However, the main problem is that the code is not secure, not that I was messing around during a free period and found a way to bypass the "security."
Found a way? Now, if you had spent your free period roaming around parking lot checking teachers' cars for unlocked doors, and then one of them turned out to be unlocked, would you then hasve simply been "messing around and found your way" into that car? Would someone who is just "messing around" and finds that only a simple hammer or two-by-four is needed to get around your household "security" by just breaking a simple piece of glass?
I do not see hobbyist computer hacking as a REAL threat, because if they can hack into a system, that system is definitely NOT secure from true hackers with illegal, immoral fraud schemes, etc in mind.
How about someone who is just a hobbyist B&E guy, who doesn't want to steal anything... he just wants to spend a couple of minutes looking through your underwear drawer. And so, since it only takes an amateur to break into pretty much any house, no harm done, right? He won't steal anything... just looking around!
Remember, set up your own comp to hack into, you will gain the knowledge from seeing how these things work, and not get in trouble.
So, just learn how they work! There's endless material out there explaining it to you. If you want to set up a private network to do that, fine... but remember that practicing break-ins, when seen by other people, is still just practicing your break-in skills.
While you made very good points on why Internet and Retail businesses are different, I didnt see anything that referred to why they shouldnt be treated the same when it comes to paying for their accessibility to customers.
Not that it matters, but they do. Online businesses pay a lot to handle traffic, maintain what it is that the customers see, pay commissions to the affiliates that drive them traffic, and lots more in other forms of marketing (without which no one would even know they exist, let alone find them credible enough to give them a credit card number).
But I think the real problem here is the notion that it's just not fair unless all businesses are equally weighed down by the same overhead. Not fair would be penalizing those people who, through the adoption of newer ideas, technologies, and cultural trends, have found a way to do business with less overhead.
50 years ago, a busy brick-and-mortar retailer would have needed many more cashiers, back-office cash accounting and inventory people, file clerks, etc. Along comes another retailer that's using bar-code scanners, computerized inventory management, direct-deposit card transactions... and you've suddenly got a retailer with greatly reduced overhead that can afford to lower its prices and thus put pressure on the "older" business that hasn't adopted the same technologies.
But they're both still paying rent for their stores, right? But the newer business only has to employ 3 office workers as opposed to the older businesses 10. They can serve the same or more customers without needing as many square feet of office space, as many parking spaces, the same amount of health care insurance, etc. Just by using technology, the newer business can get away with leasing less real estate. That's very similar to the observation that the dot-com version of Ma and Pa's store is competing without having to use as much expensive retail floor space.
Why should a business have to pay anything like what and older business is paying to make themselves available to their customers, when their customers are already paying for an internet pipe? Further, the dot-com is going to be writing some gigantic checks to UPS or FedEx to fulfill those transactions. Rarely does the consumer directly appear to pay the actual cost of the shipping of their merchandise... it's offset in the markup on the item. Just like Ma and Pa do with their overhead.
But the whole point of a competitive economy is to reward those that come up with more efficient and enjoyable ways of doing things. And you don't need a government agency or organized body to make the rewards - the consumers reward them just by appreciating their business model and spending money with them. Some sense that dot-coms need to have the playing field leveled so that they don't succeed as easily (or with their lower overhead) is just punishing innovation and efficiency. To do that by (per the article) letting some ISP slow down the connections to businesses that don't pay to boost it will just move the problem... small online businesses can't carry the overhead of large ones, in a scenario like that. That whole proposal is just nonsense on the part of the telcos, anyway... the cable providers and other carriers will dance circles around them, in terms of acquiring users.
This seams to me that it is the internet's version of "buying real estate". Ma-and-Pa stores already have to do it, why not internet companies?
Because it's not the same type of business. If Ma and Pa want to enjoy more sales to people all over the country/world, then they can also register a domain name at GoDaddy for a few dollars, find some $10/month hosting, and have their grandkid create a web site.
Oops! Apparently running a real business on line includes paying professional content people, paying for real hosting, marketing, shipping, warehousing, fraud management, numerous returns, correspondence and phone calls 24x7, language barriers, and enormous competition. You make it sound like the person with the walk-up store is the only one that has competition or overhead.
Further, if Ma and Pa actually do rent out a store on the side of a busy road, they've got something that no Amazon or eBay or any large e-tailer can provided: instant convenience and fulfillment of physical wares.
Did you have the same concerns when mail order catalogs really started to hit it big 15, 20 years ago? It's no different, except that a small retailer doesn't have to commit to a huge printing/postage expense to get a web site out in front of millions of people. Ma and Pa should get online, or Ma and Pa should fine-tune their business around the things that make walking physically into a store preferable over looking at digital pictures, paying for freight, waiting for delivery, and possibly being disappointed with the purchase. Oh: and you don't really think that online stores don't have to pay taxes, do you? The larger retailers have business presences in multiple states, and collect/remit sales tax in every one of them.
If Ma and Pa are worried that someone in their own state might turn to an out-of-state online store to buy something, tax-free, and have it shipped into Ma and Pa's home turf, then they have to remember that they could be putting up their own dot-com, and shipping to that same in-state person for next day delivery by simple ground service. Localized marketing of a web stores is easier than it's ever been (thanks, Google), so there's really no excuse. If a direct competitor of Ma and Pa's moved in right across the street, they'd have to spend money, change what they're doing, and innovate in order to compete and stay afloat. This is no different.
Of course, none of this is what the referenced article is actually about (favored connection speed for favored deal makers), but I couldn't let your comment go without making some points.
While I can see engineering taking awhile to develop something useful to humans, keep in mind that every year delayed "proving it" to arrogant government officials kills millions a year. Now explain to me why exactly they are a friend to humanity again?
You don't catch the non-nerd news much, do you? Even drugs that are tested a lot, but which have some mixed results, end up being not perfect for at least a few people, someone (who is already very sick in some other way) ends up dying while using the product, and then the maker of the product gets sued for millions of dollars. Take for example the recent crop of very effective arthritis/pain meds that have been taken off the market because (possibly) some people may have cardio/pulminary problems using them. So, millions of people who would benefit tremendously from the drugs don't get to use them because people with sensitive hearts or blood pressure problems are taking it without checking in with their doctors, and die (making their families into millionaires on the way out).
One good cure for something like this, that's delayed a few years, delayed because of FDA-type bureaucracy will slaugter more people than all those the FDA "protects"
Please make the distinction between "killing" and "not saving some of a large group of people, all of whom are certainly going to die otherwise." Not being sure that you can save people, and avoiding having a drug sued out of marketability is not the same as "killing" people. You want to blame somebody? Blame trial lawyers. Or encourage legislation that would allow people to sign a waiver when they use a new drug/device/therapy. That waiver would let them use it early and absolve the maker from getting sued into oblivion when it isn't miraculous for everyone, all the time.
even allowing for the wildest, slobbering socialist evils-of-corporations fantasies put together over the last 5 decades
On that, you're (sort of) right... plenty of things kill people all the time, and it's mostly things people do to themselves. Eeeevil influences in the form of socialist-wacko-nightmare Boogeymen are a pale shadow compared to all of the fun forms of self-destructive behavior that people engage in every day.
To hell with trying to change that law, as well. Let's just ignore it and hope no one notices.
I think you're missing the point. That law is just fine. As soon as we're actually in the mode of needing to listen in on somebody (or a group), then we do get the warrant, if they happen to be state-side. That's what FISA is all about. But how do you figure out who to get the warrant for? You have to sift through the calling patterns in and out of certain foreign locations so that you can see something of consequence to point the tracking (and the warrant) at. The law's fine, and so is the mechanism by which we arrive at enough information to fill in the paperwork. Would you rather the FBI produce a warrant that says "we got to watch some people we don't know, using phone numbers we don't have figured out yet"? If they started doing that, all we'd hear about is overly broad, meaningless warrants.
FISA's fine, but it didn't anticipate VoIP, trunkloads of disposable cell phones, and one-time communications that by their nature completely preclude what FISA is even for. A lot has changed in the last few years, in terms of the techniques and technology being used by the bad guys. We're not talking about some Russian diplomat, here, and the four phones we know he uses. We're talking about whole networks of people, using shifting communications methods, being called from internet cafes in Pakistan and Indonesia. How would you write a warrant to handle that? Don't forget, you have no names, and no repeat use of phone number in the US.
If we are so hardwired for calculus why is it that so many ancient Greek mathematicians actually used geometry to solve their hardest problems
Please make the distinction, here, between having a formal way to model and discuss the study of change in acceleration as opposed to the notable natural ability that most higher organisms have to grapple with such evaluations in a more direct way every day. Just because a person doesn't have the formal skills, a la Newton, to work through that stuff on paper doesn't mean that they can't understand and extrapolate upon acceleration changes they are able to sense. I'm sure you get my real point: I'm responding to what I think is a silly article posting that refers to "hard-wired" geometry skills. No one is born with formal geometry chops, either (in the Greek scholar sense).
Your brain doesn't calculate the precise trajectory of the frisbee; it simply assesses its position, velocity, and environmental factor and produces an appropriate response
I guess I have to disagree, to a certain extent. To get your, say, 150-pound body where it needs to be to catch a frisbee that's going to be there some seconds later, you've got to do a lot more than respond to a condition. You have to evaluate the de/acceleration, what gravity's doing, and take those changing velocities/vectors into account while setting up another motion (yours).
Precisely directing your body to a spot where a decelerating, arcing object is going to be means extrapolating on changes in the rate of velocity change. Seat-of-the-pants calculus.
Watch a little kid running down a hump-shaped hill and managing to catch a slowing, banking frisbee that's drifting in an accelerating gust of wind and you'll know what I mean. Hell, my dogs can do calculus, even when the birds they're after are using anti-calculus to try to defeat them.
Mind you, I am not supporting what the administration is doing at all. But I bet that's the story Alberto Gonzales will be telling the Senate Judiciary Committee
But you've exactly, precisely hit on what the situation really is. You're dealing with people who buy 50 disposable cell phones at a time, and use them in a manner that makes the whole warrant generally irrelevent. I'm entirely for the use of a warrant once you actually have a target to track, but the whole point of watching the communications to/from a known overseas bad guy is to figure out who to watch (and get a warrant regarding) on our end. If we only ever see ONE phone call to one cell phone (later discarded), the warrant process doesn't even become an issue. There is no 72 hours to think about because that's the last time we'll ever see that call being made. But the pattern - the use of one of a batch of 50 phones - might shed some light on who we really should be getting a warrant to follow up on.
As the slashdot crowd is pretty much clueless about astronomy I expect lots of Funny rated comments to hide our ignorance on the subject, right guys?
You'd like to think so, wouldn't you? But as everyone knows, this is a matter for astrologers, which you clearly are not. Otherwise you'd know that making jokes about jokers joking to obscure their ignorance is itself merely a joke of an argument, so we cannot, even jokingly, take the argument in front of you.
There's no true recursive decision making or calling upon the past except of what is explicitely defined by the programmer
No. Replace "programmer" with "programming" and you're closer. And that's a reminder that self-programming is something which we're genetically good at. It's also something we're getting better at building inorganic, programmable systems to do themselves. Baby steps, but the concept is there, and important.
In humans, we are not stopped by that limit.
We can't do what we can't do. We have to train ourselves to process information in a new way, or we can't process it (except in a familiar way). We can though, build inorganic systems that process information in new ways by design. Sure, the aggregate complexity of a human brain is stunning, and its interconnectivity gives rise to some astounding adapative behavior (and self programming), but that's all we're talking about: scale and complexity... not a magic leap beyond the basic, underlying organic chemistry that makes us and cockroaches tick.
We have the ability to make sense of our environment
After we've been trained to, yes. That takes a long time, and we have a nice high-speed processor highly adapted to that purpose and well integrated with its sensors. But surely you don't suggest that babies or newborn puppies (both already armed with incredibly complex neural engines) "make sense of our environment" ? Not in the way that you do, after years of training.
filter the information, and decide dynamically based on past experience and current condition.
Wal-Mart has inventory management systems that do this just fine.
That's OK - I'd rather inform the ignorant than earn karma. Of course, being modded up makes things a little more visible, as does your response. Thanks for that, and for being another in the Brotherhood of Guys Who Think Things Through.
Um, of course I may be incorrectly gender-pigeonholing "Greatmoose." And I certainly wouldn't want to be an insensitive clod. Now that assault weapons are legal again, anything could happen!
Except, IIRC, they used the phones as timers, using the vibrate function of the phone to set off the bomb after a preset alarm went off. This doesn't require any cellular service
I believe you are correct, though the same guys (some of whom they caught, some of whom blew themselves up in an apartment as they were trying to catch them) were also rigged with some that were call-based (with the vibrate-based ring action prepared to set it off). Certainly the best way to deal with that threat is to suppress/jam the service when there's reason to suspect a localized threat... but that's just not workable day-to-day in real life, which is where unexpected attacks are going to happen. Apparently one of the problems the bad guys have in Europe (and no doubt in the US) is finding people willing to kill themselves (human timers). Once you've got operatives living in the US, for example, a lot of them start feel a little more cozy, and would prefer the Madrid-style attack, which lets them walk away to attack another day.
Doesn't matter - anything they try next in the states is going to be a lot more substantial (or simply more numerous and simultaneous) because with all of the hold-ups they've had since 9/11, the PR value of an IED-type bombing just isn't going to cut it. No, it will be a gas terminal, or something crudely bio/radio or something else designed to be scarier than simple localized bomb damage. The folks in London did a great job of showing these jackasses how not-a-showstopper that sort of attack is. Gotta love that stiff upper British lip.
Hmm. Somehow I'm just not finding this +Insightful.
but judging by the shortsidedness of the current global warming fun (it was almost 70 in St. Louis yesterday) it isn't surprising
I'm not sure which "side" you're finding short. I suppose you mean shortsightedness, as in "not seeing clearly into the future." Ignoring that, let's take your comment into consideration and use another city's weather to see if you're making a good case. Hmmm... judging by the fact that it's a balmy -20F in Moscow, I'd say that we weren't planning ahead well enough for the coming ice age. What, one day's weather doesn't indicate a pattern? Oh.
And what were you thinking... that the people burning coal 100 years ago had a good solid grip on a mechanism that, even today, brilliant people armed with super computers are having trouble getting to the bottom of? Or did you mean people 20 years ago? Or last week?
Seeing as how the last space shuttle disaster was caused by something hitting it
It hit itself! Come on now. Do you even watch the non-nerd news? Even they reported that correctly.
I'll see your God, not another one! and raise you one!
Outside of the ban were all sorts of guns just as devastating, just as able to be used by a crazy in the pursuit of mayhem, and only off the list because of absurd cosmetic differences. The people who go out to procure an auto-loading gun expressly to then go and shoot people with it are already beyond the reach of our ethics or regulations. If they did want to make a purchase within the ban's rules, all they had to do was purchase any of a number of similar weapons that didn't happen to have a bayonet mount, or a flash suppressor, or other features that have absolutely no bearing on the crime-worthiness or lethality of the weapon. A bolt-action gun would have suited the DC-area "snipers" just as well as any other gun, and I haven't heard about rashes of drive-by bayonettings. The height of this sort of absurdity was neatly on display during the last presidential campaign, when Kerry was vocally on board with a particular gun control measure, and then did a photo-op/campaign stop with some good old boys in the midwest, and spent some time in front of news cameras shooting at clay pigeons with an auto-loading shotgun that the legislation he was backing would have made illegal. Of course, he didn't want to ruin the photo op, and not only didn't make note of that little detail, but also spent the time shooting without eye or ear protection. Save us from such idiocy.
As for worrying about gun-saturation in the society, please note that it's the society, not the guns. Murder is actually down from recent years past, but it's definitely up from decades ago (when you could mail-order guns from Sears). But the real thing to watch is the recently changed demographics. Florida: the addition of right-to-carry laws has reduced killings. Australia: the essentially complete ban on personally owned guns (right through to confiscation) has been met with a huge leap in assaults and murders. Basically, worrying about your personal freedom (as it relates to threats to your life and limbs by criminals) has way, way less to do with whether someone can buy a repearing rifle and more to do with whether local law enforcement is doing catch-and-release with violent criminals. Study after study of actual violent felons shows that they actually say that the one thing that deters them from accosting someone or breaking into a house is not knowing whether or not their potential victim may be armed. In areas where they know that's not possible, they act without concern (i.e., Australia, and now Scotland, etc.).
saying that the assault weapons ban was ineffective is really just flamebait
But it's not, because the ban was ineffective. The National Institute of Justice (a non-partisan piece of the DoJ) provided grants for the independent academic study of exactly this question. They concluded that "We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence" [during the ban's existence]. "It is thus premature to make definitive assessments of the ban's impact on gun violence. Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement" and so on.
A more realistic question would be why groups like the Brady Campaign aren't screaming from the mountains about arresting and prosecuting those that illegally attempt to purchase guns (a felony!) when, during the required background check, they are shown to be disallowed for criminal history reasons. Thousands of felons are turned away from weapons purchases, and just walk away. These are the ones that are so dumb that they're willing to try a "legit" puchase over the counter, and we know who they are (they present ID!), and yet they just walk away... no doubt to go ahead and make an illegal purchase anyway. Those
This might enable the next terrorist attack though.
Well, it sure worked (at the technical level) in Madrid. Thankfully they didn't plan/execute it very well, though, as apparently their initial plan was to have all of the onboard backpack bombs go off at once, aboard trains that were all in the station (this didn't work too well, since some went off outside) - with the intention of bringing the entire terminal down on all of the commuters inside. That would have been hundreds more or thousands dead. And they did use a collection of anonymously purchased disposable cell phones to do the job. Which makes this sort of thing pretty unsettling.
I'm sure your signature is less humorous if you explain it, but I still don't understand it.
One of the greatest joys in my life is watching our bird dogs (German Shorthaired Pointers) hunt. They are a spectacular piece of genetic engineering. Their job is to work through a field (say, a couple hundred acres of crops or hedgerow) and to catch the scent of the type of game they've been wired to find... usually, pheasant, quail, grouse, partridge, that sort of thing. The moment their noses recognize a single molecule of that scent, they freeze up in the classic pointing position, using their noses and direction of gaze to tell the human members of the team where to find the birds. If the dogs have some training and maturity, they will stay there, like rocks, waiting for someone to walk into the pointed area and flush the birds up into the air. Hopefully, someone talented with a shotgun is ready to identify the type of bird, and make that all-important clean shot that knocks the bird down. The pointer then dashes into whatever nasty bit of cover the dead bird landed in, and retrieves it to the hunter's hand, gently as you please.
There is nothing more embarassing than watching these animals work as hard as they do to track down that one rooster pheasant in a big corn field, only to have it take to wing right in front of you, and then miss the shot. I don't tend to anthropomorphize the dogs (much!), but there's no question that, on missing a bird like that, they'll look at you with the most withering, reproachful stare you've ever seen. So, knowing you're headed out to hunt over some talented bird dogs, it's a good idea to get in some practice on the trap range (shooting at clay pigeons - basically little orange ceramic frisbees) so that you're less likely to screw up in the field.
It's likewise important to regularly train in the kitchen. There's nothing worse than spending all day out with the dogs, coming home with a game bag full of delicious quail, and then ruining them in a bad sauce or turning them into shoe-leather by over cooking them. In case you're wondering, I'm all for hunting, but I eat what I shoot, always. And a good bird dog is all about connecting the hunter with some of the tastiest birds you'll ever put on a table for your dinner guests. It's a shame to blow all of that because you've spent all of your time posting on slashdot and no longer have the upper body mobility to swing that shotgun with speed and grace. Hey... that sounds like me. Time to go to the range!
If you think the risk associated with the launch of a plutonium-powered spacecraft is justified by the ends, fine. If you think that there is no risk, I counsel deeper reflection.
I've not said nor implied that there's no risk. I'm speaking, rather, about the shrill (and frequently very flaky) atmosphere generated by those protesting this sort of thing. They rarely comment on the many precautions NASA takes in the way they package the material they're fretting about, and instead trot out imaginary (idiot-TV-reporter-ready) scenarios that make it sound like every microgram of the Plutonium would be evenly spread out over a large area in most dangerous, inhaleable form possible. As the actual re-entry of such devices has shown, they're extremely well designed, and those scenarios are the worst possible way to gain the protesters any credibility among people that actually know anything about the matter. My somewhat flippant attitude towards these clowns is not a denigration of all of those that weigh the risks - it's annoyance at the loony fringe that injure all reasoned discourse about such issues by injecting Gaia-worship into it, or torturing the laws of physics and the engineering of the situation all out of meaningful reality. That, and the fact that their real agenda is often Greenpeace-y in the sense that they don't want to see fission power embraced, and being completely disengenuous, they're willing to equate all things "nuclear" in order to further their empty-headed position. I'm surprised they don't protest dental x-rays.
You'll notice I've not commented at all on their right to do anything, including sacrifice chickens before every launch if that makes them feel better, or if it makes their position more high-profile. But the very nature of the device(s) being launched pretty well preclude anything like a nice, even, vaporous spread of all of that plutonium across a wide area. It's the worst sort of fear mongering, and it's no surprise that the people looking to get the TV time by ranting about it usually have some other axes to grind, and manage to slip that in once there's a camera handy. Fine - they're welcome to, but let's call it what it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?
Yes.
However, the main problem is that the code is not secure, not that I was messing around during a free period and found a way to bypass the "security."
Found a way? Now, if you had spent your free period roaming around parking lot checking teachers' cars for unlocked doors, and then one of them turned out to be unlocked, would you then hasve simply been "messing around and found your way" into that car? Would someone who is just "messing around" and finds that only a simple hammer or two-by-four is needed to get around your household "security" by just breaking a simple piece of glass?
I do not see hobbyist computer hacking as a REAL threat, because if they can hack into a system, that system is definitely NOT secure from true hackers with illegal, immoral fraud schemes, etc in mind.
How about someone who is just a hobbyist B&E guy, who doesn't want to steal anything... he just wants to spend a couple of minutes looking through your underwear drawer. And so, since it only takes an amateur to break into pretty much any house, no harm done, right? He won't steal anything... just looking around!
Remember, set up your own comp to hack into, you will gain the knowledge from seeing how these things work, and not get in trouble.
So, just learn how they work! There's endless material out there explaining it to you. If you want to set up a private network to do that, fine... but remember that practicing break-ins, when seen by other people, is still just practicing your break-in skills.
However, the specifics are not in the article, so don't jump to conclusions.
You are aware you're posting on slashdot, right?
While you made very good points on why Internet and Retail businesses are different, I didnt see anything that referred to why they shouldnt be treated the same when it comes to paying for their accessibility to customers.
Not that it matters, but they do. Online businesses pay a lot to handle traffic, maintain what it is that the customers see, pay commissions to the affiliates that drive them traffic, and lots more in other forms of marketing (without which no one would even know they exist, let alone find them credible enough to give them a credit card number).
But I think the real problem here is the notion that it's just not fair unless all businesses are equally weighed down by the same overhead. Not fair would be penalizing those people who, through the adoption of newer ideas, technologies, and cultural trends, have found a way to do business with less overhead.
50 years ago, a busy brick-and-mortar retailer would have needed many more cashiers, back-office cash accounting and inventory people, file clerks, etc. Along comes another retailer that's using bar-code scanners, computerized inventory management, direct-deposit card transactions... and you've suddenly got a retailer with greatly reduced overhead that can afford to lower its prices and thus put pressure on the "older" business that hasn't adopted the same technologies.
But they're both still paying rent for their stores, right? But the newer business only has to employ 3 office workers as opposed to the older businesses 10. They can serve the same or more customers without needing as many square feet of office space, as many parking spaces, the same amount of health care insurance, etc. Just by using technology, the newer business can get away with leasing less real estate. That's very similar to the observation that the dot-com version of Ma and Pa's store is competing without having to use as much expensive retail floor space.
Why should a business have to pay anything like what and older business is paying to make themselves available to their customers, when their customers are already paying for an internet pipe? Further, the dot-com is going to be writing some gigantic checks to UPS or FedEx to fulfill those transactions. Rarely does the consumer directly appear to pay the actual cost of the shipping of their merchandise... it's offset in the markup on the item. Just like Ma and Pa do with their overhead.
But the whole point of a competitive economy is to reward those that come up with more efficient and enjoyable ways of doing things. And you don't need a government agency or organized body to make the rewards - the consumers reward them just by appreciating their business model and spending money with them. Some sense that dot-coms need to have the playing field leveled so that they don't succeed as easily (or with their lower overhead) is just punishing innovation and efficiency. To do that by (per the article) letting some ISP slow down the connections to businesses that don't pay to boost it will just move the problem... small online businesses can't carry the overhead of large ones, in a scenario like that. That whole proposal is just nonsense on the part of the telcos, anyway... the cable providers and other carriers will dance circles around them, in terms of acquiring users.
This seams to me that it is the internet's version of "buying real estate". Ma-and-Pa stores already have to do it, why not internet companies?
Because it's not the same type of business. If Ma and Pa want to enjoy more sales to people all over the country/world, then they can also register a domain name at GoDaddy for a few dollars, find some $10/month hosting, and have their grandkid create a web site.
Oops! Apparently running a real business on line includes paying professional content people, paying for real hosting, marketing, shipping, warehousing, fraud management, numerous returns, correspondence and phone calls 24x7, language barriers, and enormous competition. You make it sound like the person with the walk-up store is the only one that has competition or overhead.
Further, if Ma and Pa actually do rent out a store on the side of a busy road, they've got something that no Amazon or eBay or any large e-tailer can provided: instant convenience and fulfillment of physical wares.
Did you have the same concerns when mail order catalogs really started to hit it big 15, 20 years ago? It's no different, except that a small retailer doesn't have to commit to a huge printing/postage expense to get a web site out in front of millions of people. Ma and Pa should get online, or Ma and Pa should fine-tune their business around the things that make walking physically into a store preferable over looking at digital pictures, paying for freight, waiting for delivery, and possibly being disappointed with the purchase. Oh: and you don't really think that online stores don't have to pay taxes, do you? The larger retailers have business presences in multiple states, and collect/remit sales tax in every one of them.
If Ma and Pa are worried that someone in their own state might turn to an out-of-state online store to buy something, tax-free, and have it shipped into Ma and Pa's home turf, then they have to remember that they could be putting up their own dot-com, and shipping to that same in-state person for next day delivery by simple ground service. Localized marketing of a web stores is easier than it's ever been (thanks, Google), so there's really no excuse. If a direct competitor of Ma and Pa's moved in right across the street, they'd have to spend money, change what they're doing, and innovate in order to compete and stay afloat. This is no different.
Of course, none of this is what the referenced article is actually about (favored connection speed for favored deal makers), but I couldn't let your comment go without making some points.
While I can see engineering taking awhile to develop something useful to humans, keep in mind that every year delayed "proving it" to arrogant government officials kills millions a year. Now explain to me why exactly they are a friend to humanity again?
You don't catch the non-nerd news much, do you? Even drugs that are tested a lot, but which have some mixed results, end up being not perfect for at least a few people, someone (who is already very sick in some other way) ends up dying while using the product, and then the maker of the product gets sued for millions of dollars. Take for example the recent crop of very effective arthritis/pain meds that have been taken off the market because (possibly) some people may have cardio/pulminary problems using them. So, millions of people who would benefit tremendously from the drugs don't get to use them because people with sensitive hearts or blood pressure problems are taking it without checking in with their doctors, and die (making their families into millionaires on the way out).
One good cure for something like this, that's delayed a few years, delayed because of FDA-type bureaucracy will slaugter more people than all those the FDA "protects"
Please make the distinction between "killing" and "not saving some of a large group of people, all of whom are certainly going to die otherwise." Not being sure that you can save people, and avoiding having a drug sued out of marketability is not the same as "killing" people. You want to blame somebody? Blame trial lawyers. Or encourage legislation that would allow people to sign a waiver when they use a new drug/device/therapy. That waiver would let them use it early and absolve the maker from getting sued into oblivion when it isn't miraculous for everyone, all the time.
even allowing for the wildest, slobbering socialist evils-of-corporations fantasies put together over the last 5 decades
On that, you're (sort of) right... plenty of things kill people all the time, and it's mostly things people do to themselves. Eeeevil influences in the form of socialist-wacko-nightmare Boogeymen are a pale shadow compared to all of the fun forms of self-destructive behavior that people engage in every day.
Those who rule the Internet rule the world.
That's a bit hyperbolic, but is exactly why we don't want the UN running DNS.
To hell with trying to change that law, as well. Let's just ignore it and hope no one notices.
I think you're missing the point. That law is just fine. As soon as we're actually in the mode of needing to listen in on somebody (or a group), then we do get the warrant, if they happen to be state-side. That's what FISA is all about. But how do you figure out who to get the warrant for? You have to sift through the calling patterns in and out of certain foreign locations so that you can see something of consequence to point the tracking (and the warrant) at. The law's fine, and so is the mechanism by which we arrive at enough information to fill in the paperwork. Would you rather the FBI produce a warrant that says "we got to watch some people we don't know, using phone numbers we don't have figured out yet"? If they started doing that, all we'd hear about is overly broad, meaningless warrants.
FISA's fine, but it didn't anticipate VoIP, trunkloads of disposable cell phones, and one-time communications that by their nature completely preclude what FISA is even for. A lot has changed in the last few years, in terms of the techniques and technology being used by the bad guys. We're not talking about some Russian diplomat, here, and the four phones we know he uses. We're talking about whole networks of people, using shifting communications methods, being called from internet cafes in Pakistan and Indonesia. How would you write a warrant to handle that? Don't forget, you have no names, and no repeat use of phone number in the US.
If we are so hardwired for calculus why is it that so many ancient Greek mathematicians actually used geometry to solve their hardest problems
Please make the distinction, here, between having a formal way to model and discuss the study of change in acceleration as opposed to the notable natural ability that most higher organisms have to grapple with such evaluations in a more direct way every day. Just because a person doesn't have the formal skills, a la Newton, to work through that stuff on paper doesn't mean that they can't understand and extrapolate upon acceleration changes they are able to sense. I'm sure you get my real point: I'm responding to what I think is a silly article posting that refers to "hard-wired" geometry skills. No one is born with formal geometry chops, either (in the Greek scholar sense).
Your brain doesn't calculate the precise trajectory of the frisbee; it simply assesses its position, velocity, and environmental factor and produces an appropriate response
I guess I have to disagree, to a certain extent. To get your, say, 150-pound body where it needs to be to catch a frisbee that's going to be there some seconds later, you've got to do a lot more than respond to a condition. You have to evaluate the de/acceleration, what gravity's doing, and take those changing velocities/vectors into account while setting up another motion (yours).
Precisely directing your body to a spot where a decelerating, arcing object is going to be means extrapolating on changes in the rate of velocity change. Seat-of-the-pants calculus.
So to hell with the law then. Who needs it?
No, the hell with saying a particular law bears on the fact finding that would lead up to situation that does call for that particular law.
Watch a little kid running down a hump-shaped hill and managing to catch a slowing, banking frisbee that's drifting in an accelerating gust of wind and you'll know what I mean. Hell, my dogs can do calculus, even when the birds they're after are using anti-calculus to try to defeat them.
Mind you, I am not supporting what the administration is doing at all. But I bet that's the story Alberto Gonzales will be telling the Senate Judiciary Committee
But you've exactly, precisely hit on what the situation really is. You're dealing with people who buy 50 disposable cell phones at a time, and use them in a manner that makes the whole warrant generally irrelevent. I'm entirely for the use of a warrant once you actually have a target to track, but the whole point of watching the communications to/from a known overseas bad guy is to figure out who to watch (and get a warrant regarding) on our end. If we only ever see ONE phone call to one cell phone (later discarded), the warrant process doesn't even become an issue. There is no 72 hours to think about because that's the last time we'll ever see that call being made. But the pattern - the use of one of a batch of 50 phones - might shed some light on who we really should be getting a warrant to follow up on.
As the slashdot crowd is pretty much clueless about astronomy I expect lots of Funny rated comments to hide our ignorance on the subject, right guys?
You'd like to think so, wouldn't you? But as everyone knows, this is a matter for astrologers, which you clearly are not. Otherwise you'd know that making jokes about jokers joking to obscure their ignorance is itself merely a joke of an argument, so we cannot, even jokingly, take the argument in front of you.
There's no true recursive decision making or calling upon the past except of what is explicitely defined by the programmer
No. Replace "programmer" with "programming" and you're closer. And that's a reminder that self-programming is something which we're genetically good at. It's also something we're getting better at building inorganic, programmable systems to do themselves. Baby steps, but the concept is there, and important.
In humans, we are not stopped by that limit.
We can't do what we can't do. We have to train ourselves to process information in a new way, or we can't process it (except in a familiar way). We can though, build inorganic systems that process information in new ways by design. Sure, the aggregate complexity of a human brain is stunning, and its interconnectivity gives rise to some astounding adapative behavior (and self programming), but that's all we're talking about: scale and complexity... not a magic leap beyond the basic, underlying organic chemistry that makes us and cockroaches tick.
We have the ability to make sense of our environment
After we've been trained to, yes. That takes a long time, and we have a nice high-speed processor highly adapted to that purpose and well integrated with its sensors. But surely you don't suggest that babies or newborn puppies (both already armed with incredibly complex neural engines) "make sense of our environment" ? Not in the way that you do, after years of training.
filter the information, and decide dynamically based on past experience and current condition.
Wal-Mart has inventory management systems that do this just fine.
Bravo, sir. If I had points I'd mod you way up.
That's OK - I'd rather inform the ignorant than earn karma. Of course, being modded up makes things a little more visible, as does your response. Thanks for that, and for being another in the Brotherhood of Guys Who Think Things Through.
Um, of course I may be incorrectly gender-pigeonholing "Greatmoose." And I certainly wouldn't want to be an insensitive clod. Now that assault weapons are legal again, anything could happen!
Except, IIRC, they used the phones as timers, using the vibrate function of the phone to set off the bomb after a preset alarm went off. This doesn't require any cellular service
I believe you are correct, though the same guys (some of whom they caught, some of whom blew themselves up in an apartment as they were trying to catch them) were also rigged with some that were call-based (with the vibrate-based ring action prepared to set it off). Certainly the best way to deal with that threat is to suppress/jam the service when there's reason to suspect a localized threat... but that's just not workable day-to-day in real life, which is where unexpected attacks are going to happen. Apparently one of the problems the bad guys have in Europe (and no doubt in the US) is finding people willing to kill themselves (human timers). Once you've got operatives living in the US, for example, a lot of them start feel a little more cozy, and would prefer the Madrid-style attack, which lets them walk away to attack another day.
Doesn't matter - anything they try next in the states is going to be a lot more substantial (or simply more numerous and simultaneous) because with all of the hold-ups they've had since 9/11, the PR value of an IED-type bombing just isn't going to cut it. No, it will be a gas terminal, or something crudely bio/radio or something else designed to be scarier than simple localized bomb damage. The folks in London did a great job of showing these jackasses how not-a-showstopper that sort of attack is. Gotta love that stiff upper British lip.
Hmm. Somehow I'm just not finding this +Insightful.
but judging by the shortsidedness of the current global warming fun (it was almost 70 in St. Louis yesterday) it isn't surprising
I'm not sure which "side" you're finding short. I suppose you mean shortsightedness, as in "not seeing clearly into the future." Ignoring that, let's take your comment into consideration and use another city's weather to see if you're making a good case. Hmmm... judging by the fact that it's a balmy -20F in Moscow, I'd say that we weren't planning ahead well enough for the coming ice age. What, one day's weather doesn't indicate a pattern? Oh.
And what were you thinking... that the people burning coal 100 years ago had a good solid grip on a mechanism that, even today, brilliant people armed with super computers are having trouble getting to the bottom of? Or did you mean people 20 years ago? Or last week?
Seeing as how the last space shuttle disaster was caused by something hitting it
It hit itself! Come on now. Do you even watch the non-nerd news? Even they reported that correctly.
God, not another one!
I'll see your God, not another one! and raise you one!
Outside of the ban were all sorts of guns just as devastating, just as able to be used by a crazy in the pursuit of mayhem, and only off the list because of absurd cosmetic differences. The people who go out to procure an auto-loading gun expressly to then go and shoot people with it are already beyond the reach of our ethics or regulations. If they did want to make a purchase within the ban's rules, all they had to do was purchase any of a number of similar weapons that didn't happen to have a bayonet mount, or a flash suppressor, or other features that have absolutely no bearing on the crime-worthiness or lethality of the weapon. A bolt-action gun would have suited the DC-area "snipers" just as well as any other gun, and I haven't heard about rashes of drive-by bayonettings. The height of this sort of absurdity was neatly on display during the last presidential campaign, when Kerry was vocally on board with a particular gun control measure, and then did a photo-op/campaign stop with some good old boys in the midwest, and spent some time in front of news cameras shooting at clay pigeons with an auto-loading shotgun that the legislation he was backing would have made illegal. Of course, he didn't want to ruin the photo op, and not only didn't make note of that little detail, but also spent the time shooting without eye or ear protection. Save us from such idiocy.
As for worrying about gun-saturation in the society, please note that it's the society, not the guns. Murder is actually down from recent years past, but it's definitely up from decades ago (when you could mail-order guns from Sears). But the real thing to watch is the recently changed demographics. Florida: the addition of right-to-carry laws has reduced killings. Australia: the essentially complete ban on personally owned guns (right through to confiscation) has been met with a huge leap in assaults and murders. Basically, worrying about your personal freedom (as it relates to threats to your life and limbs by criminals) has way, way less to do with whether someone can buy a repearing rifle and more to do with whether local law enforcement is doing catch-and-release with violent criminals. Study after study of actual violent felons shows that they actually say that the one thing that deters them from accosting someone or breaking into a house is not knowing whether or not their potential victim may be armed. In areas where they know that's not possible, they act without concern (i.e., Australia, and now Scotland, etc.).
saying that the assault weapons ban was ineffective is really just flamebait
But it's not, because the ban was ineffective. The National Institute of Justice (a non-partisan piece of the DoJ) provided grants for the independent academic study of exactly this question. They concluded that "We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence" [during the ban's existence]. "It is thus premature to make definitive assessments of the ban's impact on gun violence. Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement" and so on.
A more realistic question would be why groups like the Brady Campaign aren't screaming from the mountains about arresting and prosecuting those that illegally attempt to purchase guns (a felony!) when, during the required background check, they are shown to be disallowed for criminal history reasons. Thousands of felons are turned away from weapons purchases, and just walk away. These are the ones that are so dumb that they're willing to try a "legit" puchase over the counter, and we know who they are (they present ID!), and yet they just walk away... no doubt to go ahead and make an illegal purchase anyway. Those
This might enable the next terrorist attack though.
Well, it sure worked (at the technical level) in Madrid. Thankfully they didn't plan/execute it very well, though, as apparently their initial plan was to have all of the onboard backpack bombs go off at once, aboard trains that were all in the station (this didn't work too well, since some went off outside) - with the intention of bringing the entire terminal down on all of the commuters inside. That would have been hundreds more or thousands dead. And they did use a collection of anonymously purchased disposable cell phones to do the job. Which makes this sort of thing pretty unsettling.
I'm sure your signature is less humorous if you explain it, but I still don't understand it.
One of the greatest joys in my life is watching our bird dogs (German Shorthaired Pointers) hunt. They are a spectacular piece of genetic engineering. Their job is to work through a field (say, a couple hundred acres of crops or hedgerow) and to catch the scent of the type of game they've been wired to find... usually, pheasant, quail, grouse, partridge, that sort of thing. The moment their noses recognize a single molecule of that scent, they freeze up in the classic pointing position, using their noses and direction of gaze to tell the human members of the team where to find the birds. If the dogs have some training and maturity, they will stay there, like rocks, waiting for someone to walk into the pointed area and flush the birds up into the air. Hopefully, someone talented with a shotgun is ready to identify the type of bird, and make that all-important clean shot that knocks the bird down. The pointer then dashes into whatever nasty bit of cover the dead bird landed in, and retrieves it to the hunter's hand, gently as you please.
There is nothing more embarassing than watching these animals work as hard as they do to track down that one rooster pheasant in a big corn field, only to have it take to wing right in front of you, and then miss the shot. I don't tend to anthropomorphize the dogs (much!), but there's no question that, on missing a bird like that, they'll look at you with the most withering, reproachful stare you've ever seen. So, knowing you're headed out to hunt over some talented bird dogs, it's a good idea to get in some practice on the trap range (shooting at clay pigeons - basically little orange ceramic frisbees) so that you're less likely to screw up in the field.
It's likewise important to regularly train in the kitchen. There's nothing worse than spending all day out with the dogs, coming home with a game bag full of delicious quail, and then ruining them in a bad sauce or turning them into shoe-leather by over cooking them. In case you're wondering, I'm all for hunting, but I eat what I shoot, always. And a good bird dog is all about connecting the hunter with some of the tastiest birds you'll ever put on a table for your dinner guests. It's a shame to blow all of that because you've spent all of your time posting on slashdot and no longer have the upper body mobility to swing that shotgun with speed and grace. Hey... that sounds like me. Time to go to the range!
If you think the risk associated with the launch of a plutonium-powered spacecraft is justified by the ends, fine. If you think that there is no risk, I counsel deeper reflection.
I've not said nor implied that there's no risk. I'm speaking, rather, about the shrill (and frequently very flaky) atmosphere generated by those protesting this sort of thing. They rarely comment on the many precautions NASA takes in the way they package the material they're fretting about, and instead trot out imaginary (idiot-TV-reporter-ready) scenarios that make it sound like every microgram of the Plutonium would be evenly spread out over a large area in most dangerous, inhaleable form possible. As the actual re-entry of such devices has shown, they're extremely well designed, and those scenarios are the worst possible way to gain the protesters any credibility among people that actually know anything about the matter. My somewhat flippant attitude towards these clowns is not a denigration of all of those that weigh the risks - it's annoyance at the loony fringe that injure all reasoned discourse about such issues by injecting Gaia-worship into it, or torturing the laws of physics and the engineering of the situation all out of meaningful reality. That, and the fact that their real agenda is often Greenpeace-y in the sense that they don't want to see fission power embraced, and being completely disengenuous, they're willing to equate all things "nuclear" in order to further their empty-headed position. I'm surprised they don't protest dental x-rays.
You'll notice I've not commented at all on their right to do anything, including sacrifice chickens before every launch if that makes them feel better, or if it makes their position more high-profile. But the very nature of the device(s) being launched pretty well preclude anything like a nice, even, vaporous spread of all of that plutonium across a wide area. It's the worst sort of fear mongering, and it's no surprise that the people looking to get the TV time by ranting about it usually have some other axes to grind, and manage to slip that in once there's a camera handy. Fine - they're welcome to, but let's call it what it is.
having dated a Wiccan years ago.
Whew. Talk about your eccentric orbits! Glad to have you back.
How is it news 9 hours later?
Actually, I LIKE the 9-hour window. That's exactly how long this thing has taken to pass the moon. That's really, really fast.