Should someone tell him that there are headers on email?
The problem is that everyone CAN send email...wether they know they're doing it, or not- because the spammers have bought their congressmen, and they spend a lot of time learning about computers that congressmen don't.
EVEN IF we went to a regulatory system by which you were licensed to send mail (and some key kept you from it) the spammers would still be able to bribe a key.
It's time for alternatives. Not for the entire world, for the rest of us. Leave SMTP open on the entire world, and antispam the hell out of it. But make another mechanism, running, let's say, under Linux, that we can count on. Who cares if it doesn't work in Tangique or Morocco; we'll make sendmail plugins for special cases.
Let's stop waiting for Microsoft to write their own standard, 'cause it's gonna be Linux-unfriendly. And you can COUNT on it involving the personal data that Microsoft "doesn't" have access to. (See also: tracking Word Documents to their source)
Bravo. That's the essence of the problem. You musta been a sysadmin at some point; me too. Now I'm a security guard and my ex-wife's takin' 1/2 of my minumum wage. But it's not all bad: I also work only 1/2 the time as a sysadmin, and never do I have to 'sell' anything like prudent security practices.
Ya know, if I could convince the credit card companies as well, this might be a perfect life.:>
Yeah, first the wave of panic; let's see if we can put a hole in that.
Think about it: millions of simple reflectors on the road, glued down to the pavement have been broken for decades...put something complex in there, and they'll be broken most of the time, too.
Sure, places like Chicago and New York will have teams to keep'em in place, but that'll just follow the population density.
And exactly what is it these people fear? Without running drugs/guns/etc or slaves, stealing cars or cheating on your wife while running for office...things considered wrong anyway...what's the problem?
Sure, there's the broken-sensor concept where someone goes to jail because the technology tagged someone erroneously, but it's beginning to look like there'll be so many sensors that it'll be an easy task to bear that out in court.
I know, I know, "Brian's just ignoring all the dangers", etc...but I've already went through the panic stage...and there's nothing that's going to stop this pervasion of technology into our lives. Heck, it's part of prophecy....so let's get past the panic, and get on with dealing with it.
This worm has taken down some sort of rail system in Austrailia, as did Blaster with CSX, and just about every month a large, important mission-critical institution is brought to it's knees for the slightly-bigger institution of the Virus cartel.
When your business is defending your nation or keeping trains from colliding or watching a nuclear bomb turn water into steam...don'tcha get it? Why on Earth would you entrust such infrastructure to the same kind of computers that connect Aunt Tilly to the internet for email and browsing?
Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to hide the fact that back around 1985 we called this platform "The Personal Computer (PC)". But when institution after institution gets knocked down and puts people at risk, the virus writer isn't the only one at fault.
What's it matter about the bitrate? So it takes more bits to rip it into equal quality...do you know how many people are ripping mp3s at 128 and thinking it's a precision standard? Don't sweat it. It's not like disk space is a premium anymore.
It's like comparing two cars- one we own, the other we'd be in debt for, for at least 4 years. And the only difference is the amount of shine on the hood. MP3 is effectively owned by a corporation that isn't GPL-friendly. Why is bringing in more of that of any benefit?
"Ogg is a competitor, but I don't think any rational person would say that ogg "eclipses" MP3 at similar bitrates. The consensus on hydrogenaudio is that ogg is very capable but currently requires higher bitrates to achieve the same quality as MP3."
Let's see:
It's free, and going to stay that way
It doesn't track people, never will.
It sounds at least as good as MP3's, if not better
We control it, so we can change it.
Yes. It eclipses MP3's in the way most Open Source software does: on the important parts.
Isn't this the same format for which we are to pay, while.ogg files eclipse them? Let me get this straight- we're PAYING to give out personal information?
Put another notch in the bedpost for the Microsoft mindset.
The people who lived through the depression and got their MBAs before the fall, and scrounged for food like the rest of us, after, had intelligent, visionary MBA professors. They taught these students that "The moment a product is created, there's a demand for it, however small. The trick is to find it."
Obviously this was a few years before someone tried to sell a piece of moldy toast on eBay.:>
I don't know who posited the idea that the internet would help in any way to overthrow governments...was this the guy who dreamed up WebVan? Pets.com?:>
Sure, it informs....sometimes MIS-informs...but people still have to DO it. And just about everyone who's spent a little time there learns that not everything posted on the net is 'gospel'...so I ask you: if you learned something awful on the net, would YOU put your family on the line and overthrow a dictator?
Like with Starbucks and Mc Donalds, hasn't Microsoft reached saturation? Gotta sell those licenses somehow. And once they have our computers, further scientific study is EASY. We can just use spyware.:>
Not in my eyes; they're minions of Microsoft- if you want 'mobile' internet (internet from the road, or outside the DSL limit or whatever) you *have* to have a Microsoft machine with DirecTV.
I don't....and won't...downgrade for anyone. And I won't support monetarily what feeds 'the machine'; 23 years is enough.
When the owners of the patents did their 'call for papers' and wanted to start charging, I re-ripped all my 100+ cdroms in.ogg format at a higher rate and never looked back.
"The car companies do not like (surprise surprise) people personalizing their vehicle's programming and warn of burning out your engine with bad code, and voiding your warranty."
WELL OF COURSE NOT!
It appears that few Slashdot posters have ever owned a business. I see it every once in a while. Let's think about this:
Anyone making widgets of any kind come with an implied warranty, even if it's just 30 days or so. So what happens when a tool comes out that would have semi-enlightened people hacking something they don't truly understand start to optimize their widget? Right: warranty work out the ass.
How many people here have overclocked their video cards? Do ya think that's the fault of the manufacturer? Heck no! Take refined jet-fuel you mix in your basesment and put it in the family car: BOOM! "Wah! My car broke!"
Manufacturers have to 'do the math' before they can start the assembly lines. Simply figuring out how much profit they should expect is very, very complicated. If it doesn't sell, they'll be stuck with a lot of stuff to store...or if it sells and you have to replace each one (like the first round of boots from Lands' End) you wind up taking out a loan to keep people from suing you.
Some people thought hacking the I-Opener was intended as an open source bonanza...but remember that people, using their own money, made it available to the public. And notice they're not in business anymore...
Hack if you want to. Heck, I'll HELP ya. But don't expect the manufacturer to pay for your mistakes, should you make'em.
If we can't maintain a satellite (with no explosives or radiation or whatever) how can we be expected to start a moon-colony or anything else?
The Hubble's been one of the most successful programs we've had; other than a bug in the first mirror, we got it patched and it's show us things we never would have seen otherwise. (And it'd be very useful for spotting extinction-level asteroids.
My bet is that politics got involved and NASA's never been a PR-savvy organization. Shame, really. When you have problems and need to rally around something, you don't just dump a rare success.
The Russians, people really good at rock-simple boosting of many, many tons at a time, could use the business. Now that the whole cold-war thing is over, I'd see reinstatement of this program as big an event as all the detant meetings they ever held.
Back before Britian was attacked by Germany, someone was smart enough to do an "X-pize" kinda thing: they held a prize for making floatplanes to race. Political uproar was surprizingly vocal: "We might head into a war- why does the government want to mess with sea-racers?" Well, take the floats off and replace'em with bombs, and the fastest plane became the Supermarine Spitfire: a plane that very likely saved their lives.
I think the X-prize is a great idea. Maybe let NASA do the core research- let private companies compete on the transportation side. Then we'll be able to fix things like the Hubble and that industry can start making some real progress.
It's not a Christmas play, it's a Winter Celebration. He's not short, he's height-challenged.
I grew up in a world where the left were protecting babies, blacks, impoverished, women, pretty much everyone. But what's happened?
Now the left wants abortion, even at birth-time. (the so-called partial birth thing.)
Black groups only stand in front of cameras for black people who don't/won't work, but ignore hard-working black men defending their home turf with legal (in Florida, from which he moved) handguns.
Women's groups are no longer about discovering and solving earnings-based problems in the women's workplace, but instead are there now just to hate men and tell women it's ok to be lesbian.
The impoverished? Well, those roles have declined a lot from the 60's and 70's...so there's less to do. But when anyone wants to do it, it's giving homeless men warm places to do their drugs- not telling them they can have a house as long as they're clean.
Now this master-slave thing.
Does it get any sillier? Has everyone forgotten how bad things used to be, and the original goals of these various groups?
And they have the GALL to call conservatives Fascists!
Remember the two towers coming down? Remember how no one wanted to use the airlines for a long time? We actually had about a week where NO scheduled airlines flew at all...never before has that happened, since airlines began.
And this all followed the dot-bomb days where investors woke up to the fact that business rules DO apply to this WWW-thing...and before the planes were grounded, MUCH work was already being shifted to India, for example.
People seem to want to think this year is just like last, and the last is just like the one before....but no: didn't anyone turn on the seatbelt light?!?
I believe you'll see a growing, strengthening IT industry in the next few years. The gold-rush people are all in biotech and other speculative areas if they're not on welfare, so sanity can return and people can go back to work. Yahoo, Google, BUNCHES of companies that kept themselves sane are now returning a good profit and are worth their price.
Sure, we took quite a hit...but it's ok: we're coming back. It's gonna get better!
Whatever happened to the Sandman movie?
on
Ask Neil Gaiman
·
· Score: 1
Much like Batman, when I heard there was a Sandman movie in the works, my interest was piqued. I've even been thinking about casting for it:
Death: Bridget Fonda (Looks great in black, is thin, has that certain presence)
Dream: Still Thinking.
Desire: Tea Leoni (Thin, edgy, can be made to look male and female)
Delierium: Lori Petty (Did you see Tank Girl?!?!)
But it's been some time since I've heard anything about it...is it still in the works?
I don't know about you guys, but I login every week or so...haven't turned the machine off (other than to change hardware) for about three years now. Why would I ever consider this a problem?
No, when I responded I was astounded both by someone who knew the details, AND by the fact that, probably for the first time in history, Microsoft seems to have chosen the high road, not just the road to more wallets.:>
There are some things Microsoft does and does well...but leading the industry in the right direction isn't one of them. They're normally guided by ROI, not making life easier.
I don't think Slashdot == The Onion, it's generally more balanced and more skeptical. That's why I read it several times a day.
Bill's doing this to get the skinny on the competing technologies...then he can invent something different about it, push it out the door in the next release, and it'll look, to the MS user, that MS is right, and all these other people are wrong. Remember Gates telling the ISO that he needed to change the work of 270 nations and make his codeset a little different? IE will show apostrophies....everything else shows question marks.
I sure hope they're using Longhorn to describe 'next year's Microsoft offering'. How many more years are gonna go by until they release something called 'Longhorn'? I remember hearing about that when the public betas for 95 were going on. (Which was actually Windows ME with features to be turned off.)
It's not like I care...I hope to never come into contact with any such software if I can avoid it...but this just bugs me.
You said you had nothing to hide from your mom. Well, maybe. But let me ask you this. Do you have ANY mp3's the RIAA could get you on? A copy of Photohop that isn't quite yours? Do you have a copy of...say... Mein Kampf, back from your college days? Do you post dissenting views on slashdot?
My mp3 collection is dwindling fast; I've ripped all the CDs I have into oggs, and the mp3 stuff is quickly going away. (But point-taken!)
Nah, I never got 'brainy' in college, thinking there could ever be anything of value in Communisim (unless it's Linux!) or Socialism or Totalitarianism. I could tell at an early age that those ideas were just slick ways of getting people to do what one man wants...and that's always a bad idea.
I don't have any illegal software; I'm Linux all the way, and when I give away one of my old Lokisoft titles, I erase the local copies. With all the challenges to Linux for-pay software creation, I don't want to get in the way. And I've adopted a zero-tolerance for such stuff; if it's considered illegal, I just don't want to do it. Heck, I barely surf porn anymore...
But there's one thing to consider here, too: after the first big batch have been hassled, people are going to realize that nearly everyone has *seen* porn (for example) but that doesn't mean he's trafficing in it. And after a bunch of reports of people being 'held for questioning', everyone, including the police, will realize that this is not unusual...and the stigma will go away, too.
I'm not saying this'll be painless...but if we, as the population are powerless to stop it, what other discussions are needed? :
Everyone's up in arms about identifying things we buy, and I'm sensative to that. I have no 'good ole boy' network that I fence diamonds through from Rio, no drug involvement, and nothing that I couldn't account for, standing in front of my Mom...so as long as the information is correct, I have nothing to worry about tracking.
But the uncertainty comes in them getting it wrong; one byte's difference might be all it takes to identify me as someone else, and that, for me, causes the stress.
There's one thing we have to remember here, though: we're on a mission. It has a defined ending, but we're too far away to make sense of the roadmap. Orwell. Revelation. Pick one.
Let's say that all the money from the lobbyists falls down a rathole and mutes every advocate on the side of RFID. Do you really think that a capitalist system is going to deny a technology that could, and probably will, save them millions of dollars?
No, I don't have an answer to this worrysome decision. But If I did, it would probably include a lot of 'getting along' with the RFIDs, and an equal amount of "they should have a warrant to CHECK my id's.
Now this is just silly; ties are only 'too tight' when you don't get the right size neck on the shirt!
I thought I wore a 16, but that was without the tie. Then I found that if I put on a size 18 neck (which sounds like I'm some kinda power-lifter or linebacker) the button is easy to fasten, the tie lies loosely around the neck, and all is well.
Women know this; this is why all nerd _should_ have women in their lives...sadly, they don't.
So buy the right sized shirt, and these problems go away! (Also, if your one of those stricken with bleeding-shirt disease, remember to pull out the PINS that help keep the shirt folded before wearing them. ):)
Slashdot Mirror
Should someone tell him that there are headers on email?
The problem is that everyone CAN send email...wether they know they're doing it, or not- because the spammers have bought their congressmen, and they spend a lot of time learning about computers that congressmen don't.
EVEN IF we went to a regulatory system by which you were licensed to send mail (and some key kept you from it) the spammers would still be able to bribe a key.
It's time for alternatives. Not for the entire world, for the rest of us. Leave SMTP open on the entire world, and antispam the hell out of it. But make another mechanism, running, let's say, under Linux, that we can count on. Who cares if it doesn't work in Tangique or Morocco; we'll make sendmail plugins for special cases.
Let's stop waiting for Microsoft to write their own standard, 'cause it's gonna be Linux-unfriendly. And you can COUNT on it involving the personal data that Microsoft "doesn't" have access to. (See also: tracking Word Documents to their source)
Bravo. That's the essence of the problem. You musta been a sysadmin at some point; me too. Now I'm a security guard and my ex-wife's takin' 1/2 of my minumum wage. But it's not all bad: I also work only 1/2 the time as a sysadmin, and never do I have to 'sell' anything like prudent security practices.
Ya know, if I could convince the credit card companies as well, this might be a perfect life. :>
Keep the faith, bud.Yeah, first the wave of panic; let's see if we can put a hole in that.
Think about it: millions of simple reflectors on the road, glued down to the pavement have been broken for decades...put something complex in there, and they'll be broken most of the time, too.
Sure, places like Chicago and New York will have teams to keep'em in place, but that'll just follow the population density.
And exactly what is it these people fear? Without running drugs/guns/etc or slaves, stealing cars or cheating on your wife while running for office...things considered wrong anyway...what's the problem?
Sure, there's the broken-sensor concept where someone goes to jail because the technology tagged someone erroneously, but it's beginning to look like there'll be so many sensors that it'll be an easy task to bear that out in court.
I know, I know, "Brian's just ignoring all the dangers", etc...but I've already went through the panic stage...and there's nothing that's going to stop this pervasion of technology into our lives. Heck, it's part of prophecy....so let's get past the panic, and get on with dealing with it.
This worm has taken down some sort of rail system in Austrailia, as did Blaster with CSX, and just about every month a large, important mission-critical institution is brought to it's knees for the slightly-bigger institution of the Virus cartel.
When your business is defending your nation or keeping trains from colliding or watching a nuclear bomb turn water into steam...don'tcha get it? Why on Earth would you entrust such infrastructure to the same kind of computers that connect Aunt Tilly to the internet for email and browsing?
Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to hide the fact that back around 1985 we called this platform "The Personal Computer (PC)". But when institution after institution gets knocked down and puts people at risk, the virus writer isn't the only one at fault.
[Long comment, snipped]
What's it matter about the bitrate? So it takes more bits to rip it into equal quality...do you know how many people are ripping mp3s at 128 and thinking it's a precision standard? Don't sweat it. It's not like disk space is a premium anymore.
It's like comparing two cars- one we own, the other we'd be in debt for, for at least 4 years. And the only difference is the amount of shine on the hood. MP3 is effectively owned by a corporation that isn't GPL-friendly. Why is bringing in more of that of any benefit?
"Ogg is a competitor, but I don't think any rational person would say that ogg "eclipses" MP3 at similar bitrates. The consensus on hydrogenaudio is that ogg is very capable but currently requires higher bitrates to achieve the same quality as MP3."
Let's see:
Yes. It eclipses MP3's in the way most Open Source software does: on the important parts.
Isn't this the same format for which we are to pay, while .ogg files eclipse them? Let me get this straight- we're PAYING to give out personal information?
Put another notch in the bedpost for the Microsoft mindset.
The people who lived through the depression and got their MBAs before the fall, and scrounged for food like the rest of us, after, had intelligent, visionary MBA professors. They taught these students that "The moment a product is created, there's a demand for it, however small. The trick is to find it."
Obviously this was a few years before someone tried to sell a piece of moldy toast on eBay. :>
I don't know who posited the idea that the internet would help in any way to overthrow governments...was this the guy who dreamed up WebVan? Pets.com? :>
Sure, it informs....sometimes MIS-informs...but people still have to DO it. And just about everyone who's spent a little time there learns that not everything posted on the net is 'gospel'...so I ask you: if you learned something awful on the net, would YOU put your family on the line and overthrow a dictator?
Just checking.
In memory of the dot-coms: circa 1994-2002
Uh, hello? How about Stop using Microsoft?
Why is this always such an overlooked option? I've not been hit with a virus since 1993! I've been laughing at them. It's easy.
Like with Starbucks and Mc Donalds, hasn't Microsoft reached saturation? Gotta sell those licenses somehow. And once they have our computers, further scientific study is EASY. We can just use spyware. :>
"DirecTV sounds like a great choice."
Not in my eyes; they're minions of Microsoft- if you want 'mobile' internet (internet from the road, or outside the DSL limit or whatever) you *have* to have a Microsoft machine with DirecTV.
I don't....and won't...downgrade for anyone. And I won't support monetarily what feeds 'the machine'; 23 years is enough.
When the owners of the patents did their 'call for papers' and wanted to start charging, I re-ripped all my 100+ cdroms in .ogg format at a higher rate and never looked back.
Didn't everyone? :)
"The car companies do not like (surprise surprise) people personalizing their vehicle's programming and warn of burning out your engine with bad code, and voiding your warranty."
WELL OF COURSE NOT!
It appears that few Slashdot posters have ever owned a business. I see it every once in a while. Let's think about this:
Anyone making widgets of any kind come with an implied warranty, even if it's just 30 days or so. So what happens when a tool comes out that would have semi-enlightened people hacking something they don't truly understand start to optimize their widget? Right: warranty work out the ass.
How many people here have overclocked their video cards? Do ya think that's the fault of the manufacturer? Heck no! Take refined jet-fuel you mix in your basesment and put it in the family car: BOOM! "Wah! My car broke!"
Manufacturers have to 'do the math' before they can start the assembly lines. Simply figuring out how much profit they should expect is very, very complicated. If it doesn't sell, they'll be stuck with a lot of stuff to store...or if it sells and you have to replace each one (like the first round of boots from Lands' End) you wind up taking out a loan to keep people from suing you.
Some people thought hacking the I-Opener was intended as an open source bonanza...but remember that people, using their own money, made it available to the public. And notice they're not in business anymore...
Hack if you want to. Heck, I'll HELP ya. But don't expect the manufacturer to pay for your mistakes, should you make'em.
If we can't maintain a satellite (with no explosives or radiation or whatever) how can we be expected to start a moon-colony or anything else?
The Hubble's been one of the most successful programs we've had; other than a bug in the first mirror, we got it patched and it's show us things we never would have seen otherwise. (And it'd be very useful for spotting extinction-level asteroids.
My bet is that politics got involved and NASA's never been a PR-savvy organization. Shame, really. When you have problems and need to rally around something, you don't just dump a rare success.
The Russians, people really good at rock-simple boosting of many, many tons at a time, could use the business. Now that the whole cold-war thing is over, I'd see reinstatement of this program as big an event as all the detant meetings they ever held.
Back before Britian was attacked by Germany, someone was smart enough to do an "X-pize" kinda thing: they held a prize for making floatplanes to race. Political uproar was surprizingly vocal: "We might head into a war- why does the government want to mess with sea-racers?" Well, take the floats off and replace'em with bombs, and the fastest plane became the Supermarine Spitfire: a plane that very likely saved their lives.
I think the X-prize is a great idea. Maybe let NASA do the core research- let private companies compete on the transportation side. Then we'll be able to fix things like the Hubble and that industry can start making some real progress.
But if not, "Hubble, we barely knew ye."
It's not a Christmas play, it's a Winter Celebration. He's not short, he's height-challenged.
I grew up in a world where the left were protecting babies, blacks, impoverished, women, pretty much everyone. But what's happened?
Now the left wants abortion, even at birth-time. (the so-called partial birth thing.)
Black groups only stand in front of cameras for black people who don't/won't work, but ignore hard-working black men defending their home turf with legal (in Florida, from which he moved) handguns.
Women's groups are no longer about discovering and solving earnings-based problems in the women's workplace, but instead are there now just to hate men and tell women it's ok to be lesbian.
The impoverished? Well, those roles have declined a lot from the 60's and 70's...so there's less to do. But when anyone wants to do it, it's giving homeless men warm places to do their drugs- not telling them they can have a house as long as they're clean.
Now this master-slave thing.
Does it get any sillier? Has everyone forgotten how bad things used to be, and the original goals of these various groups?
And they have the GALL to call conservatives Fascists!
(Does water run uphill yet? I haven't checked.)
Remember the two towers coming down? Remember how no one wanted to use the airlines for a long time? We actually had about a week where NO scheduled airlines flew at all...never before has that happened, since airlines began.
And this all followed the dot-bomb days where investors woke up to the fact that business rules DO apply to this WWW-thing...and before the planes were grounded, MUCH work was already being shifted to India, for example.
People seem to want to think this year is just like last, and the last is just like the one before....but no: didn't anyone turn on the seatbelt light?!?
I believe you'll see a growing, strengthening IT industry in the next few years. The gold-rush people are all in biotech and other speculative areas if they're not on welfare, so sanity can return and people can go back to work. Yahoo, Google, BUNCHES of companies that kept themselves sane are now returning a good profit and are worth their price.
Sure, we took quite a hit...but it's ok: we're coming back. It's gonna get better!
Much like Batman, when I heard there was a Sandman movie in the works, my interest was piqued. I've even been thinking about casting for it:
Death: Bridget Fonda (Looks great in black, is thin, has that certain presence)
Dream: Still Thinking.
Desire: Tea Leoni (Thin, edgy, can be made to look male and female)
Delierium: Lori Petty (Did you see Tank Girl?!?!)
But it's been some time since I've heard anything about it...is it still in the works?
I don't know about you guys, but I login every week or so...haven't turned the machine off (other than to change hardware) for about three years now. Why would I ever consider this a problem?
Just making a point...
No, when I responded I was astounded both by someone who knew the details, AND by the fact that, probably for the first time in history, Microsoft seems to have chosen the high road, not just the road to more wallets. :>
There are some things Microsoft does and does well...but leading the industry in the right direction isn't one of them. They're normally guided by ROI, not making life easier.
I don't think Slashdot == The Onion, it's generally more balanced and more skeptical. That's why I read it several times a day.
So maybe this is one MS got _right_!?!? :)
Bill's doing this to get the skinny on the competing technologies...then he can invent something different about it, push it out the door in the next release, and it'll look, to the MS user, that MS is right, and all these other people are wrong. Remember Gates telling the ISO that he needed to change the work of 270 nations and make his codeset a little different? IE will show apostrophies....everything else shows question marks.
Same stuff, different day.
I sure hope they're using Longhorn to describe 'next year's Microsoft offering'. How many more years are gonna go by until they release something called 'Longhorn'? I remember hearing about that when the public betas for 95 were going on. (Which was actually Windows ME with features to be turned off.)
It's not like I care...I hope to never come into contact with any such software if I can avoid it...but this just bugs me.
Can someone set me straight?
My mp3 collection is dwindling fast; I've ripped all the CDs I have into oggs, and the mp3 stuff is quickly going away. (But point-taken!)
Nah, I never got 'brainy' in college, thinking there could ever be anything of value in Communisim (unless it's Linux!) or Socialism or Totalitarianism. I could tell at an early age that those ideas were just slick ways of getting people to do what one man wants...and that's always a bad idea.
I don't have any illegal software; I'm Linux all the way, and when I give away one of my old Lokisoft titles, I erase the local copies. With all the challenges to Linux for-pay software creation, I don't want to get in the way. And I've adopted a zero-tolerance for such stuff; if it's considered illegal, I just don't want to do it. Heck, I barely surf porn anymore...
But there's one thing to consider here, too: after the first big batch have been hassled, people are going to realize that nearly everyone has *seen* porn (for example) but that doesn't mean he's trafficing in it. And after a bunch of reports of people being 'held for questioning', everyone, including the police, will realize that this is not unusual...and the stigma will go away, too.
I'm not saying this'll be painless...but if we, as the population are powerless to stop it, what other discussions are needed? :
Everyone's up in arms about identifying things we buy, and I'm sensative to that. I have no 'good ole boy' network that I fence diamonds through from Rio, no drug involvement, and nothing that I couldn't account for, standing in front of my Mom...so as long as the information is correct, I have nothing to worry about tracking.
But the uncertainty comes in them getting it wrong; one byte's difference might be all it takes to identify me as someone else, and that, for me, causes the stress.
There's one thing we have to remember here, though: we're on a mission. It has a defined ending, but we're too far away to make sense of the roadmap. Orwell. Revelation. Pick one.
Let's say that all the money from the lobbyists falls down a rathole and mutes every advocate on the side of RFID. Do you really think that a capitalist system is going to deny a technology that could, and probably will, save them millions of dollars?
No, I don't have an answer to this worrysome decision. But If I did, it would probably include a lot of 'getting along' with the RFIDs, and an equal amount of "they should have a warrant to CHECK my id's.
Just some food for thought.
Now this is just silly; ties are only 'too tight' when you don't get the right size neck on the shirt!
I thought I wore a 16, but that was without the tie. Then I found that if I put on a size 18 neck (which sounds like I'm some kinda power-lifter or linebacker) the button is easy to fasten, the tie lies loosely around the neck, and all is well.
Women know this; this is why all nerd _should_ have women in their lives...sadly, they don't.
So buy the right sized shirt, and these problems go away! (Also, if your one of those stricken with bleeding-shirt disease, remember to pull out the PINS that help keep the shirt folded before wearing them. ) :)