Schools and colleges in the UK have strict rules about electrically safe equipment. This leads to quite the reverse where they throw out expired but still relatively nice computer kit, awaiting salvage by dumpster diving geeks.
I predict that by the end of this year Thinkpads will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.
This story has popped up here and there in the press today, but when I actually RTFA the actual breakthrough is negative refractive index materials, in the visible spectrum. The application is not invisible tanks and infantry, but microscopy.
The guy who "accidentally" bought it was an idiot sure. (Assuming that part wasn't staged).
Is it a good thing that you can buy something literally with one click? I find it reassuring that I have to enter my credit card details, then the little code on the back, and finally the long password that is only stored in my head.
I demand more evidence before I start exercising. I keep reading about all the positive benefits for the brain, but from observation of jocks, what I actually see is negative correlation.
Names, SSi number, date of birth.. we need to stop using all of these as ID right now.
My suggestion is this. At some appropriate age, say 16-18 where most countries seem to issue ID, we each choose and commit to memory a graph G, such that the chance of a collision in all earth population is close to zero. Then whenever we need to prove our ID for air-travel or whatever we just need to go though several rounds of identify proof where we generate an isomorphic graph H, and show EITHER isomorphism between H and G, or a Hamiltonian cycle in H. After a sufficient number of rounds your identity would be certain to the required probability and you could be on your way.
The technique to do this mentally could be taught in schools. It's THAT SIMPLE!
I predict insightful moderated posts about how people are going to be executed or "disappeared" for downloading some software, by people who have never left their own country before.
Yes there are many technical ways of circumventing the Chinese firewall or any other net censorship. The real issue here is that the vast majority won't use them because they can't be bothered, leading to widespread ignorance about issues that really need to be addressed.
The reason censorship works so well is because people are generally lazy, regardless of country or race and don't go hunting for information that isn't spoon fed to them.
So to summarize, the definition of success when it comes to censorship isn't that they stopped 100% of information getting though, but that they stopped it a little, combined with a disproportionate amount of easily digested propaganda leading to an impenetrable wall of ignorance that no little circumvention tools are going to help.
"...undermine and destroy the police state that rules China..."
You seem to be implying that the Chinese people are oppressed by an authoritarian government, but liberated from the current dictatorship would suddenly be free. That isn't what would happen. After a series of power struggles they would rebuild the government in the same image, along with all the censorship. The Olympic games and a bit of media attention will not change the underlying mindset that binds the whole thing together.
Electronic money is really fascinating from a cryptography point of view. I think that electronic money is necessary for the same reasons that encryption is necessary to enforce privacy of speech.
And like encryption, it's difficult to boot-strap for similar reasons that encrypted email isn't more widely used.
I couldn't care less about money laundering, but I do worry about the lead that the US is taking on telling people what they can and can't do with their stored value.
MS do stop web developers from using straight CSS. There are so many basic layout features that are not implemented or buggy that I understand why some developers go down the propitiatory route for the sake of a consistent look. And it wasn't that long ago when IE still couldn't display a PNG with an alpha channel.
Or is it lack of awareness. Add south Korea to that list because is currently seems acceptable to have about 10 useless browser bars attempting to take over and uninstall the competitors bar in internet explorer.
Awareness didn't come overnight in North American or European either.
I can't wait until this technology becomes available on the mass market. I'm going to release all my hybrids under the GPL because I like to give back to the community.
Slashdot Mirror
Why does this drone on and on about assigning blame.
This just isn't sensible because DRM can't work ever. It's just not mathematically possible.
Right, now you can go back to trying to stop people "stealing" images off web pages with crappy bits of javascript. Good luck.
China's propaganda hasn't been about communism for a long time.
"Socialism with Chinese characteristics" is a wildcard because it can mean just about anything. Currently it is defined as socialist market economy.
Schools and colleges in the UK have strict rules about electrically safe equipment. This leads to quite the reverse where they throw out expired but still relatively nice computer kit, awaiting salvage by dumpster diving geeks.
They definitely won't take your junk though.
Don't think of it in terms of 5 minutes of battery life, think 5 minutes of UPS backup. That's plenty of time to safely shut-down.
I predict that by the end of this year Thinkpads will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.
This story has popped up here and there in the press today, but when I actually RTFA the actual breakthrough is negative refractive index materials, in the visible spectrum.
The application is not invisible tanks and infantry, but microscopy.
See here for photoshopped image that enhances the misleading headline http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7553061.stm
I think multiple genesis is far more likely than all life coming from one single-celled organism.
The guy who "accidentally" bought it was an idiot sure. (Assuming that part wasn't staged).
Is it a good thing that you can buy something literally with one click? I find it reassuring that I have to enter my credit card details, then the little code on the back, and finally the long password that is only stored in my head.
I demand more evidence before I start exercising. I keep reading about all the positive benefits for the brain, but from observation of jocks, what I actually see is negative correlation.
Names, SSi number, date of birth .. we need to stop using all of these as ID right now.
My suggestion is this. At some appropriate age, say 16-18 where most countries seem to issue ID, we each choose and commit to memory a graph G, such that the chance of a collision in all earth population is close to zero. Then whenever we need to prove our ID for air-travel or whatever we just need to go though several rounds of identify proof where we generate an isomorphic graph H, and show EITHER isomorphism between H and G, or a Hamiltonian cycle in H. After a sufficient number of rounds your identity would be certain to the required probability and you could be on your way.
The technique to do this mentally could be taught in schools. It's THAT SIMPLE!
I predict insightful moderated posts about how people are going to be executed or "disappeared" for downloading some software, by people who have never left their own country before.
Yes there are many technical ways of circumventing the Chinese firewall or any other net censorship. The real issue here is that the vast majority won't use them because they can't be bothered, leading to widespread ignorance about issues that really need to be addressed.
The reason censorship works so well is because people are generally lazy, regardless of country or race and don't go hunting for information that isn't spoon fed to them.
So to summarize, the definition of success when it comes to censorship isn't that they stopped 100% of information getting though, but that they stopped it a little, combined with a disproportionate amount of easily digested propaganda leading to an impenetrable wall of ignorance that no little circumvention tools are going to help.
How is password protection security through obscurity? I can think of no case where this is true.
Or you could just play world of warcraft. Shame about the ping times though.
"...undermine and destroy the police state that rules China..."
You seem to be implying that the Chinese people are oppressed by an authoritarian government, but liberated from the current dictatorship would suddenly be free. That isn't what would happen.
After a series of power struggles they would rebuild the government in the same image, along with all the censorship. The Olympic games and a bit of media attention will not change the underlying mindset that binds the whole thing together.
Although I'm not sure throwing intangible goods into the harbour is going to be so effective.
Electronic money is really fascinating from a cryptography point of view. I think that electronic money is necessary for the same reasons that encryption is necessary to enforce privacy of speech.
And like encryption, it's difficult to boot-strap for similar reasons that encrypted email isn't more widely used.
I couldn't care less about money laundering, but I do worry about the lead that the US is taking on telling people what they can and can't do with their stored value.
The cert isn't included in any browser your are likely to use.
You write that as if it's a bad thing.
MS do stop web developers from using straight CSS. There are so many basic layout features that are not implemented or buggy that I understand why some developers go down the propitiatory route for the sake of a consistent look. And it wasn't that long ago when IE still couldn't display a PNG with an alpha channel.
70-75% of web users can't be wrong.
Or is it lack of awareness. Add south Korea to that list because is currently seems acceptable to have about 10 useless browser bars attempting to take over and uninstall the competitors bar in internet explorer.
Awareness didn't come overnight in North American or European either.
Or scrap ActiveX controls?
For every innovative google algorithm there is an equal and opposite new type of spamming technique created.
QQ dominates the IM market in China.
OICQ was a rip-off of ICQ but was never compatible or even the same network as ICQ.
I can't wait until this technology becomes available on the mass market.
I'm going to release all my hybrids under the GPL because I like to give back to the community.
Well to be honest I usually don't think about it at all. I hit ctrl+enter which prefixes www. and suffixes .com
If I get it wrong then never mind, it only took 0.01 seconds.