Being an European and, therefore, more accostumed to live with terrorism than Americans, I believe that the whole approach is inherently wrong. I find extremely similar to the typical prevent/correct engineering design decision.
There has never been a case of success when attempting to control terrorism by developing new methods to fight it. England has failed, Spain has failed, France has failed, Portugal has failed and so on... society is just has too many vulnerabilities for ANY protection plan to work flawlessly. Even if you control every airport, bridge and nuclear weapon, a terrorist will still easily access you water supply (you can control water quality easily on depots... try the same on the piping), use a needle to insert poison randomly into supermarket goods, get an Ebola infection and then walk around a crowded stadium...
The ONLY way to avoid terrorism is to prevent it. And the way you do that is you find the reason that moves the terrorists in the first place and find a way to remove internal popular support for that sort of action. The Spanish government gave extended autonomy to Euskadia, England negotiated peace.
If you want to END terrorism, stop messing with other nation's internal political activity.
America gave Noriega a country, Noriega behaves badly, America takes down Noriega.
America gave the taliban a country to face the USSR, the taliban behaves badly, America takes down the taliban.
America gave Hussein a country to face the USSR in Iran, Hussein behaves badly, America takes down Hussein.
America gave Pahlavi a country to get Iranian oil, Pahlavi behaves badly and Ayatollah get a country, what next?!
Get the pattern?
I never understood completely what all the fuss with DNF is about. They've been honest about the timing of their development cycle from day one. Hell, they even put it on the game title how long it would take: "Forever".
I find this topic funny altogether! Everyone always fusses about how the human species uses other "innocent" species for our own ends... such as survival.
The interesting part is that, from an evolutionary viewpoint, we are not using cows or any other species any more than "they" are using us. After all, by feeding on chicken, for instance, we have created huge infrastructures that have allowed chicken to be, perhaps, more numerous that humans, turning them (again, from an evolutionary viewpoint) more successfull than the human species.
Furthermore, we invest a great deal of resources to improve theses species, as oposed to what we do with our own (yes, shocking as it may be, medicine has spoiled natural selection for us).
So, if you come to think of it, could it be that our livestock is actually using US?
..., Mr Durão Barroso, dismissed the discussion on the issue. He's Portuguese. I am Portuguese. I'm apologize to you all, but we portuguese had to get rid of him somehow... The European Comission was just a lucky coincidence.
Re:What if they're already here and observing.
on
New and Improved SETI
·
· Score: 1
I mostly agree with what you claim, although I still keep one CPU running SETI@Home.
All of our human gonverment system, be it a democracy, monarchy or dictatorship, is based in an implicit social contract in which citizens pay taxes and abide to the law in return form some form of safety, be it in the form of an army, police corps, hospital or retirement plans. If a government shows itself unable to provide such safety, it soon falls. If all governments in the world could not garantee safety against a superior form of life, there would be a generalized colapse of gonvernmental authority and total chaos.
Then again... all aliens speak English and there will be that one man army super hero guy that will lead us all to safety. Right?!:)
This is definitely THE major "backdoor" into Windows market share. While in most developed coutries Linux must open it's way into an already large Windows user base which has economical resources to buy the licences, in developing countries it has the opportunity to get a fresh start PLUS a user base that will hardly be able to pay Windows licences!
As this applies not only to home users but also to governments in these conditions, this is a major victory. As these countries increasingly become the agricultural and industrial centers of our globalised economy, while the developed countries become information and knowledge producers, the need to interface may leed to:
1 - The adoption of open middleware standards
2 - The widespread use of Free Open Source software
Either way, Open Source gets something out of it!:)
...because I don't really see how you can ever do anything only on the CD side that will prevent copy.
The way I see it, as a last resort, if you unplug you CDROM drive from your soundboard and make a digital playback... well, it's bits going through your memory, you call always record them! Or, taken to the extreme, you can always get the analog output and re-record it: with any decent electronics knowledge and half-decente DAC/ADC, the sound quality isn't noticeably degraded.
I found this article quite insightfull. One of the paradigms of modern business is the outsourcing model, and that is due to a recurrent need to reduce overhead in any kind of business (overhead always looks like bad news for stock investors). And software aquisition and maintenance IS a major overhead in any IT oriented enterprise.
The obvious solution is to get the resources as they are needed. And that business frame fits perfectly on the OS business model. That, and not Open Source fundamentalism, is what may make or mars OS.
Therefore OS must continue to focus on enhanced flexibility and customization, not offered by other non-OS platforms, as a way to thrive. Then, let us consultants do the rest of the dirty work:)
I find that this technology actually makes a lot of sense in a business environment, specially if coupled with some sort of retina light beam scanning technology. I can envision a meeting where businessmen, while negotiating, could access relevant information about the person they were talking to on the fly, including important corporate information.
There are, however, two major showstoppers. One is the matter of privacy. I may not be interested that everyone I gaze at gets an instant picture of me without my authorization, specially because I'm not all that pretty;). Second, in societies and cultures where eye contact is just not important or is considered as intrusive an menacing, such as in Japan, the system would just not be functional
But still... great for nerds who can't really tell if a woman is giving them the eye... perhaps with a computer telling them so they'll be more confident;)
I am not an Open Software fundamentalist, as I use interchangeably Windowns and Linux in the course of my work. But I always get to see the direct result of my actions, even when they don't occur in the exact same manner I intended them too (sometimes, it's just because I did it wrong:) )
But as far as software-only e-voting, how the hell can I trust my vote, of which I have no feedback, will be registered right by a system whose source-code I have no access to? In this case, I believe that OS is clearly the way... and I agree with the article on the need for simple solutions. Such a complicated architecture is bound to have errors!
But, I live in Portugal, where e-voting is still just not an issue:) It just scares me that elections in such an important country, as far as the world equilibrium is concerned, might have it's leadership stolen
Last elections in Liberia were won by a candidate which boasted a full 1500% votes.:))) Hope I never hear anything similar from that side of the Atlantic
No to mention that, if Newton got his apples right, you'd have an incredible thrust is the oposite direction. Now, the A10, which boasts a considerable firing rate off it's cannon already slows down a bit when firing... I can envision some aircraft going backwards with this one!;)
Although I am a pacifist, I do believe that currently it is still a necessity to develop weapon technology, for if the Americans and Europeans don't, some other country, perhaps with less respect for human life or International Law (although the USA haven't been that respectfull with the last one), will! So it's a martial arts kind of philosophy: get the knowledge in hope you'll never need to use it.
What must be stressed, though, is that military supremacy should not be an excuse for poor or non-existing foreign policy. The best way to get and maintain peace is not through the use of weapons, as we've been repeatedly taught by History, but by respecting people, their culture and balancing economical divides. And this is true not only as far as international war is concerned but also in the little national wars that are waged in every country in the form of crime.
As a final remark: didn't "Kursk", the Russian sub, sink due to a failed test of that same torpedo technology? And now they're selling it? Great move... develop a dangerous-to-use torpedo AND get the other guys to use it!:)
I'm a die hard Red Hot Chilli Peppers fan and, befora I had a CD recorder, I ruined 2 original copies of one of their albuns.
Recently, I ruined the third. This time, I had the recorder but was too damn lazy or stupid to have made a backup.
I dare any law enforcement agency to arrest me for getting their MP3 out of the Internet when I have 3 useless original CD casings!!! If that's not fair use, call me unfair!!!
I am Portuguese and am currently working with a Spanish colleague who was falbbergasted when he read about the "extremely poor region of Extremadura". Hey, it looks like we're talking about sub-saarian Africa of something!
As a matter of fact, Spain is one of the best developed economies in the European Union. There may be some regions where e-development may not have reached somewhat high standards, but hold on!:)
You are right! If Shannon were still alive, he'd be kicking my ass:)
Thank you for the time you took to enlighten me. Good to have a constructive exchange os posts, for a change.:)
Personaly, I'm an atheist, as in "don't believe in the existence of God". That does not mean I do not have a religion. And, paradoxally, my religion is science.
How do you define faith? Personally, I define it as "a strong belief in something you do not have evidence or have contradictory evidence of". Science fails me everyday... I've had friends dying of cancer and, although they did die, I believe that some day science will cure cancer, althoug science has been failing for ages in doing so. So, I believe in science.
MAN needs to believe in something in order to organize is model of the world in an orderly fashion. It's impossible not to believe in anything, and those who say they don't are just fooling themselves. It's only the beliefs that change...
No matter how much we evolve and get to know, there will always be unexplainables, and there will always be a place for God in Mankind...
I believe you do... BUT, if you have a number of pseudo-random noise codes stored and try them out sequentially whenever a "channel" is occupied, you could create alternate links, rendering the jamming of the entire spred-frequency quite difficult (as you know, it's one of the advantages of CDMA), and allowing for a switch-like operation instead of a hub-like operation. When establishing a virtual "link", both end could switch to a pre-determined code, changing ever-so-often if needed in a sequence.
There are probably some flaws in my reasoning, for I am a member of IEEE and know that the standards guys are amongs the brightest, but I'd like you to point them out for me: I'm always learning!
...will be to change the modulation scheme to CDMA. It is clearly the future as far as security and spectrum utilisation is concerned and as an always increasing number of equipements begin to use it (such as UMTS mobiles worldwide), the hardware should become cheap enough to make the transition pay off. Until then... keep a cable backup for criticals!;)
Slashdot Mirror
Being an European and, therefore, more accostumed to live with terrorism than Americans, I believe that the whole approach is inherently wrong. I find extremely similar to the typical prevent/correct engineering design decision. There has never been a case of success when attempting to control terrorism by developing new methods to fight it. England has failed, Spain has failed, France has failed, Portugal has failed and so on... society is just has too many vulnerabilities for ANY protection plan to work flawlessly. Even if you control every airport, bridge and nuclear weapon, a terrorist will still easily access you water supply (you can control water quality easily on depots... try the same on the piping), use a needle to insert poison randomly into supermarket goods, get an Ebola infection and then walk around a crowded stadium... The ONLY way to avoid terrorism is to prevent it. And the way you do that is you find the reason that moves the terrorists in the first place and find a way to remove internal popular support for that sort of action. The Spanish government gave extended autonomy to Euskadia, England negotiated peace. If you want to END terrorism, stop messing with other nation's internal political activity. America gave Noriega a country, Noriega behaves badly, America takes down Noriega. America gave the taliban a country to face the USSR, the taliban behaves badly, America takes down the taliban. America gave Hussein a country to face the USSR in Iran, Hussein behaves badly, America takes down Hussein. America gave Pahlavi a country to get Iranian oil, Pahlavi behaves badly and Ayatollah get a country, what next?! Get the pattern?
I never understood completely what all the fuss with DNF is about. They've been honest about the timing of their development cycle from day one. Hell, they even put it on the game title how long it would take: "Forever".
If you buy a game and later find out you don't really enjoy it, you don't have to buy all of it and the money loss won't be as bad.
In the end, this could be a very encouraging move that allows for a reduction of the risk/cost of trying out new games.
I find this topic funny altogether! Everyone always fusses about how the human species uses other "innocent" species for our own ends... such as survival. The interesting part is that, from an evolutionary viewpoint, we are not using cows or any other species any more than "they" are using us. After all, by feeding on chicken, for instance, we have created huge infrastructures that have allowed chicken to be, perhaps, more numerous that humans, turning them (again, from an evolutionary viewpoint) more successfull than the human species. Furthermore, we invest a great deal of resources to improve theses species, as oposed to what we do with our own (yes, shocking as it may be, medicine has spoiled natural selection for us). So, if you come to think of it, could it be that our livestock is actually using US?
..., Mr Durão Barroso, dismissed the discussion on the issue. He's Portuguese. I am Portuguese. I'm apologize to you all, but we portuguese had to get rid of him somehow... The European Comission was just a lucky coincidence.
I mostly agree with what you claim, although I still keep one CPU running SETI@Home.
All of our human gonverment system, be it a democracy, monarchy or dictatorship, is based in an implicit social contract in which citizens pay taxes and abide to the law in return form some form of safety, be it in the form of an army, police corps, hospital or retirement plans. If a government shows itself unable to provide such safety, it soon falls. If all governments in the world could not garantee safety against a superior form of life, there would be a generalized colapse of gonvernmental authority and total chaos.
Then again... all aliens speak English and there will be that one man army super hero guy that will lead us all to safety. Right?! :)
This is definitely THE major "backdoor" into Windows market share. While in most developed coutries Linux must open it's way into an already large Windows user base which has economical resources to buy the licences, in developing countries it has the opportunity to get a fresh start PLUS a user base that will hardly be able to pay Windows licences!
As this applies not only to home users but also to governments in these conditions, this is a major victory. As these countries increasingly become the agricultural and industrial centers of our globalised economy, while the developed countries become information and knowledge producers, the need to interface may leed to:
1 - The adoption of open middleware standards
2 - The widespread use of Free Open Source software
Either way, Open Source gets something out of it! :)
...because I don't really see how you can ever do anything only on the CD side that will prevent copy.
The way I see it, as a last resort, if you unplug you CDROM drive from your soundboard and make a digital playback... well, it's bits going through your memory, you call always record them! Or, taken to the extreme, you can always get the analog output and re-record it: with any decent electronics knowledge and half-decente DAC/ADC, the sound quality isn't noticeably degraded.
If these bacteria happen to attack micro-brains, our government is doomed!!!
This product may cause your siblings a severe case of tonguinitis
What, no pictures of "dark matter"?! That I'd call an announcement!!
... the other way around. Use CPU generated heat to power a cooking plate!
I found this article quite insightfull. One of the paradigms of modern business is the outsourcing model, and that is due to a recurrent need to reduce overhead in any kind of business (overhead always looks like bad news for stock investors). And software aquisition and maintenance IS a major overhead in any IT oriented enterprise.
The obvious solution is to get the resources as they are needed. And that business frame fits perfectly on the OS business model. That, and not Open Source fundamentalism, is what may make or mars OS.
Therefore OS must continue to focus on enhanced flexibility and customization, not offered by other non-OS platforms, as a way to thrive. Then, let us consultants do the rest of the dirty work :)
I find that this technology actually makes a lot of sense in a business environment, specially if coupled with some sort of retina light beam scanning technology. I can envision a meeting where businessmen, while negotiating, could access relevant information about the person they were talking to on the fly, including important corporate information.
There are, however, two major showstoppers. One is the matter of privacy. I may not be interested that everyone I gaze at gets an instant picture of me without my authorization, specially because I'm not all that pretty ;). Second, in societies and cultures where eye contact is just not important or is considered as intrusive an menacing, such as in Japan, the system would just not be functional
But still... great for nerds who can't really tell if a woman is giving them the eye... perhaps with a computer telling them so they'll be more confident ;)
I am not an Open Software fundamentalist, as I use interchangeably Windowns and Linux in the course of my work. But I always get to see the direct result of my actions, even when they don't occur in the exact same manner I intended them too (sometimes, it's just because I did it wrong :) )
But as far as software-only e-voting, how the hell can I trust my vote, of which I have no feedback, will be registered right by a system whose source-code I have no access to? In this case, I believe that OS is clearly the way... and I agree with the article on the need for simple solutions. Such a complicated architecture is bound to have errors!
But, I live in Portugal, where e-voting is still just not an issue :) It just scares me that elections in such an important country, as far as the world equilibrium is concerned, might have it's leadership stolen
Last elections in Liberia were won by a candidate which boasted a full 1500% votes. :))) Hope I never hear anything similar from that side of the Atlantic
No to mention that, if Newton got his apples right, you'd have an incredible thrust is the oposite direction. Now, the A10, which boasts a considerable firing rate off it's cannon already slows down a bit when firing... I can envision some aircraft going backwards with this one! ;)
Although I am a pacifist, I do believe that currently it is still a necessity to develop weapon technology, for if the Americans and Europeans don't, some other country, perhaps with less respect for human life or International Law (although the USA haven't been that respectfull with the last one), will! So it's a martial arts kind of philosophy: get the knowledge in hope you'll never need to use it.
What must be stressed, though, is that military supremacy should not be an excuse for poor or non-existing foreign policy. The best way to get and maintain peace is not through the use of weapons, as we've been repeatedly taught by History, but by respecting people, their culture and balancing economical divides. And this is true not only as far as international war is concerned but also in the little national wars that are waged in every country in the form of crime.
As a final remark: didn't "Kursk", the Russian sub, sink due to a failed test of that same torpedo technology? And now they're selling it? Great move... develop a dangerous-to-use torpedo AND get the other guys to use it! :)
I'm a die hard Red Hot Chilli Peppers fan and, befora I had a CD recorder, I ruined 2 original copies of one of their albuns.
Recently, I ruined the third. This time, I had the recorder but was too damn lazy or stupid to have made a backup.
I dare any law enforcement agency to arrest me for getting their MP3 out of the Internet when I have 3 useless original CD casings!!! If that's not fair use, call me unfair!!!
My view of the future just got darker...
I am Portuguese and am currently working with a Spanish colleague who was falbbergasted when he read about the "extremely poor region of Extremadura". Hey, it looks like we're talking about sub-saarian Africa of something!
As a matter of fact, Spain is one of the best developed economies in the European Union. There may be some regions where e-development may not have reached somewhat high standards, but hold on! :)
... that WinNT would become such a popular war gaming plattform?
You are right! If Shannon were still alive, he'd be kicking my ass :)
Thank you for the time you took to enlighten me. Good to have a constructive exchange os posts, for a change. :)
Personaly, I'm an atheist, as in "don't believe in the existence of God". That does not mean I do not have a religion. And, paradoxally, my religion is science.
How do you define faith? Personally, I define it as "a strong belief in something you do not have evidence or have contradictory evidence of". Science fails me everyday... I've had friends dying of cancer and, although they did die, I believe that some day science will cure cancer, althoug science has been failing for ages in doing so. So, I believe in science.
MAN needs to believe in something in order to organize is model of the world in an orderly fashion. It's impossible not to believe in anything, and those who say they don't are just fooling themselves. It's only the beliefs that change...
No matter how much we evolve and get to know, there will always be unexplainables, and there will always be a place for God in Mankind...
I believe you do... BUT, if you have a number of pseudo-random noise codes stored and try them out sequentially whenever a "channel" is occupied, you could create alternate links, rendering the jamming of the entire spred-frequency quite difficult (as you know, it's one of the advantages of CDMA), and allowing for a switch-like operation instead of a hub-like operation. When establishing a virtual "link", both end could switch to a pre-determined code, changing ever-so-often if needed in a sequence.
There are probably some flaws in my reasoning, for I am a member of IEEE and know that the standards guys are amongs the brightest, but I'd like you to point them out for me: I'm always learning!
...will be to change the modulation scheme to CDMA. It is clearly the future as far as security and spectrum utilisation is concerned and as an always increasing number of equipements begin to use it (such as UMTS mobiles worldwide), the hardware should become cheap enough to make the transition pay off. Until then... keep a cable backup for criticals! ;)