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Re:"wresting control away?" really? by ocelotbob · 2007-02-19 16:42 · Score: 1 · on How Jobs Played Hardball In iPhone Birth

Here's one such article.

RTF Spec by fang2415 · 2007-02-19 06:11 · Score: 4, Informative · on OLPC Has Kill-Switch Theft Deterrent

When this (old) news first came out, I posted this gloom and doom comment, but after reading the spec, I realized that the picture was more complicated than my comment, or the summary above, indicates.

FTF Spec:

The anti-theft system cannot be bypassed as long as P_SF_CORE is enabled (and disabling it requires a developer key). This, in effect, means that a child is free to do any modification to her machine's userspace (by disabling P_SF_RUN without a developer key), but cannot change the running kernel without requesting the key. The key-issuing process incorporates a 14-day delay to allow for a slow theft report to percolate up through the system, and is only issued if the machine is not reported stolen at the end of that period of time.

My earlier concerns were that this funcitonality was the same type of call-home spying and TPM kill-switch control that MSFT in its most evil moments would love to have over all of its users and that OLPC had totally screwed the pooch.

The spec makes it seem a bit more like a maximally secure default setting, whose override is difficult but still accessible. They are simply storing the lock (the laptop) and the key (the developer key) in different places. The keys won't be given out if the lock has been reported stolen, but if not, they are available to the machine's owner.

Something about this still worries me, though. The developer key makes this system radically different from something like the WGA's phone-home spyware "feature" in that it can be disabled by the machine's owner, but given that the default setting is so hard to override, is the effect really all that different? Is this going to screw over less techical users who make a mistake and somehow manage not to "renew their lease" frequently enough? Worst of all, if something goes wrong with the centrally-managed key distribution system, millions of kids will be left with fully locked down, unhackable, TPM machines that will brick in an instant if they wait too long to phone home to the server of a government that may be more interested in censoring them than empowering them.

I'd be curious to hear what Stallman has to say about this project, especially this aspect of the security system. I think everything else about this project would suit even his lofty standards to a tee, but I think OLPC is walking a fine line with this anti-theft system.

Jade from Beyond Good and Evil by PIPBoy3000 · 2007-02-19 05:55 · Score: 1 · on A Criticism of Race Portrayal in Games

There was an interesting article where the main character had an ambiguous race. Players were welcome to decide if she was asian, black, or perhaps some humanoid alien of some kind. Personally I just thought she was smart, cute, and sassy, always a winning combination.

Re:1 in 45,000 chance by Raenex · 2007-02-18 11:53 · Score: 1 · on Asteroid Highlighted as Impact Threat

I agree with your point that we need to defend against civilization enders. I wasn't trying admonish you for not being original, or saying that you plagiarized Nightfall. Your post just reminded me of Nightfall, and I really enjoyed the short story, so I wanted to point it out to others that may not have read it or elicit comment from those that had.

Sorry, there's no way you could have known that. I'll have to start taking seriously the proposition that the tone of 50% of internet messages are misunderstood. Must.. resist.. temptation for one-liners!

From the link above:

People often think the tone or emotion in their messages is obvious because they 'hear' the tone they intend in their head as they write," Epley explains.
At the same time, those reading messages unconsciously interpret them based on their current mood, stereotypes and expectations. Despite this, the research subjects thought they accurately interpreted the messages nine out of 10 times.

Re:Self-limiting congestion by maxume · 2007-02-15 12:13 · Score: 2, Interesting · on How Would You Deal With A Global Bandwidth Crisis?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr .html

It's Web 3.0 !!!!!1!!eleven1!! by EatingSteak · 2007-02-13 10:00 · Score: 0, Redundant · on Social Networking Sites Opening Their APIs

Uh oh, Here comes "Web 3.0". I wonder... who is going to take credit for this one?

Racial Ambiguity and Sci Fi by softwaremud · 2007-02-12 08:15 · Score: 5, Interesting · on Do You Care About Race in Games?

I think that the ambiguity in "Jade" reflects a change in racial attitudes and also a change in marketing. Many companies are tapping into multiracial and biracial characters because they often appeal to a larger audience.

From the article: http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/02/jades_black_ra c.html#more
"Jade was black?"
"I always thought of Jade as an arab."
"I always thought she was supposed to be of Eurasian descent."
"I thought Jade was asian."

Whenever somebody choses a character in a video game and plays that character, I agrue, in some level that they are identifying with that character. I mean you control that character's actions, you die when that character dies etc. so there is at least a little bit of your time and attention and perhaps even emotion invested into that character. Each of these people thought that Jade was a different race/ethnicity because in their mind, their hero character is represented by somebody they are more able to identify with "an arab", "of Eurasian descent", "black", etc. This is positive. Wouldn't you rather chose who your hero's are instead of accepting what somebody tells you who your hero is?

As a side, I think that there are more racially ambiguous and multiracial characters in sci fi and fantasy because the idea that "mixed" is the future. I think that this can be a bit of a double-edged sword. While think its good to have positive media images of mixed-race people, i think that sci fi can leverages stereotypes create characters.

Example #1:

George is stronger than normal humans, but savage and primal because he is half and half human.

This example is common, and there's not too much wrong with it. But how many people feel that there is a large leap between this first example and this next one:

Example #2:

Take something like the Jade character above. Jade does math better than the average character because she's asian and runs faster because she's black. This ties into to stereotypes. 1. Asian people do math well. 2. Black people run fast.

Hey- for the second example these are both positive stereotypes, why do I bring it up? Positive stereotypes can be just as negative stereotypes. This description degrades the character's performance to a characteristic of race. Maybe the jade character does math well because she has a PhD and runs fast because she ran track and field. This form of stereotyping for multiracial characters is often called "Hybrid Vigor" or "best of both worlds". The flip side of it is "Hybrid Degeneracy" or "worst of both worlds". In the end, video game characters, just like people, and should be judged and evaluated as individuals- not races.

Re:Amusing Premise, Moronic Reasons by VGPowerlord · 2007-02-10 08:35 · Score: 1 · on Apple, the New Microsoft?

What's the most common DRM on songs owned by individuals in the US and Europe? Gee, that would be PlaysForSure because of Microsoft's illegally bundling with Windows.

Bzzt. That would be FairPlay. PlaysForSure ended up being DOA because Apple already owned the market with FairPlay. There's a reason Microsoft doesn't support it with their own player, the Zune.

Proprietors do users no favors by locking them in. by jbn-o · 2007-02-09 22:03 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Apple, the New Microsoft?

So, Apple is bad because they continue to use DRM on the iTunes store. Brilliant. It can't be because, oh, I don't know, that the media companies would absolutely freak out if Apple unilaterally dropped DRM. They can't -- they would end up in court I suspect.

According to Fred von Lohmann of the EFF, Apple would not drop iTunes Music Store DRM even if they could. As I understand it (I don't recall exactly where, but I think it was from one of DVD Jon's recent blog posts on the topic), Apple employs DRM on tracks from labels that don't want DRM. von Lohmann concludes, quite rightly:

Apple's warm embrace of DRM here is every bit as reprehensible as Lexmark's effort to use DRM to eliminate interoperable printer cartridges and Chamberlain's effort to use DRM against replacement garage door clickers.

Incredible is the reaction on tech discussion sites like /. and digg where Lexmark and Chamberlain get almost universally razzed but people believe the line that Apple only reluctantly employs digital restrictions.

von Lohmann's post is quite informative and shows the real purpose of Apple's iTMS DRM—to lock in iTMS customers. DVD Jon builds on this in his recent blog posts.

Then there's Steve Jobs' recent lie about not "gum[ming] up" networks with third-party software, which the FSF debunked handily.

One doesn't need to delve too far into history to see how proprietors, no matter how slick their ads or how popular their consumer electronics, are not working in your best interests.

Dump iron dust in the ocean to feed the plankton by denis-The-menace · 2007-02-09 15:26 · Score: 3, Informative · on $25M Bounty Offered for Global Warming Fix

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.11/ecohacking .html

"Ecohacker Michael Markels claims he has a megafix for global warming: Supercharge the growth of ocean plankton with vitamin Fe and let a zillion CO2 scrubbers bloom."

Re:I can't see this really working... by Anonymous Coward · 2007-02-07 07:20 · Score: 0 · on Public Iris Scanning Device In the Works

I guess that depends on how you apply the pixels. This technology covered yesterday in Wired
http://blog.wired.com/wiredphotos34/
would seem to have an application here by increasing resolution in the interesting area using the same concept as the fovea in human eyes.

Re:At least Apple is consistent, I guess... by Anonymous Coward · 2007-02-06 22:16 · Score: 0 · on Jobs Favors DRM-Free Music Distribution

Nate isn't an official Apple spokesperson... Now, if you can point me to an article that has a single verifiable quote from someone who oficially speaks for Apple saying, "hey, we're right behind DRM," then you might have a point. Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris on the proposed French DRM interoperability law: "The French implementation of the EU Copyright Directive will result in state-sponsored piracy... If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers."

Or perhaps look at the DRM that Microsoft has rolled into Vista. Show me how Apple has loaded its flagship products with restrictions that turn them into crippleware as soon as one sees anything that looks like protected content. You mean the API that allows developers to optionally integrate MS's HDCP implementation into their media players without having to write their own HDCP implementation? Your claim is another example of the most moronic FUD spread by Microsoft haters. This "DRM that Microsoft has rolled into Vista" just makes it easier for developers to implement HDCP (required by Blu Ray). On Windows XP or OS X, developers would have to write their own HDCP support into their video player software if they want to play Blu Ray. On Vista, developers just make API calls.

Re:My eyebrows are raised.... by sumdumass · 2007-02-06 17:39 · Score: 4, Informative · on RIAA Says CDs Should Cost More

This is also interesting because they conspired to raise the prices of cd's already. Wonder if they will get away with it this time?

And right on, They compare the price of a new product to the price index instead of the price it should have been retailing for. If someone did the math in the same way with a normal valued price, I would bet that they would be a little more expensive now. I guess RIAA might be doing the "see, you getting a deal already so don't pirate" thing here.

Nothing like making you feel good about paying too much for something then by illistrating that they could be at a higher price.

Hey Let's Link to the Real Article! by Anonymous Coward · 2007-02-05 11:52 · Score: 0 · on Unreal 3 Engine to Skip the Wii

The real article is here.

Re:Scary by Reality+Master+101 · 2007-02-05 05:02 · Score: 3, Informative · on Scientology Critic Arrested After 6 Years

Have we in the Western world become so enamored by political correctness that we cannot even take a joke for what it is?

He wasn't sent to jail for the joke. If you look at the original conviction article, he was engaging in a lot of physical stalking behavior. I have to say, if someone was following me around -- physically -- and making "jokes" about violence on the Internet, and was a known hater of my religion, I'd want his ass to be in jail, too.

Just because they're wacky scientologists doesn't mean they open game for stalkers with axes to grind (so to speak).

Re:People are not "Flawed" by jmagar.com · 2007-02-05 04:35 · Score: 1 · on Study Finds Bank of America SiteKey is Flawed

If you care to ensure that the system is secure then you should really use best practices: Key Fob

RSA login fobs have been around for many, many years, and I am not aware of a better system.

It was AOL, not Yahoo! by Behrooz · 2007-02-02 14:33 · Score: 1 · on Lycos Deletes Emails and Says 'Too Bad!'

We should remember the so-called "anonymized" search data Yahoo! released some months ago where two New York Times reporters tracked down someone based on the anonymized data in her searches.

That was AOL, not Yahoo!-- the released search results were from subscribers using the AOL browser.

There are solutions that smart people have come up with to improve on e-mail, searching, and remote hosting... but they cost either cost money or are not reliable. The primary issue is users regularly expecting to get more than what they have paid for.

Re:Didn't see it in the article by twistedsymphony · 2007-02-02 02:36 · Score: 1 · on Overcoming Challenges To Game

This article also reminds me of the Blind Mortal Kombat Master. Which I found particularly interesting because I used to be good enough at MK3 that I would frequently take people on while blindfolded as a party trick; though I would imagine it's much more difficult to learn the game without your vision. Thinking of other games I'm sure the Space Channel 5 Series (originally on the Dreamcast and later on the Gamecube and PS2) would work very well for the blind without any modification, being that it's a Simon says/music driven game.

I've often contemplated how my life would be different if I just lost so much as a thumb or my vision or my hearing etc. Gaming makes up a significant portion of my pastimes and it's physical requirements are steep. I cherish the fact that I have these abilities. I think it's great that there are things out there that would expand the accessibility of games. Though it's a difficult task, and I'd hate to be limited to just MK3 and Space Channel 5 it's nice to know that there are people like Benheck who will make controllers for the one handed and the Audio games for those who are blind. I've been debating trying my hand at developing a small XBLA type game... now I think I might try to design a game that could be enjoyed by the sighted as well as the blind.

Re:Allocation strategies for ISPs: do Torrents los by Anonymous Coward · 2007-02-01 10:38 · Score: 0 · on Net Neutrality and BitTorrent - No More Throttling?

If bandwidth is scarce, how should an ISP allocate it?
That's a nice straw man you setup there. How about about ISPs quit overbooking bandwidth? Also, prove that there is a speed difference due to torrents.

1. For pay -- the more the customer pays, the faster the service
This is already in effect. See AT&T's DSL packages or RoadRunner's packages.

2. For cost -- the more costly the customer, the slower the service
So I shouldn't stream video and a slide show to people without paying again for it?

3. For QOS -- the more time-critical the service/customer, the faster the service
Then all I have to do is mark everything high priority. Else, who decides what is important to me?

4. "Fairness" -- equal bandwidth to everyone (throttle the hogs)
First, find the offenders, the harder you look, the better they will hide. Once you find them, find the offensive things in the bandwidth. The harder you look the better they will hide the activity. Besides they already do this (see response to number 1 above)

I suspect that Torrents lose with all four strategies.
Number 1 can be perfectly valid for torrents as it's already working now.
Number 2 can also be perfectly valid and work as it's only another way to put number 1.
Number 3 will never work and any of the Pro-NetNeutrality arguments can refute it.
Number 4 some ISPs are already doing this and they will lose as it's an intellectual arms race.

Define "lose". Making people pay more? OK you win, you're right, making people pay more will work. However, the gold stars were given out already to companies that tier their service and are getting millions from people like me who is paying $79.99/mo for the "Elite - Static" AT&T DSL package. When if I goto S. Korea I could have had fiber right to my apartment. Mind you when that wired article was printed too, back in 2002.

Please don't come to me (or /.) with this argument anymore. ISPs need to get off thier collective arses and up the bandwidth.

Yahoo Told Everyone About This Back in 2005 by macbort · 2007-02-01 08:49 · Score: 1 · on Flickr To Abandon Early Adopters

I'm completely missing the point of all this outrage toward Yahoo/Flickr here. These same "early adopters" are whining about the exact same thing they complained about almost 1 1/2 years ago (late August 2005).

This Yahoo account requirement is not new news - they let people know about it a long time ago, and have even extended the drop-dead date from "sometime in 2006" to early 2007.

I'm one of the "old-schoolers" and made the change to the Yahoo account last year - it wasn't a big deal. It's just a frickin' web app...

Re:Adult themed games? Aw, get real will ya... by damiangerous · 2007-02-01 05:44 · Score: 1 · on Web Retailer Bails on Games Industry, Hard

Sorry, Wal-Mart is only 12-15% of the retail industry at most,

Back in 2001 they accounted for 25% of video game sales.
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,55955,00.ht ml

I've also found several dead links referencing them as the number 1 games retailer with between 23-28% depending on the article date.

Re:No room left for legitimate marketing. by retrosteve · 2007-01-31 02:28 · Score: 1 · on 7 Ways to Be Mistaken for a Spammer

Nice (and very old) discussion on this point if you look up the first Usenet spam, Canter & Siegel ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canter_&_Siegel ) also ( http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,19098,00 .html _) and from 1994, some reaction to them: http://groups.google.se/group/news.admin.misc/brow se_thread/thread/34588f6adcaf2c79/ad6060b1bd82c185 ?lnk=st&q=cantor+siegel+&rnum=10#ad6060b1bd82c185

There's really no way to draw a dividing line between legitimate marketing and spam except whether people agreed to receive it. If your friends didn't want the ads, then it's spam.

Not necessarily funny ... by ubrgeek · 2007-01-30 08:16 · Score: 1 · on I Was a Cybercrook for the FBI

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/cybercop. html

Re:Not true. by modecx · 2007-01-30 07:05 · Score: 1 · on Google Admits China Censorship Was Damaging

I never reversed myself. I just don't see how a wikipedia article pointing to a BBC article from from five years ago is good proof of what's happening today, do you? For a while, china blocked most if not all western search sites. Google and Yahoo (and AOL, and MSN) got on the PRC's good graces by agreeing to work with the government to block objectionable content, so they could have access to the gigantic market share, back in those days... But those days are NOT today.

You know what would I would consider proof? A person in China trying to visit search engines of languages foreign to China, and being blocked or redirected to a Chinese site. Is that too problematic?

All the recent anecdotal evidence (about the last two years) I've seen is that these foreign search sites are readily accessible, but upon searching for objectionable words your connection is reset for 30 minutes, or the firewall filters out sensitive URLs, and/or filters packets with sensitive information, or the firewall simply filters out results provided by search engines.

How about this for contrary evidence? Note this: they say google.cn is self-censored, and results from google.com will be censored by the firewall, which would seem to indicate to a logical person that the site is still accessible, if limited by the firewall.

Re:Wanted: Old school search engine by justthinkit · 2007-01-30 05:28 · Score: 1 · on The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines

In 2003 (the when) Google realized that it and blogs were perfect for each other. But I don't think they are perfect for end users. I think a definitive site on, for example, baby names is more useful than the first ten (or even fifty) hits from Google combined. Compare: 1.5M names vs about 50K names in the first ten links that Google suggests.

What I am meaning when I say "Old school" is an engine that indexes content and lets the viewer decide what is important. Google no longer does this -- it gives preference to pages ordered in a way it wants, and especially if these (otherwise useless) pages contain links to other pages. The "especially" has become a problem with blogs, IMO.

It is a good point you make that Google has always taken linking into account. It is a bad point that it makes as much sense today as it did initially. DOS fitting in 640K made sense at the time but putting those video pages in the 640K to 1M range was a bad design choice that still haunts us today.

Quite simply, how does a new, useful _but_ not necessarily popular opinion make it to page one of Google today? I don't think it can, yet it must for the web to be a true information leveller. This is the horn of our dilemma. Discuss among yourselves.

Re:Actually, I wasn't going for humor by Don853 · 2007-01-29 09:21 · Score: 1 · on On Electricity (Generation)

I'm having a bit of trouble finding the exact source I'm looking for, but even a world-class athlete can only generate a few hundred watts for a few hours. This article gives a figure of 379 watts for a 75 minute time trial for Floyd Landis during the Tour de France in 2005, and I'd presume that a bicycle is one of the more efficient ways to capture energy while working out. Unless you're a really spectacular athlete, you're going to have trouble turning on more than a few lightbulbs, let alone your home PC.

what ever happend to WEBTV? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-01-28 09:12 · Score: 0 · on Gates Proclaims Internet to Revolutionize TV in 5 Years

they've had NINE years to revolutionize TV: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,2987,00. html

what ever happened to that?

Re:GoDaddy Response by Decius6i5 · 2007-01-27 10:15 · Score: 3, Insightful · on MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site

As a GoDaddy customer who hosts an open discussion site on a domain that is registered with GoDaddy, I am troubled by the mishandling of this incident. Frankly, I look at this as a substantial risk to the stability of my website, and I am now contemplating a transition to a new registrar.

I'm assuming that this account and response were actually posted by GoDaddy. If so, I'm glad you've decided to address this matter, but unforunately, you haven't gone far enough. Your handling of the matter was irresponsible, and this post glosses over serious problems with your process. You need to address these problems directly if you expect people to rely on you for registrar services. For example:

In this case, Go Daddy attempted to contact the customer with regard to a large list of MySpace user names and passwords which appeared on his Web site. The registrant was not available at the time.

This is not an honest representation of what occurred. The voicemail your abuse department left has been made public. You called the customer to inform him that the domain had already been scheduled for deactivation. You did not provide an explanation and you did not provide any telephone contact information.

Once we were able to discuss the issue with the registrant, he assured us he would remove the offending material and we re-enabled his site while he was on the phone. The site was back up within one hour.

The fact is that you did not leave a telephone number where your abuse department could be reached. According to the customer you did not respond to emails that were sent to the abuse department, your technical support group would not forward calls to the abuse department, and the customer was informed that he would receive a response in one to two business days.

This characterization that you did everything you could to contact the customer and when you finally did you got the site back up immediately is totally dishonest. The facts are that you knew that this website was a large community site and that the operators had not directly posted the content you were seeking to block access to, but you disconnected the domain without making prior contact with the customer, and you made it as hard as you possibly could for the customer to contact you after the fact to resolve the matter.

This is not a responsible way to handle incidents like this, and you cannot justify it. Furthermore, spinning it makes matters even worse, as it means that we can expect similar problems to be dealt with in a similar way in the future. That means that GoDaddy cannot be relied upon as a DNS registrar for serious Internet resources that need stable DNS services, particularly if they are open or community based sites that allow third parties to post content.

I would caution you against underestimating the influence that technical communities like Slashdot AND Seclists.org have over the purchasing decisions made by people deploying Internet systems and networks. If you do not take a serious critical look at your processes and respond to your customers in a way that assures us that incidents like this will not happen again it will have a serious negative impact on your business.

Re:Screw nukes by identity0 · 2007-01-26 16:24 · Score: 1 · on Why South Korea Is Shackled To Windows

You jest, but in fact North Korea has been reported to have a hacker and cyberwarfare unit with several hundred members, possibly many more. Given that NK has very little in the way of computer infrastructure, it's likely mostly designed for attack of their main enemies, SK, US and Japan.

Now, whether they have any talent is an open question, but the military seems to be about the only thing that works well there...

Haven't they learned anything ? by freedom_india · 2007-01-26 12:28 · Score: 1 · on Why South Korea Is Shackled To Windows

in 2003, we had a worldwide attack of SQL Server worm that left South Korea completely in the dark on the 'net.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/slammer.h tml

It completely dropped out of internet because of this SQL Server worm.

This should have made Korea realize that depending on one technology (especially MSFT) is a death knell to their online experience.
Instead these guys have gone ahead to make it more dependent on MSFT especially ActiveX which has been proven it is unsafe on 'net.

Haven't they learned anything at all.

GoDaddy thinks this is all perfectly A-OK by rabtech · 2007-01-26 11:11 · Score: 1 · on MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/01/godaddy_d efends.html

GoDaddy got back to me. General counsel Christine Jones defends taking down SecLists.org, saying that Fyodor had close to an hour to respond to GoDaddy's voicemail and e-mail warnings yesterday, and didn't.

"We couldn't reach him, and because the content was hundreds and hundreds of MySpace user names and password, we went ahead and redirected the domain to remove that content," she says.

An hour's notice doesn't seem much time before shutting down someone's website, particularly when the content in question is nine days old. Jones says there was urgency, because so many MySpace users are young teenagers, and they could suffer serious privacy invasions if perverts start logging into their profiles to get private photos and messages.

"For something that has safety implication like that, we take it really seriously," she says. "For spammers, we give people a little bit of time to respond to us."

Ouch. Archiving Full Disclosure is worse than spamming.

Awesome.

Re:its nice, but... by Nutty_Irishman · 2007-01-26 07:35 · Score: 2, Informative · on US Patent Office To Re-Examine Blackboard Patent

If you're going to make corrections to someone else's post (which is perfectly fine), try refraining from making direct insults. "Commission" isn't the most appropriate term to use, Quota is more appropriate, but my description of the system is still correct.

And if you don't believe me or "my friend", you can take it from someone else who actually does the work( http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/29/12 30256 -- forum post 1/2 way down)

You are completely wrong. I am a patent examiner. Patent examiners are under continual pressure to approve patents. We all have quotas, set by our payscale and by the area in which we work, and failure to meet the quotas results in being fired. Also, failing to respond to an amendment in time can result in being fired, even if you have been 30% over quota up till now and then three amendments land on your desk in one week that are all due because they were delayed somewhere else along the way. There is no lack of upward mobility - patent examiners can move up all the way to GS-13, I believe, without any competition. Also from the wired article ( http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,62930,00 .html?tw=newsletter_topstories_html ).

"The overriding problem is that patent examiners today, and throughout history, were never able, and never expected, to do a perfect job in examining patents," said Wegner. "The disposal system is one of the biggest evils of the patent-administration system. If the goal is to dispose of as many applications as possible, then that forces you to accept cases. You wouldn't deny patents because you can't force someone to drop their (application) unless their patent is actually invalid."

In other words, examiners are biased toward accepting as many applications as possible in order to meet their quota, according to Wegner.

(emph added).

OT: Aphex "watermark" by fmackay · 2007-01-25 22:51 · Score: 1 · on Science Journal Publishers Wary of Free Information

I read an article about how The Aphex Twin hid his own face in a graphical display of his music.

Here's a page about this. Note that this technique is clearly audible in the music, a "discordant, metallic scratching" according to this Wired article, so it wouldn't be suitable for watermarking. Supreme irony at the end of the Wired piece, BTW: "It doesn't sound a lot like music...[m]ore conventional artists like Britney Spears would have some trouble hiding this."

Could be worse by Jon+Luckey · 2007-01-25 10:02 · Score: 1 · on Diebold Security Foiled Again

It could have been this Diebold key that provided access

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr= &q=GS-567331-1000_d.jpg&btnG=Search

At least with the key under discussion, one had to do some metal work to duplicate it from a photo.

For the key in that image, I suspect that the same trick using a bic pen to open that kind of lock would work.

Hmm.... I wonder what that GS-567331 was supposed to open..... The page isn't working right now :)

Re:Robocop by Pheersome · 2007-01-25 07:59 · Score: 1 · on Street Fighting Robot Challenge

Close, but no cigar. The correct answer is "Getting his Ph.D. at UCLA":

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/posts.htm l

Re:Wii Hype Defating Rapidly by tcoop25 · 2007-01-25 07:35 · Score: 2, Informative · on Elebits and Warioware - Bad Wii and Good Wii

Wii Hype Deflating Rapidly?

From Wired Blog: Game Life:

"I called local Target, 50 units gone right after 8am. I lined up at Bestbuy about 20 minutes before opening, no tickets or vouchers, just a mad dash to the palette of wiis in the center of the store. After bagging one, I headed to gamestop about 30 minutes later since Bestbuy had ZERO remotes and chuks. Strangely, I could have bought a second one while I was there. I went back later for Wario Ware and of course, they were all out of hardware altogether."

They aren't talking about the Wii launch. They are talking about last Sunday shipments.

Re:Isn't this "ray" easily blocked? by Simetrical · 2007-01-25 05:03 · Score: 1 · on US Military Tests Non-Lethal Heat Ray

Couldn't an organized crowd just pull the metal screens off their windows and use them as shields? Last I checked, those work great against microwaves. You could even make clothing made of flexible metal mesh to block the incoming rays.

Military tests apparently show that even the tiniest gap in the clothing will give you basically the full effect. Anyway, what are you going to do about the eyes, nose, mouth . . .

At any rate, the worst that this means is it's not totally effective and you have to shoot the guy. Oh well.

Re:I hate vultures. by Viper+Daimao · 2007-01-25 02:37 · Score: 5, Informative · on US Military Tests Non-Lethal Heat Ray

Wired (which I remember covering directed-energy weapons back in 2004 and 2005) recently wrote up an easy-reading article that covers most frequently asked questions about ADS, like:
"Does it cause lasting damage?"

In more than 10,000 exposures, there were six cases of blistering and one instance of second-degree burns in a laboratory accident, the documents claim.
And if the military is willing to try it out on news reporters (volunteers all), as they did in the breaking story, they're pretty confident.

Eye damage is identified as the biggest concern, but the military claims this has been thoroughly studied. Lab testing found subjects reflexively blink or turn away within a quarter of a second of exposure, long before the sensitive cornea can be damaged. Tests on monkeys showed that corneal damage heals within 24 hours, the reports claim.

"A speculum was needed to hold the eyes open to produce this type of injury because even under anesthesia, the monkeys blinked, protecting the cornea," the report says.
[...]
[T]he Air Force is adamant that after years of study, exposure to MMW has not been demonstrated to promote cancer. During some tests, subjects were exposed to 20 times the permitted dose under the relevant Air Force radiation standard.
"Okay, no lasting damage usually, but how long does the pain last?"
The pain ceases as soon as the beam's no longer on you.

Yet the ADS, like every nonlethal weapon, is heavily scrutinized because of the potential for abuse ("Will the version in the field be as harmless as the one used on reporters?", etc.) and because, presumably, exotic new technologies like this are hard to sell to a skeptical public. Hence, the reporters themselves being subjected to the weapon.

Then, of course, there are those who oppose any new weapon almost on principle. But after reading similar comments at several sites, I have to ask, Why?

Why oppose battlefield (or riot zone) use of the ADS, which can allow our servicemen and -women to stop a suspicious person at long range rather than (A) let the person close distance and potentially harm our troops, or (B) have our servicemen shoot (lethally) first and ask questions later?

It's precisely these ethical and operational questions that lead me to believe that directed energy has a big part to play in future combat operations. Especially once these weapons get smaller (even as small as rifle-sized, perhaps with a battery in the backpack), there are all kinds of potential military applications.

If you can disable people all around a combat zone without killing them--perhaps so you can get in, detain a high-value target and get out--you don't really have to (for example) discriminate between innocent civilians and enemy combatants who dress like civilians. Instead of killing anyone who gets too close to a vehicle convoy (hey, you don't know if he has a bomb strapped to him, or a gun hidden in his clothing), just zap 'im for a few seconds at a few hundred meters (much further than bombs and much effective small arms fire usually reach) and keep moving. Furthermore, if you can make a combatant stop and drop without putting a bullet in him, you're more likely to be able to detain and question him.

That adds up to fewer "collateral" losses of innocents and more flexibility for our troops. Whatever your human rights concerns, aren't the consequences of not having such a system worse?

Heck, if they can miniaturize it, why not allow it in more mundane civilian/police applications? A short shock of pain is better than being shot, and as the North Hollywood bank robbery/shootout illustrated, bullets aren't always as effective as something like the ADS could be.