Question: why not simply use the random crap we all have on our PCs to generate random numbers? Say...choose 5 folders at random on a PC. You could use size limits to narrow the search..say between 500Mb and 2Gb. Then make a hash based on those five folders, something like file sizes or time stamps or a combination of the two, wouldn't that be pretty damned random?
Now maybe I'm understanding it wrong, certainly not a crypto expert by any stretch, but surely nobody has the exact combination of downloads+pictures+music+temp+docs that I do, and that data should be able to be mixed in plenty of ways to generate random numbers, yes? And by choosing random folders based on size instead of just choosing defaults you shouldn't run into the "everyone has the same" problem like the default contents of my music or my pictures, so am I missing something?
But if someone had access to your folders, they could do the same calculation, and then the number wouldn't be "random" at all.
I'm not sure how or why they need random numbers for crypto stuff, but I have at least gathered that the whole idea is making it so that *no one* can predict what it would be, under any circumstance. Hence, random. If your computer can calculate some number based on X files and folders, you can get the same number multiple times. In fact, if a hacker intercepted that number once, they could use it again reliably, since that's what your computer might do if the files don't change. That's not random at all.
Funny, but I do get some appreciation about seeing *more* of a character I liked, as long as they don't screw it up. But I liked Riddick so I'd love to see another movie. I feel like trilogies are usually plenty, because then things get tired and you wonder why the director is still doing the same old song (if they even use the same one), but one or two sequels can be good to further develop a story that, if good enough, needed more than a couple hours to tell. -Taylor
"The Chronicles of Riddick" was a great action movie with a dark Sci-Fi/Fantasy background - in fact it might be quite a unique mix of genres: certainly the (Futuristic Black-Magic) background to the story is way off anything else Hollywood ever made.
That said, it's not surprising that those that first saw "Pitch Black" and then went to see "The Chronicles of Riddick" as a sequel were disapointed: to put it simply "Pitch Black" was a finelly tuned Horror-Action movie while The Chronicles was more of a Rambo style action movie (chewing gum for the brain) Sci-Fi/Fantasy movie with an anti-Hero as the main character (although Riddick as a character was much more developed in the second movie).
Personally I thoroughly enjoyed both movies in different ways, although this might be because I first saw "The Chronicles of Riddick" and then went looking for "Pitch Black" instead of the other way around so I didn't saw the second movie in the expectation it would be a continuation of the first.
That is exactly how it happened for me too. I loved Chronicles, then went back and found Pitch Black. Which, if anything, left me feeling a bit wanting, because Chronicles has such a larger budget for big grand scenes. Still, Pitch Black is awesome for not being too grand, and just being a genuinely good movie, so I still love it.
I think the order or viewing probably matters a lot. -Taylor
Wow, this is awesome! I genuinely really liked the Chronicles of Riddick, which prompted me to see and also love Pitch Black. I think that Riddick is one of the most bad-ass characters I have seen in a movie*, and i really enjoyed both movies. I consider them very different, but I liked them both. I'd love to see a third and obviously just hope they don't screw it up. I really just never thought they would make one though, so this is awesome news!
And since I'm telling the world what I think, I also think of Master Chief from Halo when I think of similarly badass characters. Anyone else get that? They're both just *so* good at what they do, which is half killing, half not dying, and half staying undetected. *So* good they get three halves. Bah, I'm being a bit fanboyish. -Taylor
*yes, i'm young and/or unworthy and you've seen some other way more bad-ass character in some movie. it's just my opinion, don't worry. He killed someone with a teacup! Funny and badass combined are what amuse me.
I get a chuckle from the cnn article on this topic, that states you could use the extra 160 hp when you needed to pass somebody (in case the standard 480 horses isn't enough)
Hah, that is funny, but I think they meant *in a race*.;) -Taylor
Flywheels have been used to store energy for ages, but do they change the handling of the car at all? Boats can have gyroscopic roll stabilizers, but what effect does this flywheel have?
Well, if the axis is vertical, the car would turn just fine. It wouldn't want to flip over, but i think that's alright with most people involved.
Chilled? I was thinking more of S&R possibilities or exploration.
I knew that word was going to be the one to get a response. Chilled, titillated, interested, whatever word you want to use. I used chilled because a couple posts up someone quoted a line from the article saying that it might be "terrifying" to see the robot move.
But yeah, search and rescue, I know. Its just that while this hexapod is a particularly nice one, its still somewhat basic. Its unlikely to get farther than a robot with tank treads on it, because they just work really well. That's why the military uses packbot robots with treads on them.
To really beat tank treads, you have to make an exceptionally dexterous robot. Something that can move more like a monkey. I'd be really impressed with something like that, and its something I'd one day be interested in doing.
As it is, though this robot is very nice, its not much more than a bigger-budget version of a nearly identical robot i built on my own in high school. And that robot isn't going to be doing S&R any time soon. -Taylor
Imagine a swarm of these things communicating via wireless or 3G, sending walking algorithms to each other while traversing difficult terrain.
I've built enough walking robots to not be too chilled by that vision. They'll just kinda poke along, really slowly, and then their batteries will die.
The summary does not do the article justice. This is the first line from the actual article:
Picture a spider-like robot that teaches itself to walk, can adapt when damaged and watches its maker as he moves around the room. That might sound terrifying.
The exciting thing is that the robot could compensate when part of itself was damaged and get around/over obstacles
Actually, that's part of the learning algorithms that have been around for a long time. Since it can teach itself to walk, it can re-teach itself with broken appendages. -Taylor
For such a long rant, you didn't seem to given any reason why it won't.
Well, it was a rant...
But i dunno, it's just nothing *new*. This is no more likely to be the next moon rover than any of the other hexapods people have built. You can buy kits to build this kind of thing for ~$500, and I've been told that if you study it, the learning to walk algorithm is pretty simple.
I know a great source for something exactly like this that I saw 10 years ago, but unfortunately his site went down a few years ago. (tappotec.net)
And I did admit, I'm partially just jealous that these kinds of things get so much attention, because I was always too lazy to do a real write-up for mine. -Taylor
The officer in San Diego was driving a loaner Lexus while his vehicle was being repaired. This loaner Lexus had a push-button "ignition" system, requiring just a push of a button to start the car, and a push of the button to stop the engine, unless the car is in gear and moving greater than velocity $x$, in which case it requires keeping the "starter" button on the dash {b}depressed continuously for three seconds{/b} to turn the system off. It also has an interlock requiring some weird combination so that putting the car into neutral at high velocities is not easily done. That's the information I've gleaned from the Union-Tribune's articles on it. I've driven that stretch of road to go to Santee to eat pizza and shop at lowes, and you often see people speeding recklessly down the steep grade.
Combination of new car with bad human-interface and a panic situation, even for a trained high-performing trooper lead to a deadly result.
KL
Ah, thanks. I knew it couldn't have been as simple as an officer not thinking of removing the keys. -Taylor
A similar design might be used to explore unstable environments such as collapsed buildings or rocky landscapes.
No, it won't.
I made a hexapod with 3DOF per leg that could walk in any direction "from scratch" by myself, in high school, for fun.
Adding some foot sensors is the obvious next step, and I've heard a lot about learning algorithms for walking robots being used over the years.
Honestly, I'm only bitter because I made something cooler in college but never bothered to post it online, so no one saw it aside from my classmates. But, it was a battery-powered 4 legged walking robot that ran a micro ITX windows XP pc inside its body, and was controlled through the internet with a remote PC by a wireless Xbox 360 controller.
It was honestly totally badass.
Oh, and it could support 20lbs static weight on its standard size hobby servo motors (but they were the $115 ones).
But more than anything, my point was is wasn't that hard, and that robot wasn't going to be walking through rubble any time soon.
It *could* have, but it wasn't going to. Neither is this one. People have been building basic hexapods for a long time. We still haven't sent one to the moon.
Senator Joyce claimed that publications featuring small-breasted women were encouraging paedophilia.
Yeah, that's the part that's got me pissed off. Trying to block bestiality is one thing (which i still don't really agree with blocking), but small-breasted *adult* women? That's fucking insane. I love small breasts, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna go touching some underage child. If anything, its because I like *skinny* girls, and they often have small breasts.
If am labeled a pedophile because I am attracted to skinny women, then a *huge* percentage of men would be labeled pedophiles. I know not everyone likes the skinny look, but its certainly not uncommon.
Its reasoning like the small boobs=pedophile that makes me *hate* politicians. -Taylor
I don't really personally see any use of such service. If you need FT or HA system you need to design it as such from ground up. In this case paying 4 bucks just solves some problems with rebooting after kernel upgrade. I dont have problem with that. I just reboot in next service window. In normal situation mission critical systems have some sort of redundancy not only to cope with planned service reboots but with other unplanned disasters. So usually you have a N+1 redundant cluster in which you can reboot the servers using some procedure that was worked out while DESIGNING the system. Also I see quite few security issues with patching the kernel this way. In mission critical services you usually do test everything before rolling it out to the systems so using such feature just makes things more complicated (that just simply reboot the machine with my current procedures).
I cannot find anything about security details on their webpage. They state "Ksplice Uptrack uses cryptography to authenticate the update feed.". So what? Fedora also used cryptography and once their servers got rooted the whole chain collapsed. So if I was to use their service I wish to know how exactly their security is implemented since I would be getting kernel patches (quite critical stuff) from them. At least with RHEL I know a about their security procedures (quite rigorious). From support point of view. Does f.e. Red Hat or Oracle support systems patched this way?
It is a nice feature but IMO not suitable for enterprises yet.
You don't get it! With this, even critical systems don't need redundancy anymore.;) -Taylor
The occasional reboot, under controlled circumstances, is an excellent test of what will happen in an emergency situation. Mainly, it answers the question of whether the server and required services actually will all come back up by themselves.
Like when you reboot the power grid to keep the raptors out? -Taylor
As someone with a background in AI and HCI, I completely agree. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go, and I think that Google is jumping the gun on this. It should prove to be quite humorous, even as first steps go.
Well, to be fair, they did say this would be something they are shooting to accomplish "In a few years". Still a tough task, but they're giving themselves some time. Considering how far they've gotten so far, I'm really excited to see how this works out. -Taylor
> Does this mean that we could actually have space-based solar cells that are > just *magically* linked to the ground?
No. It is an interesting result but it has no implications for practical energy transport at all. The word "teleportation" is used in its rather esoteric quantum-mechanical meaning which is quite different than the "commonplace" meaning of the word.
Yeah... that's what i figured. I just needed someone to explain that to me before my head exploded. I really wish people wouldn't write sensation articles. Oh well. -Taylor
Not trying to be down on you, but the word 'magically' is out of place in a discussion about the fundamentals of the cosmos. The reality of the universe is FAR more interesting then any 'magic'
Well, not trying to be down on *you*, but did you honestly think I didn't know that? I was just being funny/lazy. I didn't want to bother thinking about what word to use, so I said magic. Plus, if that were ever possible to do, it would be damn near like fucking magic to me.
I know this rebuttal is a waste of a post, but you reminding me that science isn't magic was a waste to begin with. -Taylor
All I can sat is: Jesus, what the fuck? This is insane. This can't possibly be even close to as real as I think it is. Does this mean that we could actually have space-based solar cells that are just *magically* linked to the ground? This is blowing my fucking mind. -Taylor
Everyone's going to make this smart ass joke, but there's actually a serious question here.
The USPTO grants patents for utter nonsense. Then, to maintain credibility, they have to abide by the law saying that all those nonsense things are illegal for 20 years.
If someone during a board meeting pointed out that rotating electronically received data communications was patented, the board would be required to decide to stop doing that (or license the patent, but maybe they can't, or maybe the patent holder said no).
The government is legally allowed to use any patented technology for anything they do. So no, they actually don't have to be held down by their own rediculousness.
That is both a relief, and a bit unfortunate at the same time. -Taylor
I work at a federal regulatory agency which is having the same issue. They were asking IT/tech/computer people if there was a solution around. Nobody knew of any software that auto rotates images based on text. Anybody? Reply here.
What file format do they come in? If they are PDFs, adobe reader just has a f'ing "Rotate" button, since the format is often used for scanned documents which have that very problem.
And then finally they'll get the bright idea to implement software that recognizes whether it's upside down and only print out the ones that are right-side up!
They can't implement that software because a method for doing that has already been patented!
Much though I dislike software patents, that doesn't prevent using text to detect orientation. Someone upthread came up with a solution that wouldn't violate that patent, namely OCRing all orientations and the one with the most dictionary words is the correct orientation.
The posted patent compares letter width to letter height, and uses that to determine if the image is sideways. If the document is all capital letters or in Russian, it looks at the 'T's in the document, otherwise it uses 'i's. It then figures the ratio of what appear to be correctly oriented 'T's or 'i's to incorrectly oriented 'T's or 'i's and uses that to determine whether or not the document is upside down.
To circumvent that, you could test something different. If using different letters and the same overall formula don't evade the patent, you could still use factors like frequency analysis ('b' and 'd' are more common in English than 'q' and 'p') or attempting to detect different known incorrect characters (there's no English letter that looks like a sideways 'b', 'd', 'p', or 'q' or an upside-down 'k' or 'h' or 'y' (though an upside-down 'y' looks like a backwards 'h')
As someone mentioned in a patent-related posting recently on slashdot, the government is actually not bound by patent law - they can legally use any patented technology they need.
This is just a situation where some idiot at the patent office didn't know how to rotate a file, so they just made some rule that outlawed it because it was easier.
At least, I'm guessing, didn't RTFA. The point is they're not held back by patents. -Taylor
First, of course get your car serviced if it's part of the official recall. That's a gimme.
More importantly, if your car starts accelerating uncontrollably as if the throttle is stuck all the way open, for the love of god grab the key and TURN OFF THE ENGINE. Yes, you will lose power steering and brakes -- this is still preferable to attempting to drive the car at 100MPH until it runs out of gas. This didn't seem too difficult to me, but apparently a State Trooper in CA decided to call 911 before taking this rather obvious step.
The 911 call came at 6:35 p.m. on Aug. 28 from a car that was speeding out of control on Highway 125 near San Diego. The caller, a male voice, was panic-stricken: "We're in a Lexus... we're going north on 125 and our accelerator is stuck... we're in trouble... there's no brakes... we're approaching the intersection... hold on... hold on and pray... pray..." The call ended with the sound of a crash.
I know it's not kind to speak ill of the dead, and I understand that it wasn't their fault that their car was fatally defective (and Toyota is completely at fault) but it's hard for me to comprehend how someone could fail to deduce the rather straightforward solution to their problem -- car is going too fast => stop the engine. This has really been boggling my mind for the past week as these incidents pile up -- if someone can explain this to me, I'll be eternally grateful.
I really wondered about this. I also don't want to speak ill or sound like I think I know better, but how did he not at least shift out of gear or turn off the engine? Yes, as someone said turning off the engine can lock the steering, but if you know that ahead of time you can tick the key back to "run" and the steering will be unlocked again. Maybe hard to think that much in a crazy situation, but really, if this guy could operate a cell phone I really feel like he should have been able to operate the key. But i don't know a lot about the situation so I'll admit i probably don't know what I am talking about, it just really seemed weird to me that of all people, a state trooper wouldn't have been able to figure out *some way* to disable the car. -Taylor
Slashdot Mirror
Question: why not simply use the random crap we all have on our PCs to generate random numbers? Say...choose 5 folders at random on a PC. You could use size limits to narrow the search..say between 500Mb and 2Gb. Then make a hash based on those five folders, something like file sizes or time stamps or a combination of the two, wouldn't that be pretty damned random?
Now maybe I'm understanding it wrong, certainly not a crypto expert by any stretch, but surely nobody has the exact combination of downloads+pictures+music+temp+docs that I do, and that data should be able to be mixed in plenty of ways to generate random numbers, yes? And by choosing random folders based on size instead of just choosing defaults you shouldn't run into the "everyone has the same" problem like the default contents of my music or my pictures, so am I missing something?
But if someone had access to your folders, they could do the same calculation, and then the number wouldn't be "random" at all.
I'm not sure how or why they need random numbers for crypto stuff, but I have at least gathered that the whole idea is making it so that *no one* can predict what it would be, under any circumstance. Hence, random. If your computer can calculate some number based on X files and folders, you can get the same number multiple times. In fact, if a hacker intercepted that number once, they could use it again reliably, since that's what your computer might do if the files don't change. That's not random at all.
-Taylor
If it trully helps less technical people, then I think it can contribute as living proof that Linux (or GNU/Linux, you decide) can be user friendly.
Rock on!
I agree!
Nothing proves the power of free software more than spending $61 a month to keep it working!
-Taylor
Sequels are so much better than original stories!
Prequels are even better than sequels.
I can't even describe how great Reboots are.
Funny, but I do get some appreciation about seeing *more* of a character I liked, as long as they don't screw it up. But I liked Riddick so I'd love to see another movie. I feel like trilogies are usually plenty, because then things get tired and you wonder why the director is still doing the same old song (if they even use the same one), but one or two sequels can be good to further develop a story that, if good enough, needed more than a couple hours to tell.
-Taylor
"The Chronicles of Riddick" was a great action movie with a dark Sci-Fi/Fantasy background - in fact it might be quite a unique mix of genres: certainly the (Futuristic Black-Magic) background to the story is way off anything else Hollywood ever made.
That said, it's not surprising that those that first saw "Pitch Black" and then went to see "The Chronicles of Riddick" as a sequel were disapointed: to put it simply "Pitch Black" was a finelly tuned Horror-Action movie while The Chronicles was more of a Rambo style action movie (chewing gum for the brain) Sci-Fi/Fantasy movie with an anti-Hero as the main character (although Riddick as a character was much more developed in the second movie).
Personally I thoroughly enjoyed both movies in different ways, although this might be because I first saw "The Chronicles of Riddick" and then went looking for "Pitch Black" instead of the other way around so I didn't saw the second movie in the
expectation it would be a continuation of the first.
That is exactly how it happened for me too. I loved Chronicles, then went back and found Pitch Black. Which, if anything, left me feeling a bit wanting, because Chronicles has such a larger budget for big grand scenes. Still, Pitch Black is awesome for not being too grand, and just being a genuinely good movie, so I still love it.
I think the order or viewing probably matters a lot.
-Taylor
Wow, this is awesome!
I genuinely really liked the Chronicles of Riddick, which prompted me to see and also love Pitch Black. I think that Riddick is one of the most bad-ass characters I have seen in a movie*, and i really enjoyed both movies. I consider them very different, but I liked them both. I'd love to see a third and obviously just hope they don't screw it up. I really just never thought they would make one though, so this is awesome news!
And since I'm telling the world what I think, I also think of Master Chief from Halo when I think of similarly badass characters. Anyone else get that? They're both just *so* good at what they do, which is half killing, half not dying, and half staying undetected. *So* good they get three halves. Bah, I'm being a bit fanboyish.
-Taylor
*yes, i'm young and/or unworthy and you've seen some other way more bad-ass character in some movie. it's just my opinion, don't worry. He killed someone with a teacup! Funny and badass combined are what amuse me.
I get a chuckle from the cnn article on this topic, that states you could use the extra 160 hp when you needed to pass somebody (in case the standard 480 horses isn't enough)
Hah, that is funny, but I think they meant *in a race*. ;)
-Taylor
Flywheels have been used to store energy for ages, but do they change the handling of the car at all?
Boats can have gyroscopic roll stabilizers, but what effect does this flywheel have?
Well, if the axis is vertical, the car would turn just fine. It wouldn't want to flip over, but i think that's alright with most people involved.
Chilled? I was thinking more of S&R possibilities or exploration.
I knew that word was going to be the one to get a response. Chilled, titillated, interested, whatever word you want to use. I used chilled because a couple posts up someone quoted a line from the article saying that it might be "terrifying" to see the robot move.
But yeah, search and rescue, I know. Its just that while this hexapod is a particularly nice one, its still somewhat basic. Its unlikely to get farther than a robot with tank treads on it, because they just work really well. That's why the military uses packbot robots with treads on them.
To really beat tank treads, you have to make an exceptionally dexterous robot. Something that can move more like a monkey. I'd be really impressed with something like that, and its something I'd one day be interested in doing.
As it is, though this robot is very nice, its not much more than a bigger-budget version of a nearly identical robot i built on my own in high school. And that robot isn't going to be doing S&R any time soon.
-Taylor
Imagine a swarm of these things communicating via wireless or 3G, sending walking algorithms to each other while traversing difficult terrain.
I've built enough walking robots to not be too chilled by that vision. They'll just kinda poke along, really slowly, and then their batteries will die.
Awesome.
-Taylor
The summary does not do the article justice. This is the first line from the actual article:
The exciting thing is that the robot could compensate when part of itself was damaged and get around/over obstacles
Actually, that's part of the learning algorithms that have been around for a long time. Since it can teach itself to walk, it can re-teach itself with broken appendages.
-Taylor
For such a long rant, you didn't seem to given any reason why it won't.
Well, it was a rant...
But i dunno, it's just nothing *new*. This is no more likely to be the next moon rover than any of the other hexapods people have built. You can buy kits to build this kind of thing for ~$500, and I've been told that if you study it, the learning to walk algorithm is pretty simple.
I know a great source for something exactly like this that I saw 10 years ago, but unfortunately his site went down a few years ago. (tappotec.net)
And I did admit, I'm partially just jealous that these kinds of things get so much attention, because I was always too lazy to do a real write-up for mine.
-Taylor
Taylor,
The officer in San Diego was driving a loaner Lexus while his vehicle was being repaired. This loaner Lexus had a push-button "ignition" system, requiring just a push of a button to start the car, and a push of the button to stop the engine, unless the car is in gear and moving greater than velocity $x$, in which case it requires keeping the "starter" button on the dash {b}depressed continuously for three seconds{/b} to turn the system off. It also has an interlock requiring some weird combination so that putting the car into neutral at high velocities is not easily done. That's the information I've gleaned from the Union-Tribune's articles on it. I've driven that stretch of road to go to Santee to eat pizza and shop at lowes, and you often see people speeding recklessly down the steep grade.
Combination of new car with bad human-interface and a panic situation, even for a trained high-performing trooper lead to a deadly result.
KL
Ah, thanks. I knew it couldn't have been as simple as an officer not thinking of removing the keys.
-Taylor
A similar design might be used to explore unstable environments such as collapsed buildings or rocky landscapes.
No, it won't.
I made a hexapod with 3DOF per leg that could walk in any direction "from scratch" by myself, in high school, for fun.
Adding some foot sensors is the obvious next step, and I've heard a lot about learning algorithms for walking robots being used over the years.
Honestly, I'm only bitter because I made something cooler in college but never bothered to post it online, so no one saw it aside from my classmates. But, it was a battery-powered 4 legged walking robot that ran a micro ITX windows XP pc inside its body, and was controlled through the internet with a remote PC by a wireless Xbox 360 controller.
It was honestly totally badass.
Oh, and it could support 20lbs static weight on its standard size hobby servo motors (but they were the $115 ones).
But more than anything, my point was is wasn't that hard, and that robot wasn't going to be walking through rubble any time soon.
It *could* have, but it wasn't going to. Neither is this one. People have been building basic hexapods for a long time. We still haven't sent one to the moon.
-Taylor
and four estimated that probability was greater than 60%
Of our incredibly small sample size of hand picked Experts, Less than 25% think there is a probably chance! YOU SHOULD BE WORRIED!
60% of the time, it works *every* time.
-Taylor
This isn't just about child pornography and beastiality.
The Australian government is also trying to censor pornography including women with small boobs and female ejaculation.
Yeah, that's the part that's got me pissed off. Trying to block bestiality is one thing (which i still don't really agree with blocking), but small-breasted *adult* women? That's fucking insane. I love small breasts, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna go touching some underage child. If anything, its because I like *skinny* girls, and they often have small breasts.
If am labeled a pedophile because I am attracted to skinny women, then a *huge* percentage of men would be labeled pedophiles. I know not everyone likes the skinny look, but its certainly not uncommon.
Its reasoning like the small boobs=pedophile that makes me *hate* politicians.
-Taylor
I don't really personally see any use of such service. If you need FT or HA system you need to design it as such from ground up. In this case paying 4 bucks just solves some problems with rebooting after kernel upgrade. I dont have problem with that. I just reboot in next service window. In normal situation mission critical systems have some sort of redundancy not only to cope with planned service reboots but with other unplanned disasters. So usually you have a N+1 redundant cluster in which you can reboot the servers using some procedure that was worked out while DESIGNING the system. Also I see quite few security issues with patching the kernel this way. In mission critical services you usually do test everything before rolling it out to the systems so using such feature just makes things more complicated (that just simply reboot the machine with my current procedures).
I cannot find anything about security details on their webpage. They state "Ksplice Uptrack uses cryptography to authenticate the update feed.". So what? Fedora also used cryptography and once their servers got rooted the whole chain collapsed. So if I was to use their service I wish to know how exactly their security is implemented since I would be getting kernel patches (quite critical stuff) from them. At least with RHEL I know a about their security procedures (quite rigorious). From support point of view. Does f.e. Red Hat or Oracle support systems patched this way?
It is a nice feature but IMO not suitable for enterprises yet.
You don't get it! With this, even critical systems don't need redundancy anymore. ;)
-Taylor
The occasional reboot, under controlled circumstances, is an excellent test of what will happen in an emergency situation. Mainly, it answers the question of whether the server and required services actually will all come back up by themselves.
Like when you reboot the power grid to keep the raptors out?
-Taylor
As someone with a background in AI and HCI, I completely agree. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go, and I think that Google is jumping the gun on this. It should prove to be quite humorous, even as first steps go.
Well, to be fair, they did say this would be something they are shooting to accomplish "In a few years". Still a tough task, but they're giving themselves some time. Considering how far they've gotten so far, I'm really excited to see how this works out.
-Taylor
> Does this mean that we could actually have space-based solar cells that are
> just *magically* linked to the ground?
No. It is an interesting result but it has no implications for practical energy transport at all. The word "teleportation" is used in its rather esoteric quantum-mechanical meaning which is quite different than the "commonplace" meaning of the word.
Yeah... that's what i figured. I just needed someone to explain that to me before my head exploded. I really wish people wouldn't write sensation articles. Oh well.
-Taylor
Not trying to be down on you, but the word 'magically' is out of place in a discussion about the fundamentals of the cosmos. The reality of the universe is FAR more interesting then any 'magic'
Well, not trying to be down on *you*, but did you honestly think I didn't know that? I was just being funny/lazy. I didn't want to bother thinking about what word to use, so I said magic. Plus, if that were ever possible to do, it would be damn near like fucking magic to me.
I know this rebuttal is a waste of a post, but you reminding me that science isn't magic was a waste to begin with.
-Taylor
All I can sat is: Jesus, what the fuck? This is insane. This can't possibly be even close to as real as I think it is. Does this mean that we could actually have space-based solar cells that are just *magically* linked to the ground?
This is blowing my fucking mind.
-Taylor
Everyone's going to make this smart ass joke, but there's actually a serious question here.
The USPTO grants patents for utter nonsense. Then, to maintain credibility, they have to abide by the law saying that all those nonsense things are illegal for 20 years.
If someone during a board meeting pointed out that rotating electronically received data communications was patented, the board would be required to decide to stop doing that (or license the patent, but maybe they can't, or maybe the patent holder said no).
The government is legally allowed to use any patented technology for anything they do. So no, they actually don't have to be held down by their own rediculousness.
That is both a relief, and a bit unfortunate at the same time.
-Taylor
I work at a federal regulatory agency which is having the same issue. They were asking IT/tech/computer people if there was a solution around. Nobody knew of any software that auto rotates images based on text. Anybody? Reply here.
What file format do they come in? If they are PDFs, adobe reader just has a f'ing "Rotate" button, since the format is often used for scanned documents which have that very problem.
-Taylor
And then finally they'll get the bright idea to implement software that recognizes whether it's upside down and only print out the ones that are right-side up!
They can't implement that software because a method for doing that has already been patented!
Much though I dislike software patents, that doesn't prevent using text to detect orientation. Someone upthread came up with a solution that wouldn't violate that patent, namely OCRing all orientations and the one with the most dictionary words is the correct orientation.
The posted patent compares letter width to letter height, and uses that to determine if the image is sideways. If the document is all capital letters or in Russian, it looks at the 'T's in the document, otherwise it uses 'i's. It then figures the ratio of what appear to be correctly oriented 'T's or 'i's to incorrectly oriented 'T's or 'i's and uses that to determine whether or not the document is upside down.
To circumvent that, you could test something different. If using different letters and the same overall formula don't evade the patent, you could still use factors like frequency analysis ('b' and 'd' are more common in English than 'q' and 'p') or attempting to detect different known incorrect characters (there's no English letter that looks like a sideways 'b', 'd', 'p', or 'q' or an upside-down 'k' or 'h' or 'y' (though an upside-down 'y' looks like a backwards 'h')
As someone mentioned in a patent-related posting recently on slashdot, the government is actually not bound by patent law - they can legally use any patented technology they need.
This is just a situation where some idiot at the patent office didn't know how to rotate a file, so they just made some rule that outlawed it because it was easier.
At least, I'm guessing, didn't RTFA. The point is they're not held back by patents.
-Taylor
First, of course get your car serviced if it's part of the official recall. That's a gimme.
More importantly, if your car starts accelerating uncontrollably as if the throttle is stuck all the way open, for the love of god grab the key and TURN OFF THE ENGINE. Yes, you will lose power steering and brakes -- this is still preferable to attempting to drive the car at 100MPH until it runs out of gas. This didn't seem too difficult to me, but apparently a State Trooper in CA decided to call 911 before taking this rather obvious step.
The 911 call came at 6:35 p.m. on Aug. 28 from a car that was speeding out of control on Highway 125 near San Diego. The caller, a male voice, was panic-stricken: "We're in a Lexus ... we're going north on 125 and our accelerator is stuck ... we're in trouble ... there's no brakes ... we're approaching the intersection ... hold on ... hold on and pray ... pray ..." The call ended with the sound of a crash.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/business/01toyota.html?hp=&pagewanted=all
I know it's not kind to speak ill of the dead, and I understand that it wasn't their fault that their car was fatally defective (and Toyota is completely at fault) but it's hard for me to comprehend how someone could fail to deduce the rather straightforward solution to their problem -- car is going too fast => stop the engine. This has really been boggling my mind for the past week as these incidents pile up -- if someone can explain this to me, I'll be eternally grateful.
I really wondered about this. I also don't want to speak ill or sound like I think I know better, but how did he not at least shift out of gear or turn off the engine? Yes, as someone said turning off the engine can lock the steering, but if you know that ahead of time you can tick the key back to "run" and the steering will be unlocked again. Maybe hard to think that much in a crazy situation, but really, if this guy could operate a cell phone I really feel like he should have been able to operate the key. But i don't know a lot about the situation so I'll admit i probably don't know what I am talking about, it just really seemed weird to me that of all people, a state trooper wouldn't have been able to figure out *some way* to disable the car.
-Taylor