All we really have observed directly, are some anomalies in the orbit of Mercury. We interpret that to be due to the operation of gravity alone, but that is an interpretation, not a measured fact.
It does, however, line up with Relativity's predictions. That's the point.
It could be absolutely anything. But it matches the mathematical model.
Similarly, we have not "measured" Newtonian gravity. We interpret certain phenomena we see, such as the movements of the planets and the way in which things fall, to be expressions of Newtonian gravitation. We can use the mathematical model to predict how things will behave, and then measure that they behave that way. But we haven't observed them.
So I have to ask: Do you dispute Newton?
No, a scale does not count. A scale can only show that something is accelerating toward the Earth. That is only measuring the effects of gravitation, not gravitation itself.
Black holes as well as the universe as a whole, before the so-called Big Bang, are theorized to contain a SINGULARITY which has no existence in the physical world, but is ONLY a mathematical construct.
What is your evidence for this? Or, what is your reasoning for this?
The concept of zero, infinity and a point also are purely mathematical, but do not exist in the physical world.
Zero certainly exists -- it is possible to have zero of some measurable thing. Simple example: There are currently zero apples in this room.
Also, unless I'm missing something, black holes don't require the singularity to be a point, only that it have sufficient mass to create an event horizon. If you like, we can say that we don't know what they are, or what happens inside one, but I don't think we can say that they don't exist.
First of all, Newton and even Einstein only describe how gravity WORKS, not what actually constitutes or is behind gravity.
Similar things could, again, be said about anything else. Chemistry only describes how things work -- atomic theory can tell us that atoms are composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons, but what are these, really? If you said "Quarks and electrons", fine, but what are those, really?
If you accept string theory -- and I'm not sure I do -- they are actually strings, or perhaps vibrations of a string, which still doesn't answer the question. What is that string?
I know of no scientific explanation that is not in terms of something else, or relating to something else, eventually tying it back to the world we observe. So if we are talking about any fundamental property of the universe, there's always some mystery behind it.
I agree that a scientist spending all day playing with a mathematical model is not quite doing science, just a very elaborate hypothesis, and perhaps not even that. But I don't agree that either black holes or the Big Bang are just that -- the test of a mathematical model is not that it was inspired by observation, but that it fits observation, and that it is the simplest known model to do so.
Digital is like binary - it either works perfectly or not at all.
That statement shows a lack of understanding of either digital or binary.
With one-way connection, like digital TV, tape or DVD, you can only put forward error correction, then you can restore the signal even if it gets distorted.
In other words, it behaves pretty much the way I described. And the error correction built into the codec can attempt to mask certain errors, resulting in ugliness and huge, but not total, degradation of the signal.
I can tolerate a considerable amount of snow in the TV broadcast, but I hate when digital TV becomes pixelated or pauses the video completely.
In other words, you seem to agree with pretty much everything I said.
Just what was it you were disagreeing with? What was the "No it's not" referring to?
Newton supposedly did get hit by an Apple or whatever, but at any rate he observed and THEN he used mathematics to try and make sense out of what he observed.
And then -- and this is the important step -- his mathematics were used to make predictions, which were verified by further observation.
Much of cosmology today does it the other way around, in that they come up with theories and models and then try to explain the observations in terms of those. When they come up with anomalous observations, that don't fit the models, they invent fictitious things like black holes, dark matter and energy, rather than scrapping their obviously wrong models.
Except that this is essentially how both Kepler and Einstein worked. Kepler didn't scrap the "obviously wrong" model of planets orbiting the sun, but he adjusted the mathematics to match the observations. Einstein didn't scrap the "obviously wrong" model of Newtonian physics, but he did invent the "fictitious thing" of a warping of space-time -- which was then used to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the movements of Mercury.
And, unlike atoms, none of these things are directly observed. No one has observed the bending of space-time. We have observed its effects (Mercury again).
to be correct by a multitude of experiments at particle accelerators and with accurate cesium beam clocks. It is not based merely on mathematical models, but on actual observed physical reality.
Again, all of which are merely observing the effects of relativity, not relativity itself.
That is why black holes don't seem wholly "fictitious" to me -- we can see effects which are very well explained by black holes.
Moreover, consider the period before relativity -- people did not throw out Newton's models until there was a better explanation.
You do make some good points, though, and I'm probably reaching the edge of my own understanding.
It's less that digital "doesn't bounce well", and more that digital has way worse failure rates.
I wrote a really long explanation, and ditched it in favor of a really simple one:
Pop an old video tape in a VCR and watch what happens. Probably degraded a bit, but still works. Now rent a DVD -- or better yet, borrow one from the library -- most will be OK, but if you do this often enough, you'll run into one with enough scratches in it that parts of it will be completely unwatchable, and the parts that are scratched-but-watchable are way worse than all but the worst tape damage.
So, if your range/antenna/interference/whatever is such that you'd have some amount of static, you'd still be able to watch analog TV, but digital would be unwatchable.
What's frustrating is that, done properly, digital should be able to compensate for stuff like this...
except that nobody has ever observed one anywhere.
Before we proceed, define observation.
Unless you're going to dispute optics, at the very least, we never actually observe anything directly, but rather, the light coming from that place. Nor do we actually observe a place being dark, only the reduced amount of light.
So what, exactly, is your criteria for "direct" observation?
Originally, modern science got started, when somebody we now call a scientist observed something about nature. As part of trying to explain and make sense of the observations, mathematics is used as a tool that has been extremely helpful.
I'll agree with that.
Lately though, especially with the advent of modern computers, mathematical modeling computations have taken precedence and a life of their own over simple observation.
How is this different than, say, Newton?
He made some observations. He came up with a mathematical model to explain them. He used it to predict some things, and his observations matched his predictions.
The same thing happens in cosmology. The use of computers to crunch the mathematics doesn't change the basic process.
Yes, the mathematics says that black holes should exist, but the sad FACT is, that nobody has ever observed one.
Nobody has observed a quark, as far as I know. Nor, technically, have we observed atoms. We've observed a readout on a display which indicates that some electrons bounced off something in exactly the way we expect an atom to be there, but certainly, no one's directly observed an atom.
Do you dispute the existence of atoms? Would you have, if electron microscopes did not exist?
A singularity, such as theorized as being at the center of a black hole, is a mathematical fiction,
There is a difference between a theory, or even a hypothesis, and a fiction.
no such thing exists physically.
And now you've crossed from denying that we have evidence of something to positively asserting that it does not exist.
I must ask, are you actually a scientist?
If the earth had an opaque atmosphere, such as Venus, how would we ever know about the existence of the sun? Could we ever know anything about planets and stars?
Sure we could, it would just take longer. For one, is Venus' atmosphere opaque to everything?
limited understanding of the force of gravity,
Our "limited understanding" which allows us to make predictions about tiny objects moving thousands of miles per hour, and aim a rocket at a target hundreds of thousands of miles away, and hit it with a high degree of accuracy...
Maybe the mathematical Emperor really doesn't have any clothes.
It sounds very much like you're someone who wants to do science, but doesn't like doing math. Disgruntled at a physics course, you've rebelled against your teachers...
But that's idle speculation.
If you have evidence to present, or a real lack of evidence, please, go right ahead.
Despite spending millions of dollars on incredibly sophisticated detectors, no one has ever really detected gravity waves.
Once again, not directly, but their effects have been detected -- and, moreover, relativity has been shown to be a highly accurate model in the situations where we've applied it (the orbit of mercury, for instance).
Aside from your credentials, your sources, and your criteria for something having been "observed", I'd also like to hear your suggestions for the "way" that you feel science has lost. What tool would you use in place of mathematics?
I have spent the last 26 years immersed in computers. Computers I know about. Cars, even though I drive one, I do not know about.
Me too.
I can re-gap a spark plug, do a tune-up on an older model car, change my oil and change a flat. However, I am vastly ignorant about troubleshooting and doing most work on a car.
The same cannot be said of most people about computers.
Indeed, most people have to go through driver's education of some sort. We understand what a turn signal does. We understand that we have to change our oil, even if we don't know how to do so. We understand that driving over sharp objects is probably a Bad Idea.
It's one thing to not understand how a computer works. But there are basic things everyone should know. You don't need to understand how SSL works, but you should know to look for the https, and look at the domain, before entering sensitive information -- and you should know not to click through SSL warnings.
Nor am I willing to invest the time to learn.
Obviously, you're willing to invest some time.
For instance, you're not a doctor, but you probably know how to eat right, and you at least know that exercise is good for you and too much sugar isn't. You're not a mechanic, but you know that you need to change your oil, check your tire pressure, and keep gas in the tank.
This is all far more than most people understand about computers. How many users know to defrag?
none of them ever had the desire to learn how to program or how a computer works at a deep down level.
I'm not suggesting they should.
Education will not get the job done...people have for the most part decided NOT learn about computers.
That's like saying condoms don't work, because people won't use them.
It's actually more akin to saying abstinence doesn't work -- but see, we do have an alternative to abstinence that does work. There really isn't a good alternative to educating users -- the best we really have is antivirus or draconian system administrators, both of which provide a worse user experience than a compromised machine, and neither of which provides much help for Internet banking.
And for that matter, neither condoms nor abstinence works very well without sex education.
So I'm not saying everyone should have any kind of depth of understanding, just enough to understand how to keep themselves secure. And that wouldn't take much more than driver's education.
Actually, saying that the Sun orbits Earth is not really wrong even today. The universe doesn't have a fixed reference frame so no body has an absolute position...
Not everything is relative -- for example, rotation. To say that the Sun orbits the Earth, you would have to say Earth is not rotating -- but we can measure exactly how much Earth is deformed by its rotation. It's not perfectly spherical -- centrifugal force makes it slightly squashed.
We still tend to put the Sun in the "center", in coordinate (0,0,0) of the solar system, because that's very useful for local purposes, but it's just as arbitrary as having Earth in the center centuries ago.
It's not arbitrary, as the solar system doesn't make sense if we put anything else at the center. The sun is the most massive, so most things can be said to orbit the sun. If you put Earth at the center, you'd have to have the other bodies orbiting the Sun still for it to make sense.
It's "arbitrary" in the sense that there is no actual "center", but if we were to choose a center, it makes much more sense.
(a microscopic perturbation in Earth's orbit would translate, due to angular distance, in galaxies billions of years away being "shaked" in faster-than-light speed - still not violating any physics laws)
Actually, things moving faster than light does violate some very fundamental laws of physics.
Or you'd have to analyze an existing hex editor by hand. Still hard, but not as hard.
you can trust a fresh OS install from a trusted source, be it a Linux ISO downloaded from an official site or a Windows DVD purchased from a store.
Or build on a system that you already necessarily assume is trusted. For example, it should be possible to establish at least a web of trust between the signing keys for your packages and the signing key for the CD... or, if you have a CD, between that CD and the next.
Both of these are trusting external sources, but trusting a minimal amount -- for example, while I did have to download the very first install CD I used, after that, I no longer have to trust that I'm not being MITM'd. Much better to trust a distro than to trust the distro plus the connection between me and the distro.
Most distributions still include binary blobs in their corresponding source code that can bring the kinds of problems for which Microsoft Windows is advocated against in the article.
You won't find the word "proprietary", "open source", or "source code" in the article. The reason Windows is advocated against is simple: Malware is written to target Windows. Malware could as easily be written to target any operating system which is vulnerable.
Thankfully at this point, you can get machines that run a free bios, support wireless, and run 100% free software.
And 100% proprietary hardware, unless you've got schematics for all of it.
Never mind that you're connecting to a webserver running the bank's proprietary software...
Thankfully at this point, you can get machines that run a free bios, support wireless, and run 100% free software.
Which you've of course scrutinized every single line for security vulnerabilities......what's that? You haven't?
Why is it that you think free software is inherently more trustworthy than proprietary software, in that way? Or that the binary blobs in question are inherently compromising your security?
And, conversely, if you're a valuable enough target that you can afford to (and should) scrutinize every line, wouldn't you also have a budget to enroll in Microsoft's "Shared Source" program, and gain full access to the Windows source code, also?
No, you're right, there's nothing special about a "Linux LiveCD". But the magic word here isn't Linux, or even the implied "Free Software", but "LiveCD". From the point of view of the article, it could be a Windows PE disc, it's just that Linux CDs are free (as in beer), and Windows offers no real advantage in an environment which will only run a web browser.
I agree with many of the goals of software freedom, and I agree a solid open source process can yield more robust software than a closed one. But not every article with the word "Linux" is an appropriate place to bring it up. You sound kind of like this guy.
That is the only solution, and it is a complete solution, when used properly.
The only real solution is to make banks liable for online bank fraud,
And what would that solve? It isn't as though most bank websites are terribly insecure at the moment.
I would say, if the user was 0wned, make the user liable. They might learn something. Making the bank liable just opens the door for shit like a "super secure mode" app that only runs on Windows, thus decreasing security, or other equally-annoying measures that either do nothing for security, or worsen it.
Browser security is only an issue if you're visiting other sites, in the same session, on the same boot, on your LiveCD.
Wrong. Any security compromise on the same boot lends a possibility of compromising that session. Not all vulnerabilities will lead to that, but some can.
And going as far as questioning whether your CD burning software is infected is ridiculous. You can't be any more certain that your mouse doesn't have imbedded circuitry tracing your movement pattens, or your keyboard doesn't have a keylogger built directly into it,
No, the question is not whether the software came pre-0wned. The question is, once this practice becomes widespread, won't malware authors target the ISO downloading and/or CD burning process? If malware attaches itself to Nero, and Nero injects something into your shiny new livecd, what are you going to do? Ask it to verify itself?
or the aliens aren't tapping directly into your cablings electromagnetic intereference patterns to directly access your bank account as you do. You're going to extremes purely for the point of argument,
Which is exactly what you just did, right there.
See, keyboards with embedded keyloggers do exist, though mostly as proof of concept. While I'm not sure a mouse-movement-logging-mouse exists, it's not hard to imagine how one might be built.
There isn't any convincing evidence that aliens exist, and if they are here, we have no idea how they could be monitoring our thoughts.
All beside the point, of course, which is that this truly is security through obscurity, in two ways:
First, because it'd be much harder to write malware that compromises all burning software and rootkits your new LiveCD and rootkits your current Windows system such that you won't be able to detect the rootkit on the LiveCD...
But "harder" just means, they won't do it until it's worth it -- it's an obvious vulnerability.
The second kind of security through obscurity is the fact that this technique is relatively obscure -- that is, not well known. If users never use LiveCDs a lot, this will probably work well, because someone fishing for account info will go for your neighbor's (who accesses his bank from IE6) rather than you.
Unless your browser is listening for incoming connections,
Or it autoupdates itself, or its extensions, or its malware list, in an insecure way...
Or maybe something else is listening. While they have to compromise you quick (before your next reboot), most LiveCDs, out of convenience, provide a read/write filesystem.
If you are using the LiveCD as a dedicated banking only environment, the only input your browser will see is your bank's website.
Unless you're MITM'd. Or unless the default homepage is something that could potentially be host to something malicious. Or unless the user visits other websites.
If you can't trust user behavior, and want to really be sure, you could have it set to reject anything that doesn't have the bank's SSL cert.
That'll work right up until said cert expires. Or until there's an SSL vulnerability which requires browsers to be patched.
If no other site can reach your browser, your browser cannot be owned,
I agree, but the statement in bold is a pretty big assumption. Remember: Never trust anything you don't have to.
Except that CD burning software, and OSes, can both become very corrupted without touching the software. Barring crazy things like hacking the firmware of your keyboard -- and some keyboards (including Apple ones) have firmware -- the software is completely irrelevant.
If you mean, it's probably not my computer, you're right. But the point here is, I can give Grandma a livecd to use for her internet banking, and she now cannot screw up her normal OS to the point where the livecd is unsafe for banking.
That is, I agree with your examples of older models retaining their usefulness except for edge cases, but I don't think we've investigated many edge cases lately.
It seems like there's plenty of active research going on...
It seems to me that it's like the God of the Gaps. That is, as we understand progressively more, and as we refine our process for understanding, there are fewer edge cases, or at least, fewer edge cases that we haven't thought of, and restricted the domain of our laws to account for.
For example, it seems likely that really weird things happen at the instant of the Big Bang, but we can't actually get that far back. We can get really, really close, but there's a limit, and we know what that limit is.
Contrast this to Newtonian physics, which was assumed to apply universally.
Then again...
It's worth mentioning, Relativity was 1905. It's barely been 100 years since that. Origin of Species was 1859, Newton's Principia was 1687, and Copernicus' Commentariolus was 1514 -- going by the first publication of the most obvious work I could find (Origin of Species,
I've pretty much arbitrarily chosen these as revolutionary ideas, but it certainly doesn't show any signs of slowing -- only that, perhaps, we're about due for another.
You are not even really "you" in any sense beyond the illusory narrative created by the mind, to order its disparate sensations.
That depends very much by what you mean by "illusion", and what you mean by "you". If I identify myself as this particular chunk of matter in the state it is at the moment, then yes, I am me.
It's like describing a program as an illusion. In the sense that it abstract, perhaps. But it does have real, physical consequences -- at the very least, the color of the pixels on your screen (or which ones are lit by how much, if you want to be pedantic).
Black hole? Maths say they exist - but you will never really know... Reality is so totally comprehensive that all of imagination is an infinitesimal subset.
Perhaps. What is your evidence for this?
It seems to me that we are refining our understanding of reality, but the subset which we do understand, we understand fairly well. It has been a very long time since we've been truly and profoundly wrong -- and even then, we weren't.
For example: It was once believed that the earth is flat. But even this is not particularly wrong. On the scales most of us deal with in day-to-day life, a flat earth is a good approximation.
It was once believed that the sun revolved around the earth. This is still a good approximation, for most purposes here on the ground. It is only when we begin to consider the motion of other planets that it becomes important which is which.
People often point to Newton being "disproved" by Einstein, as a way to show how "unreliable" modern science is -- usually in an effort to promote some non-science, such as religion or "Intelligent Design". What they miss is that Einstein was, for all practical purposes, a refinement of Newton -- the Newtonian equations are at the core of the relativistic ones, and most of the time, we still use Newtonian physics, because it's still a good approximation and is easier to calculate.
So while I agree that there is always more to understand, we shouldn't pretend we know nothing simply because we don't know everything.
So, going back to what you've said here:
Black hole? Maths say they exist - but you will never really know,
In the sense that I can "really know" anything beyond the internal consistency of mathematical and logical systems, I can know that black holes exist, until a better explanation comes along. And as I've shown, that "better explanation" probably won't look that different than the one we have now.
For example, it is possible that we are wrong about what the singularity of a black hole looks like. But it seems unlikely that anything would ever make its way back out -- and if it did, it probably would not come back the way it went in. Even if black holes were shown to be an entirely different phenomenon, it seems unlikely we'd show that it isn't somehow swallowing up matter, energy, even light.
I'm an Intel fan right now, because of their robust Linux drivers, and because they finally stepped up with the Core series, thus making themselves a better choice than AMD.
But I'm not a blind zealot. This kind of behavior is disgusting.
No, they should either target behaviors, rather than executables, or make these available for teh application to request. Or they should improve the overall performance for everything -- starting with, oh, making a better chipset.
Targeting specific executables, even if they do end up improving the performance of specific games, has the effect of raising the barrier of entry to that market -- I mean, it's hard enough to optimize a game engine without having to develop a business relationship with Intel.
Here's the thing, though: They took 3DMarkVantage.exe and renamed it to 3DMarkVintage.exe, and much of that offloading was dropped. So this isn't a general-purpose optimization, which would make sense -- it's a targeted optimization, aimed at and enabled specifically for a benchmark, in order to get higher scores in said benchmark.
It reminds me of the days when Quake3.exe would give you higher benchmarks, but worse video, than Quack3.exe.
People on the internet called you names? It happens. Who are these people? Probably random pigs the internet has no shortage of.
This. The word "Vocal Minority" comes to mind.
I was asked to comment on this issue, and I think I delivered a calm, measured response -- certainly not "denial". (Look for "Locker-Room Culture.")
I think we can do better, but I think someone is taking the trolls too seriously. If big names like Linus, RMS, or Mark Shuttleworth are involved, that might say something -- and both RMS and Shuttleworth have said some things that could be considered sexist, which is probably what the original article was about.
But if it's random Anonymous Cowards, welcome to the Internet. Have a look around bash.org, 4chan, or even Slashdot at -1 -- this is neither new nor specifically attacking women.
This is where I really wish Google occasionally actually wrote the letters we pretend they do. For example:
Dear Mr. Murdoch, As requested, we have stopped copying your content without permission. Unfortunately, this has resulted in your sites being removed from Google Search results, as our spiders have to copy content in order to index it. Sorry about that.
Actually, I'd be fine with generic, done right. Probably my favorite example is the Aliens movie -- actually a deleted scene, apparently:
Weyland-Yutani. Ripley's former employers. Terran growth conglomerate. They had defense contracts under the military... Oh, they went under decades ago, way before your time. Bought out by Wal-Mart. Fortunes of war...
a WoW loading screen: "This instance brought to you by McDonalds,
That is a horrible and wonderful idea.
It's a good idea because it's not like you have anything better to do while it's loading.
It's a bad idea because it provides an incentive for the developers to create even more loading screens, and make them take even longer, and a disincentive for them to shorten or eliminate loading screens.
I do agree with your sentiment, though -- once we're actually in the game, ads or product placement only as you would in a movie -- where it makes sense, not just because you can.
You are buying hardware with a lot of proprietary technology in it. I'm sure there are at least a hundred different proprietary components in the device.... Its funny that you accept all of the rest of the device being massively proprietary, yet demand all of the source to the software.
Since these components are soldered in, as in most hardware, there's a limit to how much hacking/patching/maintaining I could do. Not that there isn't open source hardware, but the barrier of entry is a bit higher when you have to actually fab things yourself.
I mean, the barrier of entry to software development is an Internet connection and the ability and desire to learn. You can actually download all the tools you need. Hardware isn't quite there yet.
It's also because there is actually hardware out there which doesn't require any proprietary software, and it's possible to build a usable system out of such hardware. It's not really feasible to build a usable system out of only open hardware.
There is no business anywhere on the planet that doesn't do this in one form of or another.
Bullshit.
if you don't expect this sort of thing on the companies own website,
I expect marketspeak and hyperbole on a company website, not deception or outright lies.
netgear doesn't really care if you sneak a peak at the broadcom chip or see the die of the ARM processor. The do care a little bit more about some custom tweaks they've found to make it all work together a little better than someone else.
And none of these "custom tweaks" are in hardware?
Moreover, does anyone really think these "custom tweaks" wouldn't be possible to discover by reverse-engineering the binary blob? Where there's "secret sauce" in the firmware, it's usually a good indication that the hardware wasn't that good to begin with...
Slashdot Mirror
All we really have observed directly, are some anomalies in the orbit of Mercury. We interpret that to be due to the operation of gravity alone, but that is an interpretation, not a measured fact.
It does, however, line up with Relativity's predictions. That's the point.
It could be absolutely anything. But it matches the mathematical model.
Similarly, we have not "measured" Newtonian gravity. We interpret certain phenomena we see, such as the movements of the planets and the way in which things fall, to be expressions of Newtonian gravitation. We can use the mathematical model to predict how things will behave, and then measure that they behave that way. But we haven't observed them.
So I have to ask: Do you dispute Newton?
No, a scale does not count. A scale can only show that something is accelerating toward the Earth. That is only measuring the effects of gravitation, not gravitation itself.
Black holes as well as the universe as a whole, before the so-called Big Bang, are theorized to contain a SINGULARITY which has no existence in the physical world, but is ONLY a mathematical construct.
What is your evidence for this? Or, what is your reasoning for this?
The concept of zero, infinity and a point also are purely mathematical, but do not exist in the physical world.
Zero certainly exists -- it is possible to have zero of some measurable thing. Simple example: There are currently zero apples in this room.
Also, unless I'm missing something, black holes don't require the singularity to be a point, only that it have sufficient mass to create an event horizon. If you like, we can say that we don't know what they are, or what happens inside one, but I don't think we can say that they don't exist.
First of all, Newton and even Einstein only describe how gravity WORKS, not what actually constitutes or is behind gravity.
Similar things could, again, be said about anything else. Chemistry only describes how things work -- atomic theory can tell us that atoms are composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons, but what are these, really? If you said "Quarks and electrons", fine, but what are those, really?
If you accept string theory -- and I'm not sure I do -- they are actually strings, or perhaps vibrations of a string, which still doesn't answer the question. What is that string?
I know of no scientific explanation that is not in terms of something else, or relating to something else, eventually tying it back to the world we observe. So if we are talking about any fundamental property of the universe, there's always some mystery behind it.
I agree that a scientist spending all day playing with a mathematical model is not quite doing science, just a very elaborate hypothesis, and perhaps not even that. But I don't agree that either black holes or the Big Bang are just that -- the test of a mathematical model is not that it was inspired by observation, but that it fits observation, and that it is the simplest known model to do so.
Digital is like binary - it either works perfectly or not at all.
That statement shows a lack of understanding of either digital or binary.
With one-way connection, like digital TV, tape or DVD, you can only put forward error correction, then you can restore the signal even if it gets distorted.
In other words, it behaves pretty much the way I described. And the error correction built into the codec can attempt to mask certain errors, resulting in ugliness and huge, but not total, degradation of the signal.
I can tolerate a considerable amount of snow in the TV broadcast, but I hate when digital TV becomes pixelated or pauses the video completely.
In other words, you seem to agree with pretty much everything I said.
Just what was it you were disagreeing with? What was the "No it's not" referring to?
Newton supposedly did get hit by an Apple or whatever, but at any rate he observed and THEN he used mathematics to try and make sense out of what he observed.
And then -- and this is the important step -- his mathematics were used to make predictions, which were verified by further observation.
Much of cosmology today does it the other way around, in that they come up with theories and models and then try to explain the observations in terms of those. When they come up with anomalous observations, that don't fit the models, they invent fictitious things like black holes, dark matter and energy, rather than scrapping their obviously wrong models.
Except that this is essentially how both Kepler and Einstein worked. Kepler didn't scrap the "obviously wrong" model of planets orbiting the sun, but he adjusted the mathematics to match the observations. Einstein didn't scrap the "obviously wrong" model of Newtonian physics, but he did invent the "fictitious thing" of a warping of space-time -- which was then used to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the movements of Mercury.
And, unlike atoms, none of these things are directly observed. No one has observed the bending of space-time. We have observed its effects (Mercury again).
to be correct by a multitude of experiments at particle accelerators and with accurate cesium beam clocks. It is not based merely on mathematical models, but on actual observed physical reality.
Again, all of which are merely observing the effects of relativity, not relativity itself.
That is why black holes don't seem wholly "fictitious" to me -- we can see effects which are very well explained by black holes.
Moreover, consider the period before relativity -- people did not throw out Newton's models until there was a better explanation.
You do make some good points, though, and I'm probably reaching the edge of my own understanding.
Yeah, it is pretty bad. I get 100 mbits with a 20 gig cap for $70/mo, and as far as I can tell, they don't always enforce the cap.
Actually $65/mo, but adds up to $70 with fees/taxes/etc, and includes a phone line.
It's less that digital "doesn't bounce well", and more that digital has way worse failure rates.
I wrote a really long explanation, and ditched it in favor of a really simple one:
Pop an old video tape in a VCR and watch what happens. Probably degraded a bit, but still works. Now rent a DVD -- or better yet, borrow one from the library -- most will be OK, but if you do this often enough, you'll run into one with enough scratches in it that parts of it will be completely unwatchable, and the parts that are scratched-but-watchable are way worse than all but the worst tape damage.
So, if your range/antenna/interference/whatever is such that you'd have some amount of static, you'd still be able to watch analog TV, but digital would be unwatchable.
What's frustrating is that, done properly, digital should be able to compensate for stuff like this...
except that nobody has ever observed one anywhere.
Before we proceed, define observation.
Unless you're going to dispute optics, at the very least, we never actually observe anything directly, but rather, the light coming from that place. Nor do we actually observe a place being dark, only the reduced amount of light.
So what, exactly, is your criteria for "direct" observation?
Originally, modern science got started, when somebody we now call a scientist observed something about nature. As part of trying to explain and make sense of the observations, mathematics is used as a tool that has been extremely helpful.
I'll agree with that.
Lately though, especially with the advent of modern computers, mathematical modeling computations have taken precedence and a life of their own over simple observation.
How is this different than, say, Newton?
He made some observations. He came up with a mathematical model to explain them. He used it to predict some things, and his observations matched his predictions.
The same thing happens in cosmology. The use of computers to crunch the mathematics doesn't change the basic process.
Yes, the mathematics says that black holes should exist, but the sad FACT is, that nobody has ever observed one.
Nobody has observed a quark, as far as I know. Nor, technically, have we observed atoms. We've observed a readout on a display which indicates that some electrons bounced off something in exactly the way we expect an atom to be there, but certainly, no one's directly observed an atom.
Do you dispute the existence of atoms? Would you have, if electron microscopes did not exist?
A singularity, such as theorized as being at the center of a black hole, is a mathematical fiction,
There is a difference between a theory, or even a hypothesis, and a fiction.
no such thing exists physically.
And now you've crossed from denying that we have evidence of something to positively asserting that it does not exist.
I must ask, are you actually a scientist?
If the earth had an opaque atmosphere, such as Venus, how would we ever know about the existence of the sun? Could we ever know anything about planets and stars?
Sure we could, it would just take longer. For one, is Venus' atmosphere opaque to everything?
limited understanding of the force of gravity,
Our "limited understanding" which allows us to make predictions about tiny objects moving thousands of miles per hour, and aim a rocket at a target hundreds of thousands of miles away, and hit it with a high degree of accuracy...
Maybe the mathematical Emperor really doesn't have any clothes.
It sounds very much like you're someone who wants to do science, but doesn't like doing math. Disgruntled at a physics course, you've rebelled against your teachers...
But that's idle speculation.
If you have evidence to present, or a real lack of evidence, please, go right ahead.
Despite spending millions of dollars on incredibly sophisticated detectors, no one has ever really detected gravity waves.
Once again, not directly, but their effects have been detected -- and, moreover, relativity has been shown to be a highly accurate model in the situations where we've applied it (the orbit of mercury, for instance).
Aside from your credentials, your sources, and your criteria for something having been "observed", I'd also like to hear your suggestions for the "way" that you feel science has lost. What tool would you use in place of mathematics?
I have spent the last 26 years immersed in computers. Computers I know about. Cars, even though I drive one, I do not know about.
Me too.
I can re-gap a spark plug, do a tune-up on an older model car, change my oil and change a flat. However, I am vastly ignorant about troubleshooting and doing most work on a car.
The same cannot be said of most people about computers.
Indeed, most people have to go through driver's education of some sort. We understand what a turn signal does. We understand that we have to change our oil, even if we don't know how to do so. We understand that driving over sharp objects is probably a Bad Idea.
It's one thing to not understand how a computer works. But there are basic things everyone should know. You don't need to understand how SSL works, but you should know to look for the https, and look at the domain, before entering sensitive information -- and you should know not to click through SSL warnings.
Nor am I willing to invest the time to learn.
Obviously, you're willing to invest some time.
For instance, you're not a doctor, but you probably know how to eat right, and you at least know that exercise is good for you and too much sugar isn't. You're not a mechanic, but you know that you need to change your oil, check your tire pressure, and keep gas in the tank.
This is all far more than most people understand about computers. How many users know to defrag?
none of them ever had the desire to learn how to program or how a computer works at a deep down level.
I'm not suggesting they should.
Education will not get the job done...people have for the most part decided NOT learn about computers.
That's like saying condoms don't work, because people won't use them.
It's actually more akin to saying abstinence doesn't work -- but see, we do have an alternative to abstinence that does work. There really isn't a good alternative to educating users -- the best we really have is antivirus or draconian system administrators, both of which provide a worse user experience than a compromised machine, and neither of which provides much help for Internet banking.
And for that matter, neither condoms nor abstinence works very well without sex education.
So I'm not saying everyone should have any kind of depth of understanding, just enough to understand how to keep themselves secure. And that wouldn't take much more than driver's education.
Actually, saying that the Sun orbits Earth is not really wrong even today. The universe doesn't have a fixed reference frame so no body has an absolute position...
Not everything is relative -- for example, rotation. To say that the Sun orbits the Earth, you would have to say Earth is not rotating -- but we can measure exactly how much Earth is deformed by its rotation. It's not perfectly spherical -- centrifugal force makes it slightly squashed.
We still tend to put the Sun in the "center", in coordinate (0,0,0) of the solar system, because that's very useful for local purposes, but it's just as arbitrary as having Earth in the center centuries ago.
It's not arbitrary, as the solar system doesn't make sense if we put anything else at the center. The sun is the most massive, so most things can be said to orbit the sun. If you put Earth at the center, you'd have to have the other bodies orbiting the Sun still for it to make sense.
It's "arbitrary" in the sense that there is no actual "center", but if we were to choose a center, it makes much more sense.
(a microscopic perturbation in Earth's orbit would translate, due to angular distance, in galaxies billions of years away being "shaked" in faster-than-light speed - still not violating any physics laws)
Actually, things moving faster than light does violate some very fundamental laws of physics.
The OS X install CD was a LiveCD, last I checked.
And while it's not pushed by Microsoft, nor is it particularly easy, you can build a Windows PE CD, which is a LiveCD. Google BartPE.
No, what's special about it is that it's free and easy -- you can just download and burn an ISO.
Minor nit:
you'd have to make your own assembler, by hand.
Or you'd have to analyze an existing hex editor by hand. Still hard, but not as hard.
you can trust a fresh OS install from a trusted source, be it a Linux ISO downloaded from an official site or a Windows DVD purchased from a store.
Or build on a system that you already necessarily assume is trusted. For example, it should be possible to establish at least a web of trust between the signing keys for your packages and the signing key for the CD... or, if you have a CD, between that CD and the next.
Both of these are trusting external sources, but trusting a minimal amount -- for example, while I did have to download the very first install CD I used, after that, I no longer have to trust that I'm not being MITM'd. Much better to trust a distro than to trust the distro plus the connection between me and the distro.
Most distributions still include binary blobs in their corresponding source code that can bring the kinds of problems for which Microsoft Windows is advocated against in the article.
You won't find the word "proprietary", "open source", or "source code" in the article. The reason Windows is advocated against is simple: Malware is written to target Windows. Malware could as easily be written to target any operating system which is vulnerable.
Thankfully at this point, you can get machines that run a free bios, support wireless, and run 100% free software.
And 100% proprietary hardware, unless you've got schematics for all of it.
Never mind that you're connecting to a webserver running the bank's proprietary software...
Thankfully at this point, you can get machines that run a free bios, support wireless, and run 100% free software.
Which you've of course scrutinized every single line for security vulnerabilities... ...what's that? You haven't?
Why is it that you think free software is inherently more trustworthy than proprietary software, in that way? Or that the binary blobs in question are inherently compromising your security?
And, conversely, if you're a valuable enough target that you can afford to (and should) scrutinize every line, wouldn't you also have a budget to enroll in Microsoft's "Shared Source" program, and gain full access to the Windows source code, also?
No, you're right, there's nothing special about a "Linux LiveCD". But the magic word here isn't Linux, or even the implied "Free Software", but "LiveCD". From the point of view of the article, it could be a Windows PE disc, it's just that Linux CDs are free (as in beer), and Windows offers no real advantage in an environment which will only run a web browser.
I agree with many of the goals of software freedom, and I agree a solid open source process can yield more robust software than a closed one. But not every article with the word "Linux" is an appropriate place to bring it up. You sound kind of like this guy.
There is really no way to stop this.
There's one, but no one wants to hear it:
EDUCATION.
That is the only solution, and it is a complete solution, when used properly.
The only real solution is to make banks liable for online bank fraud,
And what would that solve? It isn't as though most bank websites are terribly insecure at the moment.
I would say, if the user was 0wned, make the user liable. They might learn something. Making the bank liable just opens the door for shit like a "super secure mode" app that only runs on Windows, thus decreasing security, or other equally-annoying measures that either do nothing for security, or worsen it.
Browser security is only an issue if you're visiting other sites, in the same session, on the same boot, on your LiveCD.
Wrong. Any security compromise on the same boot lends a possibility of compromising that session. Not all vulnerabilities will lead to that, but some can.
And going as far as questioning whether your CD burning software is infected is ridiculous. You can't be any more certain that your mouse doesn't have imbedded circuitry tracing your movement pattens, or your keyboard doesn't have a keylogger built directly into it,
No, the question is not whether the software came pre-0wned. The question is, once this practice becomes widespread, won't malware authors target the ISO downloading and/or CD burning process? If malware attaches itself to Nero, and Nero injects something into your shiny new livecd, what are you going to do? Ask it to verify itself?
or the aliens aren't tapping directly into your cablings electromagnetic intereference patterns to directly access your bank account as you do. You're going to extremes purely for the point of argument,
Which is exactly what you just did, right there.
See, keyboards with embedded keyloggers do exist, though mostly as proof of concept. While I'm not sure a mouse-movement-logging-mouse exists, it's not hard to imagine how one might be built.
There isn't any convincing evidence that aliens exist, and if they are here, we have no idea how they could be monitoring our thoughts.
All beside the point, of course, which is that this truly is security through obscurity, in two ways:
First, because it'd be much harder to write malware that compromises all burning software and rootkits your new LiveCD and rootkits your current Windows system such that you won't be able to detect the rootkit on the LiveCD...
But "harder" just means, they won't do it until it's worth it -- it's an obvious vulnerability.
The second kind of security through obscurity is the fact that this technique is relatively obscure -- that is, not well known. If users never use LiveCDs a lot, this will probably work well, because someone fishing for account info will go for your neighbor's (who accesses his bank from IE6) rather than you.
But neither kind is actually secure.
Unless your browser is listening for incoming connections,
Or it autoupdates itself, or its extensions, or its malware list, in an insecure way...
Or maybe something else is listening. While they have to compromise you quick (before your next reboot), most LiveCDs, out of convenience, provide a read/write filesystem.
If you are using the LiveCD as a dedicated banking only environment, the only input your browser will see is your bank's website.
Unless you're MITM'd. Or unless the default homepage is something that could potentially be host to something malicious. Or unless the user visits other websites.
If you can't trust user behavior, and want to really be sure, you could have it set to reject anything that doesn't have the bank's SSL cert.
That'll work right up until said cert expires. Or until there's an SSL vulnerability which requires browsers to be patched.
If no other site can reach your browser, your browser cannot be owned,
I agree, but the statement in bold is a pretty big assumption. Remember: Never trust anything you don't have to.
Except that CD burning software, and OSes, can both become very corrupted without touching the software. Barring crazy things like hacking the firmware of your keyboard -- and some keyboards (including Apple ones) have firmware -- the software is completely irrelevant.
If you mean, it's probably not my computer, you're right. But the point here is, I can give Grandma a livecd to use for her internet banking, and she now cannot screw up her normal OS to the point where the livecd is unsafe for banking.
That is, I agree with your examples of older models retaining their usefulness except for edge cases, but I don't think we've investigated many edge cases lately.
It seems like there's plenty of active research going on...
It seems to me that it's like the God of the Gaps. That is, as we understand progressively more, and as we refine our process for understanding, there are fewer edge cases, or at least, fewer edge cases that we haven't thought of, and restricted the domain of our laws to account for.
For example, it seems likely that really weird things happen at the instant of the Big Bang, but we can't actually get that far back. We can get really, really close, but there's a limit, and we know what that limit is.
Contrast this to Newtonian physics, which was assumed to apply universally.
Then again...
It's worth mentioning, Relativity was 1905. It's barely been 100 years since that. Origin of Species was 1859, Newton's Principia was 1687, and Copernicus' Commentariolus was 1514 -- going by the first publication of the most obvious work I could find (Origin of Species,
I've pretty much arbitrarily chosen these as revolutionary ideas, but it certainly doesn't show any signs of slowing -- only that, perhaps, we're about due for another.
You are not even really "you" in any sense beyond the illusory narrative created by the mind, to order its disparate sensations.
That depends very much by what you mean by "illusion", and what you mean by "you". If I identify myself as this particular chunk of matter in the state it is at the moment, then yes, I am me.
It's like describing a program as an illusion. In the sense that it abstract, perhaps. But it does have real, physical consequences -- at the very least, the color of the pixels on your screen (or which ones are lit by how much, if you want to be pedantic).
Black hole? Maths say they exist - but you will never really know... Reality is so totally comprehensive that all of imagination is an infinitesimal subset.
Perhaps. What is your evidence for this?
It seems to me that we are refining our understanding of reality, but the subset which we do understand, we understand fairly well. It has been a very long time since we've been truly and profoundly wrong -- and even then, we weren't.
For example: It was once believed that the earth is flat. But even this is not particularly wrong. On the scales most of us deal with in day-to-day life, a flat earth is a good approximation.
It was once believed that the sun revolved around the earth. This is still a good approximation, for most purposes here on the ground. It is only when we begin to consider the motion of other planets that it becomes important which is which.
People often point to Newton being "disproved" by Einstein, as a way to show how "unreliable" modern science is -- usually in an effort to promote some non-science, such as religion or "Intelligent Design". What they miss is that Einstein was, for all practical purposes, a refinement of Newton -- the Newtonian equations are at the core of the relativistic ones, and most of the time, we still use Newtonian physics, because it's still a good approximation and is easier to calculate.
So while I agree that there is always more to understand, we shouldn't pretend we know nothing simply because we don't know everything.
So, going back to what you've said here:
Black hole? Maths say they exist - but you will never really know,
In the sense that I can "really know" anything beyond the internal consistency of mathematical and logical systems, I can know that black holes exist, until a better explanation comes along. And as I've shown, that "better explanation" probably won't look that different than the one we have now.
For example, it is possible that we are wrong about what the singularity of a black hole looks like. But it seems unlikely that anything would ever make its way back out -- and if it did, it probably would not come back the way it went in. Even if black holes were shown to be an entirely different phenomenon, it seems unlikely we'd show that it isn't somehow swallowing up matter, energy, even light.
I'm an Intel fan right now, because of their robust Linux drivers, and because they finally stepped up with the Core series, thus making themselves a better choice than AMD.
But I'm not a blind zealot. This kind of behavior is disgusting.
No, they should either target behaviors, rather than executables, or make these available for teh application to request. Or they should improve the overall performance for everything -- starting with, oh, making a better chipset.
Targeting specific executables, even if they do end up improving the performance of specific games, has the effect of raising the barrier of entry to that market -- I mean, it's hard enough to optimize a game engine without having to develop a business relationship with Intel.
That was my first thought, too.
Here's the thing, though: They took 3DMarkVantage.exe and renamed it to 3DMarkVintage.exe, and much of that offloading was dropped. So this isn't a general-purpose optimization, which would make sense -- it's a targeted optimization, aimed at and enabled specifically for a benchmark, in order to get higher scores in said benchmark.
It reminds me of the days when Quake3.exe would give you higher benchmarks, but worse video, than Quack3.exe.
People on the internet called you names? It happens. Who are these people? Probably random pigs the internet has no shortage of.
This. The word "Vocal Minority" comes to mind.
I was asked to comment on this issue, and I think I delivered a calm, measured response -- certainly not "denial". (Look for "Locker-Room Culture.")
I think we can do better, but I think someone is taking the trolls too seriously. If big names like Linus, RMS, or Mark Shuttleworth are involved, that might say something -- and both RMS and Shuttleworth have said some things that could be considered sexist, which is probably what the original article was about.
But if it's random Anonymous Cowards, welcome to the Internet. Have a look around bash.org, 4chan, or even Slashdot at -1 -- this is neither new nor specifically attacking women.
This is where I really wish Google occasionally actually wrote the letters we pretend they do. For example:
Dear Mr. Murdoch,
As requested, we have stopped copying your content without permission. Unfortunately, this has resulted in your sites being removed from Google Search results, as our spiders have to copy content in order to index it. Sorry about that.
Actually, I'd be fine with generic, done right. Probably my favorite example is the Aliens movie -- actually a deleted scene, apparently:
Weyland-Yutani. Ripley's former employers. Terran growth conglomerate. They had defense contracts under the military... Oh, they went under decades ago, way before your time. Bought out by Wal-Mart. Fortunes of war...
I wonder why that didn't make the cut...
a WoW loading screen: "This instance brought to you by McDonalds,
That is a horrible and wonderful idea.
It's a good idea because it's not like you have anything better to do while it's loading.
It's a bad idea because it provides an incentive for the developers to create even more loading screens, and make them take even longer, and a disincentive for them to shorten or eliminate loading screens.
I do agree with your sentiment, though -- once we're actually in the game, ads or product placement only as you would in a movie -- where it makes sense, not just because you can.
You are buying hardware with a lot of proprietary technology in it. I'm sure there are at least a hundred different proprietary components in the device.... Its funny that you accept all of the rest of the device being massively proprietary, yet demand all of the source to the software.
Since these components are soldered in, as in most hardware, there's a limit to how much hacking/patching/maintaining I could do. Not that there isn't open source hardware, but the barrier of entry is a bit higher when you have to actually fab things yourself.
I mean, the barrier of entry to software development is an Internet connection and the ability and desire to learn. You can actually download all the tools you need. Hardware isn't quite there yet.
It's also because there is actually hardware out there which doesn't require any proprietary software, and it's possible to build a usable system out of such hardware. It's not really feasible to build a usable system out of only open hardware.
There is no business anywhere on the planet that doesn't do this in one form of or another.
Bullshit.
if you don't expect this sort of thing on the companies own website,
I expect marketspeak and hyperbole on a company website, not deception or outright lies.
netgear doesn't really care if you sneak a peak at the broadcom chip or see the die of the ARM processor. The do care a little bit more about some custom tweaks they've found to make it all work together a little better than someone else.
And none of these "custom tweaks" are in hardware?
Moreover, does anyone really think these "custom tweaks" wouldn't be possible to discover by reverse-engineering the binary blob? Where there's "secret sauce" in the firmware, it's usually a good indication that the hardware wasn't that good to begin with...