Here's the same challenge for you as for the other poster: Write some code that accesses some file it shouldn't, and does something with the data in it (writing it to a socket say) in such a way that you can't tell what's it doing without looking really well at it, and it looks harmless or to be doing something else.
I am planning to build such a system precisely for the reasons you've mentioned - low power consumption, low noise. The problem is that I did not find any benchmarks that compare VIA's CPUs with alternatives.
Can you tell me which CPU and motherboard you are using? Is Window XP usable on that machine? (I intend to run a flavour of Linux on mine, but your feedback will be valuable anyway)
Good point, and one can get a better idea by reading "The blind watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. There is also a BBC Horizon documentary about it, where Dawkins himself explains in easy terms how things work. It is an old documentary, and it's very interesting.
There is a saying amongst psychologists that at some point, each must come up with a reason why humans are fundamentally different from the other animals, only for someone to eventually prove them wrong.
I too accept your challenge.
According to "The Brain, A Decoded Enigma" by Dorin T. Moisa, what makes humans different is their ability to make "long term predictions". This allows us to make complex projects, that involve a lot of steps, and require advanced planning skills.
As a sibling poster said, we're different because we can send humans to space using only the tools we build. Now, building those tools - requires advanced planning skills; it won't work if the best thing you can do is pick up a stick and customize it.
Of course, you have to read the book, in order to find out what a 'prediction' is and so on. The book provides a high-level description of the brain's functions, the theory is called MDT - modelling device theory. It can explain many things, such as the point made above, or "what is love?". Well, I hope this was enough to 'touch' you and make you interested in reading the book.
end up in some unstable state that would potentially end up requiring a reboot
Isn't this the most important thing about separating the kernel from everything else - that no matter what happens in userland, the rest of the system remains unstable?
Can you describe a scenario in which the system can enter an unstable state?
Picture the following scenario - a system like this one can beat a human in any competition, simply because the system knows how to get the best result in any given situation. This doesn't make the system smarter than us, but it makes it more successful than us for a given task (in this case it is playing checkers).
Now, imagine there is a similar system in various structures, such as the military. At one point this dumb system [but with a huge knowledgebase] kicks our ass (simply because it can). Humans will go extinct, while this dumb system is now the only sign of civilization on the planet; the only problem is that the system has no learning capabilities and is not truly intelligent.
What I'm saying is: what protects us from being anihilated by such systems, except the fact that at the moment only some [non-critical] parts of the infrastructure are computerized, and that we can disable a system by powering it off?
I've been thinking about this problem, as my friends and I are planning to start several programming projects.
Having only academic experience in programming (i.e. code written by a single person, and maintained by the same person; literally no team-work), we want to try to develop 'good' coding habits - which is why we are looking for a set of conventions that are successfully applied in the real world.
The ones we've found on various sites are very long and detailed; for example, this one looks good, but I'm not sure it is a good one to start with, as focusing on the rules will probably draw attention away from actually making a program that works.
Are there any 'light' standards that can be embraced by us at this stage?
I was thinking about adding a script that would do all these network operations... But I have a power-on password on my laptop, as well as one for my OS account.
Take into account the fact that a dumb person can't override the power-on password, it means that they'll probably pass the computer to someone who has the skills to remove/reset it, and the brains to understand that the safest thing to do is to wipe the system. I have never seen a person who connects a computer to the internet, this being the first thing they do with it once they get it.
I conclude that either these phone-home scripts are useless, or we should redefine the best practices of security and remove power-on and user account passwords from the list, so that the phone-home script actually gets a chance to connect somewhere.
While I agree with the general idea of your post, one thing hit me - we live in a world where it is OK to post Neo-Nazi / Anti-Semitic / %insert_history's_mistakes_here% content, and it is not OK to post something that delivers "monetary compensation".
In the same context, do you think the neo-nazi or anti-semitic folk do it absolutely NOT for the money? I believe that in either case there is a lot of money at stake.
I don't know... but I think something is wrong here. If it's free speech all the way, then all the way free speech it is, and we shouldn't categorize content like that.
What if the company is supposed to send you some data via email, and the message was handled as spam and rejected by your server?
You'll miss the message, thinking the company is a bad one. On their end - they attempt to get in touch with you because they have received the failed delivery report; but they fail to contact you because all the data you provided were bogus.
Sometimes the customer may figure out something like this has happened and contact the company. Other times the customer sends a nastygram to the company asking for refunds or simply being rude - even though it's not the company's fault. Other times they just talk to the credit card company, which will refund the money without asking for details or contacting the seller first.
As you can see, there are drawbacks, so I think that's why not everyone does this.
Can someone suggest a free editor that was designed to work with.ICO files, and is able to deal with things such as multiple-sized and various colour-depth icons embedded into the same file?
It works fine when they're alone, which is why they have no need to develop a nice mechanism for error handling. Time passes by... . . . Being the man in the house, you better make sure the condition is always satisfied, because you don't want to know how a woman throws an error or worse... how a female blue screen looks like!
Hmm, interesting experiment, but I am not sure it is not biased.
While it seems possible to tell a gipsy from a non-gipsy due to skin colour and clothing (roma females tend to wear colourful stuff with flower patterns, my personal observation), it's pretty much impossible to tell a russian from a moldovan without engaging in a conversation.
People from Moldova tend to speak Russian with a specific accent, which is different from the accents typical to other ex-USSR peoples; so I am assuming they figure out the beggar is from Moldova by parsing their 'I need money' message and then mapping the accent to a country. I think this is the only way to do it, unless the beggar is wearing^ a national costume, or is dressed up in their country's flag.
The problem is that when people give money to beggars, they do it 'on-the-fly' and I've never seen anyone engage in a dialogue.
I am from Moldova, and Russian was my first language - so my Russian sounds like a russian's Russian. Also, moldovans with non-Russian as their first language can easily get rid of 'the accent' if they really try to. So I'm not sure we can trust the observations of that study.
^ The study claims the beggars "were dressed in the distinctive garb of Moldova", but I find that hard to believe - this is what one of those 'skins' looks like: http://www.galenfrysinger.com/moldovan_costumes.ht m
They "requested the footage be removed", thus guaranteeing that that this obscure video would be copied all over the internet and millions of people would get to see it.
':' or ':-' were removed because they're redundant
')' or '(' is the only character you need in order to figure out whether the author is happy or sad
The number of parantheses illustrates the 'magnitude' of the smile; i.e. the happier you are, longer you keep the button pressed, thus more characters show up on the screen
I'm not sure why you call it the 'Russian smiley', because a lot of non-Russian peoples use it. Perhaps a better name would be the 'Soviet smile', because it is used by communities in ex-Soviet states.
I live in such a country (Moldova), but I never use such smileys myself; I tend to flip my smilies, so that they show up as text on the receiver's end, rather than be replaced by an icon, ex: '(-:'. If only the paranthesis was used, '(' could be confused with ':-(', while in fact it means '(-:'. Perhaps the paranthesis is a way to make sure that the receiver will see it in plain-text, and not as an image. The graphical representations are not constant, they depend on the client used by the other party, their client's skin settings, emoticon-set, etc.
Also, it is probably worth pointing out that these 'Russian smileys' began being used 2.5 or 3 years ago, according to my observations.
Slashdot Mirror
I am planning to build such a system precisely for the reasons you've mentioned - low power consumption, low noise. The problem is that I did not find any benchmarks that compare VIA's CPUs with alternatives.
Can you tell me which CPU and motherboard you are using? Is Window XP usable on that machine? (I intend to run a flavour of Linux on mine, but your feedback will be valuable anyway)
Good point, and one can get a better idea by reading "The blind watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. There is also a BBC Horizon documentary about it, where Dawkins himself explains in easy terms how things work. It is an old documentary, and it's very interesting.
As a sibling poster said, we're different because we can send humans to space using only the tools we build. Now, building those tools - requires advanced planning skills; it won't work if the best thing you can do is pick up a stick and customize it.
Of course, you have to read the book, in order to find out what a 'prediction' is and so on. The book provides a high-level description of the brain's functions, the theory is called MDT - modelling device theory. It can explain many things, such as the point made above, or "what is love?". Well, I hope this was enough to 'touch' you and make you interested in reading the book.
"two minutes"? Why two? Why not three? What if it also depends on *which* X minutes were recorded?
Either we'll need to back that up with arguments, or simply take another approach.
Hm, interesting story, I'll use it as an example when educating my kids, when the time comes. Thank you.
P.S. The optimal approach is to use the 'they' pronoun.
Can you describe a scenario in which the system can enter an unstable state?
Picture the following scenario - a system like this one can beat a human in any competition, simply because the system knows how to get the best result in any given situation. This doesn't make the system smarter than us, but it makes it more successful than us for a given task (in this case it is playing checkers).
Now, imagine there is a similar system in various structures, such as the military. At one point this dumb system [but with a huge knowledgebase] kicks our ass (simply because it can). Humans will go extinct, while this dumb system is now the only sign of civilization on the planet; the only problem is that the system has no learning capabilities and is not truly intelligent.
What I'm saying is: what protects us from being anihilated by such systems, except the fact that at the moment only some [non-critical] parts of the infrastructure are computerized, and that we can disable a system by powering it off?
I've been thinking about this problem, as my friends and I are planning to start several programming projects.
Having only academic experience in programming (i.e. code written by a single person, and maintained by the same person; literally no team-work), we want to try to develop 'good' coding habits - which is why we are looking for a set of conventions that are successfully applied in the real world.
The ones we've found on various sites are very long and detailed; for example, this one looks good, but I'm not sure it is a good one to start with, as focusing on the rules will probably draw attention away from actually making a program that works.
Are there any 'light' standards that can be embraced by us at this stage?
I was thinking about adding a script that would do all these network operations... But I have a power-on password on my laptop, as well as one for my OS account.
Take into account the fact that a dumb person can't override the power-on password, it means that they'll probably pass the computer to someone who has the skills to remove/reset it, and the brains to understand that the safest thing to do is to wipe the system. I have never seen a person who connects a computer to the internet, this being the first thing they do with it once they get it.
I conclude that either these phone-home scripts are useless, or we should redefine the best practices of security and remove power-on and user account passwords from the list, so that the phone-home script actually gets a chance to connect somewhere.
Yes, you're correct; Stalin was just a nickname (its meaning is close to "made of steel",).
Come on, that's nonsense; how about using a firewall to block any outgoing connection initiated by this utility's process?
While I agree with the general idea of your post, one thing hit me - we live in a world where it is OK to post Neo-Nazi / Anti-Semitic / %insert_history's_mistakes_here% content, and it is not OK to post something that delivers "monetary compensation".
In the same context, do you think the neo-nazi or anti-semitic folk do it absolutely NOT for the money? I believe that in either case there is a lot of money at stake.
I don't know... but I think something is wrong here. If it's free speech all the way, then all the way free speech it is, and we shouldn't categorize content like that.
Is there a comparison between TUGZip and 7-ZIP? (also see 7-zip.org)
Did your prof also take part in the development of Slashdot's tagging system?
This is known as the crafty consumer phenomenon, and it was mentioned in another Slashdot discussion last year, check it out.
What if the company is supposed to send you some data via email, and the message was handled as spam and rejected by your server?
You'll miss the message, thinking the company is a bad one. On their end - they attempt to get in touch with you because they have received the failed delivery report; but they fail to contact you because all the data you provided were bogus.
Sometimes the customer may figure out something like this has happened and contact the company. Other times the customer sends a nastygram to the company asking for refunds or simply being rude - even though it's not the company's fault. Other times they just talk to the credit card company, which will refund the money without asking for details or contacting the seller first.
As you can see, there are drawbacks, so I think that's why not everyone does this.
Can someone suggest a free editor that was designed to work with .ICO files, and is able to deal with things such as multiple-sized and various colour-depth icons embedded into the same file?
n agement/aaICO-Freeware-Icon-Editor.html ), but it is not as flexible as commercial tools such as ArtIcons or Microangelo.
The best thing I found so far is aaICO ( http://www.softplatz.com/Soft/Business/Project-Ma
assert(lid->position==DOWN);
sit();
pee();
It works fine when they're alone, which is why they have no need to develop a nice mechanism for error handling. Time passes by...
.
.
.
Being the man in the house, you better make sure the condition is always satisfied, because you don't want to know how a woman throws an error or worse... how a female blue screen looks like!
Hmm, interesting experiment, but I am not sure it is not biased.
t m
While it seems possible to tell a gipsy from a non-gipsy due to skin colour and clothing (roma females tend to wear colourful stuff with flower patterns, my personal observation), it's pretty much impossible to tell a russian from a moldovan without engaging in a conversation.
People from Moldova tend to speak Russian with a specific accent, which is different from the accents typical to other ex-USSR peoples; so I am assuming they figure out the beggar is from Moldova by parsing their 'I need money' message and then mapping the accent to a country. I think this is the only way to do it, unless the beggar is wearing^ a national costume, or is dressed up in their country's flag.
The problem is that when people give money to beggars, they do it 'on-the-fly' and I've never seen anyone engage in a dialogue.
I am from Moldova, and Russian was my first language - so my Russian sounds like a russian's Russian. Also, moldovans with non-Russian as their first language can easily get rid of 'the accent' if they really try to. So I'm not sure we can trust the observations of that study.
^ The study claims the beggars "were dressed in the distinctive garb of Moldova", but I find that hard to believe - this is what one of those 'skins' looks like: http://www.galenfrysinger.com/moldovan_costumes.h
Hitachi drives support AAM, enable this feature and the drive will become quieter at the expense of some performance.
I'm not sure why you call it the 'Russian smiley', because a lot of non-Russian peoples use it. Perhaps a better name would be the 'Soviet smile', because it is used by communities in ex-Soviet states.
I live in such a country (Moldova), but I never use such smileys myself; I tend to flip my smilies, so that they show up as text on the receiver's end, rather than be replaced by an icon, ex: '(-:'. If only the paranthesis was used, '(' could be confused with ':-(', while in fact it means '(-:'. Perhaps the paranthesis is a way to make sure that the receiver will see it in plain-text, and not as an image. The graphical representations are not constant, they depend on the client used by the other party, their client's skin settings, emoticon-set, etc.
Also, it is probably worth pointing out that these 'Russian smileys' began being used 2.5 or 3 years ago, according to my observations.