Slashdot Mirror

There is a lot of American involvement in this problem, but it is actually positive. American RFS (river forecast system) technology that is being utilized to manage the flows of the Columbia, the Mississippi, and other large rivers in the states is being utilized to control the flows of the rivers that are draining the Aral. I read a great article about it in the dead tree version of Wired a while ago, the text is available online here.

ok, so maybe the robot is pretty cool - but the rest...

...has been working to replace the remote controls lying around the home with one device, such as a cellphone or a personal digital assistant. Eventually, he said, appliances could be equipped with technology to receive the commands.
your mean the philips pronto and X10?

...is working on a glove that could translate sign language into digitized letters...
you mean this?

Those included a rebuilt task bar that could sort onscreen files, and a program that acted like a magnifying glass for Web sites. A program called Fabric would allow a user to drag windows to the side of the computer screen, where they would turn into small icons.
what? an onscreen magnifying glass?
and dockable applications? er OSX?

Sign Language -> English : Done in the late 80s early 90s, hell I knew someone who did it as his 3rd Year project in the early 90s. Also there are PDA based products that do this for road signs et al. Like this which isn't as complex as sign-language but is indicative of how pre-commercialised this space already is.

Communicate via audio and video Hell they mean its like having a moving monitor and microphone.... or of course a better approach would be to have each room containing monitors and videos rather than having 00s of robots walking around, that way you can move from room to room much quicker and you don't suffer from multiple people trying to speak at once.

And best of the bunch

Emailable identification documents Bloody hell X500 certs and PGP in a shiny new wrapper.

Microsoft's "innovation" continues to be 10 years behind the rest of the world.

Yup, looks like someone else did it better.

How about using Sealand for your data center, go for low margin at high quantities ( say $1 per album ) and keep as low a profile in USA or whatever your home country is as possible?

"...and will keep the RIAA away from your Kazaa files."

While this is true, the RIAA doesn't actually need to win their case to get money from you. They just want you to give them $12,000 - $17,000 in an out-of-court settlement. Even if they don't have a case against you & can't prove that your files really were mp3's (due to your encrypted hard drive), they're still going to attempt sue you if you don't settle - Sure, you'll win in court, but you're still going to pay $10,000 (or more) in lawyer & court expenses...

I guess if you were doing something even more illegal that would required real evidence (i.e., innocent until proven guilty), then an encrypted hard drive would be a problem for the prosecutor. (That is, unless Abit really is just doing 'encryption by obscurity' as an above poster suggests)

cell phone usage is expected to surpass home phone ownership in 2005

The interesting thing is that, the younger you are, the more likely you are to just use a cellphone.

Also, note from this article from Wired

In many European, African and Latin American countries, cell phone usage already surpasses home phone ownership because a cellular infrastructure is cheaper to maintain than a fixed-line one.

an experiment in information markets, using anonymous message pools for exchange of instructions and items. Tim May's experiment in guerilla ontology.

Maybe this is offtopic, but if you want really elegant language processing you should check this out. Basically, you look at the compressiblity of given text and can determine what language it's in, or even what author produced it. This works with as few as 20 words.

I realize this isn't translation, but cool nonetheless. For further reading see here and here.

Well, I said this in another post, but since you've been modded up to insightful, and the other guy hasn't yet, I figure I'll send this your way as well.

Meet the Doomslayer

Really? Meet the Doomslayer

They are. See for example this and this

In the August issue of Wired magazine, there was quite a disgusting infoporn about how you could sell your body for $46 million. It priced egg cells at $7,000/egg and sperm at $75/donation.

According to this article, copy protection is a "crime against humanity". Why? Because bending the rules is an integral part of society, and DRM is either insecure and ineffective, or leaves most users no wiggle room (especially with a law like DMCA preventing users from spreading information on how to bypass it).

Spain's out:

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,59720,00 .html

In what is being touted as the largest legal action of its kind, a Spanish law firm has announced plans to file a copyright-violation complaint against 4,000 individuals who allegedly have swapped illegal files over peer-to-peer networks in that country.

Wired has an article actually about an RIAA equivalent in Spain that is planning to try to go after users in Spain.

Spanish Firms Target File Traders

bbh

That's cool as heck! I've read this article a while back, but I didn't know that anyone can sign up. Do you have further information, like a URL or something? Thanks!

The whole nuclear war thing is just an urban legend.

Yup. Wired had a intewiew. with Paul Baran about this two years ago. As a man who conceived the Internet architecture he should know what he is talking about.

Wired: The myth of the Arpanet - which still persists - is that it was developed to withstand nuclear strikes. That's wrong, isn't it?

Paul Baran: Yes. Bob Taylor1 had a couple of computer terminals speaking to different machines, and his idea was to have some way of having a terminal speak to any of them and have a network. That's really the origin of the Arpanet. The method used to connect things together was an open issue for a time.

What's even more interesting and more on-topic, in this discussion, is hes remarks about what was the big treat to Internet back then, not the USSR but the big telephone companies.
AT&T initially refused to build a digital packet switching network because they did not think it would work.

So I guess the lesson is that ehen _big_ companies or conglomerats controll something (AT&T owned the analog phone network back then) they are very relluctant to develop and support revolutionary technologies.
Maybe because they become lazy and allready have their share of the cash on the "marketplace", maybe because the risk is to high for them, but maybe most because they don't need to. They allredy controll the market through "their" network (read and replace analog network with digital Internet)

So when the big players gather controll of the Internet through user restrictions like DRM and limited possibilities for end to end communication the possibility for development of new technology will fall.

Let's do some very approximate math on iTunes Music Store...

To date, 6.5 million songs sold so far (from parent post; I've heard 5 million as of WWDC NY). Although I think their estimate is high, according to some observers Apple gets USD$0.35 per song sold. This is undoubtely less per album sold (according to Apple, this is near 50% of songs) but to be generous let's count all songs downloaded as single-song purchases. This means Apple has taken in (6.5M x $0.35) = USD$2.275M so far on iTunes Music Store. This is not much despite the fact that Apple probably has close to 100% of the paid music download market for the Mac. Considering that this is approximately 5% of the US market, we can extrapolate that, even should Apple dominate (near 100%) the entire US paid music download market when it releases iTMS for Windows, this will still only be [(100/5) x $2.275M] = USD$45.5M. While this will increase if Apple releases iTunesMS for other countries, a number this high is still highly unlikely since Apple will face very stiff competition by the time they release iTMS for Windows.

Now let's put it in perspective. $45.5M wouldn't be bad for 3 months (this is as long as iTMS has been out so far and what the 6.5M download figure is ostensibly based on), it would actually be $182M annually on all platforms if Apple retained close to 100% of the market for an entire year. However, the company had total net sales last year of $5.47 billion - even dominating close to 100% of the present theoretical paid music download market would account for only another 3.3% revenue for the company!

...this is why iTunes is not, and probably never will be, financially very significant to Apple Computer. While Apple hopefully is recouping the money they invested in making iTMS and will turn a small profit eventually, the Music Store is used to generate 'buzz' rather than profit, and it is quite effective. However, looking at the numbers (even if the paid download market grows substantially) makes you wonder what BuyMusic.com's founder Scott Blum is doing blowing over $40 Million in advertising on a venture that's locked into technologies he does not control (Win/IE/Win Media Player), features unpopular licensing, and realistically will not even return $40M back to the company in the first year. Seemingly the only thing he got right was that they're basically copying the iTunes Music Store outright when they made BuyMusic.com

I'm guessing YANAL. Under the circumstances, I'll stick with the advice of my company's IP lawyers, and continue to view the GPL as a revokable, non perpetual, non binding, non contractual implicit license.

Heck, don't take my word for it:
Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, said that Mattel might be able to argue that the GPL is invalid because users don't pay for the free software.

"Nonexclusive licenses given for free are generally revocable, even if they purport to be irrevocable," Volokh said. "Even if the GPL license in cphack is treated as signed and is covered by 205(e), it might still be revocable by Mattel as the new owners of the cphack copyright."

"It is unfortunately not quite as solid a case for the good guys as the GNU license theory would have at first led us to believe," he said.

Every time I see an article like this, I'm reminded of another work I consider a landmark - The Transparent Society.

I find it quite amazing that this work in 1996 highlighted so many issues now coming to bear - such as this one - and the article is clearly written.

Here's the first thing I'd change - All audio and video collected by any police organization should be public record 14 days after it was first recorded.

Access to the video in realtime as suggested by the above article (You did READ it, didn't you?) can be used to tactical advantage by criminal organizations - but the 14 day delay would have the same effect of keeping the cops honest without surrendering any meaningful tactical information.

Then, we could expand out from there.

• Doubleclick exec takes a top post at Commerce Department
• The original article from "Wired" is here. The O'Connor part of the story starts about halfway down.
• Here's another article from "Wired", about a week after O'Connor started.
• Last year, O'Connor became Chief Counsel for Technology for the Department's Technology Administration

• Doubleclick exec takes a top post at Commerce Department
• The original article from "Wired" is here. The O'Connor part of the story starts about halfway down.
• Here's another article from "Wired", about a week after O'Connor started.
• Last year, O'Connor became Chief Counsel for Technology for the Department's Technology Administration

So this is how they celebrate the ten year anniversary of president@whitehouse.gov and vice.president@whitehouse.gov?

• "Yes, I was detained and harrassed by federal airport security without cause or explanation because my name is David Nelson. I am not allowed to know that I am on a do-not-fly list or what criteria put a person there in the first place."
• "Yes, I was forced to drink my own breast milk out of three bottles by federal airport security to prove it was not a "security risk."
• "Yes, my right to freely assembly has been infringed my Bush and his cronies with their establishment of (incredibly cyncially named) 'First Amendment Zones' that stipulate that demonstrators who are protesting the president must remain in specific "safe distances" often blocks away from presidential appearances, while "supporters" are allowed to demonstrate in the immediate vicinity.
• "Yes, my government is developing a system that will systematically spy on everyone, all of the time, in an effort to provide me better "security." Thankfully, budgetary politics in the Senate will hopefully kill this monstrosity."
• "Yes, my ability to fairly use information and art I paid for is being stifled and criminalized, to outrageous degrees."
• "Sorry, what was the question?"
  

Here's the article from Wired News. Doesn't mention figurine sales, but they average 300 t-shirt sales a day, apparently. Wow.

I always wondered who was behind Homestar Runner. Nice to know it is (/was, perhaps) a couple of guys in their basement kinda deal.

The saddest part of all of this - all of the fines you suggested are lighter than the ones suggested by our beloved Howard Berman as reported in this article and this earlier discussion.

Right now, the teams are trying to break the 100 km barrier by going straight up and returning straight down. For example, in Rutan's design the airspeed never exceeds 155 knots. As a result, it will take 80 minutes to cover a horizontal distance of 35 miles. That is enough to win the prize and I'm fine with that. But, in years to come, there should be new targets that get us closer to orbital flight. Greatest distance prizes will do that.

The first one, greatest distance traveled between takeoff and landing, could possibly be won by some sort of hybrid between Rutan's globe-circling Voyager and his Spaceship One, but that's also something that I'd be fine with. It would, like the current X-Prize, stretch aviation technology to lits limits.

My second idea, greatest horizontal distance traveled above 100 km, would be a logical follow-up to the first one, since it could only be won by someone following a ballistic trajectory. This would might inspire new research into thermal shielding, or it may generate all new ways to return to earth. (For example, find a way to eliminate your horizontal velocity before re-entering the atmosphere.)

Either of these would be far better than the possibilites discussed in the article.

Gibson's various writings have been a huge inspiration for us at M.Com. His latest piece, which you linked, is absolutely mind-blowing stuff, very closely tied in with all the stuff we envision (but cooler, because, well, he's Bill Gibson).

Actually, one of the inspirations for the creation of Machinima.com was a much, much older piece of Mr Gibson's in Wired, in the year 2000. A quick bit of digging brings it up. It was in this article that Gibson proposed the idea of the "Garage Kubrick" - a kid who has disappeared into his garage using some piece of uber-tech to create a blockbuster movie, all by himself (hence the Kubrick reference, because the kid's the ultimate auteur).

We've always considered that one of our goals at M.Com was to help the first Garage Kubrick appear.

I thought one of the tenets of American culture was that everybody living in this country was innocent until proven guilty. By the looks of things, members of our congress with vested interests in these companies are launching dragnets based on the assumption that anything uploaded on a P2P network is stealing and we need to lock those people up.

with the RIAA planning to file a reverse class action lawsuit (Press Release), as well as proposed bills to eliminate any anonymity on the internet (Wired Article), it appears that we are being stripped of the very freedoms this country was founded on by the people who have sworn to protect it.

Fine then. Take away our right to privacy. Lock up anybody who uses P2P networks, or distributes any type of material on the internet. Make every internet user out to be a criminal. Then we will be left with people who only use the internet for E-Mail and AIM, led by power-hungry politicians, to drive us into the next century.

As a side note, I'm interested to see the provisions provided in this bill with regards to the actual verification of copyrighted material. We probably already know the answer, throw everybody in court, and let them prove otherwise.

Both Wired News and Yahoo News Australia are covering a bill which, if passed, would "make it easier to slap criminal charges on Internet users who copy music, movies and other copyrighted files over "peer-to-peer" networks", by making it a felony to share files. Penalties include "...include up to five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine." The bill, known as the Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and Security Act of 2003 (ACCOPS), is sponsored by John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.). Contact information is on their sites.

Both Wired News and Yahoo News Australia are covering a bill which, if passed, would "make it easier to slap criminal charges on Internet users who copy music, movies and other copyrighted files over "peer-to-peer" networks", by making it a felony to share files. Penalties include "...include up to five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine." The bill, known as the Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and Security Act of 2003 (ACCOPS), is sponsored by John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.). Contact information is on their sites.

The new Mozilla marketing push reminds me of the TurboGrafx-16 and Nintendo 64 days. "We've got the better browser. And that's what really matters," says a member of the Mozilla Foundation team challenging Internet Explorer's overwhelming dominance in the browser market. Well, the TurboGrafx 16 was technically superior to the Sega Genesis, as was the Nintendo 64 to the Sony Playstation. Guess which game systems won the market share race? The inferior ones. (Beta vs. VHS, anyone?) Guess which systems I bought? The superior ones. Guess how many of my friends I could share games with? Zero, because they had Sega and Sony.

Jeff Howden at evolt.org has a realistic view of what's likely to happen to Mozilla:

"Mozilla won't win with the general public by having a superior feature set. It won't win by rendering faster or being more standards-compliant. Heck, IE didn't do any of those things to get where it is today. It's on top because it's on every desktop."

Too true. It's on mine too, but I use Mozilla. Unfortunately, me plus 1.2 percent of Web users does not a viable market make.

The new Mozilla marketing push reminds me of the TurboGrafx-16 and Nintendo 64 days. "We've got the better browser. And that's what really matters," says a member of the Mozilla Foundation team challenging Internet Explorer's overwhelming dominance in the browser market. Well, the TurboGrafx 16 was technically superior to the Sega Genesis, as was the Nintendo 64 to the Sony Playstation. Guess which game systems won the market share race? The inferior ones. (Beta vs. VHS, anyone?) Guess which systems I bought? The superior ones. Guess how many of my friends I could share games with? Zero, because they had Sega and Sony.

Jeff Howden at evolt.org has a realistic view of what's likely to happen to Mozilla:

"Mozilla won't win with the general public by having a superior feature set. It won't win by rendering faster or being more standards-compliant. Heck, IE didn't do any of those things to get where it is today. It's on top because it's on every desktop."

Too true. It's on mine too, but I use Mozilla. Unfortunately, me plus 1.2 percent of Web users does not a viable market make.

Well that's an interesting point of view. I guess voice recognition software and translation software don't exist, to name a couple of prevalent (if imperfect) examples. Or were they around in the 40s?

AI has come a long way. For instance, expert systems have become useful tools in many fields. Machine learning techniques have been used to improve elevator control algorithms. In fact, just the other day, there was a story on /. in which people were arguing that AI that takes video as input and uses that to track cars, people, etc. is not far away.

There's an interesting quote at the end of a Wired article in which Marvin Minsky (one of the early AI giants) argues that AI hasn't improved since the 70s (though I think he's defining AI as a very narrow problem):

"As soon as we solve a problem," said [Professor Martha] Pollack, "instead of looking at the solution as AI, we come to view it as just another computer system."

(Prof. Pollack is a professor of AI at the University of Michigan. FULL DISCLOSURE: I (sometimes) work for Prof. Pollack).

I think you're running into that trap. AI has come a long way. Sure, some problems have had relatively little progress (e.g. an AI that is a "total person" or at least one that passes the Turing test), but researchers in various areas--planning, learning, etc. have made great strides.

gemal writes "We're very pleased to announce the creation of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization that will serve as the new home for mozilla.org. The Mozilla Foundation will continue mozilla.org's work of coordinating the development of the Mozilla codebase. With an independent non-profit as the legal home for Mozilla, we will also promote the distribution and adoption of Mozilla applications and technologies. In addition, we will raise funds to ensure Mozilla's long-term survival."

What an enthusiastic way of saying "we all just got fired."

Or to put it in context, maybe they all got tshirts saying:

Our company gave up
their lawsuit against Microsoft
and all we got were
these lousy pink-slips

What grand news... :-(

You know you're a nerd when big bandwidth makes you this happy

OR

Maybe it was the asian school girl under the table when the picture was taken :)

What's holding them back - red tape, technical issues?

There is an interesting article in the latest edition of Wired on some of the differences between the US and the EU and why this may be the case.

You know you're a nerd when big bandwidth makes you this happy :)

I agree with you 100%. I just wanted to mention (even though you probably already know this), that the police in the U.S. can't (legally) use an IR camera to watch you through your walls without getting a search warrant first. Mere suspicion doesn't cut it anymore. A 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court decided this on June 11, 2001.

Of course, if you are "suspected of being a terrorist supporting drug user" as you say, then getting a warrant these days is probably not too difficult...

Can't Scan Without a Warrant

Wired just ran an interesting article last week about Indian IT workers falling apart after long hours. IT Sweatshops Breaking Indians

Everyone has thier breaking point I guess.

I'm disappointed that such a prominent example of software piracy is not being prosecuted.

Why not?

nope Sir, you are wrong. Wired Magazine is indeed commercialized on Wired Website. Nobody talked about company relations, well, before you did. And I still see the Lycos bar when I am on Wired Magazine's Homepage.

Sometimes we just need to wait for other parts of applied science to catch up so we can move forward with something other than "blips". For example. Maybe this could be used eventually. So far, it seems to be only a "lifter", but we don't quite understand fully why this is happening. I think it qualifies as a naturally occuring phenomenon. (But wouldn't the sun count as one too?) Perhaps it (or something else as of yet undiscovered or uninvented) may hold some answers to our problems. Maybe it's a solar sail that will propel us into intergalactic travel. It might even be a giant slingshot, though unlikely. It may even require a babelfish and a Heart of Gold. :P IANAP

As far as the point of it all. Well, that is harder to discern. Could be greed (space gold!), could be enlightenment (be it scientific or religious), or maybe it's just man's innate desire to conquer things that are considered untouchable.
Not sure why but an old L. Ron Hubbard quote comes to mind (mutated version of an oldy but goody):

Now is the time to put our shoulders to men's souls, for these are the times that try men's grindstones. We are the masters of mens' fates and I thank God for my indomitable will."

L. Ron Hubbard - Mission Earth series

Regards,
Vox

> I really wish the Ministry of News would declare this newsworthy beyound the nince websites and occassional backpage news blurb.

Actually, in the year 2003 press coverage has started to pick up. If you pick up a July copy of Popular Science or Wired , the cover stories are about the X-Prize. And I'm certain that as the X-Prize teams near their launch dates, press coverage will pick up dramatically. And once the X-Prize is won -- well, that will be interesting.

Here are the articles:
Popular Science article and
Wired article

Boeing already uses this technology for wiring their planes during the assembly process. I see this mentioned on our local news just about every other month. It's very definitely a cool technology, but it looks like the automotive industry is (still) behind the times.

Widespread moblogging technology is still far off, but it's impossible to deny the impact of blogging on the world of journalism. I get news from the Progressive Review, Tom Tomorrow and Atrios' Eschaton. To round things off I go to right wing and libertarian blogs. And of course /. ; )

Interesting to note, South Korea has a citizen news networkThe key idea is establishing trust networks through filtering. Ultimately we will wind up with a more accurate system.

Oooooh, can I order pop with my phone? I wish I could...

You can, if you move to Finland.

If Sony makes it easier to get the shock going they will have something. At which point, I'm sure some geek will combine this with the shocking jacket and the shocking controller. Imagine the hours of fun.

In other RFID news today, Wired is reporting that the EU may implant RFID tags into the Euro, basically eliminating the anonymous cash transaction.

For now, the cost is too high to put in smaller denominations, but I'm guessing that with the huge numbers of bills, the cost will eventually no longer be a deciding factor.

You can check it out here.