One wonders if this is a precedent being set, or if this is just a bid to get into the good graces of what is arguably the current largest current producer of software developers (and cheap ones, too)?
Moreover, if they did do this, since the organic molecules are preserved, would a careful restoration of the liquid allow us to reconstitute the security council, as with the concrete mentioned above? What if the dust from the different members has become mixed?
I don't think that would work- if you were to reduce the UN Security Council to dust and try to reconstitute them with water, the results would be too thick to form a solution...
Well, regardless of whether you trust the government or not, your "armed forces" aren't going to help you resist the goverment's armed forces if they decide to use them against you.
The argument that people need the right to own guns to protect themselves against their goverment has always seemed totally laughable to me. The government has tanks, missiles, artillery and Apache helicopters. Your pump-action shotgun and Glock 17 9mm aren't going to do you any good. It wouldn't matter if you had a full-on M60 machinegun or any other weapon you can carry. Fact is, the goverment would win any armed conflict against the citizenry.
There are other, more realistic, arguments for gun ownership that might actually have some merit. But the idea that the 2d Amendment protects your right to defend yourself against the goverment would only work if the 2d Amendment protected your right to own ballistic missiles.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the feds are aware of two facts-
1) A "dirty bomb" would very likely be a scare tactic more than anything else. A conventional explosive with radioactive material in it would cause hysteria, panic and general disarray, but would only increase the chance of getting cancer or in some other way dying from the radiation for those in the immediate area (not killed by the blast itself) by a very small amount. It's the fear factor, not the death toll, that the gov is worried about.
2) The most likely sources of said radioactive material would likely be medical or pharmaceutical in origin, because radioactive iodine is a lot easier to get than plutonium.
So it makes sense that the scanners are calibrated to extreme sensitivity to these materials.
I wonder if it's a little too sensitive when it's nailing radiation therapy patients, though. That seems excessive.
... Browsers can enforce the "no linking outside.kids.us" rules strictly by simply checking all URLs it is about to request to make sure that the last eight bytes are ".kids.us" and if it's anything else, don't even bother letting it down the TCP/IP stack.
This betrays a lack of knowledge about the way IP addresses work... technically there is no reason why the same IP address could not be pointed to by a domain name both within kids.us and one outside it. Remember, domain names point to IP addresses, not the other way around.
Getting around any restrictions (such as a web browser like you propose) would be trivially easy- as one example, you could set up your own DNS server, invent an alias kids.us address for any address you want to access, point your system at it and fly. Or you could simply spoof any reverse DNS queries back to your own system.
I'm not sure if kids.us is a good idea or not from a social perspective, but from a technical one, it's a dead issue before it hits the street. The average 10 year old will be able to get around any restrictions that try to keep them in this domain.
Unless some enterprising 11 year old figures out a way to poison a DNS cache or two and start bouncing requests to happy-fun-site.kids.us to hardcore porn sites. Or maybe a redirector could get in under the legislative wire... are popunders to external sites covered? They're not "links" per se. There's a million holes in this idea.
Mark my words, this one is already doomed. It's totally impossible to keep such things under control, considering the amorphous nature of the IP addressing system and the inherent weaknesses (or strengths, depending on how you look at it) of the Internet.
Well, we could do something about the lifeforms (mostly cows) by reducing our appetite for them and their products, thereby reducing the need to keep so many of the flatulent beasts about...
Of course, the day that happens will be the same day that we renounce all dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
Which will also be the same day that Satan skates to work.
With something like this, a high-quality stream could be sent to a number of reflectors that reduce the quality and retransmit it for lower-bandwidth clients...
Long answer- space exploration has produced or driven the techonolgy behind everything from cell phones to Tang. The fact that you use the systems you do, much of the technology that is available to you and your children (if any), and any number of other improvements in the quality of our lives can be traced back to the need to develop new technologies for exploring space.
As I've said elsewhere, being unable to see the benefits of something yourself does not mean there are not any, and those benefits are not always quantifiable or what you would expect.
Cool is fine, but frankly we need to explore space for the most prosaic reason I can posit- this planet won't last forever; our eggs are all in one cosmic basket. One decent-sized asteroid and everything from the Gutenberg Bible to molecular porn goes.
It's a good point, but they know as well as anyone that an unacknowldeged problem becomes an embarrassing public one when the problem is posted anonymously, which is what would happen if they "froze the clock" in the manner you speak of.
I'm willing to extend them the benefit of the doubt on this one... they'd be hurt more than most of the software producers by having a security bug go unacknowledged/unpatched. It's not like a license agreement is going to stop the spread of any vulnerability info at any rate.
on publishing vulnerabilities or bugs, but at least they're making it possible, as long as you let them know, etc. Some of the more radical "full-disclosure at any cost instantly" types will rankle at this, but I think most will look at as it is- the company that has to maintain the software covering their butts as well as they can.
It could have just said "you're not allowed to publish any problems you find, period."
As I recall, I've only read it as part of a collection of other P.K. Dick works, so that may have colored my perception. Either way, it's not too long, and many of the plot elements critical to the book/story were changed- the minimal number of people left on Earth was totally turned on its head, for example.
Still, it's a great book and a great movie. But they really are two different stories, in my opinion.
I didn't say that the cool factor was a good reason for their existance, but will likely be a large portion of how manufacturers will push them on the public once they become a reality.
I happen to agree with you that there's better reasons, but I'm cynical about how they'll be sold- en masse to the people who really don't know how to use the power that they have.
Hear, hear! It should be required reading with the pretext: half of those who read it will just plain not be able to parse it.
It's not exactly the easiest book on the planet to get your head around, after all.;-)
I also think that Herbert's short stories ought to be in any good SF class curriculum. Cease Fire is still the best short story I think I've ever read.
The depressing thing about sci-fi is, while it's possible to get some fantastic books, it's insanely easy to get absolute junk. For every good book, I read two or three I want to forget.
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of science fiction is crap.
Sturgeon's Corollary: 90% of everything is crap.
Bloch's Corollary: And your agent gets the other 10%.
Cyclometh's Corollary: the 10% is different for everyone.
And the difference is even more trivial when you consider that if you really had spaceships and wanted to have a fight on one, the weapon of choice would almost have to be a sword- anything else and you're going to risk puncturing the hull or blowing away critical equipment.
You mean, of course, you remember reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep unless you're referring to the novelisation of the movie Blade Runner.
Actually, there's some interesting backstory about Blade Runner- one of my favorite "dark" SF films. The origin of the name is from a book by Alan E. Nourse called Blade Runner, but had nothing (or very little) to do with the plot of the movie, which was largely based on the P.K. Dick short story and the writers' imagination. Nourse's book had a great title, which apparently one of the writers had done a screen treatment of and they decided to use that title instead of the far-too-long Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
The cover of Nourse's book was flat black and had a sillouhette of a guy in a long coat running done in red on it- that little icon is often associated with the movie, and in fact appears at the end of the credits (along with a nod to Nourse's book, if I recall).
Nourse's book was OK, as I remember it, but not incredible or anything. The title was more prosaic than anything else, the book having to do with a future society where the practice of medicine is outlawed for most people. Blade runners would carry surgical and medical equipment to underground doctors who would provide medical care to people on the sly. The book is about one of these Blade runners. Unremarkable, but now that I think about it, some of the elements of the movie may have their origins in Nourse's book. Have to score a copy and re-read it to see if that's true or not; it's been about 20 years since I read it.
Yeah, but Zelazny also wrote some damn fine not-quite-so-believable stuff. The Amber Chronicles was absolutely wonderful stuff, if a bit fluffy- I never considered it much more than escapism, but it was fun escapism.
Haven't read Zelazny in years... I was really ticked off when I found out he'd died and there'd never be another book after Prince of Chaos.
Red Dwarf is outstanding, and I love it. Aside from Babylon 5, it's the only show I've ever taped in its entirety, and taping Red Dwarf isn't easy here in the States because it's only on PBS, usually in fits and starts, and sometimes in marathons when they're shilling for cash.
All that said, while Red Dwarf is wonderfully entertaining, and as someone else put it, deliciously bent, it's not great SF. It's outstanding comedy, and even better parody, but it's not really science fiction except in the loosest sense of the word. My opinion, of course.
Hmm. Meant to include my favorite book-type series, which is Frank Herbert's Dune series. Clarke is great, but Herbert was very nearly a god in his creation of a rich, detailed, complex and amazingly interesting universe. The only other author I can think of right offhand that created anything like Herbert's Dune universe in scope is Tolkien and Middle-Earth (actually, Tolkien's Middle-Earth was even larger and richer than the Dune universe, but this is about SF, not fantasy).
Mine would have to be Babylon 5. I've always been a SF fan, and enjoyed all the popular stuff, and a lot of the unpopular stuff. But B5 was great for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that it was the first major SF show with any production value to have an actual story arc, not just a series of disconnected episodes taking place in a loosely connected background.
Contrasted with most other SF series, B5 had a consistency and an appeal that made it truly great. As an example, I think it's the only SF series I can recall that even attempted to use something resembling realistic physics in its spaceflight sequences.
As far as movies go, I have to give the nod to Star Wars, just because it's great, even if it's a little (a lot) schlocky. If I had to choose one great SF film, it'd be 2001: A Space Odyssey. Once again, the use of real-world physics (or something resembling it) made a lot of difference, and as a long-time Clarke fan, I had loved the book/short story long before I saw the film.
Slashdot Mirror
One wonders if this is a precedent being set, or if this is just a bid to get into the good graces of what is arguably the current largest current producer of software developers (and cheap ones, too)?
Cynical, I know...
Moreover, if they did do this, since the organic molecules are preserved, would a careful restoration of the liquid allow us to reconstitute the security council, as with the concrete mentioned above? What if the dust from the different members has become mixed?
I don't think that would work- if you were to reduce the UN Security Council to dust and try to reconstitute them with water, the results would be too thick to form a solution...
Well, regardless of whether you trust the government or not, your "armed forces" aren't going to help you resist the goverment's armed forces if they decide to use them against you.
The argument that people need the right to own guns to protect themselves against their goverment has always seemed totally laughable to me. The government has tanks, missiles, artillery and Apache helicopters. Your pump-action shotgun and Glock 17 9mm aren't going to do you any good. It wouldn't matter if you had a full-on M60 machinegun or any other weapon you can carry. Fact is, the goverment would win any armed conflict against the citizenry.
There are other, more realistic, arguments for gun ownership that might actually have some merit. But the idea that the 2d Amendment protects your right to defend yourself against the goverment would only work if the 2d Amendment protected your right to own ballistic missiles.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the feds are aware of two facts-
1) A "dirty bomb" would very likely be a scare tactic more than anything else. A conventional explosive with radioactive material in it would cause hysteria, panic and general disarray, but would only increase the chance of getting cancer or in some other way dying from the radiation for those in the immediate area (not killed by the blast itself) by a very small amount. It's the fear factor, not the death toll, that the gov is worried about.
2) The most likely sources of said radioactive material would likely be medical or pharmaceutical in origin, because radioactive iodine is a lot easier to get than plutonium.
So it makes sense that the scanners are calibrated to extreme sensitivity to these materials.
I wonder if it's a little too sensitive when it's nailing radiation therapy patients, though. That seems excessive.
This betrays a lack of knowledge about the way IP addresses work... technically there is no reason why the same IP address could not be pointed to by a domain name both within kids.us and one outside it. Remember, domain names point to IP addresses, not the other way around.
Getting around any restrictions (such as a web browser like you propose) would be trivially easy- as one example, you could set up your own DNS server, invent an alias kids.us address for any address you want to access, point your system at it and fly. Or you could simply spoof any reverse DNS queries back to your own system.
I'm not sure if kids.us is a good idea or not from a social perspective, but from a technical one, it's a dead issue before it hits the street. The average 10 year old will be able to get around any restrictions that try to keep them in this domain.
Unless some enterprising 11 year old figures out a way to poison a DNS cache or two and start bouncing requests to happy-fun-site.kids.us to hardcore porn sites. Or maybe a redirector could get in under the legislative wire... are popunders to external sites covered? They're not "links" per se. There's a million holes in this idea.
Mark my words, this one is already doomed. It's totally impossible to keep such things under control, considering the amorphous nature of the IP addressing system and the inherent weaknesses (or strengths, depending on how you look at it) of the Internet.
More damage than what? Sealed lead-acid batteries explode in fires too. And the stuff in them is pretty noxious without a fire.
Well, we could do something about the lifeforms (mostly cows) by reducing our appetite for them and their products, thereby reducing the need to keep so many of the flatulent beasts about...
Of course, the day that happens will be the same day that we renounce all dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
Which will also be the same day that Satan skates to work.
With something like this, a high-quality stream could be sent to a number of reflectors that reduce the quality and retransmit it for lower-bandwidth clients...
Could be kewl.
Short answer: Yes
Long answer- space exploration has produced or driven the techonolgy behind everything from cell phones to Tang. The fact that you use the systems you do, much of the technology that is available to you and your children (if any), and any number of other improvements in the quality of our lives can be traced back to the need to develop new technologies for exploring space.
As I've said elsewhere, being unable to see the benefits of something yourself does not mean there are not any, and those benefits are not always quantifiable or what you would expect.
Cool is fine, but frankly we need to explore space for the most prosaic reason I can posit- this planet won't last forever; our eggs are all in one cosmic basket. One decent-sized asteroid and everything from the Gutenberg Bible to molecular porn goes.
It's a good point, but they know as well as anyone that an unacknowldeged problem becomes an embarrassing public one when the problem is posted anonymously, which is what would happen if they "froze the clock" in the manner you speak of.
I'm willing to extend them the benefit of the doubt on this one... they'd be hurt more than most of the software producers by having a security bug go unacknowledged/unpatched. It's not like a license agreement is going to stop the spread of any vulnerability info at any rate.
on publishing vulnerabilities or bugs, but at least they're making it possible, as long as you let them know, etc. Some of the more radical "full-disclosure at any cost instantly" types will rankle at this, but I think most will look at as it is- the company that has to maintain the software covering their butts as well as they can.
It could have just said "you're not allowed to publish any problems you find, period."
As I recall, I've only read it as part of a collection of other P.K. Dick works, so that may have colored my perception. Either way, it's not too long, and many of the plot elements critical to the book/story were changed- the minimal number of people left on Earth was totally turned on its head, for example.
Still, it's a great book and a great movie. But they really are two different stories, in my opinion.
I gotta agree with this one- that theme music was pretty much the reason I actually sought out and bought a copy of the B5 soundtracks at a con.
Sheeesh, I am such a fan-boy...
I didn't say that the cool factor was a good reason for their existance, but will likely be a large portion of how manufacturers will push them on the public once they become a reality.
I happen to agree with you that there's better reasons, but I'm cynical about how they'll be sold- en masse to the people who really don't know how to use the power that they have.
It is ever thus.... ;)
Hear, hear! It should be required reading with the pretext: half of those who read it will just plain not be able to parse it.
It's not exactly the easiest book on the planet to get your head around, after all. ;-)
I also think that Herbert's short stories ought to be in any good SF class curriculum. Cease Fire is still the best short story I think I've ever read.
The depressing thing about sci-fi is, while it's possible to get some fantastic books, it's insanely easy to get absolute junk. For every good book, I read two or three I want to forget.
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of science fiction is crap.
Sturgeon's Corollary: 90% of everything is crap.
Bloch's Corollary: And your agent gets the other 10%.
Cyclometh's Corollary: the 10% is different for everyone.
And the difference is even more trivial when you consider that if you really had spaceships and wanted to have a fight on one, the weapon of choice would almost have to be a sword- anything else and you're going to risk puncturing the hull or blowing away critical equipment.
You mean, of course, you remember reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep unless you're referring to the novelisation of the movie Blade Runner.
Actually, there's some interesting backstory about Blade Runner- one of my favorite "dark" SF films. The origin of the name is from a book by Alan E. Nourse called Blade Runner, but had nothing (or very little) to do with the plot of the movie, which was largely based on the P.K. Dick short story and the writers' imagination. Nourse's book had a great title, which apparently one of the writers had done a screen treatment of and they decided to use that title instead of the far-too-long Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
The cover of Nourse's book was flat black and had a sillouhette of a guy in a long coat running done in red on it- that little icon is often associated with the movie, and in fact appears at the end of the credits (along with a nod to Nourse's book, if I recall).
Nourse's book was OK, as I remember it, but not incredible or anything. The title was more prosaic than anything else, the book having to do with a future society where the practice of medicine is outlawed for most people. Blade runners would carry surgical and medical equipment to underground doctors who would provide medical care to people on the sly. The book is about one of these Blade runners. Unremarkable, but now that I think about it, some of the elements of the movie may have their origins in Nourse's book. Have to score a copy and re-read it to see if that's true or not; it's been about 20 years since I read it.
Yeah, but Zelazny also wrote some damn fine not-quite-so-believable stuff. The Amber Chronicles was absolutely wonderful stuff, if a bit fluffy- I never considered it much more than escapism, but it was fun escapism.
Haven't read Zelazny in years... I was really ticked off when I found out he'd died and there'd never be another book after Prince of Chaos.
Red Dwarf is outstanding, and I love it. Aside from Babylon 5, it's the only show I've ever taped in its entirety, and taping Red Dwarf isn't easy here in the States because it's only on PBS, usually in fits and starts, and sometimes in marathons when they're shilling for cash.
All that said, while Red Dwarf is wonderfully entertaining, and as someone else put it, deliciously bent, it's not great SF. It's outstanding comedy, and even better parody, but it's not really science fiction except in the loosest sense of the word. My opinion, of course.
"Smoke me a kipper; I'll be back for breakfast!"
Hmm. Meant to include my favorite book-type series, which is Frank Herbert's Dune series. Clarke is great, but Herbert was very nearly a god in his creation of a rich, detailed, complex and amazingly interesting universe. The only other author I can think of right offhand that created anything like Herbert's Dune universe in scope is Tolkien and Middle-Earth (actually, Tolkien's Middle-Earth was even larger and richer than the Dune universe, but this is about SF, not fantasy).
Interesting question.
Mine would have to be Babylon 5. I've always been a SF fan, and enjoyed all the popular stuff, and a lot of the unpopular stuff. But B5 was great for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that it was the first major SF show with any production value to have an actual story arc, not just a series of disconnected episodes taking place in a loosely connected background.
Contrasted with most other SF series, B5 had a consistency and an appeal that made it truly great. As an example, I think it's the only SF series I can recall that even attempted to use something resembling realistic physics in its spaceflight sequences.
As far as movies go, I have to give the nod to Star Wars, just because it's great, even if it's a little (a lot) schlocky. If I had to choose one great SF film, it'd be 2001: A Space Odyssey. Once again, the use of real-world physics (or something resembling it) made a lot of difference, and as a long-time Clarke fan, I had loved the book/short story long before I saw the film.
My favorite has to be the one with the cannon. I literally fell out of my chair laughing at that one. I think I scared the cat.
Does anyone keep a record of how quickly a site has been /.ed before?
OK, it just loaded while I was typing this... gotta take a look.
...
OK, that's totally creepy. Utterly.
But funny.