Yes, definitely Prey. It uses almost no resources on the machine until it is activated, it is dirt-simple to remotely activate from any web browser, and even the free service gives you access to location information, webcam shapshots of the user, screenshots, and so on. If you would like the more advanced features, you can purchase them, even after the theft, which is something that as far as I know no other service offers.
Once I found out how it worked, I installed Prey immediately on my Mac. It has been there ever since, completely unobtrusive and essentially undetectable. I have activated it for test purposes a couple of times, and it continues to just work.
Sorry, but legislation that is pending in various parts of the world, including the United States, can go far to remedy this situation. There are also counter-measures that can be implemented by individuals, to a certain extent.
The combination of the two has the potential to make this not a problem anymore. Whether it will is another question, but using the word "forever" is simply not warranted.
You know, I have grown really weary of this knee-jerk, inaccurate labeling of people. It's just "political correctness" all over again, for which I have absolutely no respect. You are being as much of a jerk as he was, if not more.
It is possible to dislike gays without being a homophobe, just like it is possible to dislike anything else without being "phobic" or neurotic about it. "Homophobe" is a label that has been far too often and grossly abused, and it's time to knock that shit off.
"Not Freud. They showed gay porn to homophobes and a control group and counted the boners. Verified."
This makes no sense at all. If they were already known to be "homophobes" in the sense you mean, then what was the point of the test? You are defining your terms in terms of what you have already defined... perfectly circular reasoning.
That's like saying "we tested some mice and discovered that they like Purina Mouse Chow", rather than a real experiment, which would have been "they like Purina Mouse Chow, therefore it is likely they are mice."
"Bullshit.
No real man cares about women falling in love with eachother. We just like to see hot chicks dyke out.
Q: Why do women fake orgasms?
A: They think we fucking care.
Quit sissy-fying guyhood or GTFO."
I didn't think this was funny until I saw the poster's username.
Yes, the versatility was my main point. On Mars it may not be as important, as the communications lag time is only a few minutes. But if you get much further out than that, anything that relies on remote control has to do everything e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y.
That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that one. Interesting.
I like this thinking-out-of-the-box. We should think about tethers more often. As Charles Pellegrino pointed out: depending on your energy source, it would probably be vastly more cost-effective, for an interstellar vehicle, to have the motors pulling the payload, via cables, than to have them pushing it using massive steel girders.
If that naming convention is going to be continued, each generation should at least sound bigger than the previous. To my ear, "Pretty Big Array" does not sound quite as big as "Very Large Array" (I'm not a native english speaker so I could be wrong). Anyway, its probably better to ditch this naming convention as you will end up in stupid names in relatively short time. For example, in few generations you could end up with something like "Ridiculously Oversized Array"
But that was my whole point. We should start back a ways. Otherwise, we'll end up having "The Very Very Large Array", "The Even Larger Array", "Yet Another Extremely Sizable Array", and "Jesus Christ! Would You Look At That Array!"
I think if we back up a bit, and start small, it will give us more room to grow.
Because all these constructions with their superlative names are always eventually surpassed by something else, I propose that we name this the "Pretty Big Array".
When you can show me a rover that can play volleyball, compose an original poem, and reason its way out of a difficult situation without outside help, I'll agree with you. Until then, no.
Exactly. Seems to me this is is quite obvious. My guess would be that looking in your neighborhood pond would be much more productive than looking on Mars.
You forgot, or at least left out, a couple of things:
"Gravity is cheap. float a tin can in space and give it a spin."
You would have to either spin it very fast, or make it very large, if you're talking about long-term habitation. Both have their problems: make it too small, so you have to spin it too fast, and the gravity will be significantly different at your feet than at your head. With all the associated health problems that implies. Make it very large, and you have the astronomical cost and effort of trying to build something that large in microgravity in the first place. Assuming you have the physical resources (which we would have to assume anyway since you left that out), building a habitat of either size, in even a small gravity well (like Mars or the Moon), would probably be much faster and cheaper. And you can get to low-v asteroids pretty easily from either place... certainly easier than from Earth.
Also, while on the general subject of radiation, you would also need rather heavy and bulky shielding from radiation. Not only that, but you would need sturdy shielding at the front (toward the direction of orbit, that is), to keep you from being a victim of punctures from orbital junk. I don't know if you are aware, but one time during orbit a flake of paint (!!) embedded itself about 1" into one of the 3" thick forward viewports of one of the space shuttles. Imagine hitting anything more massive than a flake of paint.
"Add a few mirrors and radiators to your tin can and you can have whatever temperature you want."
Only if those mirrors and radiators are adjustable, and in fact quite active, and you have lots and lots of good insulation. On a planetary body, you have plenty of naturally available insulation and your heat source can be more passive.
"The sky is black except for the clouds of ice and solid carbon dioxide."
Um... no, it's not. Haven't you seen ANY of the pictures from the Mars rovers over the last few years?
I don't know that Mars is any worse than the Moon, except for the distance, which is pretty much a deal-breaker if you're talking about any kind of frequent exchanges of anything with much mass. And I can certainly see colonies on the Moon. It has turned out to have lots of resources we never suspected until we went there, like abundant oxygen in the rock. And more recently, we have found lots and lots of water ice. Solar energy is everywhere.
Regardless of whether Mars would ever be habitable, there are all kinds of reasons to want to establish an outpost on the moon.
At the time I posted this comment, nobody else had mentioned the issue. So why did it get modded "redundant"?
I would thank you to use proper discretion with your mod powers. Disagreeing with me does not equal "redundant", nor does just not liking me for whatever reason. Try to be more adult next tiime, eh?
Nothing personal, but I make it a point not to give out location information on Slashdot. I may have slipped on occasion, and accidentally given clues, but my policy is to not do it on purpose.
"It's funny, you would think that politicians would be very aware of the disease of unaccountability..."
Ah, but see, they never seem to consider it happening to THEM. I don't know why that is so, but it does seem to be so. For example, a Republican-dominated Congress voluntarily cedes some power to the President (often unconstitutionally, but they have done it anyway, like the War Powers Act for example although I do not know what party is mostly responsible for that.) They do it because he is the President and he can help their party by furthering their cause. But it is like they've never stopped to consider what will happen when the next President comes along, who may not be a member of their party. Then the Democrats give the President a little more power, because he's a Democrat... but the next President is as likely as not to be a Republican. And so on. They keep shooting themselves in the feet, but unfortunately it hits the rest of us higher up.
I am not saying that we have the technology today, but if we don't at least explore the idea further (and I am not aware of any such discussions going on in NASA or the rest of government today), then I think we're dropping the ball.
As for advantages, if any of the moon's resources (or even asteroidal or comet resources, for that matter) can be exploited for either construction material or fuel (there is lots of oxygen in moon rock, for example), then that mass would not have to be lifted from Earth. That could be a very big advantage. Another big advantage is the exponential relationship between rockets and gravity: the higher the gravity, the more thrust needed to lift a payload, which requires more fuel, which requires more structure to hold it, which requires more thrust, which requires more fuel... and so on. And to add to that, there is no appreciable atmosphere on the moon to add drag that has to be overcome.
As we saw in the Apollo moon missions, it only takes a very small rocket to escape the moon's gravity well, while it takes a huge rocket to escape Earth's, because of those very factors. And again the last factor is that you have gravity in which to construct things.
If there are any exploitable resources in space, whether that be water ice from comets or asteroids, or frozen oxygen, or free hydrogen, or whatever, it would probably be most efficient to take it to the moon to process, rather than trying to do it in microgravity, or -- far worse -- down at the bottom of Earth's gravity well. And solar energy is plentiful on the moon. Ice can be separated to hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. And -- I had almost forgotten -- it now appears that there is actually a great deal of water ice on the moon. Couple that with abundant solar energy and you have your rocket fuel!
By the time we are finished building a (small) moonbase, will it be commercially feasible to exploit resources? Probably not. I expect some research would have to be done to find efficient ways to exploit the available resources.
I don't have a problem with a mission to Mars, but a mission to an asteroid seems particularly pointless to me. We have done some pretty close fly-bys and we have a pretty good handle on their composition and behavior. Frankly I don't see any real purpose to it. But maybe I've missed something.
Same with Mars. Because of the distances involved even if not anything else, we will have the technology to have a permanent moonbase long before we have the technology to even be going to Mars very often.
Yes, apparently it is, since you're doing plenty of it.
I didn't say it was right. I didn't say it was fair. I didn't say you would win *IF* you tried to get compensation. But somehow you seem to assume I stated all those things anyway, even though they don't appear anywhere here in print.
I am as sympathetic with Bradley Manning as you are, perhaps even more so. But that still has nothing to do with the point I did make, and I still never stated any of those other things.
IANAL, but if I am not mistaken, if the issue does not involve imminent danger to the public, or (I think) high probability of escape in the case of felonies, warrants are typically supposed to be served when the property owner (or resident) is present, the warrant is supposed to be read to said property owner or resident before a search, and it is supposed to be served during daylight hours. This ain't CSI or SWAT. The fact that police on television shows regularly storm residences does not make it proper or legal procedure.
I don't know what time of day it was, but from all appearances, and contrary to law, the police actively avoided confronting the resident and owner of the seized property, nor did they read him the warrant.
That should be very troubling to everyone here. Every time they get away with something like this, is one more example to the public that they CAN get away with it.
Because they illegally deprived Chen of the use of his property, and illegally searched his personal records (and, also illegally if I am not mistaken, made public comments about those illegally-seized private records), Chen and whoever is representing him should probably prosecute them under 18 USC, Section 242, "Deprivation of Rights Under the Color of Law".
That is a Federal law that applies to everybody, even State and Federal prosecutors, and it has teeth. Depending on what they did, the penalties range all the way up to death.
I strongly urge you to read the page at that link, because it is a very handy law to know about if you are ever harassed or victimized by the police or any government official. Don't threaten them, but if they are aware of this law (they probably are), and they know that YOU know about it, that alone could cause them to back off.
In my state, for example, it is no longer allowed to prosecute a policeman for any crime they commit against a citizen, unless actual malice can be shown. That was a well-intended law that has backfired and led to all kinds of police abuses. But they can still be prosecuted under the Federal statute, 18 USC 242.
The one item I disagree with you about is the chair. There is a lot more to a good chair than simple height adjustment and lumbar support. No chairs in the United States are rated healthy for 8 hours or more of sitting unless they are fully adjustable for height and tilt, as well as back position (front-to-back distance), height and angle.
I definitely agree with you about foot support. Many people set their chair too low in relation to the desk, so that their feet can reach the floor comfortably. This is backwards, and results in all kinds of arm and wrist problems. The proper approach is to set your chair to the proper height in relation to the work surface, then find some kind of foot rest if that is too high for you to reach the floor. Leaving your feet dangling is hard on the knees and the backs of your legs, and causes bad posture in compensation.
I won't recommend a particular brand, but be sure to get a fully-adjustable chair that is rated for more than 8 hours, even if you are only sitting in it for 4 or less. Your body will thank you.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, definitely Prey. It uses almost no resources on the machine until it is activated, it is dirt-simple to remotely activate from any web browser, and even the free service gives you access to location information, webcam shapshots of the user, screenshots, and so on. If you would like the more advanced features, you can purchase them, even after the theft, which is something that as far as I know no other service offers.
Once I found out how it worked, I installed Prey immediately on my Mac. It has been there ever since, completely unobtrusive and essentially undetectable. I have activated it for test purposes a couple of times, and it continues to just work.
Sorry, but legislation that is pending in various parts of the world, including the United States, can go far to remedy this situation. There are also counter-measures that can be implemented by individuals, to a certain extent.
The combination of the two has the potential to make this not a problem anymore. Whether it will is another question, but using the word "forever" is simply not warranted.
You know, I have grown really weary of this knee-jerk, inaccurate labeling of people. It's just "political correctness" all over again, for which I have absolutely no respect. You are being as much of a jerk as he was, if not more.
It is possible to dislike gays without being a homophobe, just like it is possible to dislike anything else without being "phobic" or neurotic about it. "Homophobe" is a label that has been far too often and grossly abused, and it's time to knock that shit off.
"Not Freud. They showed gay porn to homophobes and a control group and counted the boners. Verified."
This makes no sense at all. If they were already known to be "homophobes" in the sense you mean, then what was the point of the test? You are defining your terms in terms of what you have already defined... perfectly circular reasoning.
That's like saying "we tested some mice and discovered that they like Purina Mouse Chow", rather than a real experiment, which would have been "they like Purina Mouse Chow, therefore it is likely they are mice."
"Bullshit. No real man cares about women falling in love with eachother. We just like to see hot chicks dyke out. Q: Why do women fake orgasms? A: They think we fucking care. Quit sissy-fying guyhood or GTFO."
I didn't think this was funny until I saw the poster's username.
Yes, the versatility was my main point. On Mars it may not be as important, as the communications lag time is only a few minutes. But if you get much further out than that, anything that relies on remote control has to do everything e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y.
That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that one. Interesting.
I like this thinking-out-of-the-box. We should think about tethers more often. As Charles Pellegrino pointed out: depending on your energy source, it would probably be vastly more cost-effective, for an interstellar vehicle, to have the motors pulling the payload, via cables, than to have them pushing it using massive steel girders.
You and I know what you meant by that. But unfortunately NASA has christened one of their more recent proposals ORION, so that can cause confusion.
If that naming convention is going to be continued, each generation should at least sound bigger than the previous. To my ear, "Pretty Big Array" does not sound quite as big as "Very Large Array" (I'm not a native english speaker so I could be wrong). Anyway, its probably better to ditch this naming convention as you will end up in stupid names in relatively short time. For example, in few generations you could end up with something like "Ridiculously Oversized Array"
But that was my whole point. We should start back a ways. Otherwise, we'll end up having "The Very Very Large Array", "The Even Larger Array", "Yet Another Extremely Sizable Array", and "Jesus Christ! Would You Look At That Array!"
I think if we back up a bit, and start small, it will give us more room to grow.
Because all these constructions with their superlative names are always eventually surpassed by something else, I propose that we name this the "Pretty Big Array".
How about "Paul"?
If you find any kind of life form that has remote instruments, you might want to ask it for a ride home.
When you can show me a rover that can play volleyball, compose an original poem, and reason its way out of a difficult situation without outside help, I'll agree with you. Until then, no.
Exactly. Seems to me this is is quite obvious. My guess would be that looking in your neighborhood pond would be much more productive than looking on Mars.
"Gravity is cheap. float a tin can in space and give it a spin."
You would have to either spin it very fast, or make it very large, if you're talking about long-term habitation. Both have their problems: make it too small, so you have to spin it too fast, and the gravity will be significantly different at your feet than at your head. With all the associated health problems that implies. Make it very large, and you have the astronomical cost and effort of trying to build something that large in microgravity in the first place. Assuming you have the physical resources (which we would have to assume anyway since you left that out), building a habitat of either size, in even a small gravity well (like Mars or the Moon), would probably be much faster and cheaper. And you can get to low-v asteroids pretty easily from either place... certainly easier than from Earth.
Also, while on the general subject of radiation, you would also need rather heavy and bulky shielding from radiation. Not only that, but you would need sturdy shielding at the front (toward the direction of orbit, that is), to keep you from being a victim of punctures from orbital junk. I don't know if you are aware, but one time during orbit a flake of paint (!!) embedded itself about 1" into one of the 3" thick forward viewports of one of the space shuttles. Imagine hitting anything more massive than a flake of paint.
"Add a few mirrors and radiators to your tin can and you can have whatever temperature you want."
Only if those mirrors and radiators are adjustable, and in fact quite active, and you have lots and lots of good insulation. On a planetary body, you have plenty of naturally available insulation and your heat source can be more passive.
"The sky is black except for the clouds of ice and solid carbon dioxide."
Um... no, it's not. Haven't you seen ANY of the pictures from the Mars rovers over the last few years?
"Between the greater distance and the electrostatic dust that clings to everything, not nearly as well as on Earth."
Yeah, you would probably want to sweep off your solar collectors every week or so. And after storms.
"Water becomes more abundant the further out in the solar system you go."
But MUCH harder to melt, in most places.
I don't know that Mars is any worse than the Moon, except for the distance, which is pretty much a deal-breaker if you're talking about any kind of frequent exchanges of anything with much mass. And I can certainly see colonies on the Moon. It has turned out to have lots of resources we never suspected until we went there, like abundant oxygen in the rock. And more recently, we have found lots and lots of water ice. Solar energy is everywhere.
Regardless of whether Mars would ever be habitable, there are all kinds of reasons to want to establish an outpost on the moon.
At the time I posted this comment, nobody else had mentioned the issue. So why did it get modded "redundant"?
I would thank you to use proper discretion with your mod powers. Disagreeing with me does not equal "redundant", nor does just not liking me for whatever reason. Try to be more adult next tiime, eh?
"That wouldn't be Illinois, would it?"
Nothing personal, but I make it a point not to give out location information on Slashdot. I may have slipped on occasion, and accidentally given clues, but my policy is to not do it on purpose.
"It's funny, you would think that politicians would be very aware of the disease of unaccountability..."
Ah, but see, they never seem to consider it happening to THEM. I don't know why that is so, but it does seem to be so. For example, a Republican-dominated Congress voluntarily cedes some power to the President (often unconstitutionally, but they have done it anyway, like the War Powers Act for example although I do not know what party is mostly responsible for that.) They do it because he is the President and he can help their party by furthering their cause. But it is like they've never stopped to consider what will happen when the next President comes along, who may not be a member of their party. Then the Democrats give the President a little more power, because he's a Democrat... but the next President is as likely as not to be a Republican. And so on. They keep shooting themselves in the feet, but unfortunately it hits the rest of us higher up.
I am not saying that we have the technology today, but if we don't at least explore the idea further (and I am not aware of any such discussions going on in NASA or the rest of government today), then I think we're dropping the ball.
As for advantages, if any of the moon's resources (or even asteroidal or comet resources, for that matter) can be exploited for either construction material or fuel (there is lots of oxygen in moon rock, for example), then that mass would not have to be lifted from Earth. That could be a very big advantage. Another big advantage is the exponential relationship between rockets and gravity: the higher the gravity, the more thrust needed to lift a payload, which requires more fuel, which requires more structure to hold it, which requires more thrust, which requires more fuel... and so on. And to add to that, there is no appreciable atmosphere on the moon to add drag that has to be overcome.
As we saw in the Apollo moon missions, it only takes a very small rocket to escape the moon's gravity well, while it takes a huge rocket to escape Earth's, because of those very factors. And again the last factor is that you have gravity in which to construct things.
If there are any exploitable resources in space, whether that be water ice from comets or asteroids, or frozen oxygen, or free hydrogen, or whatever, it would probably be most efficient to take it to the moon to process, rather than trying to do it in microgravity, or -- far worse -- down at the bottom of Earth's gravity well. And solar energy is plentiful on the moon. Ice can be separated to hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. And -- I had almost forgotten -- it now appears that there is actually a great deal of water ice on the moon. Couple that with abundant solar energy and you have your rocket fuel!
By the time we are finished building a (small) moonbase, will it be commercially feasible to exploit resources? Probably not. I expect some research would have to be done to find efficient ways to exploit the available resources.
I don't have a problem with a mission to Mars, but a mission to an asteroid seems particularly pointless to me. We have done some pretty close fly-bys and we have a pretty good handle on their composition and behavior. Frankly I don't see any real purpose to it. But maybe I've missed something.
Same with Mars. Because of the distances involved even if not anything else, we will have the technology to have a permanent moonbase long before we have the technology to even be going to Mars very often.
"Well, it's all good and well to pontificate."
Yes, apparently it is, since you're doing plenty of it.
I didn't say it was right. I didn't say it was fair. I didn't say you would win *IF* you tried to get compensation. But somehow you seem to assume I stated all those things anyway, even though they don't appear anywhere here in print.
I am as sympathetic with Bradley Manning as you are, perhaps even more so. But that still has nothing to do with the point I did make, and I still never stated any of those other things.
So why don't you shut off your own pontificating?
That has nothing to do with my point. I already stated that "sometimes it operates under the color of law".
But that still does not make it legal, and that does not prevent you from trying to get compensation if it's ever done to you.
IANAL, but if I am not mistaken, if the issue does not involve imminent danger to the public, or (I think) high probability of escape in the case of felonies, warrants are typically supposed to be served when the property owner (or resident) is present, the warrant is supposed to be read to said property owner or resident before a search, and it is supposed to be served during daylight hours. This ain't CSI or SWAT. The fact that police on television shows regularly storm residences does not make it proper or legal procedure.
I don't know what time of day it was, but from all appearances, and contrary to law, the police actively avoided confronting the resident and owner of the seized property, nor did they read him the warrant.
That should be very troubling to everyone here. Every time they get away with something like this, is one more example to the public that they CAN get away with it.
Because they illegally deprived Chen of the use of his property, and illegally searched his personal records (and, also illegally if I am not mistaken, made public comments about those illegally-seized private records), Chen and whoever is representing him should probably prosecute them under 18 USC, Section 242, "Deprivation of Rights Under the Color of Law".
That is a Federal law that applies to everybody, even State and Federal prosecutors, and it has teeth. Depending on what they did, the penalties range all the way up to death.
I strongly urge you to read the page at that link, because it is a very handy law to know about if you are ever harassed or victimized by the police or any government official. Don't threaten them, but if they are aware of this law (they probably are), and they know that YOU know about it, that alone could cause them to back off.
In my state, for example, it is no longer allowed to prosecute a policeman for any crime they commit against a citizen, unless actual malice can be shown. That was a well-intended law that has backfired and led to all kinds of police abuses. But they can still be prosecuted under the Federal statute, 18 USC 242.
The one item I disagree with you about is the chair. There is a lot more to a good chair than simple height adjustment and lumbar support. No chairs in the United States are rated healthy for 8 hours or more of sitting unless they are fully adjustable for height and tilt, as well as back position (front-to-back distance), height and angle.
I definitely agree with you about foot support. Many people set their chair too low in relation to the desk, so that their feet can reach the floor comfortably. This is backwards, and results in all kinds of arm and wrist problems. The proper approach is to set your chair to the proper height in relation to the work surface, then find some kind of foot rest if that is too high for you to reach the floor. Leaving your feet dangling is hard on the knees and the backs of your legs, and causes bad posture in compensation.
I won't recommend a particular brand, but be sure to get a fully-adjustable chair that is rated for more than 8 hours, even if you are only sitting in it for 4 or less. Your body will thank you.