there is a big difference between real-life burglars and computer burglars. the difference is that computer burglars have some control over the universe they do their buisness in. they can maniputale computers while they are not even physically there.
you cant realy stop it at the source due to how the internet works. a hacker could be located in one country, under a false ip adress, and doing his stuff in another country.
so actually, the most effective way of security is locking the doors.
[i]Plenty of other industries get by being regulated by patents.[/i]
problem is that with software there is an incredible ammount of patets possible, sensible or not. no other industry has this.
the next problem is that to check patents you need both time and money. with software patents this can easily grow above the resources of a starting firm. this in turn means that there is no way such a company can check if they are violating patents or not.
afaik the PS3 hardware is (almost) mass-production ready. Epic stated at the sony E3 event that they have had the actual hardware for a a few months or so and they managed to port UnrealTournament2007 to it.
"There's no reason to think that Islamic terrorists would be any more competent virus writers than those that currently plague us. In fact, given the backwardness of the arab countries where most islamic terrorists come from, I think there's good reason to think they would be less competent as computer programmers than people from other parts of the world."
i think you are mistaken. terrorists often have funding from rich countries. not all arab countries are backward in fact, most of them are not. some arab countries are even richer and/or more forward than the US. and not all terrorists come from islamic countries.
imho its foolish to think that a terrorist would have no means of attacking the internet. its like saying that 640k is more than enough for any operating system. or like saying that computers are trustworthy.
the only thing, i'm guessing, that prevents cyberterrorism is that its realy hard to bring down the internet. its realy a big place with a lot of different equipment hooked up in often complex ways. a lot of possibilities to circumvent any problems. attacking the infrastructure seems futile since the internet is designed to have parts of it failing and being shut off from the rest. so any attack must be on a realy large scale comming from a lot of different sources. that can proove a bit tricky.
writing a virus or something similar is also tricky. remember that a virus is a form of parasitic life. it cannot exist without a host. so it cannot be too destructive or else it would prevent its own spreading. part of the success of recent worms has been that they do virtually no damage to their hosts. this alows a much higher spreading rate. if you were planning on destroying something with that virus/worm then you would have to keep it secret some time untill enough hosts are infected. problem: how do you know enough hosts have been infected without alarming the internet community ?
terrorism is a method of warfare that is suitable against a (more or less) centralized enemy. the internet is everything but centralised.
a more appropriate type of warfare would involve the manipulation of information streams. a media war, if you will. controlling the content, using information as a virus. and guess what, this is exactly what has been going on for quite some time now.:)
that may well be true for you but how about all the other people in the theatre? i mean, if everyone had beeps going off during a movie, not just you, dont you think that the movie would be spoiled?
compare it to this, say, you need to throw up proffesionaly at arbitrary times. but you still want to go to restaurants. would you still go to restaurants and hurl during dinner when you know you are offending other people? wouldnt a tv-dinner be a better and more dignifying choice?
and what if everyone started doing it? would it still be fun to go to a restaurant?
how about all the lawsuits the restaurant owner gets from people breaking their legs while trying to get out of the place? have you ever thought of that?
i mean, you KNOW clients can call you, why not wrap your personal life around the fact that you can either swith the thing off or set it to vibrate?
why being so egotistical to the point that your life is more important than other people's (well payed for) movies?
i'd proplably smite you if you started beeping in a theatre near me. these kinds of things are starting to get on my nerves lately.
!!Death to the Cellphone Overlords!! uuhm., wait.,
You seem to forget that a den full of chickens is something completely unnatural to the fox. Dens do not grow in nature, they are human inventions. Evolution never had the chance to acomodate the foxes genes for a den full of chickens (that have no way to escape).
Hence it's 'bad' behaviour. But nature is nice that way. Would this have been a natural situation then the fox would have thrown away his dinner for the comming weeks/months and would have a much slimmer chance of survival.
The fox that doesnt kill them off will have a meal for later and will have a greater chance of surviving.
"Please spell out exactly the way they're forced."
the game goes like this:
A firm grows within the US. At a certain point it becomes realy realy big, multinational big (still in the US tho) With all the experience of running a company in a country as big as the US the company sees other far-away economies and gets itchy. The company looks abroad for an unsuspecting country. It settles there. It uses its US funds (of which there are plenty by now) to establish and maintain a fort knox in said foreighn country. The other firms in said country have a hard time competing with the US fort. This is because most other countries are much smaller than the US and therefore have a different economical model., Their only way to outcompete the US firms is to start breeding (merging) like rabbits in order to increese a single companies spending budget. All this to be able compete with the US firm.
so, basically, by introducing large US multinationals in other countries, those countries are more or less forced into playing the "Game of Global World Domination"
one could of course ask the question "Why do those countries alow the US to settle there in the first place"
well, i think that there is a whole spectrum of reasons why a country would want to play along with this., and i dont realy feel like going into that.,.
"but I don't try to interfere with or influence their political process. That's for the citizens of the UK to decide."
yeah, but chances are you have no idea whatsoever about the political situation in the UK. Non-US countries on the other hand get the US politics shoved down their swallowing hole for breakfast,. there is a certain brutality to the USA's footprint on this globe., wether you like it or not it's very hard to not be involved in the consequences of US politics.,
hence a lot of people from around the globe have an opinion about US presidency,
if you would live outside the US you would understand.,
"With drugs, arresting pot smokers will do little damage to drug dealers. Half of all college students would be in trouble. Instead, they crack down on the dealers. By intercepting one truckload of marijuana, the government can prevent the distribution of marijuana to thousands of people."
___
but this is of course not what is happening.
if you would take the ISP example to the drugs world it would mean that transportation companies would be held responsible for the drugs distribution.
tracking down the dealers would be similar to finding out who put the kiddie porn on the net in the first place. (which propably is neither the ISP or the bus company)
"Almost? In the same way that I'm "almost" alive? It's surely more 'almost' than some of the stuff being produced by the merchents more usually known as Microsoft."
well, dont forget that attaining 'Almost' status by something nonexistent is quite a feat!
Slashdot Mirror
there is a big difference between real-life burglars and computer burglars.
the difference is that computer burglars have some control over the universe they do their buisness in.
they can maniputale computers while they are not even physically there.
you cant realy stop it at the source due to how the internet works.
a hacker could be located in one country, under a false ip adress, and doing his stuff in another country.
so actually, the most effective way of security is locking the doors.
i'd like to see some proof of that.
[i]Plenty of other industries get by being regulated by patents.[/i]
problem is that with software there is an incredible ammount of patets possible, sensible or not.
no other industry has this.
the next problem is that to check patents you need both time and money.
with software patents this can easily grow above the resources of a starting firm.
this in turn means that there is no way such a company can check if they are violating patents or not.
afaik the PS3 hardware is (almost) mass-production ready.
:
Epic stated at the sony E3 event that they have had the actual hardware for a a few months or so and they managed to port UnrealTournament2007 to it.
then i saw an article in the Inquirer
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23807
which basically states the same.
"There isn't enough matter in the universe to do that."
one could argue that there is EXACTLY enough matter in the universe to simulate itself.
I jist bpught one anf it is GREAY!
...
i cam typr 100% fastet!
Thid is realu rebolutiomary!
i KNOW actual people who have done this
2 trips to E3 and no game as of yet..
"There's no reason to think that Islamic terrorists would be any more competent virus writers than those that currently plague us. In fact, given the backwardness of the arab countries where most islamic terrorists come from, I think there's good reason to think they would be less competent as computer programmers than people from other parts of the world."
:
:)
i think you are mistaken.
terrorists often have funding from rich countries.
not all arab countries are backward
in fact, most of them are not.
some arab countries are even richer and/or more forward than the US.
and not all terrorists come from islamic countries.
imho its foolish to think that a terrorist would have no means of attacking the internet.
its like saying that 640k is more than enough for any operating system.
or like saying that computers are trustworthy.
the only thing, i'm guessing, that prevents cyberterrorism is that its realy hard to bring down the internet.
its realy a big place with a lot of different equipment hooked up in often complex ways.
a lot of possibilities to circumvent any problems.
attacking the infrastructure seems futile since the internet is designed to have parts of it failing and being shut off from the rest.
so any attack must be on a realy large scale comming from a lot of different sources.
that can proove a bit tricky.
writing a virus or something similar is also tricky.
remember that a virus is a form of parasitic life.
it cannot exist without a host.
so it cannot be too destructive or else it would prevent its own spreading.
part of the success of recent worms has been that they do virtually no damage to their hosts.
this alows a much higher spreading rate.
if you were planning on destroying something with that virus/worm then you would have to keep it secret some time untill enough hosts are infected.
problem
how do you know enough hosts have been infected without alarming the internet community ?
terrorism is a method of warfare that is suitable against a (more or less) centralized enemy.
the internet is everything but centralised.
a more appropriate type of warfare would involve the manipulation of information streams. a media war, if you will. controlling the content, using information as a virus.
and guess what, this is exactly what has been going on for quite some time now.
someone should shoot you before you say any more lies..
"If a theater banned all cellphone reception - I'd not listen to the occasional stupid beeps, but it would also make me lose being in touch 24/7."
no it would not.
it would, however, if you would choose to go to theaters that ban mobile phones.
it's your phone, it's YOUR choice.
i find your comparison to racism disgusting and totaly unnessesary.
that may well be true for you but how about all the other people in the theatre?
i mean, if everyone had beeps going off during a movie, not just you, dont you think that the movie would be spoiled?
compare it to this,
say, you need to throw up proffesionaly at arbitrary times.
but you still want to go to restaurants.
would you still go to restaurants and hurl during dinner
when you know you are offending other people?
wouldnt a tv-dinner be a better and more dignifying choice?
and what if everyone started doing it?
would it still be fun to go to a restaurant?
how about all the lawsuits the restaurant owner gets from people breaking their legs while trying to get out of the place?
have you ever thought of that?
i mean, you KNOW clients can call you, why not wrap your personal life around the fact that you can either swith the thing off or set it to vibrate?
why being so egotistical to the point that your life is more important than other people's (well payed for) movies?
i'd proplably smite you if you started beeping in a theatre near me.
these kinds of things are starting to get on my nerves lately.
!!Death to the Cellphone Overlords!!
uuhm., wait.,
You seem to forget that a den full of chickens is something completely unnatural to the fox.
Dens do not grow in nature, they are human inventions.
Evolution never had the chance to acomodate the foxes genes for a den full of chickens (that have no way to escape).
Hence it's 'bad' behaviour.
But nature is nice that way.
Would this have been a natural situation then the fox would have thrown away his dinner for the comming weeks/months and would have a much slimmer chance of survival.
The fox that doesnt kill them off will have a meal for later and will have a greater chance of surviving.
"Please spell out exactly the way they're forced."
,.
the game goes like this:
A firm grows within the US.
At a certain point it becomes realy realy big, multinational big (still in the US tho)
With all the experience of running a company in a country as big as the US the company sees other far-away economies and gets itchy.
The company looks abroad for an unsuspecting country.
It settles there.
It uses its US funds (of which there are plenty by now) to establish and maintain a fort knox in said foreighn country.
The other firms in said country have a hard time competing with the US fort.
This is because most other countries are much smaller than the US and therefore have a different economical model.,
Their only way to outcompete the US firms is to start breeding (merging) like rabbits in order to increese a single companies spending budget.
All this to be able compete with the US firm.
so, basically, by introducing large US multinationals in other countries, those countries are more or less forced into playing the "Game of Global World Domination"
one could of course ask the question "Why do those countries alow the US to settle there in the first place"
well, i think that there is a whole spectrum of reasons why a country would want to play along with this., and i dont realy feel like going into that.
"but I don't try to interfere with or influence their political process. That's for the citizens of the UK to decide."
yeah, but chances are you have no idea whatsoever about the political situation in the UK.
Non-US countries on the other hand get the US politics shoved down their swallowing hole for breakfast,.
there is a certain brutality to the USA's footprint on this globe.,
wether you like it or not it's very hard to not be involved in the consequences of US politics.,
hence a lot of people from around the globe have an opinion about US presidency,
if you would live outside the US you would understand.,
that your comparison is flawed.,
"Some ideologies and world views are just evil, and must be fought."
does that include ideologies like invading countries for economical gain?
" one begins gibbering uncontrollably "
funny, i aways feel like that when a page gets slashdotted..,.,
n..n.need to r.rr.RTFA.,.
ooh wait,
it was a trick question...
hmm., i think he already did.,.,
that depends in what format you master, doesnt it?.,
"Technically every format is lossy compared to the original source "
hmm., that's not true for any music that does not involve recording an analogue source.,
i'm an electronic music composer and all my sources are already digital.,
i can savely say that the production process from my studio to a CD is pretty much totaly lossless.
there is of course some processing involved along the way but this is both intentional and enhancing so i would not consider that lossy.,
"With drugs, arresting pot smokers will do little damage to drug dealers. Half of all college students would be in trouble. Instead, they crack down on the dealers. By intercepting one truckload of marijuana, the government can prevent the distribution of marijuana to thousands of people."
___
but this is of course not what is happening.
if you would take the ISP example to the drugs world it would mean that transportation companies would be held responsible for the drugs distribution.
tracking down the dealers would be similar to finding out who put the kiddie porn on the net in the first place. (which propably is neither the ISP or the bus company)
it's not so much about mozilla going up,
it's much more about IE going down!
greets.,
aka.,
"We're trying to put in place technological magic that can combat the technological magic that allows thievery."
.,,.
LOL.,
please mod this funny,
not for me,
but for the sake of this poor old man.,
i bet he imagines those thousands of algotithms drawing their lightsaber and start whacking each other or something.,.,
"take that, you filthy pirate algorithm!", said luke as he disembodie another magical hacker.,
"Almost? In the same way that I'm "almost" alive? It's surely more 'almost' than some of the stuff being produced by the merchents more usually known as Microsoft."
well, dont forget that attaining 'Almost' status by something nonexistent is quite a feat!
greets.
aka,