This in turn reminds me of a French comic strip I saw years ago somewhere... I tried googling, but couldn't find it... anyway, it had three frames and went like this:
1st frame: A guy is giving a presentation to the reader, with a slide projector screen behind him. He says: "God created Man in His image."
2nd frame: shows the picture of a caveman
3rd frame: Guy says "then man evolved. As for God, we don't know."
What was making impossible near-lightspeed travel?
The forces reducing a human travelling near the speed of light to a greasy patch on the back of the spacecraft. From TFA:
Felber's antigravity discovery solves the two greatest engineering challenges to space travel near the speed of light: identifying an energy source capable of producing the acceleration; and limiting stresses on humans and equipment during rapid acceleration.
Well, there is an easy way to check if you're being monitored:
1. CC (or BCC) o.bin-laden@aljazeera.net in every email.
2. Wait 10 minutes.
3. Look outside.
Nothing unusual - you're fine.
Black vans start pulling up, neighbours with a two mile radius have been told to "go for a walk" - yup, you were right to be paranoid after all.
Everyone on/. is so busy watching companies like Sun, Microsoft, Apple, etc, and yet 'information' is the gold of the 21st century and we don't seem to have the same eye to the companies mining it right out from underneath us.
1. Produce crap OS
2. Wait for exploits
3. Make people pay for fixes to the exploits
4. There is no step 4
5. Profit!!!!
But at the end of the day, the exploits are real, regardless of what may cause them and what you're paying for really, is the comfort of hassle-free self-updating protection. Sure, you could get it all for cheaper (as TFA notes, Norton may be more expensive in initial acquisition, but subscription renewals are cheaper - $49.95 for Microsoft vs $29.99 for Norton) or even for free (linux, free AV/Firewall software), but that involves more effort and people tend to be lazy. You are merely paying for the right to be lazy and that's got to be fair enough.
Assuming of course, that the product is worth it:) I still remember the last AV from Microsoft years ago... that offered less protection from Viri than a xxl-condom stripped over the hard disk.
According to an article in Information Week, Microsoft is aware that the 'Kama Sutra/Blackworm/MyWife' worm will hit on Friday, overwriting office documents, but will not release a patch until its regular monthly patch release on February 14th. Unless, that is, you subscribe to one of Microsoft's pay security services,
from TFA:
Both the company's free online security service, Windows Live Safety, and its in-beta OneCare Live software, however, will disinfect compromised computers, Microsoft said.
Yeah, that is a good point actually, I've noticed that too whilst playing. Though it goes away after a couple of weeks of playing... my thumbs just don't feel the way they used to now:)
I am expecting the DS Lite to be better in this respect, however. Why? I don't know - but I think designers will have done their homework. Also, that foldable GBA didn't hurt either and it was pretty small too.
I'm starting to think that Nintendo intentionally de-sexys their first version of any portable, so they can release a hotter version a year later.
And it appears to be successful. I'm going to ditch my original DS for one of those babies once they're out. Anyone looking for a cheap deal on a DS in a couple of months time?;)
There is scientific evidence supporting one way or another
In a word: Wrong. There is NO scientific evidence for Intelligent Design. None at all. I challenge you to name one. Remember, it has to be scientific, i.e. published in a peer-reviewed journal with a good reputation. Comments by Texans on blogs do not count.
There are holes in the Theory of Evolution and it is difficult to prove it. Yet, there is plenty of published evidence to support it. The only "scientifc" argument ID proponents seem to make is "Look, Evolution is flawed, so we must be right."
The entire point is moot though, as ID simply is not a scientific theory at all. To be a valid scientific theory, you have to be testable and verifiable (you don't have to prove that you're right though - but you have to make a good scientific argument that you might be). ID is not. End of story, as far as I'm concerned.
And asking that ID be taught in science classes is just ridiculous. Teach it in Religion classes, because that's where it belongs. If you wanna teach it as a science, you might as well teach Alchemy as an alternative to Chemistry.
Now, Kelvin would not be very useful for the average folk because of it's low 0 point. Temperature changes that humans can experience and tolerate would barely register as a change on that scale. That's just my opinion.
Wrong. Kelvin is exactly the same scale as degrees Celsius. The difference between the two is simply that the zero point offset by 273.15 units. So any change would register exactly the same on scales in either degrees Celsius or Kelvin, the numbers would just be higher in Kelvin.
Perhaps you were referring to the fact that relative increases may appear smaller. But as the parent already pointed out, looking at % increases in this way is completely meaningless.
If it is 0 degrees Celsius today, and tomorrow will be twice as cold, what will the temperature be tomorrow?
Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension.
So the engine buggers off back to our Universe, leaving me stranded in a weirdo dimension with no means of getting anywhere? Unless said weirdo dimension is populated with hot females with a fetish for geeky male earthlings, I fail to see why I should get into that craft.
It might have military uses, such as delivering equipment and supplies to sites that might not be easily reachable.
I know that was just marketing speak, but still, military use is the one thing I do not see happening for this flying thing. It's big, it's slow, it's target practice for the other side. As for getting stuff to 'not easily reachable' places... well, such as? Specifically, where could a blimp get to more easily than a helicopter?
According to Flying Car Magazine (1992, vol 12, pp 34-38), the figure of 50% was actually already reached in 1987. Furthermore, the last ground vehicle to be produced was a special 'Grand Finale' edition of the Volkswagen Beetle in 1996. So what are you complaining about? Oh.... I get it, you're from the lo-tech enclave set up by our Voryonite Overlords - that small patch of land back on planet Earth where people have been kept oblivious of the arrival of our Lords and left to develop on their own, the aim being to convince even the last sceptic that the arrival of our Lords has been a Good Thing (tm). How cute, so you've got internet now. Do you also access it through neuralites or are you still using external equipment? I'm sorry, I'm a little out of touch - I haven't watched the OldWay Feed since I was very little... anyway, must run, a Triunian Starhopper has just docked, I need to fix some of their computer systems. A starport, even a remote one like Venus V, is a great place to be when you're a nerd:) See ya! And do drop by once you develop space flights, I'll get you really good deals on antimatter!
What a wonky idea! In any case, it is not possible for anything to be in geosynchronous orbit over the US.
Correct. Still, one could use thrusters to stay over the US. Clearly insane, but one can easily imagine reality-detached politicians voting in favour of such a law;)
They're not just planning on doing this, they're doing it. At least they did on the M1, on the roadwork sites around (and southwards of) the M69 Junction.
I think you're much less likely to get hit by a keylogger running Linux than Windows, and that you're 100% less likely to get infected by this keylogger. Linux isn't perfect, but the more people use it the better it gets
Mmmm... I can only really agree with you on the 100% point concerning this particular keylogger.
For the rest.... I think it would be pretty easy for me to write a little useful app, which also happens to log all your keystrokes and just release it, maybe package it as a.deb and.rpm and just mass-distribute it. Sure, I'll be found out, but not straight away and I can do a lot of damage in the meantime. The beauty is, I could even release the source of the entire app and the chances that someone will go through it and find the keylogger are pretty slim. I could probably name a couple of files keylogger.c and backdoor.c and it'll go undetected for a lot of people. The people that do find out will of course spread the word very quickly in their circles, but the people that do not find out are not likely to be in those circles - newbies in particular, running Ubuntu or Suse and not very sure about how all this linux thing works will be a good target. I think on the whole, it would go undetected and unfixed pretty much on a same timescale as a Windows worm. Damages will be limited due to a lesser distribution and not running as root, but they will be there.
The last point you mention, linux getting better as more people use it, I find very hard to believe at all. I see what you mean - linux will get better as more developers, i.e. serious professional programmers who know what they're doing, join but not as more people just use it. I'm pretty willing to bet, that of 10 new linux users, 1 will try to improve it, 3 will have an in-depth interest, unafraid to recompile their kernel or to try things out, but the rest will be your Joe Average, finally convinced by his geek friend that he should use it instead of Windows. He will not change his default configuration that came with his user-friendly distro, he will certainly not know of, or touch any configuration file, and if you say that you have an application which automagically crawls the net for Anna Kurnikova pics, he will download and install it The more people switch to linux, the higher the number of absolutely clueless people will be. This won't make linux worse or better, but it will increase the number of targets for malicious people.
So, in summary, I do think it would be relatively easy to install a keylogger on other people's machines and the more people use linux, the easier it will become to achieve a significant spread.
This episode shows a strength of Wikipedia, it is quick to respond to problems when it recognizes them.
Mmm. Yeah, I guess you're right there. However, it can take a long time for a problem to be recognised. Case in point, it was months before anyone complained.
I think this episode also shows what I see as the fundamental problem of Wikipedia... the assumption that, somehow, articles will get better over time is in my opinion just flawed. To really get better, they have to be read by people who know the stuff anyway and who are willing to correct mistakes. Now granted, there will be experts on topics out there that do this, but your average guy will not look up things he already knows to see if they need checking - he will look up things he only has a vague or perhaps no idea about. He will not necessairly notice mistakes or omissions. He might add things he believes to be true but are in fact wrong, simplified or otherwise inadequate. If no expert on the topic comes along, these erroneous facts will simply stay there. Just like the allegations against Seigenthaler did.
For me, this whole episode just solidifies my belief that, while I can use Wikipedia for a quick checkup on a topic, I cannot use it if I really need accurate information. There is no guarantee for me that what I'm being told on Wikipedia is accurate and complete.
So no, I acknowledge that the quick fixing of problems is a strength, but ultimately, I don't think this episode shed a good light on Wikipedia, in spite of this.
He attacks others . . . but fails offer a convincing opinion of his own . . . except that it was an "awesome" film.
This is called Intelligent Review and it should be offered alongside the blasphemous Theory of Reviewtion so that people can make up their informed minds.
On the other hand, whoah, ok, so we've got an organic way that MAY make a plane fly level, but seriously, can't we already do this with much less fragile computers?
Yeah, I haven't RTFA, so shoot me. But generally speaking, Neural Networks are not fragile at all, they're actually quite a robust way of doing things. So if we can decently train a Neural Network the size of a rat brain to fly a plane, this is a good thing and it will be much better at coping with unforeseen events than any traditional AI approach. However, notice that there is training involved and the success or failure of any Neural Network will hinge on this - you can have a brain the size of a planet, but if you don't train it properly, it will perform awfully. Good training is paramount and since you can't actually prove (I mean mathematically prove) that a Neural Network will exactly do what you want it to do, you have to have an awful lot of faith in the training set. This is why Neural Nets are never used for safety-critical applications.
So there you go - Neural Networks can potentially be vastly superior to any traditional AI approach, but you won't be able to prove that yours actually is.
Slashdot Mirror
This in turn reminds me of a French comic strip I saw years ago somewhere... I tried googling, but couldn't find it... anyway, it had three frames and went like this:
:)
1st frame: A guy is giving a presentation to the reader, with a slide projector screen behind him. He says: "God created Man in His image."
2nd frame: shows the picture of a caveman
3rd frame: Guy says "then man evolved. As for God, we don't know."
I liked it a lot
Well, there is an easy way to check if you're being monitored:
1. CC (or BCC) o.bin-laden@aljazeera.net in every email.
2. Wait 10 minutes.
3. Look outside.
Nothing unusual - you're fine.
Black vans start pulling up, neighbours with a two mile radius have been told to "go for a walk" - yup, you were right to be paranoid after all.
I can assure you, everyone on
I predict a lot of comments along the lines of
:) I still remember the last AV from Microsoft years ago... that offered less protection from Viri than a xxl-condom stripped over the hard disk.
1. Produce crap OS
2. Wait for exploits
3. Make people pay for fixes to the exploits
4. There is no step 4
5. Profit!!!!
But at the end of the day, the exploits are real, regardless of what may cause them and what you're paying for really, is the comfort of hassle-free self-updating protection. Sure, you could get it all for cheaper (as TFA notes, Norton may be more expensive in initial acquisition, but subscription renewals are cheaper - $49.95 for Microsoft vs $29.99 for Norton) or even for free (linux, free AV/Firewall software), but that involves more effort and people tend to be lazy. You are merely paying for the right to be lazy and that's got to be fair enough.
Assuming of course, that the product is worth it
from TFA:
For those complaining about the site being down without a mirror of a picture.... a little googling does help
Yeah, that is a good point actually, I've noticed that too whilst playing. Though it goes away after a couple of weeks of playing... my thumbs just don't feel the way they used to now :)
I am expecting the DS Lite to be better in this respect, however. Why? I don't know - but I think designers will have done their homework. Also, that foldable GBA didn't hurt either and it was pretty small too.
In a word: Wrong. There is NO scientific evidence for Intelligent Design. None at all. I challenge you to name one. Remember, it has to be scientific, i.e. published in a peer-reviewed journal with a good reputation. Comments by Texans on blogs do not count.
There are holes in the Theory of Evolution and it is difficult to prove it. Yet, there is plenty of published evidence to support it. The only "scientifc" argument ID proponents seem to make is "Look, Evolution is flawed, so we must be right."
The entire point is moot though, as ID simply is not a scientific theory at all. To be a valid scientific theory, you have to be testable and verifiable (you don't have to prove that you're right though - but you have to make a good scientific argument that you might be). ID is not. End of story, as far as I'm concerned.
And asking that ID be taught in science classes is just ridiculous. Teach it in Religion classes, because that's where it belongs. If you wanna teach it as a science, you might as well teach Alchemy as an alternative to Chemistry.
Wrong.
Kelvin is exactly the same scale as degrees Celsius. The difference between the two is simply that the zero point offset by 273.15 units. So any change would register exactly the same on scales in either degrees Celsius or Kelvin, the numbers would just be higher in Kelvin.
Perhaps you were referring to the fact that relative increases may appear smaller. But as the parent already pointed out, looking at % increases in this way is completely meaningless.
If it is 0 degrees Celsius today, and tomorrow will be twice as cold, what will the temperature be tomorrow?
Looks grey from where I'm sitting. We should have a meeting to discuss this.
I know that was just marketing speak, but still, military use is the one thing I do not see happening for this flying thing. It's big, it's slow, it's target practice for the other side. As for getting stuff to 'not easily reachable' places... well, such as? Specifically, where could a blimp get to more easily than a helicopter?
Oh.... I get it, you're from the lo-tech enclave set up by our Voryonite Overlords - that small patch of land back on planet Earth where people have been kept oblivious of the arrival of our Lords and left to develop on their own, the aim being to convince even the last sceptic that the arrival of our Lords has been a Good Thing (tm).
How cute, so you've got internet now. Do you also access it through neuralites or are you still using external equipment? I'm sorry, I'm a little out of touch - I haven't watched the OldWay Feed since I was very little... anyway, must run, a Triunian Starhopper has just docked, I need to fix some of their computer systems. A starport, even a remote one like Venus V, is a great place to be when you're a nerd
See ya! And do drop by once you develop space flights, I'll get you really good deals on antimatter!
What happens if I click X or simply terminate all EULA processes?
They're not just planning on doing this, they're doing it.
At least they did on the M1, on the roadwork sites around (and southwards of) the M69 Junction.
In favour of what though? I do not like Gaim, but I'm still using it because I don't know of a better multi-protocol client on linux.
Mmmm... I can only really agree with you on the 100% point concerning this particular keylogger.
For the rest.... I think it would be pretty easy for me to write a little useful app, which also happens to log all your keystrokes and just release it, maybe package it as a
The people that do find out will of course spread the word very quickly in their circles, but the people that do not find out are not likely to be in those circles - newbies in particular, running Ubuntu or Suse and not very sure about how all this linux thing works will be a good target. I think on the whole, it would go undetected and unfixed pretty much on a same timescale as a Windows worm. Damages will be limited due to a lesser distribution and not running as root, but they will be there.
The last point you mention, linux getting better as more people use it, I find very hard to believe at all. I see what you mean - linux will get better as more developers, i.e. serious professional programmers who know what they're doing, join but not as more people just use it. I'm pretty willing to bet, that of 10 new linux users, 1 will try to improve it, 3 will have an in-depth interest, unafraid to recompile their kernel or to try things out, but the rest will be your Joe Average, finally convinced by his geek friend that he should use it instead of Windows. He will not change his default configuration that came with his user-friendly distro, he will certainly not know of, or touch any configuration file, and if you say that you have an application which automagically crawls the net for Anna Kurnikova pics, he will download and install it The more people switch to linux, the higher the number of absolutely clueless people will be. This won't make linux worse or better, but it will increase the number of targets for malicious people.
So, in summary, I do think it would be relatively easy to install a keylogger on other people's machines and the more people use linux, the easier it will become to achieve a significant spread.
I think this episode also shows what I see as the fundamental problem of Wikipedia... the assumption that, somehow, articles will get better over time is in my opinion just flawed. To really get better, they have to be read by people who know the stuff anyway and who are willing to correct mistakes. Now granted, there will be experts on topics out there that do this, but your average guy will not look up things he already knows to see if they need checking - he will look up things he only has a vague or perhaps no idea about. He will not necessairly notice mistakes or omissions. He might add things he believes to be true but are in fact wrong, simplified or otherwise inadequate. If no expert on the topic comes along, these erroneous facts will simply stay there.
Just like the allegations against Seigenthaler did.
For me, this whole episode just solidifies my belief that, while I can use Wikipedia for a quick checkup on a topic, I cannot use it if I really need accurate information. There is no guarantee for me that what I'm being told on Wikipedia is accurate and complete.
So no, I acknowledge that the quick fixing of problems is a strength, but ultimately, I don't think this episode shed a good light on Wikipedia, in spite of this.
This is called Intelligent Review and it should be offered alongside the blasphemous Theory of Reviewtion so that people can make up their informed minds.
Yeah, I haven't RTFA, so shoot me. But generally speaking, Neural Networks are not fragile at all, they're actually quite a robust way of doing things. So if we can decently train a Neural Network the size of a rat brain to fly a plane, this is a good thing and it will be much better at coping with unforeseen events than any traditional AI approach.
However, notice that there is training involved and the success or failure of any Neural Network will hinge on this - you can have a brain the size of a planet, but if you don't train it properly, it will perform awfully. Good training is paramount and since you can't actually prove (I mean mathematically prove) that a Neural Network will exactly do what you want it to do, you have to have an awful lot of faith in the training set. This is why Neural Nets are never used for safety-critical applications.
So there you go - Neural Networks can potentially be vastly superior to any traditional AI approach, but you won't be able to prove that yours actually is.