I would be willing to bet that when the trigger is pulled on a firearm, or even a firearm is aimed
Considering that the ratio of target practice to killing people is greater than 1,000,000 to 1, it seems you've lost your bet. (Without even considering legal killings of people or animals)
How does paying a couple of dollars every few years (with no testing) ensure that I drive safer?
You're incorrectly focusing on license-renewal, which is actually less important than the initial issuance, which is what really improves safety. Or do you think that I'd really be fine to allow 14-year olds to get in cars and do 65 on the highway without at least first convincing a backseat cop that he's fundamentally competent?
. Almost every DDR song has at least three step patterns, each with their own degree of dificulty,
More importantly, if you miss a single step in DDR, you keep playing. You can RECOVER from errors. Dragon's Lair stops on your first mistake and waits for another $0.5 to restart from the beginning.
That's part of the problem. To plug a few exploits and switch to safer default settings should only need a small patch, not a 200 megabyte "overhaul".
SP2 will change lots of things, more than most users care about. If Microsoft wants to rewrite half of XP out of a sense of perfectionism, fine. But security upgrades should be considered time-critical, and shouldn't wait on "nice to haves".
The question to be decided by the patent examiner is could this method have been "discovered" by someone else without making the investment that the patent applicant made?
The question they should really ask is "Will giving you this patent promote progress?" (The Constitutional requirement for Intellectual Property protection)
Regardless of the ease of re-invention, if you would've gone for the discovery anyway without anticipation of getting a patent, then the government shouldn't give you one.
For something like LZ GIF compression, or Amazon 1-Click purchasing, it's obvious: The product would've been created even if it couldn't be patented. And if that's so, then a patent will actually slow progress (made by others).
For most pharmaceuticals, the opposite answer is obvious: a drug company would rarely have gone through all the work for a product without knowing it was patentable.
Copyright, intended for literary and artistic works
That's the historical intent of copyright as created in Europe centuries ago.
However, in the USA, copyright is supposedly derived from the Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and the useful arts..."
Literary/artistic works are by no means scientific or "useful". So by a strict reading, all copyrights on something that doesn't actually work are prohibited.
* One could argue that any art can be "useful", if entertainment is considered a use. But if that were the intent, then the Consitution would've had no reason to print "useful" at all.
for the purpose of the immediate engagement, they're still neutralized. It really doesn't matter if the other guy is dead or alive
For the immediate engagement, yes. But not for longterm goals.
From the insurgent's side, their target isn't so much the USA military troops (which are too numerous and powerful to really defeat), but rather the USA's national resolve to keep the troops in Iraq. When a voter or politician is considering the war effort, deaths count more than wounds. Newspapers daily report the total number of "coalition deaths", but "number of intensive hospitalizations" is hardly mentioned. So in the big picture, the resistance wants to kill, not wound.
Or how about the US side? Conventional military analysis says that wounding an enemy not only deprives the opposition of a fighter, but also costs them money and time caring for the victim. But that assumes that the enemy is actually the one who bears the expenses of treatment! And in an occupation/insurgency scenario like today, it's actually the USA who shoulders the cost of the wounded opponent- first by hospitalizing him, and later by imprisonment. (And more even later, when in a few years he's turned loose to make trouble again)
So in the big picture (and a little cynically) the USA wants to kill, not just wound.
Don't you think that the simplest explanation for that be more a function of the fact that US body armor was specifically designed to defeat the 7.62x29mm round?
Yes, which supports the position that 7.62 is no longer powerful enough.
However, if they're taking out of the fight it's still more or less tactically equivilent regardless of if they die in the hospital or if they live -- for the purpose of the immediate engagement, they're still neutralize
I agree with you (it's a rule of thumb that a serious wound drains more military resources than a death) but interestingly, USMC combat veterans do not. Marines debriefing on their return from OIF complained a lot about needing to shoot a downed enemy 1-2 more times to stop him from wiggling.
They requested a round bigger than 5.56 for more power. Of course, prehaps their desires came from emotional reasons, and not rational tactical thinking.
I believe that such a proposal would make VOIP for medical clinics fundamentally impossible to impliment legally if such a provision were to be passed.
No. It would just mean that encryption is treated like a machinegun. The government can have it, and individuals can be permitted to temporarily have them for the purpose of following government instructions... but it's still not really legal.
What could happen is the FBI/NSA randomly sniffs internet traffic. Anything they can't read, they track down the sender and check if he's approved for crypto- if not, then off to jail.
Encryption is the *basis* of e-commerce. One cannot simply undermine it without destroying the whole foundation of internet commerce.
Ban all crypto that the government can't break. That means mandated key-escrow backdoors.
And hit exactly at the precise spot to fataly damage the building and make sure it collapses as fast as possible?
But they didn't do that. If they had hit lower, the collapse would've been faster (and more importantly, a greater percentage of occupants would be trapped inside, above the fire).
A solid hit on the building almost anyplace except the very top would've been enough for an eventual collapse.
The hijackers were not cowards - but the people who planned the attacks certainly are
But if coward means "not brave", and brave means "willing to take risks for your beliefs", then the planners were certainly taking risks, because directing that attack hugely increased the chance of US soldiers coming to kill them. It was enormously less risky than actually being a suicide-pilot, but ticking off the USA is far from safe.
Simply put, if you are working in a language where you have control of the memory you use;
That's not an answer, but an evasion. The question then becomes "Is it really that difficult to avoid languages where you have control of the memory?"- and as we all know, the answer to that is NO.
There are no real obstacles to safer languages, it's just the historical inertia of the "good enough" C-compatible environment that keeps us there.
So long as "compiling to binary on the fly" takes ZERO time.
But actually, GCC can compile Java to binary ahead of time, just like it does with any C++ code. But having experimented with this, it doesn't go any faster than Java in a VM on the same machine... which could either indicate the VM is compiling very well, or (more likely) that GCC isn't very optimized for Java inputs.
*BAM* it reveals that the client-software shouldn't have been naively decompressing the whole file, but only the part it was going to display. (Loading more data from the file when the user begins scrolling)
But seriously folks, this is an example of why DoS attacks can't really be automatically prevented. There's no strict boundary between a legitimate use of heavy resources and intentional squandering of resources.
What if someone wants to store 190000 pixels of black? On the other hand, if I'm browsing the web on my PDA, then a 1280x1024 image will just about bomb me out.
Or just write good code that includes bounds checking.
Or just never crash your car. That way, you don't need a seatbelt or airbags.
In fact, if these stupid humans would stop being making mistakes, all kinds of problems would just go away. The nerve of some people; making the world a more dangerous place, just because they happen to be fallible!
Buffer owerflow attacks won't happen in languages which doesn't "support" that feature,
Pedantically, buffer overflows can still happen in any of those languages. But the easily-exploitable subset called stack overruns cannot. And without stack overruns, the difficulty of convincing a buffer overflow to actually do something harmful is great indeed- but it is a theoretical possibility.
Oh I didn't realize they were already on the flight path towards those buildings.
I've spend a few minutes at the controls of 747 simulators. It's true what they say: if you're already safely airborne, and you don't care much about your own survival, it's easy to turn a plane.
Both the target buildings were on the coastline, near a very distinctive river pattern. They really just had to follow the waterline, and then turn towards the giant building. If you check out the recorded flight paths, you can see this is what they did.
Teaching the required amount of flying is trivial in comparison to (a) getting a healthy young man willing to kill himself & others and (b) teaching him to function in US society without raising too much fuss.
(Condition B is easy on its own, but not in conjunction with A)
It reminds me of people calling the terrorists cowards right after 9/11.
I'll love it when someday the FBI declares that all voice-chat applications must be tappable. So they'll insert backdoors into the next version of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, and their agents can sit all day and listen to teens discuss the sabotage of poison-gas canisters (in between homosexual puns)
Slashdot Mirror
I would be willing to bet that when the trigger is pulled on a firearm, or even a firearm is aimed
Considering that the ratio of target practice to killing people is greater than 1,000,000 to 1, it seems you've lost your bet. (Without even considering legal killings of people or animals)
Driver's licenses do not do anything to ensure safe driving.
You're wrong. (So is this weirdo).
How does paying a couple of dollars every few years (with no testing) ensure that I drive safer?
You're incorrectly focusing on license-renewal, which is actually less important than the initial issuance, which is what really improves safety. Or do you think that I'd really be fine to allow 14-year olds to get in cars and do 65 on the highway without at least first convincing a backseat cop that he's fundamentally competent?
. Almost every DDR song has at least three step patterns, each with their own degree of dificulty,
More importantly, if you miss a single step in DDR, you keep playing. You can RECOVER from errors. Dragon's Lair stops on your first mistake and waits for another $0.5 to restart from the beginning.
[insert coin]
Even in the 80s, I remember Dragon's Lair as taking 2 quarters... the first game I saw do that. So it's twice as bad as you think!
Seems they haven't dropped their price a lot.
I don't think they really still ask $465 for Excel.
This update is a major overhaul to the OS.
That's part of the problem. To plug a few exploits and switch to safer default settings should only need a small patch, not a 200 megabyte "overhaul".
SP2 will change lots of things, more than most users care about. If Microsoft wants to rewrite half of XP out of a sense of perfectionism, fine. But security upgrades should be considered time-critical, and shouldn't wait on "nice to haves".
Exactly. This puts MS on notice that they should abandon their software patent strategy.
Uh, bzzt. Microsoft is an opponent of IBM, but they're never going to deploy Linux.
SCO is the real target- they still support/resell Linux, while suing IBM.
The question to be decided by the patent examiner is could this method have been "discovered" by someone else without making the investment that the patent applicant made?
The question they should really ask is "Will giving you this patent promote progress?" (The Constitutional requirement for Intellectual Property protection)
Regardless of the ease of re-invention, if you would've gone for the discovery anyway without anticipation of getting a patent, then the government shouldn't give you one.
For something like LZ GIF compression, or Amazon 1-Click purchasing, it's obvious: The product would've been created even if it couldn't be patented. And if that's so, then a patent will actually slow progress (made by others).
For most pharmaceuticals, the opposite answer is obvious: a drug company would rarely have gone through all the work for a product without knowing it was patentable.
Copyright, intended for literary and artistic works
That's the historical intent of copyright as created in Europe centuries ago.
However, in the USA, copyright is supposedly derived from the Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and the useful arts..."
Literary/artistic works are by no means scientific or "useful". So by a strict reading, all copyrights on something that doesn't actually work are prohibited.
* One could argue that any art can be "useful", if entertainment is considered a use. But if that were the intent, then the Consitution would've had no reason to print "useful" at all.
If your only protection were copyright/trade secrets, then reverse engineering would kill your ability to profit,
That claim is obviously false, as software authors profited for many years with copyright before software patents were legalized.
for the purpose of the immediate engagement, they're still neutralized. It really doesn't matter if the other guy is dead or alive
For the immediate engagement, yes. But not for longterm goals.
From the insurgent's side, their target isn't so much the USA military troops (which are too numerous and powerful to really defeat), but rather the USA's national resolve to keep the troops in Iraq. When a voter or politician is considering the war effort, deaths count more than wounds. Newspapers daily report the total number of "coalition deaths", but "number of intensive hospitalizations" is hardly mentioned. So in the big picture, the resistance wants to kill, not wound.
Or how about the US side? Conventional military analysis says that wounding an enemy not only deprives the opposition of a fighter, but also costs them money and time caring for the victim. But that assumes that the enemy is actually the one who bears the expenses of treatment! And in an occupation/insurgency scenario like today, it's actually the USA who shoulders the cost of the wounded opponent- first by hospitalizing him, and later by imprisonment. (And more even later, when in a few years he's turned loose to make trouble again)
So in the big picture (and a little cynically) the USA wants to kill, not just wound.
Don't you think that the simplest explanation for that be more a function of the fact that US body armor was specifically designed to defeat the 7.62x29mm round?
Yes, which supports the position that 7.62 is no longer powerful enough.
However, if they're taking out of the fight it's still more or less tactically equivilent regardless of if they die in the hospital or if they live -- for the purpose of the immediate engagement, they're still neutralize
I agree with you (it's a rule of thumb that a serious wound drains more military resources than a death) but interestingly, USMC combat veterans do not. Marines debriefing on their return from OIF complained a lot about needing to shoot a downed enemy 1-2 more times to stop him from wiggling.
They requested a round bigger than 5.56 for more power. Of course, prehaps their desires came from emotional reasons, and not rational tactical thinking.
I believe that such a proposal would make VOIP for medical clinics fundamentally impossible to impliment legally if such a provision were to be passed.
No. It would just mean that encryption is treated like a machinegun. The government can have it, and individuals can be permitted to temporarily have them for the purpose of following government instructions... but it's still not really legal.
What could happen is the FBI/NSA randomly sniffs internet traffic. Anything they can't read, they track down the sender and check if he's approved for crypto- if not, then off to jail.
Encryption is the *basis* of e-commerce. One cannot simply undermine it without destroying the whole foundation of internet commerce.
Ban all crypto that the government can't break. That means mandated key-escrow backdoors.
A $99 handheld GPS with a single waypoint
Interestingly, that same $99 GPS could've prevented Private Lynch's convoy from getting lost off-course and slaughtered.
And hit exactly at the precise spot to fataly damage the building and make sure it collapses as fast as possible?
But they didn't do that. If they had hit lower, the collapse would've been faster (and more importantly, a greater percentage of occupants would be trapped inside, above the fire).
A solid hit on the building almost anyplace except the very top would've been enough for an eventual collapse.
The hijackers were not cowards - but the people who planned the attacks certainly are
But if coward means "not brave", and brave means "willing to take risks for your beliefs", then the planners were certainly taking risks, because directing that attack hugely increased the chance of US soldiers coming to kill them. It was enormously less risky than actually being a suicide-pilot, but ticking off the USA is far from safe.
That's funny, because I did see the flight paths and they weren't along the coastline at all,
That map doesn't show rivers! (The ocean isn't the only thing with waterlines, you know)
Simply put, if you are working in a language where you have control of the memory you use;
That's not an answer, but an evasion. The question then becomes "Is it really that difficult to avoid languages where you have control of the memory?"- and as we all know, the answer to that is NO.
There are no real obstacles to safer languages, it's just the historical inertia of the "good enough" C-compatible environment that keeps us there.
Java could be the same speed as C++
So long as "compiling to binary on the fly" takes ZERO time.
But actually, GCC can compile Java to binary ahead of time, just like it does with any C++ code. But having experimented with this, it doesn't go any faster than Java in a VM on the same machine... which could either indicate the VM is compiling very well, or (more likely) that GCC isn't very optimized for Java inputs.
are you running Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird as root?
And another question: Is all of the valuable data on your computer owned by root, or do you occasionally do important work as a user?
Ever type your credit-card into Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird?
BAM* it expands into 2gb of ram.
*BAM* it reveals that the client-software shouldn't have been naively decompressing the whole file, but only the part it was going to display. (Loading more data from the file when the user begins scrolling)
But seriously folks, this is an example of why DoS attacks can't really be automatically prevented. There's no strict boundary between a legitimate use of heavy resources and intentional squandering of resources.
What if someone wants to store 190000 pixels of black? On the other hand, if I'm browsing the web on my PDA, then a 1280x1024 image will just about bomb me out.
Or just write good code that includes bounds checking .
Or just never crash your car. That way, you don't need a seatbelt or airbags.
In fact, if these stupid humans would stop being making mistakes, all kinds of problems would just go away. The nerve of some people; making the world a more dangerous place, just because they happen to be fallible!
Buffer owerflow attacks won't happen in languages which doesn't "support" that feature,
Pedantically, buffer overflows can still happen in any of those languages. But the easily-exploitable subset called stack overruns cannot. And without stack overruns, the difficulty of convincing a buffer overflow to actually do something harmful is great indeed- but it is a theoretical possibility.
Oh I didn't realize they were already on the flight path towards those buildings.
I've spend a few minutes at the controls of 747 simulators. It's true what they say: if you're already safely airborne, and you don't care much about your own survival, it's easy to turn a plane.
Both the target buildings were on the coastline, near a very distinctive river pattern. They really just had to follow the waterline, and then turn towards the giant building. If you check out the recorded flight paths, you can see this is what they did.
Teaching the required amount of flying is trivial in comparison to (a) getting a healthy young man willing to kill himself & others and (b) teaching him to function in US society without raising too much fuss.
(Condition B is easy on its own, but not in conjunction with A)
It reminds me of people calling the terrorists cowards right after 9/11.
Bill Maher was completely right.
I'll love it when someday the FBI declares that all voice-chat applications must be tappable. So they'll insert backdoors into the next version of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, and their agents can sit all day and listen to teens discuss the sabotage of poison-gas canisters (in between homosexual puns)