...people often hit against the floor with their arms and legs in the very moment of ground impact.

The reasoning behind this is "momentum conservation". Basically, the momentum of the whole body is split in the momentum of the torso+head (i.e. most vital parts) and the momentum of the extremities. While during the fall all parts of the body move downwards with approximately the same speed, in the moment of impact the falling person hits his arms/legs against the ground, this way giving them extra momentum downwards. By the laws of physics (specifically momentum conservation), this momentum has to come from somewhere. And that "somewhere" is torso+head, i.e. vital parts of the body get slower -- the slower, the harder one hits his arms/legs against the ground.

This basically saves from internal organ injuries at the expense of the outer extremities, which, in general, are more robust and less critical to survival.

There are three problems that should be solved with robots, if something similar is to be tried:

1) The extremities. Robots need outer extremities, and they should be rather massive -- the more massive, the more momentum they can generate.

2) The joints. Joints to outer extremities should unlock immediately in the moment of inpact in order not to transfer the vibrations of impact from the extremites through the joints to the rest.

3) Useful energy dissipation mechanisms in the extremities. The whole idea is not only that the robot "survives", but that it actually can continue playing after falling. Therefore the extremity is to be built in such a way, that it has some kind of soft, massive buffer, that can get deformed repeatedly on impact without braking (think of "sand sack", for example).

The more I think about it: why not anchor 3-4 sand weights to the robot's outer shell, and "shoot" them against the ground during the impact? Also make them automatically retractable at some point (maybe version 2.0? :-) by having strings attached to them, so that the robot can reuse them minutes later...

Either (1) in case of "no signal" the system doesn't allow the car to move *at* *all*, or (2) allows the car to move without speed limits.

You know that for GPS, you'd need a clear view to the sky, right? You also know that even certain *paints* can weaken the GPS signal significantly, right? Or... an "accidentally" deconnected wire at the antenna?

"Gee, officer... I dunno, guess it must be broken!..."

Yes it is. You're required to help in emergencies (it can buy you jail time if you don't). And if "helping" means "driving faster than legally allowed" or "driving whilst drunk", then you're allowed to do it.

The question is "how fast" and "how drunk", but, in principle, you are not only allowed, but *required* to do it, provided that you can do it safely ("safely" as in "more safe than if you didn't do it").

Heck, you're even allowed to drive fast, drunk and without a driver's license, if somebody's abundently bleeding all over your back seat!

(ok, so the thread's effectively dead, but nonetheless... I think I have the answer to your worries :-)

Short answer: not everything of what anybody sais (including the church) is true. Particularly not about God.

Long answer: in my oppinion, a true "God"-thing must (1) be powerful enough to enable be laying hope into him/it, and (2) far enough from this world to be untouchable ("untouchable" in the metaforic sense -- i.e. untouchable by arguments, untouchable by proofs etc).

Now I don't know if God is just an insanely elaborate philosophical construct of our ancestors, or something real, but divine. But I think this is the point here: belief. When you believe, you believe, basically, very few basic premises: (1) that God exists (i.e. it is *not* merely a philosophical construct), (2) he created his world and he created man 'after his own image', and (3) he "loves" us.

As soon as you (decide to) believe, you live by the consequences: taking care of God's work, taking responsibility for your own life and that of others, doing TheRightThing(tm) -- all things that basically result from (2) and (3) in combination with each other... ...and that's basically it. You should not make the mistake and take "Church == God", because that way you're on the wrong track. The church is just a community. People (originally) gathered together to worship God, but that doesn't mean that *every* church is as close to God as it gets, or that a particular church (the catholics, for example), are *always* close to God.

Take middle ages: the church basically was a political institution with lots of power, instrumentalizing God & the bible for power purposes. I assert that the church would do the same today if it had the possibility to (i.e. if we were still stupid enough to fall for it :-)

So: assume responsibility for your own belief, and don't swallow everything the church says just because a church said it (and therefor it *couldn't* possibly be wrong...)

*But*:

The church is, nonetheless, a community. And a community *is* useful to have. So... while not taking everything the church says for true, also don't deem everything the church says as false! Again, the key here is: use your own brain and take the church(es) as guides, not as law. (BTW: "By their deeds you shall know them" means exacly this! Don't follow the church because it's a church, follow a church because it does TheRightThing(tm).)

Just to give an example more easily to understand: Linux, its 'followers' and its distributions :-) Just because there are bad communities and/or or shitty distros, it doesn't mean that (a) the linux OS necessarily sucks, or (b) the idea of distros should be scrapped alltogether...

No, not at all, please help yourself! Y'know... it's not really mine, found it here somewhere on slashdot, too. But it works, so I thought I'd keep it...

I think I get your point, but I also think that's not entirely true... Christianity *is* a pretty formalized religion. If you really care about being a good christian, you don't just go in there and cherry-pick whatever you need and leave the rest aside. You *do* need some sort of guidance in being / becoming a Christian. Contrary to public oppinion, not everything that "just feels right" is also being a good Christian.

On the other hand, there's lot of "churches" out there that bear the name "Christian" in them but are, in fact, not really Christian. And to make things really difficult, just listening to TheRightChurch(tm) doesn't yet do it. Christianity requires you to actually actively fight for a satisfactory understanding of God -- merely taking over what a priest tells you is not enough. This is what makes being a Christian so difficult: on the one hand fighting for your own understanding, but on the other hand avoid cherry-picking whatever you like and disregarding the rest. If you do the latter part, you're no better than all the other pseudo-Christian churches (those that at some point or the other prove themselves to having it got all so *obviously* wrong.)

So maybe it wasn't quite the perfect answer when I said "the Pope". But "no one" is at least equally wrong. "The christian community and their leader(s)" would probably be a better candidate, if it wasn't so vague...

...then I think I misunderstood you. Sorry for having bashed at you then :-)

(Boy, is this going to cost me karma...)

You're an idiot. FYI, I have mod points today, and still I decided to post into this thread just to be able tell you that you're an idiot.

And now, since I'm out of modding this thread anyway, let's get it straight, piece by piece.

Several instances, but, ultimately, it's the Pope. However, it's not like the Pope simply pulls phrases out of his ass and then they're declared truth. It's only when a certain issue now and then needs clarification that cannot be archieved otherwise that the Pope dictates how to be thought of that issue. It's then that the Pope speaks ex cathedra, and it's only then that he is regarded as an infallible instance and whatever he says is regarded as true.

The reasoning behind this is less to create truth, but instead to allow a large community to start from the same premisses and end fundamental quarrels without a sense.

However, this doesn't happen fairly often. Since 1870, the Pope has spoken ex cathedra twice so far, last time having been 1950; before 1870, there are somewhere between 10-20 documented ex cathedra decrees.

For all other cases, what Christianity is, is less of a "decission" as in "law", it's rather an "interpretation" of certain events. Church people sit together and decide what position to take towards a certain event.

There's more truth to that sentence than you probably wanted it to.

You see, the Church absolutely has no interrest whatsoever in getting involved in evolution. But that's not because they disapprove evolution. It's because the Church has no interrest in getting involved in science questions at all. (That might have been different in the Middle Ages, when people used the bible as a poor replacement for physics, however that's not today.) But then again, like in any other matter, there are those who understand and those who don't understand Christianity. Whoever tells you that the Church disapproves evolution either didn't understand Christianity, or is simply ripping you off for one reason or the other.

The Church stays away from evolution is not because they disapprove with it, it's because evolution is not their job. Period. Church may have an oppinion about how to use science to the best of mankind, blabla yadda yadda. But the Church won't tell you how to do science, just as little as they're going to accept advice from you on how to do religion.

Your statement would mean, in car analogy, that a car mechanics guy staying away from a baby that needs a diper change disapproves with the idea of having babies.

I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual -- I have a lot of atheist friends, none of which I think would like to be associated with you right now...

I've never seen *any* evidence or heard of *any* occasion that such a recovery, even from a only-once-zeroed drive was done.

Now the point is, one could say "of cooourse not, guys that can do this won't do it for peanuts, besides they're secres service" etc etc. But the point is: even if it's secret service and really expensive, at leas *some* news about it should have hit the public -- after all, this myth has been around for several years (a decade?) now.

I'd still even like to hear from a success story. Or even find a company that advertizes "We can (partly?) recover your zero'ed data -- it's going to cost a fortune, an arm and a leg, but we can." Haven't seen that one either yet. Not a commercial, not an offer, nothing... besides legends.

Annoying your users with DRM so that they cannot sell their games when they don't want them anymore does not make things better. In fact, it makes things worse.

I bought it, it's mine.

As for you: make up your mind what you're selling. If it is the media, then the moment I sell it, it belongs to somebody else. If it's the right to play the game (i.e. the "license"), then you already sold "one right" -- if I make use of it or somebody else should be none of your freakin business.

Don't try to eat both the egg and the hen at the same time, it's bound to fail.

That's easy: you don't own a car until you own the two documents that come with it (I don't know the english terms for those, however, here in the EU it's 1) a document that you are always required to be able to present to the police at traffic controls, and 2) another document, that you're supposed to keep safe).

If you own document #2, it's your car, period. Doesn't matter what any record sais -- with document #2, you can order new keys, replace locking mechanisms, and you can at _any_ time claim that you bought the car from the legitimate owner, and then it's them who have to prove otherwise in front of the law.

As for a computer, it's the same as with any other ordinary object: by law, posession implies ownership, period. If I have your laptop, it's _you_ who has to provide the evidence that I stole it, not the other way round.

Because then quality of tech support will go back to where it was: low.

There are several articles out there that cover the topic of how material/financial motivation actually diminishes the quality of work instead of increasing it when compared to an intrinsic motivation alone. I'm not going to cite them all. Look them up, if you want to, google's your friend.

Given the above statement, I'm only going to give some food for further thought: the people doing tech-support "for free" right now are those who enjoy it. They are those who both like and understand what they are doing. Now, if you have a problem, chances are slim that somebody not paid for it will be intrinsically motivated to help you, but *if* that happens, then that person is just about the best one in the world you could have ended up with...

Now, if you would be able to give money for tech support to that person, that would probably not do too much harm. But the problem is that you have no way of giving money 'only to intrinsically motivated persons' -- the moment you're paying somebody, they're not (purely) intrinsically motivated, period. Worse: you cannot even tell whether the next guy is going to help you for the money in the first place.

While it would be a good thing to be able to reward the 'selfless' ones, the problem is that as soon as you start rewarding, you start poisoning a 'selfless' community with 'selfish' people, who are out for the money, and thus you basically end up where you are today: to tech support that sucks.

Since I'm at it: why desperately try to pay back those people, who are obviously rather content with *not* being paid? Why fix it, if it's not broken? Is it because you're somehow feeling guilty that somebody is solving your problems, and you wish return the favor? Well, if you genuinely want to return the favor: help somebody yourself. They'll appreciate it, and eventually, they'll also help somebody else, in the end *maybe* reaching your original helper (the one you were trying to reward, remember? :)

But even if your original helper won't feel the traces of your good deeds: I can assure you, if you're helping somebody without expecting to get a reward, it will enable you to be able to accept help from somebody without feeling the urgent need to reward the helper with anything beyond a "thank you" :-) You're going to be happy, the original helper was happy all along, and other people along the way got happy too.

One. Big. Happy. Family. :-)

Why desperately trying to bring money to the game?

I get your point, but... :-)

Yes, I'll admit that there are time-critical applications that could be DDoS'ed. But only if you admit the following:

1) it's probably cheaper to make sure that a DDoS is recognized fast(er than now) and reacted to appropriately within a matter of mere seconds/minutes, than it is to make a system DDoS-safe. And for many applications, this is good enough and significantly cheaper. To use your example: a fuel company DDoS could be safely responded to within minutes/hours. My fuel tank is not going to need refilling on an hour basis (and if yes, then I've got bigger problems than malware), so a minute-failure of the energy company's networks isn't going to harm me.

And 2) almost none of the applications that you called have an actual need to be tied up to the internet. For example, what's a hospital network controlling machines controlling live/death lost on the *internet* in the first place? That one is supposed to be internal. Whatever critical computations need to perform, I'm sure they don't need to be shared in real time with the rest of the world.

The question is not "is it time critical", but "how time critical". If I can fix it within minutes and I *do* have the minutes to spare (as is the case for your energy example), then this doesn't qualify as time critical. There are very few applications that (a) need to answer faster than they could be fixed, (b) need to be on the internet constantly (thus exposed to attacks), and (c) have potential to cause non-trivial damage.

If an application does not meet _all_ _three_ of the above requirements, then there's a great chance than a proper response strategy will get you more security for the buck than one based on prevention.

Right, why read the post while you can disagree without. Read again.

This is a problem of identification, not of malware. Have your bank identify you using something different than a 12 digit number, and you don't have to care about bots stealing credit card information.

Do do what damage, that couldn't be undone by backups and/or restoring the software of the data centers?

For how long? Restore the banks. A "massive" cyber-attack is nothing that couldn't be detected.

The fact that we don't _have_ a decent sollution for backups/real-time-restoring in case of an attack is true, though. But with half the energy and ressources we put into trying to prevend every last bit of the attack, we could implement decent data-center-restoring capabilities.

The problem now is: no matter how good your line of defence is, it's always a hole in there. And as soon as you're penetrated, you're dead for at least a few hours / days.

If you can reduce the downtime to seconds/minutes, you've won a lot. And you can save a lot of money by implementing 'lower class' defence mechanisms.

I'm not saying you should stop defening all together -- but in the long term, after an initial hop, it will probably be more cheaper to design (and maintain) the infrastructure (data centers, authentication, public services) such that it is easily recoverable instead on focusing that its impenetrable.

The goal of it being impenetrable leads to a race you cannot win. The easy recovery is more likely to be archieved, because it's a lot less sensitive on how sohpisticated the attac is.

Yes, that's just it. Get used to "cybercrime".

As long as nobody gets hurt in the real world, get over it. ... and this leads to rule #1 of anti-cybercrime anti-malware strategy: back up your data, encrypt your data, and make recovery/restore of your data after a malware attack as easy and cheap as possible.

Yes, that also goes for you, secret services. First thing you need to do (and I never thought I'd say that) is implement some kind of secret-service-wide DRM'ed processing network, and *only* work within that network. That will require lots of discipline from you, but... hey, you're a secret service! What's worth the discipline if not the secrecy of your data?

As for you mortal users: nobody wants your grandma letters, so don't bother. As for your bank account / identity data: step on your bank's toes to give you a better identification mechanism, then the whole malware problem for you reduces to reliably proving your identity. Period. (Of course, provided that rule #1 is satisfied.)

And for all you guys in between: governments, public institutions, etc: you're not supposed to have any secret data, and if you really are, see #secret-service. Then you can affort the extra bit of discipline to keep it secret.

For the sake of completeness: this whole "cybercrime" thing is a farce. There is no crime if nobody got hurt in the real life. There is (or should not be) any such thing as cyber-murder, cyber-theft, cyber-kidnapping etc, simply because everything that's "cyber" is "information", and information, by definition cannot be murdered, stolen or kidnapped. If proper measures are taken, it can be restored in its original state any time. If deleted, it can be restored from backups, if modified it can be changed back. If crucial parts of your system are being compromised (as is the case with public energy / transportation / water supply systems): detect the intrusion and restore the system from scratch.

The only critical thing with information is that it can be illegally copied, in which case... see #secret-service: if secrecy of information is valuable enough to you, take measures: encryption, DRM'ed corporate networks, secure rooms, no-networking machines etc -- depending on how much secrecty is worth to you, you can implement more or less user-annoying and/or expensive measures.

There's no way to "put an end" to "cybercrime" simply because there's too many ways to do damage to information by anyone with a slight clue and a C compiler. But, then again, it's trivially easy to revert whatever damage is done to information, if proper measures were taken prior to the damage. So, if banning C compilers under legislation similar to heavy weaponry is not an option (and it *better* not be), then the only decent option that's left is to fight the damage of "cybercrime", not the act itself.

"Hottie" does it... ;-)