According to Turing, all sufficiently complicated computing devices are equivalent...
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that was said of binary systems? Can you prove to me that the lowest form of information in the brain is the bit? Are neurons only 'on or off'? Is it just discharge or not discharge? I am no neurologist but I believe that small non-binary charges can be held by neurons that may influence thought. Neurons are fairly complex cells that have many complex dendrites -- some being multipolar instead of bipolar.
At the very least, we know the brain obeys the laws of physics.
Unfortunately we have a very incomplete set of laws for physics.
This may shock you but I assure you that there are things going on in the human brain that no physicist, biologist or biophysicist can explain. Hell, we can't even draw a definite line between what is chemical/physical and what is purely neurological function. There may not even be a line to draw. Although we are making advances, we are still in the dark about a lot of basic things in the human mind let alone discovering the detailed inner workings of the thing we call 'consciousness.' Can you tell me why it is that enlarged regions of our brain make us so much more 'intelligent' than mice or whales?
I hope for a huge breakthrough but it is nothing more than childish hope. My gut feeling is that we are much much farther from the 'intelligence explosion' than the futurologists think.
Just remember Ray Kurzweil's argument: once a machine can achieve a human level of intelligence â" it can also exceed it.
Ray Kurzweil is a brilliant computer scientist and brought us many improvements -- maybe even the invention of -- the electronic musical keyboard.
But that is not his argument. I laughed when I read that as the concept was presented to me in sci-fi novels before Kurzweil's time. The earliest I (or Wikipedia) can trace the intelligence explosion theory back to is Irving John Good who, in 1965, said:
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.
This was popularized by Vernor Vinge which is where I recalled reading about it. There are many reasons to celebrate Raymond Kurzweil. In my opinion, his is "work" in nutrition and his near-religion called futurology are not in those reasons. He has become a vocal proponent of a dream to become god-like. I do not share that dream and I wish him the best of luck in his endeavors. I just cringe every time I read of the "singularity being near" or the ability to live forever coming about. If it's going to happen, just sit back and let it happen. I feel he has done a great disservice to the field of artificial intelligence by promising unrealistic things in interviews to the lay person. Disappointment is a sure fire way to get yourself branded as a snake oil salesman religious nut.
Predictions for the future are for sci-fi books and movies, don't get into the habit of being a scientist in an interview with a reputable magazine or web site telling them what is about to happen. Example:
Kurzweil projects that between now and 2050 technology will become so advanced that medical advances will allow people to radically extend their lifespans while preserving and even improving quality of life as they age. The aging process could at first be slowed, then halted, and then reversed as newer and better medical technologies became available. Kurzweil argues that much of this will be a fruit of advances in medical nanotechnology, which will allow microscopic machines to travel through one's body and repair all types of damage at the cellular level.
And that's easily criticized:
Biologist P.Z. Myers has criticized Kurzweil's predictions as being based on "New Age spiritualism" rather than science and says that Kurzweil does not understand basic biology. Myers also claims that Kurzweil picks and chooses events that appear to demonstrate his claim of exponential technological increase leading up to a singularity, and ignores events that do not.
Ironically, they may even be less likely to become game makers themselves, helping to perpetuate the cycle. Many have suggested that games function as crucial gatekeepers for interest in science, technology, engineering and math.
By that logic, almost all games offer children an actively engaged exercise in problem solving. Edutainment games seem to be dry and boring with the ulterior motive easily spoon fed to the player.
I would stress games that have various degrees of puzzle solving but little obvious educational value. Look up the Castle of Dr. Brain. I played the hell out of that and would welcome a web based clone with higher level difficulty! I also feel it gave me great puzzle solving skills.
Also, I'd like to caution you that we are a extreme set of the population. Opinions here may not be valuable to someone trying to reach the rest of the population. Of course we are predisposed to enjoy depth and length over trivial pop cap games with flashing jewels.
You fucking hypocrite. You are sitting on/. typing your rant on a computer that was largely made with Chinese parts/labor, probably wearing shoes/clothing that were made in China and god knows what else. I'm sorry but you don't get to throw stones when you live in a glass house.
I submitted this story in an attempt to raise awareness in our community about a death in an internet addiction camp. Who knows how many others there have been prior to this? And what, stone thrower, have you done?
And now you're criticizing me for purchasing Chinese products? What the hell does that have to do with this? You think the solution is for us to band together and boycott Chinese products? Do you really believe that causing their economic structure to collapse would be the answer? Did trade embargoes work for North Korea and pre-war Iraq?
I'm an American citizen, I have no control over the sovereign nation of China. All I can hope to do is get word out to everyone around the world and hopefully spread news to the citizens of China so they take action. A revolution from the outside is meaningless and often dangerous/deadly/destructive.
I don't want Chinese people to suffer, that's it. I don't care if their system is Communist, Capitalist, Dictatorship or Democracy. Get the word out so they fix it. Go ahead and call me a hypocrite but I'm doing what little I can by spreading facts and news... not pushing my ideals and isms on the sovereign people of China. Basic human rights are the only thing I push and I'm prepared to argue that.
Look people, tragedies happen all the time. For every poor kid beaten to death in China at a "gaming addiction recovery camp", there's thousands more dying of starvation and illnesses in other parts of the world.
This isn't news. This is China. Do you expect differently?
So because the numbers are small, we should ignore it? If you were raped and murdered we could go to the police with your logic and say, "Look, for every person raped and murdered thousands die in automobile accidents on the streets so don't waste your time with this case."
The fact that 'internet addiction' is ill defined and that this was a CHILD not an adult and the fact that it's government run should cause alarm bells to ring even if it is only one case. How do you know the action of beating children is not commonplace and applied to thousands of so called "internet addicts"? How do you know this isn't an attempt to weed out would-be dissidents at an early age?
Your compliance amazes me. Yes, hunger and starvation is a problem but so is this we can report about this on Slashdot and read about hunger and food shortages on CNN.
I'm sorry but "this is China" does not cause me to close my eyes to unalienable human rights that every human being in the world deserves!
But the price, the price...
My presbyopia is such that I just do without spectacles for close work, and don monofocals for driving, etc. I have bifocals, but they irritate me to no end. If adaptive focus spectacles are reasonably-priced (no more than double the cost of good coated bifocals), then I'll be first in line.
Yeah, it sounds like many people would enjoy this. My question is why if this was granted in 1999 is it not in production today? Is there some FDA-like approval he needs to get? Is he having trouble finding capital? Is he unable to convince people it will work? A fabrication issue? Doesn't make sense to me.
Or (like the article says) does he just have his hands in too many fields of patents to develop one of them into a business model? I was kind of shocked to see that it was issued a decade ago and I've never heard of this until now.
The NY Times article that Munroe links (registration may be required) is from April of this year, and I am amazed that this community didn't note the story at that time.
Your firehose search tool is there, yes it's slow and clunky. I don't care that you rejected my submission of this story three months ago but don't say I didn't notice one of my favorite web comics being published in book form. I mean, go ahead and say "slow news day" in your summary, I don't care if you feel obligated to dig up old news for stories at 12:25 AM EST on a Tuesday. Also, it confuses me greatly that you provide for us a means to make sure we don't submit a URL that's already been submitted as the primary link by another individual... yet you yourselves do not use this tool to your advantage when looking for duplicates.
The first thing you can imagine the officer asked was, "What's a domain?"
I get it! Cops are all dumb, lazy, and technically illiterate!
Seriously, everyone. I know we all resent cops, but to imply that a whole department can't find a single officer who knows what a domain is is ridiculous and insulting. Let's try to keep our government/authority-hate at least sort of grounded in reality.
Officer A: So then I pull up to this house, knock on the door and this 50 year old woman answers the door. I think I got the wrong house but you know those tech nerds... Officer B: Still living in his mother's basement? Officer A: Yeah, dude's whiter than paste and has maybe 90 lbs of meat on him. So I'm cuffing the guy and putting his head down so he gets into the car and the kid feels like a noodle and I say, 'Ya know you should try illegally downloading P90X.' and you can imagine the first thing he asked was, 'What the hell is P90X?' Officer B: Hahaha, those hacker nerds, man if only they got laid more often instead of stealing a 'domain'--whatever that is. Officer A: Yeah, now they expect us to police virtual property too... where will it end?
There, now everybody's made fun of everybody. Feel better?
... I wish downloading an artists album without paying actually did do the artist physical/economic harm. Here's to hoping that later in life he suffers from an actual ailment while everyone ignores him.
All this is assuming that we would know immediately if there were a 50-100 million year old alien probe in our solar system's backyard.
Yes. There could be half a bajillion alien probes in the Kuiper belt, transmitting the latest antics of the Earthlings right to GalaxyTV, and we'd have no idea.
I disagree. I shall propose what will be known as The eldavojohn Paradox which states that: If extraterrestrial life were watching our TV, surely Fox and the WB would have been attacked by now... or at least a very harshly worded intergalactic message would have been delivered to the Fox executives about their nonsensical canceling of shows like Firefly and Futurama while promoting unadulterated drivel.
You see, my assertion that extraterrestrials would enjoy the same television as I is just as utterly inept as assuming that their primary goal is establishing contact with other extraterrestrials. Who knows? Maybe they're too busy jumping between parallel universes to waste time talking to the Corky from Life Goes On of the Milky Way Galaxy? (that being us)
Maybe they showed up and watched World War I and II and said, "Wow, that is some heavy shit. We'll... we'll just come back later when you're not busy, ok?"
Isn't the Maybe Game fun? It's like I'm a sci-fi writer with me as my own audience.
All this is assuming that we would know immediately if there were a 50-100 million year old alien probe in our solar system's backyard. Stack that on top of all the non-empirical data based percentages that go into the Fermi paradox and...
*puts on Twilight Zone music*
Human beings are the alien probe!
And man, we had better start compiling that report that's due when Quetzalcoatl/Jesus/Osiris/Thoth/Viracocha get back here. He's gonna be pissed when he sees that we just threw a huge party and trashed the place instead of assessing the resources!
In a totally unexpected ruling, a Dutch court has decided that The Pirate Bay should block visitors from the Netherlands within 10 days or face a fine of â30,000 per defendant per day.
What about residents on islands like Sint Maartin in the Netherlands Antilles? Blocking by IP address could get a little more complicated considering the Northern half of that island is French.
"... so every year we have a bring-your-child-to-work day where we inject some M&M dye into the lab rats and let the kids play with them. And Gunderson's kid has this nasty tendency to just baseball them into the wall and, well, we noticed the blue colored mice were recovering much better from the wall impact injuries..."
Seriously though is there like a lab out there giving rats spinal injuries and jacking them full of chemicals? Cause if there is, I've got my resume handy!
Very temporary. I think the biggest thing here is what the researchers speculate can be done with this. I submitted a story after this guy but I'll just past the firehose here because I'm lazy:
Star Trek's transparent aluminum has already been realized by heating aluminum but Oxford scientists claim to have found a new state of matter while making transparent aluminum. The laser in use is the FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany and each brief pulse of X-Ray energy it releases is 'more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city.' Although the new state only lasts about 40 femtoseconds, Oxford Professor Justin Wark has high hopes for this research, "Transparent aluminium is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth."
I think they're excited about the strange fusion capabilities this new state may allow them to harness. Nothing conclusive yet though.
I was pretty impressed with the sounds and sights of the XBox reboot but the game play and replay value just were not there. They need to get back on the horse for the latest Guitar Hero/Rock Band fad and reboot that game for the Wii or PS3.
I dare say I would welcome Guitar Hero: Funkatron Tour although it's possible the syncopation of funk would turn off players. Funk funk funk. E.
It's easy to find. It is posted on the linux kernel mailing list as well as in several git trees from kernel.org. Where all kernel patches belong. See http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/7/20/167.
Thanks for the link and I am aware of that. I guess I was wondering how they found themselves in compliance with Section 3 of the GPLv2 and I think this is where the article and SFLC are coming from:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software
interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
received the program in object code or executable form with such
an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
What I'm trying to say is I'm not seeing any of this and when I actively look on their site for it, nothing comes up.
So I grab GPL code, modify it and upload it to some remote unnamed repository with a license and go about my business releasing it under my own license as a binary on my site? I don't think so.
PLEASE NOTE: Microsoft Corporation (or based on where you live, one of its affiliates) licenses this supplement to you. You may use it with each validly licensed copy of Microsoft operating system products software (for which this supplement is applicable) (the âoesoftwareâ). You may not use the supplement if you do not have a license for the software. The license terms for the software apply to your use of this supplement. Microsoft provides support services for the supplement as described at www.support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx.
After it unpacks, I get an RTF named "Linux ICs for Hyper-V" and LinuxIC.iso... no source code. Anybody know where said source code is? Because when I do a search on their site, I'm not finding it.
Sure, it may have contributed the source code to some repository somewhere but I think the GPLv2 says you need to provide it if you are distributing. Which is what they're doing. Pretty obvious violation right there. Also, when you distribute it, you should have a copy of the GPLv2 license with it. I can't find a trace of it when I get the iso from them...
We discussed this the day the report was released and the conversation was pretty much limited to BSOD jokes and War Games references. Hopefully it turns out a little more interesting this time around.
Really, I'm less worried about the cyber part of one of these attacks and am more so worried about the weakest link in the chain: the human factor. Social, over-the-shoulder or 'soft' hacks would be the few ways left to gain access. Mental manipulation like keeping someone in the dark would be the best way to scare them into action. It's not like someone's magically overcoming the physical barrier that exists between the internet and these secure networks on which sensitive information and control are relegated--you need a human to exploit.
At least this time around the title's gone from
Hacking Nuclear Command and Control
to
Could Cyber-Terrorists Provoke Nuclear Attacks?
Which is a lot more accurate but a lot less newsworthy.
... begging for money that comes up with these "revolutionary" breakthroughs. Did we not learn anything from the tech boom/bust?
Whenever there is a lot of government money flowing into an industry, there is never a shortage of snake-oil salesmen lining up to grab a piece of it. There really isn't a limit to what they will say they can do.
If this is true, it gives us another criteria to look for in distant solar systems that we suspect may harbor life or that we would like to colonize: a large shield planet in the same system capable of leaving the smaller world to develop uninterrupted.
It is interesting to wonder if our odds increase or decrease on being hit when there is a large massive body in our solar system. Like the article and summary say, some objects that would not have come close could be put on course for earth via Jupiter's gravitational forces. Who knows, maybe massive bodies like Jupiter pull more space debris into our system and make it more hostile than if it were just the earth orbiting the Sun?
Among those seemingly aware of the existence of Mood Stamps is Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie...
Isn't it possible that (since he worked on the Lotus Notes project) Ray Ozzie is the originator of this idea and Lotus Notes did not have the foresight to patent this technology when he worked for them? Isn't it possible that he thought this idea patentable and in a better late than never fashion he patented it?
I don't think this is a novel idea and I think it should not be patentable... I just find this summary to be very short sighted and subjective:
Think we can count on Ozzie to do the right thing and give the USPTO a heads-up?
What is "the right thing?" He works for a company with the priority to rake in cash. It's "right" in his boss' eyes, I'm sure.
I didn't realize that "I dun have no cuzmers" was a valid defense against patent violations.
That's not all of his argument. Although his letter is unprofessional and poorly organized, he says:
To Sam Baxter - if you wish to acknowledge my email and realize your mistake on claiming CitiWare in your suit on Bedrocks behalf, then remove any claims against CitiWare / CityWare and I can remove this page and any publicity about filling an invalid lawsuit against a company that never used your patent or for that matter even developed any product sold or used (CityWare only used Open Source code under GPL for personal projects or other employers)!
He's probably flabbergasted that they didn't do any development, they just repackaged/administered GPL licensed open source products and now find themselves the target of a lawsuit. And like the article says, they don't care about him or what he says or the validity of targeting him, they care about keeping the case in East Texas District Court.
This guy doesn't need a defense, he just needs to reside in East Texas and he's part of this case no matter how ill placed the blame is.
Anyway, that irrelevant nonsense aside, I'm busy working on a high performance V-8 hemi engine powered by babies. I'm having some troubles with the baby pump getting clogged by babies...
That's absurd, everyone knows that kittens have a higher Joule per liter ratio than babies. Do you know what the incubation time on a baby is? Nine months! Compare that to the three months tops on a kitten. And you only get one or two babies per baby producing mother. Kittens come in litters, litters equal more fuel. Burning babies in an engine!? What a preposterous idea!
You obviously haven't thought this out! Now if you can get your hands on some panda babies or endangered snow leopard, then you'd be in business!
Slashdot Mirror
According to Turing, all sufficiently complicated computing devices are equivalent ...
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that was said of binary systems? Can you prove to me that the lowest form of information in the brain is the bit? Are neurons only 'on or off'? Is it just discharge or not discharge? I am no neurologist but I believe that small non-binary charges can be held by neurons that may influence thought. Neurons are fairly complex cells that have many complex dendrites -- some being multipolar instead of bipolar.
At the very least, we know the brain obeys the laws of physics.
Unfortunately we have a very incomplete set of laws for physics.
This may shock you but I assure you that there are things going on in the human brain that no physicist, biologist or biophysicist can explain. Hell, we can't even draw a definite line between what is chemical/physical and what is purely neurological function. There may not even be a line to draw. Although we are making advances, we are still in the dark about a lot of basic things in the human mind let alone discovering the detailed inner workings of the thing we call 'consciousness.' Can you tell me why it is that enlarged regions of our brain make us so much more 'intelligent' than mice or whales?
I hope for a huge breakthrough but it is nothing more than childish hope. My gut feeling is that we are much much farther from the 'intelligence explosion' than the futurologists think.
Just remember Ray Kurzweil's argument: once a machine can achieve a human level of intelligence â" it can also exceed it.
Ray Kurzweil is a brilliant computer scientist and brought us many improvements -- maybe even the invention of -- the electronic musical keyboard.
But that is not his argument. I laughed when I read that as the concept was presented to me in sci-fi novels before Kurzweil's time. The earliest I (or Wikipedia) can trace the intelligence explosion theory back to is Irving John Good who, in 1965, said:
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.
This was popularized by Vernor Vinge which is where I recalled reading about it. There are many reasons to celebrate Raymond Kurzweil. In my opinion, his is "work" in nutrition and his near-religion called futurology are not in those reasons. He has become a vocal proponent of a dream to become god-like. I do not share that dream and I wish him the best of luck in his endeavors. I just cringe every time I read of the "singularity being near" or the ability to live forever coming about. If it's going to happen, just sit back and let it happen. I feel he has done a great disservice to the field of artificial intelligence by promising unrealistic things in interviews to the lay person. Disappointment is a sure fire way to get yourself branded as a snake oil salesman religious nut.
Predictions for the future are for sci-fi books and movies, don't get into the habit of being a scientist in an interview with a reputable magazine or web site telling them what is about to happen. Example:
Kurzweil projects that between now and 2050 technology will become so advanced that medical advances will allow people to radically extend their lifespans while preserving and even improving quality of life as they age. The aging process could at first be slowed, then halted, and then reversed as newer and better medical technologies became available. Kurzweil argues that much of this will be a fruit of advances in medical nanotechnology, which will allow microscopic machines to travel through one's body and repair all types of damage at the cellular level.
And that's easily criticized:
Biologist P.Z. Myers has criticized Kurzweil's predictions as being based on "New Age spiritualism" rather than science and says that Kurzweil does not understand basic biology. Myers also claims that Kurzweil picks and chooses events that appear to demonstrate his claim of exponential technological increase leading up to a singularity, and ignores events that do not.
Does length and depth of gameplay matter to you, or would you rather play a trivial game with subconscious educational value?
In a paper we recently discussed, researchers noted that
Ironically, they may even be less likely to become game makers themselves, helping to perpetuate the cycle. Many have suggested that games function as crucial gatekeepers for interest in science, technology, engineering and math.
By that logic, almost all games offer children an actively engaged exercise in problem solving. Edutainment games seem to be dry and boring with the ulterior motive easily spoon fed to the player.
I would stress games that have various degrees of puzzle solving but little obvious educational value. Look up the Castle of Dr. Brain. I played the hell out of that and would welcome a web based clone with higher level difficulty! I also feel it gave me great puzzle solving skills.
Also, I'd like to caution you that we are a extreme set of the population. Opinions here may not be valuable to someone trying to reach the rest of the population. Of course we are predisposed to enjoy depth and length over trivial pop cap games with flashing jewels.
You fucking hypocrite. You are sitting on /. typing your rant on a computer that was largely made with Chinese parts/labor, probably wearing shoes/clothing that were made in China and god knows what else. I'm sorry but you don't get to throw stones when you live in a glass house.
I submitted this story in an attempt to raise awareness in our community about a death in an internet addiction camp. Who knows how many others there have been prior to this? And what, stone thrower, have you done?
... not pushing my ideals and isms on the sovereign people of China. Basic human rights are the only thing I push and I'm prepared to argue that.
And now you're criticizing me for purchasing Chinese products? What the hell does that have to do with this? You think the solution is for us to band together and boycott Chinese products? Do you really believe that causing their economic structure to collapse would be the answer? Did trade embargoes work for North Korea and pre-war Iraq?
I'm an American citizen, I have no control over the sovereign nation of China. All I can hope to do is get word out to everyone around the world and hopefully spread news to the citizens of China so they take action. A revolution from the outside is meaningless and often dangerous/deadly/destructive.
I don't want Chinese people to suffer, that's it. I don't care if their system is Communist, Capitalist, Dictatorship or Democracy. Get the word out so they fix it. Go ahead and call me a hypocrite but I'm doing what little I can by spreading facts and news
Look people, tragedies happen all the time. For every poor kid beaten to death in China at a "gaming addiction recovery camp", there's thousands more dying of starvation and illnesses in other parts of the world.
This isn't news. This is China. Do you expect differently?
So because the numbers are small, we should ignore it? If you were raped and murdered we could go to the police with your logic and say, "Look, for every person raped and murdered thousands die in automobile accidents on the streets so don't waste your time with this case."
The fact that 'internet addiction' is ill defined and that this was a CHILD not an adult and the fact that it's government run should cause alarm bells to ring even if it is only one case. How do you know the action of beating children is not commonplace and applied to thousands of so called "internet addicts"? How do you know this isn't an attempt to weed out would-be dissidents at an early age?
Your compliance amazes me. Yes, hunger and starvation is a problem but so is this we can report about this on Slashdot and read about hunger and food shortages on CNN.
I'm sorry but "this is China" does not cause me to close my eyes to unalienable human rights that every human being in the world deserves!
But the price, the price... My presbyopia is such that I just do without spectacles for close work, and don monofocals for driving, etc. I have bifocals, but they irritate me to no end. If adaptive focus spectacles are reasonably-priced (no more than double the cost of good coated bifocals), then I'll be first in line.
Yeah, it sounds like many people would enjoy this. My question is why if this was granted in 1999 is it not in production today? Is there some FDA-like approval he needs to get? Is he having trouble finding capital? Is he unable to convince people it will work? A fabrication issue? Doesn't make sense to me.
Or (like the article says) does he just have his hands in too many fields of patents to develop one of them into a business model? I was kind of shocked to see that it was issued a decade ago and I've never heard of this until now.
The NY Times article that Munroe links (registration may be required) is from April of this year, and I am amazed that this community didn't note the story at that time.
Well, using a very simple search (xkcd book) in the firehose, I found spongedaddy's submission, my own submission and even one of the bin spammers submitted it. And we all linked to the same NYTimes story.
... yet you yourselves do not use this tool to your advantage when looking for duplicates.
Your firehose search tool is there, yes it's slow and clunky. I don't care that you rejected my submission of this story three months ago but don't say I didn't notice one of my favorite web comics being published in book form. I mean, go ahead and say "slow news day" in your summary, I don't care if you feel obligated to dig up old news for stories at 12:25 AM EST on a Tuesday. Also, it confuses me greatly that you provide for us a means to make sure we don't submit a URL that's already been submitted as the primary link by another individual
The first thing you can imagine the officer asked was, "What's a domain?" I get it! Cops are all dumb, lazy, and technically illiterate! Seriously, everyone. I know we all resent cops, but to imply that a whole department can't find a single officer who knows what a domain is is ridiculous and insulting. Let's try to keep our government/authority-hate at least sort of grounded in reality.
Officer A: So then I pull up to this house, knock on the door and this 50 year old woman answers the door. I think I got the wrong house but you know those tech nerds ... ... where will it end?
Officer B: Still living in his mother's basement?
Officer A: Yeah, dude's whiter than paste and has maybe 90 lbs of meat on him. So I'm cuffing the guy and putting his head down so he gets into the car and the kid feels like a noodle and I say, 'Ya know you should try illegally downloading P90X.' and you can imagine the first thing he asked was, 'What the hell is P90X?'
Officer B: Hahaha, those hacker nerds, man if only they got laid more often instead of stealing a 'domain'--whatever that is.
Officer A: Yeah, now they expect us to police virtual property too
There, now everybody's made fun of everybody. Feel better?
Well apparently after infecting over five million IP addresses, it's now an autonomous botnet working on its own without any master ...
Hmmm, sounds like its authors should have spent more time on their Torgo routine. You know, the bit of code that takes care while the master is away.
... but the master would ... not approve.</Torgo>
<Torgo>The master would not approve; he likes you
All this is assuming that we would know immediately if there were a 50-100 million year old alien probe in our solar system's backyard.
Yes. There could be half a bajillion alien probes in the Kuiper belt, transmitting the latest antics of the Earthlings right to GalaxyTV, and we'd have no idea.
I disagree. I shall propose what will be known as The eldavojohn Paradox which states that: If extraterrestrial life were watching our TV, surely Fox and the WB would have been attacked by now ... or at least a very harshly worded intergalactic message would have been delivered to the Fox executives about their nonsensical canceling of shows like Firefly and Futurama while promoting unadulterated drivel.
... we'll just come back later when you're not busy, ok?"
You see, my assertion that extraterrestrials would enjoy the same television as I is just as utterly inept as assuming that their primary goal is establishing contact with other extraterrestrials. Who knows? Maybe they're too busy jumping between parallel universes to waste time talking to the Corky from Life Goes On of the Milky Way Galaxy? (that being us)
Maybe they showed up and watched World War I and II and said, "Wow, that is some heavy shit. We'll
Isn't the Maybe Game fun? It's like I'm a sci-fi writer with me as my own audience.
Fewer Than 10 ET Civilizations In Our Galaxy?
All this is assuming that we would know immediately if there were a 50-100 million year old alien probe in our solar system's backyard. Stack that on top of all the non-empirical data based percentages that go into the Fermi paradox and ...
*puts on Twilight Zone music*
Human beings are the alien probe!
And man, we had better start compiling that report that's due when Quetzalcoatl/Jesus/Osiris/Thoth/Viracocha get back here. He's gonna be pissed when he sees that we just threw a huge party and trashed the place instead of assessing the resources!
In a totally unexpected ruling, a Dutch court has decided that The Pirate Bay should block visitors from the Netherlands within 10 days or face a fine of â30,000 per defendant per day.
What about residents on islands like Sint Maartin in the Netherlands Antilles? Blocking by IP address could get a little more complicated considering the Northern half of that island is French.
Microsoft refused to explain the flaw and even put a cone of silence around researchers
Those suck. My dog had to wear one of them for a week. Didn't shut him up but it sure stopped him from licking what used to be his balls.
"... so every year we have a bring-your-child-to-work day where we inject some M&M dye into the lab rats and let the kids play with them. And Gunderson's kid has this nasty tendency to just baseball them into the wall and, well, we noticed the blue colored mice were recovering much better from the wall impact injuries ..."
Seriously though is there like a lab out there giving rats spinal injuries and jacking them full of chemicals? Cause if there is, I've got my resume handy!
Star Trek's transparent aluminum has already been realized by heating aluminum but Oxford scientists claim to have found a new state of matter while making transparent aluminum. The laser in use is the FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany and each brief pulse of X-Ray energy it releases is 'more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city.' Although the new state only lasts about 40 femtoseconds, Oxford Professor Justin Wark has high hopes for this research, "Transparent aluminium is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth."
I think they're excited about the strange fusion capabilities this new state may allow them to harness. Nothing conclusive yet though.
I was pretty impressed with the sounds and sights of the XBox reboot but the game play and replay value just were not there. They need to get back on the horse for the latest Guitar Hero/Rock Band fad and reboot that game for the Wii or PS3.
I dare say I would welcome Guitar Hero: Funkatron Tour although it's possible the syncopation of funk would turn off players. Funk funk funk. E.
It's easy to find. It is posted on the linux kernel mailing list as well as in several git trees from kernel.org. Where all kernel patches belong. See http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/7/20/167 .
Thanks for the link and I am aware of that. I guess I was wondering how they found themselves in compliance with Section 3 of the GPLv2 and I think this is where the article and SFLC are coming from:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
What I'm trying to say is I'm not seeing any of this and when I actively look on their site for it, nothing comes up.
So I grab GPL code, modify it and upload it to some remote unnamed repository with a license and go about my business releasing it under my own license as a binary on my site? I don't think so.
MICROSOFT SOFTWARE LICENSE TERMS
MICROSOFT WINDOWS SERVER 2008
HYPER-V LINUX INTEGRATION COMPONENTS
PLEASE NOTE: Microsoft Corporation (or based on where you live, one of its affiliates) licenses this supplement to you. You may use it with each validly licensed copy of Microsoft operating system products software (for which this supplement is applicable) (the âoesoftwareâ). You may not use the supplement if you do not have a license for the software. The license terms for the software apply to your use of this supplement. Microsoft provides support services for the supplement as described at www.support.microsoft.com/common/international.aspx.
After it unpacks, I get an RTF named "Linux ICs for Hyper-V" and LinuxIC.iso ... no source code. Anybody know where said source code is? Because when I do a search on their site, I'm not finding it.
...
Sure, it may have contributed the source code to some repository somewhere but I think the GPLv2 says you need to provide it if you are distributing. Which is what they're doing. Pretty obvious violation right there. Also, when you distribute it, you should have a copy of the GPLv2 license with it. I can't find a trace of it when I get the iso from them
Really, I'm less worried about the cyber part of one of these attacks and am more so worried about the weakest link in the chain: the human factor. Social, over-the-shoulder or 'soft' hacks would be the few ways left to gain access. Mental manipulation like keeping someone in the dark would be the best way to scare them into action. It's not like someone's magically overcoming the physical barrier that exists between the internet and these secure networks on which sensitive information and control are relegated--you need a human to exploit.
At least this time around the title's gone from
Hacking Nuclear Command and Control
to
Could Cyber-Terrorists Provoke Nuclear Attacks?
Which is a lot more accurate but a lot less newsworthy.
... begging for money that comes up with these "revolutionary" breakthroughs. Did we not learn anything from the tech boom/bust?
Whenever there is a lot of government money flowing into an industry, there is never a shortage of snake-oil salesmen lining up to grab a piece of it. There really isn't a limit to what they will say they can do.
You may want to inform Exxon Mobil that their recent six hundred million dollar investment is snake oil.
Big oil's investing in this, I wouldn't write it off as snake oil:
Is Jupiter Earth's Cosmic Protector?
If this is true, it gives us another criteria to look for in distant solar systems that we suspect may harbor life or that we would like to colonize: a large shield planet in the same system capable of leaving the smaller world to develop uninterrupted.
It is interesting to wonder if our odds increase or decrease on being hit when there is a large massive body in our solar system. Like the article and summary say, some objects that would not have come close could be put on course for earth via Jupiter's gravitational forces. Who knows, maybe massive bodies like Jupiter pull more space debris into our system and make it more hostile than if it were just the earth orbiting the Sun?
Among those seemingly aware of the existence of Mood Stamps is Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie ...
Isn't it possible that (since he worked on the Lotus Notes project) Ray Ozzie is the originator of this idea and Lotus Notes did not have the foresight to patent this technology when he worked for them? Isn't it possible that he thought this idea patentable and in a better late than never fashion he patented it?
... I just find this summary to be very short sighted and subjective:
I don't think this is a novel idea and I think it should not be patentable
Think we can count on Ozzie to do the right thing and give the USPTO a heads-up?
What is "the right thing?" He works for a company with the priority to rake in cash. It's "right" in his boss' eyes, I'm sure.
I didn't realize that "I dun have no cuzmers" was a valid defense against patent violations.
That's not all of his argument. Although his letter is unprofessional and poorly organized, he says:
To Sam Baxter - if you wish to acknowledge my email and realize your mistake on claiming CitiWare in your suit on Bedrocks behalf, then remove any claims against CitiWare / CityWare and I can remove this page and any publicity about filling an invalid lawsuit against a company that never used your patent or for that matter even developed any product sold or used (CityWare only used Open Source code under GPL for personal projects or other employers)!
He's probably flabbergasted that they didn't do any development, they just repackaged/administered GPL licensed open source products and now find themselves the target of a lawsuit. And like the article says, they don't care about him or what he says or the validity of targeting him, they care about keeping the case in East Texas District Court.
This guy doesn't need a defense, he just needs to reside in East Texas and he's part of this case no matter how ill placed the blame is.
Anyway, that irrelevant nonsense aside, I'm busy working on a high performance V-8 hemi engine powered by babies. I'm having some troubles with the baby pump getting clogged by babies ...
That's absurd, everyone knows that kittens have a higher Joule per liter ratio than babies. Do you know what the incubation time on a baby is? Nine months! Compare that to the three months tops on a kitten. And you only get one or two babies per baby producing mother. Kittens come in litters, litters equal more fuel. Burning babies in an engine!? What a preposterous idea!
You obviously haven't thought this out! Now if you can get your hands on some panda babies or endangered snow leopard, then you'd be in business!