People will complain about late or cancelled trains but the fact is that no journey is every fast enough if you're not enjoying yourself, and no journey is too slow if you're having a good time.
The question therefore is: will on-board internet links make life better or worse for travellers? And the answer is obviously "yes".
With a notebook and wifi, even long waits are entirely bearable and can be fun. I'd rather a four-hour train journey with wifi than a two hour flight without.
Actually that was more or less my inference. My views on drones and population is that the more, the merrier. This is easily justified on several levels:
- Demonstration: the countries with the highest birth rates (and lowest death rates) also enjoy the highest standard of living. China, our favourite bogeyman, is today's fastest growing economy. Better counter examples would be Russia, with a collapsing population and parts of Africa, decimated by AIDS. Not particularly pleasant scenes.
- Optimism: either one enjoys living, or one does not. I do. I like people, I find us fun and interesting. So, the more, the merrier.
- Observation: it does appear that we are getting smarter, as a species. Our brains are not changing, but the mental models we use to operate our environment are getting more and more accurate. Example: we don't build aqueducts anymore, because we know that a simple pipe will works as well. Overall result: significant improvement in efficiency which makes it possible to improve our standards of living while also having lots of babies.
- Fatherhood: as the papa of a young child, I have to say, it's cool. She's mini-me and mini-my-wife, and reminds me of someone I never met.
- Science: evolution proves that all life is equal, fundamentally we are all just gene replication engines on autopilot. It does not matter whether human genes are the only ones out there, since a gene is a gene is a gene.
The last argument is the toughest one for the bleeding heart "we're all going to hell in a bucket" gang, of which I'm an occasional member. Either humans are _special_, in which case you have to believe in God and Creation etc. Nah. Or we're just animals, in which case we are no better, but significantly, also no worse than any other form of life.
Ask yourself, as a horny guy (the origin of this discussion), whether you would prefer to be surrounded by a beautiful diversity of wildlife, or by one smart good-looking chick who was willing to have babies with you. End of argument.
Uhm, "gay people" aren't specifically horny, it's men that are, and gay men just don't have the restraint that the female side of the relationship normally provides. Hey, I'm quoting from a gay friend of mine who explained why he had a different partner at least once, and often more than once, every week, for years.
A straight guy would do the same (speaking for myself) if he could convince attractive women to go along for the ride, so to speak.
The Bluetooth thing is cool, but won't help you find company in a strange city, which LBS will do, with the right applications.
Lastly, no-one was whining, you're being over-defensive: only a small minority of conservatives are prejudiced against gays per se, the majority of people are equally prejudiced against all people different from them. Personally I'm only prejudiced against blinkered conservatives. Gay people probably put less burden on welfare systems, but they aren't producing a new generation of tax payers (and believe me, raising children is a burden as well as a pleasure).
When it comes to 2G networks, the answer is "very segregated", mainly because the networks themselves are incredibly insecure and allowing open access to the SIM card and communications channels would mean lots of "phreaking". The GSM networks (I don't know about cell networks in the US) are mainly operated on trust.
"Location based services" is the technical term. Basically the GSM provider can localize a phone depending on its last known cell contact. Phones in passive mode re-register themselves automatically only every half-hour or so, so the position is not up to date unless the person is using the phone to call or send messages. There is a kind of 'ping' SMS which just causes the phone to re-register and thus return a valid position. It only works if the phone is turned on (doh!). The whole concept is seen as a great money spinner by the GSM providers, but like MMS and other new gadgets, that is more optimistic than realistic. LBS is probably going to be most useful in chat and dating, allowing over-horny people (I suspect mainly gays) to find each other simply by tapping on their phone. The "find your loved ones" is a joke, no-one actually expects to use this to find their errant husband or kids - it's for dating, boozing, and possibly the return of stolen phones (the service I would most appreciate, having had 5+ phones stolen in the last two years).
My company develops LBS SMS products. It's a fun market.
So will the real Bruce Perens please stand up and his karma whoring alterego please step aside? Unless you're _both_ the real Bruce Perens, in which case I excuse myself, oh schizophrenic one!
The GPL is anti-business because in business if you can steal and cheat your way to profit, you're morally obliged to do so. The GPL makes this harder to do than - e.g. a BSD-style license - so it is definitely anti-business, yes.
At the end of the article, an almost incoherent comment by some reader:
what I dont understand is all this bla bla about, all this can be achived with simple eye glasses, it needs only to tell the optician what he has to do, with this you can not only see 3D on a computer screen but also on any printed media, its amazing, I wont tell you now how to do because than all this guys run to apply patents, which I think they shoulnd get because its so simple it only needs to use the brain a little, it even works with a inkjetprinter output on normal paper.
This is true, but the intelligence is kept almost entirely segregated. The SIM card is not accessible except via a restricted interface; the user interface is not programmable except by eprom; the network cannot be accessed by any user-loadable code.
Yes, a 2G mobile phone (especially GSMs) is very sophisticated, but it is not programmable in the way needed to propagate a virus. With a GSM, for instance, the worst you can do is send malformed SMS messages that smash the eprom. You cannot take control, insert your own code, send out supretitious copies.
While the 2G phones are "smart" compared to an analogue phone, they are not "smart" in the sense that they cannot be programmed at the user level.
3G phones are a lot more programmable and rely on security through complexity, i.e. encryption, signatures, etc. This complexity creates the weaknesses that parasite code can exploit.
A simple example: as soon as a phone can run a Java applet that can access the Internet (which my 2.5G phone can do), it takes just one flaw in the Java runtime for the phone to be a potential target.
Simplicity is an excellent defense against parasitic code. 3G phones are significantly more complex than 2G and 2.5G phones. They therefore have more weaknesses.
The "monoculture" aspect just means that a large population share the same weaknesses and an infection will spread faster and wider.
It appears that war has segregated into several models:
1. Bushwar/guerilla warfare, involving low-tech small arms, often young soldiers, civilians, etc. This is the most common kind of war, the one with the most casualties (think: 3m dead in Congo in the last 5 years, by one estimate), also the one we hear least about. Robots? Big joke.
2. The Empire Strikes Back: hi-tech warfare against regimes or populations that have the wrong opinions, the wrong politics, or just happen to be in the wrong place. Robots? Not needed, it all happens by satellite-controlled smartbombs.
3. Police operations: friendly or unfriendly ground occupation with the goal of creating some kind of stability. Robots? Not likely, this is the most delicate form of aggression.
4. Entertainment: keep the public happy with videos of our heroes wiping out the enemy. Robots? Excellent - fewer of those body bags, and more potential for explosions.
The bulk of this money will return to Microsoft in the form of new income. So logically, they have no reason to block the settlement. I deduce therefore that it's a subtle way of pumping profits into 2004.
Or maybe Microsoft just hate Michael Robertson so much they would rather find themselves in breach of the settlement than pay one red cent... Nah, can't be.
This is just a puff of smoke intended to stimulate Christmas toy sales. The formula is ridiculously over-complex and loaded with unexplained constants. How on earth did this make Slashdot when perfectly good stories (like the one about SCO violations being found on the Moon) get refused?
One of the first things that get wiped in an intrusion are the logs. All access logs should be copied in as near real-time as possible to a remote server that is not accessible from the machine being logged, i.e. a drop-box.
No, they make very little money from selling their technology.
Most of Google's income comes from advertising, meaning their current customers are people paying for ads. But their indirect customers are still the people doing the searches.
And you're saying the Chinese were never aggressive?
Of course violence is a human universal. That's not news, and I did not argue the opposite. What I said was this: there is a theory that the latin alphabet has been the cause of a particularly human-centric school of thought that appears obvious to us but is not universal.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a great step forwards.
People will complain about late or cancelled trains but the fact is that no journey is every fast enough if you're not enjoying yourself, and no journey is too slow if you're having a good time.
The question therefore is: will on-board internet links make life better or worse for travellers? And the answer is obviously "yes".
With a notebook and wifi, even long waits are entirely bearable and can be fun. I'd rather a four-hour train journey with wifi than a two hour flight without.
Actually that was more or less my inference. My views on drones and population is that the more, the merrier. This is easily justified on several levels:
- Demonstration: the countries with the highest birth rates (and lowest death rates) also enjoy the highest standard of living. China, our favourite bogeyman, is today's fastest growing economy. Better counter examples would be Russia, with a collapsing population and parts of Africa, decimated by AIDS. Not particularly pleasant scenes.
- Optimism: either one enjoys living, or one does not. I do. I like people, I find us fun and interesting. So, the more, the merrier.
- Observation: it does appear that we are getting smarter, as a species. Our brains are not changing, but the mental models we use to operate our environment are getting more and more accurate. Example: we don't build aqueducts anymore, because we know that a simple pipe will works as well. Overall result: significant improvement in efficiency which makes it possible to improve our standards of living while also having lots of babies.
- Fatherhood: as the papa of a young child, I have to say, it's cool. She's mini-me and mini-my-wife, and reminds me of someone I never met.
- Science: evolution proves that all life is equal, fundamentally we are all just gene replication engines on autopilot. It does not matter whether human genes are the only ones out there, since a gene is a gene is a gene.
The last argument is the toughest one for the bleeding heart "we're all going to hell in a bucket" gang, of which I'm an occasional member. Either humans are _special_, in which case you have to believe in God and Creation etc. Nah. Or we're just animals, in which case we are no better, but significantly, also no worse than any other form of life.
Ask yourself, as a horny guy (the origin of this discussion), whether you would prefer to be surrounded by a beautiful diversity of wildlife, or by one smart good-looking chick who was willing to have babies with you. End of argument.
So, yes, the more drones the better.
Love it: this book was published on the same year I graduated in CompSci and went into business as a programmer.
Especially cool, the retro views on technology, I found. Yoda back strikes.
Like the one on computer safety. I mean, how many people actually take a break every 30 minutes to avoid damaging their eyes?
Uhm, "gay people" aren't specifically horny, it's men that are, and gay men just don't have the restraint that the female side of the relationship normally provides. Hey, I'm quoting from a gay friend of mine who explained why he had a different partner at least once, and often more than once, every week, for years.
A straight guy would do the same (speaking for myself) if he could convince attractive women to go along for the ride, so to speak.
The Bluetooth thing is cool, but won't help you find company in a strange city, which LBS will do, with the right applications.
Lastly, no-one was whining, you're being over-defensive: only a small minority of conservatives are prejudiced against gays per se, the majority of people are equally prejudiced against all people different from them. Personally I'm only prejudiced against blinkered conservatives. Gay people probably put less burden on welfare systems, but they aren't producing a new generation of tax payers (and believe me, raising children is a burden as well as a pleasure).
When it comes to 2G networks, the answer is "very segregated", mainly because the networks themselves are incredibly insecure and allowing open access to the SIM card and communications channels would mean lots of "phreaking". The GSM networks (I don't know about cell networks in the US) are mainly operated on trust.
"Location based services" is the technical term. Basically the GSM provider can localize a phone depending on its last known cell contact. Phones in passive mode re-register themselves automatically only every half-hour or so, so the position is not up to date unless the person is using the phone to call or send messages. There is a kind of 'ping' SMS which just causes the phone to re-register and thus return a valid position. It only works if the phone is turned on (doh!). The whole concept is seen as a great money spinner by the GSM providers, but like MMS and other new gadgets, that is more optimistic than realistic. LBS is probably going to be most useful in chat and dating, allowing over-horny people (I suspect mainly gays) to find each other simply by tapping on their phone. The "find your loved ones" is a joke, no-one actually expects to use this to find their errant husband or kids - it's for dating, boozing, and possibly the return of stolen phones (the service I would most appreciate, having had 5+ phones stolen in the last two years).
My company develops LBS SMS products. It's a fun market.
by Bruce Perens (3872) .Bruce Perens (150539)
by
So will the real Bruce Perens please stand up and his karma whoring alterego please step aside? Unless you're _both_ the real Bruce Perens, in which case I excuse myself, oh schizophrenic one!
The GPL is anti-business because in business if you can steal and cheat your way to profit, you're morally obliged to do so. The GPL makes this harder to do than - e.g. a BSD-style license - so it is definitely anti-business, yes.
At the end of the article, an almost incoherent comment by some reader:
what I dont understand is all this bla bla about, all this can be achived with simple eye glasses, it needs only to tell the optician what he has to do, with this you can not only see 3D on a computer screen but also on any printed media, its amazing, I wont tell you now how to do because than all this guys run to apply patents, which I think they shoulnd get because its so simple it only needs to use the brain a little, it even works with a inkjetprinter output on normal paper.
Moral of the story is: don't smoke pot and post!
This is true, but the intelligence is kept almost entirely segregated. The SIM card is not accessible except via a restricted interface; the user interface is not programmable except by eprom; the network cannot be accessed by any user-loadable code.
Yes, a 2G mobile phone (especially GSMs) is very sophisticated, but it is not programmable in the way needed to propagate a virus. With a GSM, for instance, the worst you can do is send malformed SMS messages that smash the eprom. You cannot take control, insert your own code, send out supretitious copies.
While the 2G phones are "smart" compared to an analogue phone, they are not "smart" in the sense that they cannot be programmed at the user level.
3G phones are a lot more programmable and rely on security through complexity, i.e. encryption, signatures, etc. This complexity creates the weaknesses that parasite code can exploit.
A simple example: as soon as a phone can run a Java applet that can access the Internet (which my 2.5G phone can do), it takes just one flaw in the Java runtime for the phone to be a potential target.
Simplicity is an excellent defense against parasitic code. 3G phones are significantly more complex than 2G and 2.5G phones. They therefore have more weaknesses.
The "monoculture" aspect just means that a large population share the same weaknesses and an infection will spread faster and wider.
Modern IT works like a natural system.
As soon as there is a host that can be infected, in quantities of relative interest, viruses will evolve that can parasite it.
Mobile phones are safe only so long as they are too stupid to act as carries for self-reproducing code.
A good reason IMHO to spurn "smart" phones.
Too hard to click the "Post Anonymously" option when you flame your own posts? Bloody amateurs.
Who modded this funny? This is a scandalous post!
... and planning a crackdown on US cities!!
It says:
- our soldiers are drug addicts
- our generals are alcoholics
- our army is corrupt
Mod this "-1 UNPATRIOTIC" and shoot the traitor bastard who wrote it! Come here and we'll give you what you deserve!!
It appears that war has segregated into several models:
1. Bushwar/guerilla warfare, involving low-tech small arms, often young soldiers, civilians, etc. This is the most common kind of war, the one with the most casualties (think: 3m dead in Congo in the last 5 years, by one estimate), also the one we hear least about. Robots? Big joke.
2. The Empire Strikes Back: hi-tech warfare against regimes or populations that have the wrong opinions, the wrong politics, or just happen to be in the wrong place. Robots? Not needed, it all happens by satellite-controlled smartbombs.
3. Police operations: friendly or unfriendly ground occupation with the goal of creating some kind of stability. Robots? Not likely, this is the most delicate form of aggression.
4. Entertainment: keep the public happy with videos of our heroes wiping out the enemy. Robots? Excellent - fewer of those body bags, and more potential for explosions.
Sigh.
No, the humans would be following the robots, carrying spare battery packs and very long cables.
The scene: a dim room in the Pentagon, two generals are sharing a bottle of malt with an admiral.
"Just imagine: a robot army that can think for itself, stand upright, speak clear English..."
"It sounds like a dream, but with those new scooters, it could happen."
"At last, an Army we control..."
"... no more drugs, booze,..."
"... or sleep, even!"
"There's the problem of terrain..."
"Yes, those wheels don't work well in brush."
"Maybe we can make them larger? Like HUGE?"
"Self-balancing tanks? Sounds interesting..."
"... and expensive. I like it."
"... and then we can keep the scooters for backup"
"You mean 'OPERATION NO DISSENT'?"
"Most of our cities are 'wheelchair friendly' already"
"Excellent. And we can just use the tanks in the others."
"Bottle's empty. MAJOR! MORE MALT!"
This is a wonderful resource, thanks for the link.
The bulk of this money will return to Microsoft in the form of new income. So logically, they have no reason to block the settlement. I deduce therefore that it's a subtle way of pumping profits into 2004.
Or maybe Microsoft just hate Michael Robertson so much they would rather find themselves in breach of the settlement than pay one red cent... Nah, can't be.
This is just a puff of smoke intended to stimulate Christmas toy sales. The formula is ridiculously over-complex and loaded with unexplained constants. How on earth did this make Slashdot when perfectly good stories (like the one about SCO violations being found on the Moon) get refused?
"WRONG ANSWER!"
"SOCAN" is not a representative of the Entertainment Industry, all such organizations must have acronyms ending in "A" or "AA".
"SOCAN" is most likely a Canadian organization, possibly standing for "So Canada, SO CANADA,..."
"Next question: what does SHALSHODT stand for?"
Off-site logging of all accesses.
One of the first things that get wiped in an intrusion are the logs. All access logs should be copied in as near real-time as possible to a remote server that is not accessible from the machine being logged, i.e. a drop-box.
...at least have the decency to refer people to my original Slashdot journal entry.
Thank you.
No, they make very little money from selling their technology.
Most of Google's income comes from advertising, meaning their current customers are people paying for ads. But their indirect customers are still the people doing the searches.
Dude, it's fucking HUGE, and says, in bitchy, black, bold letters, PRESS ME!!
Oh, yeah, I love my commas.
And you're saying the Chinese were never aggressive?
Of course violence is a human universal. That's not news, and I did not argue the opposite. What I said was this: there is a theory that the latin alphabet has been the cause of a particularly human-centric school of thought that appears obvious to us but is not universal.