptics" to avoid dealing with things they'd rather not believe.
Nice to see the BBC article invoking Carl Sagan by repeating his famed aphorism that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
No disrespect to Sagan, but does nobody see the glaring error in that statement?
Extraordinary claims require the same amount of proof that absolutely mundane claims require! If some claims required more proof, science wouldn't be very scientific, would it? Who knows how much truth has been cast aside because the evidence just wasn't extraordinary enough?
I find the last two questions and answers to be particularly interesting.
Do you intend at any point to begin offering licenses to Linux users? We would hope as quickly as possible to develop solutions with the industry to allow customers to move forward with whatever platforms they wanted to choose, so long as the appropriate intellectual property foundation is in place.
Why didn't you act earlier?... The point is we're really only recently seeing significant moves by many players, specifically IBM, to come out and state that they are moving wholesale to Linux.
So they'd be generous enough to sell Linux licenses and they didn't realize there might be a problem until a really big company started backing the competition.
Would it be ok to spell it $CO from now on, especially since they seem to be in bed with M$?
"RFID tags also have the ability of recording information such as details of the transactions the paper note has been involved in.
Wonderful. Now how am I supposed to buy porn? Can't use credit card, it gets tracked. Can't use cash, it gets tracked. And with the price of porn these days, who's strong enough to haul around that much change?
Unfortunately, Bezos already has a patent on the use of a royalty-free patent policy. Though I'm sure he'd be willing to license it to W3C for a reasonable fee.
Once you get past the amount of storage space something like this would require, the next big hurdle seems to be actually gathering the information. Some of it can be had through traditional spying methods, but that security camera can't tell how I feel. The only real solution is self-reporting.
To that end, I submit my proposal... Universal Mandatory Blogging
Since none of the other responses seemed to be anywhere near answering this question, I'll give it a try.
When the scientists are talking about the "speed of gravity", they're not talking about how much pull there is. What they're talking about is how long it takes for a change in the pull to get from point A to point B.
Example: The sun's gravity keeps Earth orbiting around the sun. If the sun were to suddenly vanish, taking its gravitational forces with it, the Earth would just shoot off in a straight line. The question is, how long after the sun vanished would the sun's gravity still be felt on Earth before the Earth went shooting off in a straight line.
Just for reference, it takes light about 8 minutes to travel from the sun to Earth. So if Earth shot off in a straight line the instant the sun disappeared, the speed of gravity would be much faster than the speed of light. If gravity traveled much slower than light, we'd see the sun wink out, continue to orbit the empty spot for a while, then shoot off in a straight line. As it is, they figure gravity travels at just about the speed of light, so we'll go straight off into the void at about the same time we see the sun disappear.
Slashdot Mirror
Gates told the Homeland Security folks all about how Palladium and other 'secure computing' initiatives will actually prevent the kind of scenario presented in Orwell's classic.
When asked by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge exactly how Palladium "relates to that one really neat Super Bowl commercial, the one with the running and throwing the hammer at the tv", Gates got a little red in the face and mumbled something about how that was the "wrong company."
but you should indeed fear their bed buddy the MPAA... i'm sure you're name will come up during some pillow talk.
My name, for the record, is George W. Bush. I live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC. My email address is president@whitehouse.gov and my ISP is the federal government. The MPAA/RIAA/MADD/NAMBLA can have my file sharing programs when they pry them from my cold, dead hands. Until then, they can all (in the words of Dennis Miller) go fuckerize themselves.
Oddly enough, I just recently rid myself of all the remaining warez which I didn't have. Don't need it (not that I had it) anymore now that I've switched the last Windows box over to Linux and all the software I could ever want is free. Yeah, I kept a small Windows partition around for games, but all of those I actually paid for. Go figure.
I only use file swapping services for new release movies, software and pr0n. I have nothing to fear from the RIAA.
There's no need to make an addition to Godwin's Law itself. From now on, we'll just have Godwin's Law and the Ashcroft Corollary.
It was the collapse of Communism that did for Buran...
I seem to recall that Buran program never progressed beyond a few aerodynamic trials and an unmanned test flight that went twice around the earth. Seems I was told at the time that the frame of the orbiter was bent so far out of whack during reentry that they couldn't have launched it again if they'd wanted to.
And there's the difference between science in religion. Religion wants to preserve a tradition, so its adherents stick to their story regardless of what the evidence says. Science wants to understand the universe, so it goes whereever the evidence demands.
While it's true that religions tend to stick to their stories regardless of the evidence, the same tendency has been observed among scientists as well. If you had asked Einstein about non-local effects in quantum physics, I imagine you'd have gotten the same kind of response you'd get by asking Jerry Falwell about evolution.
I could've sworn he was the old play-by-play man for the Chicago Cubs...
Big f***ing deal. What's a non-programmer going to say about code? That's like going to a farmer and asking him how to fly an airplane, or a pilot, and asking him when the best time is to plant the corn.
I'd say it's more like asking an airplane pilot if two cows look the same.
Even more like asking a farmer if two planes look the same. They're designed to perform the same function (fly) with basically the same equipment (wings) so there will be some similarities and a lot of the differences will be in the technical details (the camber of the wing and the hydraulics that move the control surfaces) that an observer not fluent in airplane design might miss.
Granted, if the comments in question all contain the programmer's initials (something not uncommon where I work), then that would be pretty damning.
Under Section 8 (Injunctive Relief), if I sign the NDA and then even threaten to reveal any of what SCO showed me:
SCO shall be entitled ... to preliminary and permanent
injunctive relief
Does this mean they can send me down for the dirt nap?
Won't work because there's no way of verifying how many of the miles were driven on Oregon roads and are thus taxable miles.
And, of course, the solutions proposed in the article don't cover out-of-state drivers.
All in all, I'd say the folks in Oregon need to go back to the drawing board and try to find a plan that works.
<satire>This is obviously a step in the wrong direction. Postal mail and package delivery won't be an efficient, user-friendly system until addresses, like phone-numbers, become portable. We need to get beyond the paradigm of delivering mail to a place and start delivering mail to a person. That's the future of mail, man.</satire>
What with something like 70% of the surface of the planet being covered with water, won't this make for a lot of wasted address space?.
And how many packages will end up being delivered to watery oblivion because someone missed 1 character in a 10 character universal address code?
And what happens when the USPS, UPS, and FedEx all BSOD?
I don't know whether to be happy or sad.
After all, the more stations a company owns in a given market, the more variety of programming it will provide. Let's look at a contrived example:
The town of Example, TX, has 10,000 residents and 5 licensed commercial broadcast frequencies. 70% of the population like pop, 20% like country, 7% like rap, 2% like disco, and the final 1% like ska. With 5 companies owning the frequencies, we'll get 3 rock and 2 country stations, because that gives everybody the largest possible audience. If we go to 2 companies (we'll call them Clueless and Cheap Channel), we'll get 2 rock, 2 country, and 1 rap. If Cheap Channel buys out Clueless, we'll get 1 station of every type and everyone in town will be happy.
So, as you can see, consolidation is good for variety. And besides, it's not like there were ever any dissenting voices or minority opinions on commercial radio. Those always have been and always will be found below 92 MHz on your FM dial.
So, from now on, if all you want to do is upgrade your browser, you'll have to switch to Mozilla or another non-Microsoft application.
I'd do it myself now that I have mod points, but something tells me it wouldn't quite be kosher. ;)
And, yes, I do know that I can't mod myself up...it's a joke people, just like Michael Moore.
If I claim that I saw a mouse in your bedroom, you wouldn't require much evidence to believe me.
I would simply want to see the mouse, or some physical evidence like mouse tracks or mouse droppings.
If I claim that I saw a fully-grown African elephant in your bedroom, you would require significantly more evidence before you would believe me.
Once again, I'd want to see the elephant, or some physical evidence like elephant tracks or elephant droppings. This seems like the same amount of proof to me.
Saying that some claims require an extraordinary amount of proof is just a convenient way for "skeptics" to avoid dealing with things they'd rather not believe.
Nice to see the BBC article invoking Carl Sagan by repeating his famed aphorism that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
No disrespect to Sagan, but does nobody see the glaring error in that statement?
Extraordinary claims require the same amount of proof that absolutely mundane claims require! If some claims required more proof, science wouldn't be very scientific, would it? Who knows how much truth has been cast aside because the evidence just wasn't extraordinary enough?
I find the last two questions and answers to be particularly interesting.
Do you intend at any point to begin offering licenses to Linux users? We would hope as quickly as possible to develop solutions with the industry to allow customers to move forward with whatever platforms they wanted to choose, so long as the appropriate intellectual property foundation is in place.
Why didn't you act earlier? ... The point is we're really only recently seeing significant moves by many players, specifically IBM, to come out and state that they are moving wholesale to Linux.
So they'd be generous enough to sell Linux licenses and they didn't realize there might be a problem until a really big company started backing the competition.
Would it be ok to spell it $CO from now on, especially since they seem to be in bed with M$?
Down 4% since the market opened this morning, half of that in the last 20 minutes.
NASDAQ: SCOX
"RFID tags also have the ability of recording information such as details of the transactions the paper note has been involved in.
Wonderful. Now how am I supposed to buy porn? Can't use credit card, it gets tracked. Can't use cash, it gets tracked. And with the price of porn these days, who's strong enough to haul around that much change?
Unfortunately, Bezos already has a patent on the use of a royalty-free patent policy. Though I'm sure he'd be willing to license it to W3C for a reasonable fee.
Once you get past the amount of storage space something like this would require, the next big hurdle seems to be actually gathering the information. Some of it can be had through traditional spying methods, but that security camera can't tell how I feel. The only real solution is self-reporting.
To that end, I submit my proposal...
Universal Mandatory Blogging
Sure, it will compile, but code made exclusively of comments doesn't do much.
Since none of the other responses seemed to be anywhere near answering this question, I'll give it a try.
When the scientists are talking about the "speed of gravity", they're not talking about how much pull there is. What they're talking about is how long it takes for a change in the pull to get from point A to point B.
Example: The sun's gravity keeps Earth orbiting around the sun. If the sun were to suddenly vanish, taking its gravitational forces with it, the Earth would just shoot off in a straight line. The question is, how long after the sun vanished would the sun's gravity still be felt on Earth before the Earth went shooting off in a straight line.
Just for reference, it takes light about 8 minutes to travel from the sun to Earth. So if Earth shot off in a straight line the instant the sun disappeared, the speed of gravity would be much faster than the speed of light. If gravity traveled much slower than light, we'd see the sun wink out, continue to orbit the empty spot for a while, then shoot off in a straight line. As it is, they figure gravity travels at just about the speed of light, so we'll go straight off into the void at about the same time we see the sun disappear.