I had an idea of a system after the attacks that involved a national ID card, after asking myself questions about how could this sort of thing have been prevented through domestic intelligence. A couple of days later I saw Oracle was proposing the same.
For one thing, a system like this might not be as naive as one might think. It can track a lot of things. Take a look at what the casinos do with those stupid little value cards or whatever they call them. A system like this could give the intelligence community the ways and means of tracking patterns of activity, and potentially flagging individuals as suspect.
I do not think that such a system would automatically thwart any attack imaginable, but it would at least give our intelligence officials the information available to look for a potential threat. Put the information there. Give them the responsibility of what to look for.
Instead of griping about Oracle trying to profit from the attacks by proposing a system like this, maybe we should really start thinking about what a system like this could really do.
It's real and it's almost here, and they aren't talking about the former iDEN phones, but the new "Condor" phone that is planned for release sometime in the near future.
See idendev.com
Let's not forget what happened to another spacecraft that was lost because of Fortran implicit typing. Someone used a variable called IVAR when performing floating point operations in a program which was compiled with implicit typing- meaning that all variables that start with I... get declared as type integer. Well, integer data types don't mix too well with floating point operations, and the thing was lost in space, or so I remember.
Anyways, from what I know of it, it got NASA on the ball to fix the problem, and so this might too as well.
1) The majority of mainstream computer users these days grew up and learned to read, write, spell, etc. on good old fashioned paper. We get used to that, and whether we like it or not, that is analogous to our native language. Our native "information interface" so to speak. As time goes on, more and more of the little shits will be integrating the computer into the electronic contraptions that we stay linked into all day, so I feel that the printing dilemma will decrease (but not go away).
2) You just can't beat paper. You can jot things down on it in a big hurry, highlight the important points, pin it up on your bulletin board, etc. We aren't sophisticated in our human / computer interface to accomplish this.
2b) Electronic information is harder to get to than physical paper. You can shuffle around on your desk for a few seconds and produce the information you want, whereas previously stored information on the web for example requires that you go searching through bookmarks or whatever to get to it. For example, how many times have you typed in a web host and navigated back to some information that you knew was there as opposed to looking it up in your bookmarks file in your browser?
Warwick is effusive about the possibilities and has even suggested that gun owners could get implanted to keep them from entering schools or other areas where heavily armed people may be unwelcome.
The idea that Warwick has to implant all gun owners so they cannot enter a school is ludicrous. I HATE seeing this kind of stuff get thrown around. Noone has the right to tell me that I cannot go somewhere simply because I am a gun owner. This guy can kiss my *$&.
I've stewed long and hard over this very question. Here are my thoughts:
1) PE certification has a large bearing if you are in an industry that directly supports the public at large. I.E., people drive across the bridge you designed every day, or walk by the nuclear waste dump that you designed. If all this sounds a lot like mechanical and civil engineering, you're right- they are the ones that need it the most. Certification is very important here because the government regulations say you have to have it. Electical engineer's don't do that sort of thing in general unless you are working in power, and then it does come to be importatnt.
2) Technically, you can't state that you are an engineer on your business card if you do not have PE certification. Everyone does anyway, though.
3) For me, I'm doing it for two reasons:
a) I don't want to limit myself. If I want to go out and contract myself out to design a power distribution system for the pentagon, I'd like to be able to produce my creditials.
b) I'm proud to be in engineering. If there is anything out there that says "You are an official engineer because we say so" accreditation, then I'm going to go get it.
Here's added incentive:
c) It's easy to pass. Myself, and I know several others who never picked up a book and passed the FE with flying colors.
Hey, I think this is great, but the fact that they are distributing the driver dependent on Red Hat should be worked on- I suppose the idea is that if it is "Red Hat 5.2" or "Red Hat 6.0," then they know precisely which kernel version is being used (or what should be running, anyways). Without that, then the kernel version that is being used is anybody's guess, and the driver may not function. The key would be to get the source in the kernel tree (I'm sure that will happen soon, anyway).
That way it will be a module with everything else.
Now, this looks like some *cool* stuff, but it should be noted that all they said that they can do is produce a "parallel array of wires" 2 nm wide. Now, I'd say that is a substantial breakthrough, but still a far cry from being able to produce a transistor at that level. Now, if they can "self-assemble" an n-p junction at the 2 nm level, well, I'd quit everything and buy stock in HP.
Well, you would actually have to learn the cryptography concepts overseas before doing any coding, since the crypto export laws state that a collection of synapses in the brain that are oriented in such a way as to provide the potential for the creation of encryption code is stricly a munition and cannot be exported.
So the Gaussian distribution isn't wrong but it just isn't correct selection of distributions for that particular experiment.
My point exactly- the people doing that research probably never intended for the article to lean towards a "Scrap Gaussian! Look at us!" thesis, but that's what happens from time to time when you get journalists in the act of "reporting" science.
Just because your data doesn't precisely fit the distribution, it does not mean the distibution is "wrong." What it means is your data doesn't match your distribution.
This appears to be another case where journalists have missed the point.
The Gaussian distribution is not "wrong" in any shape or form.
Slashdot Mirror
((NumDevelopers - 1) / NumDevelopers) * 100
Am I the only person that is in favor of this?
I had an idea of a system after the attacks that involved a national ID card, after asking myself questions about how could this sort of thing have been prevented through domestic intelligence. A couple of days later I saw Oracle was proposing the same.
For one thing, a system like this might not be as naive as one might think. It can track a lot of things. Take a look at what the casinos do with those stupid little value cards or whatever they call them. A system like this could give the intelligence community the ways and means of tracking patterns of activity, and potentially flagging individuals as suspect.
I do not think that such a system would automatically thwart any attack imaginable, but it would at least give our intelligence officials the information available to look for a potential threat. Put the information there. Give them the responsibility of what to look for.
Instead of griping about Oracle trying to profit from the attacks by proposing a system like this, maybe we should really start thinking about what a system like this could really do.
It's real and it's almost here, and they aren't talking about the former iDEN phones, but the new "Condor" phone that is planned for release sometime in the near future. See idendev.com
Here is the official word on the ruling, straight from the disctrict court of D.C.:
http://usvms.gpo.gov/ms-conclusions.html
Let's not forget what happened to another spacecraft that was lost because of Fortran implicit typing. Someone used a variable called IVAR when performing floating point operations in a program which was compiled with implicit typing- meaning that all variables that start with I... get declared as type integer. Well, integer data types don't mix too well with floating point operations, and the thing was lost in space, or so I remember.
Anyways, from what I know of it, it got NASA on the ball to fix the problem, and so this might too as well.
Two things here:
1) The majority of mainstream computer users these days grew up and learned to read, write, spell, etc. on good old fashioned paper. We get used to that, and whether we like it or not, that is analogous to our native language. Our native "information interface" so to speak. As time goes on, more and more of the little shits will be integrating the computer into the electronic contraptions that we stay linked into all day, so I feel that the printing dilemma will decrease (but not go away).
2) You just can't beat paper. You can jot things down on it in a big hurry, highlight the important points, pin it up on your bulletin board, etc. We aren't sophisticated in our human / computer interface to accomplish this.
2b) Electronic information is harder to get to than physical paper. You can shuffle around on your desk for a few seconds and produce the information you want, whereas previously stored information on the web for example requires that you go searching through bookmarks or whatever to get to it. For example, how many times have you typed in a web host and navigated back to some information that you knew was there as opposed to looking it up in your bookmarks file in your browser?
Chris
Warwick is effusive about the possibilities and has even suggested that gun owners could
get implanted to keep them from entering schools or other areas where heavily armed people may be unwelcome.
The idea that Warwick has to implant all gun owners so they cannot enter a school is ludicrous.
I HATE seeing this kind of stuff get thrown around. Noone has the right to tell me that I cannot go somewhere simply because I am a gun owner. This guy can kiss my *$&.
I've stewed long and hard over this very question. Here are my thoughts:
1) PE certification has a large bearing if you are in an industry that directly supports the public at large. I.E., people drive across the bridge you designed every day, or walk by the nuclear waste dump that you designed. If all this sounds a lot like mechanical and civil engineering, you're right- they are the ones that need it the most. Certification is very important here because the government regulations say you have to have it. Electical engineer's don't do that sort of thing in general unless you are working in power, and then it does come to be importatnt.
2) Technically, you can't state that you are an engineer on your business card if you do not have PE certification. Everyone does anyway, though.
3) For me, I'm doing it for two reasons:
a) I don't want to limit myself. If I want to go out and contract myself out to design a power distribution system for the pentagon, I'd like to be able to produce my creditials.
b) I'm proud to be in engineering. If there is anything out there that says "You are an official engineer because we say so" accreditation, then I'm going to go get it.
Here's added incentive:
c) It's easy to pass. Myself, and I know several others who never picked up a book and passed the FE with flying colors.
So do it!
Chris Ruffin
Hey, I think this is great, but the fact that they are distributing the driver dependent on Red Hat should be worked on- I suppose the idea is that if it is "Red Hat 5.2" or "Red Hat 6.0," then they know precisely which kernel version is being used (or what should be running, anyways). Without that, then the kernel version that is being used is anybody's guess, and the driver may not function. The key would be to get the source in the kernel tree (I'm sure that will happen soon, anyway).
That way it will be a module with everything else.
Here's another story about the HP guys that talk a little more about making the actual transistors.
Now, this looks like some *cool* stuff, but it should be noted that all they said that they can do is produce a "parallel array of wires" 2 nm wide. Now, I'd say that is a substantial breakthrough, but still a far cry from being able to produce a transistor at that level. Now, if they can "self-assemble" an n-p junction at the 2 nm level, well, I'd quit everything and buy stock in HP.
Well, you would actually have to learn the cryptography concepts overseas before doing any coding, since the crypto export laws state that a collection of synapses in the brain that are oriented in such a way as to provide the potential for the creation of encryption code is stricly a munition and cannot be exported.
So the Gaussian distribution isn't wrong but it just isn't correct selection of distributions for that particular experiment.
My point exactly- the people doing that research probably never intended for the article to lean towards a "Scrap Gaussian! Look at us!" thesis, but that's what happens from time to time when you get journalists in the act of "reporting" science.
Just because your data doesn't precisely fit the distribution, it does not mean the distibution is "wrong." What it means is your data doesn't match your distribution.
This appears to be another case where journalists have missed the point.
The Gaussian distribution is not "wrong" in any shape or form.