Given that some labs have already claimed that this is not a new phenomenon to them, it would be nice to see what is actually newsworthy about their "discovery"
the researchers seem to take the legality of their actions under serious consideration. From TFA:
"Measurement Ethics: We have been careful to design experiments that we believe are both consistent with current U.S. legal doctrine and are fundamentally ethical as well. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to fully describe the complex legal landscape in which active security measurements operate, we believe the ethical basis for our work is far easier to explain: we strictly reduce harm. First, our instrumented proxy bots do not create any new harm. That is, absent our involvement, the same set of users would receive the same set of spam e-mails sent by the same worker bots. Storm is a large self-organizing system and when a proxy fails its worker bots automatically switch to other idle proxies (indeed, when our proxies fail we see workers quickly switch away). Second, our proxies are passive actors and do not themselves engage in any behavior that is intrinsically objectionable; they do not send spam e-mail, they do not compromise hosts, nor do they even contact worker bots asynchronously. Indeed, their only function is to provide a conduit between worker bots making requests and master servers providing responses. Finally, where we do modify C&C messages in transit, these actions themselves strictly reduce harm. Users who click on spam altered by these changes will be directed to one of our innocuous doppelganger Web sites. Unlike the sites normally advertised by Storm, our sites do not infect users with malware and do not collect user credit card information. Thus, no user should receive more spam due to our involvement, but some users will receive spam that is less dangerous that it would otherwise be."
However, their premise of "reducing harm" is questionable. How can we be sure that a person who decided to purchase these drugs (against all warnings) really believes that not buying them is the best thing for him? What if this person really wants to purchase a drug that he thinks will enlarge him? Who gives the researchers the right to decide what other people should spend their money on? Under several legal interpretations, forcing a person not to buy something perceived as harmful is not legal: denying to sell cigarettes to a person of legal age may be illegal, under discrimination laws.
The bottom line is that the researchers have a good point regarding the ethics of their study, however this issue is not 100% resolved.
How many times has medicine been burned by animal studies and other type of non-randomized lower quality studies in the past, only to have well done follow-up studies disprove the originals. 7?
"home, and set it one the counter [or take it out of the fridge and set it on the counter] chances are I already had a use in mind--countertops that suggest recipes for food placed on them seem about as useful as as a closet that suggest where I might want to go based on the clothes I take out."
Actually I find both features quite useful. I may already have something in mind to cook already, but why not have the counter suggest something better or adjust the recipe? Also one may go shopping for generic ingredients (like tomatoes, potatoes) and have nothing specific in mind. Of course a feature that suggests recipes based on stuff you already have in the fridge could be even more useful!
About the closet feature, why not? Very often I find myself and friends changing our minds on where we want to go at the last moment or having to adjust course due to unexpected events. Having the closet suggest alternative places based on how I am dressed wouldn't hurt at all. It would be nice if it could take other input too, like my mood etc. Even nicer to send the suggestions to my cellphone.
I cannot believe that this troll was moderated insightful.
I would love to see you repeating the above statements in front of the _software_engineering_ teams in charge of A380. You can replace A380 with any advanced means of transportation or any advanced defense system.
Creating and running pieces of code is easy and perhaps this is the reason people think that it is not a rigorous engineering principle. However, creating code for critical applications is something very very different comparing to e.g. writing a Facebook application. The first has to abide by numerous standards and constrains and ensure strict reliability and performance guarantees. Hell, even a Facebook application may be a critical task and have to conform to high standards if millions of dollars of revenue depend on it.
Since you are also a civil engineer, no doubt you heavily rely on CAD applications to create structurally robust designs and you are not manually applying statics for every brick and column in your design. So,in the end you depend on the rigorousness of the CAD software engineers to ensure the rigorousness of your structural designs.
Software is one of the most complicated human artifacts and the fact that humans can successfully create such artifacts (spare me the Windows jokes pls) is the proof that we apply engineering principles.
"TCP/IP is specifically designed to recover from link outages, if it doesn't, you've got an improperly designed and/or operated (statically, as opposed to dynamically, routed) network"
That would be BGP, the interdomain routing protocol. TCP/IP is designed to recover from packet losses not day-long link outages.
Slashdot Mirror
and you can find documentation for it here:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/papers/dsync-usenix2008-abstract.html
It is rsync on steroids that uses a BitTorrent-like P2P protocol that is even more efficient because it exploits file similarity.
You may have to contact the author of the paper to get the latest version of dsync, but I am sure they would be more than happy to help you with that.
you can start from here:
http://lwn.net/Articles/105375/
"why build a convoluted contraption to do something so simple?"
Cause you can!
so, I'll pass
were peer-reviewed and published where?
Given that some labs have already claimed that this is not a new phenomenon to them, it would be nice to see what is actually newsworthy about their "discovery"
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/02/local/me-nigerian2
Leave Janella alone! (crying and shouting)
the researchers seem to take the legality of their actions under serious consideration. From TFA:
"Measurement Ethics:
We have been careful to design experiments that we believe are both consistent with current U.S. legal doctrine and are fundamentally ethical as well. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to fully describe the complex legal landscape in which active security measurements operate, we believe the ethical basis for our work is far easier to explain: we strictly reduce harm. First, our instrumented proxy bots do not create any new harm. That is, absent our involvement, the same set of users would receive the same set of spam e-mails sent by the same worker bots. Storm is a large self-organizing system and when a proxy fails its worker bots automatically switch to other idle proxies (indeed, when our proxies fail we see workers quickly switch away). Second, our proxies are passive actors and do not themselves engage in any behavior that is intrinsically objectionable; they do not send spam e-mail, they do not compromise hosts, nor do they even contact worker bots asynchronously. Indeed, their only function is to provide a conduit between worker bots making requests and master servers providing responses. Finally, where we do modify C&C messages in transit, these actions themselves strictly reduce harm. Users who click on spam altered by these changes will be directed to one of our innocuous doppelganger Web sites. Unlike the sites normally advertised
by Storm, our sites do not infect users with malware and do not collect user credit card information. Thus, no user should receive more
spam due to our involvement, but some users will receive spam that is less dangerous that it would otherwise be."
However, their premise of "reducing harm" is questionable. How can we be sure that a person who decided to purchase these drugs (against all warnings) really believes that not buying them is the best thing for him? What if this person really wants to purchase a drug that he thinks will enlarge him? Who gives the researchers the right to decide what other people should spend their money on? Under several legal interpretations, forcing a person not to buy something perceived as harmful is not legal: denying to sell cigarettes to a person of legal age may be illegal, under discrimination laws.
The bottom line is that the researchers have a good point regarding the ethics of their study, however this issue is not 100% resolved.
Who are those "40%" of people who don't pay any taxes? I am a graduate student with a $15K salary, with many additional education expenses.
Guess what, I pay taxes! The average US per capita income is 40K, the median is around 50K.
Given these numbers, I would say that the 40% number of people who don't pay taxes claimed by
Republicans is bogus.
because aluminum, titanium and carbon fibers cost a hell of a lot more than steal
From now on, I will give it a second and a third thought before i mod a poor slashdotter troll or flamebait.
I hate trolls as much as the next guy, but I don't think they deserve 2 years in jail for that.
Guys, please mod responsibly... noone deserves the federal pound me in the ass prison for calling Linux unusable.
I second that ... with some "major boobage" too
is my advice to Reiser when (and if) he manages to get out of jail.
youhave30secondstocomply tag?
After the recent Diebold fiasko, their stock has hit record bottom http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks
and I bet they were rapping "Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta" too ...
"home, and set it one the counter [or take it out of the fridge and set it on the counter] chances are I already had a use in mind--countertops that suggest recipes for food placed on them seem about as useful as as a closet that suggest where I might want to go based on the clothes I take out."
Actually I find both features quite useful. I may already have something in mind to cook already, but why not have the counter suggest something better
or adjust the recipe? Also one may go shopping for generic ingredients (like tomatoes, potatoes) and have nothing specific in mind.
Of course a feature that suggests recipes based on stuff you already have in the fridge could be even more useful!
About the closet feature, why not? Very often I find myself and friends changing our minds on where we want to go at the last moment or having
to adjust course due to unexpected events. Having the closet suggest alternative places based on how I am dressed wouldn't hurt at all. It would
be nice if it could take other input too, like my mood etc. Even nicer to send the suggestions to my cellphone.
they stick to virtual attacks on virtual worlds, like blowing up things in Second Life
I cannot believe that this troll was moderated insightful.
,in the end you depend on the rigorousness of the CAD software engineers to ensure the rigorousness of your structural designs.
I would love to see you repeating the above statements in front of the _software_engineering_ teams in charge of A380. You can replace A380 with
any advanced means of transportation or any advanced defense system.
Creating and running pieces of code is easy and perhaps this is the reason people think that it is not a rigorous engineering principle. However,
creating code for critical applications is something very very different comparing to e.g. writing a Facebook application. The first has to abide by numerous standards and constrains and ensure strict reliability and performance guarantees. Hell, even a Facebook application may be a critical task and have to conform to high standards if millions of dollars of revenue depend on it.
Since you are also a civil engineer, no doubt you heavily rely on CAD applications to create structurally robust designs and you are not manually applying statics for every brick and column in your design. So
Software is one of the most complicated human artifacts and the fact that humans can successfully create such artifacts (spare me the Windows jokes pls) is the proof that we apply engineering principles.
Someone else has a nice argument on the subject too
http://www.embedded.com/columns/embeddedpulse/159904927?_requestid=904565
I believe that was pets.com. Godaddy is still alive and kicking.
It seems that computers.com did not fare good as well.
"TCP/IP is specifically designed to recover from link outages, if it doesn't, you've got an improperly designed and/or operated (statically, as opposed to dynamically, routed) network"
That would be BGP, the interdomain routing protocol. TCP/IP is designed to recover from packet losses not day-long link outages.
>carnal maps, finite automina
...
karnaugh maps and finite automata
>Disclaimer: I'm an EE drop out
I would have never guessed
is a very brave man ...
No this was just a coincidence ... what made you say that?