I agree, up to a point. I do most of my browsing with Javascript disabled, cookies disabled, use my own font & colors, and turn off images that don't come from the original site. All this along with AdBlock leads to a suprisingly good web experience. However, when it comes to online shopping, banking, and stuff like Google Maps, I can't do without Javascript, so I use a separate browser with all the bells & whistles enabled just for that.
The worst problem with libs is that they only half-think things
The bigger problem is the screechy politics that lead to statements like above. There's plenty of poorly thought out solutions to go around. Extremists on both sides look like a bunch of screaming monkeys throwing shit at each other.
Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
I don't understand your argument. You admit that "root only" ports are inflexible. You admit stuff like xinetd are sub-optimal workarounds. You then propose that if xientd doesn't work for you to do our own ad hoc stuff that you say is tricky and doesn't work with existing programs. And if that doesn't work, you propose SELinux but say it "introduces a LOT more complexity".
How is my proposal reinventing Unix poorly? I'm saying the ports should be treated like any other device/file in Unix, by allowing the administrator to assign group/user privileges. Doesn't this fit in with the Unix model, instead of some arbitrary and unflexible rule that "the first 1,024 ports are root only", or some ad hoc, suboptimal, or complex workaround?
Nice quote. I haven't seen that before. I agree with you -- it's truly sad that in 2007 people writing security software are doing it in C with pointer arithmetic.
Instead of only allowing root to bind to critical ports tt seems that the more flexible approach is to let the admin configure who can bind to those ports. And of course the default should be something secure so that not any random user can connect to the NFS port.
I know, which is why I mentioned parallel programming already. [..] So, it depends how you define "speed" and "power" though.
Yes, you did mention it, but it seems you glossed over the idea that for decades we had it easy with exponential increases in CPU speed, and it did eventually come to an abrupt end. Multiple cores just doesn't make up for the loss of CPU increases.
My point was that my current machine is still a lot slower than one I could buy today.
And my point is that it really isn't. If there was a 10GHz machine available would you not be inclined to upgrade? Over 4 years later and a commodity machine from Best Buy isn't even twice as fast (serially). It used to be that you could pretty much trade raw speed away for abstraction (like Java over C/C++), because the CPU was letting you get away with inefficiency. It was a beautiful thing, and now it's gone for the forseeable future. Today's slow software will be tomorrow's slow software unless it's revamped.
The question still remains as to what the evolutionary/technological curve would look like for a race that had got far enough to make progress towards the stars.
Yes, for sure it's an interesting and open question, and you raised some good points. I just wouldn't have made as many assumptions as you did about technological progress. It's fun to speculate, but we can't say anything with certainty. My inclination is to believe that the vast distances and problems with near light speed travel aren't going to be overcome by stuff like practical wormholes.
How many times do you want to play "is X alive"? I answered you once, and you didn't refute my answers. So now you'll keep on coming back with new X, ignoring all the things that are commonly considered alive.
So no, those are crappy definitions of life and would get you laughed out of any biology classroom in the English-speaking world.
You haven't provided your definition as found in a biology class. Point to a reference. And besides all that, when discussing abortion among the masses, if you want to say that a fetus isn't "alive" and hence can't be killed then you must be referring to common definition, unless you qualify your statements. By the way, do people in biology and doctors talk about killing cancer cells? Why is a product used to *kill* sperm cells called spermicide?
Feotuses don't even fit the definition. They are inanimate, and they are neither vital nor functional.
The fact that they are metabolizing, dividing, and organizing itself into what eventually will be a human being indicates life to me and most people. At what magical moment do you consider the clump of cells that everybody is made out of "alive"?
Do you mean processing power, or clock speed? Clock speed was never a straightforward indication of processing power, although for a given architecture, generally a faster clock means more powerful.
I mean both. Clockspeed has been a good, general indicator of processing power. Yes, having a limited cache and sacraficing everything to clock speed like Intel did at one point can invalidate that, but despite all that clock speed has been the main driver when it came to "wait a couple of years" to solve your cpu-bound problem.
Just because designers have had to focus on other ways of improving a chip's performance, doesn't mean that progress has come to "an abrupt end".
But I think it has, and I'm not the only one. See The Free Lunch Is Over. For decades we've been spoiled by faster chips that made our software run faster without changing a thing. Now we have to focus on parallelizing our software, which is a huge paradigm shift and not easy to do. Also, don't forget Amdahl's Law, which places limits on how much adding new "cores" can help you.
My current PC (1.8GHz P4, 4 1/2 years old) has served me well given its age, but it's certainly not comparable to the machines on sale at present, regardless of its clock speed.
I'd say it compares pretty well, given its age. Consider that if clock speeds had kept up, they would be selling PCs with over 10GHz. I have a similar machine as yours, and I really have no desire to buy a new one. I don't have much use for 64-bits or more cores. I'd love to get my hands on a 10GHz one though:)
There's more general criticism on exponential technological progress on Wikipedia.
If they see it as necessary, and they know its not readily available, they should package it with their own program (GPL and BSD licenses both support this and is one of the strengths of these licenses).
GPL does not support that unless you want to make your program GPL or unless the third party code is LGPL.
IMHO the assumptions behind and thought-processes underlying the Fermi Paradox are *very* present-day-human-centric.
I agree, but so are your thoughts on technological progress. Who's to say that technology will continue to expand at an exponential pace until some singularity/God-like being results? Look at computer speeds. They were getting exponentially faster up until about 5 years ago, when they came to an abrupt end. And for all our computing power, has our software matched the exponential pace? Is there software that can even match the generic intelligence of a 4-year old?
Reset the simulator and run the Earth experiment again. What are the odds that life would look like it does today? We're also continually astounded by the variety of stuff we find in our solar system. I'd guess it's beyond any forseeable computational power and actual knowledge of what's out there to just simulate the universe around us to see what life has arisen without exploring. Even within our own planet, the variety of species and unique ways they have found to live are simply stunning.
And the biggest problem with your argument is that as a species we aren't satisified with just sitting on Earth simulating stuff. We're going to get off this rock and expand, simulation or no.
I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. Do you talk about killing a kidney or killing a wad of ass fat?
If I were considering the kidney for transplant, then yes I would. I'm not sure in what context the killing of ass fat would be of interest, but there are plenty of other common examples: killing germs, talk about the outer layer of our skin cells being dead, spermicide for birth control, etc. That you are arguing this point seems bizarre and obstinate. Common usage abounds.
Alive does NOT have a common definition (can you supply one that actually includes all the things that are usually considered to be living organisms?)
Yes, I can. From Webster's:
alive: "having life : not dead or inanimate"
life: "1 a : the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body b : a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings c : an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction"
I doubt they will ever be equivalent but the US is pretty low for liberty when compared to the other western powers.
I think all the "anti-hate" speech laws in Europe and Canada aren't very libertarian. In France they banned religious dress in schools. In England you can go to jail for shooting a burglar that enters your house. So all countries have problems.
However, your original statement that "if you rock the boat in the US you will also disappear. Much faster if your brown or black." is just fucking ridiculous. The number of people who openly criticize the government in the US is immense. You can site some examples of a few people who get screwed over, but they are the exception, not the rule.
Why don't you cut down on the hyperbole? It would lend credibility to the legitimate things you had to say.
"Alive" has a common definition. It is intellectually dishonest to say that a fetus is not alive in a debate over abortion. If you want to qualify what you mean by alive, then do so and say "human life". In particular, saying "You can't kill something that's not alive" in regards to a fetus is just complete bullshit. Of course you can kill a fetus. The cells are living. It doesn't mean that you are killing a "person" or "human life", and of course the debate on abortion hinges on exactly that question. But to deny biological life for a fetus is a downright lie.
What you can't do is wholesale copy the recommendation database, or you run afoul of compilation copyrights.
And downloading copyrighted music isn't already illegal? Guess what, people don't care.
Also, the masses aren't going to pay $8 a month for some company's recommendation. This is wishful thinking, not economic reality. In reality, the publishers are in the business of selling music (whether it's shiny plastic discs, music downloads, or radio royalties). That is how they can afford to market their artists. Take away the selling, and the business goes away. The only alternative I can think of is advertising like Google does. Still, I'm skeptical.
The "music/video download license" goes straight to the RIAA/MPAA and gets distributed somehow.
It's the "somehow" part that bothers me. There are already tons of places to legally purchase and download music. The distribution of the money is much more accurate, because the songs that are downloaded are directly accounted for. The internet opens up the market for all kinds of publishers and self-forming independent labels.
What I'm saying is that there is no need to legalize and then tax p2p, with trade groups and governmental red tape involved. I can understand arguments against DRM when it comes to personal backups. However, I don't see the reasoning for being allowed to share your copy of a song with 1,000 of your closest internet friends.
I think you should make a distinction between "alive" and "human life worthy of protection". Even a sperm cell is alive, yet nobody is clamoring for its protection. Claiming that a fetus isn't alive strikes me as an intellectually dishonest argument in favor of abortion.
The problem is that we live in a world where pyschological impairments aren't viewed as diseases.
If anything I'd say it has gone in the opposite direction. You now have people claiming their internet porn addiction is a disease, and hyper-active kids are prescribed Ritalin far too frequently. I don't think anybody who has seen a truly autistic child would claim that it isn't a disease, and if there's a clear biological mechanism for such abnormal behavior then I really don't expect any controversy for treating it as a disease.
Re: Photon gathering (and x-rays, RF, IR, etc.)
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 1
Now, I ask you, if these chumps are convinced that blowing themselves up with C4 or Semtex or TNT or even black powder is going to get them to paradise, or some other outcome they think is better than living, why is it you resist the idea that they'd be pretty happy to strap a nuke on?
You ignored the whole argument I made about terrorists and the community around them not being binary. The guy who is willing to blow himself up is not the same as the people who are necessary to help a terrorist acquire and use nuclear weapons. Such people may be ok with a conventional explosion to make their point. They may not feel ok with nuclear weapons. However, if the US starts using tactical nukes in their backyard they may feel encouraged to help terrorists do the same in ours.
You tell me which you'd rather experience: A 50 caliber machine gunning across your torso, or too many rads such that you have symptoms?
How about neither? I don't want to be anywhere near an attack. However, if a war is to be fought, I'd rather it be done with bullets and bombs that don't leave silent, invisible radiation lying around once the activities are over.
Re: Photon gathering (and x-rays, RF, IR, etc.)
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 1
If they [terrorists] had nukes, they would have already used them.
Probably, but I don't think this is a binary thing. Terrorists don't live in isolation, and there aren't terrorist robots that all follow the same program. It may be that the idea of using nukes is unsettling even to those who are terrorists or who would otherwise help terrorists, and this might hinder efforts for nuclear attacks. If the US decides that tactical nukes are on the table, then the terrorist front (and the fringe community around them) as a whole would feel equally justified in using them.
No, the reason isn't anything practical. Nukes are quite practical. The problem is people are squeamish beyond a certain level of destructive power, and they don't have the science to really understand what it is they are thinking about long term, short term, any-term.
People are rational enough to know that radiation is a nasty thing, nastier than bullets or conventional bombs. Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons are taboo for good reason.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, up to a point. I do most of my browsing with Javascript disabled, cookies disabled, use my own font & colors, and turn off images that don't come from the original site. All this along with AdBlock leads to a suprisingly good web experience. However, when it comes to online shopping, banking, and stuff like Google Maps, I can't do without Javascript, so I use a separate browser with all the bells & whistles enabled just for that.
Good luck with that :)
The bigger problem is the screechy politics that lead to statements like above. There's plenty of poorly thought out solutions to go around. Extremists on both sides look like a bunch of screaming monkeys throwing shit at each other.
I don't understand your argument. You admit that "root only" ports are inflexible. You admit stuff like xinetd are sub-optimal workarounds. You then propose that if xientd doesn't work for you to do our own ad hoc stuff that you say is tricky and doesn't work with existing programs. And if that doesn't work, you propose SELinux but say it "introduces a LOT more complexity".
How is my proposal reinventing Unix poorly? I'm saying the ports should be treated like any other device/file in Unix, by allowing the administrator to assign group/user privileges. Doesn't this fit in with the Unix model, instead of some arbitrary and unflexible rule that "the first 1,024 ports are root only", or some ad hoc, suboptimal, or complex workaround?
Nice quote. I haven't seen that before. I agree with you -- it's truly sad that in 2007 people writing security software are doing it in C with pointer arithmetic.
Instead of only allowing root to bind to critical ports tt seems that the more flexible approach is to let the admin configure who can bind to those ports. And of course the default should be something secure so that not any random user can connect to the NFS port.
I take it you really like the word "such"?
Dyslexic much? Sorry, couldn't resist.
Yes, you did mention it, but it seems you glossed over the idea that for decades we had it easy with exponential increases in CPU speed, and it did eventually come to an abrupt end. Multiple cores just doesn't make up for the loss of CPU increases.
And my point is that it really isn't. If there was a 10GHz machine available would you not be inclined to upgrade? Over 4 years later and a commodity machine from Best Buy isn't even twice as fast (serially). It used to be that you could pretty much trade raw speed away for abstraction (like Java over C/C++), because the CPU was letting you get away with inefficiency. It was a beautiful thing, and now it's gone for the forseeable future. Today's slow software will be tomorrow's slow software unless it's revamped.
Yes, for sure it's an interesting and open question, and you raised some good points. I just wouldn't have made as many assumptions as you did about technological progress. It's fun to speculate, but we can't say anything with certainty. My inclination is to believe that the vast distances and problems with near light speed travel aren't going to be overcome by stuff like practical wormholes.
How many times do you want to play "is X alive"? I answered you once, and you didn't refute my answers. So now you'll keep on coming back with new X, ignoring all the things that are commonly considered alive.
You haven't provided your definition as found in a biology class. Point to a reference. And besides all that, when discussing abortion among the masses, if you want to say that a fetus isn't "alive" and hence can't be killed then you must be referring to common definition, unless you qualify your statements. By the way, do people in biology and doctors talk about killing cancer cells? Why is a product used to *kill* sperm cells called spermicide?
The fact that they are metabolizing, dividing, and organizing itself into what eventually will be a human being indicates life to me and most people. At what magical moment do you consider the clump of cells that everybody is made out of "alive"?
I mean both. Clockspeed has been a good, general indicator of processing power. Yes, having a limited cache and sacraficing everything to clock speed like Intel did at one point can invalidate that, but despite all that clock speed has been the main driver when it came to "wait a couple of years" to solve your cpu-bound problem.
But I think it has, and I'm not the only one. See The Free Lunch Is Over. For decades we've been spoiled by faster chips that made our software run faster without changing a thing. Now we have to focus on parallelizing our software, which is a huge paradigm shift and not easy to do. Also, don't forget Amdahl's Law, which places limits on how much adding new "cores" can help you.
I'd say it compares pretty well, given its age. Consider that if clock speeds had kept up, they would be selling PCs with over 10GHz. I have a similar machine as yours, and I really have no desire to buy a new one. I don't have much use for 64-bits or more cores. I'd love to get my hands on a 10GHz one though :)
There's more general criticism on exponential technological progress on Wikipedia.
GPL does not support that unless you want to make your program GPL or unless the third party code is LGPL.
I agree, but so are your thoughts on technological progress. Who's to say that technology will continue to expand at an exponential pace until some singularity/God-like being results? Look at computer speeds. They were getting exponentially faster up until about 5 years ago, when they came to an abrupt end. And for all our computing power, has our software matched the exponential pace? Is there software that can even match the generic intelligence of a 4-year old?
Reset the simulator and run the Earth experiment again. What are the odds that life would look like it does today? We're also continually astounded by the variety of stuff we find in our solar system. I'd guess it's beyond any forseeable computational power and actual knowledge of what's out there to just simulate the universe around us to see what life has arisen without exploring. Even within our own planet, the variety of species and unique ways they have found to live are simply stunning.
And the biggest problem with your argument is that as a species we aren't satisified with just sitting on Earth simulating stuff. We're going to get off this rock and expand, simulation or no.
Actually, he did with: "and we are it".
If I were considering the kidney for transplant, then yes I would. I'm not sure in what context the killing of ass fat would be of interest, but there are plenty of other common examples: killing germs, talk about the outer layer of our skin cells being dead, spermicide for birth control, etc. That you are arguing this point seems bizarre and obstinate. Common usage abounds.
Yes, I can. From Webster's:
alive: "having life : not dead or inanimate"
life: "1 a : the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body b : a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings c : an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction"
I think all the "anti-hate" speech laws in Europe and Canada aren't very libertarian. In France they banned religious dress in schools. In England you can go to jail for shooting a burglar that enters your house. So all countries have problems.
However, your original statement that "if you rock the boat in the US you will also disappear. Much faster if your brown or black." is just fucking ridiculous. The number of people who openly criticize the government in the US is immense. You can site some examples of a few people who get screwed over, but they are the exception, not the rule.
Why don't you cut down on the hyperbole? It would lend credibility to the legitimate things you had to say.
"Alive" has a common definition. It is intellectually dishonest to say that a fetus is not alive in a debate over abortion. If you want to qualify what you mean by alive, then do so and say "human life". In particular, saying "You can't kill something that's not alive" in regards to a fetus is just complete bullshit. Of course you can kill a fetus. The cells are living. It doesn't mean that you are killing a "person" or "human life", and of course the debate on abortion hinges on exactly that question. But to deny biological life for a fetus is a downright lie.
And downloading copyrighted music isn't already illegal? Guess what, people don't care.
Also, the masses aren't going to pay $8 a month for some company's recommendation. This is wishful thinking, not economic reality. In reality, the publishers are in the business of selling music (whether it's shiny plastic discs, music downloads, or radio royalties). That is how they can afford to market their artists. Take away the selling, and the business goes away. The only alternative I can think of is advertising like Google does. Still, I'm skeptical.
It's the "somehow" part that bothers me. There are already tons of places to legally purchase and download music. The distribution of the money is much more accurate, because the songs that are downloaded are directly accounted for. The internet opens up the market for all kinds of publishers and self-forming independent labels.
What I'm saying is that there is no need to legalize and then tax p2p, with trade groups and governmental red tape involved. I can understand arguments against DRM when it comes to personal backups. However, I don't see the reasoning for being allowed to share your copy of a song with 1,000 of your closest internet friends.
I think you should make a distinction between "alive" and "human life worthy of protection". Even a sperm cell is alive, yet nobody is clamoring for its protection. Claiming that a fetus isn't alive strikes me as an intellectually dishonest argument in favor of abortion.
If anything I'd say it has gone in the opposite direction. You now have people claiming their internet porn addiction is a disease, and hyper-active kids are prescribed Ritalin far too frequently. I don't think anybody who has seen a truly autistic child would claim that it isn't a disease, and if there's a clear biological mechanism for such abnormal behavior then I really don't expect any controversy for treating it as a disease.
You ignored the whole argument I made about terrorists and the community around them not being binary. The guy who is willing to blow himself up is not the same as the people who are necessary to help a terrorist acquire and use nuclear weapons. Such people may be ok with a conventional explosion to make their point. They may not feel ok with nuclear weapons. However, if the US starts using tactical nukes in their backyard they may feel encouraged to help terrorists do the same in ours.
How about neither? I don't want to be anywhere near an attack. However, if a war is to be fought, I'd rather it be done with bullets and bombs that don't leave silent, invisible radiation lying around once the activities are over.
Probably, but I don't think this is a binary thing. Terrorists don't live in isolation, and there aren't terrorist robots that all follow the same program. It may be that the idea of using nukes is unsettling even to those who are terrorists or who would otherwise help terrorists, and this might hinder efforts for nuclear attacks. If the US decides that tactical nukes are on the table, then the terrorist front (and the fringe community around them) as a whole would feel equally justified in using them.
People are rational enough to know that radiation is a nasty thing, nastier than bullets or conventional bombs. Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons are taboo for good reason.
Ah well, I suck.