No,.torrents cannot be made, although there has recently been significant progress in the field of.torrent synthesis. But for the moment,.torrents must be mined out of the ground by sweaty men in coolie hats, refined in a stinking blast furnace, cut, polished and finally released onto the internet. Kind of like the way RPMs are made, but with less government regulation.
Oh please. You can speak of the distribution of height, weight or age in a population - it doesn't imply that anyone's distributing these things, just that there is variation. "Distribution of wealth" is used in the same sense.
Perhaps the best compromise would be a paper map with an electronic overlay. The overlay could display the positions of other units etc, but in the event of a problem with the electronics you'd still have the paper map to fall back on.
And then a voice at the back of my head says, why join them together? Why not just keep the paper map in your pocket until the electronic one breaks?
To be honest the resolution worries me more than the size. I'm typing this on a Toshiba Libretto with a 6" diagonal screen. It's perfectly usable because the resolution is 640x480, so although the picture's small it's extremely sharp (more detailed than a 17" screen at 1280x1024). Look at the size of the text in a paperback book - small fonts are quite readable as long as the resolution is high enough.
Yup, thanks to the evolutionary advantage of openness, in the year 2100 we'll be running Unix-compatible operating systems on 8088-compatible processors (and that's the good ending - in the bad ending we'll be using win32).
I'm not disagreeing with your point - open platforms can always outmaneuvre the competition - but the downside of open platforms is that evolution prefers an ugly hack delivered today to an elegant design delivered tomorrow.
I don't see the contradiction - I'm saying that when people are born they're not capable of making responsible decisions, but by the time they reach adulthood they have learned to look after themselves and they should be treated accordingly.
I'm not saying that children should have no rights, but they should have less freedom than adults because they're more vulnerable than adults. Should a 5 year old girl be allowed to decide that she wants to get married? Should 10 year olds be allowed to drive? Realistically, society has to recognize that children aren't capable of taking care of themselves, which includes making responsible decisions. Personally I think the current age of legal equality (21 in the US, 18 in the UK) is much too high, but that doesn't change the fact that you have to draw the line somewhere.
I'm very much opposed to censorship, but this system is only designed to restrict the information available to children (well, minors). I don't think society should deny adults the right to make their own decisions about what offends them, but I'm not sure the same is true of children. People have to learn the difference between right and wrong and acquire the mental tools for detecting dishonesty and unsound arguments - we're not born knowing these things. Children who don't have these skills yet are vulnerable to "dangerous" ideas in a way that most adults are not.
I object to society treating adults like children and shielding us from "dangerous" ideas, but I also think it's a mistake to demand that children should have the same rights as adults.
I don't see any rule that a hashing function may not, when one byte has been changed in the source file, merely change the value in a corresponding part of the hash (for instance, if a bit is changed 73% of the way through the file, the value 73% of the way through the hash will be changed).
Sure, for example:
If there's an odd number of bits in the message, add a zero to the end.
XOR each pair of bits and concatenate the 1-bit results.
The message is now half its original size - repeat until the output is the size you need.
Flipping any bit in the original message will flip the corresponding bit in the digest, but no others.
But you can still get a completely new digest by flipping relatively few bits (less than the length of the digest, which must be relatively small if it's going to be distributed to every node in the network).
I think you're over-stating the importance of rationality. Here's how I see it:
Reason is useful for deciding which ideas are consistent with reality or with a set of moral principles, but it can't provide the principles. No formal system can prove or disprove its own axioms, so the foundations of every rational argument are things that can't be disproved: observable facts or moral axioms. Reason can determine which ideas are consistent with reality, but reality is morally neutral so it doesn't provide answers to moral questions. Instead, the rational basis for moral decisions is their consistency with your fundamental moral beliefs (which cannot ultimately be justified rationally). As I see it, moral axioms are derived from our instincts, especially these three:
Fear of pain. I'll also lump social conditioning into this category because I think the fear of punishment is similar to the fear of physical pain. But while we might use reason to dismantle our social conditioning, the fundamental instinct to avoid suffering is immune to rational arguments.
Desire. Just as irrational as fear, and just as hard to reason with.:-)
Faith. Some would argue that faith is based on social conditioning, but I think there's an instinctive attraction to "beautiful ideas" which is separate from fear and desire. (I'm not at all religious but I still have certain beliefs about the way people "should" treat each other that I can only call faith or social conditioning.)
At the very least, everyone has concepts such as pain and pleasure - even people who claim to be completely, amorally rational usually justify their actions in terms of their own enjoyment or survival, so they are actually appealing to irrational axioms just like everyone else. If, in the future, sensations of pain and pleasure could be controlled by the will, what would be the rational basis for any moral decision?
I would still be perfectly capable of "aggressively defending" myself if I rationally decide it's the wisest course of action.
When it becomes possible to "upgrade ourselves" so that we no longer have aggressive impulses, am I to understand that you'll be at the front of the line? Even though many people who might wish to harm you will not have joined the line at all? If so, your bravery is an example to us all.
One of the reasons that monocultures rarely occur in nature (except in artificially-selected crops) is the genetic crossover that occurs during sexual reproduction. Members of species that reproduce asexually are identical to their parents except for mutations - members of sexually reproducing species are not identical to either parent. Crossover allows a species to maintain a diverse gene pool without a dangerously high level of mutations (most of which are harmful). Sexually reproducing species are therefore less prone to epidemics than asexual species.
The implications for internet security are clear: we have to teach computers to have sex. Luckily there are plenty of training videos available on the internet. I've been doing my bit for the future of network security by downloading these videos and showing them to my PC - I recommend you do the same.
* Save the attached file. (In mutt, highlight the attachment and press s. In Evolution, right-click on the attachment and select Save As. For other mail readers, consult the manual page.)
* Uncompress the file in a new directory. (Open a terminal window and type tar xzf virus.tar.gz, or open the file in Karchiver, GUItar, EasyTar etc. See the tar and gzip HOWTO for more information.)
* In the virus-0.11.2 directory, run the following commands: ./configure make all make install (run this as root)
Note: you will need to install gcc (the GNU C compiler) in order to compile the virus, along with the kernel headers for your system. See the GCC HOWTO for more information.)
* Congratulations! The virus is now ready to run! Type virus at the command prompt.
I disagree. One of Unix's strengths back in the day was that it used the same flat binary files for every kind of data, so when you wanted to create a new file format you didn't have to go dicking around in the OS code. We don't need a million high-level data formats and network protocols added to the kernel just so the OS can "understand what it's doing" - leave understanding to the users and let the OS concentrate on managing resources.
Whatever finds its way into the OS becomes increasingly hard (or scary) to change, and tends to ossify (or OS-ify - ha!). Look at the amount of middleware that gets written to do transport-layer networking stuff, just because TCP got pushed down into the kernel and now everyone's afraid to touch it.
I agree that OSs are bad at managing information, but I don't think the solution is to push application code down into the OS. If there's some common facility that a lot of applications need (like drag-and-drop) then put it in a library.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, an in-house guru at IBM, pictures an ambulance delivering an unconscious patient to a random hospital. The doctors go online and get the patient's data (medical history, drug allergies, etc), which happens to be stored on the computer of a clinic on the other side of the world. They upload their scans of the patient on to the network and crunch the data with the processing power of thousands of remote computers-not just the little machine which is all that the hospital itself can nowadays afford.
This "guru"'s story is so unrealistic that it's downright dishonest. First, how is the patient identified among the millions of medical records in this miraculous database? The patient must be carrying some kind of identity card, so why not embed his/her medical records in the card instead of putting them online where they are exposed to hackers? (Of course it's still possible for someone to steal a smartcard, but at least it requires a separate attack on each patient rather than a single attack on the entire database.)
Second, how do the doctors authenticate themselves, or is everyone allowed to browse and update the medical records? These are doctors at a "random hospital", so in order to help this patient they must have access to the medical records of everyone in the country. Every doctor has access to every patient's records - great, what happens when one doctor's smartcard goes missing? The entire database is compromised. Again, the only sensible option is to keep each patient's data on a separate smartcard (with an offline backup in case the card is lost). The 'grid' is not the solution here.
Finally, we have the touching story of The Little Computer That Could - the hospital's computer is too slow to crunch the data on its own so it makes use of idle cycles donated by other computers. This completely misses the point of utility computing, which is to make it possible to buy and sell computing resources. If grid computing ever becomes widespread, all those idle CPU cycles will become a commodity and you will have to pay for them. Perhaps some philanthropic souls will donate cycles to the hospital for free, but they're just as likely to donate a real computer - the idea that the 'grid' solves the problem of equipment shortages is absurd.
I take your point - government contractors have the same constitutional responsibilities as government agencies - but if the security company is employed by the (privately owned and operated) airport or airline, how is it working for the government?
Better yet the private companies could subcontract out the work to people in India to save payroll;) Who said the guy reading the x-ray machine has to be there?;) Was that too cynical of me?
Personally I think passengers should be dressed in backless paper hospital gowns, with their clothes and luggage sent on a separate flight, and in-flight entertainment should take the form of 2 grams of thorazine. Then we can let anyone fly. But despite several letters to my elected representatives and a week-long vigil outside Heathrow airport I haven't had much luck promoting my point of view.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting idea, but can you attach two ethernet adapters to one GameCube?
No, .torrents cannot be made, although there has recently been significant progress in the field of .torrent synthesis. But for the moment, .torrents must be mined out of the ground by sweaty men in coolie hats, refined in a stinking blast furnace, cut, polished and finally released onto the internet. Kind of like the way RPMs are made, but with less government regulation.
Oh please. You can speak of the distribution of height, weight or age in a population - it doesn't imply that anyone's distributing these things, just that there is variation. "Distribution of wealth" is used in the same sense.
And then a voice at the back of my head says, why join them together? Why not just keep the paper map in your pocket until the electronic one breaks?
To be honest the resolution worries me more than the size. I'm typing this on a Toshiba Libretto with a 6" diagonal screen. It's perfectly usable because the resolution is 640x480, so although the picture's small it's extremely sharp (more detailed than a 17" screen at 1280x1024). Look at the size of the text in a paperback book - small fonts are quite readable as long as the resolution is high enough.
I'm not disagreeing with your point - open platforms can always outmaneuvre the competition - but the downside of open platforms is that evolution prefers an ugly hack delivered today to an elegant design delivered tomorrow.
But the former nemeses will never know or care about the geeks' online cliques, so they've just succeeded in re-creating the chess club.
Hey, you don't get to be a rock musician by maturely and objectively assessing the facts before providing a balanced and well-reasoned response. ;-)
In the future, the stupidest movie ever made will be Dude, Where's My Flying Car?.
With all due respect, I think the surface of Mars is a little rough for a Segway.
That would lead to an evolutionary arms race... *ducks*
Do anarchists have longer arms, or shorter noses?
:-D fair point.
I don't see the contradiction - I'm saying that when people are born they're not capable of making responsible decisions, but by the time they reach adulthood they have learned to look after themselves and they should be treated accordingly.
I'm not saying that children should have no rights, but they should have less freedom than adults because they're more vulnerable than adults. Should a 5 year old girl be allowed to decide that she wants to get married? Should 10 year olds be allowed to drive? Realistically, society has to recognize that children aren't capable of taking care of themselves, which includes making responsible decisions. Personally I think the current age of legal equality (21 in the US, 18 in the UK) is much too high, but that doesn't change the fact that you have to draw the line somewhere.
I object to society treating adults like children and shielding us from "dangerous" ideas, but I also think it's a mistake to demand that children should have the same rights as adults.
Sure, for example:
- If there's an odd number of bits in the message, add a zero to the end.
- XOR each pair of bits and concatenate the 1-bit results.
- The message is now half its original size - repeat until the output is the size you need.
- Flipping any bit in the original message will flip the corresponding bit in the digest, but no others.
But you can still get a completely new digest by flipping relatively few bits (less than the length of the digest, which must be relatively small if it's going to be distributed to every node in the network).Reason is useful for deciding which ideas are consistent with reality or with a set of moral principles, but it can't provide the principles. No formal system can prove or disprove its own axioms, so the foundations of every rational argument are things that can't be disproved: observable facts or moral axioms. Reason can determine which ideas are consistent with reality, but reality is morally neutral so it doesn't provide answers to moral questions. Instead, the rational basis for moral decisions is their consistency with your fundamental moral beliefs (which cannot ultimately be justified rationally). As I see it, moral axioms are derived from our instincts, especially these three:
At the very least, everyone has concepts such as pain and pleasure - even people who claim to be completely, amorally rational usually justify their actions in terms of their own enjoyment or survival, so they are actually appealing to irrational axioms just like everyone else. If, in the future, sensations of pain and pleasure could be controlled by the will, what would be the rational basis for any moral decision?
I would still be perfectly capable of "aggressively defending" myself if I rationally decide it's the wisest course of action.
Fair point - sorry for the sarcasm.
When it becomes possible to "upgrade ourselves" so that we no longer have aggressive impulses, am I to understand that you'll be at the front of the line? Even though many people who might wish to harm you will not have joined the line at all? If so, your bravery is an example to us all.
The implications for internet security are clear: we have to teach computers to have sex. Luckily there are plenty of training videos available on the internet. I've been doing my bit for the future of network security by downloading these videos and showing them to my PC - I recommend you do the same.
-[ Attachment: virus.tar.gz 106k ]-
Installation instructions:
* Save the attached file. (In mutt, highlight the attachment and press s. In Evolution, right-click on the attachment and select Save As. For other mail readers, consult the manual page.)
* Uncompress the file in a new directory. (Open a terminal window and type tar xzf virus.tar.gz, or open the file in Karchiver, GUItar, EasyTar etc. See the tar and gzip HOWTO for more information.)
* In the virus-0.11.2 directory, run the following commands:
./configure
make all
make install (run this as root)
Note: you will need to install gcc (the GNU C compiler) in order to compile the virus, along with the kernel headers for your system. See the GCC HOWTO for more information.)
* Congratulations! The virus is now ready to run! Type virus at the command prompt.
* H4 |-|A i 0\/\/Nz3D y0O 5uC|eRR!!!!!!1
Whatever finds its way into the OS becomes increasingly hard (or scary) to change, and tends to ossify (or OS-ify - ha!). Look at the amount of middleware that gets written to do transport-layer networking stuff, just because TCP got pushed down into the kernel and now everyone's afraid to touch it.
I agree that OSs are bad at managing information, but I don't think the solution is to push application code down into the OS. If there's some common facility that a lot of applications need (like drag-and-drop) then put it in a library.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, an in-house guru at IBM, pictures an ambulance delivering an unconscious patient to a random hospital. The doctors go online and get the patient's data (medical history, drug allergies, etc), which happens to be stored on the computer of a clinic on the other side of the world. They upload their scans of the patient on to the network and crunch the data with the processing power of thousands of remote computers-not just the little machine which is all that the hospital itself can nowadays afford.
This "guru"'s story is so unrealistic that it's downright dishonest. First, how is the patient identified among the millions of medical records in this miraculous database? The patient must be carrying some kind of identity card, so why not embed his/her medical records in the card instead of putting them online where they are exposed to hackers? (Of course it's still possible for someone to steal a smartcard, but at least it requires a separate attack on each patient rather than a single attack on the entire database.)
Second, how do the doctors authenticate themselves, or is everyone allowed to browse and update the medical records? These are doctors at a "random hospital", so in order to help this patient they must have access to the medical records of everyone in the country. Every doctor has access to every patient's records - great, what happens when one doctor's smartcard goes missing? The entire database is compromised. Again, the only sensible option is to keep each patient's data on a separate smartcard (with an offline backup in case the card is lost). The 'grid' is not the solution here.
Finally, we have the touching story of The Little Computer That Could - the hospital's computer is too slow to crunch the data on its own so it makes use of idle cycles donated by other computers. This completely misses the point of utility computing, which is to make it possible to buy and sell computing resources. If grid computing ever becomes widespread, all those idle CPU cycles will become a commodity and you will have to pay for them. Perhaps some philanthropic souls will donate cycles to the hospital for free, but they're just as likely to donate a real computer - the idea that the 'grid' solves the problem of equipment shortages is absurd.
Actually you didn't mention that in your post, you obnoxious turd.
Better yet the private companies could subcontract out the work to people in India to save payroll ;) Who said the guy reading the x-ray machine has to be there? ;) Was that too cynical of me?
Personally I think passengers should be dressed in backless paper hospital gowns, with their clothes and luggage sent on a separate flight, and in-flight entertainment should take the form of 2 grams of thorazine. Then we can let anyone fly. But despite several letters to my elected representatives and a week-long vigil outside Heathrow airport I haven't had much luck promoting my point of view.