Re:Python is part of the answer
on
Open Source Math
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· Score: 1
For instance, the proof of the four-coloring theorem -- first it was proved by purely mathematical means that every planar graph is essentially the same as one of a few thousand small "representative" graphs. By "essentially the same", I mean that if the representative graph is four-colorable, than the original graph is, too. Then, use a computer program to color each graph with four colors. Finally, give the results to a couple of independent teams and have them verify that your coloring contains no errors.
Yup, that's why it's not really a "proof". I might sound cranky going on and on about this, but it's really important. Especially for the future of mathematics.
The FCT's proof essentially enumerated the equivalence classes of graphs and showed that they were four-colorable. That's great.
Now, the odds of a computer's processor getting hit by a gamma ray and turning a NOT FOUR COLORABLE result into a positive one is non-zero. Negligible, of course. And for this reason I have no doubt the FCT is true. But the truth of FCT does not logically follow from the experiment. What will we do when we start enumerating enough objects that the odds aren't negligible?
There's a fine line between mathematics and the other sciences. Empirical results are obviously worthwhile, but I do not want to give up the kind of certainty real proof requires.
Re:Python is part of the answer
on
Open Source Math
·
· Score: 1
Yes, this is an interesting question.
Suffice it to say there is no consensus on the issue among those who care. The status quo has historically been forcefully rejected by prominent figures. The important historical names to know are: Cantor, Frege, Russell and Whitehead, Hausdorff, Brouwer, Hilbert, Wittgenstein, Godel, Lakatos.
Re:Python is part of the answer
on
Open Source Math
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I fear you and/or the AMS are giving too much credit to the big names in mathematical software.
I can see why you might think that, but my point had little to do with commercial software houses. My main point was that computer-assisted "proofs" are not proofs in the mathematical sense. They're "results" that rest "scientifically" on the software and hardware and real world. It really doesn't matter whether I use my implementation of Newton's Method or Mathematica's. Neither should be trusted in a proof.
I forget who it was (Wiles maybe?), but a famous mathematician once described doing mathematical research as groping around a dark cave, trying to find an exit. A computer program is like a flashlight. Not an exit, but a helpful tool for finding it.
No, they aren't. Computer-assisted "proofs" are not proofs. They're "results". Subtly different. Proofs have the force of logic behind them. "Results" aren't guaranteed to. A computer-assisted proof cannot be a mathematical proof because it is logically possible for a correctly implemented program to return a false result. This is true whether the source is available or not.
Re:Python is part of the answer
on
Open Source Math
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I am no a mathematician but surely if you're going to submit a computer aided proof you must submit a full copy of the program. The are all manor of subtle mistakes that can be made in a program that could cause serious problems with a proof.
I am a mathematician. Your referees might ask to inspect the source code. This is akin to a biologist being asked to produce her raw data. But it's pointless anyway. Because...
In many ways, establishing the correctness of a computer-aided proof is very much like security engineering. You want to verify that the whole software stack is operating correctly before you can trust the result. Having the source-code is a pre-requisite to this exercise.
The AMS isn't worried about the correctness of these "proofs." They aren't proofs. It is logically possible for one of these programs to return the wrong answer, even if the program is correctly implemented. Ergo, it is not a proof.
Computing, in mathematics, is a source of fresh problems and a vehicle to explore and gain insight about mathematical structures. The AMS is far more concerned about good exploratory algorithms getting swept up by Wolfram Inc., and Mathworks, and the like, and never being seen by mathematicians again.
Regarding which language is approriate for mathematics, the answer is whichever clearly expresses the idea you're trying to write. Lexical scoping is familiar to us. I know I prefer it, since it lessens my cognitive load. I prefer dynamically typed languages. I need the ability to construct anonymous functions efficiently. And I would prefer automatic memoization. Development time is always an issue. Most languages don't come with extensive mathematical algorithm libraries. So you'll either have to write them yourself (time consuming; boring, unless you're into that stuff) or find some. I've used Perl, Ruby, Scheme, and C.
e.g. radar jammer on an aircraft, to induce the high noise in your target, you have to limit it to a small range of frequencies so that you can put all the power in (remember, square power lost with distance).
This is only true with isotropic power sources. Directional antennae (and spotlights and those neato low dispersion lasers) don't lose power at anywhere near the rate an isotropic power source (like a lightbulb, if you think of it as an antenna -- which it happens to be) would.
ZFS wasn't excluded because of a leak. It was excluded because there were problems with the kernel extensions and it was holding up Leopard. This is why Leopard was delayed. ZFS is coming soon to an Mac near you.
The Daily Show subverts the left by presenting centrist views as desireable while self-identifying as leftists. Two major implications: the centrist views become seen as "radical" (and therefore untenable) by the general public. Leftist views are not even considered.
I never said that you were a republican, "your party" might have been exaggerating your political knowledge and association since it seems from your postings that you don't actually understand even the basic terms being discussed here. So for that I apologize.
Take your condescention and shove it up your ass.
Regardless of my political affiliation, I could agree 100% with the character Stephen Colbert plays. My point would still remain completely valid. He plays a character. The character he plays has no bearing on the man he is. Lawrence Fishburne did not become naive and violent because he played Othello. Kenneth Brannagh did not become evil because he played Iago.
Is the fact that they're both named "Stephen Colbert" confusing you?
To come out and say that something others find humorous isn't funny is naive. The definition of "funny" is that people find it so. Not that you approve of it, so unless you were only stating that you don't find it funny, you are so un empathetic as to be no use in the discussion of the topic of humor.
Obviously, it is my opinion that they aren't funny. Painfully obvious. I have no idea why you even mention this, let alone make it a "point" in your post. Have you been tested for autism? The literate among us understood that this was my opinion. Why didn't you?
On the topic of characters. To play a character is common for everybody, if you are asserting that Stewart is in character when doing his show. He appears to be in no more a role than any other personality that appears on TV, including yourself if you have ever been on camera.
Too naive. I don't have a staff of writers telling me what I should say, or when and how to say it. I don't have classical training in acting, as Jon Stewart does. Nor do I have dozens of film and television credits to my name, where I was praised for my acting ability, as Jon Stewart does and has. For example, watch his work on the Larry Sanders Show.
So yes: He appears to be in no more of a role than others. And appearances, especially on television, are deceiving.
The point is this: all you know about Jon Stewart is what he tells you through the facade he has constructed. There is no denying he has constructed one. So, if you don't mind telling me (if there's only one question to respond to in this post, this is it): Why do you think you're justified in believing Jon Stewart is not playing a character role when your only epistemic access to Jon Stewart is through television?
The "no party represents me" line is a classic. The lone thinker in a sea of lemmings. Oh the burden of the intelligent. Please. With as many people in the world as there are, I'm pretty sure you have comrades. People with the same ideas as you. That you don't associate yourself with them and call yourselves a party is semantics.
(Hint: lines like these are where you've condescendingly assumed too much about me.)
Yes, there are others like me. But it is not a matter of semantics that there is no party that represents me when, there as a matter of fact, is no nationally recognized party that represents my views. Nor can there be. And this is why I said you assumed too much: because I said a simple statement that was true as a matter of fact, and assumed an uncharitable interpretation. A transparent rhetorical device bording on ad hominem. And before you get your panties in a twist, I realize I have directly insulted you. But not as a rhetorical device -- the insults are not the basis of my argument. Unlike your "argument".
What would you like us to assume of your claim that two Comedy Central shows are subverting the left. Why would you say that? What are your motives in posting that in response to this topical discussion? Try not to have an agenda as you explain that to all of us. Just try not to expose ties to historical political parties that maintain similar views. Since there are hundreds. Try to even
Jon Stewart doesn't really have a "character" at all.
How adorably naive.:-)
As for Colbert, it's clear that Stephen Colbert the person (and one who is running) holds wildly different views from Stephen Colbert the pundit.
I must wonder how you feel justified in saying that you know anything about Stephen Colbert's real opinions, given that your only access to them is through the facade he has constructed for public consumption.
You assume far too much about me. My politics are none of your concern, but you can rest assured that I am not a Republican of any stripe. Indeed, Stewart's and Colbert's comments "about my party" cannot apply to me, since no party represents me.
What you don't seem to realize is that Stewart and Colbert have done far more to subvert the left in America than Limbaugh or O'Reilly ever dreamed of.
You appear to be a member of the Colbert Report's key demographic: Young, stupid, and mildly retarded. (Hint: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert play characters named Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert respectively. Fiction. Not news. Not "insightful commentary". Not representative of their actual opinions. Not funny.)
Yeah, this whole thing about communicating effectively, even internally to yourself, can be a real mind boggler.
The "internally to yourself" part is the part from which the difficulties I mentioned arise. It is very tempting to say that what one does "internally" when "communicating" to one's self is the same as what one does internally when communicating with others. But the affirmation leads to contradiction. Interestingly, it may turn out to be brute fact that they are the same. But affirming it is ultimately fallacious. (The argument that shows this is the "Private Language Argument")
The practice has been abandoned for the kernel. The problem was that backporting 2.5 developments to 2.4 wasn't much less work than writing 2.5 in the first place. This process change is a big reason why they put so much effort into finding the "right" distributed version control system.
This is an interesting questions. If Microsoft had a similar release schedule, IT departments around the world would be screaming bloody murder about the upgrade treadmill. It is, in fact, a pretty steep one.
On the other hand, Tiger had about 300 feature upgrades over Panther. And Leopard has about 300 over Tiger. Obviously, not all of those are going to be significant, but 300 is about how many feature upgrades MS included in Vista. So the OS X line is improving significantly with each iteration, and at a faster pace.
Whether this means you have to buy the latest OS X is up to you. I tend to take a look at the feature lists. Cocoa/Ruby is going to be included in Leopard, so I'll probably be getting a copy (or, more likely, buying a big ass iMac once they ship with Leopard.)
I loved how passionately the characters in that movie talked about what's "real" and what isn't, with absolutely no evidence that Zion wasn't a part of the Matrix too. Indeed, the known existence of a computer with the power to do what the Matrix did makes such a claim at least plausible.
It's almost as if the Wachoskis didn't have a firm grasp of the topic...
While true, there is a more direct way to reach the conclusion that computer buyers are victims. Victims of fraud.
In common law jurisdictions, an implied warranty is a contract law term for certain assurances that are presumed to be made in the sale of products or real property, due to the circumstances of the sale. These assurances are characterized as warranties irrespective of whether the seller has expressly promised them verbally or in writing. They include an implied warranty of merchantiibility... An implied warranty of merchantability is a warranty implied by law that if a merchant (meaning someone who makes an occupation of selling things) sells something, that merchant is guaranteeing that the goods are reasonably fit for the general purpose for which they are sold.
If Vista has worse performance than XP, and causes a computer to be unable to perform as it had or would have under XP, an argument can be made that the computer in toto is unfit for the general purpose. Depending on the specifics of the case, it could be a good argument, or a bad one.
Skepticism about the external world: "There is no possible proof (or even evidence) that our sense data is not falsified by an unknown and unseen entity." Obviously, this is a paraphrase. But the argument is illuminating. Suppose we find some evidence A. Then, (I will presume for the sake of my paraphrase) A was found either through our reason or our senses. Our reason is no help, essentially because our thoughts about our senses (and thus our thoughts about perceived objects) is compatible with a deception occurring. (This gets rather technical. I can explain more about it if you want, but not now). Obviously, "evidence" gathered by our senses cannot act as evidence since it itself can be falsified.
A "skeptic" in the philosophical sense refers to a person who is skeptical about the external world. People can be skeptical about other philosophical issues, such as skepticism about other minds: "There is no possible proof (or even evidence) that other people (whatever that means in the context of your other beliefs) have minds -- that is, are not automatons.
The issue is one of epistemic "access". We don't have access to any modes of information we don't have access to. So nothing can vouch for the ones we do have.
I won't get into the consequences of such views, except vaguely that they can range from a sense of modesty about one's place in the universe, whatever that is; to anomie and existential angst; to boring elitist atheism; and probably many more.
Both of these are true. But they both assume someone has (subjectively) identified which resources to protect and how much cost/effort should be spent to protect them. Without those subjective decisions, security models are irrelevant
Regarding your second point: As I mentioned, cost/effort is irrelevant in the case of computer security, unless there are very particular circumstances. Encrypting your communications using AES-256 will cost you nothing more than AES-128 will, in most circumstances. Using a one provably secure framework over another will cost you nothing, aside from ease of use in setting them up.
Regarding your first point: I will grant that much. But this is a much weaker statement than you seem to think it is, in the context of our discussion. In particular, you will find that the resources that people subjectively decide to protect are the resources that objectively need protection.
I was in a position similar to yours, but for different reasons. I mention this only to make my biases apparent. Take this with a grain of salt. The first language I learned was the procedural fragment of Perl. I learned how to use OO Perl after a while, but I didn't really understand wtf was going on until I learned a less byzantine object system -- namely, Ruby's. Now, I very much appreciate Perl's dynamic programming abilities. And, similarly, I appreciate Ruby's dynamic and metaprogramming functionality. I got a lot of use out of it. But the more I learned, the more I wished was possible. Ruby is very nice, and is currently my favorite language, but its metaprogramming facilities are too inflexible for me. So I learned some functional languages.
Since you mentioned that you're interested in Lisps, I suggest you start learning functional languages with Scheme. It does have a specification -- in fact, it is rather short. (Common Lisp has a specification too, but Scheme's is shorter than its index). The syntax is simple, and the language, while rather anemic for a functional language in terms of features, it still has all the strengths of a functional language. There are lots of good books available.
Erlang is another suggestion. The syntax is ugly, so it might not seem as elegant as something like Scheme. Your post was motivated by your desire to learn effective concurrent programming practices, so I must mention that concurrency, within certain limits determined by your algorithm, is essentialy an implementation issue for functional languages. Essentially, a functional program is run by creating a parse tree of functions and applying beta-reduction. If function invocations are on separate branches, they can occur concurrently. It's up to the interpreter/compiler to make that happen. Erlang is a great concurrency system because Ericsson wrote a very good concurrent interpreter (and related supporting technologies). Scheme is a good target for a concurrent interpreter as well.
I realize I'm rambling. Pardon my awkward phrasing. I am sleep deprived.
You can accuse me of failing at logic, but it doesn't make it true. For one thing, you mixed up the "types." The security model for pluggable security models is of the "provable security" type. There is a fact of the matter whether a particular model fits a specification -- ACLs can fit any specification, by construction. There is a fact of the matter whether a particular model or implementation can be breached by an adversary, even with infinite resources. (And the answer need not be 'yes'). There is nothing subjective about this. Moreover, if implemented by a third party, using a particular open source security model costs you nothing.
'Process' can be synonymous with 'methodology', but need not be so. A process can be an on-going activity. A methodology is not understood to be an activity at all. You fail at English. My apologies if it isn't your native language, but you should really get to know the language better before criticizing others' use.
Your honeypot example is rather lame. Both "concepts" are going to be "No adversary should gain access to any resource unless implicitly or explicitly authorized to use it".
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For instance, the proof of the four-coloring theorem -- first it was proved by purely mathematical means that every planar graph is essentially the same as one of a few thousand small "representative" graphs. By "essentially the same", I mean that if the representative graph is four-colorable, than the original graph is, too. Then, use a computer program to color each graph with four colors. Finally, give the results to a couple of independent teams and have them verify that your coloring contains no errors.
Yup, that's why it's not really a "proof". I might sound cranky going on and on about this, but it's really important. Especially for the future of mathematics.
The FCT's proof essentially enumerated the equivalence classes of graphs and showed that they were four-colorable. That's great.
Now, the odds of a computer's processor getting hit by a gamma ray and turning a NOT FOUR COLORABLE result into a positive one is non-zero. Negligible, of course. And for this reason I have no doubt the FCT is true. But the truth of FCT does not logically follow from the experiment. What will we do when we start enumerating enough objects that the odds aren't negligible?
There's a fine line between mathematics and the other sciences. Empirical results are obviously worthwhile, but I do not want to give up the kind of certainty real proof requires.
Yes, this is an interesting question.
Suffice it to say there is no consensus on the issue among those who care. The status quo has historically been forcefully rejected by prominent figures. The important historical names to know are: Cantor, Frege, Russell and Whitehead, Hausdorff, Brouwer, Hilbert, Wittgenstein, Godel, Lakatos.
I fear you and/or the AMS are giving too much credit to the big names in mathematical software.
I can see why you might think that, but my point had little to do with commercial software houses. My main point was that computer-assisted "proofs" are not proofs in the mathematical sense. They're "results" that rest "scientifically" on the software and hardware and real world. It really doesn't matter whether I use my implementation of Newton's Method or Mathematica's. Neither should be trusted in a proof.
I forget who it was (Wiles maybe?), but a famous mathematician once described doing mathematical research as groping around a dark cave, trying to find an exit. A computer program is like a flashlight. Not an exit, but a helpful tool for finding it.
No, they aren't. Computer-assisted "proofs" are not proofs. They're "results". Subtly different. Proofs have the force of logic behind them. "Results" aren't guaranteed to. A computer-assisted proof cannot be a mathematical proof because it is logically possible for a correctly implemented program to return a false result. This is true whether the source is available or not.
I am no a mathematician but surely if you're going to submit a computer aided proof you must submit a full copy of the program. The are all manor of subtle mistakes that can be made in a program that could cause serious problems with a proof.
I am a mathematician. Your referees might ask to inspect the source code. This is akin to a biologist being asked to produce her raw data. But it's pointless anyway. Because...
In many ways, establishing the correctness of a computer-aided proof is very much like security engineering. You want to verify that the whole software stack is operating correctly before you can trust the result. Having the source-code is a pre-requisite to this exercise.
The AMS isn't worried about the correctness of these "proofs." They aren't proofs. It is logically possible for one of these programs to return the wrong answer, even if the program is correctly implemented. Ergo, it is not a proof.
Computing, in mathematics, is a source of fresh problems and a vehicle to explore and gain insight about mathematical structures. The AMS is far more concerned about good exploratory algorithms getting swept up by Wolfram Inc., and Mathworks, and the like, and never being seen by mathematicians again.
Regarding which language is approriate for mathematics, the answer is whichever clearly expresses the idea you're trying to write. Lexical scoping is familiar to us. I know I prefer it, since it lessens my cognitive load. I prefer dynamically typed languages. I need the ability to construct anonymous functions efficiently. And I would prefer automatic memoization. Development time is always an issue. Most languages don't come with extensive mathematical algorithm libraries. So you'll either have to write them yourself (time consuming; boring, unless you're into that stuff) or find some. I've used Perl, Ruby, Scheme, and C.
e.g. radar jammer on an aircraft, to induce the high noise in your target, you have to limit it to a small range of frequencies so that you can put all the power in (remember, square power lost with distance).
This is only true with isotropic power sources. Directional antennae (and spotlights and those neato low dispersion lasers) don't lose power at anywhere near the rate an isotropic power source (like a lightbulb, if you think of it as an antenna -- which it happens to be) would.
ZFS wasn't excluded because of a leak. It was excluded because there were problems with the kernel extensions and it was holding up Leopard. This is why Leopard was delayed. ZFS is coming soon to an Mac near you.
ATI got slapped by Jobs a few months ago: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/17800/139/
Bullshit. http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/
Keep that in mind next time you go to the pharmacist. Or have your brake lines replaced. Or buy meat.
The Daily Show subverts the left by presenting centrist views as desireable while self-identifying as leftists. Two major implications: the centrist views become seen as "radical" (and therefore untenable) by the general public. Leftist views are not even considered.
I never said that you were a republican, "your party" might have been exaggerating your political knowledge and association since it seems from your postings that you don't actually understand even the basic terms being discussed here. So for that I apologize.
Take your condescention and shove it up your ass.
Regardless of my political affiliation, I could agree 100% with the character Stephen Colbert plays. My point would still remain completely valid. He plays a character. The character he plays has no bearing on the man he is. Lawrence Fishburne did not become naive and violent because he played Othello. Kenneth Brannagh did not become evil because he played Iago.
Is the fact that they're both named "Stephen Colbert" confusing you?
To come out and say that something others find humorous isn't funny is naive. The definition of "funny" is that people find it so. Not that you approve of it, so unless you were only stating that you don't find it funny, you are so un empathetic as to be no use in the discussion of the topic of humor.
Obviously, it is my opinion that they aren't funny. Painfully obvious. I have no idea why you even mention this, let alone make it a "point" in your post. Have you been tested for autism? The literate among us understood that this was my opinion. Why didn't you?
On the topic of characters. To play a character is common for everybody, if you are asserting that Stewart is in character when doing his show. He appears to be in no more a role than any other personality that appears on TV, including yourself if you have ever been on camera.
Too naive. I don't have a staff of writers telling me what I should say, or when and how to say it. I don't have classical training in acting, as Jon Stewart does. Nor do I have dozens of film and television credits to my name, where I was praised for my acting ability, as Jon Stewart does and has. For example, watch his work on the Larry Sanders Show.
So yes: He appears to be in no more of a role than others. And appearances, especially on television, are deceiving.
The point is this: all you know about Jon Stewart is what he tells you through the facade he has constructed. There is no denying he has constructed one. So, if you don't mind telling me (if there's only one question to respond to in this post, this is it): Why do you think you're justified in believing Jon Stewart is not playing a character role when your only epistemic access to Jon Stewart is through television?
The "no party represents me" line is a classic. The lone thinker in a sea of lemmings. Oh the burden of the intelligent. Please. With as many people in the world as there are, I'm pretty sure you have comrades. People with the same ideas as you. That you don't associate yourself with them and call yourselves a party is semantics.
(Hint: lines like these are where you've condescendingly assumed too much about me.)
Yes, there are others like me. But it is not a matter of semantics that there is no party that represents me when, there as a matter of fact, is no nationally recognized party that represents my views. Nor can there be. And this is why I said you assumed too much: because I said a simple statement that was true as a matter of fact, and assumed an uncharitable interpretation. A transparent rhetorical device bording on ad hominem. And before you get your panties in a twist, I realize I have directly insulted you. But not as a rhetorical device -- the insults are not the basis of my argument. Unlike your "argument".
What would you like us to assume of your claim that two Comedy Central shows are subverting the left. Why would you say that? What are your motives in posting that in response to this topical discussion? Try not to have an agenda as you explain that to all of us. Just try not to expose ties to historical political parties that maintain similar views. Since there are hundreds. Try to even
Jon Stewart doesn't really have a "character" at all.
:-)
How adorably naive.
As for Colbert, it's clear that Stephen Colbert the person (and one who is running) holds wildly different views from Stephen Colbert the pundit.
I must wonder how you feel justified in saying that you know anything about Stephen Colbert's real opinions, given that your only access to them is through the facade he has constructed for public consumption.
The same goes for Stewart and his "pepperings".
You assume far too much about me. My politics are none of your concern, but you can rest assured that I am not a Republican of any stripe. Indeed, Stewart's and Colbert's comments "about my party" cannot apply to me, since no party represents me.
What you don't seem to realize is that Stewart and Colbert have done far more to subvert the left in America than Limbaugh or O'Reilly ever dreamed of.
You appear to be a member of the Colbert Report's key demographic: Young, stupid, and mildly retarded. (Hint: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert play characters named Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert respectively. Fiction. Not news. Not "insightful commentary". Not representative of their actual opinions. Not funny.)
Yeah, this whole thing about communicating effectively, even internally to yourself, can be a real mind boggler.
The "internally to yourself" part is the part from which the difficulties I mentioned arise. It is very tempting to say that what one does "internally" when "communicating" to one's self is the same as what one does internally when communicating with others. But the affirmation leads to contradiction. Interestingly, it may turn out to be brute fact that they are the same. But affirming it is ultimately fallacious. (The argument that shows this is the "Private Language Argument")
The practice has been abandoned for the kernel. The problem was that backporting 2.5 developments to 2.4 wasn't much less work than writing 2.5 in the first place. This process change is a big reason why they put so much effort into finding the "right" distributed version control system.
This is an interesting questions. If Microsoft had a similar release schedule, IT departments around the world would be screaming bloody murder about the upgrade treadmill. It is, in fact, a pretty steep one.
On the other hand, Tiger had about 300 feature upgrades over Panther. And Leopard has about 300 over Tiger. Obviously, not all of those are going to be significant, but 300 is about how many feature upgrades MS included in Vista. So the OS X line is improving significantly with each iteration, and at a faster pace.
Whether this means you have to buy the latest OS X is up to you. I tend to take a look at the feature lists. Cocoa/Ruby is going to be included in Leopard, so I'll probably be getting a copy (or, more likely, buying a big ass iMac once they ship with Leopard.)
Comcast was founded in 1963. It doubled in size after an acquisition in 1986, and then again in 2001, when they bought AT&T's cable service division.
Verizon was founded in 1983 as the Bell Atlantic Corporation. An AT&T spinoff.
Yes, there are lots of competitive newcomers in the market.
Nope.
I loved how passionately the characters in that movie talked about what's "real" and what isn't, with absolutely no evidence that Zion wasn't a part of the Matrix too. Indeed, the known existence of a computer with the power to do what the Matrix did makes such a claim at least plausible.
It's almost as if the Wachoskis didn't have a firm grasp of the topic...
If Vista has worse performance than XP, and causes a computer to be unable to perform as it had or would have under XP, an argument can be made that the computer in toto is unfit for the general purpose. Depending on the specifics of the case, it could be a good argument, or a bad one.
(workdeville is my work account)
Skepticism about the external world: "There is no possible proof (or even evidence) that our sense data is not falsified by an unknown and unseen entity." Obviously, this is a paraphrase. But the argument is illuminating. Suppose we find some evidence A. Then, (I will presume for the sake of my paraphrase) A was found either through our reason or our senses. Our reason is no help, essentially because our thoughts about our senses (and thus our thoughts about perceived objects) is compatible with a deception occurring. (This gets rather technical. I can explain more about it if you want, but not now). Obviously, "evidence" gathered by our senses cannot act as evidence since it itself can be falsified.
A "skeptic" in the philosophical sense refers to a person who is skeptical about the external world. People can be skeptical about other philosophical issues, such as skepticism about other minds: "There is no possible proof (or even evidence) that other people (whatever that means in the context of your other beliefs) have minds -- that is, are not automatons.
The issue is one of epistemic "access". We don't have access to any modes of information we don't have access to. So nothing can vouch for the ones we do have.
I won't get into the consequences of such views, except vaguely that they can range from a sense of modesty about one's place in the universe, whatever that is; to anomie and existential angst; to boring elitist atheism; and probably many more.
Both of these are true. But they both assume someone has (subjectively) identified which resources to protect and how much cost/effort should be spent to protect them. Without those subjective decisions, security models are irrelevant
Regarding your second point: As I mentioned, cost/effort is irrelevant in the case of computer security, unless there are very particular circumstances. Encrypting your communications using AES-256 will cost you nothing more than AES-128 will, in most circumstances. Using a one provably secure framework over another will cost you nothing, aside from ease of use in setting them up.
Regarding your first point: I will grant that much. But this is a much weaker statement than you seem to think it is, in the context of our discussion. In particular, you will find that the resources that people subjectively decide to protect are the resources that objectively need protection.
Cool! I will check it out. How does its performance compare wit DRb?
I was in a position similar to yours, but for different reasons. I mention this only to make my biases apparent. Take this with a grain of salt. The first language I learned was the procedural fragment of Perl. I learned how to use OO Perl after a while, but I didn't really understand wtf was going on until I learned a less byzantine object system -- namely, Ruby's. Now, I very much appreciate Perl's dynamic programming abilities. And, similarly, I appreciate Ruby's dynamic and metaprogramming functionality. I got a lot of use out of it. But the more I learned, the more I wished was possible. Ruby is very nice, and is currently my favorite language, but its metaprogramming facilities are too inflexible for me. So I learned some functional languages.
Since you mentioned that you're interested in Lisps, I suggest you start learning functional languages with Scheme. It does have a specification -- in fact, it is rather short. (Common Lisp has a specification too, but Scheme's is shorter than its index). The syntax is simple, and the language, while rather anemic for a functional language in terms of features, it still has all the strengths of a functional language. There are lots of good books available.
Erlang is another suggestion. The syntax is ugly, so it might not seem as elegant as something like Scheme. Your post was motivated by your desire to learn effective concurrent programming practices, so I must mention that concurrency, within certain limits determined by your algorithm, is essentialy an implementation issue for functional languages. Essentially, a functional program is run by creating a parse tree of functions and applying beta-reduction. If function invocations are on separate branches, they can occur concurrently. It's up to the interpreter/compiler to make that happen. Erlang is a great concurrency system because Ericsson wrote a very good concurrent interpreter (and related supporting technologies). Scheme is a good target for a concurrent interpreter as well.
I realize I'm rambling. Pardon my awkward phrasing. I am sleep deprived.
You can accuse me of failing at logic, but it doesn't make it true. For one thing, you mixed up the "types." The security model for pluggable security models is of the "provable security" type. There is a fact of the matter whether a particular model fits a specification -- ACLs can fit any specification, by construction. There is a fact of the matter whether a particular model or implementation can be breached by an adversary, even with infinite resources. (And the answer need not be 'yes'). There is nothing subjective about this. Moreover, if implemented by a third party, using a particular open source security model costs you nothing.
'Process' can be synonymous with 'methodology', but need not be so. A process can be an on-going activity. A methodology is not understood to be an activity at all. You fail at English. My apologies if it isn't your native language, but you should really get to know the language better before criticizing others' use.
Your honeypot example is rather lame. Both "concepts" are going to be "No adversary should gain access to any resource unless implicitly or explicitly authorized to use it".