Placing a new obstacle in the bay with high maritime traffic is asking for trouble. It may result in something similar to the recent Concordia crash or bus crash in tunnel.
If governments can produce such powerful systems, as they claim, why cannot they do something as simple as stopping spam, which, by the way, really hurts economies.
My guess is that these systems suffer from the usual contracts' weaknesses: kickbacks, wow-presentations, bugs, etc.
Certainly in some cases yes. But why attacking the Chile's National Library?
What corruption could be in a library? The librarians are saint people, neither rich, nor corrupted.
If there is a corruption in the world, one still cannot attack anyone at will. Otherwise there will be a total chaos. That is why there is this mechanism in existence: the law. It is not perfect, but how otherwise to protect libraries and the likes?
The video is in German, but one can get the sense of it. Kids visit real prison, real cells, eat with real inmates. After that the romanticism of a crime diminishes significantly.
Crime is not a game. The law is slow, sometimes very slow, but it will get one sooner or later anyway.
The problem is that evolution did not create in us the upper limit for eating. 99.99% of its history time humans lived in hunger. So there was no need to limit food consumption. Besides hunger made people to move incessantly in search for food for millions of years.
It turned out to be a major fault during the new era of automatic production. It is so easy to fell victim of this deficiency in our internal design.
Why not to help, for example, a kid who got heavily overweight without even understanding - why? Especially, if by helping him, say, by creating and integrating infrastructure for walking and cycling, we help ourselves.
Taxes should subsidize not only automobile roads and sidewalks, but also quiet green alleys, which really lead from point A to point B in the city, and where any kind of motorized traffic is forbidden.
The clothing style of British peasants of the 19th century, i.e. suit & tie, should be strictly limited or banned as an anti-ecological one. The new style of business clothing, light, elegant, ecology friendly, suitable for walking and cycling should be developed and promoted instead.
It is absurd to drive for an hour to a gym to have 40 minutes of exercise there. But if walking and cycling are incorporated into the infrastructure of the society, it would save millions of lives, let alone ecology and oil issues. Americans and people in other countries would start to look again like people, not as giant jellyfishes.
But several minutes of exercise is just too little too late.
People just answered honestly some benign questions from the democratic government's census agents in Europe in 20s (including small questions about a nationality and religion).
Some years later millions of them were eliminated on the basis on these old records.
Why just not install the "F-bomb" into each operation system at the factory? Why spread them from airplanes? Nowadays almost each computer has got a mike and a camera.
And activate it only when necessary by a special encrypted signal from the central office. What could possibly go wrong?
In 1912 new automobile companies definitely infringed on horse cart companies.
But was it possible to ban automobile in the world? Or was the innovation by itself (automobile) stronger than the international legal system of that time?
As for the Geneva convention, any law or treaty has letters and spirit. If a native warrior wears banana leaves around his body, it is not a uniform from the point of view of an advanced army, but it may well be sort of a uniform in that part of the world.
The Geneva convention can be condensed to this: treat people under your control decently, the way you want to be treated yourself in the same circumstances. Certainly, if someone armed approaches with an intent to cause harm, it is another story.
What I wanted to tell is that the conventions and treaties are not followed routinely, even though a government did sign them. The work, which the ICRC does in this respect, definitely has value.
The International Committee of Red Cross http://www.icrc.org/ conducts large scale games in Switzerland where ICRC's voluntaries work together with school students in the field. One part of students are military, another part is POW (prisoners of war), yet another civilians.
The voluntaries explain students and train them in realistic circumstances (tents, bridges, mountains, etc.) how to keep and question POWs, how to treat civilians during military operations, how to handle wounded, etc. in accordance with the Geneva Convention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions
It is a very good approach, because kids and teenagers not only learn the right rules, but also how to stick to them in realistic conditions.
We saw recently many cases how military personnel did not follow the Geneva Convention (to put it mildly), even though a country did sign it. Perhaps, it would be a good idea to teach students at school during such field exercises how to follow it.
I would not say that Windows 7 is well written. Many its GUI controls are using very bad confusing abstractions. For example, audio, networking, etc.
But if we compare personal computing and, say, telephone, we are still in 1912. Telephone was invented in 1870, bu the real use began in 1920s and 1930s.
So, I want to say that Windows is still like that apparatus where on had to turn the handle several times to start speaking. No real OSs yet exist, just like no real usable telephone existed in 1912.
Sorry to mention these sad facts, but there were cases of cut fingers to steal an expensive car with biometrics security, to get pension money instead of a dead man, etc.
Biometrics are known to turn a trivial crime into serious one.
It is very difficult to distinguish local company from non-local. A Visa card may be used locally, but it is not local. Many rich people there have bank accounts in foreign banks. They keep there money, which they earned locally, spend them locally, but check accounts via web applications of these banks abroad.
Or if 2 people speak via Skype in 2 cities inside the country, but it does not make Skype a local company. The list of such examples is endless. It is a complicated world by now.
We saw on TV that leaders are skiing in European countries, for example, in Austria. How can they go there without using foreign websites to book a hotel or an airline ticket? Without using foreign payment systems, which also do have websites?
Or it will be again like in the USSR: all people are equal, but some are more equal?
The law is not balanced. It would mean that websites of Visa, MasterCard, Skype, websites of foreign banks, where many influential people have got accounts, would be illegal.
All those super-shmuper ships could not protect even a Pentagon building from a bunch of desert shepherds. War is a dangerous enterprise. A talented military genius could be born anywhere. If there is a way to avoid a war it should be avoided. Perhaps some compromise?
Slashdot Mirror
Placing a new obstacle in the bay with high maritime traffic is asking for trouble. It may result in something similar to the recent Concordia crash or bus crash in tunnel.
If governments can produce such powerful systems, as they claim, why cannot they do something as simple as stopping spam, which, by the way, really hurts economies.
My guess is that these systems suffer from the usual contracts' weaknesses: kickbacks, wow-presentations, bugs, etc.
Say, policemen go along the sidewalk in bulletproof vests. The vests have a "week point", a "flaw", - the neck and legs are not completely protected.
Should one want to point this bulletproof vest's vulnerability as a service to community by shooting at policemen' weak points?
(The correct answer certainly is: no).
It is really funny... Ha-ha...
But how to avoid problem of spam or terrorism via such tubes?
Certainly in some cases yes. But why attacking the Chile's National Library?
What corruption could be in a library? The librarians are saint people, neither rich, nor corrupted.
If there is a corruption in the world, one still cannot attack anyone at will. Otherwise there will be a total chaos. That is why there is this mechanism in existence: the law. It is not perfect, but how otherwise to protect libraries and the likes?
Law is always a little behind real life. Law is waiting for life to innovate and settle a bit. So, certainly, there are always grey areas.
But breaking an existing clearly set law, when one can avoid it, is asking for trouble.
You are in wrong if you think that people who have to live by committing crime are happy and successful.
Here is a short video of a lesson in a German school: http://www.dw.de/dw/0,,12165,00.html "Schulbesuch im Knast" ("Visit of a prison").
The video is in German, but one can get the sense of it. Kids visit real prison, real cells, eat with real inmates. After that the romanticism of a crime diminishes significantly.
Crime is not a game. The law is slow, sometimes very slow, but it will get one sooner or later anyway.
The problem is that evolution did not create in us the upper limit for eating. 99.99% of its history time humans lived in hunger. So there was no need to limit food consumption. Besides hunger made people to move incessantly in search for food for millions of years.
It turned out to be a major fault during the new era of automatic production. It is so easy to fell victim of this deficiency in our internal design.
Why not to help, for example, a kid who got heavily overweight without even understanding - why? Especially, if by helping him, say, by creating and integrating infrastructure for walking and cycling, we help ourselves.
Taxes should subsidize not only automobile roads and sidewalks, but also quiet green alleys, which really lead from point A to point B in the city, and where any kind of motorized traffic is forbidden.
The clothing style of British peasants of the 19th century, i.e. suit & tie, should be strictly limited or banned as an anti-ecological one. The new style of business clothing, light, elegant, ecology friendly, suitable for walking and cycling should be developed and promoted instead.
It is absurd to drive for an hour to a gym to have 40 minutes of exercise there. But if walking and cycling are incorporated into the infrastructure of the society, it would save millions of lives, let alone ecology and oil issues. Americans and people in other countries would start to look again like people, not as giant jellyfishes.
But several minutes of exercise is just too little too late.
People just answered honestly some benign questions from the democratic government's census agents in Europe in 20s (including small questions about a nationality and religion).
Some years later millions of them were eliminated on the basis on these old records.
Really nice joke.
Why just not install the "F-bomb" into each operation system at the factory? Why spread them from airplanes? Nowadays almost each computer has got a mike and a camera.
And activate it only when necessary by a special encrypted signal from the central office. What could possibly go wrong?
In 1912 new automobile companies definitely infringed on horse cart companies.
But was it possible to ban automobile in the world? Or was the innovation by itself (automobile) stronger than the international legal system of that time?
Why not to go down into Earth? There is unlimited source of energy there. Just some 10 - 15 km and unlimited source of energy.
The temperature increases 30 degrees with each kilometer down. Why not to build a large scale energy generating and R&D station there?
I do not want to single out the USA at all.
As for the Geneva convention, any law or treaty has letters and spirit. If a native warrior wears banana leaves around his body, it is not a uniform from the point of view of an advanced army, but it may well be sort of a uniform in that part of the world.
The Geneva convention can be condensed to this: treat people under your control decently, the way you want to be treated yourself in the same circumstances. Certainly, if someone armed approaches with an intent to cause harm, it is another story.
What I wanted to tell is that the conventions and treaties are not followed routinely, even though a government did sign them. The work, which the ICRC does in this respect, definitely has value.
Signing a treaty is not enough.
The International Committee of Red Cross http://www.icrc.org/ conducts large scale games in Switzerland where ICRC's voluntaries work together with school students in the field. One part of students are military, another part is POW (prisoners of war), yet another civilians.
The voluntaries explain students and train them in realistic circumstances (tents, bridges, mountains, etc.) how to keep and question POWs, how to treat civilians during military operations, how to handle wounded, etc. in accordance with the Geneva Convention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions
It is a very good approach, because kids and teenagers not only learn the right rules, but also how to stick to them in realistic conditions.
We saw recently many cases how military personnel did not follow the Geneva Convention (to put it mildly), even though a country did sign it. Perhaps, it would be a good idea to teach students at school during such field exercises how to follow it.
I would not say that Windows 7 is well written. Many its GUI controls are using very bad confusing abstractions. For example, audio, networking, etc.
But if we compare personal computing and, say, telephone, we are still in 1912. Telephone was invented in 1870, bu the real use began in 1920s and 1930s.
So, I want to say that Windows is still like that apparatus where on had to turn the handle several times to start speaking. No real OSs yet exist, just like no real usable telephone existed in 1912.
You always have your eyes and fingers with you ?
Sorry to mention these sad facts, but there were cases of cut fingers to steal an expensive car with biometrics security, to get pension money instead of a dead man, etc.
Biometrics are known to turn a trivial crime into serious one.
The outstanding work of Russian scientist, Dmitri Mendeleev, on periodic table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev is still the base for every space flight.
Since they are isolated from the world the soft will reflect it by being limited and boring.
It is very difficult to distinguish local company from non-local. A Visa card may be used locally, but it is not local. Many rich people there have bank accounts in foreign banks. They keep there money, which they earned locally, spend them locally, but check accounts via web applications of these banks abroad.
Or if 2 people speak via Skype in 2 cities inside the country, but it does not make Skype a local company. The list of such examples is endless. It is a complicated world by now.
We saw on TV that leaders are skiing in European countries, for example, in Austria. How can they go there without using foreign websites to book a hotel or an airline ticket? Without using foreign payment systems, which also do have websites?
Or it will be again like in the USSR: all people are equal, but some are more equal?
The law is not balanced. It would mean that websites of Visa, MasterCard, Skype, websites of foreign banks, where many influential people have got accounts, would be illegal.
All those super-shmuper ships could not protect even a Pentagon building from a bunch of desert shepherds. War is a dangerous enterprise. A talented military genius could be born anywhere. If there is a way to avoid a war it should be avoided. Perhaps some compromise?