> but his being the _very first_ one to have the purely algorithmic insight to solve P/NP are quite slim
And the most likely result, in this case, would be that he would prove P = NP (by displaying an polynomial-time algorithm he has discovered for a problem in NP), not P != NP (the proof of which, AFAICS, requires deep mathematical reasoning, not algorithmic prowess).
And, yes, I know that most people believe that P != NP.
If any of the details come out and are sufficiently interesting, I'll end up reading about it at Bruce Schneier's blog ---- but what I find interesting now is, for example, whether (Anna) Leddra Chapman's music career will be given a significant push forward just because people searching for info about the alleged spy will find her instead/in addition.
This kind of strange interaction is something which couldn't have happened, for example, when I was younger (yes, I am that old...).
The number of days in a week is arbitrary. It's a pure human historical convention. In another time or another culture, the number of days in the "week" could be 10, or 5 or anything else people decide to agree on.
True, but it's hardly likely that they would call one of the days of their "week" Tuesday, then, is it?
I find it fascinating, though, that you pick on that particular part of the ambiguity of the language of the question, and totally ignore the much more fundamental question, which is what is the exact meaning of "one" (i.e., did he mean "exactly one" or "at least one").
See this explanation. phantomfive (GP) was almost correct, except that the movie rating system didn't have any rating more obscene than "X", porn movie advertisers/marketers invented the "XXX" as even more shocking than "X". And because of the "misuse" of X, the MPAA has moved to calling it "NC-17" which is hard to twist into a marketing advantage.
Yes, how many products did you buy because of YouTube ads last year? Was it enough? Meh.
Your comment seems very similar to "every download is a lost sale", because, to me, at least, it's pretty clear that "Moryath" isn't going to buy anything advertised in that irritating way --- in fact, I wouldn't even be surprised if he might actually consider boycotting products pushed by "those stupid annoying ads". In that case, his avoiding the ads is doing the advertisers a favor.
And you know what? I even think he's smart enough, in the case where he thought that his behavior was actually damaging Google (and it's not clear that it even is, because I'm certain that Google counts his download as a "view", and I'm not certain that Google doesn't charge advertisers based on the popularity of the clips they are supposed to pop up on, even if they don't get clicked), to move to a different tool which would block the ads while giving Google their share of payback from the advertisers.
The case was about the inventers of youtube purposefully uploading copyrighted content to boost its user-rate to get offers to sell. It also stated that Google knew what was going on when they bought it. Not just that "oh Joe in Jersey uploaded clips of Thundercats."
You forgot the part where Viacom saw YouTube was the "hot" marketing thing and started uploading its own content there disguised as pirated media. And then they often couldn't figure out they had authorized the material and sent Google a DMCA takedown for their own uploads.
There are two sides to this case. I'm waiting for the discovery evidence of Viacom's behavior to become part of the pleading in a private infringement case:
"But Judge, we've seen in Viacom vs. YouTube that Big Media upload their own content disguised as pirated stuff --- I just assumed that [random torrent] was such a disguised authorized distribution!"
Thank you for the list of treatment references, I will try to check them out.
> Why did you not hear of this before?
Oh, I'd heard of this theory as connected with one particular autoimmune disease, multiple sclerosis.
> Why don't more doctors focus on whole foods, fasting, and > sunshine as very inexpensive cures for most of what ails > most people in industrialized countries?
Why do people smoke? "Most people" do not have the self-discipline to change their dietary habits after, say, the age of 30. (BTW, you forget moderate exercise as an important component of maintaining health).
And if you saw the other medical article up on Slashdot, you'd know that there are over 13,000 diagnosable illnesses, and you are far from showing for what percentage of these good diet helps in either prevention or treatment. For many genetic diseases, for example, there would be no scientific explanation (other than the placebo effect) for diet to have a role. And a doctor who prescribed "eat healthy foods" to a patient rather than expensive medicine is just laying himself open to being sued.
But I do agree that people would be more healthy if they ate differently. The reason that modern Western society doesn't encourage this is, in my opinion, that it's just that that would generate less profit, because healthy foods are not as addictive --- and therefore less profitable. So they lose out to advertising for unhealthy foods.
OK, thanks for the info on vitamin D deficiency, you have convinced me it is more common than I thought in developed countries.
OTOH, your links to the "research" about treating autoimmune disease with diet change are pathetic, however. Where are these "well, conducted scientific investigations" reported?
The results have been startling: Violent crime in East Orange has fallen by more than two-thirds since 2003, according to state police statistics.
...
Jose Cordero was hired as East Orange's police director in 2004 after overseeing the New York Police Department's anti-gang efforts. Crime in East Orange had dropped off after the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 90s but then rose dramatically in the early 2000s as gangs began to put down roots.
It seems more likely to me that Cordero himself is the reason for falling crime rate rather than any high tech stuff (which just tends to move crime to other locations). I'm suspicious because, for example, in the UK where there is massive investment in surveillance cameras, my understanding is that they have found that they are mainly useful for providing evidence for prosecuting the criminals after the fact, and even that is only in something less than 25% of the cases.
Please cite a paper that claims that vitamin D deficiency is common in developed Western countries (where dairy products are almost universally fortified with it).
After you're done doing that, I'd be interested to see citations which show that vitamin supplementation and/or other dietary changes are effective for treating autoimmune disease once the disease has occurred (from whatever reason).
Please link directly to the accounts of the research studies; I can't be bothered to fish through vitamin marketing websites for them.
> Among the 33 patients who died from seemingly localized RCC (localized renal cell carcinoma )...
The article you cite is in a journal of surgical pathology, and the abstract seems to be about the current methods of histology of certain renal tumors giving overly optimistic results for patient survival (and possibly, incorrect advice with respect to chemotherapy or other post-surgery treatment protocols). In other words, I read it that the 33 patients subsequently died of metastatic cancer even though the RCC was "seemingly localized" at the time of the histological exam.
I fail to see what this has to do with the GP, who is talking about tumors which are localized not being immediately fatal. What I understand the GP is saying is that given the current state of dialysis treatment, it would seem to be very, very unusual for localized tumors which have destroyed the woman's kidneys to cause her death while they were still localized. The article you cite does not seem to be at all connected with this.
> And slashdotters really might not want to be pulling URLS that appeared in a DMCA letter and downloading the file.
Don't assume the rest of the world is as fearful as you are. I'm sure that quite a few live in jurisdictions where the relatively small likelihood (as far as I can determine) that you would be bothered by the **AAs is actually even smaller than in the US / UK / etc.
And if there is so much fear in some countries, that just will lead to the development of a market for proxies in other countries.
This "war" is more or less over, and just gets more so as time marches on. I pray for the day the **AAs realize this and adapt to the reality of the times. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon, nor in a peaceful manner which won't affect things like personal liberties (because yes, technological change is going to cost the **AAs a lot of money).
Just imagine a world where web pages start to get replaced by apps, controlled by apple. That is not a nice picture, but it's where current developments are taking us.
That could only happen if the generation of children growing up now would swallow it. I don't see that happening, so you can feel relatively safe.
Anyway, Apple has shown that it's not willing to demean itself with porn, and we know that's not going to disappear anytime soon.
Bayes would disagree, but, whatever. Frankly I think that household users of Linux in general are still unimportant enough (in frequency) that they're rarely targeted by web-based exploits (I do agree that we've been seeing an increase in "infiltration"-type exploit attempts, however --- those can be more worthwhile since they affect all users of the software which is successfully infiltrated).
For random web browsing on assorted sites, boot up from a Linux boot CD. Your entire OS will be in memory, nothing on your HD is touched.
Unplug your HDD too. Otherwise your Linux CD can often mount your drive read/write, and if it has a vulnerable version of FF, you're owned since the default user usually has passwordless sudo privs.
I know your advice is sound from a "maximize security" point of view, but does the threat level actually justify this for average users? Do you have experience and/or have uncovered accounts of escalation from a browser vulnerability of a live CD to sudo to infecting a secondary OS which is accessible via access as data files?
because this makes it look like it will take more time before every third-world country will be able to produce intercontinental missiles
Your comment is great and I agree with most of it. But, damn, I take offence to that phrase "third-world country". What exactly do you think "third world" means?
I actually did have some regrets about implying that lesser-developed countries (the so called "have nots" by another poster) are more of a threat to world peace than the developed countries. It's not at all clear that that's true. For example, eventually, if India doesn't control its population growth something over there is going to break --- and they already have working rockets/missiles. OTOH, many would consider India a third-world country considering its median standard of living.
And China's totalitarian government doesn't seem as stable in the long run as most of the developed countries democracies; but again, I'm just guessing.
Somehow, my guess is that the "have nots" are more dangerous than the "haves", if only because they have less to lose if all hell breaks out.
I know, I know, its a dick move, its as bad as Fax-spams, using up his Ink and Paper, but I thought it would be the best way to STRONGLY get the message across.
I look at that and personally think that the only reason it's a "dick move" is that it could possibly get you into a lot of trouble personally (if, for example, your neighbor turns out to be the brother of some hyperactive FBI cybercrime specialist).
Do you also believe that infringing the copyright on an obviously orphan work, which means that no economic damage is done to anyone, is also a "dick move"?
The range of opinion/belief I find in humanity always amazes and refreshes me (even if sometimes it also saddens and angers me --- I'm not talking about you).
I don't think you used FOSS 50 years ago. The GPL and BSD licenses were only "conceived" in 1989, a little over 20 years ago. As anyone who actually uses FOSS can tell you, its quality has been constantly increasing (on the average), and even 10 years ago it was much, much harder to use and had many more bugs and problems.
So, your question reads like, well, a strawman. If you want my answer, I'd say, yes, I see more and more individuals becoming aware of Linux and FOSS in general and using them (perhaps not comprehensively), compared with even 5 years ago. And I do not associate this with economic hardship, since there is almost always the "crackware" card you can play instead if you really want. I do associate this with the quality of FOSS having risen over a certain threshold of usability.
And this is only in 20 years. It's hard for me to believe that the quality/usability of FOSS will ever decrease as time goes on. Given that assumption, you can make your own conclusions.
The way FOSS gets adopted in corporate environments is quite different than in the individual adoption scenario, because often (my workplace is an example) there are both political reasons why FOSS doesn't get adopted (the head honcho doesn't like it) and real business reasons (which can include the fact that retraining a large workforce is expensive, or the intensive use of proprietary software which cannot be ported to FOSS platforms and/or easily be integrated with FOSS in the business's workflow, or merely the fact that FOSS availability is far from comprehensively covering the whole range of needs which some businesses have).
I foresee that both the political problems with FOSS adoption, and the retraining problem will decrease with time as FOSS is adopted by more and more individuals. As for the other problems, I have no idea (I'd like to imagine that FOSS will eventually solve all problems, but I have a feeling that not all problems are globally important enough so that they can spawn a FOSS project which can maintain the required level of volunteer interest and/or contributions by private industry of money and manpower).
Progress plods on, and if they keep trying, they will eventually get it right, even if it isn't particularly easy.
I'm not sure I'm discouraged (because this makes it look like it will take more time before humanity can easily colonize space) or encouraged (because this makes it look like it will take more time before every third-world country will be able to produce intercontinental missiles).
It would be nice if someone would put up a torrent for it, methinks...
Even more brownie points for posting an sha1sum here so we can be sure we're not getting our version "pre-hacked".
Of course, if doing so is illegal in your country, I wouldn't dream of encouraging you to break the law, even if in this case we're talking about something which was already distributed for free from the rightsholder.
Slashdot Mirror
> but his being the _very first_ one to have the purely algorithmic insight to solve P/NP are quite slim
And the most likely result, in this case, would be that he would prove P = NP (by displaying an polynomial-time algorithm he has discovered for a problem in NP), not P != NP (the proof of which, AFAICS, requires deep mathematical reasoning, not algorithmic prowess).
And, yes, I know that most people believe that P != NP.
If any of the details come out and are sufficiently interesting, I'll end up reading about it at Bruce Schneier's blog ---- but what I find interesting now is, for example, whether (Anna) Leddra Chapman's music career will be given a significant push forward just because people searching for info about the alleged spy will find her instead/in addition.
This kind of strange interaction is something which couldn't have happened, for example, when I was younger (yes, I am that old...).
The number of days in a week is arbitrary. It's a pure human historical convention. In another time or another culture, the number of days in the "week" could be 10, or 5 or anything else people decide to agree on.
True, but it's hardly likely that they would call one of the days of their "week" Tuesday, then, is it?
I find it fascinating, though, that you pick on that particular part of the ambiguity of the language of the question, and totally ignore the much more fundamental question, which is what is the exact meaning of "one" (i.e., did he mean "exactly one" or "at least one").
> I have never seen "DOES not disallow" in my entire life. ... never emphasize a positive immediately before a negative
We mathematicians do this all the time (in our proofs, etc.)!
> Normal humans
Ah, sorry, forget it...
> "sex" are English words that have no meaning in other languages
Sex = 6 in Swedish. I thought this was hilarious when I found out --- OTOH, I was a bit tipsy at the time.
See this explanation. phantomfive (GP) was almost correct, except that the movie rating system didn't have any rating more obscene than "X", porn movie advertisers/marketers invented the "XXX" as even more shocking than "X". And because of the "misuse" of X, the MPAA has moved to calling it "NC-17" which is hard to twist into a marketing advantage.
Yes, how many products did you buy because of YouTube ads last year? Was it enough? Meh.
Your comment seems very similar to "every download is a lost sale", because, to me, at least, it's pretty clear that "Moryath" isn't going to buy anything advertised in that irritating way --- in fact, I wouldn't even be surprised if he might actually consider boycotting products pushed by "those stupid annoying ads". In that case, his avoiding the ads is doing the advertisers a favor.
And you know what? I even think he's smart enough, in the case where he thought that his behavior was actually damaging Google (and it's not clear that it even is, because I'm certain that Google counts his download as a "view", and I'm not certain that Google doesn't charge advertisers based on the popularity of the clips they are supposed to pop up on, even if they don't get clicked), to move to a different tool which would block the ads while giving Google their share of payback from the advertisers.
The case was about the inventers of youtube purposefully uploading copyrighted content to boost its user-rate to get offers to sell. It also stated that Google knew what was going on when they bought it. Not just that "oh Joe in Jersey uploaded clips of Thundercats."
You forgot the part where Viacom saw YouTube was the "hot" marketing thing and started uploading its own content there disguised as pirated media. And then they often couldn't figure out they had authorized the material and sent Google a DMCA takedown for their own uploads.
There are two sides to this case. I'm waiting for the discovery evidence of Viacom's behavior to become part of the pleading in a private infringement case:
"But Judge, we've seen in Viacom vs. YouTube that Big Media upload their own content disguised as pirated stuff --- I just assumed that [random torrent] was such a disguised authorized distribution!"
Thank you for the list of treatment references, I will try to check them out.
> Why did you not hear of this before?
Oh, I'd heard of this theory as connected with one particular autoimmune disease, multiple sclerosis.
> Why don't more doctors focus on whole foods, fasting, and
> sunshine as very inexpensive cures for most of what ails
> most people in industrialized countries?
Why do people smoke? "Most people" do not have the self-discipline to change their dietary habits after, say, the age of 30. (BTW, you forget moderate exercise as an important component of maintaining health).
And if you saw the other medical article up on Slashdot, you'd know that there are over 13,000 diagnosable illnesses, and you are far from showing for what percentage of these good diet helps in either prevention or treatment. For many genetic diseases, for example, there would be no scientific explanation (other than the placebo effect) for diet to have a role. And a doctor who prescribed "eat healthy foods" to a patient rather than expensive medicine is just laying himself open to being sued.
But I do agree that people would be more healthy if they ate differently. The reason that modern Western society doesn't encourage this is, in my opinion, that it's just that that would generate less profit, because healthy foods are not as addictive --- and therefore less profitable. So they lose out to advertising for unhealthy foods.
OK, thanks for the info on vitamin D deficiency, you have convinced me it is more common than I thought in developed countries.
OTOH, your links to the "research" about treating autoimmune disease with diet change are pathetic, however. Where are these "well, conducted scientific investigations" reported?
From TFA:
The results have been startling: Violent crime in East Orange has fallen by more than two-thirds since 2003, according to state police statistics.
...
Jose Cordero was hired as East Orange's police director in 2004 after overseeing the New York Police Department's anti-gang efforts. Crime in East Orange had dropped off after the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 90s but then rose dramatically in the early 2000s as gangs began to put down roots.
It seems more likely to me that Cordero himself is the reason for falling crime rate rather than any high tech stuff (which just tends to move crime to other locations). I'm suspicious because, for example, in the UK where there is massive investment in surveillance cameras, my understanding is that they have found that they are mainly useful for providing evidence for prosecuting the criminals after the fact, and even that is only in something less than 25% of the cases.
Please cite a paper that claims that vitamin D deficiency is common in developed Western countries (where dairy products are almost universally fortified with it).
After you're done doing that, I'd be interested to see citations which show that vitamin supplementation and/or other dietary changes are effective for treating autoimmune disease once the disease has occurred (from whatever reason).
Please link directly to the accounts of the research studies; I can't be bothered to fish through vitamin marketing websites for them.
> Among the 33 patients who died from seemingly localized RCC (localized renal cell carcinoma )...
The article you cite is in a journal of surgical pathology, and the abstract seems to be about the current methods of histology of certain renal tumors giving overly optimistic results for patient survival (and possibly, incorrect advice with respect to chemotherapy or other post-surgery treatment protocols). In other words, I read it that the 33 patients subsequently died of metastatic cancer even though the RCC was "seemingly localized" at the time of the histological exam.
I fail to see what this has to do with the GP, who is talking about tumors which are localized not being immediately fatal. What I understand the GP is saying is that given the current state of dialysis treatment, it would seem to be very, very unusual for localized tumors which have destroyed the woman's kidneys to cause her death while they were still localized. The article you cite does not seem to be at all connected with this.
What kind of medical research do you do, exactly?
> copyright is a good thing
I agree, but even more agree that in this case it's easy to have too much of a good thing. In fact, we're already there.
> And slashdotters really might not want to be pulling URLS that appeared in a DMCA letter and downloading the file.
Don't assume the rest of the world is as fearful as you are. I'm sure that quite a few live in jurisdictions where the relatively small likelihood (as far as I can determine) that you would be bothered by the **AAs is actually even smaller than in the US / UK / etc.
And if there is so much fear in some countries, that just will lead to the development of a market for proxies in other countries.
This "war" is more or less over, and just gets more so as time marches on. I pray for the day the **AAs realize this and adapt to the reality of the times. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening anytime soon, nor in a peaceful manner which won't affect things like personal liberties (because yes, technological change is going to cost the **AAs a lot of money).
> How much of a kick do you think we would need to accomplish that?
Just handle a vatch to send a rock to the dark side?
Just imagine a world where web pages start to get replaced by apps, controlled by apple. That is not a nice picture, but it's where current developments are taking us.
That could only happen if the generation of children growing up now would swallow it. I don't see that happening, so you can feel relatively safe.
Anyway, Apple has shown that it's not willing to demean itself with porn, and we know that's not going to disappear anytime soon.
> which makes for a juicy target
Bayes would disagree, but, whatever. Frankly I think that household users of Linux in general are still unimportant enough (in frequency) that they're rarely targeted by web-based exploits (I do agree that we've been seeing an increase in "infiltration"-type exploit attempts, however --- those can be more worthwhile since they affect all users of the software which is successfully infiltrated).
For random web browsing on assorted sites, boot up from a Linux boot CD. Your entire OS will be in memory, nothing on your HD is touched.
Unplug your HDD too. Otherwise your Linux CD can often mount your drive read/write, and if it has a vulnerable version of FF, you're owned since the default user usually has passwordless sudo privs.
I know your advice is sound from a "maximize security" point of view, but does the threat level actually justify this for average users? Do you have experience and/or have uncovered accounts of escalation from a browser vulnerability of a live CD to sudo to infecting a secondary OS which is accessible via access as data files?
Just curious (as a fellow paranoid).
because this makes it look like it will take more time before every third-world country will be able to produce intercontinental missiles
Your comment is great and I agree with most of it. But, damn, I take offence to that phrase "third-world country". What exactly do you think "third world" means?
I actually did have some regrets about implying that lesser-developed countries (the so called "have nots" by another poster) are more of a threat to world peace than the developed countries. It's not at all clear that that's true. For example, eventually, if India doesn't control its population growth something over there is going to break --- and they already have working rockets/missiles. OTOH, many would consider India a third-world country considering its median standard of living.
And China's totalitarian government doesn't seem as stable in the long run as most of the developed countries democracies; but again, I'm just guessing.
Somehow, my guess is that the "have nots" are more dangerous than the "haves", if only because they have less to lose if all hell breaks out.
I know, I know, its a dick move, its as bad as Fax-spams, using up his Ink and Paper, but I thought it would be the best way to STRONGLY get the message across.
I look at that and personally think that the only reason it's a "dick move" is that it could possibly get you into a lot of trouble personally (if, for example, your neighbor turns out to be the brother of some hyperactive FBI cybercrime specialist).
Do you also believe that infringing the copyright on an obviously orphan work, which means that no economic damage is done to anyone, is also a "dick move"?
The range of opinion/belief I find in humanity always amazes and refreshes me (even if sometimes it also saddens and angers me --- I'm not talking about you).
Most of us non-troll Slashdotters are also pretty curious about that. Funny, eh?
Ah, and thanks for the reminder that I was going to become a subscriber for my birthday!
I don't think you used FOSS 50 years ago. The GPL and BSD licenses were only "conceived" in 1989, a little over 20 years ago. As anyone who actually uses FOSS can tell you, its quality has been constantly increasing (on the average), and even 10 years ago it was much, much harder to use and had many more bugs and problems.
So, your question reads like, well, a strawman. If you want my answer, I'd say, yes, I see more and more individuals becoming aware of Linux and FOSS in general and using them (perhaps not comprehensively), compared with even 5 years ago. And I do not associate this with economic hardship, since there is almost always the "crackware" card you can play instead if you really want. I do associate this with the quality of FOSS having risen over a certain threshold of usability.
And this is only in 20 years. It's hard for me to believe that the quality/usability of FOSS will ever decrease as time goes on. Given that assumption, you can make your own conclusions.
The way FOSS gets adopted in corporate environments is quite different than in the individual adoption scenario, because often (my workplace is an example) there are both political reasons why FOSS doesn't get adopted (the head honcho doesn't like it) and real business reasons (which can include the fact that retraining a large workforce is expensive, or the intensive use of proprietary software which cannot be ported to FOSS platforms and/or easily be integrated with FOSS in the business's workflow, or merely the fact that FOSS availability is far from comprehensively covering the whole range of needs which some businesses have).
I foresee that both the political problems with FOSS adoption, and the retraining problem will decrease with time as FOSS is adopted by more and more individuals. As for the other problems, I have no idea (I'd like to imagine that FOSS will eventually solve all problems, but I have a feeling that not all problems are globally important enough so that they can spawn a FOSS project which can maintain the required level of volunteer interest and/or contributions by private industry of money and manpower).
Progress plods on, and if they keep trying, they will eventually get it right, even if it isn't particularly easy.
I'm not sure I'm discouraged (because this makes it look like it will take more time before humanity can easily colonize space) or encouraged (because this makes it look like it will take more time before every third-world country will be able to produce intercontinental missiles).
It would be nice if someone would put up a torrent for it, methinks...
Even more brownie points for posting an sha1sum here so we can be sure we're not getting our version "pre-hacked".
Of course, if doing so is illegal in your country, I wouldn't dream of encouraging you to break the law, even if in this case we're talking about something which was already distributed for free from the rightsholder.