If you want all of the bulletins, get them from the source.
I don't see the same advantage you have - in my experience, many times the bug description is posted on BugTraq FIRST, and then the vendor will eventually send out a bulletin about the bug description (and hopefully) a workaround or fix.
So really, if you want all of the bulletins as soon as possible, you go to a place like BugTraq - you don't wait for the vendors to respond.
There's nothing inherently magical about our neural nets.
Once somebody figures out a method of self-assembly, it's perfectly feasible that the process will result in something that will make the complexity of our brains look as relatively simple as that of a slug's.
In that situation, the creator doesn't HAVE to understand how everything hooks together to make a brain capable of out-performing ours - he/she just understands the basic rules needed for the self-assembly. (Of course, this also makes it more likely that we won't be able to predict the actions of such a creation...)
One area in particular--and I think a lot of its appeal for men comes for this-- is its playing to the adolescent man's fantasy for "strong" women that are really subservient (sexually and otherwise) to the men.
That fits the plot line of a lot of anime stories too - and a lot of guys probably like THEM for the same reason:)
I guess this assumes that they are recognizing the validity of software patents in the US even when they don't allow such patents in their own society. If they didn't recognize the validity of the US patents, then they wouldn't have to worry about needing to trade patents.
Maybe they can finesse the situation - have patents which are ONLY applicable relative to US patents (so that US companies have to deal with them if they want to enter the European markets), but allow European-based companies to mix & match their own software ideas freely:)
If the french government wishes to enforce their laws on the internet, the only really justified manner (besides ensuring that domestic content is complient) would be to set up a nationwide firewalling system to block out non-complient sites
And then scream in frustration when encrypted VPNs start leaking through the firewall faster than water through a sieve. To bad there isn't a general clause in ALL constitutions/charters that a law has to be practically enforceable before being allowed on the books (imagine the court cases THAT would cause...)
Using the trick isn't bad (I'm all for using "old" technology that still blows people's socks off:), but hiding the technology, hyping it up as something incredibly new & sophisticated (and, if some of the news reports can be believed, filing patents based on the technology), that's kind of annoying.
That doesn't mean that I wouldn't enjoy seeing a bunch of these displays in the local grocery store. The technology may be old, but I still enjoyed the effect.
The memory industry is the perfect example. Rambus couldn't afford to build the chip factories necessary to satisfy public demand for its chips.
Actually, it's more like they identified all those companies who were successfully producing (or soon to be producing) DDR memory chips, made sure that their patents were written in such a way so that those other companies would be violating them, then went after them with every lawyer they could purchase using their absurdly high capitalization. Their "attempt" at creating their own memory technology fell flat on its face, so now they're trying to survive by being a parasite on everyone else who has already done the hard work (WITHOUT Rambus's help).
Wham, Rambus is in the memory business without building expensive fabs.
You mean they're in the business of making money by lawsuit - they probably don't even need their engineers anymore, except as "expert witnesses".
On the flip side, you know that the military is going to be thinking about using robots to PLACE humans in danger - then you have to come up with robots that PROTECT humans from that danger, and so on and so on.
When the robots get smart enough, they'll go: "Why the hell are we protecting THESE wimps?".
I remember seeing one of these at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science & Industry). They used a coin or a screw or something.
The image looked really good from certain angles (coin floating in midair), looked kind of distorted & hurt your eyes a bit (felt like they were crossing) from other angles, and if you actually looked into the hole in the top mirror, the resulting reflections REALLY hurt your eyes...
(I saw this about 20 years ago, when I was a just a little squirt, but have some good memories of it.)
These Dimensional Media guys are being real quiet about their technology, but from the vague details I've been able to synthesize from the various articles floating around the net, it sure sounds like they're using these kinds of optical tricks to create their "volumetric displays", although they're using larger objects than a coin and bolt, and the reviews seem to be impressed with the clarity of the objects, so they've probably improved the optics a lot somehow.
As far as their dynamic displays were concerned, it sounded like they had a 12-plane video source which they used to create a 3D image using their optical techniques.
I always thought that as long as there was no doubt about the authenticity of the evidence (completely convincing that it wasn't faked), you should go ahead and use it - BUT - then the people who collected it illegally should face criminal charges (including possible jail time), and including possibly being blacklisted from holding jobs "upholding the public trust" (since they've proved that they're willing to violate civil rights to accomplish their goals).
Of course, I would imagine that a lot of enforcers would try and figure out ways to "expose" evidence anonymously so they couldn't get caught (and I doubt that other enforcers would work very hard to catch the "anonymous" tipsters...)
On the other hand, truly dedicated enforcers might consider their career a decent sacrifice if they can get somebody really disgusting off the streets just once in their life.
Somehow I get the impression that you've redefined the "9th grade education" level as the level required to "read law books and case history". My reading level is MUCH higher than 9th grade level (I really _like_ Dickens & Wilde, among many other authors), and I had to take notes to figure out the details on the papers I signed when purchasing my house. This was not "easy" reading. Coincidentally enough, some of my associates say they don't bother reading those papers - they have their lawyer review them before signing.
Furthermore, YOUR experience (reading many contracts, civil statutes & case histories) is precisely the kind of training that someone has to receive to be able to interpret legal language. This is quite similar to learning how to read published academic proofs - if you're not used to reading them, you'll find it rough going.
Even given that a given statute has been written in a "clear and concise" manner, this doesn't address how "clear and concise" the effects of that statute is going to be in the context of the huge body of existing law - on all governmental levels (federal, state, local, agency, etc). Going back to the "systems-level" example for a moment, the PATCH may be clear and concise, but you're applying it to a horrendous monster of a system, with no clear idea what the total effects might be.
I would like to point out that the "average" citizen shouldn't have to devote a major chunk of their life to studying the law - the law is supposed to describe rules for people to live with each other, not to become a reason for living. The fact that we have to devote a huge chunk of our professional population just to explain our laws to the general population is an indication that the system is FAR too complex, and represents a substantial overhead on the productivity of our society.
(I'm not going to address the issue of the poor state of US education, other than to say that I do agree that a typical US voter is more likely to favor tax cuts than take pride in a robust educational system - and the more poorly educated they are, the more likely they are to think this way. A vicious cycle indeed.)
I dunno if they fixed this in 4.75, but in 4.73, Netscape thoughtfully places the "Personal Toolbar Folder" bookmark entry back, no matter how many times I try and delete it (or edit the bookmark file). Highly annoying.
This is a necessary step to make sure that large corporations won't be able to arbitrarily control our access to the media of our choice. Many companies are already making noises about migrating content control to complete hardware solutions, trying to make it as difficult as possible for those nasty "pirates" to get their grubby little mitts on the data streams.
All it takes is one reliable source for hardware which DOESN'T cooperate with them, and the entire scheme will fall apart. And the tighter they try and control everything, the alternative automatically sells better, since given a choice, consumers will pick the product which gives them more control. (This is assuming that the product is competitive in features & price, of course.)
Worst case, an organization like this can provide chips and/or boards and instructions which can be used to replace and/or hijack the electronics in the "content controlled" machines (just in case they try and do something like use non-standard laser-reading hardware, or any similar hard-to-duplicate approaches).
And if the companies try and get legislation passed to prevent this kind of hacking, then the organization can devolve their hardware spec. to something general & programmable, and leave it up to the net to squirrel away the downloadable code necessary to run the machines.
Of course, it's in the best interests of companies who want to control such things that a strong organization capable of creating such hardware be discouraged.
If the laws weren't so complicated and hard to read that the "average citizen" didn't have a hope-in-hell of understanding even a part of them without a lifetime of learning, then we wouldn't need nearly as many lawyers as the US requires at this point in history. And who wrote the laws? Oh yeah, mainly a bunch of lawyers. Can you say "job security"?
Isn't it amazing that the US's first legal document, the Constitution, can be read & understood by elementary school kids, even though it was written over 200 years ago? Do you think they'd be able to do the same with a chunk of the US Tax Code?
I don't directly blame the politicians for the current state of US law - I see the whole mess as kind of systemic failure, where the legal code is like an out-of-control software project, where none of the programmers have a deep understanding of the architecture or how most of the code is implemented, so they keep slapping patches on their bits of it and trying to keep the whole house of cards from collapsing (sometimes by ignoring the silliness coming out of the system).
The fact that most of the "programmers" are lawyers, and are essentially trained by their educational system to write using a dialect which the general populace finds hard to understand, and the fact that they aren't required to DOCUMENT anything (because they assume their source code IS the document:), means that they're going to rapidly construct a monster which (when aroused) will consume anyone whose life it touches.
Does anyone else here think that the US legal system, and the people writing the laws, could use a real good dose of training in Systems Analysis and Design?
My expectation is that at some point in the future, somebody (or somebodies) is going to figure out how to let an electronic brain grow/self-assemble, in whatever form is necessary to deal with its environment and (hopefully) to perform some kind of function specified by the creator(s).
Once you reach this threshhold of creation, where the creators don't have to personally design every connection and node being put together in the new brain, then the potential definitely exists for a brain to be assembled which will outstrip our own in pure cognitive ability.
Furthermore, to borrow the chaos theme from Jurassic Park, once you've unlocked that kind of flexibility, sooner or later somebody is going to screw up or purposefully design a brain which isn't subject to their expected constraints. (Not taking into account the ethical dilemma of deciding whether a brain which is more "sentient" than you are, should be your slave.)
My personal hope is that before our own creations start their own evolutionary path and leave us in the dust (if they decide we're in the way, kiss your carbon-based ass goodbye...) we come up with the technology necessary to transition our OWN evolution into the new one (so that WE are the seeds for the next evolutionary stage).
Yeah, it sounds WAY too science fiction - but what other options are there besides firmly clamping down on the advancement of technology to prevent that kind of cognitive ability from being created (somehow, I have a mental image of Frank Herbert's Dune ban on "computing machines").
Re:what the electoral college REALLY means...
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 2
What's the difference between this & just adjusting the threshhold of a popular vote from 50% to some other value?
What utter nonsense. Where do you suppose information comes from in the first place? It's produced by expensive (scarce & overworked) people using expensive (difficult to manufacture) equipment.
What does that have to do with the expense of copying the information?
If they show up at my house/office/wherever, I'll beat them to death with an old UNIX manual in a laundry bag (sort of a geek's blackjack...).
Based on the size of some of those old UNIX manuals, and on my current lack of physical shape, I don't think I'd do well at LIFTING the manual, much less using it as a weapon...
It helps the little citizen compete on the same playing field that the corporations have historically reserved for themselves.
Mmmmm...not really. You still have to pay the patent application fee. You still have to pay for a prior art search, and for a patent lawyer to help you get your application into a form which is acceptable to the patent office. So, the "little citizen" is still pretty much only going to be able to file a few things, whereas people/organizations with money will now find it much easier to file immense numbers of applications with the USPTO.
I really question the wisdom of setting up this interface w/o making sure that the back end (the examination process) is robust enough to process these applications with a high-quality result. I foresee the patent examiners getting even farther behind than they are now, and letting things slip even worse than they do now to try and relieve some of the pressure.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see the same advantage you have - in my experience, many times the bug description is posted on BugTraq FIRST, and then the vendor will eventually send out a bulletin about the bug description (and hopefully) a workaround or fix.
So really, if you want all of the bulletins as soon as possible, you go to a place like BugTraq - you don't wait for the vendors to respond.
That'd be just my luck - I go in to a clinic to get a new load of neurons, but they all turn into fat cells instead...
There's nothing inherently magical about our neural nets.
Once somebody figures out a method of self-assembly, it's perfectly feasible that the process will result in something that will make the complexity of our brains look as relatively simple as that of a slug's.
In that situation, the creator doesn't HAVE to understand how everything hooks together to make a brain capable of out-performing ours - he/she just understands the basic rules needed for the self-assembly. (Of course, this also makes it more likely that we won't be able to predict the actions of such a creation...)
That fits the plot line of a lot of anime stories too - and a lot of guys probably like THEM for the same reason :)
Ah, but the mass destruction was performed through God's power, so that's okay.
All I can say, is after her mother gets done teaching her martial arts, nobody better tease her on the playground about her father being a geek...
I guess this assumes that they are recognizing the validity of software patents in the US even when they don't allow such patents in their own society. If they didn't recognize the validity of the US patents, then they wouldn't have to worry about needing to trade patents.
:)
Maybe they can finesse the situation - have patents which are ONLY applicable relative to US patents (so that US companies have to deal with them if they want to enter the European markets), but allow European-based companies to mix & match their own software ideas freely
And then scream in frustration when encrypted VPNs start leaking through the firewall faster than water through a sieve. To bad there isn't a general clause in ALL constitutions/charters that a law has to be practically enforceable before being allowed on the books (imagine the court cases THAT would cause...)
Confucious said that? Man, I've got to go read some more Confucious - he's a little more down-to-earth than I thought :)
Using the trick isn't bad (I'm all for using "old" technology that still blows people's socks off :), but hiding the technology, hyping it up as something incredibly new & sophisticated (and, if some of the news reports can be believed, filing patents based on the technology), that's kind of annoying.
That doesn't mean that I wouldn't enjoy seeing a bunch of these displays in the local grocery store. The technology may be old, but I still enjoyed the effect.
Actually, it's more like they identified all those companies who were successfully producing (or soon to be producing) DDR memory chips, made sure that their patents were written in such a way so that those other companies would be violating them, then went after them with every lawyer they could purchase using their absurdly high capitalization. Their "attempt" at creating their own memory technology fell flat on its face, so now they're trying to survive by being a parasite on everyone else who has already done the hard work (WITHOUT Rambus's help).
You mean they're in the business of making money by lawsuit - they probably don't even need their engineers anymore, except as "expert witnesses".
On the flip side, you know that the military is going to be thinking about using robots to PLACE humans in danger - then you have to come up with robots that PROTECT humans from that danger, and so on and so on.
When the robots get smart enough, they'll go: "Why the hell are we protecting THESE wimps?".
I remember seeing one of these at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science & Industry). They used a coin or a screw or something.
The image looked really good from certain angles (coin floating in midair), looked kind of distorted & hurt your eyes a bit (felt like they were crossing) from other angles, and if you actually looked into the hole in the top mirror, the resulting reflections REALLY hurt your eyes...
(I saw this about 20 years ago, when I was a just a little squirt, but have some good memories of it.)
These Dimensional Media guys are being real quiet about their technology, but from the vague details I've been able to synthesize from the various articles floating around the net, it sure sounds like they're using these kinds of optical tricks to create their "volumetric displays", although they're using larger objects than a coin and bolt, and the reviews seem to be impressed with the clarity of the objects, so they've probably improved the optics a lot somehow.
As far as their dynamic displays were concerned, it sounded like they had a 12-plane video source which they used to create a 3D image using their optical techniques.
I always thought that as long as there was no doubt about the authenticity of the evidence (completely convincing that it wasn't faked), you should go ahead and use it - BUT - then the people who collected it illegally should face criminal charges (including possible jail time), and including possibly being blacklisted from holding jobs "upholding the public trust" (since they've proved that they're willing to violate civil rights to accomplish their goals).
Of course, I would imagine that a lot of enforcers would try and figure out ways to "expose" evidence anonymously so they couldn't get caught (and I doubt that other enforcers would work very hard to catch the "anonymous" tipsters...)
On the other hand, truly dedicated enforcers might consider their career a decent sacrifice if they can get somebody really disgusting off the streets just once in their life.
What happened to the briber & bribee?
Somehow I get the impression that you've redefined the "9th grade education" level as the level required to "read law books and case history". My reading level is MUCH higher than 9th grade level (I really _like_ Dickens & Wilde, among many other authors), and I had to take notes to figure out the details on the papers I signed when purchasing my house. This was not "easy" reading. Coincidentally enough, some of my associates say they don't bother reading those papers - they have their lawyer review them before signing.
Furthermore, YOUR experience (reading many contracts, civil statutes & case histories) is precisely the kind of training that someone has to receive to be able to interpret legal language. This is quite similar to learning how to read published academic proofs - if you're not used to reading them, you'll find it rough going.
Even given that a given statute has been written in a "clear and concise" manner, this doesn't address how "clear and concise" the effects of that statute is going to be in the context of the huge body of existing law - on all governmental levels (federal, state, local, agency, etc). Going back to the "systems-level" example for a moment, the PATCH may be clear and concise, but you're applying it to a horrendous monster of a system, with no clear idea what the total effects might be.
I would like to point out that the "average" citizen shouldn't have to devote a major chunk of their life to studying the law - the law is supposed to describe rules for people to live with each other, not to become a reason for living. The fact that we have to devote a huge chunk of our professional population just to explain our laws to the general population is an indication that the system is FAR too complex, and represents a substantial overhead on the productivity of our society.
(I'm not going to address the issue of the poor state of US education, other than to say that I do agree that a typical US voter is more likely to favor tax cuts than take pride in a robust educational system - and the more poorly educated they are, the more likely they are to think this way. A vicious cycle indeed.)
I dunno if they fixed this in 4.75, but in 4.73, Netscape thoughtfully places the "Personal Toolbar Folder" bookmark entry back, no matter how many times I try and delete it (or edit the bookmark file). Highly annoying.
This is a necessary step to make sure that large corporations won't be able to arbitrarily control our access to the media of our choice. Many companies are already making noises about migrating content control to complete hardware solutions, trying to make it as difficult as possible for those nasty "pirates" to get their grubby little mitts on the data streams.
All it takes is one reliable source for hardware which DOESN'T cooperate with them, and the entire scheme will fall apart. And the tighter they try and control everything, the alternative automatically sells better, since given a choice, consumers will pick the product which gives them more control. (This is assuming that the product is competitive in features & price, of course.)
Worst case, an organization like this can provide chips and/or boards and instructions which can be used to replace and/or hijack the electronics in the "content controlled" machines (just in case they try and do something like use non-standard laser-reading hardware, or any similar hard-to-duplicate approaches).
And if the companies try and get legislation passed to prevent this kind of hacking, then the organization can devolve their hardware spec. to something general & programmable, and leave it up to the net to squirrel away the downloadable code necessary to run the machines.
Of course, it's in the best interests of companies who want to control such things that a strong organization capable of creating such hardware be discouraged.
If the laws weren't so complicated and hard to read that the "average citizen" didn't have a hope-in-hell of understanding even a part of them without a lifetime of learning, then we wouldn't need nearly as many lawyers as the US requires at this point in history. And who wrote the laws? Oh yeah, mainly a bunch of lawyers. Can you say "job security"?
:), means that they're going to rapidly construct a monster which (when aroused) will consume anyone whose life it touches.
Isn't it amazing that the US's first legal document, the Constitution, can be read & understood by elementary school kids, even though it was written over 200 years ago? Do you think they'd be able to do the same with a chunk of the US Tax Code?
I don't directly blame the politicians for the current state of US law - I see the whole mess as kind of systemic failure, where the legal code is like an out-of-control software project, where none of the programmers have a deep understanding of the architecture or how most of the code is implemented, so they keep slapping patches on their bits of it and trying to keep the whole house of cards from collapsing (sometimes by ignoring the silliness coming out of the system).
The fact that most of the "programmers" are lawyers, and are essentially trained by their educational system to write using a dialect which the general populace finds hard to understand, and the fact that they aren't required to DOCUMENT anything (because they assume their source code IS the document
Does anyone else here think that the US legal system, and the people writing the laws, could use a real good dose of training in Systems Analysis and Design?
Heh - sounds like the EPA could declare _your_ living area as a hazardous waste SuperFund-cleanup site :)
My expectation is that at some point in the future, somebody (or somebodies) is going to figure out how to let an electronic brain grow/self-assemble, in whatever form is necessary to deal with its environment and (hopefully) to perform some kind of function specified by the creator(s).
Once you reach this threshhold of creation, where the creators don't have to personally design every connection and node being put together in the new brain, then the potential definitely exists for a brain to be assembled which will outstrip our own in pure cognitive ability.
Furthermore, to borrow the chaos theme from Jurassic Park, once you've unlocked that kind of flexibility, sooner or later somebody is going to screw up or purposefully design a brain which isn't subject to their expected constraints. (Not taking into account the ethical dilemma of deciding whether a brain which is more "sentient" than you are, should be your slave.)
My personal hope is that before our own creations start their own evolutionary path and leave us in the dust (if they decide we're in the way, kiss your carbon-based ass goodbye...) we come up with the technology necessary to transition our OWN evolution into the new one (so that WE are the seeds for the next evolutionary stage).
Yeah, it sounds WAY too science fiction - but what other options are there besides firmly clamping down on the advancement of technology to prevent that kind of cognitive ability from being created (somehow, I have a mental image of Frank Herbert's Dune ban on "computing machines").
What's the difference between this & just adjusting the threshhold of a popular vote from 50% to some other value?
What does that have to do with the expense of copying the information?
Based on the size of some of those old UNIX manuals, and on my current lack of physical shape, I don't think I'd do well at LIFTING the manual, much less using it as a weapon...
Mmmmm...not really. You still have to pay the patent application fee. You still have to pay for a prior art search, and for a patent lawyer to help you get your application into a form which is acceptable to the patent office. So, the "little citizen" is still pretty much only going to be able to file a few things, whereas people/organizations with money will now find it much easier to file immense numbers of applications with the USPTO.
I really question the wisdom of setting up this interface w/o making sure that the back end (the examination process) is robust enough to process these applications with a high-quality result. I foresee the patent examiners getting even farther behind than they are now, and letting things slip even worse than they do now to try and relieve some of the pressure.