Yes, I think that there is call for speculation on the constants varying over billions of years since the light we are observing is roughly 12 billion years old and all our observations here on earth remain static.
Well... To be fair, it is quite possible that our observations are incorrect since the human mind is quite susceptible to assumptions or deceptions of our senses or that all light particles and waves in the universe changed speed at the same time a billion years ago when no one was looking.
On the grand scale of things if something happened 10 billion years ago and all current evidence of it and its effects were removed from the universe or put outside the observable universe (you know... outside the realm of the visible universe from our point of observation of Earth) then we would not have the slightest clue (or observation) that this phenomenon occurred.
Secondly, there might be phenomena in the universe we can't observe through our 5 senses. Imagine if we happened to be evolved without ears or eyes. Hard luck seeing stars or listening to radio waves.
However, our technology appears to be able to compensate this to detect radiation and various other unperceivable effects in the universe (although being able to detect radiation with a sensory organ would be kind of cool)
Personally, I would like the to think the universe has a set of laws that it goes by because living in a logical universe makes sense and makes it easier to sleep at night without worrying about my atoms decaying in my sleep or time reverses on me.
However... I still have to worry about my senses deceiving me because I can only prove to myself that I exist...
* If we cannot be certain that our senses do not deceive us, then we cannot know anything with certainty. * We cannot know whether or not our senses deceive us. * Therefore, we cannot know anything about the world.
It'll punish you more for cracking than for murder, but at the same time it won't secure it's own systems and heed experts.
That's not even half the problem. What happens if the hacker is in China and can't be arrested because he is actually in the basement of the People's Army and employed by the Chinese government.
Seriously, if I was a lead intelligence expert in China or Russia, I'd be having a heyday of compromising US military computers and trying to get as much information out of them as possible.
If some bright guy in the UK can do it... Why not trained teams of government spies with millions of dollars in their budget?
For some reason I had always thought it was my age that made me like computers and technology, but I'm getting fairly old but the desire to buy gadgets and new technology isn't going away.
I'm buying more and getting more than I was a kid mostly because of my greater income.
However, my parents really weren't into gadgets that much so I don't know if this is passed on or just learned as a kid.
However, most kids are pretty quick to learn computers so perhaps if you can the "neophilia" bug as a kid that your mind develops in a certain way (from playing video games and messing with computers) that you end up always being like this.
Do you really think that lawmakers in the US are going to pass laws that the world leaders do not accept?
Simple answer. Yes.
They are passing laws that are invalid in many countries. Frankly... Many other countries really disaprove of the death penalty. Secondly, many of our trade laws are invalid in other nations, but its only the treaties they have to comply with.
I have a gut feeling that by 2025 the US will be a minor player with China and India being in the lead roles of determining global policies. But that is pure speculation...
Learn some discretion, and keep matters to yourself.
Really, even when they should be public? Like my religion? Or say political beliefs?
Then again that takes a bit of responsiblity... If I speak out against the powers that be then I of course will know I may face the consequences but at least I stood up for what I believe in.
Of course... The opposite is true as well. Being subversive takes a bit of tact too. As in posting false information in your blogs to make yourself look better. Or faking information about others to make them look bad in fake blogs.
Of course the best defense in any situation would be to blame hackers for the "lies" on your web page.
If the code was stolen there is a significant risk of cheaters ruining the game for everyone.
Hacking into servers is bad, but it always irritates me that people think multiplayer games cannot be secure if the source code is open.
If more eyes are looking at the code, then more people can help fix them or point them out to developers. The problem with most small programming houses and MMOG live teams is that those guys are usually swamped with bug fixes and can't look at the code.
Sure, there will always people that will exploit the source code, but if you have a good community, you will get a greater benefit by allowing people to help the live team fix bugs.
Even without the source code the bugs remain and still have the potential to be found by an exploiter. The more eyes... The faster they will be fixed.
I know people who still choose to live without TELEPHONES, let alone the internet.
It must suck for them when they need to call 911.
That or do phone interviews for that new job.
Is the internet useful? Yes. Comparable to food, clothes or shelter? Absolutely not.
Personally, I wouldn't have my current day job today without the internet (monster.com) nor would I be able to manage my personal business (or do sales) without the internet.
So basically, if the internet went away for me tomorrow... I'd be pretty much hosed for my future outlook of making money and paying for food and shelter... So yeah... To me and others it is just as important.
Popular wisdom is that the consumers of that content won't pay for it.
Actually, that is a lie perpetuated by cable companies that wanted to double dip their revenues.
People wanted to pay for programming with no ads... Remember the original setup in the 80's with cable? There is a market for "good" programming being sold directly to the consumer.
However, I use the word "good" loosely because most programming on standard TV is nothing but cheap crap thrown together for the most viewers in whatever niche possible. They need advertising for those because no one will pay for that crap.
Personally, for the good shows I do like I will buy my DVDs of TV series rather than watch them on TV.
If data is stored as magnetic bits, wouldn't a very small magnet corrupt all this data? Computer users are warned to keep magnets away from your hard drive due to data loss, but it seems this would magnify (get it?) that problem tenfold
Um... Data is stored as magnetic bits on regular hard drives. Having it on a chip instead of a platter still haves the same problem, but most people don't seem to have that much of a problem with not sticking magnets inside their computer case.
Back in the mid-90's, in my highschool and we had one of those floppy disk eraser/bad sector fixers for our 5 1/4" because they used to cost so much to fix and the teacher would have the computer club members help out and earase disk with this device.
However, this device could be used on say... Hard disks and monitors with various "halarity-ensuses" type of events.
Did you know a powerful enough magnet can leave a permanent discoloring and distortion on a Gateway 2000 monitor... Fun times.
For MRAM to become a viable replacement for HDDs, it has to become as cheap as HDDs.
If having a MRAM drive means 3d games will get 10 more FPS's over a standard HDD, people will buy the MRAM regardless of price.
But of course the same could be said about $500 video cards, but not everyone will buy them today, but they will in 12 months when those cards are mid-range in performance and price.
However, they will have to get it to a point where it actually improves performance and doesn't cost more than the computer it is going in.
The dns repsonse is the same as the ping so they will never get faster then my isp.
Anecdotal evidence is just that... Anecdotal.
And your ISP isn't my ISP. Heck, I used to work for a very large ISP and we have DNS problems on occasion and we have to manually move people to different servers as they called in to complain.
Secondly, if you have Comcast (I never worked for them though but had hellacious problems with DNS lookups last year), you might have DNS problems depending on where you live. Often times I would use open DNS server I knew of to get around downtimes.
So for you... Your ISP is better, but it might not for the next person. Especially if Comcast is involved. *coughs*
Are you really that clueless? I would not take 512 years to bruteforce a 320 bit key, it would take simply longer than the current age of the universe. Assuming of course that you are required to put a single computer per square centimeter of our planet surface (including oceans) and that you can't use more than one planet.
If you subscribe to the Technological Singularity idea, then who is to say by 2500 AD we won't have the technology to use the entire mass of Jupiter, Saturn, or Sun for mathematical computations.
That or maybe we will have found out a way to use sub-atomic particles (quarks etc) to do calculations which will of course exponentially increase our computing power.
A great deal can happen in 100 years... Much less 500.
So does Sodium Pentothal though sometimes there are decryption errors. If there is more time there is a guaranteed decryption scheme known as "heroin once a day for a week, followed no more heroin until you tell the key".
Bah. Too much like the CIA's lazy tactics. Personally, I like the KGB/Chinese method. A bit messy, but it works.
You come and ask them to give you the encryption key or they get to choose a finger they want removed with a pair of plyers.
Then repeat the process every hour.
Usually... They'll give up after the first finger.
I can just imagine this guy's response if the 9/11 hijackers had been captured BEFORE pulling off the attack:
What you say? The 9/11 highjackers didn't need to be caught. They could have been thrarted by a simple locked cockpit door like they have been doing in Israel since the 1980's.
A $20 dollar locking device and common sense could have saved thousands of lives and billions of dollars, but yet we have to keep on harping about security and giving over reaching powers to the police and government.
If not the the locks on the cockpits, the main reason they werent caught is because the FBI didn't invistigate them and actually follow up on their expired passports.
Secondly, simply arresting everyone that claims to be a terrorist in a chat room will not make terrorism go away. Heck... We could have thrawted 9/11 and yet we could have had another attack just as bad. This isn't some "oh good... we've caught the bad guys" because guess what... There are tens of thousands of people ready to die in their place.
If you want terrorism to go away we will have to change our foreign policy or find an uber technical solution like Israel and build a wall and become a locked down police state (and look what good that is doing them today with their problems in Gaza).
This may have been a joke, but I've always wondered, all these news stories say "news of 's kidnapping/murder/etc has appeared on an Islamic website", you do wonder, where are these websites? What chat rooms?
First you need to know Arabic, then you need an arabic supporting keyboard, and then you need to do your searching in google with preferences set to Arabic. Which none of these I am unable to do.
Maybe there is an Arabic version of Slashdot out there...
I for one don't pause in the middle of a game of scrabble, open google and type in the decidedly dodgy word put down on a triple word score. I pick up my trusty OED and look it up!
That is what a web enabled cell phone or PDA is for. And if you don't have one on your body at all times (including sleeping) then you can just hand in your geek card on the way out the door.
AKA felony murder, and punishable by the death penalty in many, many states.
Um... If you believe the system works you've got another thing coming. Especially in Camden, NJ. Last thing you ever want to be is called a "snitch". But I digress...
A better example would have been to compare him to a rapist who at most will get 20 years and will most likley only server 5.
As a Brit, I have to ask, really, does anyone in the US actually care about the special relationship?
As an American, I have to tell you, really, if given the option I'd rather be tried in the UK and sentenced to jail in a UK prision rather than one over here.
Please provide examples of this. I've been using Windows for more than 12 years and I've never had this happen to any of my boxes, and after all these years I've never had anyone I know ever be surrepticiously infected by anything that wasn't their fault.
So you were lucky and either:
1.) Never bought a music cd with a Sony rootkit on it or 2.) Had a hardware/software firewall or NAT router that prevented your computer from being infected in 2003 when the Blaster worm outbreak occured. The Blaster Worm nailed my parents new computer they bought from the store within 10 minutes of hooking it up to the net. My room mates dial up box got hit and they didn't use that for anything other than for a proxy to the internet. (I was like "Why does this box keep rebooting itself?")
Basically a NAT or service pack 2 with xp will prevent you from being infected, but if you don't remember this then you didn't know many people with computer back in 2003.
Um... First of all you could have your Word security settings set to High if you don't trust you users to do the right thing or Medium if you trust your users to do the right thing. Secondly, you could have an email scanner program that cleans word viruses as they come in
And lastly... Ever think about using Apple's office products instead of MS word?;) I know I sort of jest but MS put such as piss poor job into their office products for the mac, they might as well not have made them.
Heck even Open Office is a bit better than Office 2004.
Slashdot Mirror
Well... To be fair, it is quite possible that our observations are incorrect since the human mind is quite susceptible to assumptions or deceptions of our senses or that all light particles and waves in the universe changed speed at the same time a billion years ago when no one was looking.
On the grand scale of things if something happened 10 billion years ago and all current evidence of it and its effects were removed from the universe or put outside the observable universe (you know... outside the realm of the visible universe from our point of observation of Earth) then we would not have the slightest clue (or observation) that this phenomenon occurred.
Secondly, there might be phenomena in the universe we can't observe through our 5 senses. Imagine if we happened to be evolved without ears or eyes. Hard luck seeing stars or listening to radio waves.
However, our technology appears to be able to compensate this to detect radiation and various other unperceivable effects in the universe (although being able to detect radiation with a sensory organ would be kind of cool)
Personally, I would like the to think the universe has a set of laws that it goes by because living in a logical universe makes sense and makes it easier to sleep at night without worrying about my atoms decaying in my sleep or time reverses on me.
However... I still have to worry about my senses deceiving me because I can only prove to myself that I exist...
As Descartes so eloquently put in his Evil Demon theorem:
It'll punish you more for cracking than for murder, but at the same time it won't secure it's own systems and heed experts.
That's not even half the problem. What happens if the hacker is in China and can't be arrested because he is actually in the basement of the People's Army and employed by the Chinese government.
Seriously, if I was a lead intelligence expert in China or Russia, I'd be having a heyday of compromising US military computers and trying to get as much information out of them as possible.
If some bright guy in the UK can do it... Why not trained teams of government spies with millions of dollars in their budget?
For some reason I had always thought it was my age that made me like computers and technology, but I'm getting fairly old but the desire to buy gadgets and new technology isn't going away.
I'm buying more and getting more than I was a kid mostly because of my greater income.
However, my parents really weren't into gadgets that much so I don't know if this is passed on or just learned as a kid.
However, most kids are pretty quick to learn computers so perhaps if you can the "neophilia" bug as a kid that your mind develops in a certain way (from playing video games and messing with computers) that you end up always being like this.
Do you really think that lawmakers in the US are going to pass laws that the world leaders do not accept?
Simple answer. Yes.
They are passing laws that are invalid in many countries. Frankly... Many other countries really disaprove of the death penalty. Secondly, many of our trade laws are invalid in other nations, but its only the treaties they have to comply with.
I have a gut feeling that by 2025 the US will be a minor player with China and India being in the lead roles of determining global policies. But that is pure speculation...
Can you please give me an example of a technology NOT vulnerable to governmental interference?
;)
A Strong AI computer which has just destroyed Washington, DC with a swarm of nanobots/terminators/orbital laser for the good of all sentient beings.
Learn some discretion, and keep matters to yourself.
Really, even when they should be public? Like my religion? Or say political beliefs?
Then again that takes a bit of responsiblity... If I speak out against the powers that be then I of course will know I may face the consequences but at least I stood up for what I believe in.
Of course... The opposite is true as well. Being subversive takes a bit of tact too. As in posting false information in your blogs to make yourself look better. Or faking information about others to make them look bad in fake blogs.
Of course the best defense in any situation would be to blame hackers for the "lies" on your web page.
Not that I would not anything about that.
I'm not convinced that 'helping infertile couples have children' is the ultimate rationale - is everyone ENTITLED to have children?
Well to be fair... No human should be reproducing.
However, my rubber band and sharp scissors idea hasn't gone over too well.
Bravo.
Personally, I've worked for some major corporations in the day, but I've found my most favorite jobs to be small businesses.
Small businesses always pay less, but its always easier to sleep easy at night and easier to wake up in the morning and be happy with life.
If the code was stolen there is a significant risk of cheaters ruining the game for everyone.
Hacking into servers is bad, but it always irritates me that people think multiplayer games cannot be secure if the source code is open.
If more eyes are looking at the code, then more people can help fix them or point them out to developers. The problem with most small programming houses and MMOG live teams is that those guys are usually swamped with bug fixes and can't look at the code.
Sure, there will always people that will exploit the source code, but if you have a good community, you will get a greater benefit by allowing people to help the live team fix bugs.
Even without the source code the bugs remain and still have the potential to be found by an exploiter. The more eyes... The faster they will be fixed.
I know people who still choose to live without TELEPHONES, let alone the internet.
It must suck for them when they need to call 911.
That or do phone interviews for that new job.
Is the internet useful? Yes. Comparable to food, clothes or shelter? Absolutely not.
Personally, I wouldn't have my current day job today without the internet (monster.com) nor would I be able to manage my personal business (or do sales) without the internet.
So basically, if the internet went away for me tomorrow... I'd be pretty much hosed for my future outlook of making money and paying for food and shelter... So yeah... To me and others it is just as important.
Popular wisdom is that the consumers of that content won't pay for it.
Actually, that is a lie perpetuated by cable companies that wanted to double dip their revenues.
People wanted to pay for programming with no ads... Remember the original setup in the 80's with cable? There is a market for "good" programming being sold directly to the consumer.
However, I use the word "good" loosely because most programming on standard TV is nothing but cheap crap thrown together for the most viewers in whatever niche possible. They need advertising for those because no one will pay for that crap.
Personally, for the good shows I do like I will buy my DVDs of TV series rather than watch them on TV.
If data is stored as magnetic bits, wouldn't a very small magnet corrupt all this data? Computer users are warned to keep magnets away from your hard drive due to data loss, but it seems this would magnify (get it?) that problem tenfold
Um... Data is stored as magnetic bits on regular hard drives. Having it on a chip instead of a platter still haves the same problem, but most people don't seem to have that much of a problem with not sticking magnets inside their computer case.
Back in the mid-90's, in my highschool and we had one of those floppy disk eraser/bad sector fixers for our 5 1/4" because they used to cost so much to fix and the teacher would have the computer club members help out and earase disk with this device.
However, this device could be used on say... Hard disks and monitors with various "halarity-ensuses" type of events.
Did you know a powerful enough magnet can leave a permanent discoloring and distortion on a Gateway 2000 monitor... Fun times.
For MRAM to become a viable replacement for HDDs, it has to become as cheap as HDDs.
If having a MRAM drive means 3d games will get 10 more FPS's over a standard HDD, people will buy the MRAM regardless of price.
But of course the same could be said about $500 video cards, but not everyone will buy them today, but they will in 12 months when those cards are mid-range in performance and price.
However, they will have to get it to a point where it actually improves performance and doesn't cost more than the computer it is going in.
The dns repsonse is the same as the ping so they will never get faster then my isp.
Anecdotal evidence is just that... Anecdotal.
And your ISP isn't my ISP. Heck, I used to work for a very large ISP and we have DNS problems on occasion and we have to manually move people to different servers as they called in to complain.
Secondly, if you have Comcast (I never worked for them though but had hellacious problems with DNS lookups last year), you might have DNS problems depending on where you live. Often times I would use open DNS server I knew of to get around downtimes.
So for you... Your ISP is better, but it might not for the next person. Especially if Comcast is involved. *coughs*
Are you really that clueless? I would not take 512 years to bruteforce a 320 bit key, it would take simply longer than the current age of the universe. Assuming of course that you are required to put a single computer per square centimeter of our planet surface (including oceans) and that you can't use more than one planet.
If you subscribe to the Technological Singularity idea, then who is to say by 2500 AD we won't have the technology to use the entire mass of Jupiter, Saturn, or Sun for mathematical computations.
That or maybe we will have found out a way to use sub-atomic particles (quarks etc) to do calculations which will of course exponentially increase our computing power.
A great deal can happen in 100 years... Much less 500.
So does Sodium Pentothal though sometimes there are decryption errors. If there is more time there is a guaranteed decryption scheme known as "heroin once a day for a week, followed no more heroin until you tell the key".
Bah. Too much like the CIA's lazy tactics. Personally, I like the KGB/Chinese method. A bit messy, but it works.
You come and ask them to give you the encryption key or they get to choose a finger they want removed with a pair of plyers.
Then repeat the process every hour.
Usually... They'll give up after the first finger.
we're in a war folks
I'll consider us in a war when we have nightly air-raides sirens, rationing, and a draft.
Until then... This is a police action.
I can just imagine this guy's response if the 9/11 hijackers had been captured BEFORE pulling off the attack:
What you say? The 9/11 highjackers didn't need to be caught. They could have been thrarted by a simple locked cockpit door like they have been doing in Israel since the 1980's.
A $20 dollar locking device and common sense could have saved thousands of lives and billions of dollars, but yet we have to keep on harping about security and giving over reaching powers to the police and government.
If not the the locks on the cockpits, the main reason they werent caught is because the FBI didn't invistigate them and actually follow up on their expired passports.
Secondly, simply arresting everyone that claims to be a terrorist in a chat room will not make terrorism go away. Heck... We could have thrawted 9/11 and yet we could have had another attack just as bad. This isn't some "oh good... we've caught the bad guys" because guess what... There are tens of thousands of people ready to die in their place.
If you want terrorism to go away we will have to change our foreign policy or find an uber technical solution like Israel and build a wall and become a locked down police state (and look what good that is doing them today with their problems in Gaza).
This may have been a joke, but I've always wondered, all these news stories say "news of 's kidnapping/murder/etc has appeared on an Islamic website", you do wonder, where are these websites? What chat rooms?
First you need to know Arabic, then you need an arabic supporting keyboard, and then you need to do your searching in google with preferences set to Arabic. Which none of these I am unable to do.
Maybe there is an Arabic version of Slashdot out there...
I for one don't pause in the middle of a game of scrabble, open google and type in the decidedly dodgy word put down on a triple word score. I pick up my trusty OED and look it up!
That is what a web enabled cell phone or PDA is for. And if you don't have one on your body at all times (including sleeping) then you can just hand in your geek card on the way out the door.
AKA felony murder, and punishable by the death penalty in many, many states.
Um... If you believe the system works you've got another thing coming. Especially in Camden, NJ. Last thing you ever want to be is called a "snitch". But I digress...
A better example would have been to compare him to a rapist who at most will get 20 years and will most likley only server 5.
As a Brit, I have to ask, really, does anyone in the US actually care about the special relationship?
As an American, I have to tell you, really, if given the option I'd rather be tried in the UK and sentenced to jail in a UK prision rather than one over here.
Would you commit murder if there was no such thing as police?
Personally no, but to be fair having police and death penalties doesn't really seem to disuade people from murdering.
We had 300 murders in my city alone last year and it isn't as bad as Camden across the river.
Please provide examples of this. I've been using Windows for more than 12 years and I've never had this happen to any of my boxes, and after all these years I've never had anyone I know ever be surrepticiously infected by anything that wasn't their fault.
So you were lucky and either:
1.) Never bought a music cd with a Sony rootkit on it
or
2.) Had a hardware/software firewall or NAT router that prevented your computer from being infected in 2003 when the Blaster worm outbreak occured. The Blaster Worm nailed my parents new computer they bought from the store within 10 minutes of hooking it up to the net. My room mates dial up box got hit and they didn't use that for anything other than for a proxy to the internet. (I was like "Why does this box keep rebooting itself?")
Basically a NAT or service pack 2 with xp will prevent you from being infected, but if you don't remember this then you didn't know many people with computer back in 2003.
Um... First of all you could have your Word security settings set to High if you don't trust you users to do the right thing or Medium if you trust your users to do the right thing. Secondly, you could have an email scanner program that cleans word viruses as they come in
;) I know I sort of jest but MS put such as piss poor job into their office products for the mac, they might as well not have made them.
And lastly... Ever think about using Apple's office products instead of MS word?
Heck even Open Office is a bit better than Office 2004.