Re:Examine your assumptions
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 2
And for things to exist, they had to begin existing at some point.
This is exactly the assumption I would have you question. Do not take human perceptions for granted, for they can easily decieve you.
Beginnings and endings are not all imposed by our minds.
There exist one possible source of beginnings: true random events. Since we have not conclusively determined that true randomness exists or is even possible, I stand by my statement that no human has ever witnessed a true beginning. So how can we know they exist?
That I first breathed air at a certain point in time measurable as the equivalent of just over twenty-five orbits of the Earth about the sun is fact, not opinion.
The fact that you percieve this as a beginning of something new is just that: your perception. It is nothing new but the result of your development and birth. Your atoms know little difference between the time they were ejected from a star to the time they formed part of your lungs. It was merely a continuous ride from creation (if it happened) to now. The fact that there is something meaningful to "breathing" are values we impose. A "breath" is not inherently significant, it is not an event in spacetime except that you label it so.
Down to what?
An amusing anecdote, but it merely emphasises my point about the underlying assumptions inherent in human perceptions. Humans think in limited terms because we are limited creatures; volumes, spaces, here to there, all concepts expressed in terms of limitations and the thought of infinity thus seems nonsensical. But simply because we cannot conceive of it, does not mean it does not exist.
In fact, there are physicists working with theories of "infinite time"/no creation. They do not see time as existing as such; existence is merely a relative spatial configuration that sort of morphs into the next moment. There is no past to speak of, no future, only the evolving present, the eternal NOW. Pretty Neat (TM).
but if you were Eisner, wouldnt you do the same? If one of the cornerstones of your business were to all of a sudden become freely reproducible, wouldnt you try to stop that from happening?
You should have known it was going to happen from the outset.
I personally believe that an artist should have the right to his work during his lifetime,
Agreed.
and to some extent believe the artist's survivors should have some entitlement to benefit from the copyrighted work.
Why? What did they contribute? They get the inheritance left by the artist, why should they be entitled to more?
Examine your assumptions
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
What makes you think there even was a beginning? Keep in mind that we have never actually seen the beginning of an event and the end; those boundaries are imposed by us. Reality is really a continuous cascade of effects which themselves become causes. How do we know there even is a beginning to the universe?
If crackpot theories get coverage in the media, then definitely respond because this will give more exposure to NASA and real science. It's a chance to truly educate the public (who would otherwise not be exposed to science via popular media channels), and such chances are few and far between. Utilize every chance for education. Those who won't believe you, won't believe you no matter what you say anyway, so you might as well try and reach those who may not be sure of the truth.
GPL does not place restrictions on use. You do not have to agree to the GPL to use the software. Therefore, licensing issues are irrelevant and your point is immaterial. The software is free for use as the original poster said.
Defense of Brin's morality
on
Google vs. Evil
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Take Brin's decision to refuse all alcohol and tobacco advertising. The fact that Google accepts advertising for adult content sites is an intriguing commentary on Brin's morality: Cigarettes and booze are evil; porn is not. It's a policy that would become progressively harder to defend were Google to go public.
Cigarettes and alcohol harm and often kill people (more so the innocent bystanders than the abusers). Porn does neither. Do you want me to draw you a picture?
What you, and many people, seem to think is that we are somehow tinkering with genes in a more dangerous way than nature itself is going about it. Understand: humans are doing nothing that nature itself isn't doing right now at this very moment.
Nature itself is an ongoing, gigantic genetic experiment with continuous wild and unchecked mutations. At least our experiments are controlled and targeted. Nature has exteremely poor odds that a given mutation will result in a desirable trait. If we can improve those odds a million fold by statistically isolating what genes are responsible for what traits, then we have improved the efficiency and reduced the risk of hormful mutation over nature's own methods. The only risk we run with genetic engineering is deliberate malicious engineering for harm, and putting all our eggs in one basket by abandoning bio-diversity and placing all of our faith in GM.
There is little russian roulette involved in this, and certainly much less than that found in the environment nature provides.
It's a good article for beginner programmers who are still trying to wrap thoir brains around the concepts, but it's hardly a new idea. Unfortunately, the author doesn't name the phenomena for what it is; it's not a problem with abstractions themselves, but is a result of logic and algorithms upon which programming is founded. Abstractions are based on assumptions, and when those assumptions are not true, the abstraction breaks. Take his example of TCP breaking when the network cable is unplugged: since TCP assumes the destination is reachable, it will abviously break when this assumption is violated. His "law of leaky abstractions" is simply the "law of violated assumptions" (see? I can come up with fancy labels too).
We are ignoring processing costs since the original poster was suggesting to implement this in hardware (which doesn't really negate the cost, but will for this discussion). Frow a purely memory-slanted view, symmetric algos win out.
We are looking at general use, not intensive downloading so one should study typical traffic flow and determine from that what typical packet sizes are. Then, one can readily determine the appropriate algo.
Elliptic crypto is more cpu-intensive to use than RSA and easier to break at the same processing level so I'm not sure I would recommend it for use in applications with high bandwidth demands.
there's no reason you couldn't use public key crypto in realtime
Yes there is. Encrypted text's size is on the order of the key length, no matter the size of the plaintext. If you want to only send 1 byte, but encrypt with a 2048 bit key you'll be sending about 2048 bits of encrypted text. This has severe consequences for bandwidth and latency. Symmetric algos generally don't have this problem.
Character from Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. Throughout much of the first part, it was a widespread fad to ask "who is John Galt?" whenever one didn't know the answer to a difficult question.
Slashdot Mirror
And for things to exist, they had to begin existing at some point.
This is exactly the assumption I would have you question. Do not take human perceptions for granted, for they can easily decieve you.
Beginnings and endings are not all imposed by our minds.
There exist one possible source of beginnings: true random events. Since we have not conclusively determined that true randomness exists or is even possible, I stand by my statement that no human has ever witnessed a true beginning. So how can we know they exist?
That I first breathed air at a certain point in time measurable as the equivalent of just over twenty-five orbits of the Earth about the sun is fact, not opinion.
The fact that you percieve this as a beginning of something new is just that: your perception. It is nothing new but the result of your development and birth. Your atoms know little difference between the time they were ejected from a star to the time they formed part of your lungs. It was merely a continuous ride from creation (if it happened) to now. The fact that there is something meaningful to "breathing" are values we impose. A "breath" is not inherently significant, it is not an event in spacetime except that you label it so.
Down to what?
An amusing anecdote, but it merely emphasises my point about the underlying assumptions inherent in human perceptions. Humans think in limited terms because we are limited creatures; volumes, spaces, here to there, all concepts expressed in terms of limitations and the thought of infinity thus seems nonsensical. But simply because we cannot conceive of it, does not mean it does not exist.
In fact, there are physicists working with theories of "infinite time"/no creation. They do not see time as existing as such; existence is merely a relative spatial configuration that sort of morphs into the next moment. There is no past to speak of, no future, only the evolving present, the eternal NOW. Pretty Neat (TM).
but if you were Eisner, wouldnt you do the same? If one of the cornerstones of your business were to all of a sudden become freely reproducible, wouldnt you try to stop that from happening?
You should have known it was going to happen from the outset.
I personally believe that an artist should have the right to his work during his lifetime,
Agreed.
and to some extent believe the artist's survivors should have some entitlement to benefit from the copyrighted work.
Why? What did they contribute? They get the inheritance left by the artist, why should they be entitled to more?
What makes you think there even was a beginning? Keep in mind that we have never actually seen the beginning of an event and the end; those boundaries are imposed by us. Reality is really a continuous cascade of effects which themselves become causes. How do we know there even is a beginning to the universe?
If crackpot theories get coverage in the media, then definitely respond because this will give more exposure to NASA and real science. It's a chance to truly educate the public (who would otherwise not be exposed to science via popular media channels), and such chances are few and far between. Utilize every chance for education. Those who won't believe you, won't believe you no matter what you say anyway, so you might as well try and reach those who may not be sure of the truth.
GPL does not place restrictions on use. You do not have to agree to the GPL to use the software. Therefore, licensing issues are irrelevant and your point is immaterial. The software is free for use as the original poster said.
Take Brin's decision to refuse all alcohol and tobacco advertising. The fact that Google accepts advertising for adult content sites is an intriguing commentary on Brin's morality: Cigarettes and booze are evil; porn is not. It's a policy that would become progressively harder to defend were Google to go public.
Cigarettes and alcohol harm and often kill people (more so the innocent bystanders than the abusers). Porn does neither. Do you want me to draw you a picture?
You forgot: to learn.
OSS is a great way to learn programming and practice your skills.
What you, and many people, seem to think is that we are somehow tinkering with genes in a more dangerous way than nature itself is going about it. Understand: humans are doing nothing that nature itself isn't doing right now at this very moment.
Nature itself is an ongoing, gigantic genetic experiment with continuous wild and unchecked mutations. At least our experiments are controlled and targeted. Nature has exteremely poor odds that a given mutation will result in a desirable trait. If we can improve those odds a million fold by statistically isolating what genes are responsible for what traits, then we have improved the efficiency and reduced the risk of hormful mutation over nature's own methods. The only risk we run with genetic engineering is deliberate malicious engineering for harm, and putting all our eggs in one basket by abandoning bio-diversity and placing all of our faith in GM.
There is little russian roulette involved in this, and certainly much less than that found in the environment nature provides.
It's a good article for beginner programmers who are still trying to wrap thoir brains around the concepts, but it's hardly a new idea. Unfortunately, the author doesn't name the phenomena for what it is; it's not a problem with abstractions themselves, but is a result of logic and algorithms upon which programming is founded. Abstractions are based on assumptions, and when those assumptions are not true, the abstraction breaks. Take his example of TCP breaking when the network cable is unplugged: since TCP assumes the destination is reachable, it will abviously break when this assumption is violated. His "law of leaky abstractions" is simply the "law of violated assumptions" (see? I can come up with fancy labels too).
We are ignoring processing costs since the original poster was suggesting to implement this in hardware (which doesn't really negate the cost, but will for this discussion). Frow a purely memory-slanted view, symmetric algos win out.
We are looking at general use, not intensive downloading so one should study typical traffic flow and determine from that what typical packet sizes are. Then, one can readily determine the appropriate algo.
Elliptic crypto is more cpu-intensive to use than RSA and easier to break at the same processing level so I'm not sure I would recommend it for use in applications with high bandwidth demands.
Erm... well actually any block cipher requires plaintext to be a multiple of block size, so you really can't send less than that at a time
Symmetric keys are rarely as large as asymmetric keys. This is the source of the data inflation problem associated with asymmetric algos.
there's no reason you couldn't use public key crypto in realtime
Yes there is. Encrypted text's size is on the order of the key length, no matter the size of the plaintext. If you want to only send 1 byte, but encrypt with a 2048 bit key you'll be sending about 2048 bits of encrypted text. This has severe consequences for bandwidth and latency. Symmetric algos generally don't have this problem.
We all know this is just a cover story for the REAL secret messages in the static!
/.! It's ALL static. ;-)
Come on' this is
Seriously! (0T2) ;-)
I don't think it takes a supercomputer to predict the weather in Canada .
It would take a hell of alot more than one actually. There's a saying, "if you don't like the weather in Canada, wait 5 minutes".
It is well known as the world's most secure operating system
Let's rephrase that as, "It is well known as the world's most secure UNIX operating system." Otherwise it's not true.
I thought the movie had a hokey plot and poor dialog, and that the TV series excelled in both categories.
:-)
Excelled in hokey plot and poor dialog?
Jesus vs Moses!
No, no. Jesus vs Buddha!
Yeah, I love how they throw in something completely wacky, but true, when the situation is most serious. :-)
I personally liked O'neils line, "Shoot first, send flowers later." ;-)
Character from Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. Throughout much of the first part, it was a widespread fad to ask "who is John Galt?" whenever one didn't know the answer to a difficult question.
the "heavier" elements are still slowly settling out toward its core.
I think you mean "in" towards its core. It wouldn't release potential energy if the heavier elements were travelling up.
I wonder what sort of strange substance that is...
Is there an english version of the website in your sig?
Current error rates for memory cells are on the order of 10e-6 to 10e-9 if I recall correctly. 10,000 is not good enough.