I had a professor who did an experiment with my college's anti-cheating program because it said many people were cheaters who weren't. Immediately after he ran his test it told him he had cheated and copied the test despite the fact that he came up with the experimental sample based on all that he had learned in more than two decades of working in the field. Neither he nor most of his departmental colleagues pay much attention to what the computer program tells them. His main problem with the program is that the curricula for the class hardly varies at all from year to year but the program keeps a record of everything it examines each year. Thus, the probability of someone getting incorrectly flagged as a cheat increases every year. Even I have been told that I am a cheater by the stupid program due to the fact that for a single cursed thought, there are only a finite set of combinations of words which will mean the same thing.
It's not *all* bad, but...there are things which are worth doing which don't necessarily provide an extrinsic reward...helping someone in trouble, for example. Society has moved more and more towards trying to shape behaviour with extrinsic motivators, and extending that to school certainly seems to risk teaching kids that anything which doesn't provide an extrinsic reward isn't worth doing. Of *course* some kids could learn otherwise, perhaps from their family, or simply by discovering those principles on their own, but it's that much more difficult to get a difficult lesson like that to *stick* when so much else in their life is geared towards extrinsic reward. The only way this could be an unqualified good thing is if we are willing to say that education is so intrinsically valuable that it doesn't matter the cost to society.
There is no burden of proof to use an existing sample. I collect sample at crime scene. I run sample against database of profiles. I get a hit or hits. I now have a suspect list. Currently, though, you only end up in the database if you're arrested for or convicted of a crime (depending on crime & jurisdiction). This proposal is PRECISELY to eliminate that requirement. So...were you simply pedantically arguing that the existing system was just fine, and couching it such that it seemed you were defending the proposed new system?
easy. it will be almost certainly used to place people under suspicion of having committed a crime b/c their dna was found at the scene of a crime. particularly as dna collection and fingerprinting gets easier, better, and cheaper, it will be used for more and more minor crimes. that use of circumstantial evidence, however, is likely to place many people in the position of having to prove their innocence, "yes I was there, but at another time...no i don't have any witnesses that i was in bed at the time...but really, i didn't do anything!" it's not that the DNA itself is the problem, it's that it allows police to be lazy in coming up with suspects...and there will undoubtedly be some individuals in law enforcement who will take that lazy route. there will no doubt be others who are more conscientious, but i think it will lend itself to abuse. the fact that it's "scientific" evidence will lead juries to regard it as more important evidence even though it will only be circumstantial. it's one thing when it's DNA from, say, semen collected from a rape victim; quite another when it's dna swabbed from the counter of a convenience store which got robbed.
I think it's something along the lines of closing the barn door after the horse has left. The insecure OS installs are out there, and there's not much they can do to make them secure after the fact. I mean, they *could* go really black-ops and push security updates using botnets and whatnot...but I imagine the hue-and-cry would make the Sony rootkit dispute look like fan-mail.
Are you joking? That has to be the most ridiculous attempt to try to rationalize Apple's behavior. Do you think the "crApp Factories" of the world ONLY produce bikini apps? If they wanted to go against sweatshops, I'm sure they could find a more targeted way to do it. Do you think that there aren't a HUGE raft of USA based developers who are choosing quantity over quality to try to get-rich-quick? Only someone completely blind to what's gone on would think otherwise. And where do you get your 99%-1% statistic, anyway? Stop pulling crap out of your butt to try to provide some sort of moral cover for your church. At least the other parishioners who were defending Apple had the decency to come up with rational arguments, but this is just beyond the pale.
Other people have raised points of practicality wrt humans...i.e., that you're going to make things too cumbersome and the like. I'm sure your rebuttal is that that is simply evidence of an imperfect solution to the process problem. The flaw, of course, is that your contention is really only a truism. Humans are involved, and no quantity of process will eliminate all probability of a bug getting through. The only way to know a program is correct is to prove it, mathematically. Not all programs can be proven, so you're limited to writing programs in a style which lends them to proofs. However...even taking those measures isn't really sufficient. Because imperfect humans are still involved. Humans are involved either in doing the proof, or in writing the software that does the proof for you. No matter how many humans you put in that chain of proof, you can not eliminate entirely the probability they all miss something. Given enough time and enough code, eventually a bug will survive, with any process we can put in place.
And of course, your lack of familiarity is the benchmark for quality.... I don't know how good their product still is, but I evaluated it vs Google a number of years ago and they were faster, cheaper, easier to integrate with across multiple languages, and they had lower hardware requirements. I don't doubt that Google has subsequently made substantial improvements to their offering, so I wouldn't extrapolate that to today, but they certainly used to have a fantastic, developer friendly product.
that's just an engineering/design failure. if they'd designed it right, they could have put a whole MOUNTAIN on top, never mind a trifling bit of snow...
B/c there's any point in developing a real-time embedded Word Processor, or IM, or.... Those languages all have their place, I think it's unfortunate that software professionals balkanize themselves so much by demonizing the other folk who don't live on their software island. What we should focus on is promoting good engineering standards (something which is very possible in Java and C#...less sure about VB), not on the specific language. FWIW, C++ can be much less "predictable" than Java or C# unless you are very conscientious about your standards. That's especially true if one is trying to do a complex, multi-threaded application (for any problem domain where information sharing across threads is necessary). After all, it's not like Windows was written in Java (and, until recently, there certainly wasn't any C# in it either...not sure if there is now). But being written in C++ surely hasn't saved it from unpredictable crashes.... Sure, it can be done, but...different tools for different jobs. I'm happy for you, though, that you get to use "real" languages. Spending time in fake languages makes for such an existential crisis....
Absolutely. Her definition seems closer to doublethink than to truth. There are lots of rational arguments for some sort of intellectual property protection that are at least based in reason...that it somehow preserves the free and open dissemination of ideas is not one of them.
My concern isn't with the difficulty of predicting the dynamics, it's the TREMENDOUS difficulty of properly applying the force in the correct direction at the correct time and for the correct duration when you are trying to change those dynamics. I'm confident the Russian scientists can calculate what sort of force should be applied to get their desired result, but if Man's time in space has taught us anything, it's that getting everything exactly right in the extreme conditions of space is quite challenging. Maybe the risk of failure is small, but the cost of failure is unacceptably high. I think the odds of a collision would need to be similarly high before we should risk such a mission. As it stands now, we have a fairly good handle on what is going to happen and when...start mucking around, and who knows....
Completely agree. My immediate reaction to the new rules was, "Great, flying is more difficult and the rules do nothing to prevent this situation". I mean, the guy was on the plane for hours...he could have left his seat long, LONG before the "last hour" to do his thing. The only way to prevent this sort of situation is to force everyone to fly naked, with no carry on luggage (and ideally no luggage), and strapped into seats with restraints they can't remove until the flight has landed. Anything else leaves the door open. And you know what? I WANT THAT DOOR OPEN. Because I think the risk of having something terrible happen is WELL WORTH not having my person and my life completely controlled to eliminate all risk. And I would CERTAINLY rather measures that had something to do with actual safety instead of being window dressing.
Well, the GP probably was being a bit dismissive...but that aside, the truth is that if every US citizen served...a lot of them would probably end up doing not much more than practising for wars they would probably never fight. We, the people, would spend lots of money on training, feeding, clothing, paying people for a few years to prepare for a war they would never fight. At least some of those people could, I think, be put to better use by society. I think if we wanted some universal service, I imagine we could find some better balance between practising to defend the homeland and working to improve it (i.e. taking care of poor, working on infrastructure projects, etc). At any rate, there's probably a different optimal number of citizens who should serve in the armed forces than currently do, but I don't really think the optimal number is "all of them" either.
Yeah, I very much appreciate that behaviour from my bosses. I was working on a project a few years ago where we had to work a number of weekends to hit a few deadlines, which was annoying, but I very much appreciated that the senior manager on the project was there each weekend we had to come in and ensured our meals were paid for. Makes a huge difference in morale when done properly. Employees definitely understand that you aren't there b/c you have productive work to do, and as long as you aren't riding herd on them, I think it's a tremendous (and cheap) way to mitigate some of the dissatisfaction caused by having to work shite hours. Of course, not having to work those hours in the first place is nice, but if it comes to that, it helps if management makes a demonstration that they understand it's a sacrifice and not a privilege.
You could not be more incorrect. It's not a socialist utopia, it's a utopia. It's sad that people have come to equate the two. There is nothing in the statement you quoted about government. I don't think there's anything socialist to say that it would be wonderful if everyone had decent food, housing, healthcare, security.... Is that not an ideal we all agree would be great? Only a truly sick person believes it's ideal for some people to starve and suffer. Socialism is an attempt to get closer to that ideal through government intervention...it's not the ideal itself. Advocates of purer capitalism often frame their arguments in terms of a similar ideal, generally stating that this utopia can best be approached by letting pure market forces work. Socialists believe it can best be approached with government intervention and assistance. Libertarians believe it can be most closely approached if we each have a private militia...(I kid). Really, though, aren't most religion's "heaven" a place where something along those lines exists? Seems like the universal human utopia to me, not something rooted in a modern economic and political system.
I'm sorry, but while I recognize that cracking WPA is legitimately news (well, not news any more, see also "ancient history"), the fact that someone is charging $34 for the honour isn't. I tagged it slashvertisement as soon I read the summary. I mean, how is it *more* legit than some/. posting about "OMG image editing only $80, buy Paint Shop Pro!"? If kdawson wants to give a friend (or love interest) a plug, he could at *least* make it *subtle* by linking the primary TFA to some blog post talking about how WPA can be vulnerable to dictonary attacks and note, as a suble side-note, that someone is even offering a service to do it for, OMG, only $34!!! This, however, was a posting about someone selling a service based on old news. ==/vertisement
If it were only copyright, perhaps they would fall under fair-use. However, they would almost certainly fail for trademark violation. The only interesting "fair use" is generally satire and spoof. "look, here's my version of Mario in my free web-game!" would almost certainly not qualify.
Have you been following the news? They've been getting quite a many "almighty dollars" for their efforts these past few years. Their country might still be poor, but that hasn't stopped some of them from getting very rich.
B.S. Yes, hydro has a big impact. Yes, you have to find some large plot of land to "impact" to set up a solar collection grid. However...you are completely disregarding that solar plants have very little byproduct once up and running (unlike nuclear), and that the FUEL for the nuclear plant requires mining and refining operations which DO have a Very Real environmental impact. And I think you are also disregarding the impact often caused to local bodies of water which are often significantly affected by the hot-water discharge from the plant. I'm not saying nuclear doesn't have some pluses, but you seem to have a completely one-sided view of its environmental impact.
Hear, hear! It's far too often left unsaid when people talk about the "epidemic" of allergies that the numbers might very well have changed a great deal because the category has become more inclusive. I wonder that about some other "spectrum" disorders as well...autism springs to mind. Are there more sufferers? Or by coming up with broader criteria for the category have we simply made the numbers get larger? I haven't seen (although I haven't exhaustively looked) a good analysis which addresses that factor.
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I had a professor who did an experiment with my college's anti-cheating program because it said many people were cheaters who weren't. Immediately after he ran his test it told him he had cheated and copied the test despite the fact that he came up with the experimental sample based on all that he had learned in more than two decades of working in the field. Neither he nor most of his departmental colleagues pay much attention to what the computer program tells them. His main problem with the program is that the curricula for the class hardly varies at all from year to year but the program keeps a record of everything it examines each year. Thus, the probability of someone getting incorrectly flagged as a cheat increases every year. Even I have been told that I am a cheater by the stupid program due to the fact that for a single cursed thought, there are only a finite set of combinations of words which will mean the same thing.
It's not *all* bad, but...there are things which are worth doing which don't necessarily provide an extrinsic reward...helping someone in trouble, for example. Society has moved more and more towards trying to shape behaviour with extrinsic motivators, and extending that to school certainly seems to risk teaching kids that anything which doesn't provide an extrinsic reward isn't worth doing. Of *course* some kids could learn otherwise, perhaps from their family, or simply by discovering those principles on their own, but it's that much more difficult to get a difficult lesson like that to *stick* when so much else in their life is geared towards extrinsic reward. The only way this could be an unqualified good thing is if we are willing to say that education is so intrinsically valuable that it doesn't matter the cost to society.
Perhaps Grandma left some lovely azaleas that are just crying out for fresh fertilizer...? :)
There is no burden of proof to use an existing sample. I collect sample at crime scene. I run sample against database of profiles. I get a hit or hits. I now have a suspect list. Currently, though, you only end up in the database if you're arrested for or convicted of a crime (depending on crime & jurisdiction). This proposal is PRECISELY to eliminate that requirement. So...were you simply pedantically arguing that the existing system was just fine, and couching it such that it seemed you were defending the proposed new system?
easy. it will be almost certainly used to place people under suspicion of having committed a crime b/c their dna was found at the scene of a crime. particularly as dna collection and fingerprinting gets easier, better, and cheaper, it will be used for more and more minor crimes. that use of circumstantial evidence, however, is likely to place many people in the position of having to prove their innocence, "yes I was there, but at another time...no i don't have any witnesses that i was in bed at the time...but really, i didn't do anything!" it's not that the DNA itself is the problem, it's that it allows police to be lazy in coming up with suspects...and there will undoubtedly be some individuals in law enforcement who will take that lazy route. there will no doubt be others who are more conscientious, but i think it will lend itself to abuse. the fact that it's "scientific" evidence will lead juries to regard it as more important evidence even though it will only be circumstantial. it's one thing when it's DNA from, say, semen collected from a rape victim; quite another when it's dna swabbed from the counter of a convenience store which got robbed.
I think it's something along the lines of closing the barn door after the horse has left. The insecure OS installs are out there, and there's not much they can do to make them secure after the fact. I mean, they *could* go really black-ops and push security updates using botnets and whatnot...but I imagine the hue-and-cry would make the Sony rootkit dispute look like fan-mail.
that's b/c they're putting the "mirrors" in the wrong place. :) (not that i really find the idea practicable, but if one had to...)
Are you joking? That has to be the most ridiculous attempt to try to rationalize Apple's behavior. Do you think the "crApp Factories" of the world ONLY produce bikini apps? If they wanted to go against sweatshops, I'm sure they could find a more targeted way to do it. Do you think that there aren't a HUGE raft of USA based developers who are choosing quantity over quality to try to get-rich-quick? Only someone completely blind to what's gone on would think otherwise. And where do you get your 99%-1% statistic, anyway? Stop pulling crap out of your butt to try to provide some sort of moral cover for your church. At least the other parishioners who were defending Apple had the decency to come up with rational arguments, but this is just beyond the pale.
Other people have raised points of practicality wrt humans...i.e., that you're going to make things too cumbersome and the like. I'm sure your rebuttal is that that is simply evidence of an imperfect solution to the process problem. The flaw, of course, is that your contention is really only a truism. Humans are involved, and no quantity of process will eliminate all probability of a bug getting through. The only way to know a program is correct is to prove it, mathematically. Not all programs can be proven, so you're limited to writing programs in a style which lends them to proofs. However...even taking those measures isn't really sufficient. Because imperfect humans are still involved. Humans are involved either in doing the proof, or in writing the software that does the proof for you. No matter how many humans you put in that chain of proof, you can not eliminate entirely the probability they all miss something. Given enough time and enough code, eventually a bug will survive, with any process we can put in place.
And of course, your lack of familiarity is the benchmark for quality.... I don't know how good their product still is, but I evaluated it vs Google a number of years ago and they were faster, cheaper, easier to integrate with across multiple languages, and they had lower hardware requirements. I don't doubt that Google has subsequently made substantial improvements to their offering, so I wouldn't extrapolate that to today, but they certainly used to have a fantastic, developer friendly product.
that's just an engineering/design failure. if they'd designed it right, they could have put a whole MOUNTAIN on top, never mind a trifling bit of snow...
B/c there's any point in developing a real-time embedded Word Processor, or IM, or.... Those languages all have their place, I think it's unfortunate that software professionals balkanize themselves so much by demonizing the other folk who don't live on their software island. What we should focus on is promoting good engineering standards (something which is very possible in Java and C#...less sure about VB), not on the specific language. FWIW, C++ can be much less "predictable" than Java or C# unless you are very conscientious about your standards. That's especially true if one is trying to do a complex, multi-threaded application (for any problem domain where information sharing across threads is necessary). After all, it's not like Windows was written in Java (and, until recently, there certainly wasn't any C# in it either...not sure if there is now). But being written in C++ surely hasn't saved it from unpredictable crashes.... Sure, it can be done, but...different tools for different jobs. I'm happy for you, though, that you get to use "real" languages. Spending time in fake languages makes for such an existential crisis....
Absolutely. Her definition seems closer to doublethink than to truth. There are lots of rational arguments for some sort of intellectual property protection that are at least based in reason...that it somehow preserves the free and open dissemination of ideas is not one of them.
My concern isn't with the difficulty of predicting the dynamics, it's the TREMENDOUS difficulty of properly applying the force in the correct direction at the correct time and for the correct duration when you are trying to change those dynamics. I'm confident the Russian scientists can calculate what sort of force should be applied to get their desired result, but if Man's time in space has taught us anything, it's that getting everything exactly right in the extreme conditions of space is quite challenging. Maybe the risk of failure is small, but the cost of failure is unacceptably high. I think the odds of a collision would need to be similarly high before we should risk such a mission. As it stands now, we have a fairly good handle on what is going to happen and when...start mucking around, and who knows....
Completely agree. My immediate reaction to the new rules was, "Great, flying is more difficult and the rules do nothing to prevent this situation". I mean, the guy was on the plane for hours...he could have left his seat long, LONG before the "last hour" to do his thing. The only way to prevent this sort of situation is to force everyone to fly naked, with no carry on luggage (and ideally no luggage), and strapped into seats with restraints they can't remove until the flight has landed. Anything else leaves the door open. And you know what? I WANT THAT DOOR OPEN. Because I think the risk of having something terrible happen is WELL WORTH not having my person and my life completely controlled to eliminate all risk. And I would CERTAINLY rather measures that had something to do with actual safety instead of being window dressing.
Well, the GP probably was being a bit dismissive...but that aside, the truth is that if every US citizen served...a lot of them would probably end up doing not much more than practising for wars they would probably never fight. We, the people, would spend lots of money on training, feeding, clothing, paying people for a few years to prepare for a war they would never fight. At least some of those people could, I think, be put to better use by society. I think if we wanted some universal service, I imagine we could find some better balance between practising to defend the homeland and working to improve it (i.e. taking care of poor, working on infrastructure projects, etc). At any rate, there's probably a different optimal number of citizens who should serve in the armed forces than currently do, but I don't really think the optimal number is "all of them" either.
Yeah, I very much appreciate that behaviour from my bosses. I was working on a project a few years ago where we had to work a number of weekends to hit a few deadlines, which was annoying, but I very much appreciated that the senior manager on the project was there each weekend we had to come in and ensured our meals were paid for. Makes a huge difference in morale when done properly. Employees definitely understand that you aren't there b/c you have productive work to do, and as long as you aren't riding herd on them, I think it's a tremendous (and cheap) way to mitigate some of the dissatisfaction caused by having to work shite hours. Of course, not having to work those hours in the first place is nice, but if it comes to that, it helps if management makes a demonstration that they understand it's a sacrifice and not a privilege.
You could not be more incorrect. It's not a socialist utopia, it's a utopia. It's sad that people have come to equate the two. There is nothing in the statement you quoted about government. I don't think there's anything socialist to say that it would be wonderful if everyone had decent food, housing, healthcare, security.... Is that not an ideal we all agree would be great? Only a truly sick person believes it's ideal for some people to starve and suffer. Socialism is an attempt to get closer to that ideal through government intervention...it's not the ideal itself. Advocates of purer capitalism often frame their arguments in terms of a similar ideal, generally stating that this utopia can best be approached by letting pure market forces work. Socialists believe it can best be approached with government intervention and assistance. Libertarians believe it can be most closely approached if we each have a private militia...(I kid). Really, though, aren't most religion's "heaven" a place where something along those lines exists? Seems like the universal human utopia to me, not something rooted in a modern economic and political system.
I'm sorry, but while I recognize that cracking WPA is legitimately news (well, not news any more, see also "ancient history"), the fact that someone is charging $34 for the honour isn't. I tagged it slashvertisement as soon I read the summary. I mean, how is it *more* legit than some /. posting about "OMG image editing only $80, buy Paint Shop Pro!"? If kdawson wants to give a friend (or love interest) a plug, he could at *least* make it *subtle* by linking the primary TFA to some blog post talking about how WPA can be vulnerable to dictonary attacks and note, as a suble side-note, that someone is even offering a service to do it for, OMG, only $34!!! This, however, was a posting about someone selling a service based on old news. == /vertisement
Use a scrying spell, obviously.
If it were only copyright, perhaps they would fall under fair-use. However, they would almost certainly fail for trademark violation. The only interesting "fair use" is generally satire and spoof. "look, here's my version of Mario in my free web-game!" would almost certainly not qualify.
fail. GP clearly meant to say "commanded" or something along those lines (ideally "captained").
Have you been following the news? They've been getting quite a many "almighty dollars" for their efforts these past few years. Their country might still be poor, but that hasn't stopped some of them from getting very rich.
B.S. Yes, hydro has a big impact. Yes, you have to find some large plot of land to "impact" to set up a solar collection grid. However...you are completely disregarding that solar plants have very little byproduct once up and running (unlike nuclear), and that the FUEL for the nuclear plant requires mining and refining operations which DO have a Very Real environmental impact. And I think you are also disregarding the impact often caused to local bodies of water which are often significantly affected by the hot-water discharge from the plant. I'm not saying nuclear doesn't have some pluses, but you seem to have a completely one-sided view of its environmental impact.
Hear, hear! It's far too often left unsaid when people talk about the "epidemic" of allergies that the numbers might very well have changed a great deal because the category has become more inclusive. I wonder that about some other "spectrum" disorders as well...autism springs to mind. Are there more sufferers? Or by coming up with broader criteria for the category have we simply made the numbers get larger? I haven't seen (although I haven't exhaustively looked) a good analysis which addresses that factor.