Not to mention that using someone's computer without their permission is unethical. Black hats don't have to bother with ethics or morals.
GP: Even if it just forced a windows update
The first Windows update after I installed XP hosed my network drivers. If I hadn't given permission for that update I'd have seen a lawyer about the matter.
If you don't have permission to be in a computer STAY THE HELL OUT OF IT. It's unethical, it's illegal, and it's BAD MANNERS.
If you are hanging out with criminals ENGAGING in criminal activity, that's absolutely a problem.
That's true, but nobody was engaging in any criminal activity. And the activity these "criminals" engaged in should not be against the law to begin with. Those sorts of laws are what lets the nanny-state take away your rights in the first plce.
So was your garage door open or shut? locked or unlocked?
Shut but unlocked. The police are the ones who opened it; the cop said so himself. And no matter what crazy Chris did, it does not give the police any right to go into my garage. None whatever. The only way they can legally enter my property without warrant is if someone is under imminent threat, which was never suggested by anyone.
My fourth amendment rights against warrantless search were violated. The fact that you actually have to ask appalls me, but I guess that's the fault of our abysmal educational system.
She was an old girlfriend I hadn't seen in months that I ran across in a bar. The police are NOT supposed to open closed doors, locked or not. "Looking around" IS a search and it is not permitted under the US Constitution. Or wouuldn't be if the Constitution still had any meaning at all.
Your reply "hanging out with people engaged in criminal activity" is profoundly anti-patriotic and pro-tyrrany. We are supposed to have the right of free assembly. You're not supposed to have to do a background check to see if some woman you drink with in a bar has a criminal record.
I should be able to hang out with anybody I please and their criminal activity shouldn't concern me at all.
You, sir, are the reason they're taking our rights away. You not only let them take away rights, you condone and even encourage it.
The work was prompted by revelations that the Madrid train bombers who devastated the city in 2004 first met in a Spanish prison
Obviously prisons are a poor solution to the "undesirable waste persons" created by our economic system.
No, they do their job well. A pot farmer goes to prison and learns how to rape children and bomb trains. As far as teh government is concerned, growing pot is far worse than rape and murder.
There was a fascinating piece of science fiction I read decades ago about a multigenerational star ship. The people on the ship forgot they were even on a ship, there was a religion that arose concerning it, it was forbidden to go certain places (near the hull where the mutants were).
I wish I could remember the name of the book, it may have been a Heinlein story but I don't remember.
But any way, your third option is about the only way - robots. Like we've done it for decades now.
Yes, think of the children. Their rights will be gone longer than mine will, I'm a geezer. I was free of unwarranted search for most of my life, but no longer.
We have some legislators badly in need of trial for treason, followed by a nice good firing squad.
It's a real shame this revolved around a kiddie porn case that hinged on the admissibility of the evidence
Shame? Kiddie porn perverts have no shame. Neither do the legislators and law enforcement officials while taking away your rights. In fact I'm sure they targeted kiddie porn rather than (say) bootleg games.
You have no fourth amendment rights while in your car either. Or as I found out on the day we pay tribute to the brave men an women who died in defense of our Constitutional rights, The cops will search your garage without a warrant too.
I wrote a piece about this a few years ago, it seems things are only getting worse.
A) How are we going to hold a conversation with an extraterrestrial species when we still believe that humans are the only terrestrial species with speech? Biologists are just now realising that vocal animals do in fact communicate with each other.
B) A radically alien environment is going to evolve radical alien organisms. Starfish have no heads, like I said. Mammals have no eggs, lizards don't have milk. Snake eyes and cat eyes have a different pupil than other reptiles and mammals.
sentient amorphous blobs
I've often wondered if an ant were an animal, or if the ant colony was the actual animal?
almost any creature has either bilateral or radial symmetry, simply because it saves on DNA
I wonder if extraterrestrial life would necessarily be dependant on DNA?
any complex creature will have _some_ sensory organs
Which may or may not be the same as our senses. Sight nay be in the radar band yet be blind to visible light. They may even have evolved senses that earth creatures lack.
So now we have a mouth on that "head" too
You wouldn't need a head to have a mouth, eyes, or antennae.
Interstellar travel, at least to any place where we'd expect to find intelligent life, is "less impossible" than FTL
How would you get anywhere but the few closest stars without FTL travel? At half C it would take sixteen years to get to Sirius, and as that's a binary we're not likely to find any civilizations there.
If the Roswell aliens were real, maybe they were looking for intelligent life and went home because they didn't find any?
"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver coincidence, I think NOT!" ~ Oscar Wilde
Duct Tape has amazing adhesive propertiesDuct Tape is the preferred material for Tuxedo construction. It is also a mystical force with a light side and a dark side. It is said to bind the Universe together, and this, combined with the moral duality of the substance, has made it a coveted object of power and worship among several religions, including the Druids(otherwise known as Jedi.) In fact, the bible states that on the third day, God invented Duct Tape.
The Duc(k)t Tape Conspiracy Duct tape is, obviously, made of ducks. Only an idiot would say it's not. However, nobody is completely sure just how the factoris make it. Some say that after the cute little duckies hatch they are ground into powder, which is mixed with water and forms a glue. Others say they don't know. Whatever the method, duct tape is made of ducks.
Works on earth buggies, too. I can't count the number of times a coolant hose or a heater hose (coolant goes through the heater hose?) has gotten a hole and been patched with duct tape "to get to the auto parts store", and was still on the unreplaced hose when I sold or traded the car.
It may be urban legend, but I heard the military calls it "hundred mile per hour tape" because once in some godforsaken jungle somewhere a helicopter broke a rotor (gunshot or something) and the mechanic duct taped it together, telling the pilot to "keep it under a hundred miles an hour".
Why should a server protocol be patented? A patent should be for something you don't want copied. If I were selling servers I'd want to interoperate with clients and other servers.
Forgive me, maybe it's my geezerhood speaking, but I don't understand why anybody would want IM on a phone in the first place. Text messages yes, for if (say) the girl you're calling is in a movie or at the OBGYN or somewhere where she can't take a call right now, but IM? That's INSTANT message.
Why would you IM when you could more easily and cheaply just talk? English class maybe?
*wanders off muttering about foolish young people...*
Here is the deal. Any civilization advanced enough to travel those long distances (or through time) would be sufficiently advanced to simulate any information (on computers) they need to inquire about any species or observe them without even entering the atmosphere (deep scanning).
Computer simulations are useful, but if they were the be-all and end-all we wouldn't need CERN.
And if time travel was possible there would no need to extract live subjects for testing. They would simply extract those who were going to die anyways at the time of death and no one would be the wiser.
How would they know that cows weren't the dominant life form? If they're descended from us than they'll surely be fuckups.
Anyways... As soon as humans get the ability to colonize how well do you think we'll adhere to the respects of other species?
I think it depends on how tasty they are.
Seeing we haven't had any aliens showing up on our doorstep saying "We claim this land in the land of Xarboth the 145th, Emperor of the Known Universe. Now worship our true god or face extermination."
If they were ten million years more advanced than us they wouldn't have to. They would pretty much ignore our indignifigant selves with our insignifigant brains. We don't worry much about squirrels.
It only means either all other species are not interested in colonization, no other races have reached the technological level of space or time travel, or we are alone.
Or that nobody has found this insignifigant little rock in the middle of this vast galazy. Light eminating from a star at the other end of the galaxy when man was becoming human is only now reaching us. There are a hell of a lot of grains of sand on the beach to study.
As to what we'll do out there, I agree. There's little doubt.
You can only trust software that you have examined the code and compiled yourself, and people you trust who have examined and compiled the code themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention that using someone's computer without their permission is unethical. Black hats don't have to bother with ethics or morals.
GP: Even if it just forced a windows update
The first Windows update after I installed XP hosed my network drivers. If I hadn't given permission for that update I'd have seen a lawyer about the matter.
If you don't have permission to be in a computer STAY THE HELL OUT OF IT. It's unethical, it's illegal, and it's BAD MANNERS.
If you are hanging out with criminals ENGAGING in criminal activity, that's absolutely a problem.
That's true, but nobody was engaging in any criminal activity. And the activity these "criminals" engaged in should not be against the law to begin with. Those sorts of laws are what lets the nanny-state take away your rights in the first plce.
So was your garage door open or shut? locked or unlocked?
Shut but unlocked. The police are the ones who opened it; the cop said so himself. And no matter what crazy Chris did, it does not give the police any right to go into my garage. None whatever. The only way they can legally enter my property without warrant is if someone is under imminent threat, which was never suggested by anyone.
My fourth amendment rights against warrantless search were violated. The fact that you actually have to ask appalls me, but I guess that's the fault of our abysmal educational system.
She was an old girlfriend I hadn't seen in months that I ran across in a bar. The police are NOT supposed to open closed doors, locked or not. "Looking around" IS a search and it is not permitted under the US Constitution. Or wouuldn't be if the Constitution still had any meaning at all.
Your reply "hanging out with people engaged in criminal activity" is profoundly anti-patriotic and pro-tyrrany. We are supposed to have the right of free assembly. You're not supposed to have to do a background check to see if some woman you drink with in a bar has a criminal record.
I should be able to hang out with anybody I please and their criminal activity shouldn't concern me at all.
You, sir, are the reason they're taking our rights away. You not only let them take away rights, you condone and even encourage it.
It's a sad day for America.
In short, your philosophy toward security is demonstrably absurd.
In short, you have to trust. There are no absolutes.
We have a few here, too. Unfortunately they never got around to posting the "big brother is watching" posters here in the US.
The work was prompted by revelations that the Madrid train bombers who devastated the city in 2004 first met in a Spanish prison
Obviously prisons are a poor solution to the "undesirable waste persons" created by our economic system.
No, they do their job well. A pot farmer goes to prison and learns how to rape children and bomb trains. As far as teh government is concerned, growing pot is far worse than rape and murder.
It's a matter of a government's priorities.
There was a fascinating piece of science fiction I read decades ago about a multigenerational star ship. The people on the ship forgot they were even on a ship, there was a religion that arose concerning it, it was forbidden to go certain places (near the hull where the mutants were).
I wish I could remember the name of the book, it may have been a Heinlein story but I don't remember.
But any way, your third option is about the only way - robots. Like we've done it for decades now.
Yes, think of the children. Their rights will be gone longer than mine will, I'm a geezer. I was free of unwarranted search for most of my life, but no longer.
We have some legislators badly in need of trial for treason, followed by a nice good firing squad.
It's a real shame this revolved around a kiddie porn case that hinged on the admissibility of the evidence
Shame? Kiddie porn perverts have no shame. Neither do the legislators and law enforcement officials while taking away your rights. In fact I'm sure they targeted kiddie porn rather than (say) bootleg games.
You have no fourth amendment rights while in your car either. Or as I found out on the day we pay tribute to the brave men an women who died in defense of our Constitutional rights, The cops will search your garage without a warrant too.
I wrote a piece about this a few years ago, it seems things are only getting worse.
-mcgrew
A) How are we going to hold a conversation with an extraterrestrial species when we still believe that humans are the only terrestrial species with speech? Biologists are just now realising that vocal animals do in fact communicate with each other.
B) A radically alien environment is going to evolve radical alien organisms. Starfish have no heads, like I said. Mammals have no eggs, lizards don't have milk. Snake eyes and cat eyes have a different pupil than other reptiles and mammals.
sentient amorphous blobs
I've often wondered if an ant were an animal, or if the ant colony was the actual animal?
almost any creature has either bilateral or radial symmetry, simply because it saves on DNA
I wonder if extraterrestrial life would necessarily be dependant on DNA?
any complex creature will have _some_ sensory organs
Which may or may not be the same as our senses. Sight nay be in the radar band yet be blind to visible light. They may even have evolved senses that earth creatures lack.
So now we have a mouth on that "head" too
You wouldn't need a head to have a mouth, eyes, or antennae.
More impossible? My head hurts!
Interstellar travel, at least to any place where we'd expect to find intelligent life, is "less impossible" than FTL
How would you get anywhere but the few closest stars without FTL travel? At half C it would take sixteen years to get to Sirius, and as that's a binary we're not likely to find any civilizations there.
If the Roswell aliens were real, maybe they were looking for intelligent life and went home because they didn't find any?
Works on earth buggies, too. I can't count the number of times a coolant hose or a heater hose (coolant goes through the heater hose?) has gotten a hole and been patched with duct tape "to get to the auto parts store", and was still on the unreplaced hose when I sold or traded the car.
It may be urban legend, but I heard the military calls it "hundred mile per hour tape" because once in some godforsaken jungle somewhere a helicopter broke a rotor (gunshot or something) and the mechanic duct taped it together, telling the pilot to "keep it under a hundred miles an hour".
They used to seal ducts with the stuff.
Has anyone ever taped ducks together with it?
Why should a server protocol be patented? A patent should be for something you don't want copied. If I were selling servers I'd want to interoperate with clients and other servers.
Oh, Microsoft. Never mind, my bad.
Forgive me, maybe it's my geezerhood speaking, but I don't understand why anybody would want IM on a phone in the first place. Text messages yes, for if (say) the girl you're calling is in a movie or at the OBGYN or somewhere where she can't take a call right now, but IM? That's INSTANT message.
Why would you IM when you could more easily and cheaply just talk? English class maybe?
*wanders off muttering about foolish young people...*
But if punishing someone for taste were allowed on /.,
*shudder*
That's my idea of a REAL reference tome!
But first you have to learn the teachers how to teach to teach teaching.
My brain hurts.
Talk of trusting MS is like talk of trusting Sony-BMG, or trusting Hannibal Lecter not to eat you.
For those who don't trust Wikipedia, Here is another cannibal.
"How can a guy with that much money not afford contacts?" ~ Linus Torvalds on Bill Gates' coke bottle glasses
Here is the deal. Any civilization advanced enough to travel those long distances (or through time) would be sufficiently advanced to simulate any information (on computers) they need to inquire about any species or observe them without even entering the atmosphere (deep scanning).
Computer simulations are useful, but if they were the be-all and end-all we wouldn't need CERN.
And if time travel was possible there would no need to extract live subjects for testing. They would simply extract those who were going to die anyways at the time of death and no one would be the wiser.
How would they know that cows weren't the dominant life form? If they're descended from us than they'll surely be fuckups.
Anyways... As soon as humans get the ability to colonize how well do you think we'll adhere to the respects of other species?
I think it depends on how tasty they are.
Seeing we haven't had any aliens showing up on our doorstep saying "We claim this land in the land of Xarboth the 145th, Emperor of the Known Universe. Now worship our true god or face extermination."
If they were ten million years more advanced than us they wouldn't have to. They would pretty much ignore our indignifigant selves with our insignifigant brains. We don't worry much about squirrels.
It only means either all other species are not interested in colonization, no other races have reached the technological level of space or time travel, or we are alone.
Or that nobody has found this insignifigant little rock in the middle of this vast galazy. Light eminating from a star at the other end of the galaxy when man was becoming human is only now reaching us. There are a hell of a lot of grains of sand on the beach to study.
As to what we'll do out there, I agree. There's little doubt.
better link, and a quote: "Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow." ~ Oscar Wilde on Wikipedia
But 1000 years ago air travel wasn't impossible, it just wasn't possible for humans
In other words, "I'm a bird, you insensitive clod!"
You can only trust software that you have examined the code and compiled yourself, and people you trust who have examined and compiled the code themselves.
I trust neither Cisco nor the FBI.
Or if we did meet them, recognising that they are alive, let alone sentient.