In 90 seconds, how many different uses can you think of for a tree-trunk?
There. I've now spoiled this test for you. It's an otherwise useful test that's routinely used in clinical diagnosis for alzheimers disease, but when it comes time for you to go to the doctor for a mental health diagnosis then you'll get inaccurate test results. Sorry about that. But you know, security through obscurity doesn't work...
Why a fork? Why 90 seconds? Why must the patient be unprepared? -- because researchers have spent many thousands of dollars and many thousands of double-blind patients to calibrate it. Any different object, any different time period, and your results wouldn't be calibrated, and they'd lose their diagnostic value.
Conclusion: security through obscurity is necessary for some of these tests, even if it doesn't work that well.
PS. Actually the object they calibrated for isn't really a tree-trunk, so you're okay this time.
Does Star Wars include a farm-boy engaged in light-saber duels? From your interpretation, "no", because Luke wasn't an actual farm-boy.
Suppose I write a historical fiction in which Hitler wins the war and engages in a victory parade in Trafalgar Square. Does this book include a dictator engaging in a victory parading in Trafalgar Square? From your interpretation, "no", because it isn't an actual Hitler actually engaged in a victory parade.
When we say a piece of literature or art includes "X engaged in Y", it never means that the actual X is engaged in an actual Y. It only ever means that the depicted X is depicted as engaged in Y.
Your post says that VASIMR combines high-thrust with high-specific-impulse.
But the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VASIMR_Engine says instead that VASIMR operates in either high-thrust low-specific impulse mode, or in low-thrust high-specific-impulse mode.
You haven't said how far away you live. I myself live 8 miles from work, which is 45 minutes by car during rush-hour or 45 minutes by bicycle. (Actually I choose to cycle the scenic route, 25 miles each way, 90 minutes).
So: if your job is within 25 miles of home, then cycle. (maybe cycle one way every other day).
I think most investigative journalism involves identifying people who wish to remain anonymous... "Which politician was the recipient of this bribe? (sorry, he wants to remain anonymous)"
What exactly do you consider to be an "inherent right"?
There's no formal definition. But those rights which we the collective citizens of the world consider to be inalienable, well, if they're not "inherent" then I don't know what is.
And of course you can't reconcile them. That's the nature of rights. If you want things that can be reconciled then you're in a candystore not the morality of the human race.
There are two balanced rights. You only listed one. Here they are, together (this phrasing taken from the two parts of Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights):
(1) "Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits."
(2) "Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author."
Sure, you can say that one particular implementation of part 2 (i.e. copyright) is not an inherent right. But part 2 itself is the fundamental inherent right which we have to figure out how to implement.
Consequence: in the "good times" when there isn't a bad security situation, then the US-based corporations wind up with costs that are a little higher than their competitors.
Therefore the competitors win and the US-based corporations go bust.
When the "bad times" come and there are severe network security problems, well, it's too late by then.
Will the market be willing to spend a little extra money to buy from a company that has spent more on security which will possibly be worth it in ten to fifteen years? The high-end business market might pay the premium. The low- and middle-end consumer market won't.
I don't think the free market in general has eyes beyond the next 2-5 years.
That only works if you think that the truth is somehow the "average" of two untrue sources. You might also believe that a country run by Mussolini (extreme right wing) and Stalin (extreme left wing) would be, pleasant peaceful and free.
I think that by averaging out two biased sources, all you end up with is the perception that everything is biased and the truth is unreachable. Would be better to find a less biased source in the first place.
God I hate advertising. I hate the American attitude that advertising is acceptable (indeed inevitable) in all areas of life. Billboards everywhere, sportscasters interrupting their coverage to promote products, ads read by the presenters on NPR, advertising of prescription medication...
These things don't happen anywhere else. It's only in America that you've been persuaded by the advertisers that their hold on your psyche and paycheck is normal.
The figures I have are from 2000, when the total amount spent on advertising worked out to about $5000 per inhabitant of the US per year.
What a stupid tax for us all to be paying! It doesn't go to anything we particularly want. It lines the pocketbooks of advertising agencies and irritates us when we're trying to browse the web or watch television or listen to the radio or see the countryside from our cars.
As a way of funding anything, it's hugely inefficient. I bet it's even more inefficient than taxes.
Since Word 2007 it already had better equation typesetting than TeX... Word started kerning based on whitespace in the four corners of glyphs, rather than just the left/right sides of the glyphs.
(of course, in both systems, you can manually tweak the positioning of individual glyphs -- like the LaTeX logo. you just don't want to).
Word 2007 also looked better for mixing regular text with maths since it sets text and maths with the same unicode face. Latex requires you to opt into one of the packages (e.g. CM, or palatino, or whatever) so you're much more constrained in font choice.
That said, word's macros aren't anywhere near as powerful as latex's, so I haven't been able to use it as well for fields with lots of specialized notation.
Adobe already produce a home version of Photoshop. It's called "Photoshop Elements" and comes bundled free with many digital cameras and scanners. And still has more features than most home users seem able to use.
Sigh. "Blindingly obvious" is a silly comment on scientific studies.
Was it blindingly obvious that 9% (rather than 8% or 10%) of proteins would be differently expressed? Was it blindingly obvious that the best working model so far for adaption involves glycinin, beta conglycinin, dehydrins, and glycine betaine?
If these particular outcomes were blindingly obvious to you then you're a kook not a scientist.
If these details don't seem important to you then you're a woolly thinker not a scientist.
HFCS has completely different *physical* properties from sugar. HFCS is a humectant: it absorbs water from the air and makes cookies soft. Sugar is not: it makes cookies hard and brittle.
There can never be an "apples to apples" comparison between food ingredients that have such wildly different properties: they're used in different ways, for different things.
This in addition to your point about cost.
Anytime someone says "they are metabolized the same", well, I think it's misses the point so much as to be misleading.
Sure it's all in the license at the moment. The question is whether we as a society are happy that these are valid licenses.
We don't let doctors do surgery with the EULA-like conditions that "anything they do is at the users own risk and the doctor isn't held to any standards."
We don't let engineers build bridges with the EULA-like conditions that "the bridge is delivered as is and people drive over it at their own risk."
Why do we allow software to get away with such a cowboy attitude when we're more rigorous about other important infrastructure?
Or, why are we so up-tight about doctors and civil engineers when they should have the same laissez-faire setup as software engineers?
Furthermore, IMO, the fundamental search for knowledge is one of the noblest human endeavors in existence.
I think that's important. LHC and the like are the greatest achievements of our civilization. On a par with the pyramids of Ancient Egypt. Looking back, it was awesome that King Cheops of Egypt built his pyramid at Giza, but pretty much insignificant that King Userkare of Egypt raised import duties by 0.1%.
4) If you have a infection, the best most reliable way to get rid of it is to wipe your OS and reinstall from scratch. The trojan authors are kindly doing you a favor.
(similar to the idea of a trojan which improves security settings on every system it infects)
Like they say, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Well, yes, these are the gentler pirates of the 21st century. So far they've been incredibly adept at finding exactly the right level of operation so that they're seen as a minor economic nuisance that can be dealt with readily by insurance companies -- but without stepping the bounds that would make them be seen as a major threat to life that has to be dealt with.
That's why the world hasn't really dealt with them much.
Nothing will happen until they cause a real drastic financial impact. (and it's no big impact to lose $1m ransom on a ship that's worth more carrying cargo that's worth a lot more). Or until they cause a significant number of deaths. They've been avoiding both.
And the problem won't be solved until the fundamental economic and governance problems in Somalia are addressed.
I think the lesson is that if you're a media business who wants to double your revenue, then doing it through lobbying is a cheaper and easier way than doing it through innovating new technologies or products, or through satisfying your customers better.
The same story applies. Your bank account details are so precious that they should never be exposed on the internet. And yet you do use online banking. The benefit in convenience outweighs the security risk.
The same convenience applies to water, electricity, traffic lights and other parts of the public infrastructure. If we can manage the risk through security protocols, then using the public internet for remote management makes for increased efficiency.
Increased efficiency is a good goal. If the only argument against it is the unlikely risk that "terrorists might switch off our electricity supply" -- a risk that so far has no basis in fact -- then we should go for it.
the startup time blows away all the other browsers on my system
What kind of startup times are we talking?
I'd never imagined browser startup times to be an issue. IE8 on my two-year-old laptop (running Windows7 x64) goes from "click to launch cold" through to "fully-rendered home page" quicker than I can time it, probably about half a second.
Slashdot Mirror
In 90 seconds, how many different uses can you think of for a tree-trunk?
There. I've now spoiled this test for you. It's an otherwise useful test that's routinely used in clinical diagnosis for alzheimers disease, but when it comes time for you to go to the doctor for a mental health diagnosis then you'll get inaccurate test results. Sorry about that. But you know, security through obscurity doesn't work...
Why a fork? Why 90 seconds? Why must the patient be unprepared? -- because researchers have spent many thousands of dollars and many thousands of double-blind patients to calibrate it. Any different object, any different time period, and your results wouldn't be calibrated, and they'd lose their diagnostic value.
Conclusion: security through obscurity is necessary for some of these tests, even if it doesn't work that well.
PS. Actually the object they calibrated for isn't really a tree-trunk, so you're okay this time.
That was interesting. Thanks for finding the numbers.
Does Star Wars include a farm-boy engaged in light-saber duels? From your interpretation, "no", because Luke wasn't an actual farm-boy.
Suppose I write a historical fiction in which Hitler wins the war and engages in a victory parade in Trafalgar Square. Does this book include a dictator engaging in a victory parading in Trafalgar Square? From your interpretation, "no", because it isn't an actual Hitler actually engaged in a victory parade.
When we say a piece of literature or art includes "X engaged in Y", it never means that the actual X is engaged in an actual Y. It only ever means that the depicted X is depicted as engaged in Y.
Your post says that VASIMR combines high-thrust with high-specific-impulse.
But the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VASIMR_Engine says instead that VASIMR operates in either high-thrust low-specific impulse mode, or in low-thrust high-specific-impulse mode.
Have I understood this correctly? Which is right?
We will get to pay a third slice, when amazon licenses its patent to other parties and they increase their costs correspondingly!
You haven't said how far away you live. I myself live 8 miles from work, which is 45 minutes by car during rush-hour or 45 minutes by bicycle. (Actually I choose to cycle the scenic route, 25 miles each way, 90 minutes).
So: if your job is within 25 miles of home, then cycle. (maybe cycle one way every other day).
I think most investigative journalism involves identifying people who wish to remain anonymous... "Which politician was the recipient of this bribe? (sorry, he wants to remain anonymous)"
What exactly do you consider to be an "inherent right"?
There's no formal definition. But those rights which we the collective citizens of the world consider to be inalienable, well, if they're not "inherent" then I don't know what is.
And of course you can't reconcile them. That's the nature of rights. If you want things that can be reconciled then you're in a candystore not the morality of the human race.
There are two balanced rights. You only listed one. Here they are, together (this phrasing taken from the two parts of Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights):
(1) "Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits."
(2) "Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author."
Sure, you can say that one particular implementation of part 2 (i.e. copyright) is not an inherent right. But part 2 itself is the fundamental inherent right which we have to figure out how to implement.
Consequence: in the "good times" when there isn't a bad security situation, then the US-based corporations wind up with costs that are a little higher than their competitors.
Therefore the competitors win and the US-based corporations go bust.
When the "bad times" come and there are severe network security problems, well, it's too late by then.
Will the market be willing to spend a little extra money to buy from a company that has spent more on security which will possibly be worth it in ten to fifteen years? The high-end business market might pay the premium. The low- and middle-end consumer market won't.
I don't think the free market in general has eyes beyond the next 2-5 years.
That only works if you think that the truth is somehow the "average" of two untrue sources. You might also believe that a country run by Mussolini (extreme right wing) and Stalin (extreme left wing) would be, pleasant peaceful and free.
I think that by averaging out two biased sources, all you end up with is the perception that everything is biased and the truth is unreachable. Would be better to find a less biased source in the first place.
God I hate advertising. I hate the American attitude that advertising is acceptable (indeed inevitable) in all areas of life. Billboards everywhere, sportscasters interrupting their coverage to promote products, ads read by the presenters on NPR, advertising of prescription medication...
These things don't happen anywhere else. It's only in America that you've been persuaded by the advertisers that their hold on your psyche and paycheck is normal.
The figures I have are from 2000, when the total amount spent on advertising worked out to about $5000 per inhabitant of the US per year.
What a stupid tax for us all to be paying! It doesn't go to anything we particularly want. It lines the pocketbooks of advertising agencies and irritates us when we're trying to browse the web or watch television or listen to the radio or see the countryside from our cars.
As a way of funding anything, it's hugely inefficient. I bet it's even more inefficient than taxes.
The article didn't make it clear, but this data-loss concerns only people who FAILED the vetting process.
Since Word 2007 it already had better equation typesetting than TeX... Word started kerning based on whitespace in the four corners of glyphs, rather than just the left/right sides of the glyphs.
(of course, in both systems, you can manually tweak the positioning of individual glyphs -- like the LaTeX logo. you just don't want to).
Word 2007 also looked better for mixing regular text with maths since it sets text and maths with the same unicode face. Latex requires you to opt into one of the packages (e.g. CM, or palatino, or whatever) so you're much more constrained in font choice.
That said, word's macros aren't anywhere near as powerful as latex's, so I haven't been able to use it as well for fields with lots of specialized notation.
Adobe already produce a home version of Photoshop. It's called "Photoshop Elements" and comes bundled free with many digital cameras and scanners. And still has more features than most home users seem able to use.
Sigh. "Blindingly obvious" is a silly comment on scientific studies.
Was it blindingly obvious that 9% (rather than 8% or 10%) of proteins would be differently expressed? Was it blindingly obvious that the best working model so far for adaption involves glycinin, beta conglycinin, dehydrins, and glycine betaine?
If these particular outcomes were blindingly obvious to you then you're a kook not a scientist.
If these details don't seem important to you then you're a woolly thinker not a scientist.
HFCS has completely different *physical* properties from sugar. HFCS is a humectant: it absorbs water from the air and makes cookies soft. Sugar is not: it makes cookies hard and brittle.
There can never be an "apples to apples" comparison between food ingredients that have such wildly different properties: they're used in different ways, for different things.
This in addition to your point about cost.
Anytime someone says "they are metabolized the same", well, I think it's misses the point so much as to be misleading.
Sure it's all in the license at the moment. The question is whether we as a society are happy that these are valid licenses.
We don't let doctors do surgery with the EULA-like conditions that "anything they do is at the users own risk and the doctor isn't held to any standards."
We don't let engineers build bridges with the EULA-like conditions that "the bridge is delivered as is and people drive over it at their own risk."
Why do we allow software to get away with such a cowboy attitude when we're more rigorous about other important infrastructure?
Or, why are we so up-tight about doctors and civil engineers when they should have the same laissez-faire setup as software engineers?
Furthermore, IMO, the fundamental search for knowledge is one of the noblest human endeavors in existence.
I think that's important. LHC and the like are the greatest achievements of our civilization. On a par with the pyramids of Ancient Egypt. Looking back, it was awesome that King Cheops of Egypt built his pyramid at Giza, but pretty much insignificant that King Userkare of Egypt raised import duties by 0.1%.
Fourth reason:
4) If you have a infection, the best most reliable way to get rid of it is to wipe your OS and reinstall from scratch. The trojan authors are kindly doing you a favor.
(similar to the idea of a trojan which improves security settings on every system it infects)
Like they say, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France
Well, yes, these are the gentler pirates of the 21st century. So far they've been incredibly adept at finding exactly the right level of operation so that they're seen as a minor economic nuisance that can be dealt with readily by insurance companies -- but without stepping the bounds that would make them be seen as a major threat to life that has to be dealt with.
That's why the world hasn't really dealt with them much.
Nothing will happen until they cause a real drastic financial impact. (and it's no big impact to lose $1m ransom on a ship that's worth more carrying cargo that's worth a lot more). Or until they cause a significant number of deaths. They've been avoiding both.
And the problem won't be solved until the fundamental economic and governance problems in Somalia are addressed.
I think the lesson is that if you're a media business who wants to double your revenue, then doing it through lobbying is a cheaper and easier way than doing it through innovating new technologies or products, or through satisfying your customers better.
Banking?
The same story applies. Your bank account details are so precious that they should never be exposed on the internet. And yet you do use online banking. The benefit in convenience outweighs the security risk.
The same convenience applies to water, electricity, traffic lights and other parts of the public infrastructure. If we can manage the risk through security protocols, then using the public internet for remote management makes for increased efficiency.
Increased efficiency is a good goal. If the only argument against it is the unlikely risk that "terrorists might switch off our electricity supply" -- a risk that so far has no basis in fact -- then we should go for it.
the startup time blows away all the other browsers on my system
What kind of startup times are we talking?
I'd never imagined browser startup times to be an issue. IE8 on my two-year-old laptop (running Windows7 x64) goes from "click to launch cold" through to "fully-rendered home page" quicker than I can time it, probably about half a second.