the first stage engine experienced "a spontaneous stoppage" 83 seconds into launch. The vehicle was allowed to continue flying because it lacked a destruct system. But there has been no further confirmation of the report.
I just love that. The vehicle was "allowed" to continue to fly, because there's no way in hell they could stop it... Oops.
Usually, I think that New Scientist is pretty accurate as far as laymen-science articles go, but they've let a big mistake slip be.
From the article: "The Scout programming language, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in California, US, lets scientists run complex calculations on a computer's graphics processing unit (GPU) instead of its central processing unit (CPU).
Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) is based in (fittingly) Los Alamos, New Mexico. it is currently operated by the University of California, which has contracted for the ability to manage the lab. This may have caused the confusion.
Also, Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) is based in Northern California, so that may have caused the confusion as well.
Not a terribly serious concern, but their fact's should be straight. The lab is not in California, it is in New Mexico... Editors: shame on you!
First of all, I have to say that despite the fact that I disagree with you wholeheartedly, I cannot understand why the mods call this flamebait.
TO MODS: Since when is writing a contrary opition necessarily flamebait. I think this WRONG, but NOT FLAMEBAIT. anyway...
Most open source applications are built as replacements for commercial applications.
Right now a lot of the open source movement is concentrated in replicating the desktop environment and all of the accoutrements so that people will start to use it. People have been trained to understand the haptics of these programs for 10-20 years, and in order to gain market support (i.e. users and developers) the OSS movement must attempt to replicate this environment.
There are innovative features and applications, and plenty of them. I've put a few below...
LINUX:
Hardware level:
Xen (kick-ass virtualization platform)
User Interface Level:
Luminocity
Looking Glass (Sun's 3D desktop)
OTHERS:
Bit torrent
MediaWiki (As in Wikipedia)
Tor
OpenGL
That's hardly a dot in the development of "innovative" products, but to say that there's nothing innovative is just to be blind to the new projects out there, and to only look at and use the projects that are designed for the desktop.
There are not hundreds of methods for abusing cars per legitimate method for using them (which was the initial context of the poster.
You may say "but I can come up with thousands of (outlandish) scenarios of how to abuse cars for ever legitimate use."
Bravo. You have a good imagination. Seriously though, with any technology/freedom/right, one has to weigh the legitimate uses versus the illigitimate uses. It's a relatively dimple equation if you're a utilitarianist:
Sum(percentage of usage on good use 'i' * "goodness" of use 'i') - Sum(percentage of usage on bad use 'j' * "badness" of use 'j').
If the result is positive, keep the tech/freedom. If it's negative, ditch it.
For sunglasses & cars & screwdrivers the answer is overwhelmingly positive. For this technology, it may wery well be negative. I'm not going to coment on the result for this specific tech.
B.T.W. I'm only responding to the AC in this case because it's been modded up. THis is only insightful in that it doesn't pay attention to the parent and is restating a philosophical trusm (in my opinion).
You seem to be using the Sandra-Bullock (read: incorrect) definition of network.
Something "bad" gets onto the network.
First of all, the tor network is for redirect of data transfer only, not for storage. This isn't a P2P kind of service. There's no FS involved. Files don't get onto the network, they pass through it.
The network has 100 nodes.
Secondly, the network has 100 dedicated server nodes, and god-knows how many clients. The servers are not necessarily the origin or destination of the packets in question... so... where does the roundup come in?
Unless you are implying that the government would have no qualms about rounding up a network of completely legal information redirecting nodes for the crime of potentially a client logging on to one of the servers, I'd say that you're wrong. And I'd also say that the government could not do such a thing. There's absolutely no legal precedent (IANAL) for that.
It's quotes like these that make me afraid for oour future as a human race.
"When we grow up and get our jobs, that's our life right there. They can access anything about us. It just screws us up for the rest of our lives," said Julianne Junus, student.
And when I say that, I mean...
1) Wy does this deserve to be in the first 1/5th of the article, front and center? You know what, let's throw out any journalistic integrity for shock value... Oh wait, the news has been doing that for ten years.
2) On a closely related note, I don't know how old this kid is, but I just love how alarmist she is. "It just screws us up for the rest of our life." Why? did your social security account get pilfered? Anyway. I'm not going to go further down that path because everyone knows where that ends, but I just love how the most alarmist, non-sensical kid makes the top of the headline story.
Instead of sitting on something to gain power, just put a magnet in one upper thigh, and a solenoid in the other, so that current is generated as you walk. Likewise, in every feisable joint (Arm/armpit comes to mind), you could place two devices that generate current through induction as they move past each other
Your idea rocks, except it requires an external source of power. If the power were generated completely internally through natural motions, then it really rocks.
Now, I know this isn't perfect because of the people who don't move, or devices that need constant curent for long periods of time (i.e. capacitors would drain during sleep) But we could have this blood batter powering those too, having a constant-on low power generator and an active motion power generation with much higher power output.
I don't think that's fair at all. (plus I'm not sure you construed the point in the article correctly.
But, I'm going to address your question:
Does this mean that the whole world is getting dimmer? Since when has "learning a basic set of commands within a few minutes" been an almost infeasible task for soooo many people?
No, the set of commands that the world has to learn is growing exponentially. Your average person doesn't want to learn new commands, they just want results. As technophiles, we enjoy the command we exert over our tech. As a command line enthusiast, I love interacting with the OS on a low-level.
Most people don't give a damn. They want to open programs, view word documents, videos and games. They don't want to be inconvenienced with having to operate another machine.
Car enthusiasts might say the same thing. "Is it that hard to learn how to retune the throttle-body when the result is a better performing car?" (To real car-enthusiasts: I'm sorry I couldn't come up with a better example). Bottom line is, to everybody else who doesn't enjoy the mechanics to some extent, anything that needs to be learned is too much.
No, the world isn't getting dumber. our technology is demanding an increasing set of commands. You remember the 80's joke about how hard it was to program a VCR clock? You don't hear that anymore; although the interface is practically the same and damn easy (takes 2 commands push button hr x times, then push button min y times.)... Why? people are used to it. They were forced to learn it. But the command wasn't difficult. People just don't want to learn commands.
But, stepping outside of our love of technology, and our feeling that learning OS commands gives us power, can we blame the "luddites" for not caring?
If he uses your keys to snoop through your trunk, and finds your kiddie porn collection, and never tells anyone about it, does it matter to you?
Yes, it matters. I think your post is well thought out, and I applaud that level of discussion, but as long as we are discussing the analogy of real-world to digital-world rights, I think I should mention that the contract you enter into with (admittedly some) valet agencies is that they are breaking the law by doing anything other than driving your car and looking at anything in plain sight. You do not hand over your keys to a valet with the expressed consent of them looking through your private belongings in the trunk or glove compartment
For that matter, the valet is also liable if he looks in the hood and makes some adjustments to the engine. You enter into a limited contract when you give the keys to the valet, just as you enter into a limited contract when you give someone a piece of data. I was not commenting on whether this specific instance breaks that threshold, but that is like debating whether the "kiddie porn collection" was on your passenger seat, or in the glove compartment. If it was in the glove compartment, then you have a legal right to file a complaint against the valet for trespassing or undue search of your property. Likewise, if we come to the conclusion that this was sufficiently "protected," such that someone had to circumvent protection measures, then your analogy falls apart, and this is a classic criminal case, whether you view it from a real-world property standpoint, or a digital property standpoint.
as always, I welcome your intelligent response on the matter.
I completely understand that stance. However, in moving it from a philosophical stance to a legal one, one has to take into account the prevailing rules of law about accessing classified information.
Namely, you aren't allowed to circumvent any security measures and access the data. Despite the fact that I agree with you in the placement of the blame in this case, I don't think that this is the correct or dominant ideology in general.
For example, by that logic, the owner of a house would be responsible for any trespassing by not placing sufficient locks.
I see what you are getting at, but the fact is that the document is not easily readable for anyone that tries to read it
for anyone who is familiar with the way that hidden text is implemented, it is a trivial matter to extract that information, but the vast majority of the public doesn't have that knowledge.
So, if we agree that most of the people trying to read it cannot do so, and the intent of the submission was to keep it private, we are talking about levels of stupidity in encryption. It was intented to be kept private, but the savvy (albeit a vast amount of tech savvy people) can circumvent it.
so if you are proposing that you are morally or legally released from obligation due to the stupidity of their encryption scheme. I'd say that that doesn't hold water.
In the end, it comes down to the intent and the obviousness of the intent. If the intent was to keep it secret, and it was obvious that it was intended to be secret, then you are ethically, and perhaps legally responsible for "breaking" the encryption, and viewing the hidden text.
Even if the terrorists can read it, they are breaking the law by decrypting it. Even though it may serve society to notify them that it is easily broken, it doesn't release one from the legal and ethical bind that you are breaking the law/ breaking the trust of the content provider.
So, are you suggesting that there's no such thing as encryption other than a one time pad?
If you hack into an RSA encrypted stream of classified docs. (hard, but doable with lucky guesses or more computing power that exists today.) you are still guilty of a felony.
Unless you mean to say that everyone should not be liable to be punished for intercepting any kind of message, then I'd say that isn't correct at all.
I worked at a government laboratory for a while, and every employee learns the same rules about classified systems. Even though I wasn't working on classified systems, I knew that
1) Everything that parent just said
2) Classified systems are not supposed to have any removable media drives or access to an unsecured part of the network.
3) Don't mess with the above rules under penalty of felony charges.
sounds like terrible training or terribly irresponsible work to me. In my opinion, more than one person is getting fired for this.
The government did the initial distribution. It just did it unintentionally. Showing how the government did, in-fact, distribute the material itself is certainly not completely free of legal implications, but it is not the same as leaking the classified information.
The main questions are:
1) Is it legal to show how to decipher a public transmission of the government to gain more data than intended (no matter how stupid the cypher is).
I believe the answer to that question is an emphatic, "no it is illegal", despite what most of us, as technologically literate human beings see as a ton of fun.
2) Should this specific instance of hidden text be considered an encrypted message. Is a message written in Pig Latin considered encrypted? On the other hand, where do we draw the line on how hard an encryption scheme must be to crack before it's considered breaking governmental encryption.
(Fellow geeks, please hold off on the comments saying "This is not truly an encrypted message" as for all intents and purposes, this message was unable to be viewed in its intended distribution format.)
Tell me what you think!
I'm not sure myself.
1) they aren't close to Turing complete, CFG's are much closer, but still don't do it.
2) Enhanced reg exps? This is an implementation of a program that seems to function like a regular expression parser. "Enhanced Reg. Exp.'s" are not enhanced Reg. Exp.'s, they are a way of writing code similar to a regular expression that must be handled WITH A STACK FRAME OR TWO. Note that this isn't, in any sense of the word, a regular expression. This is analogous to trying to explain to a user the differnce between advanced user features and the underlying programming constructs. Enhanced reg. exp's are simply a nice user interface and a misuse of the term.
Questions? ask?
-Dan
Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't make it clear enough. It isn't an expression, it's a set of expressions, {0^n1^n | where n is an integer, n>= 0}. thus, NULL, 01, 0011, 000111, 00001111 etc. This set of strings, or any set of strings, is called a language.
One can make a Turing machine that accepts this language of all strings O^n 1^n, and no other strings, but one cannot create a DFA/NFA that does so. Regular Expressions can informally be seen as languages that a DFA/NFA can accept.
If you wish to know more about Computability Theory, please read into Sipser: Introduction to the Theory of Computation
http://www-math.mit.edu/~sipser/book.html
Relevent information:
Deterministic/Nondeterministic Finite Automata (DFA/NFA)
PushDown Automata (PDA)
Turing Machines (TM)
Chompsky hierarchy of languages/grammars
Hope this fills it out slightly
-Dan
Um, last time I checked, Reg. Exp's are not turing complete. Take the expression O^n 1^n, which can be made by Turing machines. If you can make that for me using a Regular Expression, you deserve a Turing Award.
Regular expressions are DFA/NFA complete, not turing complete... not even close!
Yeah, I see where you're coming from, but you should read more about it.
The reason why it's not at all like the elevator scheme is that you pay for the car, not for the individual ticket. Just like a taxi, you get to decide how many people get in, since you paid for the ride. This doesn't solve pushing and shoving in line waiting for a car, but I haven't seen a public transit system anywhere that solves that problem.
The problem with elevator and subway shoving is that nobody pays for a unit of space, merely for the privilege of riding. Sadly, that translates into complete disregard for the other occpants. However, consider the busiest taxi stop that you know. For me at least, pushing and shoving ends when somebody clearly has the car.
I've been following this system for 4 years, and although it does have some flaws, it certainly beats the pants off of any current transit system I've ever seen.
questions?
responses?
bring it on!
-Dan
Slashdot Mirror
Said with true grace and insight. I wish I could have said that as well as you have.
From the story:
the first stage engine experienced "a spontaneous stoppage" 83 seconds into launch. The vehicle was allowed to continue flying because it lacked a destruct system. But there has been no further confirmation of the report.
I just love that. The vehicle was "allowed" to continue to fly, because there's no way in hell they could stop it... Oops.
Well, I hope it's doing ok, wherever it is.
yeah... I already caught those, about 10 seconds after I posted. It's all there. Try reading the replies before posting one.
Of course, in my hurry to post my response, I let a few big editing slips pass by...
It should be "Slip by" not "Slip be"
Also, it should read "facts" not "fact's".
Oh well. I never said I was good at editing, only that New Scientist should have been.
Usually, I think that New Scientist is pretty accurate as far as laymen-science articles go, but they've let a big mistake slip be.
From the article:
"The Scout programming language, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in California, US, lets scientists run complex calculations on a computer's graphics processing unit (GPU) instead of its central processing unit (CPU).
Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) is based in (fittingly) Los Alamos, New Mexico. it is currently operated by the University of California, which has contracted for the ability to manage the lab. This may have caused the confusion.
Also, Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) is based in Northern California, so that may have caused the confusion as well.
Not a terribly serious concern, but their fact's should be straight. The lab is not in California, it is in New Mexico... Editors: shame on you!
First of all, I have to say that despite the fact that I disagree with you wholeheartedly, I cannot understand why the mods call this flamebait.
TO MODS: Since when is writing a contrary opition necessarily flamebait. I think this WRONG, but NOT FLAMEBAIT. anyway...
Most open source applications are built as replacements for commercial applications.
Right now a lot of the open source movement is concentrated in replicating the desktop environment and all of the accoutrements so that people will start to use it. People have been trained to understand the haptics of these programs for 10-20 years, and in order to gain market support (i.e. users and developers) the OSS movement must attempt to replicate this environment.
There are innovative features and applications, and plenty of them. I've put a few below... LINUX: Hardware level: Xen (kick-ass virtualization platform) User Interface Level: Luminocity Looking Glass (Sun's 3D desktop) OTHERS: Bit torrent MediaWiki (As in Wikipedia) Tor OpenGL That's hardly a dot in the development of "innovative" products, but to say that there's nothing innovative is just to be blind to the new projects out there, and to only look at and use the projects that are designed for the desktop.
There are not hundreds of methods for abusing cars per legitimate method for using them (which was the initial context of the poster.
You may say "but I can come up with thousands of (outlandish) scenarios of how to abuse cars for ever legitimate use."
Bravo. You have a good imagination. Seriously though, with any technology/freedom/right, one has to weigh the legitimate uses versus the illigitimate uses. It's a relatively dimple equation if you're a utilitarianist:
Sum(percentage of usage on good use 'i' * "goodness" of use 'i') - Sum(percentage of usage on bad use 'j' * "badness" of use 'j').
If the result is positive, keep the tech/freedom. If it's negative, ditch it.
For sunglasses & cars & screwdrivers the answer is overwhelmingly positive. For this technology, it may wery well be negative. I'm not going to coment on the result for this specific tech.
B.T.W. I'm only responding to the AC in this case because it's been modded up. THis is only insightful in that it doesn't pay attention to the parent and is restating a philosophical trusm (in my opinion).
You seem to be using the Sandra-Bullock (read: incorrect) definition of network.
Something "bad" gets onto the network.
First of all, the tor network is for redirect of data transfer only, not for storage. This isn't a P2P kind of service. There's no FS involved. Files don't get onto the network, they pass through it.
The network has 100 nodes.
Secondly, the network has 100 dedicated server nodes, and god-knows how many clients. The servers are not necessarily the origin or destination of the packets in question... so... where does the roundup come in?
Unless you are implying that the government would have no qualms about rounding up a network of completely legal information redirecting nodes for the crime of potentially a client logging on to one of the servers, I'd say that you're wrong. And I'd also say that the government could not do such a thing. There's absolutely no legal precedent (IANAL) for that.
It's quotes like these that make me afraid for oour future as a human race. "When we grow up and get our jobs, that's our life right there. They can access anything about us. It just screws us up for the rest of our lives," said Julianne Junus, student. And when I say that, I mean...
1) Wy does this deserve to be in the first 1/5th of the article, front and center? You know what, let's throw out any journalistic integrity for shock value... Oh wait, the news has been doing that for ten years.
2) On a closely related note, I don't know how old this kid is, but I just love how alarmist she is. "It just screws us up for the rest of our life." Why? did your social security account get pilfered? Anyway. I'm not going to go further down that path because everyone knows where that ends, but I just love how the most alarmist, non-sensical kid makes the top of the headline story.
Think of the Children!!!! Please!!!
Instead of sitting on something to gain power, just put a magnet in one upper thigh, and a solenoid in the other, so that current is generated as you walk. Likewise, in every feisable joint (Arm/armpit comes to mind), you could place two devices that generate current through induction as they move past each other
Your idea rocks, except it requires an external source of power. If the power were generated completely internally through natural motions, then it really rocks.
Now, I know this isn't perfect because of the people who don't move, or devices that need constant curent for long periods of time (i.e. capacitors would drain during sleep) But we could have this blood batter powering those too, having a constant-on low power generator and an active motion power generation with much higher power output.
what do you think?
I don't think that's fair at all. (plus I'm not sure you construed the point in the article correctly.
But, I'm going to address your question:
Does this mean that the whole world is getting dimmer? Since when has "learning a basic set of commands within a few minutes" been an almost infeasible task for soooo many people?
No, the set of commands that the world has to learn is growing exponentially. Your average person doesn't want to learn new commands, they just want results. As technophiles, we enjoy the command we exert over our tech. As a command line enthusiast, I love interacting with the OS on a low-level.
Most people don't give a damn. They want to open programs, view word documents, videos and games. They don't want to be inconvenienced with having to operate another machine.
Car enthusiasts might say the same thing. "Is it that hard to learn how to retune the throttle-body when the result is a better performing car?" (To real car-enthusiasts: I'm sorry I couldn't come up with a better example). Bottom line is, to everybody else who doesn't enjoy the mechanics to some extent, anything that needs to be learned is too much.
No, the world isn't getting dumber. our technology is demanding an increasing set of commands. You remember the 80's joke about how hard it was to program a VCR clock? You don't hear that anymore; although the interface is practically the same and damn easy (takes 2 commands push button hr x times, then push button min y times.)... Why? people are used to it. They were forced to learn it. But the command wasn't difficult. People just don't want to learn commands.
But, stepping outside of our love of technology, and our feeling that learning OS commands gives us power, can we blame the "luddites" for not caring?
If he uses your keys to snoop through your trunk, and finds your kiddie porn collection, and never tells anyone about it, does it matter to you?
Yes, it matters. I think your post is well thought out, and I applaud that level of discussion, but as long as we are discussing the analogy of real-world to digital-world rights, I think I should mention that the contract you enter into with (admittedly some) valet agencies is that they are breaking the law by doing anything other than driving your car and looking at anything in plain sight. You do not hand over your keys to a valet with the expressed consent of them looking through your private belongings in the trunk or glove compartment
For that matter, the valet is also liable if he looks in the hood and makes some adjustments to the engine. You enter into a limited contract when you give the keys to the valet, just as you enter into a limited contract when you give someone a piece of data.
I was not commenting on whether this specific instance breaks that threshold, but that is like debating whether the "kiddie porn collection" was on your passenger seat, or in the glove compartment. If it was in the glove compartment, then you have a legal right to file a complaint against the valet for trespassing or undue search of your property. Likewise, if we come to the conclusion that this was sufficiently "protected," such that someone had to circumvent protection measures, then your analogy falls apart, and this is a classic criminal case, whether you view it from a real-world property standpoint, or a digital property standpoint.
as always, I welcome your intelligent response on the matter.
Well argued. I completely agree.
I guess this settles it in my mind. It's within my fair use to extract that text.
Thanks.
Mod Parent Up! If I could mod you up, I'd do it myself.
I completely understand that stance. However, in moving it from a philosophical stance to a legal one, one has to take into account the prevailing rules of law about accessing classified information.
Namely, you aren't allowed to circumvent any security measures and access the data. Despite the fact that I agree with you in the placement of the blame in this case, I don't think that this is the correct or dominant ideology in general.
For example, by that logic, the owner of a house would be responsible for any trespassing by not placing sufficient locks.
Let me know what you think.
I see what you are getting at, but the fact is that the document is not easily readable for anyone that tries to read it
for anyone who is familiar with the way that hidden text is implemented, it is a trivial matter to extract that information, but the vast majority of the public doesn't have that knowledge.
So, if we agree that most of the people trying to read it cannot do so, and the intent of the submission was to keep it private, we are talking about levels of stupidity in encryption. It was intented to be kept private, but the savvy (albeit a vast amount of tech savvy people) can circumvent it. so if you are proposing that you are morally or legally released from obligation due to the stupidity of their encryption scheme. I'd say that that doesn't hold water.
In the end, it comes down to the intent and the obviousness of the intent. If the intent was to keep it secret, and it was obvious that it was intended to be secret, then you are ethically, and perhaps legally responsible for "breaking" the encryption, and viewing the hidden text.
Even if the terrorists can read it, they are breaking the law by decrypting it. Even though it may serve society to notify them that it is easily broken, it doesn't release one from the legal and ethical bind that you are breaking the law/ breaking the trust of the content provider.
Did I miss your point?
So, are you suggesting that there's no such thing as encryption other than a one time pad?
If you hack into an RSA encrypted stream of classified docs. (hard, but doable with lucky guesses or more computing power that exists today.) you are still guilty of a felony.
Unless you mean to say that everyone should not be liable to be punished for intercepting any kind of message, then I'd say that isn't correct at all.
I worked at a government laboratory for a while, and every employee learns the same rules about classified systems. Even though I wasn't working on classified systems, I knew that
1) Everything that parent just said
2) Classified systems are not supposed to have any removable media drives or access to an unsecured part of the network.
3) Don't mess with the above rules under penalty of felony charges.
sounds like terrible training or terribly irresponsible work to me. In my opinion, more than one person is getting fired for this.
The government did the initial distribution. It just did it unintentionally. Showing how the government did, in-fact, distribute the material itself is certainly not completely free of legal implications, but it is not the same as leaking the classified information. The main questions are: 1) Is it legal to show how to decipher a public transmission of the government to gain more data than intended (no matter how stupid the cypher is). I believe the answer to that question is an emphatic, "no it is illegal", despite what most of us, as technologically literate human beings see as a ton of fun. 2) Should this specific instance of hidden text be considered an encrypted message. Is a message written in Pig Latin considered encrypted? On the other hand, where do we draw the line on how hard an encryption scheme must be to crack before it's considered breaking governmental encryption. (Fellow geeks, please hold off on the comments saying "This is not truly an encrypted message" as for all intents and purposes, this message was unable to be viewed in its intended distribution format.) Tell me what you think! I'm not sure myself.
1) they aren't close to Turing complete, CFG's are much closer, but still don't do it. 2) Enhanced reg exps? This is an implementation of a program that seems to function like a regular expression parser. "Enhanced Reg. Exp.'s" are not enhanced Reg. Exp.'s, they are a way of writing code similar to a regular expression that must be handled WITH A STACK FRAME OR TWO. Note that this isn't, in any sense of the word, a regular expression. This is analogous to trying to explain to a user the differnce between advanced user features and the underlying programming constructs. Enhanced reg. exp's are simply a nice user interface and a misuse of the term. Questions? ask? -Dan
Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't make it clear enough. It isn't an expression, it's a set of expressions, {0^n1^n | where n is an integer, n>= 0}. thus, NULL, 01, 0011, 000111, 00001111 etc. This set of strings, or any set of strings, is called a language. One can make a Turing machine that accepts this language of all strings O^n 1^n, and no other strings, but one cannot create a DFA/NFA that does so. Regular Expressions can informally be seen as languages that a DFA/NFA can accept. If you wish to know more about Computability Theory, please read into Sipser: Introduction to the Theory of Computation http://www-math.mit.edu/~sipser/book.html Relevent information: Deterministic/Nondeterministic Finite Automata (DFA/NFA) PushDown Automata (PDA) Turing Machines (TM) Chompsky hierarchy of languages/grammars Hope this fills it out slightly -Dan
Um, last time I checked, Reg. Exp's are not turing complete. Take the expression O^n 1^n, which can be made by Turing machines. If you can make that for me using a Regular Expression, you deserve a Turing Award. Regular expressions are DFA/NFA complete, not turing complete... not even close!
Yeah, I see where you're coming from, but you should read more about it. The reason why it's not at all like the elevator scheme is that you pay for the car, not for the individual ticket. Just like a taxi, you get to decide how many people get in, since you paid for the ride. This doesn't solve pushing and shoving in line waiting for a car, but I haven't seen a public transit system anywhere that solves that problem. The problem with elevator and subway shoving is that nobody pays for a unit of space, merely for the privilege of riding. Sadly, that translates into complete disregard for the other occpants. However, consider the busiest taxi stop that you know. For me at least, pushing and shoving ends when somebody clearly has the car. I've been following this system for 4 years, and although it does have some flaws, it certainly beats the pants off of any current transit system I've ever seen. questions? responses? bring it on! -Dan