You're right, it shows he's smarter than the average person, because he's able to understand that an object can have more than one function.
Usually, the socially acceptable or most used function is the preferable use. We don't talk about cars being running-over machines or passenger-crushing devices. Guns are used more for self defense than they are for outright murder or killing, and far more often for target shooting or hunting. That's why they're called firearms, and not killing-machines.
If everyone was running around only using guns to defend themselves, we wouldn't need guns to defend ourselves now, would we?
I would still prefer a gun to any other weapon for defending myself simply because ranged weapons trump melee weapons in most situations, and guns don't incur a penalty for close range combat. They're the best choice for general self defense, but it doesn't mean I won't encounter some stupid crook with a knife or baseball bat. Also, for home defense I have the advantage of familiarity with my surroundings and concealment. I wouldn't dare challenge a burglar if I had a sword or a bat unless I was sure they didn't have a gun. Thanks to Alaska's gun laws, I can shoot first and check the body for a gun later.
1. because I find a little difficult to carry my swimmimg pool to the local school and soak everyone at the cafeteria to death. Also, it is far more easy to protect a children from a swimming pool than from a gun. Does the word "Columbine" ring any bell?
But it's not. Your children have a much higher statistical likelihood of dying in a swimming accident than they do of being shot at school (unless you are unfortunate enough to live in a very high crime neighborhood which can't afford swimming pools).
2. Again, it is far more easy to spray bullets than hammering 20 people to death.
It's far easier to run over 20 people with a car than aim and hit them with bullets.
Averaging the more expensive hardware with the reaming for software, I'm sure the alternative is $2000 or $3000 overall cost per laptop. Thank goodness for open source!
In fact, I've ever heard some suggest that firearms should only have safeties that prevent accidental discharges (ie, dropping the gun or other mechanical firing system failures) and not traditional safeties, since the traditional safety teaches the misleading idea that the gun is "safe", which promotes unsafe handling practices.
Maybe they can get some of that Hollywood technology that keeps guns permanently loaded, too. I spend way too much money on ammo.
P.S. You can already get handguns without traditional safeties (e.g. only trigger/firing pin interlocks and optional handle or thumb levers to ensure the gun is being held properly).
I can see how this would work with two special values, nullity and an entity representing the domain of discourse.
Assume we're talking about the reals:
{0}/{0}=R (the set of all reals) {x}/{0}={} for x!=0 (the empty set) {x}/{y}={x/y} for y!=0 R/0=R (since 0 is in R, R/0 includes the case of {0}/{0}=R) {x}/R=R {x}*{y}={x*y} {x}*R=R R*R=R {x}+{y}={x+y} {x}+R=R {x}-{y}={x-y}
Additionally, any operation with the empty set results in the empty set. In every case the result of an operation will be either {}, {x}, or R.
This only works in fields, but you could extend the same concept to the integers by pretending that x*N=N and rounding in division for use on computers.
The domain of discourse and {} could be represented by the same symbol without loss of generality: There are no operations where it matters whether N or {} is used, both result in one or the other and never a single element. You could always call this symbol "Undefined" instead of nullity...
Doesn't anyone watch movies? Any company that claims to "Do No Harm" is obviously the most evil vile company of them all.
I suppose that means that the intelligence agencies and the military industrial complex are actually our best friends? They've never claimed to be harmless, after all.
So, out of all the examples you could pick as to why patents don't matter, Whitney's cotton gin isn't one of them (it is probably the worst possible example).
Not that this article is authoritative, but I have heard similar claims in the past and wouldn't doubt them a bit. Apparently there are several possible inventors of the cotton gin around the time Eli Whitney got his patent. Most likely several people influenced the design, but Eli Whitney just happened to be the first to submit a patent application, and of course with only his name on it. The situation hasn't changed much today. Now, almost all patents are filed by large companies with maybe the inventor's name listed somewhere, but they don't own it. First come first serve puts an undue burden on smart people while giving an advantage to useless people who have nothing better to do than file repeated patent applications.
I'm still stunned that the conservative movement, which used to claim to champion smaller government and strict constitutional readings, has turned into a champion of authoritarian governmental control. The Bill of Rights is key to the freedoms we enjoy as Americans and these rights were ironed out by leaders who just emerged victorious from a civil war. They understood war and its dangers but more importantly they understood the danger of tyranny, and so the very first right in the Bill of Rights is the right to free speech. To try and claim that now we must suspend this fundamental right because of "war" is to go against the very underpinnings of this country's foundation and sets the stage for increasing authoritarianism by the US Government.
It's pretty simple. In the "good old days" everyone was free to have a large christian family, go to church, vote for the white christian family men, teach kids about christianity in school, and have the freedom of speech to proclaim how great it was. Now that a significant percentage of U.S. citizens are using their freedom to do different things freedom doesn't seem so hot to people who really just want everything to be done their way. The conservatives were never big on equal rights for women or minorities, for instance. True freedom implies the ability to choose for yourself and not follow some arbitrary dogma, and it's this freedom that a lot of conservatives don't like.
That said, the larger issue is important. Just last night NBC ran a story about nuclear plant and security information being available in public libraries. My first reaction was that I generally favor public access to information, and that private watchdogs and the free press are probably why the US has not had a Chernobyl. The idea of purging public libraries is distasteful. But then they talked about what information was available, and I had to agree some of it should not be public, such as specifically the most damaging place to hit a nuclear power plant with an airplane. It is old information, and that sort of information would probably never be released now. Is that a good or bad thing?
I sure hope they purge all the libraries in Europe, the Middle East, India, Australia, etc. My guess is the *exact same data* is available there as well. It's book burning time!
Not only that, but do you really think Bin Ladin needed to read some stupid book to know that picking the largest planes possible and flying them into the structures midway had the best probability of success? There are three main areas vulnerable in a nuclear plant, and I can think of them offhand without any books. The reactor, which is shielded by many feet of concrete and constructed to withstand airline crashes, the cooling system which is nonradioactive and would shut down the reactor if damaged, or the storage and holding tanks for spent or unused nuclear fuel. I don't know how vulnerable the storage is, but my guess is that it's generally as well protected as the reactor. If not, the plants are defective and should just be repaired or shut down instead of trying to hide the faults of their construction. You simply can't assume that terrorists are stupider than you are, or that they're unable to obtain a tour of the plant or observe it from the air, or maybe just look it up on the Internet.
I wish thinking was one of the autonomous functions of the brain, or that breathing was directly tied to thinking ability...
Let's say they developed some new software antenna technology that enhanced reception. This would be useful to them, as it would enhance their product, and it would be good for the public, as others may be able to build on the work, or use it as inspiration for other inventions.
Like FM radio? Where the inventor was bankrupted by his own employer (RCA) because the invention of a superior technology would trash their investment in AM radio? You have to remember that more often than not, people in positions of power have more interest in maintaining the status quo than in actually improving things. This is a very powerful argument against patents, because by and large the biggest companies are the ones holding the patents, and therefore the control over the introduction of new ideas. Not only that, but businesses will gleefully milk an invention over the lifespan of a patent before introducing superior technology (which they have also patented), cutting out competition and delaying progress. Just look at how DRM and other copy prevention technology that relies on patent and copyright laws is hindering the adoption of new and innovative distribution mechanisms.
Granted, this is a contrived example, but it *is* possible.
Frankly, I think it's contrived for a reason. Most of the really innovative ideas have been freely released by researchers, not patented and sold by some company. The Internet, the WWW, Linux, GNU, and of course all the research into compilers, languages, algorithms, and the other foundations of computer science that vastly outweigh things like one-click patents. The problem I have with patents is that usually it's not the smartest people who come up with patents, it's people who either get lucky or spend way too much time thinking up something trivial, and thus think it's worth more than it is. Really smart people are then hindered from improving society directly for fear of infringing on worthless patents.
Well that's just a stupid argument, no offense. This same argument could be applied to the creation of any physical invention. After all, these concepts are directly derivable from physics, chemistry, etc.
That's actually part of my point, that eventually physical invention patents will be just as onerous as software patents directly because of their relation to mathematics. At some point, computers are going to become better at inventing solutions to problems than we are. At this point, anyone in their garage with a big enough computer could be just as effective at inventing things as some large research company, and at that point it will no longer make sense to have a first come first served license to print money by owning ideas that literally anyone could use a computer to think up. I'm not saying that time is now, but I think it's pretty soon. After that, software patents (or patents in general for that matter) will be relatively meaningless. I think it's appropriate to look to the future and anticipate these developments instead of pretending that copyrights that won't expire until 2100 will actually mean anything then.
And again, the remainder of your post is about patents in general, and so I won't bother addressing it. You think they're a bad idea. Others disagree. You think history proves your points. Others may not. At this point, it's merely religion.:)
I think open source is rather concrete proof that software development in the absence of patents and copyrights (for practical purposes) works, is profitable, and is self sustaining. Religion is the pie in the sky future stuff about universal availability of powerful computers and fabrication ability, but I do think it's quite likely.
We as christians are often taught that Jesus is to be in control of our entire lives. So, what happens when you're in a position to teach people who don't have the same beliefs? What is the ethical/moral thing to do? Do you follow the pressure of religion, or the pressure of society at large?
True followers of Jesus are persecuted and thrown in prison, and they Like it. If you're not willing to go to jail or die or god forbid lose your job for Jesus, you're obviously not a Christian. Jesus told this to his disciples multiple times.
I gather you've never seen a hundred year old piece of cast iron with "PAT PEND" cast into it.
I've seen plenty. I bet you I could also find a 99 or 98 year old piece of cast iron that looks roughly identical, with a different patent owner or no patent at all. On the other hand, I also have a coffee cup at work with "patent pending" stamped on the bottom. What is innovative about a drinking vessel after ten thousand years?
Patents are almost exclusively an exercise in keeping lawyers rich. Of course, with good lawyers you can always extract money from other people without regard to law or reality.
And I see you completely missed my point. The patent ensures the inventor discloses the algorithm being protected. If you rely only on copyright, you won't get access to the algorithm for nearly 100 years! Patents, OTOH, force the inventor to disclose the algorithm in exchange for protection. Further, copyright only protects the inventor from outright copying. Thus, some company can still reverse engineer the code (which is perfectly legal) and reimplement it themselves. Patents protect the inventor in this case.
Copyright only protects the algorithm if the silly anti reverse engineering EULAs are taken into account. Realistically, if you have a copyrighted program you can find out exactly how it works. It may be hard, but it's done routinely. I (unfortunately) have a Broadcom wireless card that (fortunately) has a native Linux driver because of reverse engineering. Now in this case, how would a patent on some process in Broadcom's proprietary driver help them financially, or contribute to the public good after expiration? Even if it's a wonderful algorithm that boosts signal quality and speed, it's obviously based on some fundamental concepts in information and coding theory. These concepts are directly derivable via mathematics, and if the Linux driver writers had to reinvent a working algorithm it would be just as hard as if the device was merely patented (except that it would be illegal if it was patented), because generally patents do not express the precise nature of the algorithm, just what the lawyers manage to get written. It is most likely harder to reverse engineer the terms of the patent than it is to just reverse engineer the resulting implementation. In either case, the company has no requirement or desire to actually tell anyone how their algorithm works, but in the first case of copyright reverse engineering is legal, however for patented software it may be illegal to reimplement a working replacement (think JPEG, MPEG, GIF, etc.).
I think it's interesting that you mention protecting the investor in terms of patents, because history has shown dramatically otherwise. Generally, inventors are paid a salary with perhaps a pittance of proceeds from patents, or more likely their invention is stolen outright using the legal system. We can argue all day about whether it's the legal system or the concept of copyright and patents that causes the problem, but I think any system that tries to control the spread and use of pure information is simply doomed to either outright failure or abuse by the powerful. Alternatively, you can look at projects like Ogg that have recreated (in a relatively short period of time) alternatives to patented methods that are at least as good, if not better. If anything, this reinforces my point that patents are useless as a business model (in the long term) because open science, open technology, and open source will always be cheaper and better than private invention simply because they have a much larger pool of resources available, and most importantly because mathematics will always be free and open. Even machines can be represented as a mathematical model of the physical system they embody.
Give the man a cookie. Finally, someone who actually understands the purpose of patents. The whole deal, here, is that, in the past, people just kept their inventions secret if they could. The end result? Techniques could die with their inventor (read about Damascus steel for a great example of this). And, as you say, meanwhile people have to duplicate the effort.
I don't know about that. Most of the most famous inventions were generally unprotected by patents or heavily overpatented. Printing presses, screw propellers (reference), internal combustion engines, transistors (existing patents from 1930 were very similar to the ones made at Bell), and plenty of others. That's not to say that a lot of people didn't obtain or try to obtain patents, just that the general industry was able to work around the patents. Additionally, very few inventors have actually made much money for their patents. Most often, individual inventors have been crushed by rich corporations who stole their ideas, filed their own patents, and tied the inventors up in court for years. In general, big discoveries are created by the big thinkers who simply publish their ideas, and it's left up to industry to create practical implementations of these ideas. Patents can push industry to develop working implementations, but only if they are overbroad. The physical world allows a near infinite number of solutions to most classes of problems, so once a working device is patented it usually gives competitors enough information to build a similar device anyway. In reality, all that patents can do is prevent exact copying of a design. In that sense, it's very similar to copyright.
As for software patents, I have no problem with them on the surface (well, except for those that are obvious, but that's a problem with the patent office, not patents in general). However, I think software patents should have a more limited lifespan. After all, 20 years is a *very* long time in the world of computing (just think how different things were in 1986). Something like 4 or 5 years makes far more sense.
The reason software patents are bad is that copyright already covers the same concepts for software that patents do for hardware and machines, namely preventing the exact duplication of an invention. There is no need for softare patents because copyright law prevents competitors from exactly copying an existing solution and selling it themselves. However, there should be nothing wrong with understanding the underlying problem that needs to be solved, examining all the existing approaches, selecting the best approach, and reimplementing a working solution. In some cases, there are what can be called optimal solutions to problems in computer science, and in this case the copyright office recognizes that re-implementations of an optimal algorithm to solve the same problem may in fact be very similar, if not exactly so. The key is that they were produced from first principles and existing research and not directly copied from an existing copyrighted work. Patents work the same way (but in practice patent owners pretend they don't and file lawsuits contrary to this fact), and for instance patents on creating chemicals or medicines are merely a patent on a specific process of creating the end product, or in essence a patent on a machine (considering the entire process as a whole) that produces the end product. Someone who can build a machine to do the same thing in a slightly different way won't infringe the patent.
Any other concept of patents (or copyrights) requires that some entity can own an idea or class of ideas, and not merely a physical representation of a particular idea. I agree with you that patent terms should be shortened (along with copyright terms) to 5 to 10 years. The rate of progress is increasing, and there's no reason to pretend otherwise by having even longer terms th
If they can run code as the same user they don't need the attack. Thay can just read the "private" information more or less. Theres only so much you can do, even a simple keylogger attack is going to be easier than this one.
Not necessarily. Javascript or any other interpreted language could probably perform this attack and would run as the victim user, but since it's sandboxed the attack couldn't get at the keys directly.
Even if you are running such a setup on a P4 with HT turned on (even though its often useless), and you need to run secure processes along with unsecure ones (generally not a good idea anyway), patches already exist for Linux and BSDs to address this. The patches modify the scheduler to prevent processes from different users from running on the same physical core.
The problem is that theoretically the attacker could use javascript or any other locally interpreted language or an ActiveX control under Internet Explorer to run the attacking process as the same user. To get the attacking process scheduled on the same core as the RSA process, just spawn lots of attacker processes. Some of them will get scheduled alongside the crypto process, even on a massively parallel machine.
The big question will be whether multi-core processors in general will be vulnerable to these attacks using L2 cache timing attacks or something similar.
Without self-replication, nanobots will get absolutely nowhere. Using current tech, it takes ~ 40 years to build a functional nanobot (it needs to be done atom by atom). The only practical way of changing this is to get some microscopic workers in to help speed the work along in an exponential fashion, thus nanobots making more of themselves.
Read what I wrote. Making individual nanobots capable of replicating themselves is a mistake. Allowing nanobot model A to build nanobot model B, and model B to build model A is much different. You have have the chance of a runaway scenario if you make the control channel for each nanobot separate. Keeping nanobots A and B mostly separate from each other is even more secure.
Are you sure that you are not just being overly paranoid. Nanobots are not some disgruntled slaves just looking for an opportunity to rebel. Also, note that these things do not have much in the way of mass (think just a few million atoms at most), forget processing power. you want these things to run AES on themselves??? So what is one nanite out of a hundred gets a bug, it probably won't last long anyway. also note that nanobots are delicate systems and it takes a lot of effort to get even theoretical ones which work. Having one which could work after getting a mutation would probably the the engineer who designed it the equivalent of a nobel prize.
Most likely to be of much use nanobots will need at least as much processing power as current desktop PCs, probably more. Even if they are totally headless and controlled via wireless it makes sense to encrypt the communications channel and make the nanobot shut itself down in case of a fault. Don't forget that not only are random mutations a concern, but also intelligent hackers trying to make the nanobots do things they weren't supposed to do, perhaps using other nanobots. The reason self repair is dangerous is that it involves autonomous self modification, which introduces more possibilities for undetected errors in operation. For instance, the worst case is when sensors fail, causing the nanobot to believe something is broken when it's not. This leads to what the nanobot believes to be valid repairs which actually introduce unwanted behavior. In terms of pure numbers, *eventually* humanity is likely to produce more nanobots than there are biological cells. At that point, evolution is clearly a concern.
First of, removing autonomy defeats their purpose to a large extent. it is not really possible to use these things effectively if you have to keep them in a tank of exotic chemicals just to keep them from falling apart. Evolution probably won't come into the design of these things even if we wanted it to be there. refer to my previous point about mutation in these things.
Modern medicines are basically just complex chemicals but can be injected into the bloodstream. It's not hard to create inert chemicals that could be used as the signaling device for nanobots in the human body.
Repeat after me until it sinks into your head: Nanobots are not out to kill me. Nanobots are not out to kill me. Nanobots are not out to kill me.
Neither are viruses, bacteria, or prions, they're just reproducing and mutating like nature intended. The side effect is that sometimes they kill us.
So we build these guys to start replicating and to stop replicating when we want them to... but when you make a billion of something you end up with some odd mutations. Even if you are talking about.001% mutation that's still 100,000 self replicating mistakes. If even one of those 100,000 mistakes is a mutation that just doesn't turn off self replication you now have a very bad problem.
First of all, self replication should only be attempted after many years of successful nanotechnology, if at all. It's much safer to have two or more types of nanobots that can produce only the next type in a cycle, but not themselves. This lowers the probability of run away replication, because any point in the chain can be disabled. Having choke-points or environmental controls on reproduction is also a good idea.
Probably the single biggest safety measure for individual nanobots is lots of redundancy and cross checking. Every nanobot should be a collection of independant modules, all of which must cooperate in order to complete any task. Additionally, each module should be able to trigger a shutdown of the entire nanobot if inconsistancies arise. Self repair should be avoided at all costs because it is much safer for working nanobots to disassemble the broken ones and build new ones than to allow random changes to evolve within a self repairing and self replicating system. Cryptography will probably also play a large part, because traditional error checking will not be adequate to detect every error in trillions of nanobots, each executing trillions of instructions a second. Additionally, encrypting communication between modules and even instructions and data in memory will serve as protection against intelligent hacking attempts at modifying the internal state of the nanobots.
As part of the redundancy, it makes a lot of sense not to have truly autonomous nanobots, but instead require the environment to supply them with critical components, energy, or control without which they cannot function. It's much harder to make grey goo if every nanobot requires a complex chemical to operate that doesn't occur in nature and cannot be produced by the nanobot, especially if that chemical is what provides its energy to operate.
Evolution should never be allowed in the design of complete nanobots. Components can be evolved to be maximally efficient, but the overall structure and controls must be rigorously verified to ensure safe operation.
Just as aside, the grey goo scenario has already happened at least once on Earth. It's just more of a greenish goo, with some collections of larger un-goo-like structures.
You wouldn't be able to use it to prevent the next 9/11, but you could probably use a temporal communicator to prevent the next hurricane Katrina disaster. The hurricane or earthquake will still devastate the city, but that doesn't mean there has to be anyone in it at the time.
That's silly. You can't just consider what's humanly possible, but what is physically possible. Suppose next year's earthquake is caused by a fault shifting, so to prevent it we pound some really big pilings through the fault and prevent it. Any disaster can be physically averted, even if it means we have to leave the planet or perform some other superhuman feat.
That said, it's relatively easy to formulate a concrete example of a causal loop. Consider that we somehow find a way to create a simulation of our own universe, either starting somewhere in the middle or for a given point in time, and realistically even a local simulation would create what everyone but pedantics would call a causal loop. The reason is that in this simulation, there exists the computer that runs the simulation in the real world, which in turn simulates the next universe, ad infinitum. This doesn't mean that it's impossible or a paradox, simply that the universe has become its own cause at the point in time that the simulation is switched on. After that, it makes no sense to ask which universes are real and simulated, there is only one universe that is its own cause, all with a prehistory that apparently came from somewhere else. Realistically, it would probably be easier to simulate the initial conditions of the big bang, making the universe the cause of its own creation. It may be possible that only the things which can create themselves can exist, but I prefer a broader interpretation that any universe representable by (at least) set theory can, and therefore does, exist.
Can anyone imagine what would happen if one of these would be lt loose in a busy place like a christmas shopping mall, a crowded airport or atoher place where loads of people are available and unprepared for such a device? Sounds like the perfect massacre tool to me...
Oh, sure, it's much easier and cheaper to buy a large $200,000 automatic gun and set it up in a busy place without anyone noticing than to just buy or sneak in some AK-47s and a few suicide warriors. If anything, it will be the U.S. government sticking them around the white house or something equally paranoid.
Some Americans care about Open Source because they're anti-corporation, but that isn't the reason for Open Source, not really. Open Source and free software both come out of supply and demand: there is always a demand for some item's supply if the price is right. Since there are so many people willing to volunteer their time to create (they create for a profit -- that profit might just be the happiness of making something that works and is used), and there are so many people who want to use that software at no charge, open source/free software works here and in much of Europe. But if you go to countries where people don't like to work for free -- they want SOMETHING for their time and to make their lives better -- you won't see a social drive to giving away their labor.
My position on this is that there are now enough smart people to create free software despite the majority of people who wouldn't do it for free. I think it's akin to mathematics, where almost all major discoveries have been by mathematicians who weren't in it for the money. The only difference with software is that you can put a user interface in front of the mathematics and make it available to a much larger audience, this interface is almost always what is being charged for. In essence, general programmers are in the service industry of creating better user interfaces for applied mathematics, even if it's for mundane tasks like sorting lists or keeping appointments. The biggest difference between software and other industries is that reproduction costs are essentially zero. Once a working formula is found, it is usually relatively trivial to reimplement the user interface. The mathematics are well known, and it only takes a few motivated free software programmers to create software the entire world can use. It is, essentially, philanthropy of knowledge.
anyone not fencing their residential property should be assumed to be ofering free parking
Interesting comparison. You know, your house and yard broadcasts a lot of electromagnetic radiation into your neighbor's yard, especially during the day in the infrared, visible, and ultraviolet frequencies. Your microwave and cordless phone broadcast in the same general frequency as his wireless router. Your neighbor broadcasts much the same into your yard. GOD FORBID your wireless network card should broadcast a tiny amount of radiation that his router mistakenly assumes it should send to the internet... Maybe if cars were flying back and forth between the road and your yard and your neighbor's yard all day the comparison would be more apt.
My opinion is that anything relying on electromagnetic radiation in the unlicensed spectrum should *obey* the fucking FCC and accept unwanted interference. I wonder how many of the people prosecuted for "stealing" wireless access have pointed to that little FCC label and called the prosecution on federal communication laws?
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You're right, it shows he's smarter than the average person, because he's able to understand that an object can have more than one function.
Usually, the socially acceptable or most used function is the preferable use. We don't talk about cars being running-over machines or passenger-crushing devices. Guns are used more for self defense than they are for outright murder or killing, and far more often for target shooting or hunting. That's why they're called firearms, and not killing-machines.
If everyone was running around only using guns to defend themselves, we wouldn't need guns to defend ourselves now, would we?
I would still prefer a gun to any other weapon for defending myself simply because ranged weapons trump melee weapons in most situations, and guns don't incur a penalty for close range combat. They're the best choice for general self defense, but it doesn't mean I won't encounter some stupid crook with a knife or baseball bat. Also, for home defense I have the advantage of familiarity with my surroundings and concealment. I wouldn't dare challenge a burglar if I had a sword or a bat unless I was sure they didn't have a gun. Thanks to Alaska's gun laws, I can shoot first and check the body for a gun later.
1. because I find a little difficult to carry my swimmimg pool to the local school and soak everyone at the cafeteria to death. Also, it is far more easy to protect a children from a swimming pool than from a gun. Does the word "Columbine" ring any bell?
But it's not. Your children have a much higher statistical likelihood of dying in a swimming accident than they do of being shot at school (unless you are unfortunate enough to live in a very high crime neighborhood which can't afford swimming pools).
2. Again, it is far more easy to spray bullets than hammering 20 people to death.
It's far easier to run over 20 people with a car than aim and hit them with bullets.
Averaging the more expensive hardware with the reaming for software, I'm sure the alternative is $2000 or $3000 overall cost per laptop. Thank goodness for open source!
In fact, I've ever heard some suggest that firearms should only have safeties that prevent accidental discharges (ie, dropping the gun or other mechanical firing system failures) and not traditional safeties, since the traditional safety teaches the misleading idea that the gun is "safe", which promotes unsafe handling practices.
Maybe they can get some of that Hollywood technology that keeps guns permanently loaded, too. I spend way too much money on ammo.
P.S. You can already get handguns without traditional safeties (e.g. only trigger/firing pin interlocks and optional handle or thumb levers to ensure the gun is being held properly).
I can see how this would work with two special values, nullity and an entity representing the domain of discourse.
Assume we're talking about the reals:
{0}/{0}=R (the set of all reals)
{x}/{0}={} for x!=0 (the empty set)
{x}/{y}={x/y} for y!=0
R/0=R (since 0 is in R, R/0 includes the case of {0}/{0}=R)
{x}/R=R
{x}*{y}={x*y}
{x}*R=R
R*R=R
{x}+{y}={x+y}
{x}+R=R
{x}-{y}={x-y}
Additionally, any operation with the empty set results in the empty set.
In every case the result of an operation will be either {}, {x}, or R.
This only works in fields, but you could extend the same concept to the integers by pretending that x*N=N and rounding in division for use on computers.
The domain of discourse and {} could be represented by the same symbol without loss of generality: There are no operations where it matters whether N or {} is used, both result in one or the other and never a single element. You could always call this symbol "Undefined" instead of nullity...
Doesn't anyone watch movies? Any company that claims to "Do No Harm" is obviously the most evil vile company of them all.
I suppose that means that the intelligence agencies and the military industrial complex are actually our best friends? They've never claimed to be harmless, after all.
So, out of all the examples you could pick as to why patents don't matter, Whitney's cotton gin isn't one of them (it is probably the worst possible example).
Not that this article is authoritative, but I have heard similar claims in the past and wouldn't doubt them a bit. Apparently there are several possible inventors of the cotton gin around the time Eli Whitney got his patent. Most likely several people influenced the design, but Eli Whitney just happened to be the first to submit a patent application, and of course with only his name on it. The situation hasn't changed much today. Now, almost all patents are filed by large companies with maybe the inventor's name listed somewhere, but they don't own it. First come first serve puts an undue burden on smart people while giving an advantage to useless people who have nothing better to do than file repeated patent applications.
...at the total inability of digg to scale. 60 users can control the entire site?
This appears to be confirmation that at least Michelin has put RFID chips in tires.
I'm still stunned that the conservative movement, which used to claim to champion smaller government and strict constitutional readings, has turned into a champion of authoritarian governmental control. The Bill of Rights is key to the freedoms we enjoy as Americans and these rights were ironed out by leaders who just emerged victorious from a civil war. They understood war and its dangers but more importantly they understood the danger of tyranny, and so the very first right in the Bill of Rights is the right to free speech. To try and claim that now we must suspend this fundamental right because of "war" is to go against the very underpinnings of this country's foundation and sets the stage for increasing authoritarianism by the US Government.
It's pretty simple. In the "good old days" everyone was free to have a large christian family, go to church, vote for the white christian family men, teach kids about christianity in school, and have the freedom of speech to proclaim how great it was. Now that a significant percentage of U.S. citizens are using their freedom to do different things freedom doesn't seem so hot to people who really just want everything to be done their way. The conservatives were never big on equal rights for women or minorities, for instance. True freedom implies the ability to choose for yourself and not follow some arbitrary dogma, and it's this freedom that a lot of conservatives don't like.
That said, the larger issue is important. Just last night NBC ran a story about nuclear plant and security information being available in public libraries. My first reaction was that I generally favor public access to information, and that private watchdogs and the free press are probably why the US has not had a Chernobyl. The idea of purging public libraries is distasteful. But then they talked about what information was available, and I had to agree some of it should not be public, such as specifically the most damaging place to hit a nuclear power plant with an airplane. It is old information, and that sort of information would probably never be released now. Is that a good or bad thing?
I sure hope they purge all the libraries in Europe, the Middle East, India, Australia, etc. My guess is the *exact same data* is available there as well. It's book burning time!
Not only that, but do you really think Bin Ladin needed to read some stupid book to know that picking the largest planes possible and flying them into the structures midway had the best probability of success? There are three main areas vulnerable in a nuclear plant, and I can think of them offhand without any books. The reactor, which is shielded by many feet of concrete and constructed to withstand airline crashes, the cooling system which is nonradioactive and would shut down the reactor if damaged, or the storage and holding tanks for spent or unused nuclear fuel. I don't know how vulnerable the storage is, but my guess is that it's generally as well protected as the reactor. If not, the plants are defective and should just be repaired or shut down instead of trying to hide the faults of their construction. You simply can't assume that terrorists are stupider than you are, or that they're unable to obtain a tour of the plant or observe it from the air, or maybe just look it up on the Internet.
I wish thinking was one of the autonomous functions of the brain, or that breathing was directly tied to thinking ability...
Let's say they developed some new software antenna technology that enhanced reception. This would be useful to them, as it would enhance their product, and it would be good for the public, as others may be able to build on the work, or use it as inspiration for other inventions.
:)
Like FM radio? Where the inventor was bankrupted by his own employer (RCA) because the invention of a superior technology would trash their investment in AM radio? You have to remember that more often than not, people in positions of power have more interest in maintaining the status quo than in actually improving things. This is a very powerful argument against patents, because by and large the biggest companies are the ones holding the patents, and therefore the control over the introduction of new ideas. Not only that, but businesses will gleefully milk an invention over the lifespan of a patent before introducing superior technology (which they have also patented), cutting out competition and delaying progress. Just look at how DRM and other copy prevention technology that relies on patent and copyright laws is hindering the adoption of new and innovative distribution mechanisms.
Granted, this is a contrived example, but it *is* possible.
Frankly, I think it's contrived for a reason. Most of the really innovative ideas have been freely released by researchers, not patented and sold by some company. The Internet, the WWW, Linux, GNU, and of course all the research into compilers, languages, algorithms, and the other foundations of computer science that vastly outweigh things like one-click patents. The problem I have with patents is that usually it's not the smartest people who come up with patents, it's people who either get lucky or spend way too much time thinking up something trivial, and thus think it's worth more than it is. Really smart people are then hindered from improving society directly for fear of infringing on worthless patents.
Well that's just a stupid argument, no offense. This same argument could be applied to the creation of any physical invention. After all, these concepts are directly derivable from physics, chemistry, etc.
That's actually part of my point, that eventually physical invention patents will be just as onerous as software patents directly because of their relation to mathematics. At some point, computers are going to become better at inventing solutions to problems than we are. At this point, anyone in their garage with a big enough computer could be just as effective at inventing things as some large research company, and at that point it will no longer make sense to have a first come first served license to print money by owning ideas that literally anyone could use a computer to think up. I'm not saying that time is now, but I think it's pretty soon. After that, software patents (or patents in general for that matter) will be relatively meaningless. I think it's appropriate to look to the future and anticipate these developments instead of pretending that copyrights that won't expire until 2100 will actually mean anything then.
And again, the remainder of your post is about patents in general, and so I won't bother addressing it. You think they're a bad idea. Others disagree. You think history proves your points. Others may not. At this point, it's merely religion.
I think open source is rather concrete proof that software development in the absence of patents and copyrights (for practical purposes) works, is profitable, and is self sustaining. Religion is the pie in the sky future stuff about universal availability of powerful computers and fabrication ability, but I do think it's quite likely.
We as christians are often taught that Jesus is to be in control of our entire lives. So, what happens when you're in a position to teach people who don't have the same beliefs? What is the ethical/moral thing to do? Do you follow the pressure of religion, or the pressure of society at large?
True followers of Jesus are persecuted and thrown in prison, and they Like it. If you're not willing to go to jail or die or god forbid lose your job for Jesus, you're obviously not a Christian. Jesus told this to his disciples multiple times.
I gather you've never seen a hundred year old piece of cast iron with "PAT PEND" cast into it.
I've seen plenty. I bet you I could also find a 99 or 98 year old piece of cast iron that looks roughly identical, with a different patent owner or no patent at all. On the other hand, I also have a coffee cup at work with "patent pending" stamped on the bottom. What is innovative about a drinking vessel after ten thousand years?
Patents are almost exclusively an exercise in keeping lawyers rich. Of course, with good lawyers you can always extract money from other people without regard to law or reality.
And I see you completely missed my point. The patent ensures the inventor discloses the algorithm being protected. If you rely only on copyright, you won't get access to the algorithm for nearly 100 years! Patents, OTOH, force the inventor to disclose the algorithm in exchange for protection. Further, copyright only protects the inventor from outright copying. Thus, some company can still reverse engineer the code (which is perfectly legal) and reimplement it themselves. Patents protect the inventor in this case.
Copyright only protects the algorithm if the silly anti reverse engineering EULAs are taken into account. Realistically, if you have a copyrighted program you can find out exactly how it works. It may be hard, but it's done routinely. I (unfortunately) have a Broadcom wireless card that (fortunately) has a native Linux driver because of reverse engineering. Now in this case, how would a patent on some process in Broadcom's proprietary driver help them financially, or contribute to the public good after expiration? Even if it's a wonderful algorithm that boosts signal quality and speed, it's obviously based on some fundamental concepts in information and coding theory. These concepts are directly derivable via mathematics, and if the Linux driver writers had to reinvent a working algorithm it would be just as hard as if the device was merely patented (except that it would be illegal if it was patented), because generally patents do not express the precise nature of the algorithm, just what the lawyers manage to get written. It is most likely harder to reverse engineer the terms of the patent than it is to just reverse engineer the resulting implementation. In either case, the company has no requirement or desire to actually tell anyone how their algorithm works, but in the first case of copyright reverse engineering is legal, however for patented software it may be illegal to reimplement a working replacement (think JPEG, MPEG, GIF, etc.).
I think it's interesting that you mention protecting the investor in terms of patents, because history has shown dramatically otherwise. Generally, inventors are paid a salary with perhaps a pittance of proceeds from patents, or more likely their invention is stolen outright using the legal system. We can argue all day about whether it's the legal system or the concept of copyright and patents that causes the problem, but I think any system that tries to control the spread and use of pure information is simply doomed to either outright failure or abuse by the powerful. Alternatively, you can look at projects like Ogg that have recreated (in a relatively short period of time) alternatives to patented methods that are at least as good, if not better. If anything, this reinforces my point that patents are useless as a business model (in the long term) because open science, open technology, and open source will always be cheaper and better than private invention simply because they have a much larger pool of resources available, and most importantly because mathematics will always be free and open. Even machines can be represented as a mathematical model of the physical system they embody.
Give the man a cookie. Finally, someone who actually understands the purpose of patents. The whole deal, here, is that, in the past, people just kept their inventions secret if they could. The end result? Techniques could die with their inventor (read about Damascus steel for a great example of this). And, as you say, meanwhile people have to duplicate the effort.
I don't know about that. Most of the most famous inventions were generally unprotected by patents or heavily overpatented. Printing presses, screw propellers (reference), internal combustion engines, transistors (existing patents from 1930 were very similar to the ones made at Bell), and plenty of others. That's not to say that a lot of people didn't obtain or try to obtain patents, just that the general industry was able to work around the patents. Additionally, very few inventors have actually made much money for their patents. Most often, individual inventors have been crushed by rich corporations who stole their ideas, filed their own patents, and tied the inventors up in court for years. In general, big discoveries are created by the big thinkers who simply publish their ideas, and it's left up to industry to create practical implementations of these ideas. Patents can push industry to develop working implementations, but only if they are overbroad. The physical world allows a near infinite number of solutions to most classes of problems, so once a working device is patented it usually gives competitors enough information to build a similar device anyway. In reality, all that patents can do is prevent exact copying of a design. In that sense, it's very similar to copyright.
As for software patents, I have no problem with them on the surface (well, except for those that are obvious, but that's a problem with the patent office, not patents in general). However, I think software patents should have a more limited lifespan. After all, 20 years is a *very* long time in the world of computing (just think how different things were in 1986). Something like 4 or 5 years makes far more sense.
The reason software patents are bad is that copyright already covers the same concepts for software that patents do for hardware and machines, namely preventing the exact duplication of an invention. There is no need for softare patents because copyright law prevents competitors from exactly copying an existing solution and selling it themselves. However, there should be nothing wrong with understanding the underlying problem that needs to be solved, examining all the existing approaches, selecting the best approach, and reimplementing a working solution. In some cases, there are what can be called optimal solutions to problems in computer science, and in this case the copyright office recognizes that re-implementations of an optimal algorithm to solve the same problem may in fact be very similar, if not exactly so. The key is that they were produced from first principles and existing research and not directly copied from an existing copyrighted work. Patents work the same way (but in practice patent owners pretend they don't and file lawsuits contrary to this fact), and for instance patents on creating chemicals or medicines are merely a patent on a specific process of creating the end product, or in essence a patent on a machine (considering the entire process as a whole) that produces the end product. Someone who can build a machine to do the same thing in a slightly different way won't infringe the patent.
Any other concept of patents (or copyrights) requires that some entity can own an idea or class of ideas, and not merely a physical representation of a particular idea. I agree with you that patent terms should be shortened (along with copyright terms) to 5 to 10 years. The rate of progress is increasing, and there's no reason to pretend otherwise by having even longer terms th
If they can run code as the same user they don't need the attack. Thay can just read the "private" information more or less. Theres only so much you can do, even a simple keylogger attack is going to be easier than this one.
Not necessarily. Javascript or any other interpreted language could probably perform this attack and would run as the victim user, but since it's sandboxed the attack couldn't get at the keys directly.
Even if you are running such a setup on a P4 with HT turned on (even though its often useless), and you need to run secure processes along with unsecure ones (generally not a good idea anyway), patches already exist for Linux and BSDs to address this. The patches modify the scheduler to prevent processes from different users from running on the same physical core.
The problem is that theoretically the attacker could use javascript or any other locally interpreted language or an ActiveX control under Internet Explorer to run the attacking process as the same user. To get the attacking process scheduled on the same core as the RSA process, just spawn lots of attacker processes. Some of them will get scheduled alongside the crypto process, even on a massively parallel machine.
The big question will be whether multi-core processors in general will be vulnerable to these attacks using L2 cache timing attacks or something similar.
Without self-replication, nanobots will get absolutely nowhere. Using current tech, it takes ~ 40 years to build a functional nanobot (it needs to be done atom by atom). The only practical way of changing this is to get some microscopic workers in to help speed the work along in an exponential fashion, thus nanobots making more of themselves.
Read what I wrote. Making individual nanobots capable of replicating themselves is a mistake. Allowing nanobot model A to build nanobot model B, and model B to build model A is much different. You have have the chance of a runaway scenario if you make the control channel for each nanobot separate. Keeping nanobots A and B mostly separate from each other is even more secure.
Are you sure that you are not just being overly paranoid. Nanobots are not some disgruntled slaves just looking for an opportunity to rebel. Also, note that these things do not have much in the way of mass (think just a few million atoms at most), forget processing power. you want these things to run AES on themselves??? So what is one nanite out of a hundred gets a bug, it probably won't last long anyway. also note that nanobots are delicate systems and it takes a lot of effort to get even theoretical ones which work. Having one which could work after getting a mutation would probably the the engineer who designed it the equivalent of a nobel prize.
Most likely to be of much use nanobots will need at least as much processing power as current desktop PCs, probably more. Even if they are totally headless and controlled via wireless it makes sense to encrypt the communications channel and make the nanobot shut itself down in case of a fault. Don't forget that not only are random mutations a concern, but also intelligent hackers trying to make the nanobots do things they weren't supposed to do, perhaps using other nanobots. The reason self repair is dangerous is that it involves autonomous self modification, which introduces more possibilities for undetected errors in operation. For instance, the worst case is when sensors fail, causing the nanobot to believe something is broken when it's not. This leads to what the nanobot believes to be valid repairs which actually introduce unwanted behavior. In terms of pure numbers, *eventually* humanity is likely to produce more nanobots than there are biological cells. At that point, evolution is clearly a concern.
First of, removing autonomy defeats their purpose to a large extent. it is not really possible to use these things effectively if you have to keep them in a tank of exotic chemicals just to keep them from falling apart. Evolution probably won't come into the design of these things even if we wanted it to be there. refer to my previous point about mutation in these things.
Modern medicines are basically just complex chemicals but can be injected into the bloodstream. It's not hard to create inert chemicals that could be used as the signaling device for nanobots in the human body.
Repeat after me until it sinks into your head: Nanobots are not out to kill me. Nanobots are not out to kill me. Nanobots are not out to kill me.
Neither are viruses, bacteria, or prions, they're just reproducing and mutating like nature intended. The side effect is that sometimes they kill us.
So we build these guys to start replicating and to stop replicating when we want them to... but when you make a billion of something you end up with some odd mutations. Even if you are talking about .001% mutation that's still 100,000 self replicating mistakes. If even one of those 100,000 mistakes is a mutation that just doesn't turn off self replication you now have a very bad problem.
First of all, self replication should only be attempted after many years of successful nanotechnology, if at all. It's much safer to have two or more types of nanobots that can produce only the next type in a cycle, but not themselves. This lowers the probability of run away replication, because any point in the chain can be disabled. Having choke-points or environmental controls on reproduction is also a good idea.
Probably the single biggest safety measure for individual nanobots is lots of redundancy and cross checking. Every nanobot should be a collection of independant modules, all of which must cooperate in order to complete any task. Additionally, each module should be able to trigger a shutdown of the entire nanobot if inconsistancies arise. Self repair should be avoided at all costs because it is much safer for working nanobots to disassemble the broken ones and build new ones than to allow random changes to evolve within a self repairing and self replicating system. Cryptography will probably also play a large part, because traditional error checking will not be adequate to detect every error in trillions of nanobots, each executing trillions of instructions a second. Additionally, encrypting communication between modules and even instructions and data in memory will serve as protection against intelligent hacking attempts at modifying the internal state of the nanobots.
As part of the redundancy, it makes a lot of sense not to have truly autonomous nanobots, but instead require the environment to supply them with critical components, energy, or control without which they cannot function. It's much harder to make grey goo if every nanobot requires a complex chemical to operate that doesn't occur in nature and cannot be produced by the nanobot, especially if that chemical is what provides its energy to operate.
Evolution should never be allowed in the design of complete nanobots. Components can be evolved to be maximally efficient, but the overall structure and controls must be rigorously verified to ensure safe operation.
Just as aside, the grey goo scenario has already happened at least once on Earth. It's just more of a greenish goo, with some collections of larger un-goo-like structures.
SuSE is dead.
Exactly which part of SuSE is no longer licensed under the GPL?
You wouldn't be able to use it to prevent the next 9/11, but you could probably use a temporal communicator to prevent the next hurricane Katrina disaster. The hurricane or earthquake will still devastate the city, but that doesn't mean there has to be anyone in it at the time.
That's silly. You can't just consider what's humanly possible, but what is physically possible. Suppose next year's earthquake is caused by a fault shifting, so to prevent it we pound some really big pilings through the fault and prevent it. Any disaster can be physically averted, even if it means we have to leave the planet or perform some other superhuman feat.
That said, it's relatively easy to formulate a concrete example of a causal loop. Consider that we somehow find a way to create a simulation of our own universe, either starting somewhere in the middle or for a given point in time, and realistically even a local simulation would create what everyone but pedantics would call a causal loop. The reason is that in this simulation, there exists the computer that runs the simulation in the real world, which in turn simulates the next universe, ad infinitum. This doesn't mean that it's impossible or a paradox, simply that the universe has become its own cause at the point in time that the simulation is switched on. After that, it makes no sense to ask which universes are real and simulated, there is only one universe that is its own cause, all with a prehistory that apparently came from somewhere else. Realistically, it would probably be easier to simulate the initial conditions of the big bang, making the universe the cause of its own creation. It may be possible that only the things which can create themselves can exist, but I prefer a broader interpretation that any universe representable by (at least) set theory can, and therefore does, exist.
Can anyone imagine what would happen if one of these would be lt loose in a busy place like a christmas shopping mall, a crowded airport or atoher place where loads of people are available and unprepared for such a device? Sounds like the perfect massacre tool to me...
Oh, sure, it's much easier and cheaper to buy a large $200,000 automatic gun and set it up in a busy place without anyone noticing than to just buy or sneak in some AK-47s and a few suicide warriors. If anything, it will be the U.S. government sticking them around the white house or something equally paranoid.
Some Americans care about Open Source because they're anti-corporation, but that isn't the reason for Open Source, not really. Open Source and free software both come out of supply and demand: there is always a demand for some item's supply if the price is right. Since there are so many people willing to volunteer their time to create (they create for a profit -- that profit might just be the happiness of making something that works and is used), and there are so many people who want to use that software at no charge, open source/free software works here and in much of Europe. But if you go to countries where people don't like to work for free -- they want SOMETHING for their time and to make their lives better -- you won't see a social drive to giving away their labor.
My position on this is that there are now enough smart people to create free software despite the majority of people who wouldn't do it for free. I think it's akin to mathematics, where almost all major discoveries have been by mathematicians who weren't in it for the money. The only difference with software is that you can put a user interface in front of the mathematics and make it available to a much larger audience, this interface is almost always what is being charged for. In essence, general programmers are in the service industry of creating better user interfaces for applied mathematics, even if it's for mundane tasks like sorting lists or keeping appointments. The biggest difference between software and other industries is that reproduction costs are essentially zero. Once a working formula is found, it is usually relatively trivial to reimplement the user interface. The mathematics are well known, and it only takes a few motivated free software programmers to create software the entire world can use. It is, essentially, philanthropy of knowledge.
anyone not fencing their residential property should be assumed to be ofering free parking
Interesting comparison. You know, your house and yard broadcasts a lot of electromagnetic radiation into your neighbor's yard, especially during the day in the infrared, visible, and ultraviolet frequencies. Your microwave and cordless phone broadcast in the same general frequency as his wireless router. Your neighbor broadcasts much the same into your yard. GOD FORBID your wireless network card should broadcast a tiny amount of radiation that his router mistakenly assumes it should send to the internet... Maybe if cars were flying back and forth between the road and your yard and your neighbor's yard all day the comparison would be more apt.
My opinion is that anything relying on electromagnetic radiation in the unlicensed spectrum should *obey* the fucking FCC and accept unwanted interference. I wonder how many of the people prosecuted for "stealing" wireless access have pointed to that little FCC label and called the prosecution on federal communication laws?