I never cared for all these futuristic predictions. Seems like way more often than not, they are way off. I'm a believer in the old adage "necessity is the mother of invention." Granted, it's not always the case, sometimes the invention preceeds the necessity, but I think a capitalistic society should let things be invented and develop on their own without feeling burdoned by someone else's oddball prediction.
It's one thing to say "gosh, I wish there was a device that did such-and-such, I could really use something like that." It's another to say "In 10 years, we will have this and that invention." and it being dead wrong 95 percent (or more) of the time.
Exactly. Quite frankly, if RIAA thinks they're so powerful, I'd like to see them try the same thing against, oh, lets see... Harvard Law School or Yale or someone like that. Who do you think will wipe the floor with the other one in that case?
If I were a student, or a college administrator, I would much prefer that a course in computer security be taught/aligned with a company that has a long, solid, proven track record in security, as opposed to a company whose track record is nothing but miserable. I know OpenBSD's security record is pretty strong, as is Apple's and I'm sure other vendors. But MS? It would be about like having a French general teach an ROTC class and makes about as much sense as Lybia charing the UN Commission on Human Rights and Iraq chairing the UN Commission on Disarmament (both of these are in effect right now, crazy as it sounds).
Rambus has maintained that its document destruction was part of the company's regular document retention policy.
Hmmm, I wonder if Enron could get away with saying the same thing at trial. "I'm sorry, your honor, but we always destroy our evidence, it's our normal business practice."
Pioneer 10, and other satellites of that era, worked far beyond what they were intended, and did a darn good job (and then some) at what they did. Pioneer 10, you did good. May you rest in peace. A job well done.
Well, if our emotions are affected by what we cannot hear, maybe it's a blessing in disguise that my new car stereo got ripped off on Sunday (from the church parking lot during service, nonetheless, bastards.....)
A new area of remote sensing and communication is opening up, thanks to groundbreaking technology from the European Space Agency.
StarTiger, a European Space Agency project, has taken the first terahertz picture of a human hand. Terahertz radiation lies on the boundary between radio and light waves and is far more difficult to detect and analyse than either, but is of huge interest for medical, security, environmental and communication uses; the technology could, for instance, theoretically carry wireless data at terabit speeds.
ESA originally investigated the radiation for sensing atmospheric and ground phenomena from satellites, but it is now examining terrestrial applications of the new frequencies. "We have recognised the huge potential in non-space applications, and in parallel to exploiting the use of terahertz waves and the StarTiger technology in space, we have kicked-off a commercialisation study to identify the best way of transferring it into terrestrial systems," said Pierre Brisson, head of ESA's Technology Transfer and Promotion Office.
One terahertz is 1,000 gigahertz, and most current radio technology stops at around 100 GHz: 0.1THz. Everything gives off terahertz radiation naturally, and like radio waves -- but unlike heat or light -- the waves can pass through some solid objects. Like light, it is possible to focus the radiation and create images as if the intervening material were translucent, and by analysing the frequencies given off the chemical and physical characteristics of the object can be worked out.
Terahertz radiation has wavelengths too short for normal radio antennae to pick up but too long for normal optical techniques and thus the band has been closed to experimenters and scientists. Until now, the only known user of the frequencies has been a species of moth. By using nano-engineering techniques to create micro-machined arrays of minute antennae, the StarTiger team has created a sensor array that can image objects at 0.2THz and 0.3THz.
"The final version was an enhanced imaging system incorporating a two-colour 16-pixel detector array of the size of a postage stamp. This advanced system incorporated revolutionary silicon micro-electrical-mechanical systems (MEMs) technology," said Chris Mann, the project manager at Rutherford Appleton Laboratories (RAL) in Oxfordshire, where most of the work has been done. "The enhanced system delivered images that confirmed the nature of terahertz waves. An imager can show details of features under the skin, confirming the potential of this technique." As well as images of a hand taken through 15mm of paper, the project has also released pictures of the human body imaged through clothing.
Because the field is so new and unexplored, many applications are still to be tested. Detecting explosives or biological agents in parcels, cancers beneath the skin, the state of wounds beneath dressings, and seeing through fog: all have been suggested by StarTiger and other researchers.
Well, I forked over 20 clams and am downloading it now. Looking forward to getting home and giving it a try. Lets see if I can go with a triple-boot box, RedHat 8, Win2k and Solaris.....
While I cannot profess to have read the article or the bill, I wonder suspiciously what might be behind this. Remember a few months back when Tom Daschle, Al Gore, and the "usual suspects" among the Democratic party were whining and moaning because talk radio has few to no "liberal" shows to "combat" hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity?
I wonder if the real motive isn't a return to the Fairness Doctrine of a decade or two ago, requiring radio stations to give equal time to a variety of viewpoints? Democrats have tried and tried again to get their own talk show going, and it fell flat on it's face every time. But, if they can do it through legislation, I bet they would.
I hope this is not the case, but with Feinstein, one of the most liberal in Congress, behind this, I'm all but positive this is a huge part of this whole thing.
C'mon, people, it's NOT THAT HARD to click on a link and read for a few minutes. This is not a "road" as we understand them. Basically, they will clear a path on the ice so it is free from snow and debris, and fill in any crevices, etc., with (presumably) ice, etc. As some have suggested, no, the road will not be dug down and laid on terra ferma. They would have to dig hundreds of feet to do that. Basically, they'll take big bulldozers and clear the way for large caterpillar-type vehicles to carry fuel and supplies. Now, everything must be brought in by air, and that's gotta be expensive!
I'm glad judges and juries are finally seeing the light and understanding this whole spam mess. Free speech? Nope. It's just like junk fax laws, junk faxes are actually illegal because the recipient pays for the fax machine, paper, toner, etc. Same reason why telemarketers cannot call your cell phone (if you do get a call from them on it, just tell them it's a cell and they'll hang up quick) because you're paying for those minutes. With spam, I'm the one paying for my 'net connection, and after a certain amount of traffic, I pay by the byte. If only I could force direct mail marketers to stop snail-mailing me crap all the time. Why does a single 24-year-old guy need coupons for feminine hygiene products?
So, this means that the iPod will either come down in price, or start using these cards. Imagine having an iPod that takes these 5 gig (and in the future, larger, I'd assume) drive cards. Boom, suddenly your iPod isn't limited to 5, 10 or 20 gigs! WooHoo! I can finally justify buying one.
Hmmm, sounds like this could be a problem for the impending military conflict between the U.S. and Iraq. Our "smart bombs" are guided by GPS. Oh, wait, they already bought some from the Russians! Doh!
In all seriousness, how much you want to bet the military thought about this long ago and has ways around it (different frequencies, etc.)
Ever look at your telephone bill? A bunch of the charges on there, under various names, go to support Internet access to schools, etc. Also, the infrastructure of the Internet is much more like that of a railroad as opposed to a highway system. It is privately owned.
All technobabble and RSI talk aside, everyone seems to have overlooked a big part of this. Be honest, people. How many of you would be willing to put this much time and effort into a project simply for the purpose of making your wife/husband/boy/girlfriend happy? I read the article (yes, I'm actually a/.er who reads the articles, a shock I know) and while I found it interesting and intuitive, the thought at the back of my mind was, "Dang, this guy must really love his wife to undertake a project like this just for her."
Way to go, sir! You sound like a great husband, a guy your wife was lucky to snag!
In theory, this is a good idea, I think. Looks like./ covered this back in May. That post also describes a way to fool it with gelatin. Another submission talks about Thriftway stores doing this back in April. And, back in Oct. 2001 a post described use of fingerprint IDs on Acer laptops.
So, this is really nothing new, but it looks like this may be one of the larger rollouts of such technology. Really no different (from a practical standpoint) than things like automatic toll booths or Mobil's Speedpass method of buying gas, although fingerprints would be inherently more secure. If we had Kroger stores around here, I'd be willing to sign up, but I don't think they have a presence in Nebraska, at least not in the Lincoln area.
It's only common knowledge that people want choice. I would subscribe to cable myself if I didn't have to order a bunch of crap I don't want just to get one or two channels. It's certainly technologically feasable, but it's all about money and control. Cable companies obviously realize they have monopolies all over the place, and that opens the door wide to bending over and getting screwed by the cable companies (or any other monopoly). I don't give a damn about anything sports-related, but forcing me to order sports channels to see one non-sports one I want is outrageous.
It would be like going to the store for a bag of Doritos and being forced to buy 1/3 of the entire aisle to get the bag of chips you want. Consumers would never stand for that, and I'm surprised they've put up with this for so long.
If you would like to consider me bleak and simplistic, then I feel I must apologize for believing capitalism is a good thing. The same "intellectual circles" you site would likely find comfort in an environment where capitalism does not exist (read: communism, where it's all for the good of the people/state/etc.) and suddenly you have no incentive to succeed or improve yourself. Now that's what I call "bleak and simplistic."
>Big businesses think about one thing, and one thing only: the bottom line.
I loathe this mentality. EVERYTHING exists for the bottom line, big business, small business, non profits, governments, my wallet, everything. Businesses, large or small, are in business to make money. Whoever said that was wrong? You seem to imply that it's morally wrong for a company to want to make money.
I would actually disagree with your statement and its related inference. "Big Business" thinks about a lot more than the bottom line, they think about bad press, political influence, etc. Granted, it's likely related to the bottom line, but my boss (over all of 9 people in my company) thinks about the bottom line just as much, if not more than, Carly Fiorni. And I care about my personal "bottom line" as much as Fiorni cares about HP's.
HP and other companies certainly could do this on their own, and if they TRULY cared, they would. I take my cans, newspaper, milk jugs, etc., to the city recycling place regularly. I don't get paid for it, it's not in my monetary interest, but I do it because I support recycling. If HP thought similarly, they would simply do it and not need to pass a law. Seems it's only about eliminating competition from the little guys, which is sad.
Yeah, and Pepsi should pay to get rid of my Mountain Dew cans, Sherwin Williams should pay to take care of those old paint cans in my basement, Goodyear should pay to get rid of the old tires in my garage, Johnson & Johnson should pay to dispose of the mercury thermometer in my bathroom and Napa needs to pay for my old antifreeze and motor oil.
Laws like this do nothing but raise costs for consumers. Does anyone in their right mind think HP, etc., will simply eat the cost of this? No. The only reason they're doing it is because it's in California (home base of American liberalism), and if they don't, they'll be totally demonized by militant environmentalists and human rights activists playing on your emotions rather than hard, scientific data.
Like it or hate it, admit it. This guy's got vision. Not only did he start one of the few remaining "dot coms", he seems to have another idea that could really take off (no pun intended). Perhaps he'll be able to come up with a cheaper and/or easier method for deploying satellites, in fact it sounds like that's what it's all about. Satellites work wonders already, and if they become more within the reach of a wider market, I can see only good things coming from it. Who knows, maybe better satellite 'net access, cheaper satellite phones, more amateur radio satellites, increased competition all around.
But, if all your Windows were made the exact same way, a thief knows the easiest way in. The same hammer/hack works.
If I design my "open source" house with, say, bullet-proof glass, the thief doesn't know this, because it's different and he can't see it, and therefore has a harder time breaking in......
Slashdot Mirror
The real question though is how much of my money did they spend figuring that one out?
It's one thing to say "gosh, I wish there was a device that did such-and-such, I could really use something like that." It's another to say "In 10 years, we will have this and that invention." and it being dead wrong 95 percent (or more) of the time.
Exactly. Quite frankly, if RIAA thinks they're so powerful, I'd like to see them try the same thing against, oh, lets see... Harvard Law School or Yale or someone like that. Who do you think will wipe the floor with the other one in that case?
If I were a student, or a college administrator, I would much prefer that a course in computer security be taught/aligned with a company that has a long, solid, proven track record in security, as opposed to a company whose track record is nothing but miserable. I know OpenBSD's security record is pretty strong, as is Apple's and I'm sure other vendors. But MS? It would be about like having a French general teach an ROTC class and makes about as much sense as Lybia charing the UN Commission on Human Rights and Iraq chairing the UN Commission on Disarmament (both of these are in effect right now, crazy as it sounds).
Hmmm, I wonder if Enron could get away with saying the same thing at trial. "I'm sorry, your honor, but we always destroy our evidence, it's our normal business practice."
Four minutes and already slashdotted. And, no Google mirror! Jeez, this thing running off a 300 baud modem?
Pioneer 10, and other satellites of that era, worked far beyond what they were intended, and did a darn good job (and then some) at what they did. Pioneer 10, you did good. May you rest in peace. A job well done.
Well, if our emotions are affected by what we cannot hear, maybe it's a blessing in disguise that my new car stereo got ripped off on Sunday (from the church parking lot during service, nonetheless, bastards.....)
14:35Tuesday 11th February 2003
Rupert Goodwins
A new area of remote sensing and communication is opening up, thanks to groundbreaking technology from the European Space Agency.
StarTiger, a European Space Agency project, has taken the first terahertz picture of a human hand. Terahertz radiation lies on the boundary between radio and light waves and is far more difficult to detect and analyse than either, but is of huge interest for medical, security, environmental and communication uses; the technology could, for instance, theoretically carry wireless data at terabit speeds.
ESA originally investigated the radiation for sensing atmospheric and ground phenomena from satellites, but it is now examining terrestrial applications of the new frequencies. "We have recognised the huge potential in non-space applications, and in parallel to exploiting the use of terahertz waves and the StarTiger technology in space, we have kicked-off a commercialisation study to identify the best way of transferring it into terrestrial systems," said Pierre Brisson, head of ESA's Technology Transfer and Promotion Office.
One terahertz is 1,000 gigahertz, and most current radio technology stops at around 100 GHz: 0.1THz. Everything gives off terahertz radiation naturally, and like radio waves -- but unlike heat or light -- the waves can pass through some solid objects. Like light, it is possible to focus the radiation and create images as if the intervening material were translucent, and by analysing the frequencies given off the chemical and physical characteristics of the object can be worked out.
Terahertz radiation has wavelengths too short for normal radio antennae to pick up but too long for normal optical techniques and thus the band has been closed to experimenters and scientists. Until now, the only known user of the frequencies has been a species of moth. By using nano-engineering techniques to create micro-machined arrays of minute antennae, the StarTiger team has created a sensor array that can image objects at 0.2THz and 0.3THz.
"The final version was an enhanced imaging system incorporating a two-colour 16-pixel detector array of the size of a postage stamp. This advanced system incorporated revolutionary silicon micro-electrical-mechanical systems (MEMs) technology," said Chris Mann, the project manager at Rutherford Appleton Laboratories (RAL) in Oxfordshire, where most of the work has been done. "The enhanced system delivered images that confirmed the nature of terahertz waves. An imager can show details of features under the skin, confirming the potential of this technique." As well as images of a hand taken through 15mm of paper, the project has also released pictures of the human body imaged through clothing.
Because the field is so new and unexplored, many applications are still to be tested. Detecting explosives or biological agents in parcels, cancers beneath the skin, the state of wounds beneath dressings, and seeing through fog: all have been suggested by StarTiger and other researchers.
Well, I forked over 20 clams and am downloading it now. Looking forward to getting home and giving it a try. Lets see if I can go with a triple-boot box, RedHat 8, Win2k and Solaris.....
I wonder if the real motive isn't a return to the Fairness Doctrine of a decade or two ago, requiring radio stations to give equal time to a variety of viewpoints? Democrats have tried and tried again to get their own talk show going, and it fell flat on it's face every time. But, if they can do it through legislation, I bet they would.
I hope this is not the case, but with Feinstein, one of the most liberal in Congress, behind this, I'm all but positive this is a huge part of this whole thing.
C'mon, people, it's NOT THAT HARD to click on a link and read for a few minutes. This is not a "road" as we understand them. Basically, they will clear a path on the ice so it is free from snow and debris, and fill in any crevices, etc., with (presumably) ice, etc. As some have suggested, no, the road will not be dug down and laid on terra ferma. They would have to dig hundreds of feet to do that. Basically, they'll take big bulldozers and clear the way for large caterpillar-type vehicles to carry fuel and supplies. Now, everything must be brought in by air, and that's gotta be expensive!
I'm glad judges and juries are finally seeing the light and understanding this whole spam mess. Free speech? Nope. It's just like junk fax laws, junk faxes are actually illegal because the recipient pays for the fax machine, paper, toner, etc. Same reason why telemarketers cannot call your cell phone (if you do get a call from them on it, just tell them it's a cell and they'll hang up quick) because you're paying for those minutes. With spam, I'm the one paying for my 'net connection, and after a certain amount of traffic, I pay by the byte. If only I could force direct mail marketers to stop snail-mailing me crap all the time. Why does a single 24-year-old guy need coupons for feminine hygiene products?
So, this means that the iPod will either come down in price, or start using these cards. Imagine having an iPod that takes these 5 gig (and in the future, larger, I'd assume) drive cards. Boom, suddenly your iPod isn't limited to 5, 10 or 20 gigs! WooHoo! I can finally justify buying one.
-Andy
In all seriousness, how much you want to bet the military thought about this long ago and has ways around it (different frequencies, etc.)
Ever look at your telephone bill? A bunch of the charges on there, under various names, go to support Internet access to schools, etc. Also, the infrastructure of the Internet is much more like that of a railroad as opposed to a highway system. It is privately owned.
Way to go, sir! You sound like a great husband, a guy your wife was lucky to snag!
The group's headquarters, called UFO Land, are located in Valcourt, Que., about 200 km east of Montreal.
Oh, this just screams of validity!
So, this is really nothing new, but it looks like this may be one of the larger rollouts of such technology. Really no different (from a practical standpoint) than things like automatic toll booths or Mobil's Speedpass method of buying gas, although fingerprints would be inherently more secure. If we had Kroger stores around here, I'd be willing to sign up, but I don't think they have a presence in Nebraska, at least not in the Lincoln area.
It would be like going to the store for a bag of Doritos and being forced to buy 1/3 of the entire aisle to get the bag of chips you want. Consumers would never stand for that, and I'm surprised they've put up with this for so long.
If you would like to consider me bleak and simplistic, then I feel I must apologize for believing capitalism is a good thing. The same "intellectual circles" you site would likely find comfort in an environment where capitalism does not exist (read: communism, where it's all for the good of the people/state/etc.) and suddenly you have no incentive to succeed or improve yourself. Now that's what I call "bleak and simplistic."
I loathe this mentality. EVERYTHING exists for the bottom line, big business, small business, non profits, governments, my wallet, everything. Businesses, large or small, are in business to make money. Whoever said that was wrong? You seem to imply that it's morally wrong for a company to want to make money.
I would actually disagree with your statement and its related inference. "Big Business" thinks about a lot more than the bottom line, they think about bad press, political influence, etc. Granted, it's likely related to the bottom line, but my boss (over all of 9 people in my company) thinks about the bottom line just as much, if not more than, Carly Fiorni. And I care about my personal "bottom line" as much as Fiorni cares about HP's.
HP and other companies certainly could do this on their own, and if they TRULY cared, they would. I take my cans, newspaper, milk jugs, etc., to the city recycling place regularly. I don't get paid for it, it's not in my monetary interest, but I do it because I support recycling. If HP thought similarly, they would simply do it and not need to pass a law. Seems it's only about eliminating competition from the little guys, which is sad.
Laws like this do nothing but raise costs for consumers. Does anyone in their right mind think HP, etc., will simply eat the cost of this? No. The only reason they're doing it is because it's in California (home base of American liberalism), and if they don't, they'll be totally demonized by militant environmentalists and human rights activists playing on your emotions rather than hard, scientific data.
More power to ya!
If I design my "open source" house with, say, bullet-proof glass, the thief doesn't know this, because it's different and he can't see it, and therefore has a harder time breaking in......