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Slashback: Privacy, Spectrum, Location
Sir, you just need to trust us. geekee writes "An article on CNN claims that the proposed passenger-screening system for air travelers is much more innocuous than previously claimed. Now it is claimed that the Transportation Security Administration "will not view credit records, traffic violations or other personal data", according to Admiral James Loy. He also claims records of travel will not be maintained. "Airline reservation agents would provide a traveler's name, address, phone number, date of birth, and travel plans to the TSA, which would then check that information against a variety of commercial databases and an FBI watch list.", according to TSA spokeperson Heather Rosenker."
Thinking of the children means more than hiding their eyes. Jim Tyre writes: "You pointed out that my censorware.net piece ["CIPA Before the Supreme Court"] provided a nifty link to where the official supreme court oral argument transcript would be when available online. It's now available."
What's good for the mercantilists ... wait, no doesn't have the same ring. Lawrence Lessig says that the current radio spectrum is vastly underutilized, and that new technology can extract much more use from it, creating a true radio commons. Zo writes to point out that many Salon readers disagree: "Radio waves, bandwidth, the spectrum. . .Don't we know *anything* for sure?
Sir, these books smell fine ... what's the catch?
silentbozo writes "Avid Slashdotters will remember the Baen Free Library, which puts up free web versions of Baen titles for ANYONE to download and read without having to mess around with encryption and DRM. They went a step further with this experiment last fall with the release of David Weber's War of Honor which had a bunch of novels in html, rtf, doc, palmdoc, and othe formats on CD (bound into the hardcover), which you could copy and give away to anyone. Well, they're at it again. In May, they'll have another CD for those of you who didn't get War of Honor, bound into John Ringo's Hell's Faire.
I got hooked reading John Ringo's books after browsing through my copy of the War of Honor CD... and it's a great way of catching up on the previous books in the series. Hell's Faire looks really good - I personally am looking forward to finding out what happens to the O'Neals as they fight the Posleen on Earth, and to the crew of Bun-Bun... Eat anti-matter Posleen-boy!"
As secure as ... well, you pick. Anthanos writes "pGina [http://pgina.xpasystems.com], a modular authentication framework for Windows, has come a long way since it was last noted on /. nearly a year ago. Since then a full-fledged LDAP plugin, PAM plugin, and chaining have all become part of the feature set. The kicker is the recently released Slashdot plugin, which allows authentication of Windows clients with... yup you guessed it, Slashdot Accounts! XPA Systems has even begun offering services revolving around this GPL product. Seems this may be the solution for people looking to merge authentication of Windows clients with MacOSX, Solaris, and other *nix boxen."
Let's see a handheld that uses both, please ... Mattias Östergren writes "Well aware of the risks with dependency of GPS the European Space Agency (ESA) have developed their own satellite navigation system, EGNOS. EGNOS is more accurate than GPS and the signal also tell you how much it could be off.
The first reference station have just been installed on the roof of the Land Survey in Gävle, Sweden. There is a Swedish press release about it."
You know, previewing a story before it makes the page is really worthless on Slashback when you can't "Read More"
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
If so, how can anyone from Arkansas go anywhere?
But seriously, all this background check BS is too much. Scan people and baggage. Lock the cockpit. Put an 'air cop' on board. What can you do? Not pay for movie headphones? (Credit be damnned, they make you pay in cash.)
Background checks are unnessasary if the airport is secure in the first place.
Ahh...I see. Its cheaper to run my SS/DL #s and invade my privacy than it is to change a door on an airplane. It must be, or airline would have done it a long time ago, because they care about people!^W airplanes.
...secure, locked cockpit doors aren't going to look like such a good idea the first time some terrorist type spends years training to be a pilot and is sitting *behind* that door.
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
IIRC, government-held info that's supposed to be purged from someone's record has a nasty tendency to stick around (whether by accident or by design). I wonder how hard the TSA and the DHS will make it to submit a FOIA request to verify that this information *is* being purged after each flight.
It's not like most people are letting their GPS device drive their vehicles or something.
No, but they let Microsoft Streets do it for them. And it's really annoying when your car symbol jumps from one street to a parallel one.
Anyway, check out Geocaching. It's awesome, but an accurate GPS helps out a lot. You go around finding boxes of prizes with only a GPS coordinate and a couple of clues. It's great for excercise, and it's fun! You hear me, geeks? FUN EXCERCISE!
What's this Submit thingy do?
You've obviously never tried to find a geocache hidden in a field of boulders and rocks. Look for an hour or so and you get pretty mad.
Also frequency hopping spread spectrum was designed to stop jamming since it's hard to broadcast across a very wide spectrum at high power. But give one of these transmitters to everyone in a metropolitan area and watch the mayhem insue. All cell networks use spread spectrum technology, and there are still subscriber limits.
The reply of Rauch was completely accurate. I'd like to see you send any signifcant power at modern radio or TV frequencies without a giant antenna. Mesh networking may be nice, but what happens when you're alone on a back road with your
Let the people who have EE and not CS degrees build the radios. Real life is not digital.
While the subset of people that need high accuracy maybe small, that doesn't mean they're not economically significant. Just making surveying easier would be a hugh cost savings. Think of all the things that are surveyed. The lot your home sits on. The street in front of your house. In oil exploration, there's surveying of seimic sensors. The list goes on and on.
You've never been sailing, have you? In the fog ... Try it some time - you might suddenly get to appreciate the advantages of accuracy.
Or you could try flying - in poor viz.
But I agree, you just don't get it.
"Cats like plain crisps"
Limit wireless to short range, and put hubs everywhere. Problem solved (for urban areas; rural areas are an entirely different problem with different constraints).
So you would have no free long range high power spectrum at all?
There would be a few bands open for hobbyists, just like there are now. Want to build a 1 kW transmitter? Go ahead - just get your ham license first. Decide you're not going to play nicely in the community? Your license gets revoked.
Without management, anything longer than short-range will cause too many people to step on each others' toes.
The cost of all that badwith you want would be considerably less if more spectrum was given over to 802.11B type freedom. The equipment is cheap enough that people would build the infrastructure and run it as a free public service.
The free public service would then start charging a modest fee to support its overhead, and then the core of people running it would slowly drift to the dark side as bureaucracy started fossilizing, and you'd end up with something indistinguishable from the bandwidth providers we currently have.
Do you think that Cthulhu came to earth and decided to found UUNet to torment the mortals? Large-scale utility providers _naturally_ evolve to become this way!
If you want cheaper bandwidth, start a letter-writing campaign to get better government regulation of the industry. It's a utility, just like phone and power and water and so forth. Manage it like one.