Where did you get that from (for smart cards)? if this was the case they wouldn't have to do this complicated man-in-the-middle simultaneous transaction attack.
You're right. As you say, it's not cloning, and what sjmurdoch and co demonstrated is a man-in-the-middle attack.
Your victim puts their card into a modified chip-and-pin terminal. At the same time, a criminal carrying a card connected to a hidden laptop goes to make a purchase in another store, putting the (fake) card in a (legitimate) terminal. The challenge-and-response between the legit terminal and the legit card are carried out remotely . The victim gets their $5 coffee for free but has just authorised payment for a high-value item elsewhere.
Anyway, yep - the crypto is good enough to stop cloning, but not this man-in-the-middle attack. However, this is unlikely to work well as a real scam - it's more of a proof-of-concept.
This is due to be on 'Watchdog' (a popular consumers'-rights show) in about 45 minutes.
As I understand it, the point of this research is that the banks have been claiming that chip-and-pin terminals are completely tamper-proof. In fact, they may be tamper-proof from the banks' point of view (preventing fraudulent transactions by destroying encryption keys if the case is tampered with), they're not from the customers' point of view - a dodgy establishment or criminal employee could clone your card with a terminal that looks legit.
So, ripping out the innards and putting a machine playing Tetris inside looks silly, but demonstrates that the devices aren't inherently trustworthy. And this is the next step: showing that a card can be cloned and the details used to make a fraudulent transaction using modified hardware.
While I didn't think too much of the article, I think that there is a market for this type of article. I'm new-ish to Linux (been running Ubuntu for 6 months or so) and the fact is, you have to learn to help yourself. Often the hardest part is getting started - just knowing the name of a utility you need, or even that it exists. An article giving specific advice about certain programs on a current version of a single distro would be fine, but would date very quickly - whereas this article helps you get started and leaves you to find out more. Which is exactly what you have to do.
I share a flat with a bunch of unix gurus, and I have to stop myself from asking them every tiny question about everything. Much better to find out the hardest thing (where to start) from them, then force myself to read man pages etc and gradually get better at solving my own problems.
Re:Nine women cannot have one baby in one month
on
Why Software is Hard
·
· Score: 1
Incidentally, if anyone knows how to parallelize the construction of babies, would you care to share?
The stock answer is that with sufficient women you can produce a baby per month, but there's a nine-month lead time.
No idea if that's a clever statement about planning or just a wiseass remark.
The problem I see with this, is that there is no point in fighting a war with robots, because the point of a war is to weaken your enemy, by killing off their people (soldiers).
Yes, if you're engaging in total war. These are a bit thin on the ground nowadays - a few still occur between non-nuclear states.
Modern warfare tends to take place with a group of nations (e.g. NATO, the EU, or a 'coalition of the willing') committing some fraction of their total force against a state (e.g. Afghanistan) or a non-state force (the Iraqi insurgency). These little wars drag on for years and are ended by political means as much as military ones. Soldiers being killed is just one way a side can lose the will to fight. But in fact, it's often the more powerful nations that are keenest to not lose troops. Consider the political ramifications of the Iraqi death-toll, or how fanatical the Israeli Defence Force are about not losing men.
That is why robot soldiers are desired. Western nations can spend plenty on materiel, but don't like their soldiers coming home in body bags.
Because of the complexity, however, you are practically guaranteed that there are countless bugs to be found. Finding them all simply cannot happen. Anyone who does not grasp this cannot claim to understand software development. If you do not understand or agree, then ponder on the tree of woe.
Heh. My comment was based on the supposition that the axiom that more testing => more defects may have been directly taken from a different area (manufacturing) when in fact, if it applies, it applies in a rather different way. Sometimes ideas cross-pollinate without actually being relevant to the new area, and I want people to think before using them.
Re-reading your original comment, there's nothing I actually disagree with, though it's perhaps a little defeatist. Even notwithstanding the continued existence of bugs, design decisions and better tools can make software more secure.
tuxlove wrote:
Anyone who develops software knows the axiom - the number of bugs discovered in any piece of software is directly proportional to the amount of testing you perform on that software.
With respect, I suspect this is a not-quite-appropriate extension of the maxim applied in manufacturing processes, that you can't test defects out of an item. This applies to pulling mass-produced objects off the assembly line and checking they perform to specification. You can test more items, and you can test them more rigorously, but this will keep increasing your defect rate. (You have to actually improve your processes, which leads to the continuous improvement idea, six sigma quality control, and numerous other buzzword-laden methodologies anyone who went to engineering school any time recently will remember as a welcome break from proper courses that had equations).
In software, the finished product can be perfectly duplicated, so one could aim to produce software that actually performs as specified and doesn't misbehave. This is leaving aside the philosophical question of whether one can improve a piece of software for ever. And of course the bigger the project the more impossible this becomes in practice. But at least you don't have to check every copy of 'rm' and 'less' for defects as they come off the assembly line:)
Where did you find XML in my comment? Crossmark is NOT XML. Also, this is I think the first time in history AbiWord is blamed of having bloatness, thanks!:-P
Au contraire, parent post was supporting you, and repudiating the claim that Sugar should use ODF (where the XML and bloat reside).
A "state of" emergency has ever been the excuse for taking away people's liberties. GWB thinks 9/11 gives him the right to do whatever he pleases, constitution be damned. I think you meant never and I also think you are forgetting the Japanese internment camps we had during World War II. Just because our country doesn't do it often, doesn't mean it can't be done.
Finally, if you are a law abiding American citzen or law abiding resident then you should have nothing to worry about. However if you skirt the law, are a criminal, and in this country illegally then I say tough shit to you. The constitution is for protecting the citizens, not every joe blow who crosses the border.
Some brief points:
(a) Note, ever, not never. As in, it has always been the excuse.
(b) The internment camps are hardly considered to have been a good idea nowadays.
(c) 'Protecting the citizens' is all very well, but every nation's economy depends on the comings-and-goings of visitors, tourists and economic migrants. If a country effectively only extends full human rights to its citizens, it risks an economic cost, as well as isolating the country in the view of the rest of the world, and making its citizens more isolationist through unfamiliarity. It also makes a statement to the rest - it hardly holds the nation up as a beacon of freedom.
You hit F2 in Windows to rename files? And that's supposed to be intuitive?
No, but it is sensible. If you're renaming a file, you're about to be hitting the keyboard anyway - 'rename' should be a menu option (with a convenient shortcut, such as F2). I find from time to time I try to click to open a file and the Windows GUI thinks I want to rename it - incredibly annoying. It's just the typical Windows thing of making things easier for novice users at the expense of everyone.
Hmm, I'm drifting off-topic. Here's hoping having a little moan about Windows is never off-topic on Slashdot:-)
The proper solution is the death penalty for SPAMmers.
Will you please stop writing 'SPAM' and 'SPAMmers'. It's distracting to the eye, and spam is not an acronym.
You're not protecting the manufacturers of the canned meat either. Their stuff is sold as SPAM, and comes in a can with SPAM written on it in big letters.
That game actually looks fast and fun. I hope I'm not alone in saying, I don't get particularly attached to a game world, be it Sonic, Mario or whatever (IMHO Mario remains insanely popular because so many of the games have been high-quality, not because of any intrinsic interest in a plumber in the Mushroom Kingdom).
Original Sonic was amazing because of the incredible speed and excitement, not because of a smartass blue hedgehog. That Wildfire footage looked fun to play.
A 17 year old street-kid, who (as the game begins) is training himself on rats, quickly progresses to the wanton slaughter of the undead, not to mention elite Imperial guardsmen[...]
You've got to admit FFVII got this almost right. Cloud, supposedly an elite SOLDIER working as a mercenary, is a fair bit tougher than his half-assed AVALANCHE buddies. (Barret looks tough but he's basically an angry cafe-owner). It later turns out *spoiler alert!:D that he never quite made the grade in SOLDIER and was just a Guard Lvl 3 or some such (whereas we get to see just how tough Sephiroth is when we briefly play as him) so there's plenty of room for him to level up. Flower-girl Aeris is utter crap except but has great magic skills due to her heritage as one of the 'Ancients'.
Leveling up and becoming stronger is a satisfying gameplay mechanic. Crafting a believable plot while still letting your character start at level one could be quite difficult, but would aid us in suspending our disbelief and getting into the story.
I don't really have the know-how to say much more on this thread (methinks I'll have to do some reading up some time) but these points might be worthwhile:
1). Don't get too caught up on differences among human races. We can all interbreed so we're not that different:D Seriously, even in this day and age there is a lot of racist crap to be found around suggesting much bigger racial differences than really exist.
2). I think the thing with demographics is maybe that we're unlikely to breed characteristics out of the whole human population. And it's characteristics that happen to be useful when the environment changes that are selected for over time. A couple of generations just can't change the human race that much.
3). As for things such as good looks affecting breeding, well a few points spring to mind. Firstly, what we consider attractive might change within, say, 500 years (even if we aren't all robots by then:D ). Secondly, ugly folks still get to breed. In fact, all sorts of folks get to breed. I think people select based on a range of things, it's not as if we're intensely breeding for attractiveness.
Now, lots of breeds of dog were bred from wolves over only, say, 5000 years, much fewer generations than natural selection requires. So selective breeding can change species fast, but it's not what we call evolution by natural selection. I'm not convinced that you could generally make a case that humans *as a whole* are intensely breeding themselves towards certain characteristics. It's fun to think about but I still believe technological changes will overtake any kind of changes based on us breeding our mammalian bodies:D
The solution to not voting is voting and the solution to voting while uninformed is to go read something
Well said, sir. Even if you start on election day you can read the manifestos/pledges/whatever of the parties you'd consider voting for, and find out a little about your local candidates. You can turn over in your mind whether to vote on an issue (such as economics, global politics or personal liberties) that you consider most important, or to make a 'tactical vote', go for a big party or a little guy etc. It doesn't take long to arrive at a decision you can at least live with for the next few years.
Evolution does not ALWAYS take long timescales. There are spurts of history that show it happened amazingly quickly.
I'm sorry, I don't believe that and I'd like to ask you to back it up. If you have in mind something like Genghis Khan's conquest of (large parts of) Asia and the demographic changes associated, I would suggest that racial mixing, demographics etc is not quite what we would ordinarily call the evolution of species by natural selection. Though maybe our unique ability to make war on political and ideological grounds (not to mention our global mobility) means we're already unlikely to propagate in quite the same way as another animal species. Hmmm...
Anyway, I'm no biologist but I think a change in people's characteristics due to demographic changes within a population (and probably a small part of the whole human population at that) is part of life and will not visit itself as a genuine change in the species as a whole for millennia, longer timescales than human history, and any changes you are considering are just transitory effects.
But thanks for the polite reply, Slashdot discussion usually quickly degenerates to an argument. I liked "I didn't just stick on my stupid hat one day":D
I used to worry that because we formed societies, and protect the weak, that evolution was being crippled and Humanity was harmed by it. But I finally got to REALLY looking around, and humans even LOOK different than we did 50 years ago.
No, no, evolution only occurs over inordinately long timescales. People nowadays achieve more of their genetic potential than in ages past. For example, the average western person's height increased several inches over the twentieth century, not by evolution but just by improved nutrition. Likewise education and prosperity have allowed many countries to achieve, say, high rates of literacy. But there could be no measurable change in characteristics due to natural selection in 50 years.
Far from worrying that we're stopping natural selection in some way (less killing off of those not fit to survive or some such idea) surely it's much more likely that we will become able to make changes on much quicker timescales than natural selection. I mean, if we bootstrap our personalities into Artificial Intelligence constructs or genetically modify ourselves into tiger-like space creatures in 200 years, whether our species happened to be gradually evolving better eyes or fewer toes will make no difference.
By the way, I phrased that last part in a jokey way, but I'm not really joking.
are the non-intelligent threats really less deadly or simply more open to analysis and prediction? the eight million victims of the Holocaust might have the right to ask that question. perhaps also the 3000 who died at the WTC.
No, no, listen to yourself - you're doing just what the article's talking about. I could come back at you with statistics: numbers of people killed by various disasters and diseases, but instead I'll respect your intelligence and ask you to think about your reactions.
The 3000 who died at the WTC: how many have been killed since by action in Iraq and Afghanistan? Undoubtedly many more. Obviously it's complex situation, but just think about why the WTC attacks revolt you (and me) so much: because they were intentional (someone wanted to kill americans indiscriminately to make a point) and outrage your moral sense (they were just innocent civilians going about their business).
If we can think about our own reactions to upsetting events, it might make us better able to judge appropriate responses in future.
I made a funny about 42 being the answer and even my own Anthropology professor didn't get the joke. Its more funny than creative now.
Except that most geeks will use the number 42 every chance they get and chuckle over it. I'm as guilty as the rest of us, but it is a bit hackneyed, notwithstanding that you found a room full of anthropologists who didn't get it.
[As regards games on Knoppix-style live CDs] We see this type of comment all the time. A few problems:[1. Drivers, 2. Networking and Patching, 3. Rebooting, 4. Licensing]
To be fair, a lot of your listed problems are already solved: for example, a Knoppix live CD alreay has excellent hardware detection and loads of drivers included. The networking of a game-specific version of an OS could be extremely stripped down (no extra programs listening on various ports). And if the game developers developed for Linux, they could hack at the OS all they wanted. (The OS is modifiable and GPL'ed; the game is a closed-source userland program; the live CD is a simple aggregation and hence the game needn't be open-sourced).
I'm not saying this is necessarily the best idea. But if you could stick the same CD into a PC or a Mac and get the same game running (on Linux from the CD) then there would be no need to port games, hence each game could be developed for a single platform with potentially fewer bugs.
I've never even played Warrior Within or the third game [...] I eagerly awaited the sequel until I found out more about it.
Respectfully sir, you're wrong. Warrior Within is a fine game with more of the same platforming awesomeness. It has a cool time-looping plot and takes place in a huge castle whose parts you traverse more than once, in different time periods, and you have a little more freedom in navigating them (especially when you're seeking out the hard-to find health upgrades and weapons). The combat system is improved. Let's face it, the system in Sands of Time was a little simplistic (though it did let you rush through the game in about four hours once you'd mastered it:D ).
Anyway, the soundtrack, the gratuitous semi-nudity of the female characters, and the 'darker' tone are just superficial aspects to a really good game. You can probably pick it up for pennies second-hand now; I recommend anyone to do so.
why can't a foreign self governing nation control its own airspace and space space.
It's own space space? Are you seriously suggesting that we consider the entire volumes of the universe extruded from the surface of the Earth to infinity to belong to the nation below?
I guess that could work - we would 'let' all the other alien species live in the space above international waters - but only if the Earth were stationary. (Hmm... do I need to point out that it isn't?). Do the Chinese get to launch an attack on Alpha Centauri when it's 'above' China?
That's cool, and it ties in fine with this discussion: Mark Shuttleworth wrote about a large group of people with conflicting goals. For all that you want a single GUI and consistency, other people love having lots of choice. You don't "give a rat's ass about what is free and what isn't"; lots of people care a lot about it.
Now you can almost certainly find a distro that gives you what you want (well, maybe not DirectX), while others can find distros that suit them. And other people claim that there are too many distributions and that efforts are too spread out. You can't win:-)
"...just that in the real world they are not indicative of a 'real' university or college."
Minor quibble, not directed at you: the OU is a 'real' university in the sense that it is a well-respected institution whose degrees are accepted as equivalent to other UK institutions (it would probably feature in the top 20 of the Sunday Times Good University Guide on aspects such as teaching quality, but can't be in the league table because other aspects don't really match the judgement criteria).
(This is just a note in case readers think it's a diploma mill or some such. I'm not associated with the OU btw).
Slashdot Mirror
Your victim puts their card into a modified chip-and-pin terminal. At the same time, a criminal carrying a card connected to a hidden laptop goes to make a purchase in another store, putting the (fake) card in a (legitimate) terminal. The challenge-and-response between the legit terminal and the legit card are carried out remotely . The victim gets their $5 coffee for free but has just authorised payment for a high-value item elsewhere.
Anyway, yep - the crypto is good enough to stop cloning, but not this man-in-the-middle attack. However, this is unlikely to work well as a real scam - it's more of a proof-of-concept.
This is due to be on 'Watchdog' (a popular consumers'-rights show) in about 45 minutes.
As I understand it, the point of this research is that the banks have been claiming that chip-and-pin terminals are completely tamper-proof. In fact, they may be tamper-proof from the banks' point of view (preventing fraudulent transactions by destroying encryption keys if the case is tampered with), they're not from the customers' point of view - a dodgy establishment or criminal employee could clone your card with a terminal that looks legit.
So, ripping out the innards and putting a machine playing Tetris inside looks silly, but demonstrates that the devices aren't inherently trustworthy. And this is the next step: showing that a card can be cloned and the details used to make a fraudulent transaction using modified hardware.
I share a flat with a bunch of unix gurus, and I have to stop myself from asking them every tiny question about everything. Much better to find out the hardest thing (where to start) from them, then force myself to read man pages etc and gradually get better at solving my own problems.
No idea if that's a clever statement about planning or just a wiseass remark.
The problem I see with this, is that there is no point in fighting a war with robots, because the point of a war is to weaken your enemy, by killing off their people (soldiers).
Yes, if you're engaging in total war. These are a bit thin on the ground nowadays - a few still occur between non-nuclear states.
Modern warfare tends to take place with a group of nations (e.g. NATO, the EU, or a 'coalition of the willing') committing some fraction of their total force against a state (e.g. Afghanistan) or a non-state force (the Iraqi insurgency). These little wars drag on for years and are ended by political means as much as military ones. Soldiers being killed is just one way a side can lose the will to fight. But in fact, it's often the more powerful nations that are keenest to not lose troops. Consider the political ramifications of the Iraqi death-toll, or how fanatical the Israeli Defence Force are about not losing men.
That is why robot soldiers are desired. Western nations can spend plenty on materiel, but don't like their soldiers coming home in body bags.
Yeah right, like they'll even listen to someone who can't spell 'humourously'.
:D
Because of the complexity, however, you are practically guaranteed that there are countless bugs to be found. Finding them all simply cannot happen. Anyone who does not grasp this cannot claim to understand software development. If you do not understand or agree, then ponder on the tree of woe.
Heh. My comment was based on the supposition that the axiom that more testing => more defects may have been directly taken from a different area (manufacturing) when in fact, if it applies, it applies in a rather different way. Sometimes ideas cross-pollinate without actually being relevant to the new area, and I want people to think before using them.
Re-reading your original comment, there's nothing I actually disagree with, though it's perhaps a little defeatist. Even notwithstanding the continued existence of bugs, design decisions and better tools can make software more secure.
With respect, I suspect this is a not-quite-appropriate extension of the maxim applied in manufacturing processes, that you can't test defects out of an item. This applies to pulling mass-produced objects off the assembly line and checking they perform to specification. You can test more items, and you can test them more rigorously, but this will keep increasing your defect rate. (You have to actually improve your processes, which leads to the continuous improvement idea, six sigma quality control, and numerous other buzzword-laden methodologies anyone who went to engineering school any time recently will remember as a welcome break from proper courses that had equations).
In software, the finished product can be perfectly duplicated, so one could aim to produce software that actually performs as specified and doesn't misbehave. This is leaving aside the philosophical question of whether one can improve a piece of software for ever. And of course the bigger the project the more impossible this becomes in practice. But at least you don't have to check every copy of 'rm' and 'less' for defects as they come off the assembly line
Where did you find XML in my comment? Crossmark is NOT XML. Also, this is I think the first time in history AbiWord is blamed of having bloatness, thanks! :-P
Au contraire, parent post was supporting you, and repudiating the claim that Sugar should use ODF (where the XML and bloat reside).
I think you meant never and I also think you are forgetting the Japanese internment camps we had during World War II. Just because our country doesn't do it often, doesn't mean it can't be done.
Finally, if you are a law abiding American citzen or law abiding resident then you should have nothing to worry about. However if you skirt the law, are a criminal, and in this country illegally then I say tough shit to you. The constitution is for protecting the citizens, not every joe blow who crosses the border.
Some brief points:
(a) Note, ever , not never. As in, it has always been the excuse.
(b) The internment camps are hardly considered to have been a good idea nowadays.
(c) 'Protecting the citizens' is all very well, but every nation's economy depends on the comings-and-goings of visitors, tourists and economic migrants. If a country effectively only extends full human rights to its citizens, it risks an economic cost, as well as isolating the country in the view of the rest of the world, and making its citizens more isolationist through unfamiliarity. It also makes a statement to the rest - it hardly holds the nation up as a beacon of freedom.
You hit F2 in Windows to rename files? And that's supposed to be intuitive?
:-)
No, but it is sensible. If you're renaming a file, you're about to be hitting the keyboard anyway - 'rename' should be a menu option (with a convenient shortcut, such as F2). I find from time to time I try to click to open a file and the Windows GUI thinks I want to rename it - incredibly annoying. It's just the typical Windows thing of making things easier for novice users at the expense of everyone.
Hmm, I'm drifting off-topic. Here's hoping having a little moan about Windows is never off-topic on Slashdot
The proper solution is the death penalty for SPAMmers.
Will you please stop writing 'SPAM' and 'SPAMmers'. It's distracting to the eye, and spam is not an acronym.
You're not protecting the manufacturers of the canned meat either. Their stuff is sold as SPAM, and comes in a can with SPAM written on it in big letters.
That's great - thanks for posting.
That game actually looks fast and fun. I hope I'm not alone in saying, I don't get particularly attached to a game world, be it Sonic, Mario or whatever (IMHO Mario remains insanely popular because so many of the games have been high-quality, not because of any intrinsic interest in a plumber in the Mushroom Kingdom).
Original Sonic was amazing because of the incredible speed and excitement, not because of a smartass blue hedgehog. That Wildfire footage looked fun to play.
A 17 year old street-kid, who (as the game begins) is training himself on rats, quickly progresses to the wanton slaughter of the undead, not to mention elite Imperial guardsmen[...]
:D that he never quite made the grade in SOLDIER and was just a Guard Lvl 3 or some such (whereas we get to see just how tough Sephiroth is when we briefly play as him) so there's plenty of room for him to level up. Flower-girl Aeris is utter crap except but has great magic skills due to her heritage as one of the 'Ancients'.
You've got to admit FFVII got this almost right. Cloud, supposedly an elite SOLDIER working as a mercenary, is a fair bit tougher than his half-assed AVALANCHE buddies. (Barret looks tough but he's basically an angry cafe-owner). It later turns out *spoiler alert!
Leveling up and becoming stronger is a satisfying gameplay mechanic. Crafting a believable plot while still letting your character start at level one could be quite difficult, but would aid us in suspending our disbelief and getting into the story.
I don't really have the know-how to say much more on this thread (methinks I'll have to do some reading up some time) but these points might be worthwhile: :D Seriously, even in this day and age there is a lot of racist crap to be found around suggesting much bigger racial differences than really exist. :D ). Secondly, ugly folks still get to breed. In fact, all sorts of folks get to breed. I think people select based on a range of things, it's not as if we're intensely breeding for attractiveness.
:D
1). Don't get too caught up on differences among human races. We can all interbreed so we're not that different
2). I think the thing with demographics is maybe that we're unlikely to breed characteristics out of the whole human population. And it's characteristics that happen to be useful when the environment changes that are selected for over time. A couple of generations just can't change the human race that much.
3). As for things such as good looks affecting breeding, well a few points spring to mind. Firstly, what we consider attractive might change within, say, 500 years (even if we aren't all robots by then
Now, lots of breeds of dog were bred from wolves over only, say, 5000 years, much fewer generations than natural selection requires. So selective breeding can change species fast, but it's not what we call evolution by natural selection. I'm not convinced that you could generally make a case that humans *as a whole* are intensely breeding themselves towards certain characteristics. It's fun to think about but I still believe technological changes will overtake any kind of changes based on us breeding our mammalian bodies
The solution to not voting is voting and the solution to voting while uninformed is to go read something
Well said, sir. Even if you start on election day you can read the manifestos/pledges/whatever of the parties you'd consider voting for, and find out a little about your local candidates. You can turn over in your mind whether to vote on an issue (such as economics, global politics or personal liberties) that you consider most important, or to make a 'tactical vote', go for a big party or a little guy etc. It doesn't take long to arrive at a decision you can at least live with for the next few years.
Evolution does not ALWAYS take long timescales. There are spurts of history that show it happened amazingly quickly.
:D
I'm sorry, I don't believe that and I'd like to ask you to back it up. If you have in mind something like Genghis Khan's conquest of (large parts of) Asia and the demographic changes associated, I would suggest that racial mixing, demographics etc is not quite what we would ordinarily call the evolution of species by natural selection. Though maybe our unique ability to make war on political and ideological grounds (not to mention our global mobility) means we're already unlikely to propagate in quite the same way as another animal species. Hmmm...
Anyway, I'm no biologist but I think a change in people's characteristics due to demographic changes within a population (and probably a small part of the whole human population at that) is part of life and will not visit itself as a genuine change in the species as a whole for millennia, longer timescales than human history, and any changes you are considering are just transitory effects.
But thanks for the polite reply, Slashdot discussion usually quickly degenerates to an argument. I liked "I didn't just stick on my stupid hat one day"
I used to worry that because we formed societies, and protect the weak, that evolution was being crippled and Humanity was harmed by it. But I finally got to REALLY looking around, and humans even LOOK different than we did 50 years ago.
No, no, evolution only occurs over inordinately long timescales. People nowadays achieve more of their genetic potential than in ages past. For example, the average western person's height increased several inches over the twentieth century, not by evolution but just by improved nutrition. Likewise education and prosperity have allowed many countries to achieve, say, high rates of literacy. But there could be no measurable change in characteristics due to natural selection in 50 years.
Far from worrying that we're stopping natural selection in some way (less killing off of those not fit to survive or some such idea) surely it's much more likely that we will become able to make changes on much quicker timescales than natural selection. I mean, if we bootstrap our personalities into Artificial Intelligence constructs or genetically modify ourselves into tiger-like space creatures in 200 years, whether our species happened to be gradually evolving better eyes or fewer toes will make no difference.
By the way, I phrased that last part in a jokey way, but I'm not really joking.
are the non-intelligent threats really less deadly or simply more open to analysis and prediction? the eight million victims of the Holocaust might have the right to ask that question. perhaps also the 3000 who died at the WTC.
No, no, listen to yourself - you're doing just what the article's talking about. I could come back at you with statistics: numbers of people killed by various disasters and diseases, but instead I'll respect your intelligence and ask you to think about your reactions.
The 3000 who died at the WTC: how many have been killed since by action in Iraq and Afghanistan? Undoubtedly many more. Obviously it's complex situation, but just think about why the WTC attacks revolt you (and me) so much: because they were intentional (someone wanted to kill americans indiscriminately to make a point) and outrage your moral sense (they were just innocent civilians going about their business).
If we can think about our own reactions to upsetting events, it might make us better able to judge appropriate responses in future.
I made a funny about 42 being the answer and even my own Anthropology professor didn't get the joke. Its more funny than creative now.
Except that most geeks will use the number 42 every chance they get and chuckle over it. I'm as guilty as the rest of us, but it is a bit hackneyed, notwithstanding that you found a room full of anthropologists who didn't get it.
[As regards games on Knoppix-style live CDs] We see this type of comment all the time. A few problems:[1. Drivers, 2. Networking and Patching, 3. Rebooting, 4. Licensing]
To be fair, a lot of your listed problems are already solved: for example, a Knoppix live CD alreay has excellent hardware detection and loads of drivers included. The networking of a game-specific version of an OS could be extremely stripped down (no extra programs listening on various ports). And if the game developers developed for Linux, they could hack at the OS all they wanted. (The OS is modifiable and GPL'ed; the game is a closed-source userland program; the live CD is a simple aggregation and hence the game needn't be open-sourced).
I'm not saying this is necessarily the best idea. But if you could stick the same CD into a PC or a Mac and get the same game running (on Linux from the CD) then there would be no need to port games, hence each game could be developed for a single platform with potentially fewer bugs.
I've never even played Warrior Within or the third game [...] I eagerly awaited the sequel until I found out more about it.
:D ).
Respectfully sir, you're wrong. Warrior Within is a fine game with more of the same platforming awesomeness. It has a cool time-looping plot and takes place in a huge castle whose parts you traverse more than once, in different time periods, and you have a little more freedom in navigating them (especially when you're seeking out the hard-to find health upgrades and weapons). The combat system is improved. Let's face it, the system in Sands of Time was a little simplistic (though it did let you rush through the game in about four hours once you'd mastered it
Anyway, the soundtrack, the gratuitous semi-nudity of the female characters, and the 'darker' tone are just superficial aspects to a really good game. You can probably pick it up for pennies second-hand now; I recommend anyone to do so.
why can't a foreign self governing nation control its own airspace and space space.
It's own space space? Are you seriously suggesting that we consider the entire volumes of the universe extruded from the surface of the Earth to infinity to belong to the nation below?
I guess that could work - we would 'let' all the other alien species live in the space above international waters - but only if the Earth were stationary. (Hmm... do I need to point out that it isn't?). Do the Chinese get to launch an attack on Alpha Centauri when it's 'above' China?
What I want out of Linux:
:-)
[5-point list elided]
That's cool, and it ties in fine with this discussion: Mark Shuttleworth wrote about a large group of people with conflicting goals. For all that you want a single GUI and consistency, other people love having lots of choice. You don't "give a rat's ass about what is free and what isn't"; lots of people care a lot about it.
Now you can almost certainly find a distro that gives you what you want (well, maybe not DirectX), while others can find distros that suit them. And other people claim that there are too many distributions and that efforts are too spread out. You can't win
"...just that in the real world they are not indicative of a 'real' university or college."
Minor quibble, not directed at you: the OU is a 'real' university in the sense that it is a well-respected institution whose degrees are accepted as equivalent to other UK institutions (it would probably feature in the top 20 of the Sunday Times Good University Guide on aspects such as teaching quality, but can't be in the league table because other aspects don't really match the judgement criteria).
(This is just a note in case readers think it's a diploma mill or some such. I'm not associated with the OU btw).