However, the feudal model of decentralization looks very little like the modern one and, to be frank, it sucked.
Well it depends on how you look at it...
Serfs got more time off for holidays than most US workers do today. Serfs were guaranteed employment by their lord. Serfs were guaranteed housing and food by their lord. Serfs were guaranteed law enforcement by their lord.
This is a lot more than most of us corporate workers get.
The lord in most cases could not beat or strike their serfs nor sell them to other lords and had to pay the serfs in some fashion for their work and they were allowed to have personal possessions. (This was not universal however in Russia for example though)
Secondly, peasants were not expected to actually pay attention to religion or worry about it. Gambling, prostitution, drinking, and all the vices were generally tolerated among them as long as they showed up on Church on Sunday.
And when they went to Church on Sunday they didn't even have to pay attention because the sermons were in Latin and no one knew what the priest was saying so they talked among themselves and some Cathedrals had market place so you could trade goods and socialize during the whole thing.
Heck they gave you free wine and bread! Sounds like a good deal to me.
Now the key problem back then was of course living conditions and health concerns which generally was universally problematic even for the nobles (hell the Europeans nobles used to sleep in straw hay in the grand halls with their dogs back in the 1100's)
As far as class mobility and scientific advancement it just sucked in Europe at the time (not so much in the Middle East and China) but overall I'd say that people had somethings better than us back then and it wasn't all that bad.
I don't like playing cultural imperialist, but something about current Asian cultures seems to me to be broken: this isn't exactly the first suicide of its sort, or even an uncommon phenomenon, just one of the more high-profile cases
For a while the technology will be expensive, but the cost will come down, whereas the cost of human labor (i.e., of surgeons and nurses) will not. So in the long run, perhaps this is cheaper.
I suspect that sometime in the near future (10 to 25 years), that most surgeries will not involve a human being for the operation itself.
For all its worth, I suspect America will never political solve the problem with Universal Healthcare, but technology will eventually fill in the gap.
At the cost of how many lives in the meantime until that day...
I think that problem is exactly the same one DRM tries to solve.
Actually the authors specifically does not prevent the recipient from copying as it was not their intention. It was to prevent man in the middle attacks of people who were not supposed to be copying in the first place.
I didn't realize that P2P systems are known for making a piece of information unavailable once it is scattered across that P2P system, especially encryption keys and such. No one gets stuff like that on P2P networks, why would they do that?
I think the authors were thinking of the the issue of where a torrent goes away once people stop seeding it once the original software is obsolete.
I mean can you find a working torrent of Photoshop 5 these days?
A specific threat like this should always be investigated. I'm sure you would feel differently if you had friends or family aboard that flight.
If every specific threat was investigated, it would only take a well financed terrorist organization to swamp all the investigators with false positives by paying people over in 3rd world internet cafe $0.01 per threat.
I really wish law enforcement, school officials, and the courts handled the fine gradiations between "stupid stuff kids say," "stupid stuff people, who should know better but apparently don't, say" and "real threats" better than they do.
The whole idea of the "Crime of Conspiracy" irks me simply because it reminds me of people like Cardinal Richelieu whose mantra was:
"Never write a letter and never destroy one." "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
This simply means that it is quite easy to take the words of anyone and construe them into something that will put them on the gallows and that the best solution to avoid this was to never write any letters to begin with (even in private to a friend).
Which leads me back to this whole idea of "conspiracy" which means you are accused of planning to do something which requires little or no evidence.
I could accusing you of plotting to destroy the sun in your mind and you would no evidence against other than saying "No I'm not" which basically means you'll have to waive the 5th amendment and take the stand which might get you to confess under duress (or at least look guilty to a jury.
All it would take is a snide remark that someone takes in the wrong way and you'll be in jail for "conspiracy" to do whatever where in reality you had no intention of EVER committing the crime.
It is very dangerous and gives the wrong people too much power.
Sorry, I could have worded it better. I'm not claiming intelligent design put Jupiter there, merely that Jupiter is doing what Jupiter does, and that this event is nothing out of the ordinary.
Well if you take the reverse view, it doesn't require ID.
We are here simply because Jupiter happen to be there.
Wait a minute...How does a simulation with real doctors, nurses, and patients in real facilities make it cheaper? The patient has to be in a hospital with all those people around, anyway, right?
IAMAMS (I am not a med studen) but I am indirectly familiar with the process.
I'm not sure if you are familiar with med school, but the only training most surgeons get before they get to assist with a surgery is of course cadavers.
Sure its great hands on, but the key problem is that they are dead so any training has no method of letting the student know if he did something horrible wrong other than the instructor looking over their shoulder.
Secondly you can't simulate conditions or diseases in a cadaver on the fly. I mean if you happen to have one of someone who died of something, that's great, but sometimes its not so convenient all the time.
With a computer simulation you can simulate a living being with whatever condition you want to train on.
Except that knowing the creator, their milieu, culture, and intentions is often vital to a proper understanding and appreciation of the artwork in question, rather than some superficial and effectively meaningless reaction based on your cultural biases and limited experience.
A work by an anonymous author is no less creative or less beautiful than a work by a known author.
You can look at plenty of Roman or middle ages art created by people lost to the ages and still understand their culture and reflect on how things were back then.
Most people define a lie as a statement the speaker knows to be false.
The problem is that if someone makes presents a statement as evidence in which a lie detector shows they are telling the truth then the court/jury believes may give the statement more credence simply because it passed the test.
Even if the testifier is speaking in good faith and believes what they say to be truth, does not always make for justice with the verdict.
You know... Mistaken identity sending a man for life until DNA testing proves him innocent 20 years down the road.
I think they mean by contagious is that you can infect a person who goes on to infect another person without involving the original person.
As in your example a power line may give someone cancer, but that sick person going off and hanging out with other people is not going to give them cancer.
Now if the person had the swine flue... They could pass that off to other people who in turn pass it on to other people.
Same thing with behavior. Kids see one kid doing something so they start doing it and someone else copies in and it infects a slew of kids who never met the original and the next thing you know you've got a whole new POKEMON FAD for no good reason.
To say it doesn't happen is foolish... One has to point out at the popularity of the backstreet boys and Pokemon as empirical proof.
could easily beat the machine if they refused to cooperate/pretened to cooperate with the 'set-up' phase.
Also, this doesn't catch people who actually believe the lie either because someone else told them or they duped themselves into believing in it.
If you asked someone if there was a god, the only answer you can take away from that is whether or not they believe that one exists and doesn't prove one way or another if it really is true.
I don't see why having a working non-intrusive lie detection method would mean those things have to stop!
Pretty much.
If the victim's... Err... bad guy's MRI shows that he is lying when you finally got the confession out of him just to make you stop the torture means you need to keep beating him until he fully believes it himself.
Also as far as i know... If you buy a game on steam, its locked to your account and name and you can not resell it.
True, but computer games in general are hard to resell even if you have the original box simply because of random DRM schemes and isn't specific to Steam.
I personally would never buy a used computer game because of this.
Console games on the other hand will always be easier to resell.
Maybe a lot of slashdotters aren't old enough to have kids, but it seems to me that providing for one's widow and/or children is one of the things that an author would likely be concerned about, and probably even consider to be a "need".
Author's can buy life insurance like the rest of us.
Do plumbers demand royalties for toilets they fixed for their children after they die? Nope.
Same difference.
Just because you write books or make music, doesn't give you anymore rights than all the cubicle slaves and factory workers of the world.
You want something to give your children after you pass one... Buy some land, buy stocks, and get insurance. It is what everyone else has to do.
Frankly, I'm surprised that this research hadn't already been started, albeit to reduce dependence of foreign oil rather than out of any concern for the environment given the stance of the Bush Presidency on such matters.
They have been working with a company called Syntroleum to use the old German process of converting coal and natural gas to fuel they can put in B52 bombers.
Slashdot Mirror
However, the feudal model of decentralization looks very little like the modern one and, to be frank, it sucked.
Well it depends on how you look at it...
Serfs got more time off for holidays than most US workers do today.
Serfs were guaranteed employment by their lord.
Serfs were guaranteed housing and food by their lord.
Serfs were guaranteed law enforcement by their lord.
This is a lot more than most of us corporate workers get.
The lord in most cases could not beat or strike their serfs nor sell them to other lords and had to pay the serfs in some fashion for their work and they were allowed to have personal possessions. (This was not universal however in Russia for example though)
Secondly, peasants were not expected to actually pay attention to religion or worry about it. Gambling, prostitution, drinking, and all the vices were generally tolerated among them as long as they showed up on Church on Sunday.
And when they went to Church on Sunday they didn't even have to pay attention because the sermons were in Latin and no one knew what the priest was saying so they talked among themselves and some Cathedrals had market place so you could trade goods and socialize during the whole thing.
Heck they gave you free wine and bread! Sounds like a good deal to me.
Now the key problem back then was of course living conditions and health concerns which generally was universally problematic even for the nobles (hell the Europeans nobles used to sleep in straw hay in the grand halls with their dogs back in the 1100's)
As far as class mobility and scientific advancement it just sucked in Europe at the time (not so much in the Middle East and China) but overall I'd say that people had somethings better than us back then and it wasn't all that bad.
But expect to pay a pretty penny for it.
The application does more than remote control system, it can also do inventory scans of software and hardware.
Beyond that you got me...
I don't like playing cultural imperialist, but something about current Asian cultures seems to me to be broken: this isn't exactly the first suicide of its sort, or even an uncommon phenomenon, just one of the more high-profile cases
No, because in America if we are going to commit suicide we're going to take a lot of people with us.
Or you can attention whore and do it on TV.
For a while the technology will be expensive, but the cost will come down, whereas the cost of human labor (i.e., of surgeons and nurses) will not. So in the long run, perhaps this is cheaper.
I suspect that sometime in the near future (10 to 25 years), that most surgeries will not involve a human being for the operation itself.
For all its worth, I suspect America will never political solve the problem with Universal Healthcare, but technology will eventually fill in the gap.
At the cost of how many lives in the meantime until that day...
What?!
How dare you sir! My mother is a saint!
I think that problem is exactly the same one DRM tries to solve.
Actually the authors specifically does not prevent the recipient from copying as it was not their intention. It was to prevent man in the middle attacks of people who were not supposed to be copying in the first place.
I didn't realize that P2P systems are known for making a piece of information unavailable once it is scattered across that P2P system, especially encryption keys and such. No one gets stuff like that on P2P networks, why would they do that?
I think the authors were thinking of the the issue of where a torrent goes away once people stop seeding it once the original software is obsolete.
I mean can you find a working torrent of Photoshop 5 these days?
Same difference.
A specific threat like this should always be investigated. I'm sure you would feel differently if you had friends or family aboard that flight.
If every specific threat was investigated, it would only take a well financed terrorist organization to swamp all the investigators with false positives by paying people over in 3rd world internet cafe $0.01 per threat.
Just saying...
I really wish law enforcement, school officials, and the courts handled the fine gradiations between "stupid stuff kids say," "stupid stuff people, who should know better but apparently don't, say" and "real threats" better than they do.
The whole idea of the "Crime of Conspiracy" irks me simply because it reminds me of people like Cardinal Richelieu whose mantra was:
"Never write a letter and never destroy one."
"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."
This simply means that it is quite easy to take the words of anyone and construe them into something that will put them on the gallows and that the best solution to avoid this was to never write any letters to begin with (even in private to a friend).
Which leads me back to this whole idea of "conspiracy" which means you are accused of planning to do something which requires little or no evidence.
I could accusing you of plotting to destroy the sun in your mind and you would no evidence against other than saying "No I'm not" which basically means you'll have to waive the 5th amendment and take the stand which might get you to confess under duress (or at least look guilty to a jury.
All it would take is a snide remark that someone takes in the wrong way and you'll be in jail for "conspiracy" to do whatever where in reality you had no intention of EVER committing the crime.
It is very dangerous and gives the wrong people too much power.
Sorry, I could have worded it better. I'm not claiming intelligent design put Jupiter there, merely that Jupiter is doing what Jupiter does, and that this event is nothing out of the ordinary.
Well if you take the reverse view, it doesn't require ID.
We are here simply because Jupiter happen to be there.
Had Jupiter not been there, then no complex life would have evolved on earth in the first place simply because it would be hit a great deal more by very large objects.
Wait a minute...How does a simulation with real doctors, nurses, and patients in real facilities make it cheaper? The patient has to be in a hospital with all those people around, anyway, right?
IAMAMS (I am not a med studen) but I am indirectly familiar with the process.
I'm not sure if you are familiar with med school, but the only training most surgeons get before they get to assist with a surgery is of course cadavers.
Sure its great hands on, but the key problem is that they are dead so any training has no method of letting the student know if he did something horrible wrong other than the instructor looking over their shoulder.
Secondly you can't simulate conditions or diseases in a cadaver on the fly. I mean if you happen to have one of someone who died of something, that's great, but sometimes its not so convenient all the time.
With a computer simulation you can simulate a living being with whatever condition you want to train on.
Except that knowing the creator, their milieu, culture, and intentions is often vital to a proper understanding and appreciation of the artwork in question, rather than some superficial and effectively meaningless reaction based on your cultural biases and limited experience.
A work by an anonymous author is no less creative or less beautiful than a work by a known author.
You can look at plenty of Roman or middle ages art created by people lost to the ages and still understand their culture and reflect on how things were back then.
Just saying...
Most people define a lie as a statement the speaker knows to be false.
The problem is that if someone makes presents a statement as evidence in which a lie detector shows they are telling the truth then the court/jury believes may give the statement more credence simply because it passed the test.
Even if the testifier is speaking in good faith and believes what they say to be truth, does not always make for justice with the verdict.
You know... Mistaken identity sending a man for life until DNA testing proves him innocent 20 years down the road.
However, that doesn't make it CONTAGIOUS.
I think they mean by contagious is that you can infect a person who goes on to infect another person without involving the original person.
As in your example a power line may give someone cancer, but that sick person going off and hanging out with other people is not going to give them cancer.
Now if the person had the swine flue... They could pass that off to other people who in turn pass it on to other people.
Same thing with behavior. Kids see one kid doing something so they start doing it and someone else copies in and it infects a slew of kids who never met the original and the next thing you know you've got a whole new POKEMON FAD for no good reason.
To say it doesn't happen is foolish... One has to point out at the popularity of the backstreet boys and Pokemon as empirical proof.
could easily beat the machine if they refused to cooperate/pretened to cooperate with the 'set-up' phase.
Also, this doesn't catch people who actually believe the lie either because someone else told them or they duped themselves into believing in it.
If you asked someone if there was a god, the only answer you can take away from that is whether or not they believe that one exists and doesn't prove one way or another if it really is true.
I don't see why having a working non-intrusive lie detection method would mean those things have to stop!
Pretty much.
If the victim's... Err... bad guy's MRI shows that he is lying when you finally got the confession out of him just to make you stop the torture means you need to keep beating him until he fully believes it himself.
Now how many light bulbs do you see?
As if smashing the window and opening the door the old-fashioned way were so difficult.
No, but where I live if you don't lock your doors, you'll find a homeless person in it in the morning during the winter.
I suppose they can smash the window to get in but that defeats the purpose of getting out of the cold.
My bad. I read the summary backwards. It sounded like the FBI offered Kwak the money.
But I got modded up so I guess other people read it wrong too.
Oh my bad... Kwak was the one offering the money and not the other way around.
Apparently my dyslexia is bad right now.
It was the federal agent the offered the money and the means to break the encryption.
Serves them right, while I'm against the DMCA trying to profit off of someone else's work is not right. They deserve what they get
Sounds like entrapment to me.
(I posted this link because it sounds like the Feds did to the cracker the same thing they did to Mr. DeLorean)
Also as far as i know... If you buy a game on steam, its locked to your account and name and you can not resell it.
True, but computer games in general are hard to resell even if you have the original box simply because of random DRM schemes and isn't specific to Steam.
I personally would never buy a used computer game because of this.
Console games on the other hand will always be easier to resell.
Maybe a lot of slashdotters aren't old enough to have kids, but it seems to me that providing for one's widow and/or children is one of the things that an author would likely be concerned about, and probably even consider to be a "need".
Author's can buy life insurance like the rest of us.
Do plumbers demand royalties for toilets they fixed for their children after they die? Nope.
Same difference.
Just because you write books or make music, doesn't give you anymore rights than all the cubicle slaves and factory workers of the world.
You want something to give your children after you pass one... Buy some land, buy stocks, and get insurance. It is what everyone else has to do.
Frankly, I'm surprised that this research hadn't already been started, albeit to reduce dependence of foreign oil rather than out of any concern for the environment given the stance of the Bush Presidency on such matters.
I know the US Airforce is acutely aware of the foreign oil problem.
They have been working with a company called Syntroleum to use the old German process of converting coal and natural gas to fuel they can put in B52 bombers.
Not as cool looking as when the munitions storage goes boom ;)