You're assuming: 1) You know that the person submitting the change is from the NSA or some other group that wants to introduce a back door. 2) The person reviewing the changes is trustworthy and not, say, someone else from the NSA. 3) The person reviewing the changes will recognize code that introduces a backdoor. 4) The person reviewing the changes is honest enough to report the backdoor they found rather than exploiting it themselves. 5) The person reviewing the changes has enough time and attention available to review the code thoroughly enough to find the backdoor (if they're worried about something in their personal life, or if the change introducing the backdoor is one of fifty or sixty changes they have to review before their vacation or the release of a new version tomorrow.)
I could come up with other assumptions, but I think you realize what I'm trying to say. If someone wants to get a backdoor into a piece of software badly enough, they're going to do it unless there's exactly one developer who never ever allows anyone else to change a single character in the piece of software.
There are some programs that are very easy to write or describe, that involve very basic operations, but for which the question of whether or not it terminates is very, very hard. One such program is the Collatz conjecture:
Step 1: Start with an integer n.
Step 2: If n is 1, stop.
Step 3: If n is odd, replace n by 3*n+1.
Step 4: If n is even, replace n by n/2.
Step 5: Goto Step 2.
An even better comparison would be a pair of forums, one moderated and the other unmoderated, with the same viewpoint on the same topic. The poster in the forum quoted in the article is comparing apples grown in a greenhouse with oranges grown outside.
Also keep in mind that the doctor can simulate the surgery using the patient's own data and use that simulation to program the robot to perform the operation ahead of time. If the program fails the simulation, the doctor can tweak the program until it performs exactly as he or she wants. At that point, the doctor's responsibility during the actual operation is to monitor the program to make sure it's performing exactly as it did during the simulation and that nothing goes wrong. Even if something does go wrong, depending on how accurate and thorough the simulation was, the program may have been trained to be able to handle the situation.
Just out of curiosity, is there anything preventing someone who is ordered to pay up to the RIAA to appeal and quote verbatim from UMG's arguments in this case in their appeal? I seem to remember something about court filings being part of the public record and therefore not copyrightable, but I figured I'd ask a real lawyer. That would certainly make things interesting, as you'd basically be forcing the RIAA to argue against one of their member's statements.
Of course, knowing the RIAA, they'd try to find some way to sue you for copying this argument.
So if He is the creator of everything, then He holds all the copyrights (as the original creator) correct? If that is your belief, could you use that along with freedom of religion as some sort of defense against the RIAA (or at least to drag out the trial, making it more expensive for them, and giving them a reputation as an anti-religious organization?)
In an emergency (something life and death -- I've been shot and need to get to the hospital immediately, say) I can borrow someone else's car without getting their permission first -- as long as I come back later on and explain the emergency, I suspect many people would understand and retroactively grant that permission.
But if I borrow someone else's car and don't come back to explain why, that's Grand Theft - Auto (and I don't mean the video game.)
We're still waiting for an explanation from the administration as to why they borrowed our conversations. Since the telcos helped "hotwire" our conversations based on the administration's assertion that they'd been shot (without seeing any evidence of that, as far as I'm aware) we're waiting for their explanation as to why they shouldn't be arrested as accessories.
I'd love to see someone ask the Republicans who are pushing for immunity one question, on the record (even better if it's on live TV): "If Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama win the upcoming Presidential election, what _exactly_ do you think is going to prevent them from wiretapping your home, office, and cell phones and listening to every word you say, including anything you say to other members of the Republican party? The telecoms will have no reason to refuse, as they're immune to prosecution. Anything you say can and will be used against you during your reelection campaign, leaked by 'secret sources' to the press."
Who, other than a NATO-type international task force, would have the resources to reach out to those 40k users and help them clean their machines?
Microsoft? After all, we have ample evidence that if a user's machine pops up a dialog, they'll click OK. Just get Microsoft to send out an automatic, urgent, must-be-installed update that clears out Storm (call it "Microsoft Performance Enhancement Update" or something else sufficiently nice) and people will install it.
And where's the incentive for Congress to stick to their budget? If their salaries get cut 10%, they can just vote themselves a 10% "cost of living increase" or something like that.
One way I could think of to reduce the budget: Require all members of Congress to be present and listening on the floor while the full budget, no matter how long it is, is read. Every single solitary line item. Allow the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate and his/her staff and the corresponding officer in the House to wake any Senator or Representative who falls asleep, or to stop any that are working on other material, by any reasonable means. Yes, I can imagine how long that would take and how boring it would be. If the members of Congress don't like it, they can simply make the budget shorter next year.
That's where "intellectual property" becomes such a vague and dubious notion. Consider if this were a medical device. If health risks were involved, could a company forbid the FDA from investigating the device because someone signed a licensing agreement? Or if the FDA has no interest, what about restriction a state board of health from investigating the device?
Here's his official web feedback form. Note that while it requires you to provide your name and address, nothing validates that those are actually your real name and address. You might want to point that out to the representative.
All it takes is one police officer seizing the hard drive of a politician whom he thinks is guilty of a crime because "it was networked with this other suspect's computer via the Internet" and threatening to seize other politicians' hard drives because they were networked with the first politician's computer.
That's one reason I'm surprised so many politicians here in the US support George Bush's warrantless wiretapping -- what exactly do they believe prevents him from ordering the FBI/CIA/NSA/etc. to wiretap them (and throw anyone who divulges the wiretapping into Guantanamo forever) or the next President from doing the same?
The guy would need a *lot* of support from earth. If it doesn't come during the launch window, fatal results.
The astronaut wouldn't be the first mission sent. Send enough supplies for the astronaut to survive even if two consecutive missions failed to reach Mars safely, then send the astronaut.
Or just send someone we don't care so much about. Perhaps someone whose name starts with 'D' and ends with 'arl McBride'?
Why make the general population pay for his crime? Put him under house arrest (he's allowed to go to a job, to purchase the basic necessities like food and clothing, to court if he's called, and that's it) for a LONG time. Make him pay for someone to monitor his house arrest on his dime. Instead of or in addition to house arrest, deny him the tools he used in his crime -- a permanent ban from using the telephone.
Perhaps, perhaps not. But if you had the ability to search through everyone's phone calls, listening for anything potentially embarrassing, incriminating, or interesting, without the possibility of anyone finding out, would you? You never know when someone who today isn't important to the government will become very important tomorrow.
Quite frankly, I'm surprised that any members of Congress would support giving the Executive branch that much power. After all, if I were President and had this much power and not-so-many morals, the first target I'd have for my cronies to wiretap would be the members of the opposing party in Congress. After all, if you know their plans, it's easier to stop them or turn them to your purposes.
You're assuming the test cases are themselves unambiguous and can't be twisted. For instance, let's take a test case: X is "you strike someone with your car and they die." Sounds reasonably straightforward, doesn't it?
Does that include the case where you strike someone with your truck? How about a motor home? A motorcycle? An SUV? Do those fall into the category "car"?
What if you strike someone else's car, pushing them into a person, and that person dies. Is the person you hit the Guilty party, even if they were obeying the letter and spirit of the law?
What if the person that you struck wanted to commit suicide and threw themselves in front of your car giving you no time to avoid them. Are you Guilty or !Guilty?
How long can pass between the first part of the clause, "you strike someone with your car", and the second "they die"? Let's say you strike someone with your car and they recover, then five years down the line they die from causes unrelated to you striking them with your car. Are you still Guilty? After all, you struck them with your car and they died... the test case wasn't written unambiguously, and doing so (if it's even possible) would probably make the test case (or test cases, since once it gets too big you're going to want to break it into smaller tests) longer than the law it was designed to test!
Slashdot Mirror
You're assuming:
1) You know that the person submitting the change is from the NSA or some other group that wants to introduce a back door.
2) The person reviewing the changes is trustworthy and not, say, someone else from the NSA.
3) The person reviewing the changes will recognize code that introduces a backdoor.
4) The person reviewing the changes is honest enough to report the backdoor they found rather than exploiting it themselves.
5) The person reviewing the changes has enough time and attention available to review the code thoroughly enough to find the backdoor (if they're worried about something in their personal life, or if the change introducing the backdoor is one of fifty or sixty changes they have to review before their vacation or the release of a new version tomorrow.)
I could come up with other assumptions, but I think you realize what I'm trying to say. If someone wants to get a backdoor into a piece of software badly enough, they're going to do it unless there's exactly one developer who never ever allows anyone else to change a single character in the piece of software.
There are some programs that are very easy to write or describe, that involve very basic operations, but for which the question of whether or not it terminates is very, very hard. One such program is the Collatz conjecture:
Step 1: Start with an integer n.
Step 2: If n is 1, stop.
Step 3: If n is odd, replace n by 3*n+1.
Step 4: If n is even, replace n by n/2.
Step 5: Goto Step 2.
Have you met little Bobby Tables?
Except that the rgrep is itself a very basic static analysis, right?
An even better comparison would be a pair of forums, one moderated and the other unmoderated, with the same viewpoint on the same topic. The poster in the forum quoted in the article is comparing apples grown in a greenhouse with oranges grown outside.
Also keep in mind that the doctor can simulate the surgery using the patient's own data and use that simulation to program the robot to perform the operation ahead of time. If the program fails the simulation, the doctor can tweak the program until it performs exactly as he or she wants. At that point, the doctor's responsibility during the actual operation is to monitor the program to make sure it's performing exactly as it did during the simulation and that nothing goes wrong. Even if something does go wrong, depending on how accurate and thorough the simulation was, the program may have been trained to be able to handle the situation.
There are lots of people who like putting metal in birds. Of course, the birds don't tend to fly after the "implantation" process, but ...
Just out of curiosity, is there anything preventing someone who is ordered to pay up to the RIAA to appeal and quote verbatim from UMG's arguments in this case in their appeal? I seem to remember something about court filings being part of the public record and therefore not copyrightable, but I figured I'd ask a real lawyer. That would certainly make things interesting, as you'd basically be forcing the RIAA to argue against one of their member's statements.
Of course, knowing the RIAA, they'd try to find some way to sue you for copying this argument.
So if He is the creator of everything, then He holds all the copyrights (as the original creator) correct? If that is your belief, could you use that along with freedom of religion as some sort of defense against the RIAA (or at least to drag out the trial, making it more expensive for them, and giving them a reputation as an anti-religious organization?)
In an emergency (something life and death -- I've been shot and need to get to the hospital immediately, say) I can borrow someone else's car without getting their permission first -- as long as I come back later on and explain the emergency, I suspect many people would understand and retroactively grant that permission.
But if I borrow someone else's car and don't come back to explain why, that's Grand Theft - Auto (and I don't mean the video game.)
We're still waiting for an explanation from the administration as to why they borrowed our conversations. Since the telcos helped "hotwire" our conversations based on the administration's assertion that they'd been shot (without seeing any evidence of that, as far as I'm aware) we're waiting for their explanation as to why they shouldn't be arrested as accessories.
I'd love to see someone ask the Republicans who are pushing for immunity one question, on the record (even better if it's on live TV): "If Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama win the upcoming Presidential election, what _exactly_ do you think is going to prevent them from wiretapping your home, office, and cell phones and listening to every word you say, including anything you say to other members of the Republican party? The telecoms will have no reason to refuse, as they're immune to prosecution. Anything you say can and will be used against you during your reelection campaign, leaked by 'secret sources' to the press."
The Mythbusters would like to disagree with that, I think.
And where's the incentive for Congress to stick to their budget? If their salaries get cut 10%, they can just vote themselves a 10% "cost of living increase" or something like that.
One way I could think of to reduce the budget: Require all members of Congress to be present and listening on the floor while the full budget, no matter how long it is, is read. Every single solitary line item. Allow the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate and his/her staff and the corresponding officer in the House to wake any Senator or Representative who falls asleep, or to stop any that are working on other material, by any reasonable means. Yes, I can imagine how long that would take and how boring it would be. If the members of Congress don't like it, they can simply make the budget shorter next year.
Here's his official web feedback form. Note that while it requires you to provide your name and address, nothing validates that those are actually your real name and address. You might want to point that out to the representative.
All it takes is one police officer seizing the hard drive of a politician whom he thinks is guilty of a crime because "it was networked with this other suspect's computer via the Internet" and threatening to seize other politicians' hard drives because they were networked with the first politician's computer.
That's one reason I'm surprised so many politicians here in the US support George Bush's warrantless wiretapping -- what exactly do they believe prevents him from ordering the FBI/CIA/NSA/etc. to wiretap them (and throw anyone who divulges the wiretapping into Guantanamo forever) or the next President from doing the same?
Or just send someone we don't care so much about. Perhaps someone whose name starts with 'D' and ends with 'arl McBride'?
Why make the general population pay for his crime? Put him under house arrest (he's allowed to go to a job, to purchase the basic necessities like food and clothing, to court if he's called, and that's it) for a LONG time. Make him pay for someone to monitor his house arrest on his dime. Instead of or in addition to house arrest, deny him the tools he used in his crime -- a permanent ban from using the telephone.
Funny that you should link to a posting on Gleemax that says Psionics is not overpowered, considering what I believe is the origin of the name Gleemax.
Perhaps, perhaps not. But if you had the ability to search through everyone's phone calls, listening for anything potentially embarrassing, incriminating, or interesting, without the possibility of anyone finding out, would you? You never know when someone who today isn't important to the government will become very important tomorrow.
Quite frankly, I'm surprised that any members of Congress would support giving the Executive branch that much power. After all, if I were President and had this much power and not-so-many morals, the first target I'd have for my cronies to wiretap would be the members of the opposing party in Congress. After all, if you know their plans, it's easier to stop them or turn them to your purposes.
Actually, I would -- making small rocks from large rocks while wearing a nice bright orange jumpsuit.
Actually, in my opinion curling is more like ice shuffleboard or ice bocce.
You're assuming the test cases are themselves unambiguous and can't be twisted. For instance, let's take a test case: X is "you strike someone with your car and they die." Sounds reasonably straightforward, doesn't it?
... the test case wasn't written unambiguously, and doing so (if it's even possible) would probably make the test case (or test cases, since once it gets too big you're going to want to break it into smaller tests) longer than the law it was designed to test!
Does that include the case where you strike someone with your truck? How about a motor home? A motorcycle? An SUV? Do those fall into the category "car"?
What if you strike someone else's car, pushing them into a person, and that person dies. Is the person you hit the Guilty party, even if they were obeying the letter and spirit of the law?
What if the person that you struck wanted to commit suicide and threw themselves in front of your car giving you no time to avoid them. Are you Guilty or !Guilty?
How long can pass between the first part of the clause, "you strike someone with your car", and the second "they die"? Let's say you strike someone with your car and they recover, then five years down the line they die from causes unrelated to you striking them with your car. Are you still Guilty? After all, you struck them with your car and they died