Kill switch is a terrible name, but here is the scenario it is designed to address.
A real war breaks out, honest to goodness shooting war. Our enemy starts: taking active control of previously compromised network devices, flooding our network with traffic from their networks and bots, stealing anything they can find, crashing every system they can. The purpose of this is primarily to disrupt communication/information during the conflict.
Where this traffic is coming from, ultimately will be from their home country of course. Even in the case of botnets they will be guided by hackers in their home country, not stationed around the world. (you know, where their hackers are safe from arrest and where their families are). Also Bots in the US will require some kind of direction from somewhere to start transmitting.
So what does the government do if it can't block any of this traffic from the U.S. network? Topology matter guys. Should the government build its own isolated network with an air gap for all systems it considers critical? Should it assume the ISP's will take care of it and keep their communications going during an event like this? Does communication of private entities matter during this time? How will their networks be secured? Maybe we should just find out the hard way.
First I am glad they asked Facebook as opposed to telling them. But in truth they the police should just make their own plug in, sort of an online 911 gadget, then it could work at any time on the web. I don't know how useful the information will be and I am not sure how much I would trust a police based plug in (and a million other things)! However the cool thing about the internet is you can give crazy ideas a try. Face it, those "email the FBI to report fraud" addresses are mostly data collection, but even collecting data is worth while.
OK, this is hardly a revolution of any kind, but science does require that you do things to prove they are possible not just assume you can do them. Long term there are lots of pratical little details around becomeing a cyborg.
I don't share the view of the extremists, but how does not drawing the Prophet Mohamed hurt anyone?
I don't share the view of the extremists, but how does DRAWING the Prophet Mohammad hurt anyone?
I don't share the view of the extremists, but how does not drawing the Prophet Mohamed hurt anyone?
I don't share the view of the extremists, but how does DRAWING the Prophet Mohammad hurt anyone?
I don't share your views, and how does Blackface hurt anyone? This contest is protected free speech, but so is a Neo-Nazi using the N word. Someone posting to the site might have more noble goals, but I suspect most of them are religion baiters just as the NN are race baiters, even if they tell themselves something different. You can have free speech and good manners.
I don't consider it the business of Government to decide what we can and can't see, of course as we all know All Governments do. Blocking a site isn't a death sentence and all governments do it. I don’t approve, but our approval isn’t needed it turns out.
You really ready to support true free speech, plenty to fix at home first I assure you.
China simply encourages people to go abroad (they have plenty to spare) and keeps on good terms with them. Then agents just keep in cotanct and, by playing on national pride, ask expats what they know about X. (say a new chemical process or code snippet or whatever) It *almost* doesn't qualify as spying, I understand they are fairly upfront and just say stuff like, "we want to make a better car but we keep having problems with the fuel line, how does the company you work for solve this" or "do you have any advice". If they get "secret" information in the process, so be it.
They don't bother to train spies and send them out because it isn't that type of espionage.
The issue for us is to understand what is important to protect and what isn't. The Soviets had a great security system, it was so secure they kept their inventions secret from themselves.
'I think the ball is now in the court of "take no action"'
I disagree. Before the world spends itself silly fighting AGW, I want to see solid scientific evidence that it's worth spending all that money. And the current computer models using data tweaked to agree with the predetermined conclusions are far from solid proof.
I understand you disagree, but I don't understand why. Actually I am not totally sure what you are disagreeing with.
I hope you agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that we can measure how effective it is at holding back heat. That we also know about how much humans are adding each year from fossil fuels.
Based on the facts I know about the situation, without knowing anything about any climate model simple back of the envelope calculations would suggest temperatures to rise, snow to melt, water to expand, climate patterns to change and so on.
Now I know dynamic systems will sometimes give unexpected results so more research is needed, I am just saying this is what I would expect from what I know. Climate models seem more like details of how it will happen.
(if you don't agree so far please tell me why)
OK, even if every model is wrong (and that is a pretty big if) why should I not be concern, or in other words, why should I support no limit to how much more CO2 we can add to the atmosphere?
Is there any kind of credible "everything is OK" model you can point to?
OK, now for what I think your real issue is, spending ourselves silly over an unsure problem. Let me say this, only pointing out flaws in other peoples models doesn't help me decide how much risk we are in. Unless you mean to spend no money whatever (no research, no nothing) in order to figure out what needs to be done I need some kind of model. So, I simply ask, do you have any research to show me that I should not be so concerned?
"The temperature of the earth is warming over time. 1. The amount of this warming is unprecedented. 2. The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it. 3. The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans. 4. The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly" 5. What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth? 6. When has it been at that temperature in the past? 7. Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past? 8. How, specifically, do we know this? 9. In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?"
Now as I answer these, remember the question I am really trying to answer is "Should there be any legal limit on the amount of CO2 from fossil fuels dumped into the atmosphere".
CO2 traps heat, CO2 is going up, Humans produce C02 from fossil fuels. So what is it you know that will prevent temperatures from going up?
1. Of course that is what the debate is about, will the earth warm over time and will it be unprecedented. 2. Same as one. 3. What feedback mechanisms? A block of iron sitting over a fairly constant fire can retain a fairly constant temp. I am not saying there are no such mechanisms, but you need you understand you are basically asserting there are some that will limit climate change. What is, how will it work, how much CO2 can it cope with? 4. All climate change costs money, even non catastrophic change. Moving farms isn't free, building houses to new standards isn't and so on. We much balance these costs with costs from limiting fossil fuels, but no change sound like an expensive plan. Further Catastrophic change is possible, how do you know we are not near it? 5. First, who cares if humans are mostly at fault, I wish to deal with disasters both natural and manmade. Also, we are taking fossil fuels out of the ground and therefore adding carbon to the carbon cycle, so again based on the first three things, why reason do you have to believe this isn't sufficient proof? 6. No idea, I know we have set up our activities to match the way they are now and change will cost us, even change that *may* be beneficial in some way. Do you have anything that will help show how the cost of the change will be in some way offset by future benefits? 7. No idea, and if you are following me at all you will understand why I don't consider this relevant. 8. Again, it doesn't matter. 9. I would define is as the average temperature of the air and water, in theory all of the energy divided by the mass. Of course you can also cause climate problems without changing temp.
I hope I have changed you mind, or at least opened it to engage in the conversation about how much CO2 we can add. But if I haven't, let me ask you the same question. On the face of it, adding CO2 to the atmosphere seems like it will raise temp over time. What do you know that can assure me we are in do danger and can burn fuels withoug limit?
The real problem Climate Change is the weakness of our future weather models. I really do believe they are quite bad.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that humans are producing it and that CO2 levels appear to be going up.
I however don't believe we can really accuratly predict climate changes. Too much about the world is unknown and we have been wrong many times in the past.
But the good news is the models don't have to be perfect, once you accepted the three things I listed I think the ball is now in the court of "take no action", what models do YOU have that prove everthing will be fine? Are you prepared to present them for peer review? Tell me why I should take the risk of no action!
The opposing side in this debate simply doesn't give any good information to act on(or not act on), so by default the side that has something wins my vote.
The Geneva convention isn't exactly the document you think it is, it is far more subtle than you might suspect.
To answer one of the original questions, the reason nations typically follow the GC is because is describes the "smart" way to run a war.
You treat prisoners well because you want people to surrender to you. If it gets out that you torture prisoners, people fight to the death. However if you treat them very well and publicly show this, your average guy might think "that sure beats dying". Indeed typically you tell your own troops the enemy will torture them, that is certainly what the Japanese did in WWII.
You don't dress up like civilians because if you do, the enemy starts killing your civilians also! If fighting a local insurgency, then you build bad will and give your opponents new recruits. After all if I am going to be killed on "accident", maybe I am better off with a gun myself.
The other prohibitions against needless cruelty are about the same, why make your enemy even more enraged against you? Remember, your ultimate goal in war is to convince the enemy to stop fighting, not total annihilation.
The French resistance thing is kind of an exception. Basically that is why countries can’t define terrorism, they all agree certain tactics are wrong but want to make exceptions for people they consider the “good guys” to break the rules. In a case like WWII, since the Germans so clearly did not belong in France it is probably safe to give the French the benefit of the doubt. Harder to codify however.
Well, true. But a "Cyberwar" is just designed to gain temporary advantage by diabling systems and pulling resources away from the actual real world conflict. Most of the attacks will be preplanned on already known vulnrabilities. That is the reason for the term "Digital Pearl Harbor", of course the U.S. is a digital "super power", we have extrodianary resources and given time will likely solve most issues. But we don't want a sneak attack "while we sleep".
BTW, I do agree that central control will NOT solve the problem. I don't see any advantage of the goverment ordering all smart phones turned off. Better is simple training to identify critical systmes that should be removed from the Internet and training on plan B if you have to go to manual control.
If you have any interest in this kind of stuff, Infragard (http://www.infragard.net/) is a good place to start. It's primary focus is sharing posible security threats with the public.
For the same reason we can't win a space war, we have the most to lose. The more systems you have dependent on an asset, the more vulnerable you become in that asset.
Note however, that doesn't mean you are in a weaker position, an asset is still an asset.
Convenience isn't just convenient, it is time saved you can use to do other things. We just need to start waking up to what is a security risk and what isn't. What we need to protect and what we don't and finally drills on what to do if the primary system fails.
A dolphin, the mammal with one of the largest brains out there, is NOT smarter then a human.
By what measure? As far as can be told, Dolphin's apply their brains to different types of activities and problems to humans. I can imagine having tests that compare dolphin intelligence levels relative to other dolphins, and of course there are tests that purport to measure human intelligence levels relative to other humans, but I doubt you could create any meaningful unified scale for comparing humans to dolphins. Where would you start?
Brain size does not equal intelligence, if you define intelligence as the ability to score well on an IQ test only. Your brain does a lot more than just let you score well on an IQ test! Best to think of intelligences (plural) as opposed to intelligence (singular).
Think of it this way, Anything your brain does is an intelligence, math, language, processing 2D images, converting 2 D images to 3 D representations, processing sound waves, converting sound waves into 3D images, memory, social networking, controlling body functions, controlling body movement, fear. This list goes on and on so I hope you get the idea.
Playing the violin, doing math, being charming or playing football well all take brain power and are each different types of intelligence. Even in humans comparing intelligences is a tricky matter. Now when you start talking about other species, like dolphins for example, they do so many different things we don't normally, like use sonar, that you can't compare any more. You can map functions to brain areas, but it is apples and oranges.
Your brain does a lot more than let you score well on an IQ test so the two don't correlate well.
I'm happy that with this Nigerian terrorist that the media is emphasizing his wealthy and privileged background.
I was disappointed that the wealthy, privileged, backgrounds of Osama Bin Laden and almost all of the 19 9/11 hijackers were not emphasized more.
As with Marxism, Islamic terrorism is not about the poor rising up against oppressors.
It is about is about rich people with unresolved issues telling the poor what to think and egging them on to take actions that really don't help the poor...........exactly the complaint that these self appointed "vanguard activists" have.
You should listen to more liberal media, they were very clear Bin Laden was a rich kid who basically hated the US because he viewed it as the major patron/support for the government he didn't like at home.
What is going on is the people see their current goverment/social struture is corrupt so they try to rethink how society ought to be put together. So they become attracted to radical new ideas that on the face seem like they might work. Since they rich and otherwise empowered they have the ability to act on their beliefs.
The poor, speaking from personal experience, spend most of their lives keeping their head down and are well aware the new "saviours" might be every bit as bad as the previous crew. But when things get bad enough, any change might be for the better. Just remember what Marxism was replacing!
There are plenty of times and places where uniforms gain respect. In many civilizations, wearing a military uniform was very much a sign of respect, certainly a high ranking one anyway. Lots of people still respect firefighters and police officers today. At one time government officals all wore uniforms as a mark of position. Also as noted, suit and tie are definitely a uniform of a kind.
Uniforms gain you respect IF the institution they represent is respected. So it can be a benefit (IT, those guys are great) or a problem (geez, another IT goon). In all cases it sets you apart and puts you in a class.
Also the surrounding culture matters. If you are surrounded by suits, wearing a uniform will likely pull you down the totem pole. If the standards of dress are very lax, then it might make you stand out and appear to have your act together. Management will still view themselves as above you, but you might gain over all organizational respect.
So a risky move that might pay off if you understand your culture well.
When you're paying a monthly fee to use that service, it should not matter how much or how little you use it. ISPs have no right to bitch and moan about high bandwidth users.
That's not logical. It makes sense that people who use more should pay more. Why shouldn't the people who use more, pay more? If I use more water, I pay a higher water bill; if I use more electricity, I pay a higher electric bill.
It seems that the problem is that word "unlimited." If the sales pitch says that you're buying "unlimited" internet, then you've got an argument that they're doing false advertising when they then say "...but that doesn't mean unlimited".
Well, it kind of depends on your service model, "fair" is a lot trickier concept to nail down than you think. As a practical matter, there is a cost in even making internet service available and providing bandwidth even if it isn't used. If others "borrow" the bandwidth you aren't using, then there *might* be no harm. (please note I said might)
For example, it is perfectly valid to offer a service plan like "I am going to put a T-3 line into your neighborhood, charge everyone $100 per month to connect and you will all share this line"
It is also valid to have a plan like "I am going you make sure you can use X Gigabytes of throughput at Y speed per month"
You can have hybrid plan also (X per month for any connection and y more for lots of data).
Which is the best plan for your situation, I don't know. Maybe different circumstances need different plans?
Everyone keeps focusing on the wrong thing in this debate (pretty much always, what am *I* getting). The real key issues policy should focus on is.
1. Accurate, honest and straightforward description of service being offered.
2. Assuring there is genuine competition and choice for consumers. If not, maybe utilities are best.
There is kind of a paradox about things like CASE, sometimes the better they work the MORE progamers you need because people always want MORE and now producing the final prodect is easier, so you get more for your money.
So consider what computers did for us in 1980 vs. what they do today. Improvements in programing have made is possible and cost effective to do what we do now. So CASE may have been a total sucess, from the point of view of someone in the 80's, but the net result is increased demand, not reduced.
I understand why everything after the first comment is redundant, but at the same time I feel it also is the central problem with much libertarian thinking today. Basically to prevent people from using force to compel your actions, the people have to actually use force as a prevention. Kind of like, "If you would have peace, be prepared for war", or actually "If you would have peace, be prepared for war and you will have no choice but to wage a few in the name of peace".
In my gut, I feel like this "paradox" ought to be able to be resolved, but just like the war example you can't seem to help but wage a war or two in the name of peace. Problem is you can always say it was just self defense, especially if you can get a majority of people to agree with you. This is actually very frustrating for me, I want it to be true but I can't think of a way, in actual practice, to assure it.
The best I have come up with is that Freedom is actually about information. For example, I would assert that no matter if you liked a particular war (WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Gulf War 1, Gulf War 2), good accurate information, the ability to talk about our course of action and the willingness to change our course of action were the actual key issues. So, for example, if you must remove someone's rights(like jail), at least be 100% clear what you are doing and it's impact.
I am not a big fan of either movement, but the more you look at the movements the more they have in common. Frankly I think both movements have tapped into, but not fully understood, the idea of our time, Freedom is more important than Communism or Capitalism. In other words, if you are actually free, then you are free to sell stuff or join a commune or what ever you think appropriate. Maybe we aren't the first generation to realize this, but still an important break through in light of our recent history (think about the rhetoric of the Cold War).
I suspect that is also why you get people appearing to switch from ultra left wing to ultra right wing or vice versa. They are changing their implementation, but not what they are all about.
There are even more reasons to be very interested in VM and the Cloud model.
Remember VM's can run anywhere, so while they CAN run at Amazon, they don't have to. They can run local or at a competitor. You choose where they are at and can move them based on your needs when you want to.
Also Linux servers can live on the same box as Windows! And since all you care about is the applications, maybe you don't really care so much what OS it uses. Maybe the config needed to run the OS can be bundled with the application config and the users just sees that, and the OS is mostly pre configured to run that application. Maybe then you don't need a giant do everthing OS, just the OS to run your application and no overhead. Maybe you now don't have to care if MS plays nice with your app.
VM is about creating an isolated location for an OS and applications, gaining hardware indepedence at the same time. Mainframers have understoord and been doing this for years, Java virtual machines were another attempt at the same thing. I don't know all the nitty gritty of why some isolation schemes work better than others, all I know is VM and hypervisors seem to finally have gotten it right.
P.S. every time someone mentions VM a Mainframer loses his wings.
Odd coincidence actually. A couple years ago I decided to read some of the more serious anti evolution literature to try and understand the counter arguments.
One mathematician questioned evolution based on probability, in other words what are the odds that you could get the genes of real creatures from random mutation, what kind of time scales. The results were crazy big numbers, this was a pretty serious question that seemed needed to be addressed. So it occurred to me, what if there really weren't very many different DNA sequences (compared to the number possible), that useful sequences got reused a lot and that sequence or gene once useful got "written down" for future reference but deactivated. Much of evolution would just be retrying "known useful" sequences in new combinations, that could massively reduce the probabilities needed for evolution.
Sure enough, as we learn more about DNA we find that these inactive DNA areas keep a lot of valuable information. I wonder if the amount of "extra" inactive DNA each species keeps is itself an adaptation, how quickly a species wants to be able to evolve. The more inactive stuff you have sitting around, the more likely it accidentally becomes active, so you have a balancing act between bad for individual vs. good to quickly adapt to new environment. So that might be why relatively simple creatures have so much DNA in them.
Of cousre I am sure I was primed to make this "discovery" from other stuff I had read. Still, I think it shows the advantages of getting different points of view.
>while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.
Really? You mean those 5-foot-1 suits of armor at the museum were worn by the same 6-foot-5 monsters who grace our modern football fields and armed forces?
I guess men from the Renaissance were the same as us, except highly compressible.
I don't know if this was meant as a joke but I think is spot on. Bigger people (mostly men) have more back and knee problems. In the wild, this would be a death sentence. Now we have doctors and if you have desk job, a bum knee isn't the end of world.
We all know about the giant spider thing, designs don't scale up or down without limit. I wouldn't be surprised at all if you could do the same thing with men and height. If women are getting taller, it might just be a side effect (i.e. do women have more or less children based on height or do only men?)
Once a French philosopher basically asked asked (forget his name(, "If all women were beautiful, would we just get pickier?" I guess we will find out.
Also I have said for years, if you think civilization has stopped evolution, you don't understand evolution. It has only changed it.
We can give them 4 billion dollars and have aircraft to show for it, or give them 4 billion in bailout money to save the jobs this will impact and have NOTHING to show for it.:-)
Or we could invest 4 Billion in research or schools (like the stimulus package does) and have new technology and a skilled workforce to show for it, and at the same time get same 4 Billion worth of economic stimulus.
Sorry charlie, military spending may stimulate the economy also, but it invests in the future the way buying 4 billion worth of cupie dolls would. And the resulting new cupie doll factories and manufacturing techniques would be as much of a money making asset as a plane making factory.
Before you sharpen your pitch forks too much, there is one thing to look into. Did the man in this case have proof he actually lost the money? Was the money traceable? Did the court have proof he at one time had the money?
Look, the woman and the court presumably had indisputable proof he had the money shortly before the divorce. I think we all understand the likely thing that happened next was he put his money in a untraceable location and *failed* to provide any documentation. He could as easily claimed aliens took his money, can you prove they didn't?
The courts can't imprison you for something they have no evidence of, but remember they had evidence and he absolutely lost. Once he loses the case, he HAS to comply. If courts are literally unable to punish you for failing to follow a court order, all court orders would be ignored. Really, every court order would be ignored and why not? They court has no power to do anything about it. After a trial do you have to have another trial for ignoring the results of the first trial? Followed by another trial for ignoring the results of that trial and so on? And imagine what the case would look like "Members of the jury, here is the court order for the defendant to do X, we will now call the pervious judge as a witness to verify that X was not done."
OK, you may think that the court would have been better served by taking other assets it could reach. Maybe that might have worked in this case. But if Courts are unable to enforce rulings they literally have no power at all.
In it's most simple incarnation, it is just virtual servers. You can now host them anywhere you want inside or outside your data center. Users can access these machine through virtual terminals or sessions, so they look like they are on the local network, or maybe in a web interface. Cloud computing is about delivering this as a seemless package. It is spun by the big corporations to look like big corperations hosting your applications because they want people to use it that way to collect fees, but there is no reason the underlying technology has to be used that way.
Slashdot Mirror
Kill switch is a terrible name, but here is the scenario it is designed to address.
A real war breaks out, honest to goodness shooting war. Our enemy starts: taking active control of previously compromised network devices, flooding our network with traffic from their networks and bots, stealing anything they can find, crashing every system they can. The purpose of this is primarily to disrupt communication/information during the conflict.
Where this traffic is coming from, ultimately will be from their home country of course. Even in the case of botnets they will be guided by hackers in their home country, not stationed around the world. (you know, where their hackers are safe from arrest and where their families are). Also Bots in the US will require some kind of direction from somewhere to start transmitting.
So what does the government do if it can't block any of this traffic from the U.S. network? Topology matter guys. Should the government build its own isolated network with an air gap for all systems it considers critical? Should it assume the ISP's will take care of it and keep their communications going during an event like this? Does communication of private entities matter during this time? How will their networks be secured? Maybe we should just find out the hard way.
So really, what is your plan?
First I am glad they asked Facebook as opposed to telling them. But in truth they the police should just make their own plug in, sort of an online 911 gadget, then it could work at any time on the web. I don't know how useful the information will be and I am not sure how much I would trust a police based plug in (and a million other things)! However the cool thing about the internet is you can give crazy ideas a try. Face it, those "email the FBI to report fraud" addresses are mostly data collection, but even collecting data is worth while.
Cop chat?
OK, this is hardly a revolution of any kind, but science does require that you do things to prove they are possible not just assume you can do them. Long term there are lots of pratical little details around becomeing a cyborg.
I don't share the view of the extremists, but how does not drawing the Prophet Mohamed hurt anyone?
I don't share the view of the extremists, but how does DRAWING the Prophet Mohammad hurt anyone?
I don't share the view of the extremists, but how does not drawing the Prophet Mohamed hurt anyone?
I don't share the view of the extremists, but how does DRAWING the Prophet Mohammad hurt anyone?
I don't share your views, and how does Blackface hurt anyone? This contest is protected free speech, but so is a Neo-Nazi using the N word. Someone posting to the site might have more noble goals, but I suspect most of them are religion baiters just as the NN are race baiters, even if they tell themselves something different. You can have free speech and good manners.
I don't consider it the business of Government to decide what we can and can't see, of course as we all know All Governments do. Blocking a site isn't a death sentence and all governments do it. I don’t approve, but our approval isn’t needed it turns out.
You really ready to support true free speech, plenty to fix at home first I assure you.
China simply encourages people to go abroad (they have plenty to spare) and keeps on good terms with them. Then agents just keep in cotanct and, by playing on national pride, ask expats what they know about X. (say a new chemical process or code snippet or whatever) It *almost* doesn't qualify as spying, I understand they are fairly upfront and just say stuff like, "we want to make a better car but we keep having problems with the fuel line, how does the company you work for solve this" or "do you have any advice". If they get "secret" information in the process, so be it.
They don't bother to train spies and send them out because it isn't that type of espionage.
The issue for us is to understand what is important to protect and what isn't. The Soviets had a great security system, it was so secure they kept their inventions secret from themselves.
'I think the ball is now in the court of "take no action"'
I disagree. Before the world spends itself silly fighting AGW, I want to see solid scientific evidence that it's worth spending all that money. And the current computer models using data tweaked to agree with the predetermined conclusions are far from solid proof.
I understand you disagree, but I don't understand why. Actually I am not totally sure what you are disagreeing with.
I hope you agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that we can measure how effective it is at holding back heat. That we also know about how much humans are adding each year from fossil fuels.
Based on the facts I know about the situation, without knowing anything about any climate model simple back of the envelope calculations would suggest temperatures to rise, snow to melt, water to expand, climate patterns to change and so on.
Now I know dynamic systems will sometimes give unexpected results so more research is needed, I am just saying this is what I would expect from what I know. Climate models seem more like details of how it will happen.
(if you don't agree so far please tell me why)
OK, even if every model is wrong (and that is a pretty big if) why should I not be concern, or in other words, why should I support no limit to how much more CO2 we can add to the atmosphere?
Is there any kind of credible "everything is OK" model you can point to?
OK, now for what I think your real issue is, spending ourselves silly over an unsure problem. Let me say this, only pointing out flaws in other peoples models doesn't help me decide how much risk we are in. Unless you mean to spend no money whatever (no research, no nothing) in order to figure out what needs to be done I need some kind of model. So, I simply ask, do you have any research to show me that I should not be so concerned?
I will try if you like
"The temperature of the earth is warming over time.
1. The amount of this warming is unprecedented.
2. The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.
3. The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.
4. The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly"
5. What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?
6. When has it been at that temperature in the past?
7. Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past?
8. How, specifically, do we know this?
9. In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?"
Now as I answer these, remember the question I am really trying to answer is "Should there be any legal limit on the amount of CO2 from fossil fuels dumped into the atmosphere".
CO2 traps heat, CO2 is going up, Humans produce C02 from fossil fuels. So what is it you know that will prevent temperatures from going up?
1. Of course that is what the debate is about, will the earth warm over time and will it be unprecedented.
2. Same as one.
3. What feedback mechanisms? A block of iron sitting over a fairly constant fire can retain a fairly constant temp. I am not saying there are no such mechanisms, but you need you understand you are basically asserting there are some that will limit climate change. What is, how will it work, how much CO2 can it cope with?
4. All climate change costs money, even non catastrophic change. Moving farms isn't free, building houses to new standards isn't and so on. We much balance these costs with costs from limiting fossil fuels, but no change sound like an expensive plan. Further Catastrophic change is possible, how do you know we are not near it?
5. First, who cares if humans are mostly at fault, I wish to deal with disasters both natural and manmade. Also, we are taking fossil fuels out of the ground and therefore adding carbon to the carbon cycle, so again based on the first three things, why reason do you have to believe this isn't sufficient proof?
6. No idea, I know we have set up our activities to match the way they are now and change will cost us, even change that *may* be beneficial in some way. Do you have anything that will help show how the cost of the change will be in some way offset by future benefits?
7. No idea, and if you are following me at all you will understand why I don't consider this relevant.
8. Again, it doesn't matter.
9. I would define is as the average temperature of the air and water, in theory all of the energy divided by the mass. Of course you can also cause climate problems without changing temp.
I hope I have changed you mind, or at least opened it to engage in the conversation about how much CO2 we can add. But if I haven't, let me ask you the same question. On the face of it, adding CO2 to the atmosphere seems like it will raise temp over time. What do you know that can assure me we are in do danger and can burn fuels withoug limit?
The real problem Climate Change is the weakness of our future weather models. I really do believe they are quite bad.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that humans are producing it and that CO2 levels appear to be going up.
I however don't believe we can really accuratly predict climate changes. Too much about the world is unknown and we have been wrong many times in the past.
But the good news is the models don't have to be perfect, once you accepted the three things I listed I think the ball is now in the court of "take no action", what models do YOU have that prove everthing will be fine? Are you prepared to present them for peer review? Tell me why I should take the risk of no action!
The opposing side in this debate simply doesn't give any good information to act on(or not act on), so by default the side that has something wins my vote.
Anonymity doesn't cause Freedom, Freedom allows Anonymity. If the information exists, it is within the rights of the Judge to order it.
If there is a problem, it is that the information exists in the first place. That is what you should focus on.
Of course that might make tracking death threats a little harder, but that goes hand in hand with Anonymity.
The Geneva convention isn't exactly the document you think it is, it is far more subtle than you might suspect.
To answer one of the original questions, the reason nations typically follow the GC is because is describes the "smart" way to run a war.
You treat prisoners well because you want people to surrender to you. If it gets out that you torture prisoners, people fight to the death. However if you treat them very well and publicly show this, your average guy might think "that sure beats dying". Indeed typically you tell your own troops the enemy will torture them, that is certainly what the Japanese did in WWII.
You don't dress up like civilians because if you do, the enemy starts killing your civilians also! If fighting a local insurgency, then you build bad will and give your opponents new recruits. After all if I am going to be killed on "accident", maybe I am better off with a gun myself.
The other prohibitions against needless cruelty are about the same, why make your enemy even more enraged against you? Remember, your ultimate goal in war is to convince the enemy to stop fighting, not total annihilation.
The French resistance thing is kind of an exception. Basically that is why countries can’t define terrorism, they all agree certain tactics are wrong but want to make exceptions for people they consider the “good guys” to break the rules. In a case like WWII, since the Germans so clearly did not belong in France it is probably safe to give the French the benefit of the doubt. Harder to codify however.
Well, true. But a "Cyberwar" is just designed to gain temporary advantage by diabling systems and pulling resources away from the actual real world conflict. Most of the attacks will be preplanned on already known vulnrabilities. That is the reason for the term "Digital Pearl Harbor", of course the U.S. is a digital "super power", we have extrodianary resources and given time will likely solve most issues. But we don't want a sneak attack "while we sleep".
BTW, I do agree that central control will NOT solve the problem. I don't see any advantage of the goverment ordering all smart phones turned off. Better is simple training to identify critical systmes that should be removed from the Internet and training on plan B if you have to go to manual control.
If you have any interest in this kind of stuff, Infragard (http://www.infragard.net/) is a good place to start. It's primary focus is sharing posible security threats with the public.
For the same reason we can't win a space war, we have the most to lose. The more systems you have dependent on an asset, the more vulnerable you become in that asset.
Note however, that doesn't mean you are in a weaker position, an asset is still an asset.
Convenience isn't just convenient, it is time saved you can use to do other things. We just need to start waking up to what is a security risk and what isn't. What we need to protect and what we don't and finally drills on what to do if the primary system fails.
A dolphin, the mammal with one of the largest brains out there, is NOT smarter then a human.
By what measure? As far as can be told, Dolphin's apply their brains to different types of activities and problems to humans. I can imagine having tests that compare dolphin intelligence levels relative to other dolphins, and of course there are tests that purport to measure human intelligence levels relative to other humans, but I doubt you could create any meaningful unified scale for comparing humans to dolphins. Where would you start?
Brain size does not equal intelligence, if you define intelligence as the ability to score well on an IQ test only. Your brain does a lot more than just let you score well on an IQ test! Best to think of intelligences (plural) as opposed to intelligence (singular).
Think of it this way, Anything your brain does is an intelligence, math, language, processing 2D images, converting 2 D images to 3 D representations, processing sound waves, converting sound waves into 3D images, memory, social networking, controlling body functions, controlling body movement, fear. This list goes on and on so I hope you get the idea.
Playing the violin, doing math, being charming or playing football well all take brain power and are each different types of intelligence. Even in humans comparing intelligences is a tricky matter. Now when you start talking about other species, like dolphins for example, they do so many different things we don't normally, like use sonar, that you can't compare any more. You can map functions to brain areas, but it is apples and oranges.
Your brain does a lot more than let you score well on an IQ test so the two don't correlate well.
I'm happy that with this Nigerian terrorist that the media is emphasizing his wealthy and privileged background.
I was disappointed that the wealthy, privileged, backgrounds of Osama Bin Laden and almost all of the 19 9/11 hijackers were not emphasized more.
As with Marxism, Islamic terrorism is not about the poor rising up against oppressors.
It is about is about rich people with unresolved issues telling the poor what to think and egging them on to take actions that really don't help the poor...........exactly the complaint that these self appointed "vanguard activists" have.
You should listen to more liberal media, they were very clear Bin Laden was a rich kid who basically hated the US because he viewed it as the major patron/support for the government he didn't like at home.
What is going on is the people see their current goverment/social struture is corrupt so they try to rethink how society ought to be put together. So they become attracted to radical new ideas that on the face seem like they might work. Since they rich and otherwise empowered they have the ability to act on their beliefs.
The poor, speaking from personal experience, spend most of their lives keeping their head down and are well aware the new "saviours" might be every bit as bad as the previous crew. But when things get bad enough, any change might be for the better. Just remember what Marxism was replacing!
There are plenty of times and places where uniforms gain respect. In many civilizations, wearing a military uniform was very much a sign of respect, certainly a high ranking one anyway. Lots of people still respect firefighters and police officers today. At one time government officals all wore uniforms as a mark of position. Also as noted, suit and tie are definitely a uniform of a kind.
Uniforms gain you respect IF the institution they represent is respected. So it can be a benefit (IT, those guys are great) or a problem (geez, another IT goon). In all cases it sets you apart and puts you in a class.
Also the surrounding culture matters. If you are surrounded by suits, wearing a uniform will likely pull you down the totem pole. If the standards of dress are very lax, then it might make you stand out and appear to have your act together. Management will still view themselves as above you, but you might gain over all organizational respect.
So a risky move that might pay off if you understand your culture well.
When you're paying a monthly fee to use that service, it should not matter how much or how little you use it. ISPs have no right to bitch and moan about high bandwidth users.
That's not logical. It makes sense that people who use more should pay more. Why shouldn't the people who use more, pay more? If I use more water, I pay a higher water bill; if I use more electricity, I pay a higher electric bill.
It seems that the problem is that word "unlimited." If the sales pitch says that you're buying "unlimited" internet, then you've got an argument that they're doing false advertising when they then say "...but that doesn't mean unlimited".
Well, it kind of depends on your service model, "fair" is a lot trickier concept to nail down than you think. As a practical matter, there is a cost in even making internet service available and providing bandwidth even if it isn't used. If others "borrow" the bandwidth you aren't using, then there *might* be no harm. (please note I said might)
For example, it is perfectly valid to offer a service plan like "I am going to put a T-3 line into your neighborhood, charge everyone $100 per month to connect and you will all share this line"
It is also valid to have a plan like "I am going you make sure you can use X Gigabytes of throughput at Y speed per month"
You can have hybrid plan also (X per month for any connection and y more for lots of data).
Which is the best plan for your situation, I don't know. Maybe different circumstances need different plans?
Everyone keeps focusing on the wrong thing in this debate (pretty much always, what am *I* getting). The real key issues policy should focus on is.
1. Accurate, honest and straightforward description of service being offered.
2. Assuring there is genuine competition and choice for consumers. If not, maybe utilities are best.
There is kind of a paradox about things like CASE, sometimes the better they work the MORE progamers you need because people always want MORE and now producing the final prodect is easier, so you get more for your money.
So consider what computers did for us in 1980 vs. what they do today. Improvements in programing have made is possible and cost effective to do what we do now. So CASE may have been a total sucess, from the point of view of someone in the 80's, but the net result is increased demand, not reduced.
I understand why everything after the first comment is redundant, but at the same time I feel it also is the central problem with much libertarian thinking today. Basically to prevent people from using force to compel your actions, the people have to actually use force as a prevention. Kind of like, "If you would have peace, be prepared for war", or actually "If you would have peace, be prepared for war and you will have no choice but to wage a few in the name of peace".
In my gut, I feel like this "paradox" ought to be able to be resolved, but just like the war example you can't seem to help but wage a war or two in the name of peace. Problem is you can always say it was just self defense, especially if you can get a majority of people to agree with you. This is actually very frustrating for me, I want it to be true but I can't think of a way, in actual practice, to assure it.
The best I have come up with is that Freedom is actually about information. For example, I would assert that no matter if you liked a particular war (WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Gulf War 1, Gulf War 2), good accurate information, the ability to talk about our course of action and the willingness to change our course of action were the actual key issues. So, for example, if you must remove someone's rights(like jail), at least be 100% clear what you are doing and it's impact.
Still I am open so someone having a better idea.
I am not a big fan of either movement, but the more you look at the movements the more they have in common. Frankly I think both movements have tapped into, but not fully understood, the idea of our time, Freedom is more important than Communism or Capitalism. In other words, if you are actually free, then you are free to sell stuff or join a commune or what ever you think appropriate. Maybe we aren't the first generation to realize this, but still an important break through in light of our recent history (think about the rhetoric of the Cold War).
I suspect that is also why you get people appearing to switch from ultra left wing to ultra right wing or vice versa. They are changing their implementation, but not what they are all about.
There are even more reasons to be very interested in VM and the Cloud model.
Remember VM's can run anywhere, so while they CAN run at Amazon, they don't have to. They can run local or at a competitor. You choose where they are at and can move them based on your needs when you want to.
Also Linux servers can live on the same box as Windows! And since all you care about is the applications, maybe you don't really care so much what OS it uses. Maybe the config needed to run the OS can be bundled with the application config and the users just sees that, and the OS is mostly pre configured to run that application. Maybe then you don't need a giant do everthing OS, just the OS to run your application and no overhead. Maybe you now don't have to care if MS plays nice with your app.
VM is about creating an isolated location for an OS and applications, gaining hardware indepedence at the same time. Mainframers have understoord and been doing this for years, Java virtual machines were another attempt at the same thing. I don't know all the nitty gritty of why some isolation schemes work better than others, all I know is VM and hypervisors seem to finally have gotten it right.
P.S. every time someone mentions VM a Mainframer loses his wings.
Odd coincidence actually. A couple years ago I decided to read some of the more serious anti evolution literature to try and understand the counter arguments.
One mathematician questioned evolution based on probability, in other words what are the odds that you could get the genes of real creatures from random mutation, what kind of time scales. The results were crazy big numbers, this was a pretty serious question that seemed needed to be addressed. So it occurred to me, what if there really weren't very many different DNA sequences (compared to the number possible), that useful sequences got reused a lot and that sequence or gene once useful got "written down" for future reference but deactivated. Much of evolution would just be retrying "known useful" sequences in new combinations, that could massively reduce the probabilities needed for evolution.
Sure enough, as we learn more about DNA we find that these inactive DNA areas keep a lot of valuable information. I wonder if the amount of "extra" inactive DNA each species keeps is itself an adaptation, how quickly a species wants to be able to evolve. The more inactive stuff you have sitting around, the more likely it accidentally becomes active, so you have a balancing act between bad for individual vs. good to quickly adapt to new environment. So that might be why relatively simple creatures have so much DNA in them.
Of cousre I am sure I was primed to make this "discovery" from other stuff I had read. Still, I think it shows the advantages of getting different points of view.
>while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.
Really? You mean those 5-foot-1 suits of armor at the museum were worn by the same 6-foot-5 monsters who grace our modern football fields and armed forces?
I guess men from the Renaissance were the same as us, except highly compressible.
I don't know if this was meant as a joke but I think is spot on. Bigger people (mostly men) have more back and knee problems. In the wild, this would be a death sentence. Now we have doctors and if you have desk job, a bum knee isn't the end of world.
We all know about the giant spider thing, designs don't scale up or down without limit. I wouldn't be surprised at all if you could do the same thing with men and height. If women are getting taller, it might just be a side effect (i.e. do women have more or less children based on height or do only men?)
Once a French philosopher basically asked asked (forget his name(, "If all women were beautiful, would we just get pickier?" I guess we will find out.
Also I have said for years, if you think civilization has stopped evolution, you don't understand evolution. It has only changed it.
We can give them 4 billion dollars and have aircraft to show for it, or give them 4 billion in bailout money to save the jobs this will impact and have NOTHING to show for it. :-)
Or we could invest 4 Billion in research or schools (like the stimulus package does) and have new technology and a skilled workforce to show for it, and at the same time get same 4 Billion worth of
economic stimulus.
Sorry charlie, military spending may stimulate the economy also, but it invests in the future the way buying 4 billion worth of cupie dolls would. And the resulting new cupie doll factories and manufacturing techniques would be as much of a money making asset as a plane making factory.
Before you sharpen your pitch forks too much, there is one thing to look into. Did the man in this case have proof he actually lost the money? Was the money traceable? Did the court have proof he at one time had the money?
Look, the woman and the court presumably had indisputable proof he had the money shortly before the divorce. I think we all understand the likely thing that happened next was he put his money in a untraceable location and *failed* to provide any documentation. He could as easily claimed aliens took his money, can you prove they didn't?
The courts can't imprison you for something they have no evidence of, but remember they had evidence and he absolutely lost. Once he loses the case, he HAS to comply. If courts are literally unable to punish you for failing to follow a court order, all court orders would be ignored. Really, every court order would be ignored and why not? They court has no power to do anything about it. After a trial do you have to have another trial for ignoring the results of the first trial? Followed by another trial for ignoring the results of that trial and so on? And imagine what the case would look like "Members of the jury, here is the court order for the defendant to do X, we will now call the pervious judge as a witness to verify that X was not done."
OK, you may think that the court would have been better served by taking other assets it could reach. Maybe that might have worked in this case. But if Courts are unable to enforce rulings they literally have no power at all.
In it's most simple incarnation, it is just virtual servers. You can now host them anywhere you want inside or outside your data center. Users can access these machine through virtual terminals or sessions, so they look like they are on the local network, or maybe in a web interface. Cloud computing is about delivering this as a seemless package. It is spun by the big corporations to look like big corperations hosting your applications because they want people to use it that way to collect fees, but there is no reason the underlying technology has to be used that way.