View from Chaos Manor, Thursday, January 15, 2015

Went to Kaiser, took all morning but the verdict is in – I am all right but everything takes longer. So it goes. Physical therapist here just after we got home – pharmacy out there took forever to get one bottle of standard pills. PT was lovely young lady who grew up in Memphis of all places. And gave me a pile of exercises to do daily.  Slowly I recover.  Well it seems slow to me, but actually the therapists say it is quite rapid.  After all, I never got mu balance back after the 50,000 RAD cancer treatment, which finished the tumor.

Thought I might get to LASFS tonight but the fan club as to wait a week…  Just too tired.  Larry and  Wendy will be over tomorrow…   

President Obama has acknowledged this problem but, again, at a high level of abstraction. “The question . . . is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works,” he said in his first Inaugural Address. “Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day.”

But no programs have ended since January 2009. Is it because all of them work?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/liars-remorse_823377.html?page=3

. This sums up the situation of growing government nicely. Government programs last forever. Das Buros steht immer. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, per omnia secula seculorum.

Similarly, teacher unions say they protect only the competent, but few incompetents – in LA 10 in eleven years among 30,000 – are ever found. No one gets fired, money is spent, and the kids learn nothing, so they go to college and learn less. Now they are debtors forever, and the beat goes on. They have to turn to government, which will bail them out, by raising taxes and paying themselves big salaries and big sure pensions they could get nowhere else.

Of course eventually you run out of money.

It is predictable and was predicted. Salve sclave.

RE: Google pushes to take Oracle Java copyright

Jerry,

As a software developer, I have always felt that software, which describes a process for solving a problem, should be coverable by patents. This use of patents, however, has been restricted to covering fundamental ideas, like graphical user interfaces, many of which patents should not have been granted because these ideas were already common practice at the time.

That left copyright law to protect general software. It is not in my mind an ideal fit, but my intellectual property deserves some protection or it has no market value what-so-ever. Then I go hungry and so do my children. Not good.

Copyright law, as currently implemented, is rather silent about licensing standard-essential property whereas patent law specifically recognizes standard-essential property. Patent law demands that the holders of patents for technology required to abide by a recognized industry standard (such as IEEE-802.3 for wired Ethernet or IEEE-802.11 for wireless Ethernet) are themselves required to license without prejudice and at a standard price to all who wish to manufacture devices complying with the industry standard. There is no such prevision in copyright law, allowing holders of copyrights over software the right to NOT sell to anyone or to sell at whatever price they wish to each entity wishing to use the copyrighted IP.

The case in question revolves around what Google did when it created Android (Well, Android, Inc. created Android and Google bought Android, Inc…). While Android is based upon Linux, Google wanted the apps running on Android to be written in Java and they wanted a Java JVM to run on top of Android to handle the execution of these apps. Google found that Java was not friendly to mobile devices as they did not have the memory or mass storage capabilities that the Java architecture requires to run well.

Remember the Spirit fiasco on Mars.

Rather than completely abandoning the approach, they re-wrote the Java JVM to be friendly to small devices, calling the result Dalvik. Dalvik is not the open source Java core, but it is based upon it. It does implement the Java API pretty faithfully, but Google diverged from that API where it suited their needs. Android and all of its components are open source. Android is also freeware. It sounds, at least, like fair use of open source software.

I find the case of Oracle trying to claim copyright over the Java API to be dubious as they have placed Java into the market as open source and as an industry standard. It is not, however, a standard recognized by any national or international governing body (e.g. IEEE, ISO, etc.). It is open source, or at least, most of it is. Sun Microsystems completed putting all of the Java they owned into open source in 2007, before Sun was acquired by Oracle. Open source, however, does not mean that anyone if free to redistribute Java tools developed by Oracle, such as the JDK or the JVM. That still needs to be licensed for commercial use.

Oracle has taken exception to Google’s use of the Java ‘standard’. Since Google does not use the JVM (it uses Dalvik), Oracle’s only approach to getting at Google is to claim abuse of copyright on its Java API, which Google largely used intact. The decision that API’s are copyrightable leaves Google with a very weak "fair use" defense. I see it as weak, because fair use has never allowed anyone to widely redistribute copyrighted material for free.

Should API’s be copyrightable? Probably, because they can’t be patented and IP deserves market protection. Do we need a way to manage copyrighted material that is standard-essential in the market place? Most definitely. Should the Java API, which has been put into the open source space, be copyrightable? Probably not. Open source distribution means that anyone can make as many copies as they want and give it away for free. It means that new code can be written based upon the open source and be given away for free as widely as desired. This seems incompatible with copyright protection. Did the court decision say that the Java API was not open source? Did the court even consider the nature of open source?

As a developer, I realize that recognizing copyright protection for industry standard APIs, absent a rule under copyright for handling standard-essential IP, is a disaster. I also recognize that the court’s decision has a terrible impact on the meaning of open source. If I base popular work on open source software, do I risk being sued for copyright infringement? IP protection needs to be re-thought and re-implemented.

Kevin L Keegan

It is generally known that when Oracle (aka One Raving Ass Called Larry Ellison) went to acquire Sun, the main goal was to monetize Java, and only reluctantly dealing with Sun’s dwindling hardware business. Android developers write in Java, then run the resultant code through a converter to create Android-compatible bytecode for its VM (Dalvik). Android’s need to create a counterpart VM was then-Sun’s insistence on licensing for mobile Java.

Oracle is trying to levy a reverse-engineering tax on Google for their ingenuity in avoiding the mobile Java licensing terms. Imagine the state of the industry had IBM done this back in the 80s to Phoenix, AMI etc for the PC BIOS, or AT&T/Novell to Linus Torvalds for reverse-engineering the UNIX APIs for Linux. In a previous life I made my living reverse-engineering 3270 terminal controllers for a third-party firm made up mainly of former IBM engineers from Triangle Park NC; they’d have been sued out of existence in this scenario.

If this went in Oracle’s favor, most coding would be brought to a screeching halt for re-implementing anything previously done by anyone, anywhere, in the last 70+ years (modulo the successor to the Sonny Bono copyright law).

Robert Halloran

Wow, followup to the previous item: EFF has submitted an amicus brief in support of Google with a list of names looking like a Who’s Who from the Computer Science Hall of Fame: Vint Cerf, Ken Thompson (UNIX), Bjarne Stroustrup (C++) , Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger and Brian Kernighan (the A, W and K in UNIX’ awk), Alan Kay and Peter Deutsch (Smalltalk), Brendan Eich (Javascript), Ed Felten and Bruce Schneier (security), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Ray Kurtweil, Tim Paterson (86-DOS); https://www.eff.org/document/amicus-brief-computer-scientists-scotus  

Robert Halloran

One of my earliest columns in BYTE – about 1982 – included a conversation with my mad friend Dan Mac Lean on copyright vs. patents in software.  Just what is patentable?  But code is not the same as stories.

Buck up! Good reading ahead!

http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=8139#more-8139

Sci Phi Journal on Amazon!

David Couvillon

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Avoider of Yard Work

Thanks.  Indeed

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

I’m glad you are out of the hospital and are recovering well.

I thought you might appreciate this feel-good story; Marines foil a robbery in progress, being careful not to mess up their dress blues.

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/01/14/three-marines-foil-armed-robbery-of-woman-without-wrinkling-dress-blues/

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Robert Kinoshita, RIP.

<http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/robert-kinoshita-dead-robot-designer-763491>

Roland Dobbins

Sisi’s Brave New Egypt?

<http://pjmedia.com/blog/sisis-brave-new-egypt/?singlepage=true>

 

Roland Dobbins

‘A federal researcher points out George III couldn’t suspend laws — as many say Obama just did.’

<http://www.nationalreview.com/article/396261/what-not-even-king-england-could-do-joel-gehrke>

Roland Dobbins

Jerry, on your blog, you said:

It did sound a bit fuzzy to me, but it’s a bit out of my field. So what did happen? Just change in direction of a beam? That happens all the time.

Well, I’m an astronomer/astrophysicist by education and experience, so it’s right in my field. And if anything unusual happened at all — I haven’t gotten hold of the full article from the Astrophysical Journal yet, let alone had time to read it in full, so I can’t say that ANYthing unusual happened yet, although the news media seem to think so — then it was a simple (well, perhaps not so simple, depending on your point of view) case of spacetime distortion from the powerful gravity fields causing a gravitational lensing effect that essentially changed the direction of the pulsar beam.

If I should find out any more info, I will let you know asap.

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

Jerry,

The general public ‘science’ article published by the Inquisitor about the disappearing pulsar drew upon another general public science article published by Popular Science. The Popular Science interpretations of the science were quite liberally reinterpreted by the Inquisitor.

Nothing unusual happened to pulsar J1906. It is NOT beaming its signal somewhere else in time, just somewhere else in space. We detect pulsars as pulsars because spinning neutron stars that are accreting mass from another object produce jets at points perpendicular to the accretion disk, a plane determined by the neutron star’s magnetic field, not by its spin axis. Just like on the Earth, the magnetic poles on a neutron star seldom align with the spin axis of the neutron star, so as the neutron star rotates (at up to 30 times per second), the jets emitted at the poles are swept though space like a lighthouse. If those jets happen to illuminate the Earth, we detect them as pulsars. We can only detect pulsars that happen to aim at the Earth at some point in their rotation. Most pulsars never do, so we do not detect them, though we can estimate their number given the number of pulsars we have found.

Precession happens to any spinning object whose rotation axis is not vertical. As children, we see this as the wobble of our toy tops when we nudge them away from vertical while they spin. Newton provided a means of predicting the rate of precession for our toy tops, so we call this Newtonian precession. When you get up to objects of significant mass, such as the Earth, scientists like to differentiate the precession of these objects by calling it geodetic precession (see http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/geodetic/). While it is difficult to define ‘vertical’ in open space, a rotating mass produces a bulge at its equator, making it wider and more massive around its equator than it is around its poles. The Earth has this issue. The gravitational influences of the Moon and the Sun would like to keep that bulge at the Earth’s equator in the plane of the Moon’s orbit around the Earth and in the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The two are not coincident, so they are each pulling on the Earth’s bulge in different directions at different times. Also, the Earth’s spin axis is tilted 26 degrees to it solar orbital plane, likely by a large impact over 4 billion years ago. All of this leads the Earth to have an approximately 26,000 year precession. If we beamed a laser straight up in the sky from the North spin pole, it would strike the star we currently call Polaris. A few thousand years now, it will strike a different star. At some point in the time between, any observers watching Earth from Polaris will see our laser beam wink out. Disappear. Did the Earth just vanish? No. Did our laser beam go somewhere else in time? No.

What is complicating the Inquisitor interpretation is a misunderstanding of geodetic precision. Scientists make this distinction because large rotating masses alter their precession rates in a significant way due to the effects of gravity. In 1916, W. de Sitter used general relativity to predict that when a mass rotates, it actually rotates the spacetime around it as well. Think of it as a twisting effect, as would happen if you spun a bowling ball on a rubber sheet. This is called frame dragging. If a spinning mass is precessing, then frame dragging will have an effect on the rate of precession. It will not, though, allow the rotating object to send signals to other times.

What was observed with pulsar J1906 was geodetic precession shifting the axis of rotation away from the Earth, thus rendering the pulsar undetectable. While it may be the first time we have observed a pulsar doing this, it is not going to re-write the physics text books. Even without the effects of general relativity, this pulsar, and ALL of the other pulsars we currently observe, will eventually become undetectable as pulsars from the Earth as precession moves their rotation axes. Geodetic precession just predicts the when of this better than Newtonian precession. According to the Popular Science article, geodetic precession predicts that pulsar J1906 will be observable as a pulsar from the Earth again in just 160 years.

Kevin L Keegan

One advantage of being me is that I generally know someone who someone – or several – who  does know.  Pity this is probably a fairly standard observation among pulsars

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View from Chaos Manor, Saturday, January 10, 2015

Was delayed. Still at home. Monday, January 12, 2015

Came home Friday night. Get about with a wheelchair and walker … I am not frail, but I have even less balance than before, and I had essentially none before. I will add to this all day. Essentially I cannot type fast, but I can use both hands now. That may not be as fast as 2 fingers, do not know yet.

Slow but I am here. And of course it’s all expensive.

Hillary’s Half-Baked Haiti Project [WSJ]

Caracol Industrial Park is failing to deliver on the promises made to foreign investors and Haitians.

By

Mary Anastasia O’Grady

Jan. 11, 2015 6:18 p.m. ET

On the fifth anniversary of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti remains a poster child for waste, fraud and corruption in the handling of aid. Nowhere is the bureaucratic ineptitude and greed harder to accept than at the 607-acre Caracol Industrial Park, a project launched by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with U.S. taxpayer money, under the supervision of her husband Bill and his Clinton Foundation.

Between the State Department and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which hands out…

Hillary’s Half-Baked Haiti Project: Mary A. O’Grady

The news all over the weekend was about France, but there are other stories that may be more important. Haiti proves again that throwing money at a problem enriches bureaucrats, but does far less good for those we “help”. Of course for Haiti it has been this way a very long time. When I was in graduate school I had a fried from Haiti who was studying fishing science at the University of Washington. He had the same observations, foreign aid from the US went to US civil servants, Brown and Root contractors who imported all but the most menial labor at high prices, and Haitian officials working for Duvalier. Clinton sent Marines to restore a different crook to office, and Brown and Root continued to thrive, and little else changed as the roads degenerated into jungle again. Little has changed. Haiti will not be rich, but we have put enough money in there that it should be up to poverty level if we just dropped the money from airplanes.

Education’s No Dollar Left Behind Competition

K-12 spending has little bearing on student success, yet state rankings drive the money scramble.

By

Vicki Alger

Jan. 11, 2015 5:59 p.m. ET

One of education’s most important annual rituals began last week, when Education Week released its annual Quality Counts report, which grades states based on a variety of criteria, including spending. On cue came the predictable hand-wringing over K-12 education funding.

On Thursday Florida’s Duval County Public Schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told the Florida Times-Union that underfunding is undermining student achievement. “[I]magine how much stronger our students would perform if the policy commitments were maintained and balanced with an increase in per pupil funding,” he said.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/vicki-alger-educations-no-dollar-left-behind-competition-1421017161

Of course the best schools have 50% proficiency in reading. Yet I recall in Capleville with two grades to the room, 25 students (usually; sometimes more) to the grade, four teachers to the whole school – the 7-8 grade teacher was Principal, and there were no other officials, no guidance counselors, no frills, and surely no $5000 a year per pupil – EVERYONE could read better than most high schoolers can today. See my California Reader on Amazon for what we read in 6^th grade.

Throwing money at them makes schools worse not better. Cut the school budget and give local boards control, and get the education experts out of the way. Fire them or bribe to get out of the way. Let teacher teach and put some discipline in the classrooms and things might improve. They can hardly get worse than the experts have made them.

If this is true, it’s the most important discovery to date in human history.

<http://www.inquisitr.com/1745673/pulsar-observed-wobbling-out-of-space-time-and-vanishing-out-of-our-now/>

—————-

Roland Dobbins

It certainly seems significant.  This is perhaps a crucial finding for Einstein; I do not see how Petr Beckmann can explain the vanishing but I am not sure that ia really what was observed.

Web: www.nss.org <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001EJ_Yd-dbwmXhomE0GHvhwWM1RjYLDRgETsoI8iPV2DGUEOt8oFD_LnQfhjUaG9wGXk_hiDGCg67lCJLDCS7curyr3NFEaW_PNp8ghjDslMCJL8W08cLAkuPWSfK50U3qM1jQnKf7x8oedxtFVINM-M5H_FHLKrQ1&c=a6Qs5IRzfyXMo0xE7XIHNZz4aqUrLraLaLe6tza19V36Ya7GXBuSAw==&ch=9Abw5bAFaycARgPM2duTGvcrtPDaKRqphLHg-LWxSd8mcBoZnzqEyQ==>

National Space Society Applauds Milestone on the Road to Space Settlement: First Precision Return of a Falcon 9 First Stage to an Ocean Platform

(Washington DC, January 12, 2015) The recent launch of NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services 5 (CRS-5) on January 10th represents a major step towards space settlement, according to the National Space Society (NSS). The Dragon capsule berthed with the International Space Station (ISS) at 5:54 am EST Monday, January 12th. This is the seventh flight of the Dragon, and the fifth of 12 contracted flights to the ISS by SpaceX.

CRS-5 marked a major step forward for SpaceX’s efforts to develop reusable rocket technology. Such technology is called for in Milestone 2 of the NSS Space Settlement Roadmap (http://www.nss.org/settlement/roadmap/ <http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001EJ_Yd-dbwmXhomE0GHvhwWM1RjYLDRgETsoI8iPV2DGUEOt8oFD_Lq__lWm6K7xYnZl-7_6CYoEmotz0B1JFUbOtre1AJwIDBbEevqUOtOqcK8eAIbsxsa2T77SH3Gdlbv6wuAaZxTWdePHVm6AClVGJUeTnMTtjv1dYMJhCqw-aqpQFb59b4ludm5Zi-nPTHKKPgSISLj4=&c=a6Qs5IRzfyXMo0xE7XIHNZz4aqUrLraLaLe6tza19V36Ya7GXBuSAw==&ch=9Abw5bAFaycARgPM2duTGvcrtPDaKRqphLHg-LWxSd8mcBoZnzqEyQ==> ), titled "Higher Commercial Launch Rates and Lower Cost to Orbit" based on, among other things, "re-usable vehicles." For the first time ever, SpaceX attempted to land a returning first stage on an ocean-going platform. The stage impacted the platform "hard" according to Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO. The ocean platform measures 300-ft by 170-ft, and achieving this level of precision on first stage return represents a significant milestone toward a reusable launcher. CRS-5 also utilized for the first time hydraulic grid fins to control the descent. Musk stated that the "grid fins worked extremely well … but ran out of hydraulic fluid right before landing." The next Falcon 9 flight will increase the amount of hydraulic fluid by 50%, raising the chance of a successful landing that will lead to ultimate re-use of the first stage and a significant drop in the cost of flying to space.

Nobody threw money at them  

<http://www.inquisitr.com/1745673/pulsar-observed-wobbling-out-of-space-time-and-vanishing-out-of-our-now/>

The headline is total hooey, and the science in the article is BS. The article in the ApJ — at least the abstract — indicates that all that is happening is that the relativitistic gravitational distortion is creating a gravitational lensing effect, and changing the direction of the pulsar "beams" as a result.

I quote, "The pulsar is fading fast due to geodetic precession, limiting future timing improvements."

http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/798/2/118/article

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com <http://www.stephanie-osborn.com/>

It did sound a bit fuzzy to me, but it’s a bit out of my field.  So what did happen? Just change in direction  of a beam?  That happens all the time.

Google pushes to take Oracle Java copyright case to Supreme Court (ZD)

Summary:Can software code, and application programming interfaces in particular, be copyrighted? That is the question.

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols <http://www.zdnet.com/meet-the-team/us/steven-j-vaughan-nichols/> for Linux and Open Source <http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/> | January 12, 2015 — 16:46 GMT (08:46 PST)

This is important, because how can there be a standard if copyright is used to make these things proprietary for seventy years?

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View from Holy Cross, Friday, January 09, 2015

Much to say but may not get to it today. I go home this afternoon, after 3, no idea how long it will take to get settled. Just had the last therapy session.

There is a lot from CES. Of course I was not there but I have read a lot of press releases and accounts, will have a full report.. It appears to be incremental progress, making salable products of last year’s ideas, but the increments grow larger. Last year 3d  printers were a novelty; this year they are for sale, and better, and that trend will continue, to change manufacturing forever.  Specialty gadgets are real now. 

This is a good analysis  of why you may love Windows 10

Windows 10’s new browser will have the most advanced features ever

Microsoft is planning to radically overhaul its web browser in Windows 10. Sources familiar with the company’s Windows plans tell The Verge that the new browser, codenamed Spartan <http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/29/7460961/microsoft-working-on-brand-new-web-browser-windows-10> , will include a host of new features not found in rival browsers. Chief among the plans for Spartan is new inking support that allows Windows 10 users to annotate a web page with a stylus and send the notes and annotations to a friend or colleague. The web note service will be powered by Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage, meaning notes will be stored on a copy of a web page that can be accessed by any browser across multiple platforms. As annotations are shared, multiple users can doodle on a web page and share edits and annotations between groups.

Cortana is coming to your browser

A second major feature for Spartan will be the integration of Microsoft’s Cortana digital assistant. Microsoft is planning to use Cortana to surface information on flights, hotel bookings, package tracking, and other data within the traditional address bar. If you use Cortana to track a particular flight and start to search for "American Airlines" in the browser address bar, it will automatically display tracked flights and allow Spartan users to view the status of the flight directly. It’s a subtle addition, but you’ll also be able to access Cortana search directly from the new tab interface in Spartan. Cortana integration in the Spartan browser is planned to replace every instance of the existing Bing methods in Internet Explorer.

Other features include a new way to group tabs together to declutter the occasionally messy interface of multiple browser tabs. Spartan will allow users to group tabs however they want, making it easier, for example, to split up personal tabs from work ones. Microsoft also originally planned to allow Spartan to support custom themes, but we understand the company has dropped this for the final new browser in Windows 10. Such support may arrive in future updates.

Spartan will be a Windows Store app for regular updates

Spartan is designed to be a single browser across PCs, tablets, and phones. We’re told that Microsoft will make Spartan a Windows Store app, enabling the company to quickly and easily update the browser in future. ZDNet previously reported <http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-is-building-a-new-browser-as-part-of-its-windows-10-push/> that Microsoft will continue to include Internet Explorer in Windows 10, and we understand this will be primarily for legacy compatibility reasons. Spartan is the main browser in Windows 10, and most users will be accessing the web using it. While Spartan will be a Windows Store app, we understand Microsoft isn’t planning to make it a universal app initially. One version of Spartan will be available in the Store as a desktop app, and another as a modern app for tablets and phones. Both will be updated regularly with identical features.

Microsoft is planning to keep the look and feel of Spartan very similar across phones, tablets, and PCs. The desktop version looks like a simplified version of Chrome, with a tabbed interface above the address bar, alongside options to go back, forward, and refresh a page. It’s all designed to look lightweight, without the bloat typically associated with older versions of Internet Explorer. While the Spartan name is a codename, it’s not clear if Microsoft plans to continue the Internet Explorer branding with its new browser. That naming and other features of Spartan could play a part in Microsoft’s Windows 10 event on January 21st. Microsoft is planning to detail the consumer features of Windows 10 at its press event later this month, including its phone and tablet features.

We reached out to Microsoft for comment on its Windows 10 browser plans, but a spokesperson says the company has "nothing to share."

Verge Video from CES 2015: First Look at Dell’s XPS 13 Laptop

* Related Itemsmicrosoft <safari-reader://www.theverge.com/tag/microsoft> spartan <safari-reader://www.theverge.com/tag/spartan> features <safari-reader://www.theverge.com/tag/features> browser <safari-reader://www.theverge.com/tag/browser> internet explorer <safari-reader://www.theverge.com/tag/internet-explorer> windows 10 <safari-reader://www.theverge.com/tag/windows-10>

.

This Little Robot Wants to Carry Your Bags wsj

* By

* Geoffrey A. Fowler <http://topics.wsj.com/person/A/biography/1345>

*

*

Javascript is required to view this video. Please enable javascript.

What kinds of things will robots help us with, both at home and when we’re out and about?

At the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, 5 Elements Robotics demonstrated a robot assistant called Budgee Bot designed to help with one specific task: carrying stuff.

Maybe I’ll get one…

The situation in France could be said to be Colonial chickens coming home to roost, or a failure of will. As you choose. But France faces an existential threat. So do we. Can we overcome it? It is a real question. Not with present strategy.

#France <https://twitter.com/hashtag/France?src=hash> ‘s most famous cartoonist, 87 year old Uderzo – father of Asterix – comes out of retirement for #CharlieHebdo <https://twitter.com/hashtag/CharlieHebdo?src=hash> .

Space X

And later last night, I saw that SpaceX has rescheduled the launch attempt to the next available window, 4:47 am EST Saturday.

Oh well, what’s one more day given the decades we’ve been at this? No guarantee they’ll launch Saturday either, of course – the flight’s primary goal is to get essential cargo to Station, the launch window is brief, and they won’t go if the instrumentation doesn’t show the rocket entirely ready.

Just to be clear for all, there’s also no guarantee this particular test will 100% succeed. Let me quote from the most recent Space Access Update at http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau138.html:

"They will build on previous successes in slowing down F9’s first stage from a significant fraction of orbital velocity to a low-altitude hover, this time attempting to land their F9R first stage intact on a position-stabilized barge floating downrange of the launch site.

"We have been talking for decades about the possibility of recovering orbital-launcher rocket stages intact enough to quickly and cheaply reuse them, thus radically changing the launch cost equation. Now SpaceX will be making their first attempt at this in just a few weeks.

It is an attempt, mind – an engineering test, intended to quickly discover what the simulations and analysis may have missed.

"There’s no guarantee it’ll work the first time, but if it doesn’t, the lessons learned will be quickly applied to the next test, and the next.

Once SpaceX does recover a stage intact, there’s then no guarantee it will be in good enough shape to fly again right away. But if not, it will provide data needed to redesign the next try to return in better shape. We would not bet against SpaceX attempting the first actual reflight of their Falcon 9 first stage within the next year or two."

Looking forward to it, trying to be patient…

Henry

At least they try!..An X program that makes money…

Jerry,

Welcome home.

Je suis Charlie. As a right-thinking Englishman it pains me to have to say nice things about the French, but I have no option. Enmerde yourselves Abdul.

In the matter of ransomware Why does law enforcement not attack those collecting the ransoms? This would work wonders A short jail sentence for the bosses of a credit card company and no more ransomware.

John Edwards

Mostly because we cannot find them –  bitcoins are hard to follow – or if we do it is in some country that will not extradite them.  It has been suggested that we nuke these places from orbit, but we don’t do that to jihadist homes…

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View from Holy Cross, Thursday, January 08, 2015

Going home tomorrow so all’s well. There ought to be a service for hiring malicious hackers to harass people who send long unsolicited mail to people. The hospital router gets overloaded, and 7 Mb messages stall the system and it takes forever to clear them. Ah well. It has been all day and still… The latest thing are messages big but no visible content and no headers. Have no idea what that is.

.

According to an editorial posted in USA Today, "people know the

consequences" of insulting the Mohammedans’ prophet. The piece goes

on to ask, :"Why did France allow the tabloid to provoke Muslims?" and so forth:

<.>

Muslims consider the honor of the Prophet Muhammad to be dearer to them than that of their parents or even themselves. To defend it is considered to be an obligation upon them. The strict punishment if found guilty of this crime under sharia (Islamic law) is capital punishment implementable by an Islamic State. This is because the Messenger Muhammad said, "Whoever insults a Prophet kill him."

However, because the honor of the Prophet is something which all Muslims want to defend, many will take the law into their own hands, as we often see.

Within liberal democracies, freedom of expression has curtailments, such as laws against incitement and hatred.

</>

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/01/07/islam-allah-muslims-shariah-anjem-choudary-editorials-debates/21417461/

This is something I’d expect to see in a transcript of a Bin Laden video…

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

You have identified one of the primary problems. Sharia states clearly that infidels are not equal to Muslims, and anyone who leaves Islam deserves death. It is fundamental to Islamic Law that infidels, even people of the Book – primarily Christians and Jews – must pay a tax in order to avoid conversion. For everyone else it is Islam or the sword. Many say that they do not practice that, but it is there and not to believe it is heresy. They have a remedy for heretics.

Coming to a strategy in this war is key. If it is treated as a problem of law enforcement we are doomed to a strategy of defense only, giving all initiative to the enemy. That makes for a long war. Have we that much patience? Will the nation make war upon those who have had enough of reaction to enemy atrocities?

NBC’s Terror Expert Kohlmann: "France Has A Very Serious Problem With Islamphobia" <http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/track/trackurl.asp?q=bxBwrlnesmrr

I would have thought that having a security expert who puts Islamophobia as the major threat after an attack on a publications office may be part of the problem.

Hello, Jerry –

Best of luck on your recovery.

On 30 Dec, you printed a number of responses which generally pooh-poohed the idea that the FBI could have got it right about N. Korea and the Sony hack. In general, they showed considerable disrespect for the FBI’s forensic IT capabilities. "How could they possibly search through proxy servers, spoofed MAC addresses, etc and finger North Korea in such a short time?"

Well, apparently they didn’t need to. From http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/sony-hack/sony-hackers-got-sloppy-used-north-korean-ips-fbi-director-n281556 the North Koreans got sloppy and didn’t do any of that stuff. Using IPs that are unique to N. Korea seems pretty boneheaded, but that seems to be the case. And the alternate theory presented in the posts, that the hack was done by disgruntled insiders – well, finding a way to get access to N. Korean servers in order to cover one’s tracks seems a little much for Hollywood IT workers, even those who have helped create the "Mission Impossible" series.

So, in this case, the FBI needed only the IT equivalent of the ability to read the postmark on an envelope.

Underestimating an opponent is a classic prelude to failure, but so is overestimation.

Regards,

Jim Martin

Interesting. Of course they can’t train people without exposing them to the West. Sort of like the Soviets except Communism makes more sense than fealty to Kim Jong Un.

Jerry,

I’m glad to see you coming back to writing and commenting so quickly.

Best wishes for eventual complete recovery.

I’m especially glad that your stroke was (I’d guess) recognized and treated quickly, before much (or any, I hope) permanent damage happened.

My analogy from ten years living with my Dad’s disabling stroke (alas not treated quickly) is that it’s the difference between losing the local programming for the affected skills but being able to relearn relatively quickly because the local hardware’s still there, versus losing the local hardware that slice of programming ran on, at which point relearning is dependent on retasking other hardware and is much slower and more problematic.

Even the latter can be overcome eventually, but it takes a lot more brute persistence. May all your recovery be of the former sort, but if you do hit any of the latter, well, I don’t see you as inclined to give up too easily in any case so I’ll spare you the obvious advice.

I’m very much looking forward to SpaceX’s next try at intact recovery of their first stage. The launch window is 2:09 am your time Friday, 3:09 mine, so unless insomnia hits we’ll likely read about it in the morning.

I’d be tempted to wake up and watch, except they (understandably I

think) aren’t going to televise the landing attempt live in any case.

Regardless, flying an entire booster stage to Mach 10 or so then bring it back in one piece is a major step toward things we’ve both been working toward for a long time. May we both have cause for some joy come tomorrow morning.

Henry

I await…

Regarding Cryptolocker (malware that encrypts your data files, and requires a ransom to unencrypt), it is extremely difficult to unencrypt without paying the ransom.

Your advice to backup to an external hard drive then disconnect that hard drive from your system is good advice. Backups are important. One could also copy to DVD, although that is much slower. Large capacity external hard drives are relatively inexpensive. So that advice is good for the average user, or perhaps the small business.

The difficulty is in the implementation. You have to remember to do it. And you need to have a good rotation schedule so that you have multiple backups in case you don’t catch an infection right away. The ‘googles’ will have lots of advice on rotation backup schedules.

But the implementation is difficult. My own procedure is thus:

– I use the Microsoft SyncToy to backup my laptop data files to another computer on my home network. The advantage is that it only copies changed files, plus also deletes files as needed. Quite easy to set up, and pretty fast. So that protects my laptop files.

– On that desktop, I have the Carbonite automated backup program installed (www.carbonite.com). It takes care of automatic backups, doing them continually in the background so as to not affect the use of the computer. Files are encrypted and stored in Carbonite’s "cloud", and can be retrieved to any computer at any location. The cost is reasonable for personal use, plus they also have plans for businesses. They also have plans to support multiple computers in a location.

It is my understanding that Carbonite keeps multiple versions of your files, so it is possible to get a previous version of your backed up files.

I could do the backups myself, but using Carbonite as my automatic – "don’t think about it" – backup is more convenient. And it protects me from any possible data loss due to theft or damage (fire, flood, local hard disk failure, etc.). And I don’t have to think about it.

There are others that provide similar services to back up your data to the cloud. I am not worried about my data security in the "cloud", even though some of my files contain confidential data. It provides me with a backup process that I don’t have to worry about.

There are many ways to backup and protect your data. I am happy with my choice.

(I have no affiliation with Carbonite other than being a satisfied customer.)

…Rick Hellewell, Security Dweeb

Jerry:

First, I’m glad you’re doing better.

Second, the solution to Cryptowall and similar problems would be to get a Letter of Marque, recruit a few friends, and go hunting.

While law enforcement agencies have to play by the rules, a Letter of Marque pretty much allows you to set your own rules. A sufficiently skilled group of researchers would be able find out where the money has gone — at which point, the same group could make life interesting for the scumbags.

Since it’s not likely that a Letter of Marque would be granted, another solution is for the email and browser writers to set a default that attachments won’t be opened without specific authorization. Click the link, and a pop-up box would require the user to enter a code before the attachment can be opened.

My brother and I have a practice of sending a single-use authenticator in any email which includes a link. This authenticator is simple — a reference to something we’ve discussed in a recent phone call — but it’s something that nobody else would have.

Keith

Do you think the President would issue you one?  And Ukraine might object to your hunting there…

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.