The second amendment recognizes that an armed population is harder to dominate by a central authority. This is as true today as it was then, and just as important. The right to bear arms is not for the purposes of hunting or other recreational activities. It is a check against tyranny. History has shown power to be a corrupting force, so preventing the concentration of power should be the goal of any civilization interested in longevity.
Ending the private ownership of weapons should be considered carefully. Freedom is easy to lose and hard to gain. The loss of this particular freedom would make it considerably easier to lose the rest of them. What safety is worth that cost?
The purpose of taxes are to pay for the government.
As long as we have any publicly funded health care, then government is paying for the health consequences of smoking. With that in mind, why is it wrong to tax a behavior that increases an individual's societal burden?
Individual behavior that has a societal cost should be fair game for targeted taxes. In many cases I think that allowing someone the freedom to engage in the costly behavior while asking them to compensate society for the privilege is preferable to an outright ban on the behavior.
But physical dispersal would allow physical network access in all of the locations (i.e. it's not like the US military couldn't dial into "Okinawa ISP Inc" just for this application). You'd likely not want these on the military network anyway. I'd expect they would be completely isolated until activation, and then they would be using local connections rather than the connections used for actual military base communications.
Even then, military bases would not be necessary for physical distribution throughout the world. Simply have equipment in various countries connected to local networks (probably at network hubs in friendly nations, but any sort of high bandwidth connection would probably suffice). This distributed system could have the ability to receive activation and execution commands from a separate secured military satellite connection.
Re:Ah, the smart-arse non-sequiturs
on
Hacking a Pacemaker
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I can't speak to how Medtronic implements their RF communication, but as I said ours is encrypted and boosting the signal to "hack" someone does not get around the encryption.
With the encryption that you say your company uses, wouldn't it simply be a matter of acquiring a single sending device, and reverse engineering it?
No. The individual communication session is protected by a unique key. Still, if you physically had a programmer (the sending device you mentioned), you could use it without any hacks to change a patient's settings just as a doctor could, but it would require physical proximity on the order of a few cm. This sort of communication does not occur using RF. You can't spoof this with a high gain antenna or any such thing because the communication isn't occurring using radio frequencies at all. And as you said, at this range you could kill a person any number of other ways.
Re:Ah, the smart-arse non-sequiturs
on
Hacking a Pacemaker
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I appreciate your enthusiasm, but thank god you aren't designing these devices.
I work for one of the competitors to Medtronic (the company whose devices were studied). We have encryption in our RF communication. We DO take security into consideration, but there are trade offs that have to be considered. Battery life is generally the most important consideration. Every time surgery needs to be performed to physically access the device (usually because of a depleted battery) there is a risk of complications. These aren't insignificant risks either. Keep in mind the people getting these devices have health problems of some sort or they wouldn't be getting them. With that in mind, security solutions in this domain have to be very well thought out so as to avoid draining the battery significantly.
So please, don't for a second presume that we are a bunch of monkeys sitting around on our asses ignoring real concerns. The real issue is that there are far more concerns than you are aware of. We do evaluate these concerns and try to build the best devices possible with the fewest compromises.
I hardly think it is fair to look at the average student's comprehension of math and science and think it has any relationship to the best and brightest among us. There are plenty of home grown Americans in the top tiers of research and development, and they are just as smart as their foreign grown counterparts.
I believe that the real trouble with the decline in general knowledge of math and science, is that it has led a large segment of society to lose sight of the value of research. There is a growing trend towards rejecting the recommendations of our top researchers, and instead trusting our gut feelings on things. This is a disturbing trend indeed, as placing our faith in feelings over facts is wrongheaded and dangerous. It doesn't matter how good we are at research if the majority of people choose to ignore the research.
Lol. Relative to what? Using the word "true" implies some kind of universal reference frame.
Re:Can you use it to upload mails?
on
Free IMAP On Gmail
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I suppose the hope is that most people will use both IMAP and the web interface and that allowing IMAP will increase usage overall.
Well certainly. Gmail's interface still far exceeds any traditional mail client. Using Outlook at work is the worst experience in my day. The benefit of imap is that I will be able to use my iPhone properly until the SDK is released, when hopefully Google will be able to develop a 3rd party client for my phone.
Does anyone know of any mail experience available that is superior to gmail?
you cant know any of that stuff unless you study it with an analytical mind, which is what liberal arts is all about.
I agree with most of what you say, but why would you go to school to study liberal arts? Every responsible citizen should make it part of their everyday life. History and the arts should be studied, not taught. The idea of teaching history is ripe for abuse. Even worse is the idea that you can test people on their opinions about topics. A math problem has an answer. "What were the strengths and weaknesses of Regan's administration?" does not have a clear answer (but plenty of people will give you one).
A lot of literature classes are nothing more than reading lists and in class discussion. Join a book club.
I guess the key point I'm trying to make is that Science/Engineering/Business/Law/Medicine/etc. are about learning the state of the art in a particular field. Liberal arts is about experiencing a range of culturally significant material. Why would you pay someone to tell you what to experience? You have your whole life to discover all you can on your own.
We don't NEED LUGs anymore, but that's not to say that they need to disappear. It is just that it would be more like a club now. People with similar interests getting together. Not because they NEED to, but because they WANT to.
How often do you see a classically trained computer scientist (with no IT experience) hired to design and implement worldwide data center operations for an international Internet company serving hundreds of millions of users per day?
I hope you aren't suggesting that someone fresh out of school with an IT degree would be suited for this task either. We are talking about entry level jobs here, and there really isn't an entry level IT job that a CS grad couldn't do that an IT grad could based solely on their educational background.
I'm certainly not saying that getting a degree in CS is better per-say, but it does without a doubt open more doors at the entry level. If someone is absolutely sure they only want to do IT, I hardly see anything wrong with focusing their education on it. The education will be easier, but that doesn't mean the real world work will be. Serious IT work requires experience and bright people. There is nothing shameful about doing this sort of work, and the people who are really good at it are incredibly valuable to society.
I have to totally agree with you. The iPhone is freaking mind blowing. I can't figure out why so many people hate a device they haven't used.
I know it is awesome. I am using mine to post this with its ultra quick keyboard. Seriously guys, before you condem it, why don't you go try it?
So, when a company does something sinister, it is evil.
When an individual does it, it is clever?
How would you feel about this: Got free food stealing from company X. Sure beats paying for food from company Y and Z. Don't worry, it's cool, I stole it by outsmarting company X, they deserved it.
Thus, I wear out roads less than other cars, but I have yet to see a toll based on weight for any passenger vehicles. The gas tax actually seems fairer to me in this case, because my car has better gas mileage than cars that weigh more.
I would have to agree with you here. The traditional method of taxing fuel was a relatively fair way of evaluating road "use." Heavier, more destructive vehicles typically require more fuel (hence more tax). I believe with emerging alternative fuel sources the way we charge for road use needs to be re-evaluated. This guy shouldn't be fined for using his alternative fuel in any case, but some way needs to be devised for charging everyone fairly for road use. Roads are expensive and critical, but not every road user causes the same amount of wear.
A reasonable solution would be charing a use tax based on (mileage)*(vehicle weight). If vehicles under a certain weight are found to have no appreciable impact on roads, then they should be exempt from the tax entirely.
All of those who benefit from roads should pay for roads. For those who would suggest that even people who do not drive benefit from roads through the transportation of goods, remember that the cost of transportation is paid for in the cost of the goods, or the companies selling the goods could not stay in business.
I think you are missing the point here. All of the taxes you mentioned are different kinds of taxes for different purposes. Fuel taxes in many states are used for transportation costs like road maintenance and public transportation (which in theory reduces traffic). It's like a use tax for the road system. Why should those who choose to pursue alternative fuel sources automatically get an out on paying for the roads they are going to be driving on with that alternative fuel?
I could understand a state making the choice to promote alternative fuels by giving them tax breaks, but it seems like a decision that should be made rather than assumed. At the end of the day, there are costs that those taxes are paying, and we should all pay our fair share of it. If you feel like taxes are too high, pressure your legislators to cut taxes, and programs.
if that means coming accross a less than optimally tender steak once in a while that's a price I'm more than willing to pay.
That is a sentiment I just can't get behind. There is nothing more important to me then an optimally tender steak.
Sorry to break it to you, but there was never a time when "leetspeak" was actually cool. I'm guessing 2000 must have been when you were finally old enough to realize it.
Slashdot Mirror
The second amendment recognizes that an armed population is harder to dominate by a central authority. This is as true today as it was then, and just as important. The right to bear arms is not for the purposes of hunting or other recreational activities. It is a check against tyranny. History has shown power to be a corrupting force, so preventing the concentration of power should be the goal of any civilization interested in longevity.
Ending the private ownership of weapons should be considered carefully. Freedom is easy to lose and hard to gain. The loss of this particular freedom would make it considerably easier to lose the rest of them. What safety is worth that cost?
Isn't Android also? As is WebOS (HP Touchpad). I think Microsoft makes the only tablet OS that isn't *nix based.
The purpose of taxes are to pay for the government.
As long as we have any publicly funded health care, then government is paying for the health consequences of smoking. With that in mind, why is it wrong to tax a behavior that increases an individual's societal burden?
Individual behavior that has a societal cost should be fair game for targeted taxes. In many cases I think that allowing someone the freedom to engage in the costly behavior while asking them to compensate society for the privilege is preferable to an outright ban on the behavior.
WoW runs just fine on my Mac
member's only jackets of the web
The only problem with your analogy is that member's only jackets are awesome.
I'm from the Tri-Cities, and we refer to everything east of the Cascades as Eastern Washington.
But physical dispersal would allow physical network access in all of the locations (i.e. it's not like the US military couldn't dial into "Okinawa ISP Inc" just for this application). You'd likely not want these on the military network anyway. I'd expect they would be completely isolated until activation, and then they would be using local connections rather than the connections used for actual military base communications.
Even then, military bases would not be necessary for physical distribution throughout the world. Simply have equipment in various countries connected to local networks (probably at network hubs in friendly nations, but any sort of high bandwidth connection would probably suffice). This distributed system could have the ability to receive activation and execution commands from a separate secured military satellite connection.
I can't speak to how Medtronic implements their RF communication, but as I said ours is encrypted and boosting the signal to "hack" someone does not get around the encryption.
With the encryption that you say your company uses, wouldn't it simply be a matter of acquiring a single sending device, and reverse engineering it?
No. The individual communication session is protected by a unique key. Still, if you physically had a programmer (the sending device you mentioned), you could use it without any hacks to change a patient's settings just as a doctor could, but it would require physical proximity on the order of a few cm. This sort of communication does not occur using RF. You can't spoof this with a high gain antenna or any such thing because the communication isn't occurring using radio frequencies at all. And as you said, at this range you could kill a person any number of other ways.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, but thank god you aren't designing these devices. I work for one of the competitors to Medtronic (the company whose devices were studied). We have encryption in our RF communication. We DO take security into consideration, but there are trade offs that have to be considered. Battery life is generally the most important consideration. Every time surgery needs to be performed to physically access the device (usually because of a depleted battery) there is a risk of complications. These aren't insignificant risks either. Keep in mind the people getting these devices have health problems of some sort or they wouldn't be getting them. With that in mind, security solutions in this domain have to be very well thought out so as to avoid draining the battery significantly. So please, don't for a second presume that we are a bunch of monkeys sitting around on our asses ignoring real concerns. The real issue is that there are far more concerns than you are aware of. We do evaluate these concerns and try to build the best devices possible with the fewest compromises.
I hardly think it is fair to look at the average student's comprehension of math and science and think it has any relationship to the best and brightest among us. There are plenty of home grown Americans in the top tiers of research and development, and they are just as smart as their foreign grown counterparts. I believe that the real trouble with the decline in general knowledge of math and science, is that it has led a large segment of society to lose sight of the value of research. There is a growing trend towards rejecting the recommendations of our top researchers, and instead trusting our gut feelings on things. This is a disturbing trend indeed, as placing our faith in feelings over facts is wrongheaded and dangerous. It doesn't matter how good we are at research if the majority of people choose to ignore the research.
"true velocity"
Lol. Relative to what? Using the word "true" implies some kind of universal reference frame.
I suppose the hope is that most people will use both IMAP and the web interface and that allowing IMAP will increase usage overall.
Well certainly. Gmail's interface still far exceeds any traditional mail client. Using Outlook at work is the worst experience in my day. The benefit of imap is that I will be able to use my iPhone properly until the SDK is released, when hopefully Google will be able to develop a 3rd party client for my phone.
Does anyone know of any mail experience available that is superior to gmail?
Which is why this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_resynchronization_therapy#Biventricular_Pacing_.28BVP.29 is probably a more appropriate solution in such situations. In certain cases cardiac resynchronization therapy can lead an enlarged heart to shrink back to its natural size. It fixes the problem rather than trying to mitigate the symptoms (ie a larger heart).
That would be the point of view of Xbox 360 owners only, correct?
Yeah, I think the millions of people playing Burning Crusade (which came out this year) might just out do this game.
you cant know any of that stuff unless you study it with an analytical mind, which is what liberal arts is all about.
I agree with most of what you say, but why would you go to school to study liberal arts? Every responsible citizen should make it part of their everyday life. History and the arts should be studied, not taught. The idea of teaching history is ripe for abuse. Even worse is the idea that you can test people on their opinions about topics. A math problem has an answer. "What were the strengths and weaknesses of Regan's administration?" does not have a clear answer (but plenty of people will give you one). A lot of literature classes are nothing more than reading lists and in class discussion. Join a book club. I guess the key point I'm trying to make is that Science/Engineering/Business/Law/Medicine/etc. are about learning the state of the art in a particular field. Liberal arts is about experiencing a range of culturally significant material. Why would you pay someone to tell you what to experience? You have your whole life to discover all you can on your own.
We don't NEED LUGs anymore, but that's not to say that they need to disappear. It is just that it would be more like a club now. People with similar interests getting together. Not because they NEED to, but because they WANT to.
How often do you see a classically trained computer scientist (with no IT experience) hired to design and implement worldwide data center operations for an international Internet company serving hundreds of millions of users per day?
I hope you aren't suggesting that someone fresh out of school with an IT degree would be suited for this task either. We are talking about entry level jobs here, and there really isn't an entry level IT job that a CS grad couldn't do that an IT grad could based solely on their educational background.
I'm certainly not saying that getting a degree in CS is better per-say, but it does without a doubt open more doors at the entry level. If someone is absolutely sure they only want to do IT, I hardly see anything wrong with focusing their education on it. The education will be easier, but that doesn't mean the real world work will be. Serious IT work requires experience and bright people. There is nothing shameful about doing this sort of work, and the people who are really good at it are incredibly valuable to society.
I have to totally agree with you. The iPhone is freaking mind blowing. I can't figure out why so many people hate a device they haven't used.
I know it is awesome. I am using mine to post this with its ultra quick keyboard. Seriously guys, before you condem it, why don't you go try it?
That's not very nice.
So, when a company does something sinister, it is evil.
When an individual does it, it is clever?
How would you feel about this: Got free food stealing from company X. Sure beats paying for food from company Y and Z. Don't worry, it's cool, I stole it by outsmarting company X, they deserved it.
Thus, I wear out roads less than other cars, but I have yet to see a toll based on weight for any passenger vehicles. The gas tax actually seems fairer to me in this case, because my car has better gas mileage than cars that weigh more.
I would have to agree with you here. The traditional method of taxing fuel was a relatively fair way of evaluating road "use." Heavier, more destructive vehicles typically require more fuel (hence more tax). I believe with emerging alternative fuel sources the way we charge for road use needs to be re-evaluated. This guy shouldn't be fined for using his alternative fuel in any case, but some way needs to be devised for charging everyone fairly for road use. Roads are expensive and critical, but not every road user causes the same amount of wear.
A reasonable solution would be charing a use tax based on (mileage)*(vehicle weight). If vehicles under a certain weight are found to have no appreciable impact on roads, then they should be exempt from the tax entirely.
All of those who benefit from roads should pay for roads. For those who would suggest that even people who do not drive benefit from roads through the transportation of goods, remember that the cost of transportation is paid for in the cost of the goods, or the companies selling the goods could not stay in business.
I think you are missing the point here. All of the taxes you mentioned are different kinds of taxes for different purposes. Fuel taxes in many states are used for transportation costs like road maintenance and public transportation (which in theory reduces traffic). It's like a use tax for the road system. Why should those who choose to pursue alternative fuel sources automatically get an out on paying for the roads they are going to be driving on with that alternative fuel? I could understand a state making the choice to promote alternative fuels by giving them tax breaks, but it seems like a decision that should be made rather than assumed. At the end of the day, there are costs that those taxes are paying, and we should all pay our fair share of it. If you feel like taxes are too high, pressure your legislators to cut taxes, and programs.
I typically look to the underground OSS crowd to be the purveyors of hip.
if that means coming accross a less than optimally tender steak once in a while that's a price I'm more than willing to pay.
That is a sentiment I just can't get behind. There is nothing more important to me then an optimally tender steak.
Sorry to break it to you, but there was never a time when "leetspeak" was actually cool. I'm guessing 2000 must have been when you were finally old enough to realize it.