Right, but if you can see out with IR goggles, then what stops the enemy from seeing you with them? Seems to me like this technology would have to block a large part of the spectrum in order to be effective, or the person in the cloak could be spotted.
Not to say that Microsoft shouldn't have patched this, for it is certainly a design flaw to allow computers hooked up to a machine to access its memory, but if you're plugging something into the Firewire port of a computer, then you're sitting at that computer, aren't you? It's true of all hardware that if you have physical access, then you can do whatever you want with it anyway.
Hmm. $58 million, eh? Well, here's a simple solution to Vonage's problem: Verizon obviously knows that $58 million is 58 million cents. Since 58 million cents is $580,000, they only have to pay $580,000. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. If we continue this process, the amount of money Vonage owes to Verizon if the latter wins approaches zero! So it's not the end after all.
Patents on the medical and biological industry, while potentially good for the companies, are truly terrible for the rest of the world. The last thing we need is more expensive medicine, and having biological trade secrets released will help humanity as a whole.
I've done a little research on AIDS, for example, and to give you an example of what patents do for the cost of medicine, take a look at this quote from the New York Times article, "Look at Brazil."
"Until a year ago, the triple therapy that has made AIDS a manageable disease in wealthy nations was considered realistic only for those who could afford to pay $10,000 to $15,000 a year or lived in societies that could."
In developing countries, the cost of patented medication is the reason why many families cannot afford it and so many suffer from it. Now look at another quote from the same article:
"Brazil now produces some triple therapy for $3,000 a year and expects to do much better, and the price could potentially drop to $700 a year or even less."
Many countries cannot do this for fear of economic sanctions, which means the next logical step would be for companies to open up their medical and biological information, for the good of humanity. Not only will this help potential consumers of this medication, but also provide a base for other companies to build on to excel each other's knowledge.
According to the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:82.148.97. 69), this is a misunderstanding. I didn't figure I would be the first to post on this, but here goes.
The article says, "If you came here from a news headline saying that Wikipedia has banned all of Qatar, please pop right back over there and post in the comments that the story is not true. This IP number was temporarily blocked for less than 12 hours, and a block of an entire nation would go absolutely against Wikipedia policy. In the English Wikipedia, such an action would require approval of at a minimum the English Arbitration Committee and/or me personally, and would never ever be undertaken lightly, nor without extensive attempts at direct negotiation with the ISP and/or nation in question."
Go to the updated site, and it explains it all. I really was doubtful that Wikipedia would indefinitely ban an entire country anyway. Certainly, Wikipedia does not unilaterally censor an entire country.
In this age of liability, it seems anyone can be sued for no reason. This is why my dad and I thought of a wonderful idea to prevent companies from being sued for absolutely no reason over people doing ridiculous things. Some doors nowadays even say, "Warning: Door May Open At Any Time." To correct this problem, just slap a sticker on your product that says, "Do Not Use." IANAL, but as far as I can tell, it's as good as any other sticker to prevent you from being sued.
0.05 cents per page or 0.05 dollars per page? Ironically, even Slashdot readers are confusing the facts. I know we already went over this in a recent Slashdot post, and I'm probably just being picky, but here goes. . .
0.05 cents per page. Multiply by 550. We get 27.50. . . CENTS. In other words, we're multiplying $0.0005/page by 550 and getting $0.2750. I wouldn't mind paying $0.28 to print a book, quite honestly.
Then again, the rest of your post was very true, but I couldn't help but point it out.
This is why I think it's very important to use something like GnuPG for email. With a large keysize, it's very hard to break. I encourage everyone who will be affected by this to cryptographically sign and encrypt his or her email, and use something like OTR (Off The Record) to encrypt instant messages.
Conversations are between the intended people, and should stay that way. The last thing we need is people snooping through our emails and private conversations.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, but if you can see out with IR goggles, then what stops the enemy from seeing you with them? Seems to me like this technology would have to block a large part of the spectrum in order to be effective, or the person in the cloak could be spotted.
Not to say that Microsoft shouldn't have patched this, for it is certainly a design flaw to allow computers hooked up to a machine to access its memory, but if you're plugging something into the Firewire port of a computer, then you're sitting at that computer, aren't you? It's true of all hardware that if you have physical access, then you can do whatever you want with it anyway.
-Nick
I also wrote a haiku, in DeCSS style, that details the hex. Enjoy!
Hmm. $58 million, eh? Well, here's a simple solution to Vonage's problem: Verizon obviously knows that $58 million is 58 million cents. Since 58 million cents is $580,000, they only have to pay $580,000. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. If we continue this process, the amount of money Vonage owes to Verizon if the latter wins approaches zero! So it's not the end after all.
Nick
Patents on the medical and biological industry, while potentially good for the companies, are truly terrible for the rest of the world. The last thing we need is more expensive medicine, and having biological trade secrets released will help humanity as a whole.
I've done a little research on AIDS, for example, and to give you an example of what patents do for the cost of medicine, take a look at this quote from the New York Times article, "Look at Brazil."
"Until a year ago, the triple therapy that has made AIDS a manageable disease in wealthy nations was considered realistic only for those who could afford to pay $10,000 to $15,000 a year or lived in societies that could."
In developing countries, the cost of patented medication is the reason why many families cannot afford it and so many suffer from it. Now look at another quote from the same article:
"Brazil now produces some triple therapy for $3,000 a year and expects to do much better, and the price could potentially drop to $700 a year or even less."
Many countries cannot do this for fear of economic sanctions, which means the next logical step would be for companies to open up their medical and biological information, for the good of humanity. Not only will this help potential consumers of this medication, but also provide a base for other companies to build on to excel each other's knowledge.
According to the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:82.148.97. 69), this is a misunderstanding. I didn't figure I would be the first to post on this, but here goes.
The article says, "If you came here from a news headline saying that Wikipedia has banned all of Qatar, please pop right back over there and post in the comments that the story is not true. This IP number was temporarily blocked for less than 12 hours, and a block of an entire nation would go absolutely against Wikipedia policy. In the English Wikipedia, such an action would require approval of at a minimum the English Arbitration Committee and/or me personally, and would never ever be undertaken lightly, nor without extensive attempts at direct negotiation with the ISP and/or nation in question."
Go to the updated site, and it explains it all. I really was doubtful that Wikipedia would indefinitely ban an entire country anyway. Certainly, Wikipedia does not unilaterally censor an entire country.
In this age of liability, it seems anyone can be sued for no reason. This is why my dad and I thought of a wonderful idea to prevent companies from being sued for absolutely no reason over people doing ridiculous things. Some doors nowadays even say, "Warning: Door May Open At Any Time." To correct this problem, just slap a sticker on your product that says, "Do Not Use." IANAL, but as far as I can tell, it's as good as any other sticker to prevent you from being sued.
0.05 cents per page or 0.05 dollars per page? Ironically, even Slashdot readers are confusing the facts. I know we already went over this in a recent Slashdot post, and I'm probably just being picky, but here goes. . . 0.05 cents per page. Multiply by 550. We get 27.50. . . CENTS. In other words, we're multiplying $0.0005/page by 550 and getting $0.2750. I wouldn't mind paying $0.28 to print a book, quite honestly. Then again, the rest of your post was very true, but I couldn't help but point it out.
This is why I think it's very important to use something like GnuPG for email. With a large keysize, it's very hard to break. I encourage everyone who will be affected by this to cryptographically sign and encrypt his or her email, and use something like OTR (Off The Record) to encrypt instant messages.
Conversations are between the intended people, and should stay that way. The last thing we need is people snooping through our emails and private conversations.