From TFA, "Maintaining those indexes is expensive and slows down transaction processing. Let's get rid of them," Ellison remarked. "Let's throw all of those analytic indexes away and replace the indexes with in-memory column sort."
This merely minimizes the penalties of poor indexing and RBAR by making complete table scans on arbitrary columns faster. Apparently Mr. Ellison has forgotten his algoithmics and combinatorics - Oh, wait, no he didn't, he dropped out as a sophmore. Pity, because had he stayed, he would have learned that even with a 1000x slower storage medium, an O(log N) algorithm (index seek) will eventually beat an O(N log N) algorithm (column sort).
RTA - the improvement is there specifically for real time analytic workloads. In these kind of workflows the optimal algorithm is O(n) in general case and indexes are useless (query optimizing engine will always choose scans as you need to visit a lot of data). You might know a thing or two about algorithms, but you should brush up on problem analysis 101.
Other mistakes in logic: Index seek and column sort are not different algorithms for the same task so comparing them brings little insight (without considering some other details of the query optimizer). This leads you to nonsensical claim that O(log N) will eventually beat or be equal to O(N log N). It is not eventually, the first will be always faster or equal.
The legislation is intended for Telcos and ISPs according to the excerpt. AFAIK they already have legislation on log retention.
So you have couple of easily detectable cases:
* Missing logs or other log anomalies and no reported breach - bad and easy to check
* Logs with breach activity and no reported breach - bad and possible to check
So the worst case is actually if someone manages to reconstruct the logs, however I would say that would not be so easy these days with redundant and complex systems that log at various levels.
As for reporting the breach - as with anything that you need to report yourself it would require audits of some sorts.
Working virtually is not what makes someone unavailable - I work in a nice mix that allows for comparison. We have four people team: two people at one site, one person off-site in another office (at +6 hours) and another person off-site working from home in the same time zone.
Virtual meetings i.e. voice and sharing a desktop tend to be more more productive than cramping around a monitor or booking a meeting room in most cases. If you manage to add video you can recover a part of non verbal communication channel and sharing control and switching desktops from one person to another allows for very productive work for up to four people to the extent that we sometimes prefer it even when all participants are at the same site. On the other hand the time zone difference of one team member indeed leads to some issues having to wait.
Therefore it is not virtual work that makes it less effective, but it is the working times flexibility or time zone differences that needs to be offset with attention to scheduling that you are highlighting as a cause of productivity loss - and that is a matter of working hours policies not real life vs virtual office setup.
because obviously we will set things up so that only obedient units ever get to transmit their "genes" to the next robot generation, so to speak
Ah, really? So, if we 'filter' only the 'obedient' units in each genereation how do you define this "obedience"? (Of course, in a way that is essentially(!) different compared to Asimov's second law, as that is your point.)
Saying that this is not a good resource depends on what you compare it to. If you compare to an experienced and brilliant teacher giving lectures to a small group of students then Khan does not really have a chance. If you compare also to best of books he is a bit shaky. But I've read that lots of people find it a good resource and I am not surprised - it is a video, you can do it at your own pace and it has a social network component. If used as additional learning tool I can't see how you could call it anything but a good resource.
Numbers consisting of long sequences of digits can be made more readable by separating them into groups, preferably groups of three, separated by a small space. For this reason, ISO 31-0 specifies that such groups of digits should never be separated by a comma or point, as these are reserved for use as the decimal sign.
To put this in perspective, natural background radiation is aproximately 1-3 mSv per year , while at 10.000mSv death is to be expected.
You mean 10 000 (ten thousand).
What's with this irritating Europe-style switching of the command and decimal point in English? I see it more and more. It might be what they do in Europe but in English, using the decimal there is rather misleading.
True, but... the big thing in the Khan's effort is material nicely divided into chunks which can be skipped or studied in detail. Another big plus is a social component - take a look at stackoverflow and cousins - the social dimension makes these things work. The (not so clear) deficiency of Khan's academy is, while the model is nice, sticking to single source is not enough and is biased (in this case respectably well biased in good way, but inherently imperfect).
Still, I see this as a push in the right direction, the trick is not to think of it as a silver bullet. This approach is bloody useful - reminding yourself of certain topic or learning new one can be achieved in an ecosystem of peers, with what seems to be good quality material. Yes, it is, and it will be even in next evolutionary cycles, an education which quality can not be compared to any real live teacher worth his own education, but if you watched the ted video you'd know that the realistic use case for this 'academy' is to be supplemental tool, and as such it has enormous potential. In and out of the classroom. Just don't abuse it or expect things from it that it can not deliver.
If(!) ARM is more energy efficient then it delivers more processing power per unit of power. Principle works the same at 250mW and at 600W. It would also generate less heat. Ability to turn the cores on and off is additional benefit that would further improve efficiency.
True, except I don't consider spatial memory and image memory to be the same.
True. They are not the same, but there is overlap. Topological rarely goes without image memory. Images are encoded, yes, and photographic memory is really rare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVqRT_kCOLI) and probably there's a reason.
First of all spatial memory provides a constant stream of clues. That is you have a current view that you can use as a key to the next assiocation, if you try to remember an image you usually have a one clue -> all details relation. You can fix that by making strings of associations, but that is the memory tricks we are talking about.
Memory is association. What you call tricks are just using conscious efforts to reinforce associations.
Furthermore, memory can be improved even without conscious meddling in encoding system; one of the standard exercises during drawing classes is to observe different parts of face - for example you spend a week observing people's noses. All the time. Everywhere you go. Result: your perception and memory increases - it is like the compression algorithms that help you encode and associate a given detail (nose, ears, eyes, etc..) improves.
Also, the image is not a single, full detail clue in terms of experience on the level of neuron excitation - your eyes always provide the stream, even looking at the still image - full resolution of your eye can only be achieved on a very limited FOV, that's why you move your eyes while you read this text or while you look at the painting, etc...
It is the encoding system (and hardware) that your brain uses that distinguish the image retention capabilities - be it naturally or consciously trained.
I consider remembering numbers and images equally hard because both has a single context to a lot of details relationship, and to remember many of the details you need all kinds of tricks.
People have different difficulty of remembering certain details, some remember dates, some smells, some people, some emotions, so when having to improve your memory you would usually use something that you are natural good at remembering.
Again true, however, I repeat, spatial (in a sense of topological+image) memory is particularly good in humans. Also, most faces (image) you remember from just one meeting (names are the problem; reinforcing association is useful in remembering the name; but this remembering faces is understandable - we have specialised hardware for that, see http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html on what happens when it breaks). Most locations you remember extremely well with quite a lot of detail. Stephen might remember more, but is that optimal? So you do abstract the images, unless there are particularly important to what you do or what you like; at the same time you do remember distinguishing factors: for example you might still remember the exact way to your childhood school, a neighbourhood where you lived ten years ago, student dorm, streets in various cities that you walked and that is not pure abstract topological graph; memory contains enough image detail for recognition (compression algorithms are normally optimised for recognition, not necessarily reconstruction; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipomu0MLFaI).
Spatial/visual memory is in average person much more powerful then conceptual memory.
All memory is association, but if you compare how efficient you are in remembering, let's say a rather complicated path through a bigger park compared to remembering let's say remembering 8 3-digit numbers, spatial memory easily wins by order of magnitude in an average person (people who have great visual memory or great audio memory might complicate the analysis, so treat those as special cases).
Spatial memory is so good that we expect very much of it, that's why labyrinths are interesting and also that is why when it you get lost or can not find a certain place you forget how good your spatial memory is: most of the time you know exactly where you are, you know how to get to most places you know and most importantly you retain this information without effort for years and years (think about cities you used to live in, airports, houses, etc...).
Using these existing memories is referred to as 'memory palace' (palaces are usually also well structured with many separate spaces) - now, the point is that since all memory is association, you can use existing memory structures (rooms, halls, stairways, etc) to store new information by using your imagination and associating new info with existing one.
Besides the spatial, we are also quite good in remembering how something happened - films, theatre, etc comes to mind. So you take something that we are not so good at and turn it into something we are good at: you use, for example well known room to put the objects that you would like to remember in places that you have a good memory with. Objects can be a coding system for cards, numbers or other less visual information that you would like to store.
'Memory palace' = 'method of loci' is a method, i.e. something that an average person can learn and train her or himself to use efficiently. It is not particularly new, it is attributed to 5th/6th century (BC) Greek poet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
It is actually quite simple and can be taught in an hour or less. Training takes more time.
It is based on a simple fact that our brain is more specialized for remembering spatial facts and relations (has probably a bit to do with being able to quickly remember paths: either to successfully chase that squirrel or find the closest path to the most secure location while running away from a malnourished tiger of some sorts)
These methods map this mental power to non spatial concepts through visual association. Not completely unlike using GPU to do some non graphic tasks efficiently. The trick, in both cases, is to be able to recognize which tasks are best suited for it.
However, you are very wrong in saying that availability (in terms of resilience to malicious software) of a mission critical system is achieved by installing decent AV and keeping it updated. And if you call that done you would be very well done working for me.
The number of times I had viruses which no engine with latest signatures was yet able to recognize (so, yes, really new) was less then a dozen times (in two years working in Southeast Asia), but it was definitively not fun cleaning those.
Sysinternals' tools were very usefull as process explorer is really a decent tool which was rarely specifically targeted by malicious software and autoruns was able to disable quite a lot of suspicious things. With these two, normally I was able to disable things AV software would not pickup (or was not able to clean). Some sort of honeypot was useful to detect unusual activity. Locking down the OS helped and keeping it patched is no small thing. Having another OS (mac, linux) as a fail-over option for desktop stuff (for regular users) was also in place and paid out a few times. Booting live Linux distro for cleaning purposes was used a few times, but that's for viruses that are already in signature files (or that you have mapped out). Of course, backups are a must. Checking for rootkits was done periodically. Educating users and having policies was something we did, but it is hard to measure if that worked (if it actually saved any work). Any server service that could go on Linux was moved to Linux. Every little bit helped.
Our systems were not mission critical. The few infections that were successful were hard to clean, but luckily the payload of the viruses in question was mostly harmless in terms of damage to files and services. I really don't like to think what would have happened if these infections were more malicious (for example if they locked and/or damaged documents).
So, yes, US and Europe get new malicious software with a slight delay which is enough for AV software to be an order of magnitude more efficient here, but 0-day exploits and new viruses that can not be detected by AV software are not myths and on a vulnerable OS they are a big part of your security considerations, your continuity plan, IT policies and they do take more resources to achieve approximately same level of system resilience as an OS that is more secure and has less threats.
At a risk of stating obvious I'll point out that stories do much more than 'influence human behaviour in security context'. Stories have shaped entire cultures. (see for example The City of Words by Alberto Manguel, it is a fine read)
If I would to extrapolate I might say that for every action that influenced certain culture it was either direct, like war or famine, or striking gold - but the people who experienced that directly are rarely majority. Most others experience this through retelling. Which can be considered storytelling. For example the basis of democratic society, an election process, can be considered storytelling in its largest part (cynics would add that in its largest part it is a storytelling of pure fiction).
All of this goes back to rhetoric (be careful in interpreting wikipedia's definition: 'Rhetoric is the art and study of the use of language with persuasive effect' - this art and persuasive effect is essential not only to political and legal speech, but also can be understood as an attribute that, in the end, makes any writing worth reading).
So, in essence they are trying to research analytical and quantitative rhetoric, which I think is a valid effort. Though I would not bet all my money that it is realistic to expect a coherent and testable model without a coherent and testable model of human brain (or at least of linguistic and cognitive areas of it) and society (culture).
Still, military had always had interest in manipulating the moral. Of both sides. It is only natural to research this subject. Don't see it as anything new.
AMD went a long way in supporting linux and it seems that they will stick to it for newer cards (Mobility HD 5650 running stable as a rock on Ubuntu 10.10; with Catalyst Control Center).
Yes, we can 'understand' infinity, but that is not the point. The point is weather your belief(!) that time is infinite is correct or not (btw, is it circular or not?). At the end, even though you are imprecise, it might be that you are correct and it might be that you are wrong.
Science is trying to get us closer to answers to such questions.
I would say that you are confused due to your incapacity or unwillingness to imagine a realistic concept of finite time (or you dismiss it as 'obviously' false), which is hardly objective.... for example, under current calculations we have no reason to believe that anything existed before 13.7 * 10^9 units of time (which happen to be very close to current rotation period of Earth). Few billions are hardly infinity and if you were trying to be objective it seems reasonable that you would opt for the finite model of time. But then you would probably have to deal with the question such as 'What caused the Big Bang?' and that is difficult. However, resorting to 'infinite model' is not significantly different - the questions change to: 'how the infinity came to exist?' and 'why is it infinite?' or 'how can it be infinite?'.
Could you provide some references? I found claims on wikipedia that
"Once ignited, a simple solid rocket motor cannot be shut off, because it contains all the ingredients necessary for combustion within the chamber in which they are burned. More advanced solid rocket motors can not only be throttled but also be extinguished and then re-ignited by controlling the nozzle geometry or through the use of vent ports. Also, pulsed rocket motors that burn in segments and that can be ignited upon command are available.
Modern designs may also include a steerable nozzle for guidance, avionics, recovery hardware (parachutes), self-destruct mechanisms, APUs, controllable tactical motors, controllable divert and attitude control motors, and thermal management materials."
Well, that would be useful if bandwidth and latency were not problems; we are not yet at the point of streaming interactive video content 1080p60, for example...
Though it could be used for dynamic pre-rendering (baking textures, etc...), but normally you get all that shipped on DVD when you buy your games.
Once the bandwidth/latency barrier breaks down there will possibly be a lot of changes, and yes, then it would be conceivable to have huge wins - in terms of calculations that are beneficial for multiple users (plus content protection) if you would render insanely complicated things on central server farms (even 'physically correct light' some day).
Well, if Blue-ray can do 1080p24 in H.264 at around 25-35 Mbps then not sure where you pulled out 3Gbps out from (I only get a similar number if I multiply 1080 x 1920 x 50 frames x 32 luma/chroma = 3.31 Gbps).
And OK, maybe today we can not use commodity hardware to do real-time (as in interactive) encoding and decoding of 1080p60, but I have always liked the idea of thin clients and central resources.
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA, "Maintaining those indexes is expensive and slows down transaction processing. Let's get rid of them," Ellison remarked. "Let's throw all of those analytic indexes away and replace the indexes with in-memory column sort." This merely minimizes the penalties of poor indexing and RBAR by making complete table scans on arbitrary columns faster. Apparently Mr. Ellison has forgotten his algoithmics and combinatorics - Oh, wait, no he didn't, he dropped out as a sophmore. Pity, because had he stayed, he would have learned that even with a 1000x slower storage medium, an O(log N) algorithm (index seek) will eventually beat an O(N log N) algorithm (column sort).
RTA - the improvement is there specifically for real time analytic workloads. In these kind of workflows the optimal algorithm is O(n) in general case and indexes are useless (query optimizing engine will always choose scans as you need to visit a lot of data). You might know a thing or two about algorithms, but you should brush up on problem analysis 101.
Other mistakes in logic: Index seek and column sort are not different algorithms for the same task so comparing them brings little insight (without considering some other details of the query optimizer). This leads you to nonsensical claim that O(log N) will eventually beat or be equal to O(N log N). It is not eventually, the first will be always faster or equal.
It's not unlike a GPU vs CPU: while visual is much faster it brings a certain bias.
(For bias look for "optical illusions" and focus more on static ones).
So you have couple of easily detectable cases:
* Missing logs or other log anomalies and no reported breach - bad and easy to check
* Logs with breach activity and no reported breach - bad and possible to check
So the worst case is actually if someone manages to reconstruct the logs, however I would say that would not be so easy these days with redundant and complex systems that log at various levels.
As for reporting the breach - as with anything that you need to report yourself it would require audits of some sorts.
Working virtually is not what makes someone unavailable - I work in a nice mix that allows for comparison. We have four people team: two people at one site, one person off-site in another office (at +6 hours) and another person off-site working from home in the same time zone.
Virtual meetings i.e. voice and sharing a desktop tend to be more more productive than cramping around a monitor or booking a meeting room in most cases. If you manage to add video you can recover a part of non verbal communication channel and sharing control and switching desktops from one person to another allows for very productive work for up to four people to the extent that we sometimes prefer it even when all participants are at the same site. On the other hand the time zone difference of one team member indeed leads to some issues having to wait.
Therefore it is not virtual work that makes it less effective, but it is the working times flexibility or time zone differences that needs to be offset with attention to scheduling that you are highlighting as a cause of productivity loss - and that is a matter of working hours policies not real life vs virtual office setup.
because obviously we will set things up so that only obedient units ever get to transmit their "genes" to the next robot generation, so to speak
Ah, really? So, if we 'filter' only the 'obedient' units in each genereation how do you define this "obedience"? (Of course, in a way that is essentially(!) different compared to Asimov's second law, as that is your point.)
Saying that this is not a good resource depends on what you compare it to. If you compare to an experienced and brilliant teacher giving lectures to a small group of students then Khan does not really have a chance. If you compare also to best of books he is a bit shaky. But I've read that lots of people find it a good resource and I am not surprised - it is a video, you can do it at your own pace and it has a social network component. If used as additional learning tool I can't see how you could call it anything but a good resource.
Allow me to be more specific, from SO/ISO 31-0
Numbers consisting of long sequences of digits can be made more readable by separating them into groups, preferably groups of three, separated by a small space. For this reason, ISO 31-0 specifies that such groups of digits should never be separated by a comma or point, as these are reserved for use as the decimal sign.
To put this in perspective, natural background radiation is aproximately 1-3 mSv per year , while at 10.000mSv death is to be expected.
You mean 10 000 (ten thousand).
What's with this irritating Europe-style switching of the command and decimal point in English? I see it more and more. It might be what they do in Europe but in English, using the decimal there is rather misleading.
There, corrected that for you according to SI
No, it's bullshit.
Almost all art ever made, was made to be sold
Oh, now you are piling it up.
True, but... the big thing in the Khan's effort is material nicely divided into chunks which can be skipped or studied in detail. Another big plus is a social component - take a look at stackoverflow and cousins - the social dimension makes these things work. The (not so clear) deficiency of Khan's academy is, while the model is nice, sticking to single source is not enough and is biased (in this case respectably well biased in good way, but inherently imperfect). Still, I see this as a push in the right direction, the trick is not to think of it as a silver bullet. This approach is bloody useful - reminding yourself of certain topic or learning new one can be achieved in an ecosystem of peers, with what seems to be good quality material. Yes, it is, and it will be even in next evolutionary cycles, an education which quality can not be compared to any real live teacher worth his own education, but if you watched the ted video you'd know that the realistic use case for this 'academy' is to be supplemental tool, and as such it has enormous potential. In and out of the classroom. Just don't abuse it or expect things from it that it can not deliver.
If(!) ARM is more energy efficient then it delivers more processing power per unit of power. Principle works the same at 250mW and at 600W. It would also generate less heat. Ability to turn the cores on and off is additional benefit that would further improve efficiency.
Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Advantages_of_HVDC_over_AC_transmission is pretty informative, both for advantages and disadvantages of DC compared to AC.
True, except I don't consider spatial memory and image memory to be the same.
True. They are not the same, but there is overlap. Topological rarely goes without image memory. Images are encoded, yes, and photographic memory is really rare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVqRT_kCOLI) and probably there's a reason.
First of all spatial memory provides a constant stream of clues. That is you have a current view that you can use as a key to the next assiocation, if you try to remember an image you usually have a one clue -> all details relation. You can fix that by making strings of associations, but that is the memory tricks we are talking about.
Memory is association. What you call tricks are just using conscious efforts to reinforce associations.
Furthermore, memory can be improved even without conscious meddling in encoding system; one of the standard exercises during drawing classes is to observe different parts of face - for example you spend a week observing people's noses. All the time. Everywhere you go. Result: your perception and memory increases - it is like the compression algorithms that help you encode and associate a given detail (nose, ears, eyes, etc..) improves.
Also, the image is not a single, full detail clue in terms of experience on the level of neuron excitation - your eyes always provide the stream, even looking at the still image - full resolution of your eye can only be achieved on a very limited FOV, that's why you move your eyes while you read this text or while you look at the painting, etc...
It is the encoding system (and hardware) that your brain uses that distinguish the image retention capabilities - be it naturally or consciously trained.
I consider remembering numbers and images equally hard because both has a single context to a lot of details relationship, and to remember many of the details you need all kinds of tricks.
People have different difficulty of remembering certain details, some remember dates, some smells, some people, some emotions, so when having to improve your memory you would usually use something that you are natural good at remembering.
Again true, however, I repeat, spatial (in a sense of topological+image) memory is particularly good in humans. Also, most faces (image) you remember from just one meeting (names are the problem; reinforcing association is useful in remembering the name; but this remembering faces is understandable - we have specialised hardware for that, see http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html on what happens when it breaks). Most locations you remember extremely well with quite a lot of detail. Stephen might remember more, but is that optimal? So you do abstract the images, unless there are particularly important to what you do or what you like; at the same time you do remember distinguishing factors: for example you might still remember the exact way to your childhood school, a neighbourhood where you lived ten years ago, student dorm, streets in various cities that you walked and that is not pure abstract topological graph; memory contains enough image detail for recognition (compression algorithms are normally optimised for recognition, not necessarily reconstruction; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipomu0MLFaI).
Spatial/visual memory is in average person much more powerful then conceptual memory.
All memory is association, but if you compare how efficient you are in remembering, let's say a rather complicated path through a bigger park compared to remembering let's say remembering 8 3-digit numbers, spatial memory easily wins by order of magnitude in an average person (people who have great visual memory or great audio memory might complicate the analysis, so treat those as special cases).
Spatial memory is so good that we expect very much of it, that's why labyrinths are interesting and also that is why when it you get lost or can not find a certain place you forget how good your spatial memory is: most of the time you know exactly where you are, you know how to get to most places you know and most importantly you retain this information without effort for years and years (think about cities you used to live in, airports, houses, etc...).
Using these existing memories is referred to as 'memory palace' (palaces are usually also well structured with many separate spaces) - now, the point is that since all memory is association, you can use existing memory structures (rooms, halls, stairways, etc) to store new information by using your imagination and associating new info with existing one.
Besides the spatial, we are also quite good in remembering how something happened - films, theatre, etc comes to mind. So you take something that we are not so good at and turn it into something we are good at: you use, for example well known room to put the objects that you would like to remember in places that you have a good memory with. Objects can be a coding system for cards, numbers or other less visual information that you would like to store.
'Memory palace' = 'method of loci' is a method, i.e. something that an average person can learn and train her or himself to use efficiently.
It is not particularly new, it is attributed to 5th/6th century (BC) Greek poet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
It is actually quite simple and can be taught in an hour or less. Training takes more time.
It is based on a simple fact that our brain is more specialized for remembering spatial facts and relations (has probably a bit to do with being able to quickly remember paths: either to successfully chase that squirrel or find the closest path to the most secure location while running away from a malnourished tiger of some sorts)
These methods map this mental power to non spatial concepts through visual association. Not completely unlike using GPU to do some non graphic tasks efficiently. The trick, in both cases, is to be able to recognize which tasks are best suited for it.
You are both right and wrong.
It is the fault of the IT staff, of course.
However, you are very wrong in saying that availability (in terms of resilience to malicious software) of a mission critical system is achieved by installing decent AV and keeping it updated. And if you call that done you would be very well done working for me.
The number of times I had viruses which no engine with latest signatures was yet able to recognize (so, yes, really new) was less then a dozen times (in two years working in Southeast Asia), but it was definitively not fun cleaning those.
Sysinternals' tools were very usefull as process explorer is really a decent tool which was rarely specifically targeted by malicious software and autoruns was able to disable quite a lot of suspicious things. With these two, normally I was able to disable things AV software would not pickup (or was not able to clean). Some sort of honeypot was useful to detect unusual activity. Locking down the OS helped and keeping it patched is no small thing. Having another OS (mac, linux) as a fail-over option for desktop stuff (for regular users) was also in place and paid out a few times. Booting live Linux distro for cleaning purposes was used a few times, but that's for viruses that are already in signature files (or that you have mapped out). Of course, backups are a must. Checking for rootkits was done periodically. Educating users and having policies was something we did, but it is hard to measure if that worked (if it actually saved any work). Any server service that could go on Linux was moved to Linux. Every little bit helped.
Our systems were not mission critical. The few infections that were successful were hard to clean, but luckily the payload of the viruses in question was mostly harmless in terms of damage to files and services. I really don't like to think what would have happened if these infections were more malicious (for example if they locked and/or damaged documents).
So, yes, US and Europe get new malicious software with a slight delay which is enough for AV software to be an order of magnitude more efficient here, but 0-day exploits and new viruses that can not be detected by AV software are not myths and on a vulnerable OS they are a big part of your security considerations, your continuity plan, IT policies and they do take more resources to achieve approximately same level of system resilience as an OS that is more secure and has less threats.
At a risk of stating obvious I'll point out that stories do much more than 'influence human behaviour in security context'. Stories have shaped entire cultures. (see for example The City of Words by Alberto Manguel, it is a fine read)
If I would to extrapolate I might say that for every action that influenced certain culture it was either direct, like war or famine, or striking gold - but the people who experienced that directly are rarely majority. Most others experience this through retelling. Which can be considered storytelling.
For example the basis of democratic society, an election process, can be considered storytelling in its largest part (cynics would add that in its largest part it is a storytelling of pure fiction).
All of this goes back to rhetoric (be careful in interpreting wikipedia's definition: 'Rhetoric is the art and study of the use of language with persuasive effect' - this art and persuasive effect is essential not only to political and legal speech, but also can be understood as an attribute that, in the end, makes any writing worth reading).
So, in essence they are trying to research analytical and quantitative rhetoric, which I think is a valid effort. Though I would not bet all my money that it is realistic to expect a coherent and testable model without a coherent and testable model of human brain (or at least of linguistic and cognitive areas of it) and society (culture).
Still, military had always had interest in manipulating the moral. Of both sides. It is only natural to research this subject. Don't see it as anything new.
I see very little practical use for controlling worms.
Horatio, here are some ideas for future.
AMD went a long way in supporting linux and it seems that they will stick to it for newer cards (Mobility HD 5650 running stable as a rock on Ubuntu 10.10; with Catalyst Control Center).
If your geo-socio stereotyping is correct, he actually might have much higher chance of getting shot then average citizen of the world.
That's why Sweden is an effective stop word.
Yes, we can 'understand' infinity, but that is not the point.
The point is weather your belief(!) that time is infinite is correct or not (btw, is it circular or not?).
At the end, even though you are imprecise, it might be that you are correct and it might be that you are wrong.
Science is trying to get us closer to answers to such questions.
I would say that you are confused due to your incapacity or unwillingness to imagine a realistic concept of finite time (or you dismiss it as 'obviously' false), which is hardly objective.... for example, under current calculations we have no reason to believe that anything existed before 13.7 * 10^9 units of time (which happen to be very close to current rotation period of Earth). Few billions are hardly infinity and if you were trying to be objective it seems reasonable that you would opt for the finite model of time. But then you would probably have to deal with the question such as 'What caused the Big Bang?' and that is difficult. However, resorting to 'infinite model' is not significantly different - the questions change to: 'how the infinity came to exist?' and 'why is it infinite?' or 'how can it be infinite?'.
The problem is, YOU CAN't SWITCH THEM OFF.
Could you provide some references? I found claims on wikipedia that
"Once ignited, a simple solid rocket motor cannot be shut off, because it contains all the ingredients necessary for combustion within the chamber in which they are burned. More advanced solid rocket motors can not only be throttled but also be extinguished and then re-ignited by controlling the nozzle geometry or through the use of vent ports. Also, pulsed rocket motors that burn in segments and that can be ignited upon command are available.
Modern designs may also include a steerable nozzle for guidance, avionics, recovery hardware (parachutes), self-destruct mechanisms, APUs, controllable tactical motors, controllable divert and attitude control motors, and thermal management materials."
Well, that would be useful if bandwidth and latency were not problems; we are not yet at the point of streaming interactive video content 1080p60, for example...
Though it could be used for dynamic pre-rendering (baking textures, etc...), but normally you get all that shipped on DVD when you buy your games.
Once the bandwidth/latency barrier breaks down there will possibly be a lot of changes, and yes, then it would be conceivable to have huge wins - in terms of calculations that are beneficial for multiple users (plus content protection) if you would render insanely complicated things on central server farms (even 'physically correct light' some day).
Well, if Blue-ray can do 1080p24 in H.264 at around 25-35 Mbps then not sure where you pulled out 3Gbps out from (I only get a similar number if I multiply 1080 x 1920 x 50 frames x 32 luma/chroma = 3.31 Gbps).
And OK, maybe today we can not use commodity hardware to do real-time (as in interactive) encoding and decoding of 1080p60, but I have always liked the idea of thin clients and central resources.