That's only one of the many reasons. Others would be legal and security issues. On the legal side, every time someone died because they ran out of gas, stalled the engine, or had a mid-air fender bender, someone would get sued. On the security side, how easy would it be for someone like Osama or Ted Kaczynski to load these up with home-made explosives and crash them into buildings? Even without explosives, think of the damage a dozen of these things could do smashing into a building at a few hundred miles per hour. It would be nearly impossible to stop them from doing it (even if you mounted AA guns on every sizable building in the US). Anyone could easily hit military bases, dams, bridges, nuclear power plants, and so on with these. They could even be rigged to fly by remote control so they wouldn't need to be suicide missions.
The only "safe" way to do it would be to make them all 100% computer controlled (i.e. humans would not be allowed to pilot them under any circumstance), and even then it would only safe until someone hacks the system (which is easy when you have direct access to the hardware).
It's too bad power storage technology doesn't double every few years like computer technology does. If we could squeeze a few MWh into something the size of an AA battery, we'd be all set. Although I doubt I'd want anything with that much energy density in my house or my car. Come to think of it, they would probably make really great explosive devices. Maybe the DoD could foot the bill for research and development (although they probably wouldn't let the private sector have them, even if they could help save the world).;-)
Great post. However, you forgot to mention what the total usage was for that $1.2M/month (so we can compare it to the cost of coal running 24/7 for a whole month).
I also wonder what has happened with the "physical batteries" (which I use for lack of a better term) I've been reading about. I've read about a number of different ideas, but my favorite was to have two reservoirs of water with one higher than the other. When the system generates excess energy, pump the water from the lower one to the higher one. When the system doesn't have enough energy, let it run back down to the lower one to generate hydro power. If you put it in the desert, it would need to be a closed system to minimize water loss due to evaporation. If you can find a way to move the heat from some of the solar panels to the water, you may also be able to have it power something like a Stirling engine to help pump the water. (The Stirling engine itself may provide a decent amount of its own power if its "cold" side was underground.)
I'm sure that the engineering problems involved in designing things like this are non-trivial. I have no clue how large the bodies of water would need to be for commercial-scale power, and backup generators would probably be needed in case of general system failure. Also, the efficiencies involved may not make it anywhere close to worthwhile, but there may be other types of "physical batteries" that may prove more feasible. What we really need is Heinlein's "Shipstone" batteries. Someone should get on inventing one of those right away.;-)
There are two things wrong with your argument. The first is that you're wrong, and the second is that your argument is moot because you're not even arguing about the same thing. The argument was about whether it was allowed to affect gameplay. Glide did not affect gameplay, it just made games look nicer and run smoother.
I started working on my planet rendering engine (http://sponeil.net/) in OpenGL back when I had a Riva 128, and I wrote my first ray tracer a few years before 3DFX cards were even available. Don't bother trying to tell me that I don't remember when 3D accelerated graphics was new.;-)
Of course not. It was the same with PhysX. No game developer could release a game that required a PhysX card to play because so few people had one. I wouldn't expect to see games where gameplay has been improved by this until 1-2 years after it is available to everyone. Although if it only works on nVidia cards, we still may not see much until ATI has a similar offering. Game developers always have to account for the lowest common denominator, and that's usually ATI (unless you count embedded chipsets like Intel's).
Have you ever heard the saying "You can't fight city hall." The truth is that you can, but just like your wife, they will make sure you regret it for a VERY long time (or until you decide to leave). I suppose if you don't live there it might be ok, because then it would be more like getting a one-night stand mad at you.;-)
I think you're right, but I don't feel you explained it well. In addition, if you're going to correct posts like that, you should at least comment on whether you agree with them or not.
A con is one type of social engineering, just as a scam is one type of con, which means a scam is one type of social engineering. You can not say the reverse is true in either case because there are many types of social engineering, and not all of them are cons. There are also many types of cons, and not all of them are scams.
However, I think the post you replied to was correct in implying that this kind of social engineering was a con, and that the article should go ahead and call it that. It is better for articles to be specific than to be vague, and in this case they are being vague on purpose to make it sound more socially acceptable. That would be another form of social engineering that could also be called: lying, embellishing, marketing, etc. (Take your pick, or feel free to add your own terms for it.)
It was meant to be a joke, but you're right, I messed it up.;-) If we're being serious though, we also need to account for the fact that the keychain lasers use 1-5mW in a full second, not in 100 femtoseconds, so you would need to scale that number up by several orders of magnitude.
Ummmm....yes. I was living in Florida when they removed it from the endangered species list.
"Status: First listed as an endangered species in 1967, the American alligator was removed from the endangered species list in 1987 after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pronounced a complete recovery of the species."
"But, they could brush up on the same skills by developing something capable of taking down Storm, and then holding it in reserve for some time when they would need to take down Storm, and not before."
There are several flaws in that argument. I thought I mentioned that Storm is continually changing, which means any program they write to take it down may only be potent for a few weeks. Even if that would work, the guy who developed the Storm worm has had plenty of time to prepare counter-measures for the anti-virus writers. He's expecting to be attacked, and his business depends on him being ready for it by having several tricks up his sleeve. The military would never be able to anticipate those tricks and learn from them until they picked a fight. If they hold back, as you suggest, they will learn very little, and they will fail.
As I said before, I think they should have a long, drawn out fight with every bot network in existence. Keep in mind that to the military, the bot nets are not the enemy. They are merely sparring partners. Hell, if the military found a way to completely wipe out a bot network, I think they should hold THAT back until they feel they aren't learning anything from that guy anymore (at which point the best thing they have left to learn is whether the crushing blow actually works). It should literally be like a cat-and-mouse game.
The military will learn an incredible amount doing that (both offensive and defensive, because the bot nets will not give up without a fight), and they will create invaluable tools and build a skill-set. These tools and skills will be vital if there's ever a high-tech war with another country. If we're good enough at that point, our largest problems will probably be cloak-and-dagger style (spy infiltration, insiders selling passwords/secrets, and so on). I can already imagine the James Bond types beating the crap out of computer nerds to get the secrets on their laptops and flash drives.;-)
That's an interesting point, but there are some flaws in it. Exploits like that are specific to the application being attacked. So if the military devises a zero-day exploit for the Storm bot, no one but the Storm authors could possibly "defend" against that specific exploit. People may find new types of attacks to watch out for, but it's doubtful. They're much more likely to find those from actual virus/bot writers.
The military would most likely need to reverse engineer Storm to take it down, so they would be brushing up on some much-needed reverse engineering skills, as well as creating new tools to help automate the process of reverse engineering programs and looking for exploits. THAT is what they would need to keep secret, and it wouldn't be exposed by releasing a program they wrote to take advantage of a specific exploit they found.
They will also learn new tricks from the bots and viruses they reverse engineer. Those tricks will give them ammunition that they don't have any reason to share with others. I don't share what I learn that way.;-)
I doubt it. Given the way the thing downloads updates of itself, and the way it attacks intruders on the network, any changes made by other hackers would be overwritten with each update. I've read about "bot vs. bot" wars where hackers try to take over each others' bot networks, but it's not done in a collaborative sense as you're implying. There seems to be one group controlling it, and others paying that group to have the spam sent or web sites threatened with DDOS attacks.
Not spammers, bot nets (which often generate spam). Taking down malicious and devious programs like the Storm network would help remove an existing threat and would help them brush up on both offensive and defensive tactics.
Given how agents occasionally get into the business they're investigating (i.e. CIA agents running drugs and that sort of thing), he may not have been joking.
You're right about the dust. I had an Ionic Breeze air purifier, and the static charge it had made it a dust magnet. I have pets and hardwood floors (which increases the amount of dust you have floating around the house because there's no carpet for it to get caught in), so the thing had to be cleaned all the time, and when it was dirty it made an incredible amount of noise.
Go talk to people and form your own opinion. Most of the people I talk to in my office like having the telco companies providing information to the FBI to help them bust terrorists. If a few people like drug dealers and sexual predators get busted while they're at it, most people think that's an added bonus (even though they're technically not supposed to use the information for that). People may not feel this way in many cities and/or states, but that's the way they seem to feel about it where I live.
The main problem I see with it is that politics ALWAYS gets involved, and powers like this ALWAYS get abused. I'm sure the Bush administration could easily have the FBI snoop on anyone who's not in his camp to dig up some dirt for a little old-fashioned blackmail. If you think the FBI has time to listen to all of our calls, you're deluded. But if you think they're not listening to the calls of certain high-profile people the Bush administration is watching out for, you're just as deluded.
I'm going to have to agree with the other reply. It sounds like there is no muscle movement, just thought. Add a receiver and make it wireless, and you could have completely silent - telepathic for all intents and purposes - communications with someone else. It may even work for stroke patients who can't speak, or perhaps even for someone in a coma. Researches often suspect that some people in a coma can hear and think actively, but can't move any of their muscles.
Another interesting thing to wonder about is if you're bored with a conversation you're having while using this thing, and your mind starts to wander, could you accidentally say something you didn't mean to say while pretending to be listening? I imagine that initially it requires concentration to make the thing speak for you, but once it becomes second nature, it may be possible for things to slip out that you didn't intend. Along similar lines, what if you had it hooked up while dreaming? It could definitely open up several new avenues for psychology studies.
I'm a parent myself, so please take this as my opinion and not criticism, but to me those missions sound like giving in but disguising it as a game so it doesn't seem as bad. I consistently say no to my kids when they ask for things at the grocery store that aren't on the shopping list, and as long as I remain consistent, they don't complain about it. They still love to fetch things and put them in the cart, but they do it for fun and not for a reward. I do buy them treats from time to time, but I make it a point never to do it while we're shopping for something else. If I want to get them a treat when we're done shopping (or running some other errand), I make an extra stop at an ice cream shop or convenience store on the way home so they don't relate it to the shopping trip.
Whenever possible though, I prefer to walk with them to the local corner store or ice cream shop when I want to get them a treat (although that may not be possible in your neighborhood). If possible, I try to do it after the kids have been working or playing hard at something. If I've been working hard as well (perhaps working on my house), sometimes I get myself a treat. The kids seem to enjoy it a lot more when I get myself one too, perhaps because it shows them that they don't have to stop enjoying things like that when they grow up.;-)
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That's only one of the many reasons. Others would be legal and security issues. On the legal side, every time someone died because they ran out of gas, stalled the engine, or had a mid-air fender bender, someone would get sued. On the security side, how easy would it be for someone like Osama or Ted Kaczynski to load these up with home-made explosives and crash them into buildings? Even without explosives, think of the damage a dozen of these things could do smashing into a building at a few hundred miles per hour. It would be nearly impossible to stop them from doing it (even if you mounted AA guns on every sizable building in the US). Anyone could easily hit military bases, dams, bridges, nuclear power plants, and so on with these. They could even be rigged to fly by remote control so they wouldn't need to be suicide missions.
The only "safe" way to do it would be to make them all 100% computer controlled (i.e. humans would not be allowed to pilot them under any circumstance), and even then it would only safe until someone hacks the system (which is easy when you have direct access to the hardware).
It's too bad power storage technology doesn't double every few years like computer technology does. If we could squeeze a few MWh into something the size of an AA battery, we'd be all set. Although I doubt I'd want anything with that much energy density in my house or my car. Come to think of it, they would probably make really great explosive devices. Maybe the DoD could foot the bill for research and development (although they probably wouldn't let the private sector have them, even if they could help save the world). ;-)
Great post. However, you forgot to mention what the total usage was for that $1.2M/month (so we can compare it to the cost of coal running 24/7 for a whole month).
;-)
;-)
I also wonder what has happened with the "physical batteries" (which I use for lack of a better term) I've been reading about. I've read about a number of different ideas, but my favorite was to have two reservoirs of water with one higher than the other. When the system generates excess energy, pump the water from the lower one to the higher one. When the system doesn't have enough energy, let it run back down to the lower one to generate hydro power. If you put it in the desert, it would need to be a closed system to minimize water loss due to evaporation. If you can find a way to move the heat from some of the solar panels to the water, you may also be able to have it power something like a Stirling engine to help pump the water. (The Stirling engine itself may provide a decent amount of its own power if its "cold" side was underground.)
I'm sure that the engineering problems involved in designing things like this are non-trivial. I have no clue how large the bodies of water would need to be for commercial-scale power, and backup generators would probably be needed in case of general system failure. Also, the efficiencies involved may not make it anywhere close to worthwhile, but there may be other types of "physical batteries" that may prove more feasible. What we really need is Heinlein's "Shipstone" batteries. Someone should get on inventing one of those right away.
And FYI, it would be awesome if all solar power plants looked like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PS10_solar_power_tower_2.jpg
I doubt it's safe for birds, but it looks so cool. It would be even cooler if it attracted mosquitos and acted like a giant bug zapper.
There are two things wrong with your argument. The first is that you're wrong, and the second is that your argument is moot because you're not even arguing about the same thing. The argument was about whether it was allowed to affect gameplay. Glide did not affect gameplay, it just made games look nicer and run smoother.
;-)
I started working on my planet rendering engine (http://sponeil.net/) in OpenGL back when I had a Riva 128, and I wrote my first ray tracer a few years before 3DFX cards were even available. Don't bother trying to tell me that I don't remember when 3D accelerated graphics was new.
Of course not. It was the same with PhysX. No game developer could release a game that required a PhysX card to play because so few people had one. I wouldn't expect to see games where gameplay has been improved by this until 1-2 years after it is available to everyone. Although if it only works on nVidia cards, we still may not see much until ATI has a similar offering. Game developers always have to account for the lowest common denominator, and that's usually ATI (unless you count embedded chipsets like Intel's).
What do they mean by "more money"? Was Google already paying Virgin for better access?
Have you ever heard the saying "You can't fight city hall." The truth is that you can, but just like your wife, they will make sure you regret it for a VERY long time (or until you decide to leave). I suppose if you don't live there it might be ok, because then it would be more like getting a one-night stand mad at you. ;-)
I think you're right, but I don't feel you explained it well. In addition, if you're going to correct posts like that, you should at least comment on whether you agree with them or not.
A con is one type of social engineering, just as a scam is one type of con, which means a scam is one type of social engineering. You can not say the reverse is true in either case because there are many types of social engineering, and not all of them are cons. There are also many types of cons, and not all of them are scams.
However, I think the post you replied to was correct in implying that this kind of social engineering was a con, and that the article should go ahead and call it that. It is better for articles to be specific than to be vague, and in this case they are being vague on purpose to make it sound more socially acceptable. That would be another form of social engineering that could also be called: lying, embellishing, marketing, etc. (Take your pick, or feel free to add your own terms for it.)
Fortunately, Java is a very thread-friendly language. I'm sure I could think of a way to use those 256 processors. ;-)
It was meant to be a joke, but you're right, I messed it up. ;-) If we're being serious though, we also need to account for the fact that the keychain lasers use 1-5mW in a full second, not in 100 femtoseconds, so you would need to scale that number up by several orders of magnitude.
10 Watts? So this thing is approximately twice as powerful as one of those 5W key-chain laser pointers? That's good to know. ;-)
Ummmm....yes. I was living in Florida when they removed it from the endangered species list.
"Status: First listed as an endangered species in 1967, the American alligator was removed from the endangered species list in 1987 after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pronounced a complete recovery of the species."
Something tells me we'll have to put them back on the endangered species list. We just recently took them off of it.
"But, they could brush up on the same skills by developing something capable of taking down Storm, and then holding it in reserve for some time when they would need to take down Storm, and not before."
;-)
There are several flaws in that argument. I thought I mentioned that Storm is continually changing, which means any program they write to take it down may only be potent for a few weeks. Even if that would work, the guy who developed the Storm worm has had plenty of time to prepare counter-measures for the anti-virus writers. He's expecting to be attacked, and his business depends on him being ready for it by having several tricks up his sleeve. The military would never be able to anticipate those tricks and learn from them until they picked a fight. If they hold back, as you suggest, they will learn very little, and they will fail.
As I said before, I think they should have a long, drawn out fight with every bot network in existence. Keep in mind that to the military, the bot nets are not the enemy. They are merely sparring partners. Hell, if the military found a way to completely wipe out a bot network, I think they should hold THAT back until they feel they aren't learning anything from that guy anymore (at which point the best thing they have left to learn is whether the crushing blow actually works). It should literally be like a cat-and-mouse game.
The military will learn an incredible amount doing that (both offensive and defensive, because the bot nets will not give up without a fight), and they will create invaluable tools and build a skill-set. These tools and skills will be vital if there's ever a high-tech war with another country. If we're good enough at that point, our largest problems will probably be cloak-and-dagger style (spy infiltration, insiders selling passwords/secrets, and so on). I can already imagine the James Bond types beating the crap out of computer nerds to get the secrets on their laptops and flash drives.
That's an interesting point, but there are some flaws in it. Exploits like that are specific to the application being attacked. So if the military devises a zero-day exploit for the Storm bot, no one but the Storm authors could possibly "defend" against that specific exploit. People may find new types of attacks to watch out for, but it's doubtful. They're much more likely to find those from actual virus/bot writers.
;-)
The military would most likely need to reverse engineer Storm to take it down, so they would be brushing up on some much-needed reverse engineering skills, as well as creating new tools to help automate the process of reverse engineering programs and looking for exploits. THAT is what they would need to keep secret, and it wouldn't be exposed by releasing a program they wrote to take advantage of a specific exploit they found.
They will also learn new tricks from the bots and viruses they reverse engineer. Those tricks will give them ammunition that they don't have any reason to share with others. I don't share what I learn that way.
I doubt it. Given the way the thing downloads updates of itself, and the way it attacks intruders on the network, any changes made by other hackers would be overwritten with each update. I've read about "bot vs. bot" wars where hackers try to take over each others' bot networks, but it's not done in a collaborative sense as you're implying. There seems to be one group controlling it, and others paying that group to have the spam sent or web sites threatened with DDOS attacks.
Not spammers, bot nets (which often generate spam). Taking down malicious and devious programs like the Storm network would help remove an existing threat and would help them brush up on both offensive and defensive tactics.
Given how agents occasionally get into the business they're investigating (i.e. CIA agents running drugs and that sort of thing), he may not have been joking.
How could you make a flexible wire with that?
You're right about the dust. I had an Ionic Breeze air purifier, and the static charge it had made it a dust magnet. I have pets and hardwood floors (which increases the amount of dust you have floating around the house because there's no carpet for it to get caught in), so the thing had to be cleaned all the time, and when it was dirty it made an incredible amount of noise.
Go talk to people and form your own opinion. Most of the people I talk to in my office like having the telco companies providing information to the FBI to help them bust terrorists. If a few people like drug dealers and sexual predators get busted while they're at it, most people think that's an added bonus (even though they're technically not supposed to use the information for that). People may not feel this way in many cities and/or states, but that's the way they seem to feel about it where I live.
The main problem I see with it is that politics ALWAYS gets involved, and powers like this ALWAYS get abused. I'm sure the Bush administration could easily have the FBI snoop on anyone who's not in his camp to dig up some dirt for a little old-fashioned blackmail. If you think the FBI has time to listen to all of our calls, you're deluded. But if you think they're not listening to the calls of certain high-profile people the Bush administration is watching out for, you're just as deluded.
I'm going to have to agree with the other reply. It sounds like there is no muscle movement, just thought. Add a receiver and make it wireless, and you could have completely silent - telepathic for all intents and purposes - communications with someone else. It may even work for stroke patients who can't speak, or perhaps even for someone in a coma. Researches often suspect that some people in a coma can hear and think actively, but can't move any of their muscles.
Another interesting thing to wonder about is if you're bored with a conversation you're having while using this thing, and your mind starts to wander, could you accidentally say something you didn't mean to say while pretending to be listening? I imagine that initially it requires concentration to make the thing speak for you, but once it becomes second nature, it may be possible for things to slip out that you didn't intend. Along similar lines, what if you had it hooked up while dreaming? It could definitely open up several new avenues for psychology studies.
I'm a parent myself, so please take this as my opinion and not criticism, but to me those missions sound like giving in but disguising it as a game so it doesn't seem as bad. I consistently say no to my kids when they ask for things at the grocery store that aren't on the shopping list, and as long as I remain consistent, they don't complain about it. They still love to fetch things and put them in the cart, but they do it for fun and not for a reward. I do buy them treats from time to time, but I make it a point never to do it while we're shopping for something else. If I want to get them a treat when we're done shopping (or running some other errand), I make an extra stop at an ice cream shop or convenience store on the way home so they don't relate it to the shopping trip.
;-)
Whenever possible though, I prefer to walk with them to the local corner store or ice cream shop when I want to get them a treat (although that may not be possible in your neighborhood). If possible, I try to do it after the kids have been working or playing hard at something. If I've been working hard as well (perhaps working on my house), sometimes I get myself a treat. The kids seem to enjoy it a lot more when I get myself one too, perhaps because it shows them that they don't have to stop enjoying things like that when they grow up.
This is not a computer, this is 4 bytes of memory. 4^16 is the same as 2^32.
I wonder if the CEO's of these companies agree to things like this so that they can use that line on chicks without feeling like complete liars.