I wonder if a mass-based deflector is less technologically risky than a deflector that requires a landing craft. Scaling up launch systems to put 20 tons next to an asteroid carries a high degree of risk, too. The complex scaling relationships in rockets mean you can't just double every dimension to make a rocket X times as big. In contrast, a smaller lander might use existing, off-the-shelf, launch systems.
Yes, a lander is risky, but so is a much bigger rocket.
I'd bet carriers had more to say about the song limit -- imposed to encourage paying for downloading of songs via the cell network, not the built-in slow USB1 connection. If the phone stored 1000 songs you can bet that people would scream that they can't quickly sync an entire large collection.
Motorola does NOT make phones for consumers, it makes them for carriers.
My first reaction is that they should only teach ID in science class when they teach evolution in sunday school.
My second reaction is that I can only hope is that actual science teachers in Kansas can use this to get the children to discuss hypotheses about the designer(s) that supposedly created the "intelligent design". What if examining the fossil record causes kids to think about the flaws in the designer or the possibility that multiple designers participated? (see my prior post) Such a discussion should create enough discomfort among the religious right to get them to withdraw these mandates to teach this theory.
I can understand that code will always be susceptible to byzantine failure modes that create vulnerabilities -- software isn't perfect and never can be. The lone programmer can't be expected to withstand the onslaught of a horde of black-hat hackers. Nonetheless some categories of faults should be avoidable. For example, buffer overflows, stack overflows, heap overflows should stop being a problem because every programmer should be aware of them and should reuse overflow-proof code constructs.
Yet I bet that new code will continue to suffer from well-know old vulnerabilities. Perhaps these type vulnerabilities wouldn't occur if anyone who wrote code that is vulnerable to an overflow had their mouse-hand severed from their body. Until truly negligent errors in code carry penalties (for programmer and company), these types of dumb programming errors will continue to create vulnerabilities. Perhaps an analogous code of professional and legal sanctions that governs civil engineering should also govern software. We don't let just anyone build public physical structures, yet we do let anybody build public code structures.
I once wrote a simple finite difference routine in FORTRAN on a VAX 11/750 for an engineering class in college. The code used a nested DO loop to do 100 iterations, check for convergence, do another 100 iterations, check for convergence, etc. The inner loop was a dead simple DO 100 iterations using an integer counter, had absolutely no exit code inside the loop, no use of random numbers, nothing squirrelly. The outer loop had a simple test for convergence. A PRINT statement on the outer loop kept me apprised of the progress of the run. Everything is going fine until a do a run and get:
How this VAX decided that 99 times through a i = 1 to 100 loop was OK, I'll never know. I re-ran code with the identical inputs and it never did this again.
With printed blood vessels on thin sheet and a bit of folding, they could get a nice surface area to volume ratio for an artificial lung. I could also see making gills, but I doubt that a man-size warm-blooded organism can get enough O2 in water.
If Intelligent Design is really a science, then the next step is to generate and test hypotheses about the designer(s). Surely the fossil record and current genetic and phenotypic characteristics of organisms could be used to hypothesize the nature of the designer(s). If scientists did this I suspect that Christians might be less supportive of the theory. Consider these likely hypotheses about the designer:
Multiple Designers: Why are there so many different designs for the eye and what does that say about the designer(s)? Why does the human eye lack important innovations such as the reflective layer in the cat's eye that improves night vision or the more logical retina-over-blood network of the octopus eye or the four-color vision of the jumping spider eye (or the 6-color vision of the mantis shrimp) or the polarization sensitivity used by bees and ants for navigation? One strong hypothesis is that multiple designers participated -- different designers, working independently, created these different designs. Perhaps the joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee is really true.
Flawed Designer(s): The waves of extinctions and vast numbers of extinct species suggest that the designer(s) were flawed in their designs. It would seem that the designer(s) thought that velociraptors, plesiosaurs, trilobites, Homo erectus, etc. were good ideas, but then changed their mind(s) or found they created creatures that were too flawed to survive.
Lazy Designer(s): The fossil record suggests that little happened for the first 6/7ths of the Earth's existence -- everything happened on the seventh "day". Out of the last 4.5 billion years of the planet's existence complex life only in the last 600 million years or so have complex life forms appears. Humans didn't appear until about 30 seconds to midnight late on the metaphorical 7th day. (Note that this fact is used by some non-atheistic scientists to say that a deity set up the rules of evolution and then "rested" while the mechanism of evolution created everything. This explanation refutes IS because then the designer is not participating in the creation of all these complex organisms on the seventh day).
Overall, I'd wager that the scientific evidence would provide more "scientific" support for a polytheistic religion with humanistic/flawed dieties (such as the ancient Roman/Greek religions) than for an omnipotent monotheistic religion such as Christianity.
The bigger issues is that the allegedly religious ID people probably don't want to entertain hypotheses about designer(s) and would be especially uncomfortable letting school children even discuss these questions. Yet the entire purpose of science is to ask these questions and that is why it doesn't mix well with religion which is entirely based on faith. From a theological standpoint, I would suspect that Christians would prefer a separation between church and science.
So you've saying that if your car was stolen and used to commit a crime, then you should be liable for the criminals behavior?
Hmmm.. Interesting analogy. Actually, its more like if you GIVE your cars keys to someone and they commit a crime, then you are liable (I'm not saying you are liable or should be liable, but that is the proper analogy). After all, the criminal's computer asked to connect to the unlocked WAP and the WAP said "OK." The criminals never "enter" the unlocked WAP or "stole" the unlocked WAP. Instead, they use a standard public protocol to ask to use it and it's up to the owner to configure the WAP to allow or deny that usage.
So let's be clear. You are in favour of strict penalties for anyone who leaves their house with a door unlocked on the grounds that the premises may be used for illegal behaviour?
Clarity is good. And to be clear, I am NOT in favor of this law. I'm only pointing out that the unlocked/burgled house analogy is deeply flawed because the damage isn't limited to the unlocked house but extends to others on the internet. If we are to debate the problems with this law, we do need to be clear that the law is intended to limit criminal's access to the net via unsecure and largely untraceable means and that the potential harm extends beyond the interior of the "unlocked house". You are 100% correct that this is a law that criminalizes what is not, on the face, a criminal act. Perhaps this law is more like one that says a person can't leave a loaded gun in their front yard. Perhaps, like so many things about the net, no meatspace analogy is going to work.
Personally, I am in favor of expansive personal freedom bounded by personal responsibility and civil, ethical behavior. Yet I (and many law makers) notice that some people like the freedom, but don't hold up their end of the responsibility/civility side of the bargain. The result is loathsome nanny-state laws like this one. I may be against this law on a personal level, but I can understand on an intellectual level why this law is a direct consequence of the current state of the internet.
It is like fining somebody for leaving their door unlocked and they get burglarized.
No, it is like fining somebody for leaving their door unlocked and letting someone run a meth lab in your house.
If the damage done by those who entered the unlocked door stayed inside the house, it would be no problem. But if unlocked WiFi is used for spamming or malware activities, then it needs regulation. Perhaps the law should be fine-tuned -- to only target those who have unlocked WiFi attached to the internet.
someone has to collect and distribute this stuff for things like background checks. are we suggesting the govt should do it instead of the private sector?
Very insightful comment and I'm glad it got upmodded.
As a consumer I'm really of two minds on this issue. On the one hand, I hate that all this data is sitting out there. But on the otherhand, i realize its the price one pays to get a reasonable mortgage rate, credit cards on favorable terms, low insurance premiums, and a wide range of services at acceptable prices. Without accurate credit reporting, all businesses would need to increase prices to factor in the risk of loss and the added costs of extracting late payments.
As long as people expect businesses to take risks on them (lending money, providing service without up-front payment, entering into long-term service contracts, etc.), those businesses will want to collect information on the riskiness of those consumers. And if a consumer doesn't have an established relationship with a given business, then it makes sense that that business will need to ask other business that have done business with that consumer. And rather than have each business pester every other business with questions, it makes sense that other businesses would form to collect and sell consumer payment/risk data. Thus we get to the question of who should do this?
I fear that the government would be utterly incompetent at creating such a system, even if consumers did decide that all their purchase/payment history data should go to the government. The government would have little incentive to create accurate risk models. Because there is no a priori obvious way to estimate a given consumer's risk of non-payment, it's sensible to have multiple credit risk analysis companies each with their own scoring system. The final question is how should they do this?
What we need are better laws to ensure that the data is properly secured, properly vetted, fairly computed, and that consumers have some due process rights to contest erroneous data.
Dell does NOT maximize profits -- I've heard several Dell executives speak (including Micheal Dell) and their pricing strategy is more subtle that just maximizing the short-term revenue minus costs bottom line. In fact, they said that they will actually penalize sales divisions that create too high a profit margin.
The reason is that the higher the profit margin, the higher the price. The higher the price, the lower the market-share. Dell is more interested in gaining market-share than in maximizing price. For a commodity such as PCs, the way to achieve long-term success is high volume with a more modest profit margin. Undercutting competitors is more valuable than earning more on each sale.
The key is that total profits are a second-order curve as a function of price. Too low a price results in too low a total profit. To high a price means lower sales volume and lower total profit. The optimum price foregoes some profits per PC, but makes it up in volume.
Perhaps the big lesson is that Dell and Apple are NOT in the same business. Dell is just one more PC maker that sells a commodity that is strongly subject to price competition (Dell is very good at competing on this). Apple is a sole-source for an intrinsically valued product. Sure, some people do avoid Apple because of price, but many buy Apple (and don't even consider buying a PC) because of the unique value provided by Apple.
Someone needs to create an air interconnect standard that lets server room designers snap-on cold air supplies onto a standard "air-port" on the box or blade. The port standard would include several sizes to accomodate different airflow needs and distribution form large supply ports to a rack of small ports on servers. A Lego-like portfolio of snap-together port connections, tees, joints, ducts, plenums, etc. would let an IT HVAC guy quickly distribute cold air from a floor, wall or ceiling air supply to a rack of servers.
Having no TPM would be an open invitation to widespread unauthorized distribution of OS X - not good for the old revenue stream in either hardware or software. Having perfect TMP would stifle experimentation -- not good for letting prospects try before they buy. Having an evolving, imperfect TPM shield provides the best of both worlds.
I'd bet Apple knows that TPM will never be 100% successful and that that is OK by them (although I doubt they would admit it). People who really want to _try_ OS X will get a free hacked copy. People that really want to _use_ OS X in a production environment will buy it. I doubt that many people will want hacked version of OS X if they know that it means potential instabilities, lack of updates (or hassles to get updates), etc.
Synthesizing a high index of refraction is cool, but if the dispersion (the variation of that index across wavelengths) is non-zero, then this can make a mess of modulated signals. Dispersion means that signals at slight different wavelengths run at different velocities and arrive at different times at the output.
The higher the dispersion, the lower the practical bandwidth of the device.
I'm wondering when some company will just auction "hot" new products to the highest bidder? The top 1000 bids get the product in week 1, the second highest 1000 bids get the product in week 2, etc. A central website would manage the bidding and winners would get a code or printed barcode sheet that entitles them to buy the item at the agreed price at their local retailer or online. Retailers could even use bid data to guess-timate the likely volume of sales (knowing that some % of winning bidders in their zip code are likely to buy at that retailer).
Auctions would reduce problems with insiders who buy multiple copies of the product at retail and sell scarce goods on eBay. It would also avoid mob scenes in which desperate parents storm the doors of stores known to have the much-sought product. Finally, winning bidders would have some assurance that they will be able to get the scarce item.
I'm sure OSS can create some extremely clever UI and firmware features, but that's not what's needed. The answer to the ipod killer question is "yes" only if OSS developers somehow understand and implement the wishes of the broader iPod-loving populace. If they create an iPod with a vi or emacs-style interface, the unit will be loved by geeks and hated by 98% of the general public.
Security is all about preventing undesirable events. Yet these systems will always be subject to false-positives -- preventing the user from taking a legitimate actions. For example, I hate *nix file permission systems because its too easy to set the permissions too restrictively and run into "permission denied" problems when working across several accounts and file systems. Sure, I can chmod things, but that's an added hassle (each added step or command is to the detriment of ease of use).
In contrast, the easiest systems require no passwords, no authentication, and let the user do anything they want to any file, anywhere. But that is not secure.
Yet I'd argue that security can be made easier. Single sign-on and password keychains help (although these arguably reduce security somewhat). The bigger solution is goal-oriented UIs, not mechanism-oriented UIs. Current security often assumes that the user understands the internals of the system -- that particular ports provide particular functions or vulnerabilities. Easy-to-use security software would guide the user is defining what they want to allow or disallow and hide technical details of how that is implemented.
Even if we add a wonderful UI to security, it will never be perfect. Security is about saying "no", ease of use is about saying "yes." To that extent, the gap between security and ease-of use is permanent.
The kind of changes you're talking about require vastly faster memory. Not the kind of latency differences being discussed here at all. Both of these are "high latency" compared to what would be needed for your theoretical redesign of the entire software stack.
Exactly!
Oh, and latency is getting worse, not better, and has been for a long, long time.
Very true my first full-sized computer had a 8 MHz processor and 150 ns RAM in 1985. Now there's more than an 8:1 ratio between CPU and RAM clocks (and the RAM requires several cycles of wait states even at its slow speed). The question is: is this totally irreversible? Could future memory technologies based on paramagnetic hyperoptical nanodots (there's no such thing, but you never know) provide CPU-equalling clock speeds or allow significant amounts of on-die RAM for future CPUs?
My point is that these tests suggest that low-latency RAM wouldn't help in most of the applications tested in TFA. But I wonder if most of those applications have been written to cope with high-latency memory.
These tests underestimate the performance impact of latency because they are conducted using software optimized over the years for the high-latency realities of current-day memory architectures. CPU clock speeds have been outstripping RAM clock speeds for about 15 years. Software developers have spent years optimizing their code to mitigate the impacts of latency.
In the short-run, these tests help a person decide whether to buy low-latency RAM. But they provide little long-term insight into how much faster the entire system could be if low-latency were the norm and compilers, libraries, operating systems, and applications were re-optimized for low-latency, not high-latency, architectures.
The move to digitize out-of-copyright works combined with the natural movement of new materials to web creates a kind of internet information gap. Many things appearing after 1990 or so are now on the net in some form or other. And things that occurred before 1923 are in material now lapsed from copyright and will be on the net courtesy of Google. Things in between are too old to be on the net directly and too new to be out of copyright.
In 75 years, give or take, the gap will close for oldest years on. But for a while the internet will not have as much on a wide array content on pre-digital topics.
I wonder how NBC will feel if their online nightly news broadcast gets wrapped with Google ads (especially if the DVR lets one skip ads in the video)?
I sure some content creators will sign deals with Google, but many content distributors will have a knee-jerk anti-Google reaction because this makes Google a direct competitor (e.g., another company distributing ad-supported content).
This rootkit hides itself from the user and anti-malware. Why should any software be allowed to run invisibly? I really want to know.
It seems to me that a well designed OS should NEVER let a piece of code be invisible. There should be some part of the OS that knows what is running, what invoked it, what file it came from, etc. A well designed OS would know the provenance of every segment of code. This information should be read-only to anything outside of this protected monitoring function. Thus ALL running code would be visible to the user and anti-malware software. And if you add hash-code locks on installed software, then malware wouldn't be able to masquerade as some other normal bit of code or damage anti-malware apps. Malware could still hide in a user-downloaded software, but the tracking function would aid the detection and removal of any unwanted code.
Is there ever a good reason to let software be invisible?
I assume they will use an "old" version
on
Printing Wikipedia
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
If this project is to avoid erroneous and vandal edits, it needs to use a well-reviewed version of each entry. Only entries that have been seen X times in the last Y days with no edits would be printable.
And if they do use a stable version for printing, then the could offer that as a version for those that don't want beta entries. Entries with less than a certain viewer/edit ratio would be deemed "beta" and not show to people or coded as such.
Wiki could even color-code the text by recency of edit. Readers would know which sections are too recent to trust and editor would see what's changed.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, a lander is risky, but so is a much bigger rocket.
Motorola does NOT make phones for consumers, it makes them for carriers.
My second reaction is that I can only hope is that actual science teachers in Kansas can use this to get the children to discuss hypotheses about the designer(s) that supposedly created the "intelligent design". What if examining the fossil record causes kids to think about the flaws in the designer or the possibility that multiple designers participated? (see my prior post) Such a discussion should create enough discomfort among the religious right to get them to withdraw these mandates to teach this theory.
Yet I bet that new code will continue to suffer from well-know old vulnerabilities. Perhaps these type vulnerabilities wouldn't occur if anyone who wrote code that is vulnerable to an overflow had their mouse-hand severed from their body. Until truly negligent errors in code carry penalties (for programmer and company), these types of dumb programming errors will continue to create vulnerabilities. Perhaps an analogous code of professional and legal sanctions that governs civil engineering should also govern software. We don't let just anyone build public physical structures, yet we do let anybody build public code structures.
It seems someone else was using "Windows Defender" until MS sent in their lawyers. Tucked into the agreement was a line making the prior owner give all rights to the "Defender" name to MS. Two weeks later, MS announces the new name.
I: ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... .....
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How this VAX decided that 99 times through a i = 1 to 100 loop was OK, I'll never know. I re-ran code with the identical inputs and it never did this again.
With printed blood vessels on thin sheet and a bit of folding, they could get a nice surface area to volume ratio for an artificial lung. I could also see making gills, but I doubt that a man-size warm-blooded organism can get enough O2 in water.
Overall, I'd wager that the scientific evidence would provide more "scientific" support for a polytheistic religion with humanistic/flawed dieties (such as the ancient Roman/Greek religions) than for an omnipotent monotheistic religion such as Christianity.
The bigger issues is that the allegedly religious ID people probably don't want to entertain hypotheses about designer(s) and would be especially uncomfortable letting school children even discuss these questions. Yet the entire purpose of science is to ask these questions and that is why it doesn't mix well with religion which is entirely based on faith. From a theological standpoint, I would suspect that Christians would prefer a separation between church and science.
Hmmm.. Interesting analogy. Actually, its more like if you GIVE your cars keys to someone and they commit a crime, then you are liable (I'm not saying you are liable or should be liable, but that is the proper analogy). After all, the criminal's computer asked to connect to the unlocked WAP and the WAP said "OK." The criminals never "enter" the unlocked WAP or "stole" the unlocked WAP. Instead, they use a standard public protocol to ask to use it and it's up to the owner to configure the WAP to allow or deny that usage.
Clarity is good. And to be clear, I am NOT in favor of this law. I'm only pointing out that the unlocked/burgled house analogy is deeply flawed because the damage isn't limited to the unlocked house but extends to others on the internet. If we are to debate the problems with this law, we do need to be clear that the law is intended to limit criminal's access to the net via unsecure and largely untraceable means and that the potential harm extends beyond the interior of the "unlocked house". You are 100% correct that this is a law that criminalizes what is not, on the face, a criminal act. Perhaps this law is more like one that says a person can't leave a loaded gun in their front yard. Perhaps, like so many things about the net, no meatspace analogy is going to work.
Personally, I am in favor of expansive personal freedom bounded by personal responsibility and civil, ethical behavior. Yet I (and many law makers) notice that some people like the freedom, but don't hold up their end of the responsibility/civility side of the bargain. The result is loathsome nanny-state laws like this one. I may be against this law on a personal level, but I can understand on an intellectual level why this law is a direct consequence of the current state of the internet.
No, it is like fining somebody for leaving their door unlocked and letting someone run a meth lab in your house.
If the damage done by those who entered the unlocked door stayed inside the house, it would be no problem. But if unlocked WiFi is used for spamming or malware activities, then it needs regulation. Perhaps the law should be fine-tuned -- to only target those who have unlocked WiFi attached to the internet.
Very insightful comment and I'm glad it got upmodded.
As a consumer I'm really of two minds on this issue. On the one hand, I hate that all this data is sitting out there. But on the otherhand, i realize its the price one pays to get a reasonable mortgage rate, credit cards on favorable terms, low insurance premiums, and a wide range of services at acceptable prices. Without accurate credit reporting, all businesses would need to increase prices to factor in the risk of loss and the added costs of extracting late payments.
As long as people expect businesses to take risks on them (lending money, providing service without up-front payment, entering into long-term service contracts, etc.), those businesses will want to collect information on the riskiness of those consumers. And if a consumer doesn't have an established relationship with a given business, then it makes sense that that business will need to ask other business that have done business with that consumer. And rather than have each business pester every other business with questions, it makes sense that other businesses would form to collect and sell consumer payment/risk data. Thus we get to the question of who should do this?
I fear that the government would be utterly incompetent at creating such a system, even if consumers did decide that all their purchase/payment history data should go to the government. The government would have little incentive to create accurate risk models. Because there is no a priori obvious way to estimate a given consumer's risk of non-payment, it's sensible to have multiple credit risk analysis companies each with their own scoring system. The final question is how should they do this?
What we need are better laws to ensure that the data is properly secured, properly vetted, fairly computed, and that consumers have some due process rights to contest erroneous data.
The reason is that the higher the profit margin, the higher the price. The higher the price, the lower the market-share. Dell is more interested in gaining market-share than in maximizing price. For a commodity such as PCs, the way to achieve long-term success is high volume with a more modest profit margin. Undercutting competitors is more valuable than earning more on each sale.
The key is that total profits are a second-order curve as a function of price. Too low a price results in too low a total profit. To high a price means lower sales volume and lower total profit. The optimum price foregoes some profits per PC, but makes it up in volume.
Perhaps the big lesson is that Dell and Apple are NOT in the same business. Dell is just one more PC maker that sells a commodity that is strongly subject to price competition (Dell is very good at competing on this). Apple is a sole-source for an intrinsically valued product. Sure, some people do avoid Apple because of price, but many buy Apple (and don't even consider buying a PC) because of the unique value provided by Apple.
Someone needs to create an air interconnect standard that lets server room designers snap-on cold air supplies onto a standard "air-port" on the box or blade. The port standard would include several sizes to accomodate different airflow needs and distribution form large supply ports to a rack of small ports on servers. A Lego-like portfolio of snap-together port connections, tees, joints, ducts, plenums, etc. would let an IT HVAC guy quickly distribute cold air from a floor, wall or ceiling air supply to a rack of servers.
I'd bet Apple knows that TPM will never be 100% successful and that that is OK by them (although I doubt they would admit it). People who really want to _try_ OS X will get a free hacked copy. People that really want to _use_ OS X in a production environment will buy it. I doubt that many people will want hacked version of OS X if they know that it means potential instabilities, lack of updates (or hassles to get updates), etc.
The higher the dispersion, the lower the practical bandwidth of the device.
Auctions would reduce problems with insiders who buy multiple copies of the product at retail and sell scarce goods on eBay. It would also avoid mob scenes in which desperate parents storm the doors of stores known to have the much-sought product. Finally, winning bidders would have some assurance that they will be able to get the scarce item.
Who's ready to grep their music?
In contrast, the easiest systems require no passwords, no authentication, and let the user do anything they want to any file, anywhere. But that is not secure.
Yet I'd argue that security can be made easier. Single sign-on and password keychains help (although these arguably reduce security somewhat). The bigger solution is goal-oriented UIs, not mechanism-oriented UIs. Current security often assumes that the user understands the internals of the system -- that particular ports provide particular functions or vulnerabilities. Easy-to-use security software would guide the user is defining what they want to allow or disallow and hide technical details of how that is implemented.
Even if we add a wonderful UI to security, it will never be perfect. Security is about saying "no", ease of use is about saying "yes." To that extent, the gap between security and ease-of use is permanent.
Exactly!
Oh, and latency is getting worse, not better, and has been for a long, long time.
Very true my first full-sized computer had a 8 MHz processor and 150 ns RAM in 1985. Now there's more than an 8:1 ratio between CPU and RAM clocks (and the RAM requires several cycles of wait states even at its slow speed). The question is: is this totally irreversible? Could future memory technologies based on paramagnetic hyperoptical nanodots (there's no such thing, but you never know) provide CPU-equalling clock speeds or allow significant amounts of on-die RAM for future CPUs?
My point is that these tests suggest that low-latency RAM wouldn't help in most of the applications tested in TFA. But I wonder if most of those applications have been written to cope with high-latency memory.
In the short-run, these tests help a person decide whether to buy low-latency RAM. But they provide little long-term insight into how much faster the entire system could be if low-latency were the norm and compilers, libraries, operating systems, and applications were re-optimized for low-latency, not high-latency, architectures.
In 75 years, give or take, the gap will close for oldest years on. But for a while the internet will not have as much on a wide array content on pre-digital topics.
I sure some content creators will sign deals with Google, but many content distributors will have a knee-jerk anti-Google reaction because this makes Google a direct competitor (e.g., another company distributing ad-supported content).
It seems to me that a well designed OS should NEVER let a piece of code be invisible. There should be some part of the OS that knows what is running, what invoked it, what file it came from, etc. A well designed OS would know the provenance of every segment of code. This information should be read-only to anything outside of this protected monitoring function. Thus ALL running code would be visible to the user and anti-malware software. And if you add hash-code locks on installed software, then malware wouldn't be able to masquerade as some other normal bit of code or damage anti-malware apps. Malware could still hide in a user-downloaded software, but the tracking function would aid the detection and removal of any unwanted code.
Is there ever a good reason to let software be invisible?
And if they do use a stable version for printing, then the could offer that as a version for those that don't want beta entries. Entries with less than a certain viewer/edit ratio would be deemed "beta" and not show to people or coded as such.
Wiki could even color-code the text by recency of edit. Readers would know which sections are too recent to trust and editor would see what's changed.