Is the RSA also going to start selling Tin Foil Hats?
No, you can keep right on selling them.
You should write and thank them.
I don't think these devices would even be remotely practical for another 3-4 years when RFID's will be prevalent
3 or 4 years aren't all that unreasonable considering they have to do the R&D (i.e. get the blocker down to a chip manufacturable for under 10 cents) and find consumer product manufacturers willing to partner with them to get it into the consumer market.
It's a bit strange for RSA to come up with an innovative product that's a reasonable thing for consumers to buy... I wish them good luck with this, and might buy one myself if they offer it at a reasonable price. (say $10)
We need a standard GUI, standard installation methods that work at least as well as Windoze installers.
When MS finally gets around to replacing the FUD with the real truth about what's wrong with Linux from the viewpoint of a Windows desktop user who doesn't have company in-house tech support and puts megabucks into telling this truth across major media, the community will get either its act together or get publically exposed as a bunch of lus3rs.
That in-house MS Linux project may get MS the information needed to do this. It actually is possible that they don't have the in-house expertise to know what the average newbie Linux user knows from ugly experience yet. Or it may be that in MS's corporate culture, the truth is used only when all else fails.
Why wait for MS to give us that kick in the pants?
I would like some serious talk about just what exactly we ARE supposed to do about spam. Government moves too slow to pass an effective law, and the spammers don't abide by the law anyway. Filters don't work effectivly, blacklists are not working either apparently. Does anyone have a usefull suggestion about how to fix this problem?
Unfortunately, the only real solution is going to have to be a legal one. Spam technology is moving too fast, and anti-spam tech is either ineffective or does entirely too much collateral damage.
Make people and businesses responsible for damage their machines do, whether they relay spams or viruses, and whether they were an open relay or let their machine get Trojaned. $100 USD/spam seems a reasonable amount via Federal law.
Make the organizations that profit from spam responsible for damage. $100 USD/spam seems reasonable.
Allow suing of spammers and/or spam/virus relayers in small claims court, in the same lawsuit if both can be located
Require due diligence on the part of the person bringing legal action to prevent people not too clear on the concept from simply using the From: address as the target for lawsuit.
Allowable defenses: 'first offense' (use a national database to track this) and "best practices"... that's probably as far as it's reasonable to go, how many of us can cope with a "zero-day exploit"?
There's a link to the Wired article in the original post, go read it.
The industrial diamonds you're thinking of aren't relevant to the new generation of lab-grown $5 diamonds, which can only be distinguished from natural diamonds using expensive and specialized lab equipment. IIRC, the people experimenting with this are already working on making this harder.
The new generation of diamonds will be indistinguishable from natural diamonds to the naked eye, meaning that a diamond engagement ring will look just as good to the recipient either way.
This is a proof-of-concept lab prototype. It's easier to debug a handful of gates than 5-10M on a chip, and they're probably playing with interconnects as well.
With respect to the interest in power handling capability, if you don't think modern CPUs run significant power, you can always try taking the fan off your CPU heat sink and see for yourself.
Lots of different companies working on diamond semiconductor substrates, most are thinking about future CPUs, not future RF power amps.
Wonder if this can be combined with carbon nanotube technology?
The worst part is that this won't be a good source of revenue, but will impose considerable expense on businesses to comply with the reporting requirement
There are a great many businesses with LANs in FL that add value to the state but are only located there because they consider FL convenient.The tax is not convenient, and the paperwork will be worse.
They'll probably lose more in general taxes than the LAN tax will bring.
Let's hope this passes. We need a few bad examples to scare other governments into finding other things to regulate.
Powersats. This requires a working space-based infrastructure. As for lifting payloads into orbit, best solutions are either Space Elevator or railguns capable of putting 1,000 kg payloads into orbit.
Expensive, but what do you want for a solution capable of solving the problem for a few hundred megayears? We've run out of cheap solutions.
Certain energy-saving measures are going to have to be mandatory if they're going to be used.
Requiring via Federal law or administrative regulation light sources sold in the USA to meet energy efficiency standards that stock incandescent bulbs can not meet is a good start. Or simply setting tariffs on them which would make them cost-competitive with LEDs.
If energy conservation is necessary, we can't let the marketplace decide about it. Though I think consumers will be pleasantly surprised after buying them when their light bills drop and replacement is a rare thing.
If you do the math, the regular old light bulb is still most efficient overall when compared to fluorescents or neobulbs. The amount of energy, resources, and pollution that goes into something has to be taken into account if you're really looking at reducing your impact on the environment.
Additionally, you can't go wrong with nuclear power if you're looking at least polluting power sources. Many people look at solar as if its some sort of panacea, but the amount of energy that goes into making a tile is far more than you'll ever get out of it -- turns out that at the end of the day the thing everybody's been complaining about is the best option because all the pollution is contained.
Let's see some extraordinary proof for each of your claims, including your sources (URLs to the product manufacturer information which gives energy costs and material costs will do, Enron, First Energy, and PR firms will NOT.) and any critical assumptions you made.
I want to see the math. An Excel spreadsheet with the text cut and pasted here and a URL pointing at the file will do if you don't feel like entering it by hand. Excel 97 probably has the best chance at getting read by Windows and Open Source spreadsheets.
IIRC, that second claim comes straight out of an energy industry-funded study that was exposed as bogus within days of when the media feeding frenzy started, and one of the major problems was that the math was done wrong. They wanted the feeding frenzy to eat the nuclear power movement. It ate a chunk of their credibility instead.
We don't expect to see quite as much proof as we would if you asserted that Bush's foriegn policy is made by alien grays or that the Easter Bunny is real But you can't depend on "everybody knows" here. Just because your assertions are contrarian and counterintuitive doesn't make them right.
And YOU get to "do the math". I'm not the one making the extraordinary claims, you are. Prove them or retract them. Where did you think you were, an AOL chatroom?
I don't believe you actually did the math, I believe you're simply parroting some claims based on energy or conventional light bulb industry press releases you heard off Rush Limbaugh.
Well, it worked for the moment, though I'm not the only one who suspects the guy is looking for another ISP right now and getting ready to start shoveling more crap at us.
I keep wondering when some spammer is going to get publically outed complete with real name and home address, and somebody who's pissed off who feels he has nothing at all to lose will do something permanent to the guy in a very public way.
We can hope at this point that some public spirited citizen will put together a legal defense fund for the person who . . . reasoned with the spammer.
However, I have seen a couple of occasions where a SPAM has been followed a couple of days later by an apology, where it truly does appear that someone has had a break-through experience and now understands that SPAM is a bad idea, where they truly did not understand that previously.
Usually, this is spam they're sending using their real e-mail addresses from their own domain names, often with real addresses in the spam itself, and they are selling real products and services of some sort.
I may have seen as many as a dozen or so since I got onto the Net in late 1991.
In those rare cases, you explain to them politely that they did a bad thing and why it's a bad thing, and they'll apologize and stop.
If they respond with one of the well-known spammer rationalizations, have fun and use your imagination to come up with an appropriate response.
But government historically has been inefficient on managing any kind of infrastructure, just look at its state in the former Soviet Union countries.
Google on the history of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Look into how South Korea managed to get broadband into the majority of its homes and businesses. How about the examples of municipal power companies opening up their fiber optic networks to consumers? Or the Federal Interstate network?
Just because the government runs it doesn't mean it's bad, just because it's privatized doesn't mean it's good.
Personally, I think the idea of using public money to build dark fiber infrastructure and leasing it to private companies is a good one.
One thing it is reasonable for government to spend our money on is something that'll improve the economy for everybody, even for people who don't directly use the service in question.
I never said this. I merely said that my money is going towards alternative purchases which simply will not benefit either of the **AA orgs.
This was addressed to the part of the slashdot community that does want to ratfuck the *AA member organizations.
I'm one of those people. I regard the *AA member organizations as a bunch of parasitic "rent-seekers", I think that they are bad for the music community and high-tech industry and users, and they are going to become bad for independent film makers. I also believe that they are bad for the consumer, and that the drop off in sales is largely due to the consumer population realizing this, even if not at a conscious level.
I think the world as a whole will be better off for their self-destruction, and that our civic duty is to give them a push towards the cliff whenever possible.
I'm using ZoneAlarm on Windows, an application-based firewall.
If a utility I download or any app I buy which has no reason to connect to the Net asks permission for it to connect, I JUST SAY NO.
If it has no access to the Net, there isn't a problem.
The real problem with something like this is... if it's just telling companies "this package is stolen", that's one thing and the ethics can be argued. However, only an idiot would trust any company which would use this kind of copy-protection not to report other things of interest to the company with the spyware, and make no mistake about it, this kind of app is spyware no matter what the rationalization is.
I've been looking for a Linux equivalent to ZoneAlarm, preferably one that allows blocking of specific ports as well as application-based filtering. IMHO, application-based filtering is an improvement on ipchains or iptables.
First, the *AA organizations aren't trying to protect themselves, they're protecting the people who decide whether or not to pay them membership dues. The CEOs at the *AA companies are shoveling the same crap upstairs to the CEOs at the multinationals that own them. The *AA company CEOs are expected to generate more revenue every year despite the shape the economy is in and the business problems you correctly cite. At the moment, they can blame PIRATES!!! for their problems.
In short, no matter what people do, or do not, buy, the likes of the MPAA and the RIAA will merely blame-shift so they don't have to accept responsibility for their own [NAUGHTY]-ups.
If people buy enough new music from independent artists and *AA label content from used record stores, industry sales tracking will pick up on this, and industry and mainstream press will tell everybody what really happened to CD and DVD sales.
You want to ratfuck the *AA companies? Simply spend just as much as you usually do on entertainment, but spend it on independent musicians and new video artists who are selling direct-to-DVD and if you must buy *AA, buy it from used record stores which will not show up in *AA sales numbers.
If indie sales go up and *AA sales go into the toilet, it will be noticed. By both politicians and the *AA label/record company owners.
The result will be at minimum, new management and in most cases, new owners for content cartel companies who believe they know how to make money in a real non-monopoly world and know how to use the Net for marketing, not cringe in fear of it.
Buy your music and your video whenever possible from independent artists NOT connected with RIAA/MPAA.
Once the industry tracking organizations demonstrate that the money spent on entertainment has simply shifted to organizations not involved with the *AA organizations, it's all over.
No more piracy as an excuse, and a bunch of companies we don't like will be forced to find new business models or die under new management or in the case of the record companies, new owners.
The complexity makes it tough to say whether Issa, a Republican from Vista, broke the law with portions of $650,000 in contributions to the campaign to recall Davis.
Darrell Issa wanted to be governor. He paid enough petition gatherers $0.50 - $1.00 per petition signature to the legally required number of signatures. Why'd he drop out of the race afterwards? Arnie decided to run and apparently, he was afraid of getting his ass kicked yet again by The Terminator.
this article is from a.co.uk site so I assume they are talking about Europe?
No, they are indeed talking about the USA, cell phone with text message usage has apparently finally hit enough of a critical mass among US teens (the ones with enough disposable money for movies also. . . are the ones who can afford cell phones) to make this kind of difference.
I'm wondering why this doesn't seem to be happening in Europe. Are the export-only movie versions with enhanced sex and violence that much more entertaining?
In any case, I think Hollywood had better get the message that their only recourse is to start making better movies... probably starting with finding better ways to select movies. (previously covered on/.)
to see law working exactly as it was intended to. At least by the lawyers working for the various corporate interests that drafted it, if not by the Congressmen who were told "THIS will fix our computer security problems."
Correctly, but the problems the legislation was intended to address were the problems of keeping problems secret from the users so they wouldn't have to be fixed.
That is the corporate security problem.
Protecting user privacy is something for a marketing department to use in advertising.
Non-issue. The politicians don't want this to go away.
All it would take to stop illegal immigration within weeks would be a "turn in employers" campaign (say, anyone with more than a dozen illegals or with more than XX% of the workforce illegals) with:
a green cards and $1K in cash for everybody working for an employer turned in as a result of the program
A toll-free number advertised heavily in ethnic media
The reason for making everybody working at an illegal alien shop eligible for the reward is, of course, so that nobody at a place full of illegal aliens will have the slightest reluctance based on harming his fellow aliens to turn in his boss and everybody would be happy to testify.
This would probably be one hell of a lot cheaper than what's spent on INS enforcement now.
You can find Arnie's real enemies in the Religious Right, all of whom are members in good standing of the GOP.
Here's something from the Traditional Values Coalition:
"The recall election in California is heating up as TVC's Chairman Rev. Louis P. Sheldon takes on Arnold Schwarzenegger's moral values and fitness for public office."
Their problem is that they don't think Schwartzenegger's a Nazi, either.
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No, you can keep right on selling them.
You should write and thank them.
I don't think these devices would even be remotely practical for another 3-4 years when RFID's will be prevalent
3 or 4 years aren't all that unreasonable considering they have to do the R&D (i.e. get the blocker down to a chip manufacturable for under 10 cents) and find consumer product manufacturers willing to partner with them to get it into the consumer market.
It's a bit strange for RSA to come up with an innovative product that's a reasonable thing for consumers to buy... I wish them good luck with this, and might buy one myself if they offer it at a reasonable price. (say $10)
When MS finally gets around to replacing the FUD with the real truth about what's wrong with Linux from the viewpoint of a Windows desktop user who doesn't have company in-house tech support and puts megabucks into telling this truth across major media, the community will get either its act together or get publically exposed as a bunch of lus3rs.
That in-house MS Linux project may get MS the information needed to do this. It actually is possible that they don't have the in-house expertise to know what the average newbie Linux user knows from ugly experience yet. Or it may be that in MS's corporate culture, the truth is used only when all else fails.
Why wait for MS to give us that kick in the pants?
Including names and addresses. The list claims that these 200 spammers create 90% of the world's spam.
Have fun.
Unfortunately, the only real solution is going to have to be a legal one. Spam technology is moving too fast, and anti-spam tech is either ineffective or does entirely too much collateral damage.
The industrial diamonds you're thinking of aren't relevant to the new generation of lab-grown $5 diamonds, which can only be distinguished from natural diamonds using expensive and specialized lab equipment. IIRC, the people experimenting with this are already working on making this harder.
The new generation of diamonds will be indistinguishable from natural diamonds to the naked eye, meaning that a diamond engagement ring will look just as good to the recipient either way.
This is something for deBeers to worry about.
With respect to the interest in power handling capability, if you don't think modern CPUs run significant power, you can always try taking the fan off your CPU heat sink and see for yourself.
Lots of different companies working on diamond semiconductor substrates, most are thinking about future CPUs, not future RF power amps.
Wonder if this can be combined with carbon nanotube technology?
There are a great many businesses with LANs in FL that add value to the state but are only located there because they consider FL convenient.The tax is not convenient, and the paperwork will be worse.
They'll probably lose more in general taxes than the LAN tax will bring.
Let's hope this passes. We need a few bad examples to scare other governments into finding other things to regulate.
Expensive, but what do you want for a solution capable of solving the problem for a few hundred megayears? We've run out of cheap solutions.
Requiring via Federal law or administrative regulation light sources sold in the USA to meet energy efficiency standards that stock incandescent bulbs can not meet is a good start. Or simply setting tariffs on them which would make them cost-competitive with LEDs.
If energy conservation is necessary, we can't let the marketplace decide about it. Though I think consumers will be pleasantly surprised after buying them when their light bills drop and replacement is a rare thing.
Additionally, you can't go wrong with nuclear power if you're looking at least polluting power sources. Many people look at solar as if its some sort of panacea, but the amount of energy that goes into making a tile is far more than you'll ever get out of it -- turns out that at the end of the day the thing everybody's been complaining about is the best option because all the pollution is contained.
Let's see some extraordinary proof for each of your claims, including your sources (URLs to the product manufacturer information which gives energy costs and material costs will do, Enron, First Energy, and PR firms will NOT.) and any critical assumptions you made.
I want to see the math. An Excel spreadsheet with the text cut and pasted here and a URL pointing at the file will do if you don't feel like entering it by hand. Excel 97 probably has the best chance at getting read by Windows and Open Source spreadsheets.
IIRC, that second claim comes straight out of an energy industry-funded study that was exposed as bogus within days of when the media feeding frenzy started, and one of the major problems was that the math was done wrong. They wanted the feeding frenzy to eat the nuclear power movement. It ate a chunk of their credibility instead.
We don't expect to see quite as much proof as we would if you asserted that Bush's foriegn policy is made by alien grays or that the Easter Bunny is real But you can't depend on "everybody knows" here. Just because your assertions are contrarian and counterintuitive doesn't make them right.
And YOU get to "do the math". I'm not the one making the extraordinary claims, you are. Prove them or retract them. Where did you think you were, an AOL chatroom?
I don't believe you actually did the math, I believe you're simply parroting some claims based on energy or conventional light bulb industry press releases you heard off Rush Limbaugh.
We can hope at this point that some public spirited citizen will put together a legal defense fund for the person who . . . reasoned with the spammer.
Usually, this is spam they're sending using their real e-mail addresses from their own domain names, often with real addresses in the spam itself, and they are selling real products and services of some sort.
I may have seen as many as a dozen or so since I got onto the Net in late 1991.
In those rare cases, you explain to them politely that they did a bad thing and why it's a bad thing, and they'll apologize and stop.
If they respond with one of the well-known spammer rationalizations, have fun and use your imagination to come up with an appropriate response.
At which point the bed would contain an entire horse.
No, just the head and ass, no middle. Not all that viable but who cares?
That would presumably break all the firmware and would remind the users in no uncertain terms that they need to upgraded to fixed software NOW.
Alternately, it could have told netgear "pick up our bandwidth charges or all that model of router will have to be fixed or replaced."
I see no particular reason to be nice about this, bandwidth costs and netgear is a commercial company that can be expected to pay for its mistakes.
As for anyone else using your server, there are lots of NTP servers out there and changing if yours go down isn't that difficult.
Google on the history of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Look into how South Korea managed to get broadband into the majority of its homes and businesses. How about the examples of municipal power companies opening up their fiber optic networks to consumers? Or the Federal Interstate network?
Just because the government runs it doesn't mean it's bad, just because it's privatized doesn't mean it's good.
Personally, I think the idea of using public money to build dark fiber infrastructure and leasing it to private companies is a good one.
One thing it is reasonable for government to spend our money on is something that'll improve the economy for everybody, even for people who don't directly use the service in question.
I never said this. I merely said that my money is going towards alternative purchases which simply will not benefit either of the **AA orgs.
This was addressed to the part of the slashdot community that does want to ratfuck the *AA member organizations.
I'm one of those people. I regard the *AA member organizations as a bunch of parasitic "rent-seekers", I think that they are bad for the music community and high-tech industry and users, and they are going to become bad for independent film makers. I also believe that they are bad for the consumer, and that the drop off in sales is largely due to the consumer population realizing this, even if not at a conscious level.
I think the world as a whole will be better off for their self-destruction, and that our civic duty is to give them a push towards the cliff whenever possible.
If a utility I download or any app I buy which has no reason to connect to the Net asks permission for it to connect, I JUST SAY NO.
If it has no access to the Net, there isn't a problem.
The real problem with something like this is... if it's just telling companies "this package is stolen", that's one thing and the ethics can be argued. However, only an idiot would trust any company which would use this kind of copy-protection not to report other things of interest to the company with the spyware, and make no mistake about it, this kind of app is spyware no matter what the rationalization is.
I've been looking for a Linux equivalent to ZoneAlarm, preferably one that allows blocking of specific ports as well as application-based filtering. IMHO, application-based filtering is an improvement on ipchains or iptables.
First, the *AA organizations aren't trying to protect themselves, they're protecting the people who decide whether or not to pay them membership dues. The CEOs at the *AA companies are shoveling the same crap upstairs to the CEOs at the multinationals that own them. The *AA company CEOs are expected to generate more revenue every year despite the shape the economy is in and the business problems you correctly cite. At the moment, they can blame PIRATES!!! for their problems. In short, no matter what people do, or do not, buy, the likes of the MPAA and the RIAA will merely blame-shift so they don't have to accept responsibility for their own [NAUGHTY]-ups.
If people buy enough new music from independent artists and *AA label content from used record stores, industry sales tracking will pick up on this, and industry and mainstream press will tell everybody what really happened to CD and DVD sales.
You want to ratfuck the *AA companies? Simply spend just as much as you usually do on entertainment, but spend it on independent musicians and new video artists who are selling direct-to-DVD and if you must buy *AA, buy it from used record stores which will not show up in *AA sales numbers.
If indie sales go up and *AA sales go into the toilet, it will be noticed. By both politicians and the *AA label/record company owners.
The result will be at minimum, new management and in most cases, new owners for content cartel companies who believe they know how to make money in a real non-monopoly world and know how to use the Net for marketing, not cringe in fear of it.
Once the industry tracking organizations demonstrate that the money spent on entertainment has simply shifted to organizations not involved with the *AA organizations, it's all over.
No more piracy as an excuse, and a bunch of companies we don't like will be forced to find new business models or die under new management or in the case of the record companies, new owners.
A quote from this article.
The complexity makes it tough to say whether Issa, a Republican from Vista, broke the law with portions of $650,000 in contributions to the campaign to recall Davis.
Darrell Issa wanted to be governor. He paid enough petition gatherers $0.50 - $1.00 per petition signature to the legally required number of signatures. Why'd he drop out of the race afterwards? Arnie decided to run and apparently, he was afraid of getting his ass kicked yet again by The Terminator.
There's no mass movement here to rid the world of bad government. Just an ambitious politician who "broke into tears as he announced he would retain his seat in Congress so he could work toward peace in the Middle East." when he found out that he had no chance of winning.
While Davis sucks, at worst, he's about average... 0wn3d by the usual suspects.
No, they are indeed talking about the USA, cell phone with text message usage has apparently finally hit enough of a critical mass among US teens (the ones with enough disposable money for movies also. . . are the ones who can afford cell phones) to make this kind of difference.
High-Tech Word of Mouth Maims Movies in a Flash (registration required) is what the shorter article you saw apppears to be based on.
I'm wondering why this doesn't seem to be happening in Europe. Are the export-only movie versions with enhanced sex and violence that much more entertaining?
In any case, I think Hollywood had better get the message that their only recourse is to start making better movies... probably starting with finding better ways to select movies. (previously covered on /.)
Correctly, but the problems the legislation was intended to address were the problems of keeping problems secret from the users so they wouldn't have to be fixed.
That is the corporate security problem.
Protecting user privacy is something for a marketing department to use in advertising.
All it would take to stop illegal immigration within weeks would be a "turn in employers" campaign (say, anyone with more than a dozen illegals or with more than XX% of the workforce illegals) with:
The reason for making everybody working at an illegal alien shop eligible for the reward is, of course, so that nobody at a place full of illegal aliens will have the slightest reluctance based on harming his fellow aliens to turn in his boss and everybody would be happy to testify.
This would probably be one hell of a lot cheaper than what's spent on INS enforcement now.
You can find Arnie's real enemies in the Religious Right, all of whom are members in good standing of the GOP.
Here's something from the Traditional Values Coalition:
"The recall election in California is heating up as TVC's Chairman Rev. Louis P. Sheldon takes on Arnold Schwarzenegger's moral values and fitness for public office."
Their problem is that they don't think Schwartzenegger's a Nazi, either.