Well, it does raise an interesting question of academic freedom versus free speech. The constitution doesn't allow you to say whatever you want, for instance libel, slander, shouting "Terminator Gates has come with flaming balls of DRM" at a Linux conference, etc. But the definition of libel/slander I guess would be what is debatable in this case.
Though doesn't part of the user agreeement state that you will not use this software as part of any critical systems such as power plants, air traffic control, medical systems etc. Whether or not that actually stops them is another story. The only place I worked with critical systems was in a steel mill, but we used VMS.
This is the exact same thing the original English settlers of this land said about the Irish and the Germans coming in. This is the same thing the KKK said in the 20's about the Italians and Poles etc.(Sacco and Vanzetti ring a bell?) American culture has not died, now has it? Perhaps I should clarify, at my school I notice two types of foriegn students(mostly Indian and Chinese) the ones who keep to their own little groups, but these also tend to be the poorer students when it comes project time(they always try to get help off me, but refuse to give me help the few times I ask), but there are also ones who, while respecting their home culture, have also embraced US culture, and they tend to be the ones that find creative answers to problems versus just being able to spew the crap you feed them(which the grading system of most classes rewards, while punishing creative solutions). We need more of the latter, the former can be sent back to their own little elitist society and stagnate for all I care(their job will be automated eventually anyway), but maybe you have created a more fundamental question, what is American culture? Almost all of our customs come from Europe, but we just make them bigger and badder it seems. Or maybe what you are afraid of is an end of Western culture, well(being a white person myself) I can tell you that it's inevitable, there just aren't enough of us around, if you take the entire population of the US, Canada, and Western Europe, it's roughly a billion people, about the same size as India and 30% less than the size of China. What exact cultural items do you feel will come under fire? Most second-generation Americans I know(Chinese, Russian, Indian etc) are as "American" as I am. There is no greater cultural propaganda than the television. US entertainment(popular worldwide btw) will make sure that the US culture does not fall by the wayside any time soon.
Perhaps Mr. Facts might get in the way of your little imaginary world:
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5330. html
Maybe it's just my American math, but when imports from India exceed exports to India by 7 billion dollars or so(and there has been a trade deficit for the past 15 years), that might just mean that India has a trade SURPLUS with the US. Try thinking before you open your mouth, you might just become a mute.
It actually depends on immigration(which, if offshoring is wildly successful, one would assume that immigration would drop as people can just stay home to have all the economic benefits that are currently present in the US). If you ignore immigration, then the US population is not growing very fast, and in a matter of 20 years or so will actually start shrinking. This is actually a problem economically, as there will be more and more non-workers(retired etc) for every worker. Which is why, as a US citizen, I think the country should be doing more to support immigration(while ensuring that there is still fair competetion for jobs, H1-B has this in theory, but has abused it, and the abusers are taking away a lot of visas that could be used for valid shortages, it needs to be changed). I personally think that instead of offering tuition waivers and stipends to foriegn grad students unconditionally, we should make them contingent upon their staying in the US after they graduate. IE make the waives and stipends a kind of loan, but one that you can either pay off with a) money or b) working in the country(every year that you work in the US, a year comes off your loan). This will make it much harder for people to come here, get a great education, then take all that knowledge(and investment) back home where it sees very little benefit to the US economy. We also need to get more engineering grad students, stop the oppressive fees etc that we all have to pay as undergrads and to a certain extent grads. That is really how the US can improve it's economy in the long run.
I think the bigger mis-understanding is what science really is. Science consists of observing nature, and then creating a model to make predictions. Like Ptolemy's theory, he observed the movement of the bodies, and then attempted to come up with a theory that would be able to predict those movements. To the best of his knowledge, he was right. However, once more in-depth observations became available(the telescope etc), his model fell apart, and a different model took it's place. Science really doesn't "explain" anything in the way we think it does, it's merely observations and models, and yet it is the most powerful tool mankind has ever created!
Actually there is some research(a paper I read at work, don't have it in front of me) that atempts something like this, basically a worm/virus/whatever that tries to send itself out very quickly will make requests to a HUGE number of "invalid" IP addresses(they had some evidence from slammer) and thus the router may be able to detect this and attemtp to contain the virus. However the authors do admit there is a problem with speed, and thus it isn't currently feasible.
There are also un-intended consequences of people who write viruses/worms whatever, even if they don't have a purposely malicious payload they can still cause some real havoc. Note in the article it mentioned something about 911 services having to resort to manual methods of tracking calls, a slower and error prone. What if the phone system were to have suffered? So a totally innocent person could have died as a result, not something that I would advocate.
Yeah, but guess what, at some point you gotta be authenticated, which means a list of valid sequential numbers + some method of authentification. Plus, what happens when someone dies etc and they need to remove them from the voter rolls. Voter registration info(though not votes) is a lot easier to obtain than you might think it is.
It's not anonymous though, while it's true that one-way functions are "irreversible", that is given a result from a one-way function, you should not be able to get the input to the function, even if you had access to the function. However you have to realize that the number has to come from somewhere. If for example, it's an MD5 of your SSN, then anyone with your SSN(ie the entire population of India now adays) can run it through the function, then take the result and match it against the published voter list. The only way to prevent this is to either a) hide the way the input to the function is created or b) hide the function itself, but both are based on security through obscurity, they will never work.
You have some good points, the trade balance is going to have to be balanced, eventually. However I think the main flaw with your argument is you assume economies are very flexible, that overnight if there is some demand for some product, then the US will be able to make it, it's just not how it works in the real world, people have long term contracts, the effects of a brain drain on certain industries can be devastating, it takes time to create factories etc. Which is why I think that protectionism isn't the answer, but a "balanced trade budget" might be, basically, it would use tariffs to either a) make sure you can't export a huge amount of stuff in a very short time to the US, or b) if you do export large amounts, then you either a) have those things tariffed or b) can avoid the tariffs buy buying US products. If there is a real efficiency(whether offshoring is more efficient or not is another subject!) that exists in one country, but not the US, then this should be a free-traders dream come true. Each country can concentrate in what it excels at, and at the same time, can get lots of efficiently-made goods/services at the same time, everybody wins! cept for CEOs in the short term, which is why it will never happen, back to the ivory-batcave Robin!
Hehe, though you can't buy alcohol unless your magstripe works right, at least everywhere I have been(Pittsburgh and State College). Everywhere I go swipes my card(it could also be that the piece of crap hologram is almost invisible now, so everyone assumes my id is fake till they swipe it, almost got kicked out of a bar once cuz they thought it was fake)
Actually, here in Japan I saw a ps2 controller, and on the controller(where the gap between the left circle and the right circle usually is) there was a full qwerty keyboard, I'm thinking about buying it just for the novelty value.
Actually, Japan gets only 17% of its total energy from nuclear energy, and the US 21%.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/japan.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/usa.html
And they use a lot less energy than the US both overall and per-capita, however this summer they ran into problems(the Japanese) because corrupt supervisors refused to do safety maintenance, and finally some underlings(long afraid of criticizing their supervisors) came forward with several safety violations at various plants, and they had to close a lot of them down for a while to do necessary repairs. The US hasn't built any plants for a while, but we are pretty decent at getting the most out of the existing ones(though de-regulation is a BAD idea!)
A combination of hashbrown fishing(The little devices we use to lower the hashbrowns into the grease sometimes will let a few escape after you pull them out, then you have to "fish" them out with tongs) and not watching what I was doing, works every time.
On an unrelated note, silver can also be used to treat burns, found that out after I stuck my hand in the 400 degree McDonald's frier, got payed minimum wage to go to the hopital though. Three cheers for silver!
Actually, (for Apple's service anyway) it's based on if you can provide a credit card with a US address, I am currently living in Japan, and I gave them my US credit info, and I was allowed to buy songs.
Slashdot Mirror
All it did was hurt my eyes!
Oh, you mean I should do it with a BALL mouse!
Well, it does raise an interesting question of academic freedom versus free speech. The constitution doesn't allow you to say whatever you want, for instance libel, slander, shouting "Terminator Gates has come with flaming balls of DRM" at a Linux conference, etc. But the definition of libel/slander I guess would be what is debatable in this case.
Though doesn't part of the user agreeement state that you will not use this software as part of any critical systems such as power plants, air traffic control, medical systems etc. Whether or not that actually stops them is another story. The only place I worked with critical systems was in a steel mill, but we used VMS.
This is the exact same thing the original English settlers of this land said about the Irish and the Germans coming in. This is the same thing the KKK said in the 20's about the Italians and Poles etc.(Sacco and Vanzetti ring a bell?) American culture has not died, now has it? Perhaps I should clarify, at my school I notice two types of foriegn students(mostly Indian and Chinese) the ones who keep to their own little groups, but these also tend to be the poorer students when it comes project time(they always try to get help off me, but refuse to give me help the few times I ask), but there are also ones who, while respecting their home culture, have also embraced US culture, and they tend to be the ones that find creative answers to problems versus just being able to spew the crap you feed them(which the grading system of most classes rewards, while punishing creative solutions). We need more of the latter, the former can be sent back to their own little elitist society and stagnate for all I care(their job will be automated eventually anyway), but maybe you have created a more fundamental question, what is American culture? Almost all of our customs come from Europe, but we just make them bigger and badder it seems. Or maybe what you are afraid of is an end of Western culture, well(being a white person myself) I can tell you that it's inevitable, there just aren't enough of us around, if you take the entire population of the US, Canada, and Western Europe, it's roughly a billion people, about the same size as India and 30% less than the size of China. What exact cultural items do you feel will come under fire? Most second-generation Americans I know(Chinese, Russian, Indian etc) are as "American" as I am. There is no greater cultural propaganda than the television. US entertainment(popular worldwide btw) will make sure that the US culture does not fall by the wayside any time soon.
Perhaps Mr. Facts might get in the way of your little imaginary world: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5330. html
Maybe it's just my American math, but when imports from India exceed exports to India by 7 billion dollars or so(and there has been a trade deficit for the past 15 years), that might just mean that India has a trade SURPLUS with the US. Try thinking before you open your mouth, you might just become a mute.
It actually depends on immigration(which, if offshoring is wildly successful, one would assume that immigration would drop as people can just stay home to have all the economic benefits that are currently present in the US). If you ignore immigration, then the US population is not growing very fast, and in a matter of 20 years or so will actually start shrinking. This is actually a problem economically, as there will be more and more non-workers(retired etc) for every worker. Which is why, as a US citizen, I think the country should be doing more to support immigration(while ensuring that there is still fair competetion for jobs, H1-B has this in theory, but has abused it, and the abusers are taking away a lot of visas that could be used for valid shortages, it needs to be changed). I personally think that instead of offering tuition waivers and stipends to foriegn grad students unconditionally, we should make them contingent upon their staying in the US after they graduate. IE make the waives and stipends a kind of loan, but one that you can either pay off with a) money or b) working in the country(every year that you work in the US, a year comes off your loan). This will make it much harder for people to come here, get a great education, then take all that knowledge(and investment) back home where it sees very little benefit to the US economy. We also need to get more engineering grad students, stop the oppressive fees etc that we all have to pay as undergrads and to a certain extent grads. That is really how the US can improve it's economy in the long run.
I think the bigger mis-understanding is what science really is. Science consists of observing nature, and then creating a model to make predictions. Like Ptolemy's theory, he observed the movement of the bodies, and then attempted to come up with a theory that would be able to predict those movements. To the best of his knowledge, he was right. However, once more in-depth observations became available(the telescope etc), his model fell apart, and a different model took it's place. Science really doesn't "explain" anything in the way we think it does, it's merely observations and models, and yet it is the most powerful tool mankind has ever created!
Actually there is some research(a paper I read at work, don't have it in front of me) that atempts something like this, basically a worm/virus/whatever that tries to send itself out very quickly will make requests to a HUGE number of "invalid" IP addresses(they had some evidence from slammer) and thus the router may be able to detect this and attemtp to contain the virus. However the authors do admit there is a problem with speed, and thus it isn't currently feasible.
There are also un-intended consequences of people who write viruses/worms whatever, even if they don't have a purposely malicious payload they can still cause some real havoc. Note in the article it mentioned something about 911 services having to resort to manual methods of tracking calls, a slower and error prone. What if the phone system were to have suffered? So a totally innocent person could have died as a result, not something that I would advocate.
Yeah, but guess what, at some point you gotta be authenticated, which means a list of valid sequential numbers + some method of authentification. Plus, what happens when someone dies etc and they need to remove them from the voter rolls. Voter registration info(though not votes) is a lot easier to obtain than you might think it is.
It's not anonymous though, while it's true that one-way functions are "irreversible", that is given a result from a one-way function, you should not be able to get the input to the function, even if you had access to the function. However you have to realize that the number has to come from somewhere. If for example, it's an MD5 of your SSN, then anyone with your SSN(ie the entire population of India now adays) can run it through the function, then take the result and match it against the published voter list. The only way to prevent this is to either a) hide the way the input to the function is created or b) hide the function itself, but both are based on security through obscurity, they will never work.
Yeah, but it's closed source and windows only :P
Friggin keyboard Anyway, http://sourceforge.net/projects/magic-project/ Open-source magic, free for all till Wizards shuts it down!
You have some good points, the trade balance is going to have to be balanced, eventually. However I think the main flaw with your argument is you assume economies are very flexible, that overnight if there is some demand for some product, then the US will be able to make it, it's just not how it works in the real world, people have long term contracts, the effects of a brain drain on certain industries can be devastating, it takes time to create factories etc. Which is why I think that protectionism isn't the answer, but a "balanced trade budget" might be, basically, it would use tariffs to either a) make sure you can't export a huge amount of stuff in a very short time to the US, or b) if you do export large amounts, then you either a) have those things tariffed or b) can avoid the tariffs buy buying US products. If there is a real efficiency(whether offshoring is more efficient or not is another subject!) that exists in one country, but not the US, then this should be a free-traders dream come true. Each country can concentrate in what it excels at, and at the same time, can get lots of efficiently-made goods/services at the same time, everybody wins! cept for CEOs in the short term, which is why it will never happen, back to the ivory-batcave Robin!
Hehe, though you can't buy alcohol unless your magstripe works right, at least everywhere I have been(Pittsburgh and State College). Everywhere I go swipes my card(it could also be that the piece of crap hologram is almost invisible now, so everyone assumes my id is fake till they swipe it, almost got kicked out of a bar once cuz they thought it was fake)
Actually, here in Japan I saw a ps2 controller, and on the controller(where the gap between the left circle and the right circle usually is) there was a full qwerty keyboard, I'm thinking about buying it just for the novelty value.
I know it shouldn't be funny, but who didn't give a little giggle when they read the name, "Sandeep Dikshit"?
Now that they are back up, look at the picture of the laptop on the main page, is that an iBook?
Actually, Japan gets only 17% of its total energy from nuclear energy, and the US 21%. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/japan.html http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/usa.html And they use a lot less energy than the US both overall and per-capita, however this summer they ran into problems(the Japanese) because corrupt supervisors refused to do safety maintenance, and finally some underlings(long afraid of criticizing their supervisors) came forward with several safety violations at various plants, and they had to close a lot of them down for a while to do necessary repairs. The US hasn't built any plants for a while, but we are pretty decent at getting the most out of the existing ones(though de-regulation is a BAD idea!)
A combination of hashbrown fishing(The little devices we use to lower the hashbrowns into the grease sometimes will let a few escape after you pull them out, then you have to "fish" them out with tongs) and not watching what I was doing, works every time.
On an unrelated note, silver can also be used to treat burns, found that out after I stuck my hand in the 400 degree McDonald's frier, got payed minimum wage to go to the hopital though. Three cheers for silver!
Actually, (for Apple's service anyway) it's based on if you can provide a credit card with a US address, I am currently living in Japan, and I gave them my US credit info, and I was allowed to buy songs.