Of course! That's why US governments have never gotten away with infringements on civil liberties. You all have gun owners to thank!
Just think: During WW2, the government might have actually succeeded in interning Japanese-American citizens. Or McCarthy might have succeeded in his assault on freedom of association. The "war on drugs" might actually have succeeded in making unreasonable search and seizure routine. The "patriot" act might have passed. The NSA might still be tapping phones without warrants. Even habeas corpus might be suspended!
Thank you, gun owners! You've made America what it is today!
Don't worry, I'm sure you can count on gun owners to provide the necessarily balance. After all, look what a good job they did against Japanese-American internment, McCarthy, unreasonable search and seizure as part of the "war on drugs", the "patriot" act and the suspension of habeas corpus.
Elections won't get cancelled indefinitely. You'll still be able to vote!
Except for you. You've been struck from the roll in the latest purge. Complete accident. Sorry about that. Better luck next time.
You were expecting someone to help you get to a polling place? Funny thing is, that bus won't be making it. Some loony vandal slashed the tires. What are the odds of that?
Oh, you can still vote, though. Don't worry, I'll count your votes. I know what's a valid vote. Yes, of course the votes will be counted correctly! Don't you trust me or something? Oh, you must be some kind of nutty conspiracy theorist.
No, of course you can't have a recount. The Supreme Court says so. The guy was elected, can't we just leave it at that?
If there's one thing that's uncommon, it's common sense. Think of this as the equivalent of a modern building code; most of the ideas behind those are also common sense.
As long as it's a voluntary rating system, I'm with you. But as soon as it becomes a mandatory rating system, then I think you've crossed the line, and I'm not willing to give the folks running the rating system that much control over society, for the sake of your or anybody else's kids.
I agree, so long as the system is fairly standard. The last thing we need is three incompatible rating systems.
The fact is, any site targeting kids is going to use such a rating system because it's great advertising, and any site not targeting kids will either use it (again, for porn sites, a strong rating might be a great advertising) or not use it. The important thing is that if you choose to put a rating on your web site, there should be, at least in theory, recourse if your rating is too misleading.
Well I'm a parent, and I can partially answer that.
I have two kids, aged 4 and 6. Both of them know a bit about human anatomy. Both of them know what a human body looks like in its most natural state. It's not a big deal. Neither of them have yet asked how the baby gets inside a woman's tummy (though they've seen pictures of one coming out), but when it comes, they'll get a truthful (if undetailed, depending on how old they are) answer.
As intelligent as my kids are, though, at their ages I can't think of a good way to explain concepts like suicidal thoughts, mental illness, relationship breakdown and racist prejudice. Understanding this stuff requires a certain maturity that four year olds don't have. (The Australian OFLC refers to this sort of material as "adult themes".) That is indeed inappropriate for young kids, or at least my kids.
So what is "innappropriate"? Every child is different! My six-year-old has no problem with Saturday morning cartoon anime-style violence, but gets upset if a Disney character can't find his mother.
All I want is the tools to make parental screening effective. On movies, and television, I want a good ratings system so I can choose what my kids watch. On web sites? Well, my kids don't use the web yet. But probably the most useful thing would be some kind of standard (voluntary) ratings system, and legal recourse should a web site lie about its rating. Ratings are open to opinion, but I think we can tell the difference between a difference of opinion and actual lying.
If you look up "ultimate" in the dictionary, you'll see it actually means "final". Since there will clearly never, ever be another client-side application platform ever again, "ultimate" seems appropriate.
What are you looking at me like that for?
OK, OK. AJAX is the penultimate client-side platform. Happy now?
Re:This guy has staying power!
on
An Ode To Al
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I wonder what the chances of getting a slashdot interview with him would be.
This is also why nuclear power plants have cooling pools for nuclear waste -- for the first few years, the waste produces enough heat (energy) and radioactivity to make moving and storing much more difficult.
I've often wondered, given the massive amounts of research going into power distribution systems these days, why this energy can't be used in some way. Nuclear reactors, after all, work by heating water. If you could preheat the water using the recently-produced waste, you wouldn't need to drive the main reactor quite so high.
Is it that nobody could be bothered retro-fitting existing reactors with extra pipes and pumps, or is it a matter of diminishing returns?
I know that KDE libraries, as packaged on every distro I've seen, have exceptions disabled. This means you can't link to them with exception-throwing code. (The GNU linker knows it's a disaster waiting to happen.)
I'm surprised to hear you say that you use exceptions in your Qt code. You must be using a fairly recent version. The Qt source itself, last time I checked, is full of such leaky code as:
QThing* thing = new QThing();
Most of the KDE source looks like that too. It doesn't help that Qt's exception safety is poorly documented and is not obvious from the interface. (Ten years ago it made sense, but today, no method should take ownership of a raw pointer unless that method is a managed pointer constructor.)
The problem may simply be that KDE was designed for a previous incarnation of Qt, Qt has improved but KDE hasn't gotten with the programme yet. I get the impression that a lot of KDE developers think that way; I was informed not too long ago that Qt is "an alternative to the standard library", the implication being that you probably shouldn't use the STL in Qt code.
Don't pay attention to the clueless dorks who are suggesting that you should switch everything from C++ to something else, [...]
On the contrary, it would be enough if KDE did switch to C++.
At the moment, it uses a bastardised dialect of C++ which doesn't support exceptions. This makes combining KDE with just about any other ISO C++-compliant library (Boost being but the most obvious) in the same application impossible.
From this C++ developer's point of view, it's the most important fix, and it won't be easy. It means that when I write an application, I have to choose between writing it in C++ or writing it for KDE, and I have to check all of the third-party libraries I want to use to use to make sure they're obsolete enough to work with KDE.
BTW, it's a fallacy that "embedded" implies "tiny". Sure, a heart pacemaker is an embedded device, but so is a digital set-top box and so is an MRI scanner. Many modern embedded devices have demand for quite a bit of computing power.
Getting tasks to complete on time is actually not something that an operating system can guarantee: you can simply lie about how long your job will take. (But, like your compiler, if you lie to your operating system, it will get its revenge.) Or you can design your hardware so that it swamps the system with so many interrupts that it can't service any user tasks. This kind of problem is a property of the system as a whole, and the best that the kernel can do is guarantee that if you play by the rules, it will too.
Latency (be it interrupt delivery, signal delivery, context switch or whatever) is something that the kernel can guarantee for the most part, but even then, in an OS like Linux, where hardware drivers are part of the kernel, you also rely on those drivers to play nice. This means, for example, that it must not disable interrupt delivery around a loop.
The other main things you need are things like the ability to fix data in memory (which Linux has had for a while), fixed-priority tasks and the ability for a task not to be preempted by a task of the same priority.
The answer is very simple: If you have nothing to hide, why don't you send all your correspondence on postcards? The postage is cheaper, after all.
It's because we all have something to hide, even if we've done nothing wrong. The issue isn't secrecy, it's privacy.
You do nothing wrong when you have a quiet word with your boss about a co-worker, or your trade union representative about your boss, file your tax return, talk about your yeast infection with your doctor, go to the toilet, have sex, dance naked in your bedroom when your favourite song comes on the radio, or any number of perfectly normal things.
But your life would be affected if you knew someone might be watching. You might be slightly less likely to go to your doctor or pharmacist about the yeast infection if you thought some stranger might learn about it. You might not indulge in all the consensual sex that you might like if you thought someone might be watching (unless you like that sort of thing). These are known as "chilling effects".
Don't talk about the police turning up at the door. Talk about all the small, normal, legal, moral things that you do that you wouldn't do if someone was watching. Talk about those little stressful things that would make your life more miserable.
If you think about this, there's a certain amount of poetic justice. NP-hard problems are solvable in principle, just not in practice. And the conjecture that P!=NP may be true in principle, but not provable in practice.
(What exactly is insecure about the Internet's infrastructure anyway?)
Does your IP stack support strict source routing? It should, if it conforms to RFC 791. But of course you have it switched off, because it can be used for spoofing even though it's a very useful option.
The only reason why the Internet's infrastructure is as secure as it is, is that enough features have been removed.
If I sent you a version of Apache with malicious code in it and you installed it as root, I could do whatever I wanted. Doesn't matter how secure your OS is, you gave it the permissions it needs.
On the other hand, if Apache didn't need root to run, you wouldn't install the malicious Apache as root.
And that is an operating system problem. The Unix security model merges a bunch of permissions (the permission to access any file, the permission to open low-numbered ports, the permission to send any signal to any process etc) together under once concept: the super-user. Any program which needs one of those permissions gets them all. And if the program is sufficiently complex (sendmail springs to mind), you have a security problem waiting to happen.
They should do like other businesses do in this situation: Buy some congresscritters and legislate that operating systems should have at least a certain number of security holes. Naturally, such legislation will will affect open source operating systems the worst, but that's no big deal. Those who don't know what a "rootkit" is also won't know what Linux is.
Aside from math geeks though, of what use is that body of knowledge?
To the best of my knowledge, every field of mathematics more than (picking a number, say) 20 years old has found a practical application.
When I was at university, I had a friend who was doing a PhD in radical theory (an obscenely abstract area of group theory). She came in crestfallen one day, and when asked what was wrong, she said that somebody had found an application for it in environmental management.
That's not to say that every theorem has an application. But the thing is, you never know what's going to turn out to be important. There's a nice theorem from group theory which, when applied to permutation groups, says something like this:
If P and Q are permutations, then Q^-1PQ has the same cycle structure as P.
The mathematician who discovered this probably thought it was very cool and completely useless. Little did he know that this would turn out to be, as one cryptanalyst put it, "the theorem that won World War II". Using this theorem and a copy of the Enigma machine patent, Polish mathematicians managed to recover the original Enigma rotor and reflector ring permutations without physically having an Enigma machine, by analysing cycle structures.
If the answer to this question is: few or none, then the string theory community is not a scientific community, but merely a mutual admiration society.
More accurately: If this is true, the string theory community is not a physics community, but a pure mathematics community.
Nobody is disputing the fact that string theorists are coming up with some extremely cool and elegant mathematics, and in that, it's good science. The dispute is that these theorists might not be doing any physics.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course! That's why US governments have never gotten away with infringements on civil liberties. You all have gun owners to thank!
Just think: During WW2, the government might have actually succeeded in interning Japanese-American citizens. Or McCarthy might have succeeded in his assault on freedom of association. The "war on drugs" might actually have succeeded in making unreasonable search and seizure routine. The "patriot" act might have passed. The NSA might still be tapping phones without warrants. Even habeas corpus might be suspended!
Thank you, gun owners! You've made America what it is today!
Don't worry, I'm sure you can count on gun owners to provide the necessarily balance. After all, look what a good job they did against Japanese-American internment, McCarthy, unreasonable search and seizure as part of the "war on drugs", the "patriot" act and the suspension of habeas corpus.
Elections won't get cancelled indefinitely. You'll still be able to vote!
Except for you. You've been struck from the roll in the latest purge. Complete accident. Sorry about that. Better luck next time.
You were expecting someone to help you get to a polling place? Funny thing is, that bus won't be making it. Some loony vandal slashed the tires. What are the odds of that?
Oh, you can still vote, though. Don't worry, I'll count your votes. I know what's a valid vote. Yes, of course the votes will be counted correctly! Don't you trust me or something? Oh, you must be some kind of nutty conspiracy theorist.
No, of course you can't have a recount. The Supreme Court says so. The guy was elected, can't we just leave it at that?
Sheesh, the nerve of some people.
If there's one thing that's uncommon, it's common sense. Think of this as the equivalent of a modern building code; most of the ideas behind those are also common sense.
I agree, so long as the system is fairly standard. The last thing we need is three incompatible rating systems.
The fact is, any site targeting kids is going to use such a rating system because it's great advertising, and any site not targeting kids will either use it (again, for porn sites, a strong rating might be a great advertising) or not use it. The important thing is that if you choose to put a rating on your web site, there should be, at least in theory, recourse if your rating is too misleading.
Well I'm a parent, and I can partially answer that.
I have two kids, aged 4 and 6. Both of them know a bit about human anatomy. Both of them know what a human body looks like in its most natural state. It's not a big deal. Neither of them have yet asked how the baby gets inside a woman's tummy (though they've seen pictures of one coming out), but when it comes, they'll get a truthful (if undetailed, depending on how old they are) answer.
As intelligent as my kids are, though, at their ages I can't think of a good way to explain concepts like suicidal thoughts, mental illness, relationship breakdown and racist prejudice. Understanding this stuff requires a certain maturity that four year olds don't have. (The Australian OFLC refers to this sort of material as "adult themes".) That is indeed inappropriate for young kids, or at least my kids.
So what is "innappropriate"? Every child is different! My six-year-old has no problem with Saturday morning cartoon anime-style violence, but gets upset if a Disney character can't find his mother.
All I want is the tools to make parental screening effective. On movies, and television, I want a good ratings system so I can choose what my kids watch. On web sites? Well, my kids don't use the web yet. But probably the most useful thing would be some kind of standard (voluntary) ratings system, and legal recourse should a web site lie about its rating. Ratings are open to opinion, but I think we can tell the difference between a difference of opinion and actual lying.
If you look up "ultimate" in the dictionary, you'll see it actually means "final". Since there will clearly never, ever be another client-side application platform ever again, "ultimate" seems appropriate.
What are you looking at me like that for?
OK, OK. AJAX is the penultimate client-side platform. Happy now?
I wonder what the chances of getting a slashdot interview with him would be.
I've often wondered, given the massive amounts of research going into power distribution systems these days, why this energy can't be used in some way. Nuclear reactors, after all, work by heating water. If you could preheat the water using the recently-produced waste, you wouldn't need to drive the main reactor quite so high.
Is it that nobody could be bothered retro-fitting existing reactors with extra pipes and pumps, or is it a matter of diminishing returns?
I think you misspelled "wessels". Hope this helps!
I know that KDE libraries, as packaged on every distro I've seen, have exceptions disabled. This means you can't link to them with exception-throwing code. (The GNU linker knows it's a disaster waiting to happen.)
I'm surprised to hear you say that you use exceptions in your Qt code. You must be using a fairly recent version. The Qt source itself, last time I checked, is full of such leaky code as:
QThing* thing = new QThing();
Most of the KDE source looks like that too. It doesn't help that Qt's exception safety is poorly documented and is not obvious from the interface. (Ten years ago it made sense, but today, no method should take ownership of a raw pointer unless that method is a managed pointer constructor.)
The problem may simply be that KDE was designed for a previous incarnation of Qt, Qt has improved but KDE hasn't gotten with the programme yet. I get the impression that a lot of KDE developers think that way; I was informed not too long ago that Qt is "an alternative to the standard library", the implication being that you probably shouldn't use the STL in Qt code.
On the contrary, it would be enough if KDE did switch to C++.
At the moment, it uses a bastardised dialect of C++ which doesn't support exceptions. This makes combining KDE with just about any other ISO C++-compliant library (Boost being but the most obvious) in the same application impossible.
From this C++ developer's point of view, it's the most important fix, and it won't be easy. It means that when I write an application, I have to choose between writing it in C++ or writing it for KDE, and I have to check all of the third-party libraries I want to use to use to make sure they're obsolete enough to work with KDE.
BTW, it's a fallacy that "embedded" implies "tiny". Sure, a heart pacemaker is an embedded device, but so is a digital set-top box and so is an MRI scanner. Many modern embedded devices have demand for quite a bit of computing power.
Real-time is all this and more.
Getting tasks to complete on time is actually not something that an operating system can guarantee: you can simply lie about how long your job will take. (But, like your compiler, if you lie to your operating system, it will get its revenge.) Or you can design your hardware so that it swamps the system with so many interrupts that it can't service any user tasks. This kind of problem is a property of the system as a whole, and the best that the kernel can do is guarantee that if you play by the rules, it will too.
Latency (be it interrupt delivery, signal delivery, context switch or whatever) is something that the kernel can guarantee for the most part, but even then, in an OS like Linux, where hardware drivers are part of the kernel, you also rely on those drivers to play nice. This means, for example, that it must not disable interrupt delivery around a loop.
The other main things you need are things like the ability to fix data in memory (which Linux has had for a while), fixed-priority tasks and the ability for a task not to be preempted by a task of the same priority.
The answer is very simple: If you have nothing to hide, why don't you send all your correspondence on postcards? The postage is cheaper, after all.
It's because we all have something to hide, even if we've done nothing wrong. The issue isn't secrecy, it's privacy.
You do nothing wrong when you have a quiet word with your boss about a co-worker, or your trade union representative about your boss, file your tax return, talk about your yeast infection with your doctor, go to the toilet, have sex, dance naked in your bedroom when your favourite song comes on the radio, or any number of perfectly normal things.
But your life would be affected if you knew someone might be watching. You might be slightly less likely to go to your doctor or pharmacist about the yeast infection if you thought some stranger might learn about it. You might not indulge in all the consensual sex that you might like if you thought someone might be watching (unless you like that sort of thing). These are known as "chilling effects".
Don't talk about the police turning up at the door. Talk about all the small, normal, legal, moral things that you do that you wouldn't do if someone was watching. Talk about those little stressful things that would make your life more miserable.
There have been some problems (e.g. the weak pigeonhole principle) where it's been shown that any proof must be intractably large. There is some evidence http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cache/papers/cs/27779/ http:zSzzSzwww.wisdom.weizmann.ac.ilzSz~ranrazzSzp ublicationszSzPchina.pdf/raz02np.pdfthat this is true of P!=NP.
If you think about this, there's a certain amount of poetic justice. NP-hard problems are solvable in principle, just not in practice. And the conjecture that P!=NP may be true in principle, but not provable in practice.
Surely the Nobel Prize in Chemistry would go to Sherwood Idso for proving that global warming will be great for humanity.
Does your IP stack support strict source routing? It should, if it conforms to RFC 791. But of course you have it switched off, because it can be used for spoofing even though it's a very useful option.
The only reason why the Internet's infrastructure is as secure as it is, is that enough features have been removed.
On the other hand, if Apache didn't need root to run, you wouldn't install the malicious Apache as root.
And that is an operating system problem. The Unix security model merges a bunch of permissions (the permission to access any file, the permission to open low-numbered ports, the permission to send any signal to any process etc) together under once concept: the super-user. Any program which needs one of those permissions gets them all. And if the program is sufficiently complex (sendmail springs to mind), you have a security problem waiting to happen.
They should do like other businesses do in this situation: Buy some congresscritters and legislate that operating systems should have at least a certain number of security holes. Naturally, such legislation will will affect open source operating systems the worst, but that's no big deal. Those who don't know what a "rootkit" is also won't know what Linux is.
To the best of my knowledge, every field of mathematics more than (picking a number, say) 20 years old has found a practical application.
When I was at university, I had a friend who was doing a PhD in radical theory (an obscenely abstract area of group theory). She came in crestfallen one day, and when asked what was wrong, she said that somebody had found an application for it in environmental management.
That's not to say that every theorem has an application. But the thing is, you never know what's going to turn out to be important. There's a nice theorem from group theory which, when applied to permutation groups, says something like this:
The mathematician who discovered this probably thought it was very cool and completely useless. Little did he know that this would turn out to be, as one cryptanalyst put it, "the theorem that won World War II". Using this theorem and a copy of the Enigma machine patent, Polish mathematicians managed to recover the original Enigma rotor and reflector ring permutations without physically having an Enigma machine, by analysing cycle structures.
More accurately: If this is true, the string theory community is not a physics community, but a pure mathematics community.
Nobody is disputing the fact that string theorists are coming up with some extremely cool and elegant mathematics, and in that, it's good science. The dispute is that these theorists might not be doing any physics.
As others said, yes, I was deliberately trying to juxtapose the two, and it was precisely to point out the difference.
Excuse me, but who is John Galt?
Indeed. Here's one of my favourite examples: