[T]he attempted Times Square car bombing may have heightened the American public's awareness of and concern over global and domestic cybersecurity threats.
Sooo... without the Internet it isn't possible to stick a bomb in a car and drive it through Times Square?
Not exactly. Before you actually read the article, it simultaneously does and does not explain quantum computing.
They were behind the couch the whole time?
I tried living in a virtualized home once, but I found the insulation to be quite insubstantial. Made for some particularly chilly winters.
Now chili winters on the other hand, those are nice.
Seriously? Yes, they should.
I've worked at an ISP for 10 years, and we cut people off the second we find out that they're infected with a bot and trying to infect others. When they call and ask why their Internet connection isn't working, we tell them strait up what the issue is and that the'll have to clean off their computer (have it done 'professionally' if they can't do it themselves) and then report back to us to get their connection reinstated.
It's a hard lesson to learn, but I think it's necessary.
To use the obligatory car metaphor; if your car starts to leak gasoline while driving down the road, you can't just keep driving it like that since it's 'not your fault' that you gas line ruptured. Even if you do all the preventative maintenance that is recommended, stuff can still happen and it's up to you to get it fixed, even if that means taking it to a professional to fix it.
Serves you right for leaving the basement!
If it didn't have any impact, then what would be the point?
Let's say we have competitive services A and B. Their traffic travels over a connection with 10 units of bandwidth (the actual units are unimportant). For the sake of argument let's say that the services in equal demand, and both use 4 units of bandwidth so the connection is not saturated. If company A pays the telco money, what exactly do they get for their money? They're not going to get more bandwidth, because they could have used more before and their demand has not gone up.
Now let's say that service A and service B would each use, if available, 6 units of bandwidth. With only 10 available, the connection is now saturated. Treated equally, that means they each get 5 units. But then company A pays out money, their traffic gets prioritized, and now runs at 6 units of bandwidth. That only leaves 4 for company B.
If no bottleneck exists, then there's no point in companies paying for priority. If a bottleneck does exist, then someone's gotta lose when someone else gets priority.
News about an unfair DMCA takedown (don't worry, there are thousands of those) or free advertising for Zen Magnets? You decide.
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Exactly what I was thinking too. I work in a building that has a highly irregular layout. No two floors are the same. It was hard enough to model in Sketchup, and I don't even want to think about doing the interior the same way.
But for about 10 years now I've though that it would be perfect for a Quake II map. Now I think it would be good for a Left 4 Dead map, but yeah, I've got to get me one of those backpacks.
Two photons walk into a bar...
Wait, didn't Brian Greene already tell this joke?
*facepalm*
What we're looking at here is the one Cabinet-level department specifically charged with maintaining IT infrastructure getting nailed by their IG for having a security profile slightly better than your average baby's candy protection perimeter.
?!? Where are you getting this analogy from? ?!?
Can't you think of an appropriate car-themed analogy?
Major Linux distributions ask their users to install a kernel update roughly once each month. Before Uptrack, each such update required a reboot. Until a system can be updated, it remains vulnerable to security flaws. By allowing users to install kernel updates without downtime, Uptrack slashes the cost of system administration [...]
Slashes the cost how? So... your sysadmins are all working on putting out fires caused by attacks on vulnerabilities, since they didn't get the patches in right away? Or they're just sitting around idle, waiting for the exact, once-a-month moment to reboot the computer.
You'll still need the sysadmin to apply these updates anyway, Ksplice or not. It's not like Ksplice will come to your machine room and install the updates themselves. And it's not like applying the updates the moment they are released will guard you against all exploits either.
You need sysadmins to fix things when attackers break it. You need sysadmins to fix things when users break it. You need sysadmins to fix things when it breaks itself. Preventative maintenance, housekeeping, and not to mention updates to every other piece of software on a server other than the kernel. Seriously, rebooting a machine takes up the least amount of my time. I type `sudo reboot`, enter my password, and the machine does the rest. If I've done my job correctly I don't have to sit there and hand-hold the machine while it boots itself.
Well, you learn something new everyday.
Thanks!
Some may argue that the same could be said about a child- we 'create' it and then 'program' it with what we want to, but I think this trivializes humanity.
I'm glad I don't share your viewpoint on what constitutes 'trivial'. To me, when we can understand something in more detail, such as how a child learns and grows, this knowledge of seemingly simple, but innately complex processes makes these events all the more exhilarating.
Children begin processing information at a rate that we are incapable of quantifying before they even learn a language.
So when we can quantify the rate at which children process information, and in the event that computer process information faster than we can quantify, the computer is alive and the children are not?
We can create an AI that has the ability to learn, and an AI that can masquerade or exude human characteristics and behavior, but it's all an act. It's a toy. It isn't 'alive' in the sense that we are alive (whatever that sense may be).
I think this is your problem right here. You don't actually know what constitutes 'alive' and what does not. Neither do I, but I'm open to debate it. You just say that humans are alive, and computers are not, and therefore never will be. Also, I think you're mixing two ideas here; one is the idea of Artificial Intelligence, and the other the creation of a computer that 'is' a human. I agree with you that an AI mimicking human reactions is in fact just 'acting' like a human, and is not an actual human, but I don't see what this has to do with being 'alive'. My cat does not (at least not when I'm around) "exude human characteristics and behavior", but even if it were, it would still be alive.
Human characteristics are not the defining characteristics of being alive.
The idea that we could create an AI that could think 'outside' of the box that we create it in is, to me, a childish sci fi fantasy. [...] I rest assured that this is one of those that we can safely say will never come to pass.
I don't see what's stopping us? Just because we can't see the finish line, it doesn't mean it isn't there. So far your argument for what is 'alive' and what isn't is that what you say is 'alive' is, and everything else isn't, even things (computers of the future) that don't exist yet. I don't think any single person has jurisdiction over what is considered alive and what isn't.
Likewise with a "thinking" computer, it is still just silicon and lines of code, not a living being
Surely you must have heard the argument where humans are likened to 'organic' computers, made of Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, etc. and lines of DNA? Again, you must find that this trivializes the miracle of life. I just find that it adds to it.
"Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love." -- Albert Einstein
