...but why create a new unit under the FBI, when the NSA probably has significant numbers of mathematicians and computer scientists, and the clock cycles to help 'em? Sounds like duplication of effort...
Well, that depends on what planet you've been hiding on.;-)
{shrug} Here, the Computer Science department's thrilled that it finally got a ~37% or so freshman class. Better than what it used to be; think when I enrolled in '94, the M:F class ratio might have been something like 100:9 or so.
Yep. IIRC, polls showed that those who listened to that debate on the radio gave Nixon a greater weight than those who watched it on TV (who tended to favor JFK).
Incidentally, it also varied by demographics...
{shrug} We saw much the same effect w/ our current Prez, 'natch.
Is a politician who refuses to compromise on his principles, but by doing so manages to not accomplish anything (due to refusal to budge) ethical? Or has he, by knowingly and deliberately failing his people, basically broken *that* trust compared to somebody who *does* make deals, and get stuff done?
(You've basically described Athenian direct democracy (whoops, almost wrote 'demonocracy'... heh; that'd be interesting. Or maybe we already have that...); part of the theory was that every person (or, probably man, methinks) was equally entitled to and responsible for running the city...
I've heard the idea about multiple votes per person before, mostly advocated as a way to "help" underrepresented minority populations -- the theory being that, say, a black minority community could pile their votes into a single black candidate and get a seat. Why a) these theorists seem to think that white voters will be split far more than black voters, and b) "same race==good" is, er, questionable...
Single-issue people have been responsible for cluelessly obstructing vast amounts of legislation, funding, confirmations, treaties and so forth. Look at groups on all sides of the abortion issue, on the death penalty, on nuclear testing, and so forth. There's a very strong argument that candidates that avoid demagoguery tend to be take more balanced views, and generally the public seems to agree. Witness, say, recent GOP choices; "Flat-Tax" Forbes, "Isolationist" Buchanan, and "Dan-Dan-The Clueless (Family Values) Man" Quayle have been losing to folks like Dole the Senior Statesman and Bush the Guv'nor, neither of which had a particularly distinct (or, with Bush, even vocalized...) platform. On the other side of the aisle, there's Clinton, the for all practical purposes the acknowledged, utterly untouchable reigning master of dancing in the wind...
As for their obstructionism: consider the perpetual confirmation battles in Congress (depends on who's in charge. Both parties have members who apply litmus tests on Roe v. Wade; that confounded issue even affects US payments to the UN, and darn near everything else. I prefer to label 'em, more honestly, as Anti-Choice and Pro-Death, but this is long enough of a rant already...)... and so forth. Without convincing the rest, they won't be able to push through anything positive, but with just enough numbers they can block the more productive from doing work...
The other thang, Net-based voting... um, well, you need some *darn* good way of ensuring 1:1. Not only that, but you'll get lots of silly self-selection effects (as in: don't trust "what is your favorite {foo}" polls if their URL ever gets out to partisans, especially those that can code... also, the demographics of the online differ greatly from the norm methinks) even if you can somehow avoid fraud. And you'll have the more creative, diabolical folks ("Web-based voting? OK. Now we know that this precinct tends to vote our way, but that one doesn't -- so let's take down this router, and that, and...) doing things that a corrupt feller could only dream about when dealing with physical ballots and booths.
Keep in mind that the 19 click number is inherently flawed because it progressed through links themselves, and thus probably missed many, many isolated sites.
Try getting to, say, any porn site from, oh, Jane's Information Group or a page on mantids w/n 19 clicks, just clicking on the provided links. My suspicion is that it's going to be pretty difficult.
Hmmm. Lots of pages generate links, and many allow links to be added by others. Search engines tend to be in this category... does that mean that they are liable, since they'll spit out pages with links to pirated material? Personal auction/trading sites also tend to be of this category, although sites like E-bay are trying to clamp down on people offering anything they consider contraband or controversial.
If it's restricted to obvious, conscious intent (like specifically describing the content. Were one to link to a free hosted page, ala Geocities, and then that page lapsed and the address got re-used for somebody brazenly and stupidly distributing "w4r3z"... that doesn't seem like it should be prosecuted as long as ignorance is plausible.
Since the person in question was specifically and knowingly pointing to pirated content, however, that's more like a go-between faciltating a transaction between a junkie and a dealer. He might not touch the drugs himself, ever, nor necessarily the money, but he's certainly a willing accomplice, and part of the racket; and I'm pretty sure most places would bust 'im.
It probably costs a lot of money to properly decommision a missile (meaning disassembly and destruction of important parts, and such...); while they probably could just leave the warheads intact in warehouses, that is *not* a good scenario. I believe that at least at one point, we were subsidizing decommisioning costs... for the Ukraine, methinks.
Until then, they'll still be in their silos. You've got a point that they could probably be targeted elsewhere, 'tho, which might help in the event of an accidental launch.
Adding a patch to the Linux kernel (hereafter referred to as "kernel") may compromise security, functionality or both. Therefore, before submitting patch for inclusion you must attach a Form 15812n Software Audit Report for all contexts in which you intend to use this patch. This procedure must be repeated should additional contexts emerge.
We will need the following details.
Who wrote the patch? Is/are the people responsible (hereafter referred to as "patch author(s)") U.S. citizens? Please have them undergo security clearances and attach the resulting paperwork. Use of nails and rivets is for this purpose (attaching, not auditing) is hereby sanctioned.
What does this patch do, and why do you want it? Be sure to detail all system resources consumed by such, and study the impact upon the targetted environment. Include time and resources expended on this application, sub-applications and related activities.
Do you expect it to be applied to future revisions of the kernel? If so, explain why and bear in mind that this is included in the aforementioned "additional contexts" section, and thus will require periodical documentation and re-application.
Please remit this form once completed to your supervisor and all other individuals affected for approval, with copies for yourself, the Software Patching Department, and Personnel (for your quarterly performance evaluation) as usual.
Bear in mind that approval may not occur until a full review of your provided documentation has occured. We hope to be able to respond to you within six months of completion of said review. Thank you for your time.
Well, 64 bits should outlast the Sun, anyway. I seem to remember that it's expected to only last for another 5 billion years or so.
Something like 512 bits at a second resolution should last on the order of, hm, roughly 10^145 years or so methinks. Anybody know the current age of the universe?
Socialism should not be mixed up with pacifism, even when dealing with nations of similar bent. Unless, of course, you're saying that the economy would collapse to the point where we couldn't support a significant military budget... *that* might be true. A strong case can be made that the US victory in the Cold War was on economic grounds: we could spend far more than the Soviet command economy could, and far more efficiently, as well.
Greens might do it, 'tho. They tend to have a strongly anti-nuclear, pacifist stance compared to everyone else around. Not that they tend to be revolutionaries...
It is actually true that their warning systems have, historically, been questionable, and that their command structure exacerbates this problem.
Some years ago, a naval-based satellite launch north of Russian waters came reasonably close to provoking a nuclear response. Despite the fact that they had been notified in advance of the nature of this (of course, the warning could have been a lie and instead the rocket could have been a MIRV'd ICBM...), the warning had not propagated to the people in charge of deciding whether it was a pre-emptive nuclear strike (presumably by the US). In addition, the launch was close enough that there wasn't that much time to decide, since it still takes some time (unless you're already at maximum readiness) to launch a retalliatory strike.
Be happy that the rocket turned away from Soviet territory within that timeframe...
You also have incidents such as the apparent mis-identification of KAL007 and so forth... given that the Russian military budget has dwindled significantly, one has to worry about the state of readiness and maintenance of their systems. It's arguably in the interests of the US to help stabilize the situation, since it doesn't exactly benefit us if their nuclear arsenal is ill-kept.
Maybe not panic, but crime. While most people either aren't preparing much at all (perhaps getting some hardcopies of financial records, or shifting assets towards cash a *little*, and having some food on hand), while some are going all-out (moving to secluded cabins, and keeping their powder dry... but not going out and actually bothering other people) -- you're going to have some who try to take advantage of the situation.
You might have people trying to defraud, say, banks, perhaps claiming that their debts were fictitious results of a bug; you might have people trying to take advantage of any date-based security systems that may or may not be offline; and for everybody that leaves for the woods, you might have somebody who decides that the vacated property is intriguing enough to burgle. IIRC, Congress has even restricted damage awards for Y2K-related lawsuits, but there'll still probably be lawsuits filed, considering that there are habitual plaintiffs who file literally hundreds with the sole intent of being enough of a nuisance that somebody eventually settles, or hoping that jury will buy his arguments. A lot of this won't be panicking in any way, but purely premeditated misdeeds.
Heh. You left out China, which actually does have missiles with sufficient range to hit the Lower 48; AFAIK, most other nuclear powers ('sides Russia) don't have land-based ballistic missiles of sufficient range, and generally don't need to (as their arsenals are mostly aimed at their immediate neighbors). I don't remember diddly about their naval- or air-based capabilities capabilities, 'tho.
Lowering the, er, alertness level (removing fuel from missiles, targeting random unhabited spots in space, etc) might be a good idea 'tho. Not that retargetting can't be done in moments, but...
...er, what antimissile defense? I'm not aware of any (successful, still funded) ABM system. IIRC, US-Soviet treaties explicitly prohibited such in order to maintain the possibility of MAD.
Why, of course you'll be seeing Federal mail on LKML. After all, no doubt the Father of the Internet has plenty of proposed patches for the Linux IPv4 code.
Think Al Gore, networking guru extraordinaire, Linux Hacker, Creator of the Internet, and all-'round net.god. Bow down before the Great Tree^H^H^H^HMan.
Interesting point. I was under the impression that the source is sometimes made available to outside groups; my memory is telling me that some universities have operating systems courses where students are required to sign NDAs, because they get access to at least some of the NT sources. I can't give specific citations, 'tho, just vagaries.
It's possible that the statement should be taken to mean: source code for not only the Linux kernel, but just about everything else as well with fairly few exceptions (for Gov't stuff. I doubt, say, that Civ:CTP or Myth II are on procurement lists...); whereas the opposite is true for most of the Windows world. Even if the NSA had access to NT sources, they'd still need audit ability for all the applications; even a safe kernel with poorly written applications isn't that safe.
It just occurred to me that if UCITA passed, and the Federals were using commercial, proprietary software for critical systems, that they'd be up the proverbial creek at the whim of the vendors... not necessarily a good thing when you're suing one for anti-trust violations. Heh.
Freedom includes the ability to be an asshole, and then the responsibility to pay for it. If that means fines, incarceration or execution, so be it: determine thyself, and be treated accordingly.
FWIW, it's the laws that at least partly make you free; in a system without a written Constitution and body of laws that guarantees rights to the people, it's the lack of such that allows blatant dictatorship because the leaders can act without constraints. Or, do you think that folks like Beria or "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky worked primarily through written law?
Slashdot Mirror
...but why create a new unit under the FBI, when the NSA probably has significant numbers of mathematicians and computer scientists, and the clock cycles to help 'em? Sounds like duplication of effort...
Well, that depends on what planet you've been hiding on. ;-)
{shrug} Here, the Computer Science department's thrilled that it finally got a ~37% or so freshman class. Better than what it used to be; think when I enrolled in '94, the M:F class ratio might have been something like 100:9 or so.
Yep. IIRC, polls showed that those who listened to that debate on the radio gave Nixon a greater weight than those who watched it on TV (who tended to favor JFK).
Incidentally, it also varied by demographics...
{shrug} We saw much the same effect w/ our current Prez, 'natch.
Question for ya --
Is a politician who refuses to compromise on his principles, but by doing so manages to not accomplish anything (due to refusal to budge) ethical? Or has he, by knowingly and deliberately failing his people, basically broken *that* trust compared to somebody who *does* make deals, and get stuff done?
That could be debated endlessly, methinks.
Already done...
...on the city-state level...
...thousands of years ago...
(You've basically described Athenian direct democracy (whoops, almost wrote 'demonocracy'... heh; that'd be interesting. Or maybe we already have that...); part of the theory was that every person (or, probably man, methinks) was equally entitled to and responsible for running the city...
I've heard the idea about multiple votes per person before, mostly advocated as a way to "help" underrepresented minority populations -- the theory being that, say, a black minority community could pile their votes into a single black candidate and get a seat. Why a) these theorists seem to think that white voters will be split far more than black voters, and b) "same race==good" is, er, questionable...
Single-issue people have been responsible for cluelessly obstructing vast amounts of legislation, funding, confirmations, treaties and so forth. Look at groups on all sides of the abortion issue, on the death penalty, on nuclear testing, and so forth. There's a very strong argument that candidates that avoid demagoguery tend to be take more balanced views, and generally the public seems to agree. Witness, say, recent GOP choices; "Flat-Tax" Forbes, "Isolationist" Buchanan, and "Dan-Dan-The Clueless (Family Values) Man" Quayle have been losing to folks like Dole the Senior Statesman and Bush the Guv'nor, neither of which had a particularly distinct (or, with Bush, even vocalized...) platform. On the other side of the aisle, there's Clinton, the for all practical purposes the acknowledged, utterly untouchable reigning master of dancing in the wind...
As for their obstructionism: consider the perpetual confirmation battles in Congress (depends on who's in charge. Both parties have members who apply litmus tests on Roe v. Wade; that confounded issue even affects US payments to the UN, and darn near everything else. I prefer to label 'em, more honestly, as Anti-Choice and Pro-Death, but this is long enough of a rant already...)... and so forth. Without convincing the rest, they won't be able to push through anything positive, but with just enough numbers they can block the more productive from doing work...
The other thang, Net-based voting... um, well, you need some *darn* good way of ensuring 1:1. Not only that, but you'll get lots of silly self-selection effects (as in: don't trust "what is your favorite {foo}" polls if their URL ever gets out to partisans, especially those that can code... also, the demographics of the online differ greatly from the norm methinks) even if you can somehow avoid fraud. And you'll have the more creative, diabolical folks ("Web-based voting? OK. Now we know that this precinct tends to vote our way, but that one doesn't -- so let's take down this router, and that, and...) doing things that a corrupt feller could only dream about when dealing with physical ballots and booths.
But do you really want your mother playing Quake, and possibly getting fragged by her? ...when you're supposed to be doing your homework? Heh. :)
Oh god, does that have Hollywood potential... :)
Did you actually read the article? The (religious) spokesperson cited seemed quite calm about the whole deal...
Keep in mind that the 19 click number is inherently flawed because it progressed through links themselves, and thus probably missed many, many isolated sites.
Try getting to, say, any porn site from, oh, Jane's Information Group or a page on mantids w/n 19 clicks, just clicking on the provided links. My suspicion is that it's going to be pretty difficult.
In addition, intent is not transitive.
Hmmm. Lots of pages generate links, and many allow links to be added by others. Search engines tend to be in this category... does that mean that they are liable, since they'll spit out pages with links to pirated material? Personal auction/trading sites also tend to be of this category, although sites like E-bay are trying to clamp down on people offering anything they consider contraband or controversial.
If it's restricted to obvious, conscious intent (like specifically describing the content. Were one to link to a free hosted page, ala Geocities, and then that page lapsed and the address got re-used for somebody brazenly and stupidly distributing "w4r3z"... that doesn't seem like it should be prosecuted as long as ignorance is plausible.
Since the person in question was specifically and knowingly pointing to pirated content, however, that's more like a go-between faciltating a transaction between a junkie and a dealer. He might not touch the drugs himself, ever, nor necessarily the money, but he's certainly a willing accomplice, and part of the racket; and I'm pretty sure most places would bust 'im.
It probably costs a lot of money to properly decommision a missile (meaning disassembly and destruction of important parts, and such...); while they probably could just leave the warheads intact in warehouses, that is *not* a good scenario. I believe that at least at one point, we were subsidizing decommisioning costs... for the Ukraine, methinks.
Until then, they'll still be in their silos. You've got a point that they could probably be targeted elsewhere, 'tho, which might help in the event of an accidental launch.
--- Kernel Patch Request Form ---
Adding a patch to the Linux kernel (hereafter referred to as "kernel") may compromise security, functionality or both. Therefore, before submitting patch for inclusion you must attach a Form 15812n Software Audit Report for all contexts in which you intend to use this patch. This procedure must be repeated should additional contexts emerge.
We will need the following details.
Who wrote the patch? Is/are the people responsible (hereafter referred to as "patch author(s)") U.S. citizens? Please have them undergo security clearances and attach the resulting paperwork. Use of nails and rivets is for this purpose (attaching, not auditing) is hereby sanctioned.
What does this patch do, and why do you want it? Be sure to detail all system resources consumed by such, and study the impact upon the targetted environment. Include time and resources expended on this application, sub-applications and related activities.
Do you expect it to be applied to future revisions of the kernel? If so, explain why and bear in mind that this is included in the aforementioned "additional contexts" section, and thus will require periodical documentation and re-application.
Please remit this form once completed to your supervisor and all other individuals affected for approval, with copies for yourself, the Software Patching Department, and Personnel (for your quarterly performance evaluation) as usual.
Bear in mind that approval may not occur until a full review of your provided documentation has occured. We hope to be able to respond to you within six months of completion of said review. Thank you for your time.
--end form--
Well, 64 bits should outlast the Sun, anyway. I seem to remember that it's expected to only last for another 5 billion years or so.
Something like 512 bits at a second resolution should last on the order of, hm, roughly 10^145 years or so methinks. Anybody know the current age of the universe?
Socialism should not be mixed up with pacifism, even when dealing with nations of similar bent. Unless, of course, you're saying that the economy would collapse to the point where we couldn't support a significant military budget... *that* might be true. A strong case can be made that the US victory in the Cold War was on economic grounds: we could spend far more than the Soviet command economy could, and far more efficiently, as well.
Greens might do it, 'tho. They tend to have a strongly anti-nuclear, pacifist stance compared to everyone else around. Not that they tend to be revolutionaries...
;) How does it go?
We'll meet again
Don't know how,
Don't know when...
Peace on Earth, heh. There'd sure be peace after Plan R, once the radioactive dust settles...
It is actually true that their warning systems have, historically, been questionable, and that their command structure exacerbates this problem.
Some years ago, a naval-based satellite launch north of Russian waters came reasonably close to provoking a nuclear response. Despite the fact that they had been notified in advance of the nature of this (of course, the warning could have been a lie and instead the rocket could have been a MIRV'd ICBM...), the warning had not propagated to the people in charge of deciding whether it was a pre-emptive nuclear strike (presumably by the US). In addition, the launch was close enough that there wasn't that much time to decide, since it still takes some time (unless you're already at maximum readiness) to launch a retalliatory strike.
Be happy that the rocket turned away from Soviet territory within that timeframe...
You also have incidents such as the apparent mis-identification of KAL007 and so forth... given that the Russian military budget has dwindled significantly, one has to worry about the state of readiness and maintenance of their systems. It's arguably in the interests of the US to help stabilize the situation, since it doesn't exactly benefit us if their nuclear arsenal is ill-kept.
Maybe not panic, but crime. While most people either aren't preparing much at all (perhaps getting some hardcopies of financial records, or shifting assets towards cash a *little*, and having some food on hand), while some are going all-out (moving to secluded cabins, and keeping their powder dry... but not going out and actually bothering other people) -- you're going to have some who try to take advantage of the situation.
You might have people trying to defraud, say, banks, perhaps claiming that their debts were fictitious results of a bug; you might have people trying to take advantage of any date-based security systems that may or may not be offline; and for everybody that leaves for the woods, you might have somebody who decides that the vacated property is intriguing enough to burgle. IIRC, Congress has even restricted damage awards for Y2K-related lawsuits, but there'll still probably be lawsuits filed, considering that there are habitual plaintiffs who file literally hundreds with the sole intent of being enough of a nuisance that somebody eventually settles, or hoping that jury will buy his arguments. A lot of this won't be panicking in any way, but purely premeditated misdeeds.
Ah. Back to the MAD ole days... 'k. Not SDI or anything like that.
At least, supposedly, it's not *that* automated so that in theory human intervention is required before launch...
Heh. You left out China, which actually does have missiles with sufficient range to hit the Lower 48; AFAIK, most other nuclear powers ('sides Russia) don't have land-based ballistic missiles of sufficient range, and generally don't need to (as their arsenals are mostly aimed at their immediate neighbors). I don't remember diddly about their naval- or air-based capabilities capabilities, 'tho.
Lowering the, er, alertness level (removing fuel from missiles, targeting random unhabited spots in space, etc) might be a good idea 'tho. Not that retargetting can't be done in moments, but...
...er, what antimissile defense? I'm not aware of any (successful, still funded) ABM system. IIRC, US-Soviet treaties explicitly prohibited such in order to maintain the possibility of MAD.
Why, of course you'll be seeing Federal mail on LKML. After all, no doubt the Father of the Internet has plenty of proposed patches for the Linux IPv4 code.
Think Al Gore, networking guru extraordinaire, Linux Hacker, Creator of the Internet, and all-'round net.god. Bow down before the Great Tree^H^H^H^HMan.
;)
Interesting point. I was under the impression that the source is sometimes made available to outside groups; my memory is telling me that some universities have operating systems courses where students are required to sign NDAs, because they get access to at least some of the NT sources. I can't give specific citations, 'tho, just vagaries.
It's possible that the statement should be taken to mean: source code for not only the Linux kernel, but just about everything else as well with fairly few exceptions (for Gov't stuff. I doubt, say, that Civ:CTP or Myth II are on procurement lists...); whereas the opposite is true for most of the Windows world. Even if the NSA had access to NT sources, they'd still need audit ability for all the applications; even a safe kernel with poorly written applications isn't that safe.
It just occurred to me that if UCITA passed, and the Federals were using commercial, proprietary software for critical systems, that they'd be up the proverbial creek at the whim of the vendors... not necessarily a good thing when you're suing one for anti-trust violations. Heh.
Not that'd ever happen, but...
Freedom includes the ability to be an asshole, and then the responsibility to pay for it. If that means fines, incarceration or execution, so be it: determine thyself, and be treated accordingly.
FWIW, it's the laws that at least partly make you free; in a system without a written Constitution and body of laws that guarantees rights to the people, it's the lack of such that allows blatant dictatorship because the leaders can act without constraints. Or, do you think that folks like Beria or "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky worked primarily through written law?