Look at this timeline (I'm blending a lot of physical interpretations here): Time -2: Universe is (inversely) frozen in time, i.e. at a time singularity; the (imaginary) movie ends, though all the frames still exist "between" the singularities #-2 and #0 Time -1: Universe is an (inversely) expanding 4-dimensional Lorentzian geometry, approaching maximum (imaginary) entropy (time is parabolic; this is one argument being currently studied) Time 0: Universe is a singularity with neither time nor space (where does the future go? where does the space go? where does the imaginary past go? where did the imaginary space go? into a singularity, of course, with no (imaginary) history and no dimension!); the movie begins / the imaginary movie ends (same thing) Time 1: Universe is an expanding 4-dimensional Lorentzian geometry, approaching maximum entropy Time 2: Universe is frozen in time, i.e. at a time singularity; the movie ends, though all the frames still exist "between" the singularities #0 and #2
Note: an imaginary observer would see this chart flipped, and wouldn't know he was imaginary. From his perspective, we are imaginary.
Perhaps a time-wise observer would approach the singularity (#2; an imaginary time-wise observer, #-2) at an ever-decreasing (or ever-increasing) rate? By ever-decreasing (or ever-increasing?), of course, time isn't stretching out time-wise (it can't do that), but stretching out space-wise: the universe's expansion approaches a maximum rate (would the distance between every point be expanding at the speed of light? that would render communication between any two points impossible, which might be at the point of time singularity?).
If this time-singularity interpretation is applied to loop quantum gravity, you end up with an odd effect where the geometric complexity of the universe approaches a finite limit. Or, applied to time atoms, we just have a limited number of them.
The many flawed discussions of a 'many worlds' interpretation are annoying to people who study David Lewis' Multiverse, which has nothing to do with QM but resembles the 'many worlds' interpretation in a few ways...
Humans are only 'alive' in the sense that they require hundreds of supporting organisms and a very specific environment with many specific characteristics in order to complete the necessary criteria to be called a living organism. In this sense, a virus could definitely be a part of a 'living organism,' thought it wouldn't be a critical component, unless the virus was necessary to keep the organism's growth and/or reproduction rates in check.
The simplest case of 'living organism' would perhaps be a bacterium that needs only sunlight (or a stream of charged particles, or a rotating magnetic field whose rotation is held constant by input of external energy whenever its energy/momentum is taken up by the living organism, or an electric field whose energy is held constant by its generating source whenever energy is removed, etc.; in other words, a steady supply of energy) and lives in perfect stasis with its environment other than giving off excess heat; in other words, death rate is exactly growth rate, and the resources taken from the environment, when eventually returned to it, are in the same form and same proportions, have not created any byproducts, and have not 'used up' any chemicals (that are not also simultaneously being output in the same quantity). In other words, a self-contained machine that needs only a constant supply of energy to perpetuate its own internal energy level (body temperature) while continuously rebuilding its own components and having the ability to adapt to modifications in the amount of resources available in the environment (give it a bigger biosphere, the population grows and hits a new steady-state value; take away a portion of the biosphere, the population shrinks and hits a new steady-state value).
An organism does not generally stand alone. We've already created little globes that can sit out in orbit absorbing photons and giving off heat, living in stasis, containing a miniature biosphere with a handful of interdependent organisms; that's one (very different, occuring at a different level) form of creation of artifical life (by designing a new biosphere that it stable by itself) by modifying some existing natural biosphere, usually by reducing it to only its critical components.
If we can design a self-replicating molecule that can live in a sea of ammonia (for example), and reaches a population stasis by not exceeding a certain concentration relative to within the sea, that would be another example of artifical life. (Energy input could be by photon bombardment, and the 'death' of the self-replicating molecule should be considered its occasional breakdown from the photon bombardment and/or breakdown when the available ammonia (in ratio to the population) is too low.
(Hoping this doesn't sound like a troll nor flamebait!)
My theory: decently complex ("thinking" and not purely reflexive) brains construct an always-limited but nevertheless-good-at-predicting internal model of the outside world. There are many parts of the brain that feed this model in a huge variety of ways, including the model itself via an adaptive feedback network that exhibits highly comlpex plasticity. Your brain *expects* the outside world to tend to differ from your internal model, and uses that as a basis for refining the model. I think these differences (both by prediction and by recall of past models, a.k.a. memories) and refinements account for a wealth of the qualia of experiencing.
From my perspective, there are countless thought-experiments, introspections, and obervations of the long-term and short-term behavior of humans and all fairly intelligent non-human animals (perhaps sentient, though not to our level, and lacking our amazing communication abilities which enable the rapid spread of ideas, something that contributes to very rapid learning) that support this model. Though, I am curious if there are significant number of good counter-examples (I don't really subscribe to some of the common methods of philosophy and metaphysics wherein one counterexample deeply invalidates a model, in totality).
What you put in the chroot jail also matters. setuid/setgid programs can elevate priveleges, and then you might be able to break out of the jail, especially if a user is able to play tricks with his chroot'ed filesystem (check those directory permissions!); you don't need LD_PRELOAD (which is ignored for setuid programs, obviously, to prevent libc hacks) if you can mess with ld.so and/lib. A procfs mounted in the chroot jail (so 'ps' works) has/proc/1/cwd being the root of the real filesystem.
Of course, the best practice is to put the minimum of what is necessary in a chroot jail (and be careful about what you might be tempted to hard-link to save on disk space) and have tripwire daemons spying on the chroot jail just in case.
VMS has had the philosophy of "users who need a little administrative ability get those special permissions and ONLY those special permissions" for years, and modern security-enhanced UNIX and Linux distributions have implemented that functionality. If any users need to do anything fancy, you should be running a security-enhanced distribution by now:)
I would say that licensing something under a CC license that allows commercial use nearly impliess the photographer *had* gotten a model release. Regardless of how the law sees it, that's how it seems to be to me, logically speaking.
As far as I knew, the sytem goes something like this:
Wireless client sends out SSID requests, asking "What connections are aavailable?" APs respond with their names via SSID broadcasts, "Hello, I am XXX, and I am open (or) secured," or they may keep to themselves and not reply. Wireless client connects to an AP whose SSID reply STATES THAT IT IS OPEN. Wireless client sends out DHCP packing saying, "May I have an address for access?" *Authoritative* DHCP server built into AP (or just residing on the network behind the AP) sends out reply, "Yes, you may have an address to access my network. Your address will be A.B.C.D and you can access the Internet by talking to gateway E.F.G.H." It could very well NOT give you an address, which would be like saying, "I'm sorry, you're not welcome here; I'm not going to tell you where this network's private resources are laid out, nor will I tell you how you may access our Internet link."
Courts need to understand the way these systems work.
Imagine if you shouted down a street, "What stores are open for public access/shopping right now?" Some stores didn't reply, some stores said, "We're not open to the public," and some stores said, "We're open for business!" You enter one of the stores, and there's a front desk with a secretary. You call out, "Sir/Ma'am, may I have a shopping basket to shop in your store?" The secretary might ignore you, or might reply, "No, you're not one of our official customers," or may hand you a basket labeled ABCD and say, "You can use this for 86,400 seconds, after which point we'd like for you to come back by the front desk, at which point we might take your basket, give you a new one, or let you keep using the same one."
Someone might bring up the "If you leave your front door unlocked, does that mean strangers should be allowed to enter?" analogy that is commonly referred to servers that are set up with negligible or nonexistant security, but I don't think it's a very good one. Why? That's not the case. Your wireless card broadcasts a request for SSIDs, or listens for AP's to broadcast their names in SSID packets. After linking to an AP, your wireless card *asks for* an address via DHCP. It does not steal the address of an existing computer on that network. It does not force its own address, except in the case of the 169.254.x.x ad-hoc system, which is akin to a bunch of strangers hanging out in a public park and calling out to each other, "My name is Bob J., if you want to chat, that's how you can get my attention," because the 169.254.x.x namespace is DESIGNATED as an ad-hoc namespace for when there is no authoritative DHCP server. Network standards exist for a reason, and there are VERY MUCH like human standards of common sense, common courtesy, and respect for one another's belongings, security, and privacy.
Here's a revised bike analogy, too: Network which broadcasts it's own SSID: Bike with a nametag prominently displayed on it. Network with hidden SSID: Bike with no nametag. Network that replies with SSID response when a wireless client broadcasts a request for reachable SSIDs: Bike with a small but visible nametag that is easily readable when someone walks up next to bike and looks at it. Network with DHCP server that gives out an address and Internet gateway: Bike with a sign that says, "You can borrow this for 86,400 seconds (~DHCP lease time), just return to this spot when done." Network with DHCP server that gives out an address but no gateway: Bike with a sign that says, "You can borrow this bike but remain within line-of-sight of this spot." Network with DHCP server that will not give out an addreess: Bike with a sign that says, "Please don't ride this bike, but feel free to hang out nearby with your own bike." Network with simple firewall: Bike with speed-limiter/governor. Network with heavily restrictive firewall: Bike on a long rope that won't go more than 300 yards or so. Network that redirects you to a webpage where you have to pay with credit card bef
I've always wanted to see better benchmarking systems that show how efficient various architectures are for various types of tasks, rather than just lists of MFLOPS and MIPS numbers. I know there's always a business push to be able to compare everything from vector-oriented supercomputers with huge registers to commodity clusters to massively parallel RISC arrays using just one single "magic" number (typically MFLOPS), but, this has so little effect on real-world performance. I want a benchmark to spit out dozens of numbers, and different architectures should show their particular strengths readily through those numbers, if the benchmark was designed well.
For an unsophisticated species, yes, of course. By unsophisticated, I'm referring to the purely genetic (hard-wired) aspects of human nature.
I think that culture has its own form of genes (language, customs, memetics, etc.) which, in some cases, does count. Also, it depends on what you mean by 'long run'---I can argue that the kinds of complex species that abound on this planet are irrelevant, because what counts in the long run is only the various types of mitochondria that are the "true" form of life. After all, they're much more stable and successful on very large time scales.
Suppose you have two Earths, A and B. On Earth A, there aren't any humans who would ever sacrifice themselves to benefit the all. Earth A never sends any astronauts into space, because nobody would endanger their potential descendents in that way. On Earth B, there are some humans who would. It may happen that Earth B is more successful at spreading its biosphere (humans and non-humans) to other planets. It's a level of abstraction upwards, with the same principles at play.
Actually, the real problem is that what you mean by "sex" isn't what psychologists mean by "sex". The same goes for "power", "gender", "impress", "belief", and a whole host of other concepts that appear to be simple, common, shared ideas but aren't.
Within a certain context, the statements in the article may be quite valid. That doesn't make them politically incorrect; political correctness has to do more with *our* notions of these concepts than the academic-psychological ones. From that, the title and tone of the article is rather laughable. But, the article does have some interesting theories in it. Those theories do have some backing, and it's not *entirely* Darwinian and neo-Freudian. (There are plenty of other, well-developed schools of thought in the realm of modern psychology besides that type of viewpoint, too!)
For example, when most people say "sex", they think of sexual desire, which is (in the realm of psychology) arguably just a side-effect (albeit a useful one in most types of reproductive species) of a single agent's involvement in a gene pool influenced by multiple agents. "Promoting all aspects of future human fitness" is something more akin to what psychologists think of when you say "sex."
There are a few other odd things in this article which I hope the book addresses---for example, some of the ideas simply don't stand up in any way, shape, or form in other schools of thought. I would expect that a book would leave ample room for analyses and discussions outside of the central viewpoint that the linked article seesm to hold.
Plus, one thing I would re-iterate is that although we are subconsciously influenced by our 'human nature', given our intellectual sophistication as a species, I should hope that, given that we are becoming aware of some of our subconscious motivations, we may analyze ourselves carefully enough so as to provide ourselves the options to behave in ways that may not favor our internal drives but could favor longer-term success and stability of human society and culture. The article does state at the beginning that environment and genes both make the man, and that the article will only discuss anthropological genetics, so bear that in mind. Your environment can have a lot to do with how you behave "above human nature", so, there's far more at play than that to which the article may allude.
I have a question for you... (I have some background in metaphysics, as well).
I invent a hallucinogenic, disassociative, or otherwise reality-altering drug. If someone ingests it, are they experiencing a qualia? I expect so, if you were to reason that the drug is similar to a sensory input.
Tool #1: Now, every good study is blind, so of course there is a group receiving a placebo. And, for the record, every good study is double-blind, so we cannot create arguments that involve the state of the observer.
Tool #2: Let's suppose I am very clever, and for any given qualia you can suggest, I can create a drug that seems to (does it?) induce the same qualia.
Here's my question: with these two tools, can I build any arguments for/against qualia?
And, hey, I can even jump back to the topic at large, and invoke (or can I?): Tool #3: In a different universe, all of the above happens, except that the outcome is slightly different: for example, maybe my drugs don't work; they don't produce the intended qualia, or they produce nothing at all. In that universe, though, must there also exist a class of qualia-recreating drugs? (Or, a better question would be, does there exist a universe wherein my chemistry does not create qualia for humans but another qualia does?) If it must (as I would think, since, if you will allow me to have my set of qualia drugs in some universe in the first place, I must be able to create a set of qualia drugs in any universe), this begs the question, then, of whether the fact that my drugs not mapping (by not sharing multiverse-identity) with that foreign set of (correctly inducing qualia in that universe) drugs indicates either a logical flaw or that this foreign universe is metaphysically corrupt (which it might be)?
[Would Lewis allow such a universe? Would Kripke be able to find an error in the identity that I've given to my set of qualia drugs?]
I think the generally-accepted criteria for a mainfame are: (1) multi-user with fine-grained security model (2) multiple access mechanisms (LAN, WAN, multiplexed terminals) (3) multiple storage layers (caches, core, paging devices, disk storage, backup media), with redundancy and partitioning (4) high-scalability, high-throughput busses (5) error detection and correction (ability to 'rewind' your virtual machine at least a few steps back) which typically requires CPU redundancy, very good management of CPU state, and SECDED memory (6) multiprogramming with good handling of parallelized tasks (7) batch execution, and automatic recovery from nearly every imaginable error condition
All of this needs to be pretty transparent to applications and users, too.
Only in the imperial-size US. Here, tables are 59" wide and have a variety of lengths. In the rest of the world, it's sort of a "one-size-fits-all" mentality, leading to S/M/L tables that are not only all 150cm wide, but all 400cm long as well.;)
Project idea: (1) domain resolver modification/hack that returns a "not found" result for domains that aren't real sites (maybe check a list of IP addresses used for domain parking / auctioning / squatting / spamming?) In short, if you mistype "ssh myserver.org", the result will be what you expect (host not found) rather than something misleading (connection refused, login incorrect, unknown server key, etc.) (2) browser hack that detects and blocks pages of this type, possibly trying to correct typos
Alaska to Helsinki works, though. After playing around, I see they seem to have roadmaps for the US, UK, and EU, but experimenting with North Asia, North Africa, Central America, South America, and East Asia didn't result in much luck (for me, at least).
I think one of the "Life comes at you fast" commercials (was that liberty mutual insurance? who knows) said it best (something like this): [View of interior of car] Man is driving in car with GPS. GPS: "Left turn, 50 ft.".. Man turns left. GPS: "Right turn, 15 ft.".. [View of store] Car smashes through window of storefront.
Ancient greek philosophers wandered around outside a lot, so the stories go. I'm curious about where lawmakers did their work, traditionally; probably inside buildings, but how high were the ceilings? I checked the latest revision of wikipedia's page on Ancient Greek law (as of the time of posting this comment) to see if there were any pictures of ancient Greek law buildings, but, there were only references to "Ancient Greek poop" and "Roman crap." This could be symbolically indicative of legislatures in low-ceiling buildings, but I suspect it's just random vandalism...
Let's just start making blog posts where the first letter of each word fits one of these patterns (and include the key via the subject line). Hell, you could write the README to a hddvd playing program so that each paragraph started with one letter, and the Makefile could generate the key from the README, so you wouldn't be distributing the key with the program...
Actually, it looks like you do take a snapshot from the screenshot, and with how some programs are designed, this might be sometimes better if you're going to use it for logs or programs that auto-save every N minutes. I can't get the page to load, and the coral cache isn't NS resolving (?), so I'm not completely sure, but the wikipedia page on Versioning file systems implies that ext3cow is snapshot-based.
I want to put ext3cow together with SELinux and call it Secure Cow---no, better yet, Sacred Cow. How about it?
Under VMS (Files-11 is a versioning FS), there are many ways of opening a file, and I believe appending records to a record-oriented file doesn't actually create a new version (correct me if I'm wrong), which is a good idea for logs; the number of retained versions is also adjustable.
Actually, I would say the analogy would be more accurate if done this way: Windows-user patient visiting Windows-OS doctor: Doctor: Welcome to My Visit. Please note: all information contained in this visit is proprietary medical information. Am I a real doctor? Would you like to call the ADA and ensure my license is Genuine? Patient: Uh, that's okay. I'd rather just get on to what's wrong. Doctor: Okay. Say "Start" to begin! Patient:... Start?... Doctor, something feels wrong. I think my wrist is broken. Doctor: What's that, you say? Your breath is rotten? Here's a prescription for breathmints. Is that what you needed? Patient: No, not my breath, I said my wrist. Could you take a look at it? [ Doctor shines light in Patient's ears. ] Doctor: Your problem appears to be a herniated disc, but because you have red hair, I am unable to offer any treatment. Would you like me to submit a report about your hair color to the publisher of my medical texts? Patient: Uh, no thanks. [ Doctor runs quickly out of the room. ]
Linux-user patient visiting Linux-distribution doctor: Doctor, skimming a textbook: This is Gray's Anatomy, 23rd Edition. Reading skeletal charts... done. Reading cardiovascular charts... done. Reading male groin chart... done. Reading female groin chart... WARNING: PATIENT DOES NOT HAVE FEMALE OPTIONS INSTALLED---CONTINUING ANYWAY. Reading blood pressure chart... rescaling... done. WARNING: YOUR LOCALE IS SET TO "IMPERIAL UNITS". METRIC UNITS WILL BE THE ONLY TYPE SUPPORTED IN THE 40TH EDITION! Done. [ Doctor stares blankly at patient. ] Patient:... Um, something is wrong with my wrist. Doctor: Ok. Patient:... Could you take an X-ray or something? Doctor: What primary focus depth for the X-ray? Patient: What do you mean? [ Doctor hands patient a book on X-rays. Patient skims through for a few minutes. ] Patient: Oh, aim for about 2cm penetration for my wrist. [ Doctor X-rays wrist. ] Doctor: Your X-ray has been placed in the hospital's default location. Consult with the front desk staff to change where your X-rays are stored. Patient: Can you tell me what's wrong? Doctor: I don't understand. Patient: Please examine my X-ray for problems. Doctor: Which X-ray? Patient:... uh, the one in the hospital's default location. [ Doctor examines X-ray, which takes a mere fraction of a second. ] Doctor: Ulna and Radius are properly spaced. All ligaments are intact. Capitate is cropped at the edge of the slide. Pisiform is intact. Triquetrum is intact. GRAYS_SCAPHOID_CHECK: STUB! Continuing. NOTICE: Lunate is not intact. Patient: Does that mean I need surgery? Doctor: Please see "Lunate HOWTO." [ Doctor hands patient a file of papers. Patient reads through them. ] Patient: Uhh, I think I just need a cast for two months, from what I can make of this. I guess I also need to schedule for a follow-up when it's time to remove it. Doctor: What color would you like your cast to be? What day of the week two months from now? Patient: White is fine. And, a Monday, preferably in the morning. Doctor: "White" is ambiguous. Say "fine" again to get a list of possibilities. We have appointments beginning at 1300-hours Universal Coordinated Time. Patient: Just use the first kind of "white" you have, I don't care. Umm, that would be starting at 9AM Eastern/daylight, right? Doctor: "White, beige-white" chosen. Yes, that is 1300-hours Universal Coordinated Time. Patient: Okay. Schedule me for 1300 then. Doctor: Okay. Scheduled. [ Doctor applies cast to patient. ] Patient: Thanks. Do I pay here, or out front? Doctor: Payment is optional. All our services are essentially free-as-in-beer but funded by contributions. More importantly, though, all of our medical treatment is free-as-in-speech. This means that you are allowed to discuss your treatment with whomever you like or take not
I don't see how anyone with a good understanding of the Scientific Process could possibly misunderstand this article, you know? It is clearly stating that we have proved that the reason people talk on cell phones so much is that their minds have been infected with a parasitic fungus, and we shouldn't be worried about accidentally swallowing bees from flopping our mouths open whilst we walk-and-talk.
I always gave my teachers *my* conditions. I figure, the classroom is supposed to be a cooperative environment, so to some extent the teachers and students need to be on similar levels, rather than dictator/slave mode. So, teachers hand out their rules and syllabi, and I hand them my disclaimer with submitted essays. It was typically something like (for creative writing), "This essay is intended to be fictional and not represent any real persons or things. Any inappropriate behavior by the characters in this essay is not intended to represent the author's point of view. The author hereby relinquishes responsibility for the reader's interpretation of the writing." or something much shorter, such as, "Depictions in this creative essay do not actually reflect my feelings or real intentions; this is a purely explorative work." I didn't put this in all assignments; just stuff that I thought might raise some eyebrows.
Sometimes teachers would just mark "OK" next to it; some would mark "Clever!" and some would mark, "You don't need to put this." I got pulled aside a couple times and asked why I put that, and I more or less re-iterated the disclaimer: "I wrote that because I wanted to convey that, since this is creative writing, it's not supposed to be realistic, and it doesn't represent my actual opinions on the subject matter." I think only one teacher actually got annoyed, so I said, "Sorry---I just wanted to make sure anyone reading it understood my mindset while writing it. I won't put anything like that again." (and didn't.)
Thankfully, I stayed out of trouble:)
Most of my depictions of deviant behavior were supposed to be somewhat unrealistic, anyway: "The extraterrestrials retreated their spacecraft to a safe distance, then fired a high-energy beam at Earth, turning humanity into lumps of organic matter." OR "Bob grabbed Sarah by the throat. Unsatisfied with her explanation of homework problem number 43, he broke her neck, as he did with most of his previous tutors. He never quite understood why he had problems getting another student to replace his old, late tutor." OR "Joe ordered the McAppendix. After a few bites, he decided that Soylent Green was indeed more flavorful, even though the McAppendix was arguably fresher food." OR "After being suspended yet again for harassing other students, McNeal took out his pack of the wiley, addictive breathmints that were likely the source of his problematic behavior. No longer satisfied with simply dissolving the breathmint sublingually, he was now alternating between freebasing and mainlining the damn things."
I was cautious, though, and slowly edged into the territory of the bizarre, so that if I found a teacher who just wouldn't tolerate it, I would revert to writing boring things to submit for assignments.
Re:Social hack - use "bullfight" for "speed trap".
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Is Your GPS Naive?
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[not trying to pick a fight here, but I can't think of a better way to explain this than hopping up on a soapbox]... and that's an example of why roadways aren't safer. I've seen some of the kindest, calmest people turn into short-fuesd freaks as soon as they get behind the wheel.
Why? What's the point of risking your life and everyone else's? Why does everyone seem to think that they are invulnerable?
Does anybody ever stop to think about the fact that cars are dangerous and heavy machinery that carry valuable human passengers, and that humans are much more delicate than cars? Humans have emotions, and that's another variable that enters the system, too. Road rage should be punished just as much as driving while intoxicated.
Cars are designed to be easy to drive, and for a good reason: if they were hard to drive, that would only increase the risks. When it's raining, though, it's no longer easy to operate a vehicle, and people get a little nervous. Then, they actually realize driving is risky and carries a lot of responsibility. Sometimes I think I like to drive when it's raining better than when it's dry, despite the additional hazards, simply because other drivers are actually cautious and not flying along at breakneck speed.
I think drivers aren't trained enough. When you're on the road, you're effectively entrusting your life to a crowd of people who have managed to answer most of an exam correctly and successfully demonstrate that they can change lanes and parallel park.
How about this: every driver is required to do 50 hours per year of stress testing in a virtual reality simulator. The simulator would be much like driving a real car, and would simulate bad weather, heavy traffic, and, most of all, enraged drivers on the road.
Driver's Ed. classes also don't teach many good "navigation recovery" techniques. For example, suppose you need to merge onto an interstate, cross three lanes, and exit through a weave, all within a half of a mile. If the traffic is light and the visibility is good, you'd probably be just fine, but if it isn't, you shouldn't force your way through traffic or do reckless things just to make it to that exit. Driver's Ed. classes need to teach people about what to do when they miss their exit, how to estimate how long it will take to meander through a weave area, etc. Sometimes it's smarter to deliberately pass your exit and back-track rather than do something hazardous.
People need to be less lazy and more responsible. Don't sleep until the last possible minute and race to work. Get up ten minutes earlier and drive safely. Which would you pick: losing ten minutes of sleep, or possibly losing your life?
Drivers need to be sympathetic to other drivers. Everyone gets lost sometimes, everyone accidentally cuts somebody off sometimes, and everyone ends up in the wrong lane sometimes. Bad stuff simply happens. Humans make mistakes. Maps have errors. Roadsigns get knocked over or bent in the wrong direction. Plus, it's not like we drive the exact same routes every day. People wind up in unfamiliar territory all the time, and you can't expect them to be clairvoyant, precognitive, nor descrying all loci of their intended circuit perfectly.
Some of what I've talked about is covered in defensive driving classes, but, everyone who drives a vehicle ought to have at least triple the training that you get out of several defensive driving classes.
True, it is hard to get in touch with server admins, and they can be busy folk, possibly not speaking English as well.
Idea: you can put things like SPF in the TXT record for your domain's DNS. How about a flag: NUB - Notify Upon Blacklisting - that could be put in the TXT? As long as the SOA records have valid e-mail addresses that someone does read, it'd be helpful.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at this timeline (I'm blending a lot of physical interpretations here):
Time -2: Universe is (inversely) frozen in time, i.e. at a time singularity; the (imaginary) movie ends, though all the frames still exist "between" the singularities #-2 and #0
Time -1: Universe is an (inversely) expanding 4-dimensional Lorentzian geometry, approaching maximum (imaginary) entropy (time is parabolic; this is one argument being currently studied)
Time 0: Universe is a singularity with neither time nor space (where does the future go? where does the space go? where does the imaginary past go? where did the imaginary space go? into a singularity, of course, with no (imaginary) history and no dimension!); the movie begins / the imaginary movie ends (same thing)
Time 1: Universe is an expanding 4-dimensional Lorentzian geometry, approaching maximum entropy
Time 2: Universe is frozen in time, i.e. at a time singularity; the movie ends, though all the frames still exist "between" the singularities #0 and #2
Note: an imaginary observer would see this chart flipped, and wouldn't know he was imaginary. From his perspective, we are imaginary.
Perhaps a time-wise observer would approach the singularity (#2; an imaginary time-wise observer, #-2) at an ever-decreasing (or ever-increasing) rate? By ever-decreasing (or ever-increasing?), of course, time isn't stretching out time-wise (it can't do that), but stretching out space-wise: the universe's expansion approaches a maximum rate (would the distance between every point be expanding at the speed of light? that would render communication between any two points impossible, which might be at the point of time singularity?).
If this time-singularity interpretation is applied to loop quantum gravity, you end up with an odd effect where the geometric complexity of the universe approaches a finite limit. Or, applied to time atoms, we just have a limited number of them.
Disclaimer: I am (obviously) not a physicist.
The many flawed discussions of a 'many worlds' interpretation are annoying to people who study David Lewis' Multiverse, which has nothing to do with QM but resembles the 'many worlds' interpretation in a few ways...
Here's my (mostly uninformed) opinion:
Humans are only 'alive' in the sense that they require hundreds of supporting organisms and a very specific environment with many specific characteristics in order to complete the necessary criteria to be called a living organism. In this sense, a virus could definitely be a part of a 'living organism,' thought it wouldn't be a critical component, unless the virus was necessary to keep the organism's growth and/or reproduction rates in check.
The simplest case of 'living organism' would perhaps be a bacterium that needs only sunlight (or a stream of charged particles, or a rotating magnetic field whose rotation is held constant by input of external energy whenever its energy/momentum is taken up by the living organism, or an electric field whose energy is held constant by its generating source whenever energy is removed, etc.; in other words, a steady supply of energy) and lives in perfect stasis with its environment other than giving off excess heat; in other words, death rate is exactly growth rate, and the resources taken from the environment, when eventually returned to it, are in the same form and same proportions, have not created any byproducts, and have not 'used up' any chemicals (that are not also simultaneously being output in the same quantity). In other words, a self-contained machine that needs only a constant supply of energy to perpetuate its own internal energy level (body temperature) while continuously rebuilding its own components and having the ability to adapt to modifications in the amount of resources available in the environment (give it a bigger biosphere, the population grows and hits a new steady-state value; take away a portion of the biosphere, the population shrinks and hits a new steady-state value).
An organism does not generally stand alone. We've already created little globes that can sit out in orbit absorbing photons and giving off heat, living in stasis, containing a miniature biosphere with a handful of interdependent organisms; that's one (very different, occuring at a different level) form of creation of artifical life (by designing a new biosphere that it stable by itself) by modifying some existing natural biosphere, usually by reducing it to only its critical components.
If we can design a self-replicating molecule that can live in a sea of ammonia (for example), and reaches a population stasis by not exceeding a certain concentration relative to within the sea, that would be another example of artifical life. (Energy input could be by photon bombardment, and the 'death' of the self-replicating molecule should be considered its occasional breakdown from the photon bombardment and/or breakdown when the available ammonia (in ratio to the population) is too low.
(Hoping this doesn't sound like a troll nor flamebait!)
My theory: decently complex ("thinking" and not purely reflexive) brains construct an always-limited but nevertheless-good-at-predicting internal model of the outside world. There are many parts of the brain that feed this model in a huge variety of ways, including the model itself via an adaptive feedback network that exhibits highly comlpex plasticity. Your brain *expects* the outside world to tend to differ from your internal model, and uses that as a basis for refining the model. I think these differences (both by prediction and by recall of past models, a.k.a. memories) and refinements account for a wealth of the qualia of experiencing.
From my perspective, there are countless thought-experiments, introspections, and obervations of the long-term and short-term behavior of humans and all fairly intelligent non-human animals (perhaps sentient, though not to our level, and lacking our amazing communication abilities which enable the rapid spread of ideas, something that contributes to very rapid learning) that support this model. Though, I am curious if there are significant number of good counter-examples (I don't really subscribe to some of the common methods of philosophy and metaphysics wherein one counterexample deeply invalidates a model, in totality).
What you put in the chroot jail also matters. setuid/setgid programs can elevate priveleges, and then you might be able to break out of the jail, especially if a user is able to play tricks with his chroot'ed filesystem (check those directory permissions!); you don't need LD_PRELOAD (which is ignored for setuid programs, obviously, to prevent libc hacks) if you can mess with ld.so and /lib. A procfs mounted in the chroot jail (so 'ps' works) has /proc/1/cwd being the root of the real filesystem.
:)
Of course, the best practice is to put the minimum of what is necessary in a chroot jail (and be careful about what you might be tempted to hard-link to save on disk space) and have tripwire daemons spying on the chroot jail just in case.
VMS has had the philosophy of "users who need a little administrative ability get those special permissions and ONLY those special permissions" for years, and modern security-enhanced UNIX and Linux distributions have implemented that functionality. If any users need to do anything fancy, you should be running a security-enhanced distribution by now
I would say that licensing something under a CC license that allows commercial use nearly impliess the photographer *had* gotten a model release. Regardless of how the law sees it, that's how it seems to be to me, logically speaking.
As far as I knew, the sytem goes something like this:
Wireless client sends out SSID requests, asking "What connections are aavailable?"
APs respond with their names via SSID broadcasts, "Hello, I am XXX, and I am open (or) secured," or they may keep to themselves and not reply.
Wireless client connects to an AP whose SSID reply STATES THAT IT IS OPEN.
Wireless client sends out DHCP packing saying, "May I have an address for access?"
*Authoritative* DHCP server built into AP (or just residing on the network behind the AP) sends out reply, "Yes, you may have an address to access my network. Your address will be A.B.C.D and you can access the Internet by talking to gateway E.F.G.H." It could very well NOT give you an address, which would be like saying, "I'm sorry, you're not welcome here; I'm not going to tell you where this network's private resources are laid out, nor will I tell you how you may access our Internet link."
Courts need to understand the way these systems work.
Imagine if you shouted down a street, "What stores are open for public access/shopping right now?" Some stores didn't reply, some stores said, "We're not open to the public," and some stores said, "We're open for business!" You enter one of the stores, and there's a front desk with a secretary. You call out, "Sir/Ma'am, may I have a shopping basket to shop in your store?" The secretary might ignore you, or might reply, "No, you're not one of our official customers," or may hand you a basket labeled ABCD and say, "You can use this for 86,400 seconds, after which point we'd like for you to come back by the front desk, at which point we might take your basket, give you a new one, or let you keep using the same one."
Someone might bring up the "If you leave your front door unlocked, does that mean strangers should be allowed to enter?" analogy that is commonly referred to servers that are set up with negligible or nonexistant security, but I don't think it's a very good one. Why? That's not the case. Your wireless card broadcasts a request for SSIDs, or listens for AP's to broadcast their names in SSID packets. After linking to an AP, your wireless card *asks for* an address via DHCP. It does not steal the address of an existing computer on that network. It does not force its own address, except in the case of the 169.254.x.x ad-hoc system, which is akin to a bunch of strangers hanging out in a public park and calling out to each other, "My name is Bob J., if you want to chat, that's how you can get my attention," because the 169.254.x.x namespace is DESIGNATED as an ad-hoc namespace for when there is no authoritative DHCP server. Network standards exist for a reason, and there are VERY MUCH like human standards of common sense, common courtesy, and respect for one another's belongings, security, and privacy.
Here's a revised bike analogy, too:
Network which broadcasts it's own SSID: Bike with a nametag prominently displayed on it.
Network with hidden SSID: Bike with no nametag.
Network that replies with SSID response when a wireless client broadcasts a request for reachable SSIDs: Bike with a small but visible nametag that is easily readable when someone walks up next to bike and looks at it.
Network with DHCP server that gives out an address and Internet gateway: Bike with a sign that says, "You can borrow this for 86,400 seconds (~DHCP lease time), just return to this spot when done."
Network with DHCP server that gives out an address but no gateway: Bike with a sign that says, "You can borrow this bike but remain within line-of-sight of this spot."
Network with DHCP server that will not give out an addreess: Bike with a sign that says, "Please don't ride this bike, but feel free to hang out nearby with your own bike."
Network with simple firewall: Bike with speed-limiter/governor.
Network with heavily restrictive firewall: Bike on a long rope that won't go more than 300 yards or so.
Network that redirects you to a webpage where you have to pay with credit card bef
I've always wanted to see better benchmarking systems that show how efficient various architectures are for various types of tasks, rather than just lists of MFLOPS and MIPS numbers. I know there's always a business push to be able to compare everything from vector-oriented supercomputers with huge registers to commodity clusters to massively parallel RISC arrays using just one single "magic" number (typically MFLOPS), but, this has so little effect on real-world performance. I want a benchmark to spit out dozens of numbers, and different architectures should show their particular strengths readily through those numbers, if the benchmark was designed well.
For an unsophisticated species, yes, of course. By unsophisticated, I'm referring to the purely genetic (hard-wired) aspects of human nature.
I think that culture has its own form of genes (language, customs, memetics, etc.) which, in some cases, does count. Also, it depends on what you mean by 'long run'---I can argue that the kinds of complex species that abound on this planet are irrelevant, because what counts in the long run is only the various types of mitochondria that are the "true" form of life. After all, they're much more stable and successful on very large time scales.
Suppose you have two Earths, A and B. On Earth A, there aren't any humans who would ever sacrifice themselves to benefit the all. Earth A never sends any astronauts into space, because nobody would endanger their potential descendents in that way. On Earth B, there are some humans who would. It may happen that Earth B is more successful at spreading its biosphere (humans and non-humans) to other planets. It's a level of abstraction upwards, with the same principles at play.
Actually, the real problem is that what you mean by "sex" isn't what psychologists mean by "sex". The same goes for "power", "gender", "impress", "belief", and a whole host of other concepts that appear to be simple, common, shared ideas but aren't.
Within a certain context, the statements in the article may be quite valid. That doesn't make them politically incorrect; political correctness has to do more with *our* notions of these concepts than the academic-psychological ones. From that, the title and tone of the article is rather laughable. But, the article does have some interesting theories in it. Those theories do have some backing, and it's not *entirely* Darwinian and neo-Freudian. (There are plenty of other, well-developed schools of thought in the realm of modern psychology besides that type of viewpoint, too!)
For example, when most people say "sex", they think of sexual desire, which is (in the realm of psychology) arguably just a side-effect (albeit a useful one in most types of reproductive species) of a single agent's involvement in a gene pool influenced by multiple agents. "Promoting all aspects of future human fitness" is something more akin to what psychologists think of when you say "sex."
There are a few other odd things in this article which I hope the book addresses---for example, some of the ideas simply don't stand up in any way, shape, or form in other schools of thought. I would expect that a book would leave ample room for analyses and discussions outside of the central viewpoint that the linked article seesm to hold.
Plus, one thing I would re-iterate is that although we are subconsciously influenced by our 'human nature', given our intellectual sophistication as a species, I should hope that, given that we are becoming aware of some of our subconscious motivations, we may analyze ourselves carefully enough so as to provide ourselves the options to behave in ways that may not favor our internal drives but could favor longer-term success and stability of human society and culture. The article does state at the beginning that environment and genes both make the man, and that the article will only discuss anthropological genetics, so bear that in mind. Your environment can have a lot to do with how you behave "above human nature", so, there's far more at play than that to which the article may allude.
I have a question for you... (I have some background in metaphysics, as well).
I invent a hallucinogenic, disassociative, or otherwise reality-altering drug.
If someone ingests it, are they experiencing a qualia? I expect so, if you were to reason that the drug is similar to a sensory input.
Tool #1:
Now, every good study is blind, so of course there is a group receiving a placebo. And, for the record, every good study is double-blind, so we cannot create arguments that involve the state of the observer.
Tool #2:
Let's suppose I am very clever, and for any given qualia you can suggest, I can create a drug that seems to (does it?) induce the same qualia.
Here's my question: with these two tools, can I build any arguments for/against qualia?
And, hey, I can even jump back to the topic at large, and invoke (or can I?):
Tool #3:
In a different universe, all of the above happens, except that the outcome is slightly different: for example, maybe my drugs don't work; they don't produce the intended qualia, or they produce nothing at all. In that universe, though, must there also exist a class of qualia-recreating drugs? (Or, a better question would be, does there exist a universe wherein my chemistry does not create qualia for humans but another qualia does?) If it must (as I would think, since, if you will allow me to have my set of qualia drugs in some universe in the first place, I must be able to create a set of qualia drugs in any universe), this begs the question, then, of whether the fact that my drugs not mapping (by not sharing multiverse-identity) with that foreign set of (correctly inducing qualia in that universe) drugs indicates either a logical flaw or that this foreign universe is metaphysically corrupt (which it might be)?
[Would Lewis allow such a universe? Would Kripke be able to find an error in the identity that I've given to my set of qualia drugs?]
I think the generally-accepted criteria for a mainfame are:
(1) multi-user with fine-grained security model
(2) multiple access mechanisms (LAN, WAN, multiplexed terminals)
(3) multiple storage layers (caches, core, paging devices, disk storage, backup media), with redundancy and partitioning
(4) high-scalability, high-throughput busses
(5) error detection and correction (ability to 'rewind' your virtual machine at least a few steps back) which typically requires CPU redundancy, very good management of CPU state, and SECDED memory
(6) multiprogramming with good handling of parallelized tasks
(7) batch execution, and automatic recovery from nearly every imaginable error condition
All of this needs to be pretty transparent to applications and users, too.
Only in the imperial-size US. Here, tables are 59" wide and have a variety of lengths. In the rest of the world, it's sort of a "one-size-fits-all" mentality, leading to S/M/L tables that are not only all 150cm wide, but all 400cm long as well. ;)
Project idea:
(1) domain resolver modification/hack that returns a "not found" result for domains that aren't real sites (maybe check a list of IP addresses used for domain parking / auctioning / squatting / spamming?) In short, if you mistype "ssh myserver.org", the result will be what you expect (host not found) rather than something misleading (connection refused, login incorrect, unknown server key, etc.)
(2) browser hack that detects and blocks pages of this type, possibly trying to correct typos
Actually, it looks like #2 has already been done... cool =)
Alaska to Helsinki works, though. After playing around, I see they seem to have roadmaps for the US, UK, and EU, but experimenting with North Asia, North Africa, Central America, South America, and East Asia didn't result in much luck (for me, at least).
.. ..
I think one of the "Life comes at you fast" commercials (was that liberty mutual insurance? who knows) said it best (something like this):
[View of interior of car]
Man is driving in car with GPS.
GPS: "Left turn, 50 ft."
Man turns left.
GPS: "Right turn, 15 ft."
[View of store]
Car smashes through window of storefront.
What about outdoors versus indoors?
Ancient greek philosophers wandered around outside a lot, so the stories go. I'm curious about where lawmakers did their work, traditionally; probably inside buildings, but how high were the ceilings?
I checked the latest revision of wikipedia's page on Ancient Greek law (as of the time of posting this comment) to see if there were any pictures of ancient Greek law buildings, but, there were only references to "Ancient Greek poop" and "Roman crap." This could be symbolically indicative of legislatures in low-ceiling buildings, but I suspect it's just random vandalism...
I just wrote this:
/* start char */ /* byte # */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
unsigned char key[16] = {
0x09, 0xf9, 0x11, 0x02,
0x9d, 0x74, 0xe3, 0x5b,
0xd8, 0x41, 0x56, 0xc5,
0x63, 0x56, 0x88, 0xc0};
int main() {
int s;
int b;
for(s = 65 ; s <= 75 ; ++s) {
printf("Start = %c: ", s);
for(b = 0 ; b < 16 ; ++b) {
fputc(s + ((key[b] & 0xf0) >> 4), stdout);
fputc(s + (key[b] & 0x0f), stdout);
}
fputc('\n', stdout);
}
exit(0);
return 0;
}
And its output:
Start = A: AJPJBBACJNHEODFLNIEBFGMFGDFGIIMA
Start = B: BKQKCCBDKOIFPEGMOJFCGHNGHEGHJJNB
Start = C: CLRLDDCELPJGQFHNPKGDHIOHIFHIKKOC
Start = D: DMSMEEDFMQKHRGIOQLHEIJPIJGIJLLPD
Start = E: ENTNFFEGNRLISHJPRMIFJKQJKHJKMMQE
Start = F: FOUOGGFHOSMJTIKQSNJGKLRKLIKLNNRF
Start = G: GPVPHHGIPTNKUJLRTOKHLMSLMJLMOOSG
Start = H: HQWQIIHJQUOLVKMSUPLIMNTMNKMNPPTH
Start = I: IRXRJJIKRVPMWLNTVQMJNOUNOLNOQQUI
Start = J: JSYSKKJLSWQNXMOUWRNKOPVOPMOPRRVJ
Start = K: KTZTLLKMTXROYNPVXSOLPQWPQNPQSSWK
Let's just start making blog posts where the first letter of each word fits one of these patterns (and include the key via the subject line). Hell, you could write the README to a hddvd playing program so that each paragraph started with one letter, and the Makefile could generate the key from the README, so you wouldn't be distributing the key with the program...
MuPAD light seems to still be around, if you look hard enough :)
Actually, it looks like you do take a snapshot from the screenshot, and with how some programs are designed, this might be sometimes better if you're going to use it for logs or programs that auto-save every N minutes. I can't get the page to load, and the coral cache isn't NS resolving (?), so I'm not completely sure, but the wikipedia page on Versioning file systems implies that ext3cow is snapshot-based.
I want to put ext3cow together with SELinux and call it Secure Cow---no, better yet, Sacred Cow. How about it?
Under VMS (Files-11 is a versioning FS), there are many ways of opening a file, and I believe appending records to a record-oriented file doesn't actually create a new version (correct me if I'm wrong), which is a good idea for logs; the number of retained versions is also adjustable.
http://n0x.org/copyfs/ and http://wayback.sourceforge.net/ are purportedly two versioning FS's for linux.
Actually, I would say the analogy would be more accurate if done this way: ... Start? ... Doctor, something feels wrong. I think my wrist is broken.
... Um, something is wrong with my wrist. ... Could you take an X-ray or something? ... uh, the one in the hospital's default location.
Windows-user patient visiting Windows-OS doctor:
Doctor: Welcome to My Visit. Please note: all information contained in this visit is proprietary medical information. Am I a real doctor? Would you like to call the ADA and ensure my license is Genuine?
Patient: Uh, that's okay. I'd rather just get on to what's wrong.
Doctor: Okay. Say "Start" to begin!
Patient:
Doctor: What's that, you say? Your breath is rotten? Here's a prescription for breathmints. Is that what you needed?
Patient: No, not my breath, I said my wrist. Could you take a look at it?
[ Doctor shines light in Patient's ears. ]
Doctor: Your problem appears to be a herniated disc, but because you have red hair, I am unable to offer any treatment. Would you like me to submit a report about your hair color to the publisher of my medical texts?
Patient: Uh, no thanks.
[ Doctor runs quickly out of the room. ]
Linux-user patient visiting Linux-distribution doctor:
Doctor, skimming a textbook: This is Gray's Anatomy, 23rd Edition. Reading skeletal charts... done. Reading cardiovascular charts... done. Reading male groin chart... done. Reading female groin chart... WARNING: PATIENT DOES NOT HAVE FEMALE OPTIONS INSTALLED---CONTINUING ANYWAY. Reading blood pressure chart... rescaling... done. WARNING: YOUR LOCALE IS SET TO "IMPERIAL UNITS". METRIC UNITS WILL BE THE ONLY TYPE SUPPORTED IN THE 40TH EDITION! Done.
[ Doctor stares blankly at patient. ]
Patient:
Doctor: Ok.
Patient:
Doctor: What primary focus depth for the X-ray?
Patient: What do you mean?
[ Doctor hands patient a book on X-rays. Patient skims through for a few minutes. ]
Patient: Oh, aim for about 2cm penetration for my wrist.
[ Doctor X-rays wrist. ]
Doctor: Your X-ray has been placed in the hospital's default location. Consult with the front desk staff to change where your X-rays are stored.
Patient: Can you tell me what's wrong?
Doctor: I don't understand.
Patient: Please examine my X-ray for problems.
Doctor: Which X-ray?
Patient:
[ Doctor examines X-ray, which takes a mere fraction of a second. ]
Doctor: Ulna and Radius are properly spaced. All ligaments are intact. Capitate is cropped at the edge of the slide. Pisiform is intact. Triquetrum is intact. GRAYS_SCAPHOID_CHECK: STUB! Continuing. NOTICE: Lunate is not intact.
Patient: Does that mean I need surgery?
Doctor: Please see "Lunate HOWTO."
[ Doctor hands patient a file of papers. Patient reads through them. ]
Patient: Uhh, I think I just need a cast for two months, from what I can make of this. I guess I also need to schedule for a follow-up when it's time to remove it.
Doctor: What color would you like your cast to be? What day of the week two months from now?
Patient: White is fine. And, a Monday, preferably in the morning.
Doctor: "White" is ambiguous. Say "fine" again to get a list of possibilities. We have appointments beginning at 1300-hours Universal Coordinated Time.
Patient: Just use the first kind of "white" you have, I don't care. Umm, that would be starting at 9AM Eastern/daylight, right?
Doctor: "White, beige-white" chosen. Yes, that is 1300-hours Universal Coordinated Time.
Patient: Okay. Schedule me for 1300 then.
Doctor: Okay. Scheduled.
[ Doctor applies cast to patient. ]
Patient: Thanks. Do I pay here, or out front?
Doctor: Payment is optional. All our services are essentially free-as-in-beer but funded by contributions. More importantly, though, all of our medical treatment is free-as-in-speech. This means that you are allowed to discuss your treatment with whomever you like or take not
I don't see how anyone with a good understanding of the Scientific Process could possibly misunderstand this article, you know? It is clearly stating that we have proved that the reason people talk on cell phones so much is that their minds have been infected with a parasitic fungus, and we shouldn't be worried about accidentally swallowing bees from flopping our mouths open whilst we walk-and-talk.
I always gave my teachers *my* conditions. I figure, the classroom is supposed to be a cooperative environment, so to some extent the teachers and students need to be on similar levels, rather than dictator/slave mode. So, teachers hand out their rules and syllabi, and I hand them my disclaimer with submitted essays.
:)
It was typically something like (for creative writing), "This essay is intended to be fictional and not represent any real persons or things. Any inappropriate behavior by the characters in this essay is not intended to represent the author's point of view. The author hereby relinquishes responsibility for the reader's interpretation of the writing." or something much shorter, such as, "Depictions in this creative essay do not actually reflect my feelings or real intentions; this is a purely explorative work." I didn't put this in all assignments; just stuff that I thought might raise some eyebrows.
Sometimes teachers would just mark "OK" next to it; some would mark "Clever!" and some would mark, "You don't need to put this." I got pulled aside a couple times and asked why I put that, and I more or less re-iterated the disclaimer: "I wrote that because I wanted to convey that, since this is creative writing, it's not supposed to be realistic, and it doesn't represent my actual opinions on the subject matter." I think only one teacher actually got annoyed, so I said, "Sorry---I just wanted to make sure anyone reading it understood my mindset while writing it. I won't put anything like that again." (and didn't.)
Thankfully, I stayed out of trouble
Most of my depictions of deviant behavior were supposed to be somewhat unrealistic, anyway:
"The extraterrestrials retreated their spacecraft to a safe distance, then fired a high-energy beam at Earth, turning humanity into lumps of organic matter." OR "Bob grabbed Sarah by the throat. Unsatisfied with her explanation of homework problem number 43, he broke her neck, as he did with most of his previous tutors. He never quite understood why he had problems getting another student to replace his old, late tutor." OR "Joe ordered the McAppendix. After a few bites, he decided that Soylent Green was indeed more flavorful, even though the McAppendix was arguably fresher food." OR "After being suspended yet again for harassing other students, McNeal took out his pack of the wiley, addictive breathmints that were likely the source of his problematic behavior. No longer satisfied with simply dissolving the breathmint sublingually, he was now alternating between freebasing and mainlining the damn things."
I was cautious, though, and slowly edged into the territory of the bizarre, so that if I found a teacher who just wouldn't tolerate it, I would revert to writing boring things to submit for assignments.
Quantization may be showing up in more and more unexpected places, which may lead to the "floating-opint error" effects... here's some links:# Loop_quantization- raft-future1 99/?searchterm=loop%20quantum%20gravityt m
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/oct/jarons-world
http://discovermagazine.com/1993/apr/loopsofspace
http://itotd.com/articles/582/quantized-time/
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf103/sf103a05.h
[not trying to pick a fight here, but I can't think of a better way to explain this than hopping up on a soapbox] ... and that's an example of why roadways aren't safer. I've seen some of the kindest, calmest people turn into short-fuesd freaks as soon as they get behind the wheel.
Why? What's the point of risking your life and everyone else's? Why does everyone seem to think that they are invulnerable?
Does anybody ever stop to think about the fact that cars are dangerous and heavy machinery that carry valuable human passengers, and that humans are much more delicate than cars? Humans have emotions, and that's another variable that enters the system, too. Road rage should be punished just as much as driving while intoxicated.
Cars are designed to be easy to drive, and for a good reason: if they were hard to drive, that would only increase the risks. When it's raining, though, it's no longer easy to operate a vehicle, and people get a little nervous. Then, they actually realize driving is risky and carries a lot of responsibility. Sometimes I think I like to drive when it's raining better than when it's dry, despite the additional hazards, simply because other drivers are actually cautious and not flying along at breakneck speed.
I think drivers aren't trained enough. When you're on the road, you're effectively entrusting your life to a crowd of people who have managed to answer most of an exam correctly and successfully demonstrate that they can change lanes and parallel park.
How about this: every driver is required to do 50 hours per year of stress testing in a virtual reality simulator. The simulator would be much like driving a real car, and would simulate bad weather, heavy traffic, and, most of all, enraged drivers on the road.
Driver's Ed. classes also don't teach many good "navigation recovery" techniques. For example, suppose you need to merge onto an interstate, cross three lanes, and exit through a weave, all within a half of a mile. If the traffic is light and the visibility is good, you'd probably be just fine, but if it isn't, you shouldn't force your way through traffic or do reckless things just to make it to that exit. Driver's Ed. classes need to teach people about what to do when they miss their exit, how to estimate how long it will take to meander through a weave area, etc. Sometimes it's smarter to deliberately pass your exit and back-track rather than do something hazardous.
People need to be less lazy and more responsible. Don't sleep until the last possible minute and race to work. Get up ten minutes earlier and drive safely. Which would you pick: losing ten minutes of sleep, or possibly losing your life?
Drivers need to be sympathetic to other drivers. Everyone gets lost sometimes, everyone accidentally cuts somebody off sometimes, and everyone ends up in the wrong lane sometimes. Bad stuff simply happens. Humans make mistakes. Maps have errors. Roadsigns get knocked over or bent in the wrong direction. Plus, it's not like we drive the exact same routes every day. People wind up in unfamiliar territory all the time, and you can't expect them to be clairvoyant, precognitive, nor descrying all loci of their intended circuit perfectly.
Some of what I've talked about is covered in defensive driving classes, but, everyone who drives a vehicle ought to have at least triple the training that you get out of several defensive driving classes.
Something that would help is an "I'm sorry" gesture. It's rare that someone actually *wants* to cut off another driver to annoy him; usually, it's unintentional. Here are some links for discussions about how to excuse yourself on the road:
http://metastatic.org/text/Concern/2007/02/19/sign aling/
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/The_20_22Sorry!_22_ 20Gesture
True, it is hard to get in touch with server admins, and they can be busy folk, possibly not speaking English as well.
Idea: you can put things like SPF in the TXT record for your domain's DNS. How about a flag: NUB - Notify Upon Blacklisting - that could be put in the TXT? As long as the SOA records have valid e-mail addresses that someone does read, it'd be helpful.