[...] A thousand years ago what we take for granted would have seemed magic or even godlike. And who knows what tomorrow will hold for us - a cure for death, perhaps?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
Not necessarily, at least not in Germany. Article 8 (1) and Article 9 (1) of German Basic Law, for example, expressly limit certain rights only to German citizens. Even though Article 3 (1), as you say, states that all "man are equal before the law", already a few articles later, certain rights are limited only to German citizens. With that in mind, one could argue, without problems, that certain rights (e.g. protection of people's privacy in Germany) can be, by law, limited to German citizens only.
And I'm pretty sure there is possibility to interpret the 14th Amendments section 1, last sentence equally in the US as the previous sentences clearly protect only US citizens.
But hey, who am I to say? I'm not a lawyer, but I know lawyers could always find ways.
"USA" shall mean the "United States of America" and all its government and military institutions. "US Citizen" shall mean any citizen of "USA"....
WHEREAS "Germany" shall mean the Federal Republic of Germany and any and all government and military institutions. "German Citizen" shall mean any citizen of "Germany"....
NOW THEREFORE,
Germany and USA agree that neither party shall secretly or otherwise authorize any of its citizens to secretly obtain information about the other party's citizen or those citizen's communication, publication,... within the other party's legal borders unless expressly authorized by the other party.
--snip-- Do you see the problem?
1) "Oh, sorry. We though he is not a citizen of your country because his name isn't a typical German/US name." 2) "We didn't spy within your borders. We just checked emails on Gmail, Yahoo, etc." 3) "We never authorized such spying. We will identify the person and fire him/her." 4) "Hey Max, I have this guy in [Berlin|New York] and have ample int that he might be plotting to commit acts of terrorism. Can you let me spy on him?" - Max: "Yeah, sure, go ahead. I also have a guy in [Munich|Orlando], can I spy on him? He seems to be interested in pressure cookers..." - "Of course, be my guest."
Just for the fun of it - I've been doing contracts for so many years, I love picking at them and trying to identify all the holes in them...
No, but with all the public data available on social networks, the web itself, and the data that you can purchase, given enough computing power (whatever that may mean), I am pretty sure one could identify national security situations.
If a terrorist organization or any US-unfriendly organization has enough money to buy the required computing power, then collect the vast amounts of public data available about individuals in the US on an ongoing basis and try to identify certain patterns, it could, IMHO, identify potential targets for attacking the US in one way or another.
One of the key problems for these organizations, I believe, is not to find the "right weapon" to use for an attack, but rather to find the "right weakness" where the right weapon could have the highest impact. Unfortunately, it is the traditional "Return on Investment" calculation that they need to do.
I believe DARPA is right to understand whether this is possible with publicly available data of individuals in the US and it could be a very interesting research and analysis topic. Given enough time and computing power/resources, I'm pretty sure I could myself identify certain attack vectors.
For quite some time, I was always interested in identifying possible "attack vectors", whether of IT systems or social systems. Just for the "fun of identifying". Seeing that DARPA finally recognizes this problem public is not bad, as there are probably some huge possibilities using Big Data.
Let's not just dismiss this and mix it with PRISM/NSA or so - this could be really interesting and could help everybody by also identifying ways to protect against such attack vectors.
True.. However, until mankind figures out how to get out of the mechanical age, we aren't going to be building things like what are in movies. for example...
Nuclear power. Generated (supposedly) by the escaping electrons of nuclear matter. in most sci-fi movies, these escaping electrons are captured and immediately used to power ships, mobile suits, cities, etc. "Nuclear reactors" are micro-miniaturized because they don't need the huge plethora of safety gear, nor do they require the electrical/mechanical conversion that we use today. how do we use nuclear? We use it to heat water to steam, which then drives turbines to generate electricity via magnetic induction. Essentially a mechanical means to acheive the desired result.
Actually, though what you say abut how we use nuclear power is true, it seems your understanding of what happens there is not correct.
Unfortunately, controlled nuclear power doesn't generate enough free electrons to be captured and used. What it does generate is heat due to neutrons flying around and getting atoms to move around faster and faster. Many times a neutron hits an atom's core, it kicks out another neutron there which then flies around at high-speed to kick another neutron out of another atom. In these situations, the atom receives a big chunk of energy and starts "wobbling" around heavily, which we then see as heat.
Even with nuclear fusion, the situation would be the same - except exponentially higher.
In order to use "real nuclear power" the way you describe on how we should, we would need to implement matter-antimatter-annhilition. In this case, there is enough free electrons generated that can be captured to use it directly, without having to use centuries-old mechanical technology. It is also what I dream of and I do agree with you that unless we leave mechanical age behind us, we will never reach our full potential.
On a cosmic scale...we're still in the stone age.
On, this I partially disagree. We're not even in the stone age - on a cosmic scale...
There were some interesting articles in German online media regarding this. The BND acknowledged that they were forwarding at least mobile communications data to the NSA and defended this as fight against terrorism.
On the other hand, according to the 2006 NIST Special Publication 800-88 (p. 7): "Studies have shown that most of today’s media can be effectively cleared by one overwrite" and "for ATA disk drives manufactured after 2001 (over 15 GB) the terms clearing and purging have converged."[1] An analysis by Wright et al. of recovery techniques, including magnetic force microscopy, also concludes that a single wipe is all that is required for modern drives. They point out that the long time required for multiple wipes "has created a situation where many organisations ignore the issue all together – resulting in data leaks and loss.
My argument above is, it seems, correct: overwriting with "0" will solves this. Lookup the sentence above:
It literally not only unlinks the files, but also replaces all impacted file-contents with "0"
which quite actually says that one should overwrite it. Alternatively, I have recommended "encryption" in my posting below.
So, next time you tell someone he doesn't know what he's talking about, maybe it could be a good idea for you to re-read his/her statement and try to understand it before commenting.
Alternatively, you could have everything on an encrypted hard disc and instead of deleting the files, you delete the key (overwrite it on a block-level). So could hand-over the hard disc but since the key is not retrievable anymore (and you could make it so that it looks like a hard disc failure), that's it...
A while ago I had a similar thought. My solution was quite easy:
Install an email system that does the the following: Normally, when "standard" email arrives, it is processed as usual.
When an email arrives from an authorized sender (such as you), in a very specially formatted way and with special content, the mail server immediately starts destroying all emails, all communication logs, and all attached backups. It literally not only unlinks the files, but also replaces all impacted file-contents with "0". You can even do it on block-level completely reformat (overwrite) the hard disc in a way that it looks crashed. It then initiates a clean re-install of a clean, unused, fresh out-of-the-box system.
The only that you have to do is to make sure none of the backups are available... Then again, I would probably NOT have historical backups of emails outside somewhere, but rather backups on devices that *are* connected to the server and erase those too...
End result: "Ooops, sorry, but it seems, my server has crashed..."
The problem is "... unless required by law", not the second part ("... or court order"). The NSA cannot request a court order in Norway.
But if Norway has a law that requires the email provider to provide information to the Norwegian secret service, which then forwards the information to the NSA, then yes, you can "can drive a truck through [that hole]".
In my experience, having a mail server provider in Europe (e.g.) and using PGP/GPG could help. The problem is of course that your recipient also needs PGP/GPG.
1&1 and Deutsche Telekom in Germany just announced that (paraphrasing it) they will take email security more seriously now. You might want t get an email account at GMX in Germany (product of 1&1) and then use PGP/GPG for fully confidential communication. I wouldn't use their webmail interface, rather suggest to use their IMAP/POP Interface using SSL/TLS.
Using PGP/GPG *and* a foreign email service provider helps in (a) encrypting your email (PGP/GPG), and (b) (if used with SSL/TLS) communication, also hiding the sender/recipient identification, including your email's subject.
On the other hand, I don't know if that would be really secure (for [b] at least), as the German secret service (BND) seems to forward communication information to the NSA (at least the meta-information)...
If you really want to communicate securely, I recommend a "dead mailbox"-principle electronically, but by using PGP/GPG to encrypt the file in question, maybe even hiding the content as a picture or video...
I never directly mentioned anything like money to others.
"Soft Power" means that you use your political and economical clout, such us using the UN, as well as e.g. access to your market as a means to convince other countries to behave differently, more in-line with American values.
Also sharing riches not necessarily means giving money; there are countries that are significantly richer in per-capita income... I meant your values that are enshrined in your Constitution as well as in your Declaration of Independence; lastly, riches also contains the diversity, creativity, and entrepreneurship -
You know, not everything is about money - there are more riches in the US than just money. In fact, the US is basically bankrupt - it owes over 2 Trillion to the Chinese Government alone.
So, please do not put words in my mouth - sharing riches and having an interest in what's going in the world doesn't necessarily mean giving money away. In fact, giving away money would be the dumbest thing to do - You know the saying: "Give a man a fish, he is fed for a day. Teach him how to fish..."
The US has more to give than just money and soldiers. You just have to understand and use it rightly and be more inline with the values enshrined in valuable documents as well as the values the US preaches.
The greatness of a person or a country, still, lies not in his money, power or values - but rather in how he uses it...
I believe that that friend of mine was quite trained in driving + reading and knew exactly when to put down the book and when to continue. So, he could not be really distracted from driving while reading.
I agree: talking to passengers while driving doesn't distract me, but talking on the phone *does* - so I don't pick-up the phone either. I rather find a stop, halt the car and then call back if the caller seemed some "important" person (my wife, daughter, etc...)
In fact, knowing your limits is one of the key things I learned while taking driving lessons in Germany. My teacher would say: "You *always* need to have reserves: gasoline, water, your speed [never drive top-speed], and your own energy and concentration. If you are at your limits, stop!"
That's probably the one best recommendation he gave that I will never forget...
As someone who has moved to the US only about four years ago, I can say that it still is a great country. There is still the possibility to fix the government's wrongdoings - and there are really great people here in the US.
The country is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen (well, it is half a continent, isn't it?). I took the California Zephyr and traveled a little, otherwise spent most of my time at the East Coast or West Coast. I'm planning to do a cross-country trip quite soon with a car.
But so, whether it was in the major cities or small towns and villages - the people are really great, nice, not always educated enough (to my expectations), but have a great heart.
Unfortunately, the last decade was a nightmare as a lot of people here started thinking about isolationism again - also arrogance (Government mostly, but also some John Does).
I think there are only very few things that Americans need to do to make their country really a Great Country again:
1) Fight for your freedoms that are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution - all your rights are there and you need to grab them back from your government and government agencies; 2) Have a serious interest in what's really going on in the world - politically, economically, socially - and take actions (not military) using soft-power to expand the rights and freedoms into other places in the world; 3) Use your riches to share with the rest of the world and help people in other places to increase their wellbeing/wealth 4) Take responsible action towards the nature and environment - you are the guys who, more or less, "invented" National Parks and Nature Reserves 5) Stop waging war on anything - fighting against terrorists is a police activity, not military - there is no need for a "War on Terrorism" (we in Good Ol' Europe had terrorism for a very long time and made a lot of mistakes - learn from them - but we never fought a "War on Terror" [except Turkey]) 6) And stay/become liberal, welcoming, diverse again - as much as possible.
I must say, having lived in Europe, Turkey and in spent some time in other countries, the US is still the country where I feel most "free" - that doesn't mean it is free, but it is to show how "unfree" you can feel in other places on this planet. Let's just make the US again the "Country of Ms Liberty"
I don't know, I knew a guy who would, every year, drive from Kiel (Northern Germany) to Malaga (Spain) in his Volkswagen van. While doing so, he would read poems and memorize these so could recite.
The distance is about 2700 Km (1600 miles) and he never had an accident. I don't know how he did it, but for about ten years, he was quite a safe driver (after that, I lost contact to him - because I moved to another place)...
... and to add: I would *really* like to know if there is a way to actively and consciously use the brain's subconscious ability to perform 0.2 - 2 ExaFLOPS. If we could consciously harness that ability, we wouldn't need any computer at all.
Maybe by understanding how the brain and consciousness/subconsciousness works, we could harness that - but I think, it's just wishful thinking...
Funded by DARPA. There's a military or dictatorship angle in there somewhere...perhaps...towards accurate predictive models of the 30 minute delay between initial decision formation and action...???
In fact, I cannot judge what it will be used for and I wonder myself why DARPA is financing something like this. But then again, I wasn't sure about other DARPA fundings either.
Yes, DARPA might have sinister motives, but I would definitely like to understand how the brain works and how "mind" and "consciousness" is created (either in the brain or... ) - but, as you say, perhaps there's something more to it than we can anticipate at the moment wrt DARPA...
Actually, the idea is to understand two things, which we still don't know how they work:
1) The brain itself - how does it work, how does it process information 2) More important: what is the relation between brain and "mind" - is "mind" created in the brain or is the brain the mind. More relevant for humans is "consciousness": does the consciousness inform when a complex-enough brain is created or how does it exist?
I'm not sure this project will get closer to answering Q2, but it will probably help in bringing us one step closer to answer Q1.
Actually his argument is not valid if you use OS-based password storage such as Keychain on OSX.
The way it works is that all your confidential data (passwords, etc) are stored in a keychain, which is encrypted. In order to access a password from the keychain, the app in question must send a request to the OS. The OS then asks the user whether he/she wants to grant access to that password to the app in question. The user can then decide to give one-time access all "Always Allow".
The good thing is that if you use "Allow" and NOT "Always Allow", every time the same app request access to the same password, the OS asks the user again and the user must enter his password to allow access to it.
For quite some time, I didn't use Firefox because it had its own password storage - not because I didn't trust Firefox but because it was insecure to save my passwords in a place only protected by Firefox (and not being able to just copy the password-file to somewhere else, e.g. new machine).
I don't know how secure Keychain encryption is, but I assume it is secure enough that you can rely on it - also, having your passwords in one place and accessible across apps (with user-grants) is a nice-to-have.
The scenario the Google guys are explaining above is not possible either as the extension-install on Safari needs either an Admin-Account (to install the extension for all users) or can only be installed for one user. Lastly, yes, the malicious guy can have access to session cookies and grab my history, but at least he cannot grab my passwords.
The reason for the the two different valuations is based on what discount you use to value the future obligations and potential gains.
As I understand, Detroit was using something around 8% (or 9%), which would show that the Defined Benefit Pension Plans they offered way back would be 80% funded. When, according to an external accountant, you'd use a more realistic 5%, the funding would be less than 50%.
Basically, a good leader/manager tries to find the best possible people for his organization to get things done. It is not necessarily his own job to do things himself, but rather to find the right people, promote, coach and help them to deliver the best possible results.
So, if it's true that Ballmer didn't have a good product guy next to him, then it would be his fault as he is the President & CEO of the company, i.e. he is the ultimate decision-maker for hiring such a person.
Either he didn't see the need (which means he is a bad manager), he couldn't find someone (bad manager, too) or he didn't want such a person next to him (a very bad leader).
In any case, as I always tell my people: If an employee doesn't perform, it is not necessarily his fault but rather his boss's - because his boss is the one who either hired him/her or decided to keep him/her at the current position.
There are only very few tasks that a manager needs to do, among of the most important ones are defining the tasks to be done to deliver a specific result, define a job description for it and find the right person/assign the person to do that task. After that, it is the responsibility of the manager to make sure that that person can deliver - by creating the environment needed.
This might sounds overtly "optimistic", but this has always been what I believed in what a good manager is... (apart from some other tasks, that are less relevant)...
So, with that definition in mind, I would say that Ballmer was not a good CEO - nor a particularly bad one either as he didn't manage to bankrupt MS. He is/was just a mediocre one...
You probably mean "Memory is cheap in terms of dollars".
On a mobile device such as a smartphone, every micrometer of space counts. Every milliwatt of energy consumption counts. It's not about whether another GB of RAM costs ten bucks or so (whatever it is). It is about efficient use of space and battery.
If you add more RAM, it not only uses more energy but because it also requires space, it reduces the space available for either the battery or other components. There are numerous other reasons why memory, in a smartphone, is NOT cheap. And $$ is definitely not the main cause why people don't add that much memory (well, for some low-end devices, $$ is also a reason, but for high-end smartphones, that doesn't really count).
Yet C developers have no problem using C, which is much more minimal language, to do much more than what you do with JavaScript, and they rarely depend on shitloads of libraries.
Hmm, try doing something in C without stdio, stdlib, etc - I dare you to print out one single character in C without using stdio....
C is a quite barebones language; if you didn't have all the libraries, you couldn't do anything in it except running some loops, if/else's and such.
Slashdot Mirror
[...] A thousand years ago what we take for granted would have seemed magic or even godlike. And who knows what tomorrow will hold for us - a cure for death, perhaps?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
Not necessarily, at least not in Germany. Article 8 (1) and Article 9 (1) of German Basic Law, for example, expressly limit certain rights only to German citizens. Even though Article 3 (1), as you say, states that all "man are equal before the law", already a few articles later, certain rights are limited only to German citizens. With that in mind, one could argue, without problems, that certain rights (e.g. protection of people's privacy in Germany) can be, by law, limited to German citizens only.
And I'm pretty sure there is possibility to interpret the 14th Amendments section 1, last sentence equally in the US as the previous sentences clearly protect only US citizens.
But hey, who am I to say? I'm not a lawyer, but I know lawyers could always find ways.
WHEREAS
"USA" shall mean the "United States of America" and all its government and military institutions. ...
"US Citizen" shall mean any citizen of "USA".
WHEREAS ...
"Germany" shall mean the Federal Republic of Germany and any and all government and military institutions.
"German Citizen" shall mean any citizen of "Germany".
NOW THEREFORE,
Germany and USA agree that neither party shall secretly or otherwise authorize any of its citizens to secretly obtain information about the other party's citizen or those citizen's communication, publication, ... within the other party's legal borders unless expressly authorized by the other party.
--snip--
Do you see the problem?
1) "Oh, sorry. We though he is not a citizen of your country because his name isn't a typical German/US name."
2) "We didn't spy within your borders. We just checked emails on Gmail, Yahoo, etc."
3) "We never authorized such spying. We will identify the person and fire him/her."
4) "Hey Max, I have this guy in [Berlin|New York] and have ample int that he might be plotting to commit acts of terrorism. Can you let me spy on him?" - Max: "Yeah, sure, go ahead. I also have a guy in [Munich|Orlando], can I spy on him? He seems to be interested in pressure cookers..." - "Of course, be my guest."
Just for the fun of it - I've been doing contracts for so many years, I love picking at them and trying to identify all the holes in them...
No, but with all the public data available on social networks, the web itself, and the data that you can purchase, given enough computing power (whatever that may mean), I am pretty sure one could identify national security situations.
If a terrorist organization or any US-unfriendly organization has enough money to buy the required computing power, then collect the vast amounts of public data available about individuals in the US on an ongoing basis and try to identify certain patterns, it could, IMHO, identify potential targets for attacking the US in one way or another.
One of the key problems for these organizations, I believe, is not to find the "right weapon" to use for an attack, but rather to find the "right weakness" where the right weapon could have the highest impact. Unfortunately, it is the traditional "Return on Investment" calculation that they need to do.
I believe DARPA is right to understand whether this is possible with publicly available data of individuals in the US and it could be a very interesting research and analysis topic. Given enough time and computing power/resources, I'm pretty sure I could myself identify certain attack vectors.
For quite some time, I was always interested in identifying possible "attack vectors", whether of IT systems or social systems. Just for the "fun of identifying". Seeing that DARPA finally recognizes this problem public is not bad, as there are probably some huge possibilities using Big Data.
Let's not just dismiss this and mix it with PRISM/NSA or so - this could be really interesting and could help everybody by also identifying ways to protect against such attack vectors.
Men, you're lucky men. Soon, you'll all be fighting for your planet. many of you will be dying for your planet.
Sir: What's it that we're fighting and dying for?
I don't know. You are the ones doing the dying...
Or so it seems.
True..
However, until mankind figures out how to get out of the mechanical age, we aren't going to be building things like what are in movies.
for example...
Nuclear power. Generated (supposedly) by the escaping electrons of nuclear matter.
in most sci-fi movies, these escaping electrons are captured and immediately used to power ships, mobile suits, cities, etc. "Nuclear reactors" are micro-miniaturized because they don't need the huge plethora of safety gear, nor do they require the electrical/mechanical conversion that we use today.
how do we use nuclear? We use it to heat water to steam, which then drives turbines to generate electricity via magnetic induction. Essentially a mechanical means to acheive the desired result.
Actually, though what you say abut how we use nuclear power is true, it seems your understanding of what happens there is not correct.
Unfortunately, controlled nuclear power doesn't generate enough free electrons to be captured and used. What it does generate is heat due to neutrons flying around and getting atoms to move around faster and faster. Many times a neutron hits an atom's core, it kicks out another neutron there which then flies around at high-speed to kick another neutron out of another atom. In these situations, the atom receives a big chunk of energy and starts "wobbling" around heavily, which we then see as heat.
Even with nuclear fusion, the situation would be the same - except exponentially higher.
In order to use "real nuclear power" the way you describe on how we should, we would need to implement matter-antimatter-annhilition. In this case, there is enough free electrons generated that can be captured to use it directly, without having to use centuries-old mechanical technology. It is also what I dream of and I do agree with you that unless we leave mechanical age behind us, we will never reach our full potential.
On a cosmic scale...we're still in the stone age.
On, this I partially disagree. We're not even in the stone age - on a cosmic scale...
There were some interesting articles in German online media regarding this. The BND acknowledged that they were forwarding at least mobile communications data to the NSA and defended this as fight against terrorism.
Example source: http://www.zeit.de/politik/2013-08/bnd-gibt-daten-weiter (in German)
I did check that and came back with
On the other hand, according to the 2006 NIST Special Publication 800-88 (p. 7): "Studies have shown that most of today’s media can be effectively cleared by one overwrite" and "for ATA disk drives manufactured after 2001 (over 15 GB) the terms clearing and purging have converged."[1] An analysis by Wright et al. of recovery techniques, including magnetic force microscopy, also concludes that a single wipe is all that is required for modern drives. They point out that the long time required for multiple wipes "has created a situation where many organisations ignore the issue all together – resulting in data leaks and loss.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence#Overwriting
My argument above is, it seems, correct: overwriting with "0" will solves this. Lookup the sentence above:
It literally not only unlinks the files, but also replaces all impacted file-contents with "0"
which quite actually says that one should overwrite it. Alternatively, I have recommended "encryption" in my posting below.
So, next time you tell someone he doesn't know what he's talking about, maybe it could be a good idea for you to re-read his/her statement and try to understand it before commenting.
Alternatively, you could have everything on an encrypted hard disc and instead of deleting the files, you delete the key (overwrite it on a block-level). So could hand-over the hard disc but since the key is not retrievable anymore (and you could make it so that it looks like a hard disc failure), that's it...
A while ago I had a similar thought. My solution was quite easy:
Install an email system that does the the following: Normally, when "standard" email arrives, it is processed as usual.
When an email arrives from an authorized sender (such as you), in a very specially formatted way and with special content, the mail server immediately starts destroying all emails, all communication logs, and all attached backups. It literally not only unlinks the files, but also replaces all impacted file-contents with "0". You can even do it on block-level completely reformat (overwrite) the hard disc in a way that it looks crashed. It then initiates a clean re-install of a clean, unused, fresh out-of-the-box system.
The only that you have to do is to make sure none of the backups are available... Then again, I would probably NOT have historical backups of emails outside somewhere, but rather backups on devices that *are* connected to the server and erase those too...
End result: "Ooops, sorry, but it seems, my server has crashed..."
The problem is "... unless required by law", not the second part ("... or court order"). The NSA cannot request a court order in Norway.
But if Norway has a law that requires the email provider to provide information to the Norwegian secret service, which then forwards the information to the NSA, then yes, you can "can drive a truck through [that hole]".
Yes, correct.
In my experience, having a mail server provider in Europe (e.g.) and using PGP/GPG could help. The problem is of course that your recipient also needs PGP/GPG.
1&1 and Deutsche Telekom in Germany just announced that (paraphrasing it) they will take email security more seriously now. You might want t get an email account at GMX in Germany (product of 1&1) and then use PGP/GPG for fully confidential communication. I wouldn't use their webmail interface, rather suggest to use their IMAP/POP Interface using SSL/TLS.
Using PGP/GPG *and* a foreign email service provider helps in (a) encrypting your email (PGP/GPG), and (b) (if used with SSL/TLS) communication, also hiding the sender/recipient identification, including your email's subject.
On the other hand, I don't know if that would be really secure (for [b] at least), as the German secret service (BND) seems to forward communication information to the NSA (at least the meta-information)...
If you really want to communicate securely, I recommend a "dead mailbox"-principle electronically, but by using PGP/GPG to encrypt the file in question, maybe even hiding the content as a picture or video...
I never directly mentioned anything like money to others.
"Soft Power" means that you use your political and economical clout, such us using the UN, as well as e.g. access to your market as a means to convince other countries to behave differently, more in-line with American values.
Also sharing riches not necessarily means giving money; there are countries that are significantly richer in per-capita income... I meant your values that are enshrined in your Constitution as well as in your Declaration of Independence; lastly, riches also contains the diversity, creativity, and entrepreneurship -
You know, not everything is about money - there are more riches in the US than just money. In fact, the US is basically bankrupt - it owes over 2 Trillion to the Chinese Government alone.
So, please do not put words in my mouth - sharing riches and having an interest in what's going in the world doesn't necessarily mean giving money away. In fact, giving away money would be the dumbest thing to do - You know the saying: "Give a man a fish, he is fed for a day. Teach him how to fish..."
The US has more to give than just money and soldiers. You just have to understand and use it rightly and be more inline with the values enshrined in valuable documents as well as the values the US preaches.
The greatness of a person or a country, still, lies not in his money, power or values - but rather in how he uses it...
I believe that that friend of mine was quite trained in driving + reading and knew exactly when to put down the book and when to continue. So, he could not be really distracted from driving while reading.
I agree: talking to passengers while driving doesn't distract me, but talking on the phone *does* - so I don't pick-up the phone either. I rather find a stop, halt the car and then call back if the caller seemed some "important" person (my wife, daughter, etc...)
In fact, knowing your limits is one of the key things I learned while taking driving lessons in Germany. My teacher would say: "You *always* need to have reserves: gasoline, water, your speed [never drive top-speed], and your own energy and concentration. If you are at your limits, stop!"
That's probably the one best recommendation he gave that I will never forget...
As someone who has moved to the US only about four years ago, I can say that it still is a great country. There is still the possibility to fix the government's wrongdoings - and there are really great people here in the US.
The country is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen (well, it is half a continent, isn't it?). I took the California Zephyr and traveled a little, otherwise spent most of my time at the East Coast or West Coast. I'm planning to do a cross-country trip quite soon with a car.
But so, whether it was in the major cities or small towns and villages - the people are really great, nice, not always educated enough (to my expectations), but have a great heart.
Unfortunately, the last decade was a nightmare as a lot of people here started thinking about isolationism again - also arrogance (Government mostly, but also some John Does).
I think there are only very few things that Americans need to do to make their country really a Great Country again:
1) Fight for your freedoms that are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution - all your rights are there and you need to grab them back from your government and government agencies;
2) Have a serious interest in what's really going on in the world - politically, economically, socially - and take actions (not military) using soft-power to expand the rights and freedoms into other places in the world;
3) Use your riches to share with the rest of the world and help people in other places to increase their wellbeing/wealth
4) Take responsible action towards the nature and environment - you are the guys who, more or less, "invented" National Parks and Nature Reserves
5) Stop waging war on anything - fighting against terrorists is a police activity, not military - there is no need for a "War on Terrorism" (we in Good Ol' Europe had terrorism for a very long time and made a lot of mistakes - learn from them - but we never fought a "War on Terror" [except Turkey])
6) And stay/become liberal, welcoming, diverse again - as much as possible.
I must say, having lived in Europe, Turkey and in spent some time in other countries, the US is still the country where I feel most "free" - that doesn't mean it is free, but it is to show how "unfree" you can feel in other places on this planet. Let's just make the US again the "Country of Ms Liberty"
I don't know, I knew a guy who would, every year, drive from Kiel (Northern Germany) to Malaga (Spain) in his Volkswagen van. While doing so, he would read poems and memorize these so could recite.
The distance is about 2700 Km (1600 miles) and he never had an accident. I don't know how he did it, but for about ten years, he was quite a safe driver (after that, I lost contact to him - because I moved to another place)...
... and to add: I would *really* like to know if there is a way to actively and consciously use the brain's subconscious ability to perform 0.2 - 2 ExaFLOPS. If we could consciously harness that ability, we wouldn't need any computer at all.
Maybe by understanding how the brain and consciousness/subconsciousness works, we could harness that - but I think, it's just wishful thinking...
Funded by DARPA. There's a military or dictatorship angle in there somewhere...perhaps...towards accurate predictive models of the 30 minute delay between initial decision formation and action...???
In fact, I cannot judge what it will be used for and I wonder myself why DARPA is financing something like this. But then again, I wasn't sure about other DARPA fundings either.
Yes, DARPA might have sinister motives, but I would definitely like to understand how the brain works and how "mind" and "consciousness" is created (either in the brain or ... ) - but, as you say, perhaps there's something more to it than we can anticipate at the moment wrt DARPA...
Actually, the idea is to understand two things, which we still don't know how they work:
1) The brain itself - how does it work, how does it process information
2) More important: what is the relation between brain and "mind" - is "mind" created in the brain or is the brain the mind. More relevant for humans is "consciousness": does the consciousness inform when a complex-enough brain is created or how does it exist?
I'm not sure this project will get closer to answering Q2, but it will probably help in bringing us one step closer to answer Q1.
He was probably talking about Google.ORG, not necessarily the for-profit-Google.
Actually his argument is not valid if you use OS-based password storage such as Keychain on OSX.
The way it works is that all your confidential data (passwords, etc) are stored in a keychain, which is encrypted. In order to access a password from the keychain, the app in question must send a request to the OS. The OS then asks the user whether he/she wants to grant access to that password to the app in question. The user can then decide to give one-time access all "Always Allow".
The good thing is that if you use "Allow" and NOT "Always Allow", every time the same app request access to the same password, the OS asks the user again and the user must enter his password to allow access to it.
For quite some time, I didn't use Firefox because it had its own password storage - not because I didn't trust Firefox but because it was insecure to save my passwords in a place only protected by Firefox (and not being able to just copy the password-file to somewhere else, e.g. new machine).
I don't know how secure Keychain encryption is, but I assume it is secure enough that you can rely on it - also, having your passwords in one place and accessible across apps (with user-grants) is a nice-to-have.
The scenario the Google guys are explaining above is not possible either as the extension-install on Safari needs either an Admin-Account (to install the extension for all users) or can only be installed for one user. Lastly, yes, the malicious guy can have access to session cookies and grab my history, but at least he cannot grab my passwords.
The reason for the the two different valuations is based on what discount you use to value the future obligations and potential gains.
As I understand, Detroit was using something around 8% (or 9%), which would show that the Defined Benefit Pension Plans they offered way back would be 80% funded. When, according to an external accountant, you'd use a more realistic 5%, the funding would be less than 50%.
Basically, a good leader/manager tries to find the best possible people for his organization to get things done. It is not necessarily his own job to do things himself, but rather to find the right people, promote, coach and help them to deliver the best possible results.
So, if it's true that Ballmer didn't have a good product guy next to him, then it would be his fault as he is the President & CEO of the company, i.e. he is the ultimate decision-maker for hiring such a person.
Either he didn't see the need (which means he is a bad manager), he couldn't find someone (bad manager, too) or he didn't want such a person next to him (a very bad leader).
In any case, as I always tell my people: If an employee doesn't perform, it is not necessarily his fault but rather his boss's - because his boss is the one who either hired him/her or decided to keep him/her at the current position.
There are only very few tasks that a manager needs to do, among of the most important ones are defining the tasks to be done to deliver a specific result, define a job description for it and find the right person/assign the person to do that task. After that, it is the responsibility of the manager to make sure that that person can deliver - by creating the environment needed.
This might sounds overtly "optimistic", but this has always been what I believed in what a good manager is... (apart from some other tasks, that are less relevant)...
So, with that definition in mind, I would say that Ballmer was not a good CEO - nor a particularly bad one either as he didn't manage to bankrupt MS. He is/was just a mediocre one...
You probably mean "Memory is cheap in terms of dollars".
On a mobile device such as a smartphone, every micrometer of space counts. Every milliwatt of energy consumption counts. It's not about whether another GB of RAM costs ten bucks or so (whatever it is). It is about efficient use of space and battery.
If you add more RAM, it not only uses more energy but because it also requires space, it reduces the space available for either the battery or other components. There are numerous other reasons why memory, in a smartphone, is NOT cheap. And $$ is definitely not the main cause why people don't add that much memory (well, for some low-end devices, $$ is also a reason, but for high-end smartphones, that doesn't really count).
Yet C developers have no problem using C, which is much more minimal language, to do much more than what you do with JavaScript, and they rarely depend on shitloads of libraries.
Hmm, try doing something in C without stdio, stdlib, etc - I dare you to print out one single character in C without using stdio....
C is a quite barebones language; if you didn't have all the libraries, you couldn't do anything in it except running some loops, if/else's and such.