The new news is that he is being sued. The old news is that identity thieves took his identity. The summary mentions the new part, but the title is poorly chosen. From TFA:
- Atty David Paris is seeking class action lawsuit against founder Todd Davis in MD, NJ and WV for
- Also being sued in AZ over the 1 million dollar "service guarantee" because it is being misrepresented and only covers "defects in lifelock's service" and not actual identity theft. which they are misrepresenting.
- Experian is accusing LifeLock of deceiving customers about their breadth of service because all they do is put a fraud watch on your credit record every 90 days which is something anyone can do with the agencies for free themselves. The only thing this protects you from is credit fraud which where an initial credit check is performed -- and incidentally means if you actually want a change in credit, a cell phone, car, etc you have to contact the credit agency ahead of time so they will allow it.
Good point, but if we use this stuff for fuel won't we be burning it right back into the atmosphere? Maybe if we used what the bacteria are producing for food. Since they're producing glucose and sucrose I wonder what potential this has for creating a substitue for high-fructose corn syrup. Filter out the bugs, use the glucose for biofuel and the sucrose for food. Might as well use all the byproducts and putting a little bug sugar in your diet couldn't hurt, right?
Hospital care reliability and Hospital IT reliability are two completely different things. Hospital care reliability basically means staff, equipment and most importantly power reliability to 5 9's (or whatever your standard is). I would venture to say there are quite a few hospitals who provide this level of reliability. The machines that are supporting a surgeon while in surgery are not going to fail mid-surgery because of a power outage because of significant power generation and backup power. If a nurse is late she is fired. That is how hospital care maintains 5 9s of reliability. Whether or not a doctor can email someone is really very inconsequential. As doctors become more and more dependent on IT functions for providing day to day care those aspects will have to be improved or else they will not be adopted. Honestly though as many others have mentioned services labeled "mission-critical" (such as email) often isn't.
Yeah Dvorak is a little troll monkey trying to get ad dollars as usual (no I didn't click on his link). However, I am going to have to agree with the principle here. There are so many more things a developing country needs before it needs laptops. If you're going to give tech to kids in developing nations I think One Bicycle Per Child is a much more useful proposition. I'm sure it could be done for less than $50 per child and I think kids will get a lot more use out of a bicycle than a computer. Often children have to walk many miles to school and back every day. Markets and city centers are often many miles away. It just seems like a more useful distribution of technology. And for severely impoverished regions a truckload of food will have a more beneficial impact than even a few bicycles (assuming the food gets to the right place). I hate to say it, but Dvorak has the right idea.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying OLPC is a terrible idea or that just because something isn't perfect we shouldn't do it. If you need a computer and the XO will meet your needs. Excellent. Get it. Hopefully the second laptop will be delivered somewhere they have a solid infrastructure and textbooks, just not the next level of tech that could benifit the kids. That way it will be less of a "let them eat cake" scenario. Wouldn't it be great if every time we purchased something at 1st world prices someone else would receive the equivalent in a third world country. The concept is awesome. I just think it could be applied to more useful things in the third world. Like food or a bicycle.
The press release http://www.eac.gov/vvsg/News/press/eac-seeks-public-comment-on-tgdc2019s-recommended-voluntary-voting-system-guidelines-online-comment-tool-now-available says the VVSG will be open for public comment for the next 120 days. After the 120 days they will internally review/modify the document and then re-open it for comments for another 120 days. If you have posted some brilliant, insightful bit of wisdom here on slashdot for karma... PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO LEAVE A COMMENT IN THE RELEVANT SECTION OF THE VVSG. I am guessing comments that get posted in this first 120 day period will have more influence than those posted in the second 120 day period.
It's actually not as vague as "multiple windows visible for application" which Clippy would violate. The patent is on the ability of share windows/views between multiple workspaces. So the fact that your application toolbar / "start menu" shows up in multiple workspaces would be a violation of this patent. FYI, ctl-alt-left,right arrow to switch between workspaces in gnome. Also right click the window-title "always on visible workspace" option is a violation of this patent. It's disgusting that companies can buy these patents for the sole purpose of suing people. If Redhat disabled this feature I doubt it would impact a significant portion of the users. Most window managers implement it in some form.
The 4W/cc was quoted as the maximum possible output AFTER optimization based on the generation capabilities of a single wire. 4W/cc would be a very impressive output for biomedical implant type applications, but currently the generator chips are putting out current on the nano-amp scale. So, this technology is in its infancy, but considering there wasn't anything available for powering nano tech sized devices (which only need nano-amp current) this could be huge for powered nano-scale devices. As far as powering your watch or your toaster don't count on it in the near future. They used an ultrasonic generator to drive the device so a low frequency kinetic drive, (heart beat, annoying thumping car stereo, etc) hasn't been demonstrated and probably wouldn't be as continuous as an ultrasonic driving force. The continuous (but varying) current seems to depends on the fact that there are currently hundreds of nanowires in motion so that some of them are always transfering energy. When the design is optimized with millions highly regular nano-wires it should provide more current, but not necessarily more consistent current. As the more consistent wires will be transferring energy with greater regularity, on and off in presence and absence of motion. Although something with regular motion like heartbeat might provide continuous motion I wonder if the device works no matter which direction the kinetic energy is going. Would it only work in systole but not diastole or would it work both ways? It would be interesting to see if they could couple this to a nano-capacitor / nano-battery to make flow more continuous. Although from the article it seems that nano-batteries aren't available because batteries just aren't that small (and they use poisionous metals so they're not good for implants). Interesting stuff. Maybe it's just the breakthrough we need to develop grey goo.:) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
What about Zaxxon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaxxon Sure Wolfenstein/Doom was impressive with the 3D graphics and all. But considering the state of home computing when Zaxxon came out over 10 years prior... I think it deserves mention. It was a very impressive game. I suppose it didn't spawn a whole new genre, although the graphics were by far the closest thing to 3D until FPS and Flight Simulators. Am I reaching with this one?
Personally I'd label this kind of marketing as, "irrelevent". The deluge of new bloggers who have to wade through the pricing structure only to find their mid range computer barely runs their mid range vista will far outweigh those old bloggers reviewing vista on top end hardware.
That is an interesting thought. Although I think the result would be an ocean floor stacked deep with bloated carcasses. A fishing boat goes out and cuts a net size cylinder out of the ocean, returning with a huge pile of fish. It doesn't take long (hundreds of yards) for a shrimp boat to haul up a net full of shrimp and crabs from the bottom in the Gulf of Mexico (highly recommend shrimping if you get the chance). If you took a square meter at the surface and condensed all the volume of the rectangular cube going down to the ocean floor into one square meter at the floor the interesting stuff would probably be underneath the stuff we know about. I would rather see the top 2/3rds taken out completely and just drain the last 1/3rd. Although still there has to be huge amounts of unknown species swimming around in those top 2/3rds. Depending on the average density of life in the ocean that last 1/3rd could be problematic too. I wonder what is the average density of ocean life, and how much it's changed in the last 100 years. Also, I call not it on building the tank necessary to hold all that water.:)
--David
Oh! Maybe we could build a machine that zaps all the known species and sends them to the top then scoop them off. Drain out the rest.
That's exactly true for human vision and the requirements for true invisibility... However, radar isn't quite as sophisticated as human vision. Rendering an object black is essentially the same as rendering it invisible because radar systems detect the reflection of radar off of objects to determine their location. The radar is actively transmitted and I imagine it would be very difficult to determine the difference between lack of reflection from dissipation vs a lack of reflection from absorbance of an object. You're absolutely right about the visible light spectrum. They would be seen as black. Planes flying with complete radar absorbtion and at night would essentially be "invisible" until it was too late to respond. Night vision detection would be much less effective when a plane is seen only as a "lack of stars" in the area where the plane is absorbing light. There are definitely techniques which could be developed (and probably already have been) for detecting a "moving shadow" on a starlit (or reflecting cloud-lit) background.
And yes it will make any data encrypted in this manner unavailable to another operating system. It does this by using TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in the BIOS and can base the key on the kernel and optionally: just the bios, a user supplied key, or a USB drive supplied key.
This allows for the option of encrypting/decrypting data from the very start of the boot process. And guess what? It's being implemented in linux too!
BitLocker from windows is just a kernel based drive encryption software that takes advantage of TPMs just like the linux system. If you're concerned about cross platform compatibility then use user space encryption rather than kernel space encryptiong. If you're that concerned about secure keys then don't dual boot! If you love dual booting and don't care about encryption at all, noone is going to beat you up and make you use encryptiong.
So when does WOW II come out? Because that's when they're going to be able to fix all this from the ground up. Hopefully they can keep enough people happy with WOW I long enough to justify making a second one. If they piss too many subscribers off Blizzard might decide the whole venture just isn't profitable enough. Although I doubt it considering the success already acheived.
When I graduated Georgia Tech in 1999 there was a lot of research towards how to manage storage capacity so users wouldn't lose all their data in a quagmire of bits (gigity). The prediction was that within 10 years it would be common to have 10TB of personal storage. It looks like the prediction was right on target. I guess if you're storing a bunch of high density videos (pr0n) then you could eat up and manage 10TB pretty easily. But I'm sure there's all kinds of useful files I've forgotten about. I seem to make a new "drivers/utilities" hierarchy every year or so. Google desktop has had some serious security issues to consider with some "features", but it seems that a fully indexed/searchable drive will be required with 10TB drives. Can the google algorithms even handle this feasibly? We're talking 100x or more over the typical 100G or so people are searching through now. Will new filesystems be required or will user level indexing work? Is anyone familiar with the current state of research in this area?
Not that slashdotters need to worry about this, but there should be a fairly large demand for this type of accessory. Especially since this nice scary study came out:
The study showed laptop use can significantly increase scrotal temperature. Previous studies have shown regular increased temperature can reduce sperm count for weeks or months.
The open source groupware offerings for Linux are horrible. That's why I suggest MS Small Business Server to small business when consulting. If there is open source groupware out there that competes with Exchange on shared calendars, contacts, tasks, etc PLEASE let me know. Some requirements: must be accessible from MS Outlook (via plugin or standard method). must be relatively inexpensive (MS Small Business Server was only $300 or so and came with exchange server and 5 outlook licenses).
Again if there's a legitimate open source groupware system for linux that's come up in the last few years PLEASE let me know.
> And then throw in the editorializing in the last paragraph?
Did you RTFA? This is a LETTER FROM THE EDITOR. What did you expect? That's where EDITORIAL gets its name.
> (along with fair time for the administration to rebut if they can)
IF they can... I think that's the point. They can't, and they're not going to publish half assed arguments. In the scientific world "fair and balanced" fortunately applies only to claims which are backed by evidence.
The article on ZDNet is REALLY short and there's no excuse for anyone not reading it.
As it's already mentioned you don't have the right to use Windows Updater if you don't own Windows. It's just like you can't use Redhat Network unless you own Redhat. Only Redhat is even more restrictive with their update services than Windows Update, granted their services are more comprehensive.
Some interesting tidbits from the article...
White, CEO at CodeWeavers (acompany that utilizes Wine), said 'he was excited rather than worried to hear that the WGA validation tool was blocking Wine. "The reason we love this is because this shows that Microsoft is aware of Wine at very high levels," said White. "For us it's exciting -- it is an acknowledgement of us as a threat."
Also, the spokesperson for windows 'said users who are not running Windows XP or Windows 2000 natively can still download updates for Microsoft Office from the Office Update Web site.'
So you can still get the updates manually, which is something anyone running Wine over linux probably has the expertise to do.
The only reason we have Windows machines where I work is because of Microsoft Office file compatibility. Wine and consequently Codeweaver's CrossOver Office is a HUGE threat to Windows OS, and it's a good sign that Microsoft is forced to recognize this.
Ahhh. Two good points. Valet operations are a place where this could be a problem. Lots of nice cars, and quick connections between cars and owners. Plus the cars that have this feature will be the ones more desirable to thIefs. I hadn't really considered either of those.
Valets operations would be smart to provide complimentary tin foil hats. For the keys. Maybe marked with a logo of the club so the owner could surreptitiously boast.
Ok, so anytime encryption is cracked it lessens security and this is definitely bad publicity for TI. However, this will not have car theives coming out in droves to steal cars that utilize "smart" keys. Here is what's required to defeat these keys:
The theif must know who the owner of the car is.
The theif must get close to the owner to challenge the key and crack its code.
The theif must break into the car, and hotwire the car as he would to steal any other car (he still doesn't have the physical key).
We're talking about car theft here. Stealing cars isn't like the internet where you can "ping" a huge range of potential targets in seconds. Theives will still pass over the smart key cars and move to the ones they can steal without stalking the car's owner. I think TI can safely deny that there's a problem without being compared to Microsoft.
Last time I saw a post about this on SlashdotVision was boasting they would be able to win the World Cup in 2050... I felt the need to call bullshit on that boast, but for the wrong reason.
The reason I called bullshit originally is because I remember seeing an amazing achievement in robot dexterity in 1998. The Honda prototype, Asimo, slowly, precisely and precariously walk up a few steps without toppling. After seeing that robot hobble up some stairs, my response to a humanoid robot with soccer player dexterity within 45 years was a predictable... Bullshit.
If you were thinking the same thing... Take a look at these pics and vids. They are impressive. They just might have soccer player dexterity by 2050. Without having to worry about getting tired or even slowing down they could pose a major threat (in soccer, put your tinfoil hat back on).
However, I'm still going to call bullshit. Mainly because soccer, unlike chess, deals with full freedom of motion in a 3D field. Computers only recently were able to master chess on a world competition level with intense processing. Chess is played on an 8x8 field, with significant, but limited, branching. The 3D nature of soccer (or even the 2D nature of novice soccer) presents branching that could be arguably higher than that of Go. Combine that with the fact that soccer players aren't going to wait a turn for the computer to "think". This is my new reason for calling bullshit on a Robot 2050 World Cup Champion.
But, damn if those robot control systems aren't impressive. I wouldn't mind eating these words. Robots are cool.
Anyone interested in this concept I would highly recommend the Heechee Saga by Frederick Pohl. They're all incredible books. Here are the individual book titles in order:
Gateway Beyond the Blue Event Horizon Heechee Rendevous Annals of the Heechee
I just picked up Annals of the Heechee, and I'm hoping it's as good as the first three.
I'm afraid we are heading down that road. What made up a "dangerous" typewriter was one that was not registered by the government (and thereby easily traceable). So... with the government trying to standardize and create backdoors to encryption methods. How long will it be before unregistered encryption is illegal? One of encryption's uses is the facilitation of anonymity. Which is exactly why typewriters were illegal.
I never even looked at linspire. It looks like they're doing a great job simplifying Linux use. The other distros could use a consolodated repository with an easy to use web interface. I wish they would have a "password for installing" and pop up a dialog box like in Fedora. Running XWindows as root is Bad (tm). It will certainly look bad when the "more stable, more secure, virus free" linux system they brag about succumbs to a Linspire inspired worm. I hope they're at least integrating SELinux.
Also regarding the live distros on CD. I'd have to say they're the pinnacle of easy to use. They have demo logins (more secure than linspire) and they have everything already installed. They're great for demonstrating how far linux has come in the last 10 years. It's true, they can't be compared to a real distro because you can't install software. However, they're excellent at detecting and using hardware and with less fuss than windows (when it works, which is most of the time).
Now excuse me while I go update the rpm/yum V3 DSA signatures that randomly changed on one of my 3 update repositories. Heh.
Slashdot Mirror
The new news is that he is being sued. The old news is that identity thieves took his identity. The summary mentions the new part, but the title is poorly chosen. From TFA:
- Atty David Paris is seeking class action lawsuit against founder Todd Davis in MD, NJ and WV for
- Also being sued in AZ over the 1 million dollar "service guarantee" because it is being misrepresented and only covers "defects in lifelock's service" and not actual identity theft. which they are misrepresenting.
- Experian is accusing LifeLock of deceiving customers about their breadth of service because all they do is put a fraud watch on your credit record every 90 days which is something anyone can do with the agencies for free themselves. The only thing this protects you from is credit fraud which where an initial credit check is performed -- and incidentally means if you actually want a change in credit, a cell phone, car, etc you have to contact the credit agency ahead of time so they will allow it.
--David
Good point, but if we use this stuff for fuel won't we be burning it right back into the atmosphere? Maybe if we used what the bacteria are producing for food. Since they're producing glucose and sucrose I wonder what potential this has for creating a substitue for high-fructose corn syrup. Filter out the bugs, use the glucose for biofuel and the sucrose for food. Might as well use all the byproducts and putting a little bug sugar in your diet couldn't hurt, right?
Hospital care reliability and Hospital IT reliability are two completely different things. Hospital care reliability basically means staff, equipment and most importantly power reliability to 5 9's (or whatever your standard is). I would venture to say there are quite a few hospitals who provide this level of reliability. The machines that are supporting a surgeon while in surgery are not going to fail mid-surgery because of a power outage because of significant power generation and backup power. If a nurse is late she is fired. That is how hospital care maintains 5 9s of reliability. Whether or not a doctor can email someone is really very inconsequential. As doctors become more and more dependent on IT functions for providing day to day care those aspects will have to be improved or else they will not be adopted. Honestly though as many others have mentioned services labeled "mission-critical" (such as email) often isn't.
Yeah Dvorak is a little troll monkey trying to get ad dollars as usual (no I didn't click on his link). However, I am going to have to agree with the principle here. There are so many more things a developing country needs before it needs laptops. If you're going to give tech to kids in developing nations I think One Bicycle Per Child is a much more useful proposition. I'm sure it could be done for less than $50 per child and I think kids will get a lot more use out of a bicycle than a computer. Often children have to walk many miles to school and back every day. Markets and city centers are often many miles away. It just seems like a more useful distribution of technology. And for severely impoverished regions a truckload of food will have a more beneficial impact than even a few bicycles (assuming the food gets to the right place). I hate to say it, but Dvorak has the right idea.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying OLPC is a terrible idea or that just because something isn't perfect we shouldn't do it. If you need a computer and the XO will meet your needs. Excellent. Get it. Hopefully the second laptop will be delivered somewhere they have a solid infrastructure and textbooks, just not the next level of tech that could benifit the kids. That way it will be less of a "let them eat cake" scenario. Wouldn't it be great if every time we purchased something at 1st world prices someone else would receive the equivalent in a third world country. The concept is awesome. I just think it could be applied to more useful things in the third world. Like food or a bicycle.
The press release http://www.eac.gov/vvsg/News/press/eac-seeks-public-comment-on-tgdc2019s-recommended-voluntary-voting-system-guidelines-online-comment-tool-now-available says the VVSG will be open for public comment for the next 120 days. After the 120 days they will internally review/modify the document and then re-open it for comments for another 120 days. If you have posted some brilliant, insightful bit of wisdom here on slashdot for karma... PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO LEAVE A COMMENT IN THE RELEVANT SECTION OF THE VVSG. I am guessing comments that get posted in this first 120 day period will have more influence than those posted in the second 120 day period.
It's actually not as vague as "multiple windows visible for application" which Clippy would violate. The patent is on the ability of share windows/views between multiple workspaces. So the fact that your application toolbar / "start menu" shows up in multiple workspaces would be a violation of this patent. FYI, ctl-alt-left,right arrow to switch between workspaces in gnome. Also right click the window-title "always on visible workspace" option is a violation of this patent. It's disgusting that companies can buy these patents for the sole purpose of suing people. If Redhat disabled this feature I doubt it would impact a significant portion of the users. Most window managers implement it in some form.
The 4W/cc was quoted as the maximum possible output AFTER optimization based on the generation capabilities of a single wire. 4W/cc would be a very impressive output for biomedical implant type applications, but currently the generator chips are putting out current on the nano-amp scale. So, this technology is in its infancy, but considering there wasn't anything available for powering nano tech sized devices (which only need nano-amp current) this could be huge for powered nano-scale devices. As far as powering your watch or your toaster don't count on it in the near future. They used an ultrasonic generator to drive the device so a low frequency kinetic drive, (heart beat, annoying thumping car stereo, etc) hasn't been demonstrated and probably wouldn't be as continuous as an ultrasonic driving force. The continuous (but varying) current seems to depends on the fact that there are currently hundreds of nanowires in motion so that some of them are always transfering energy. When the design is optimized with millions highly regular nano-wires it should provide more current, but not necessarily more consistent current. As the more consistent wires will be transferring energy with greater regularity, on and off in presence and absence of motion. Although something with regular motion like heartbeat might provide continuous motion I wonder if the device works no matter which direction the kinetic energy is going. Would it only work in systole but not diastole or would it work both ways? It would be interesting to see if they could couple this to a nano-capacitor / nano-battery to make flow more continuous. Although from the article it seems that nano-batteries aren't available because batteries just aren't that small (and they use poisionous metals so they're not good for implants). Interesting stuff. Maybe it's just the breakthrough we need to develop grey goo. :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
--David
What about Zaxxon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaxxon Sure Wolfenstein/Doom was impressive with the 3D graphics and all. But considering the state of home computing when Zaxxon came out over 10 years prior... I think it deserves mention. It was a very impressive game. I suppose it didn't spawn a whole new genre, although the graphics were by far the closest thing to 3D until FPS and Flight Simulators. Am I reaching with this one?
Personally I'd label this kind of marketing as, "irrelevent". The deluge of new bloggers who have to wade through the pricing structure only to find their mid range computer barely runs their mid range vista will far outweigh those old bloggers reviewing vista on top end hardware.
That is an interesting thought. Although I think the result would be an ocean floor stacked deep with bloated carcasses. A fishing boat goes out and cuts a net size cylinder out of the ocean, returning with a huge pile of fish. It doesn't take long (hundreds of yards) for a shrimp boat to haul up a net full of shrimp and crabs from the bottom in the Gulf of Mexico (highly recommend shrimping if you get the chance). If you took a square meter at the surface and condensed all the volume of the rectangular cube going down to the ocean floor into one square meter at the floor the interesting stuff would probably be underneath the stuff we know about. I would rather see the top 2/3rds taken out completely and just drain the last 1/3rd. Although still there has to be huge amounts of unknown species swimming around in those top 2/3rds. Depending on the average density of life in the ocean that last 1/3rd could be problematic too. I wonder what is the average density of ocean life, and how much it's changed in the last 100 years. Also, I call not it on building the tank necessary to hold all that water. :)
--David
Oh! Maybe we could build a machine that zaps all the known species and sends them to the top then scoop them off. Drain out the rest.
That's exactly true for human vision and the requirements for true invisibility... However, radar isn't quite as sophisticated as human vision. Rendering an object black is essentially the same as rendering it invisible because radar systems detect the reflection of radar off of objects to determine their location. The radar is actively transmitted and I imagine it would be very difficult to determine the difference between lack of reflection from dissipation vs a lack of reflection from absorbance of an object. You're absolutely right about the visible light spectrum. They would be seen as black. Planes flying with complete radar absorbtion and at night would essentially be "invisible" until it was too late to respond. Night vision detection would be much less effective when a plane is seen only as a "lack of stars" in the area where the plane is absorbing light. There are definitely techniques which could be developed (and probably already have been) for detecting a "moving shadow" on a starlit (or reflecting cloud-lit) background.
--David
Ok... I've been a linux fan for 10 years or so now. Haven't run anything but linux in about 7 years. But c'mon guys this is FUD.
r ary/c61f2a12-8ae6-4957-b031-97b4d762cf31.mspx
First of all, vista won't have this activated by default. Here's how you can turn it on in Vista Beta:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/lib
And yes it will make any data encrypted in this manner unavailable to another operating system. It does this by using TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in the BIOS and can base the key on the kernel and optionally: just the bios, a user supplied key, or a USB drive supplied key.
This allows for the option of encrypting/decrypting data from the very start of the boot process. And guess what? It's being implemented in linux too!
http://lwn.net/Articles/144681/
BitLocker from windows is just a kernel based drive encryption software that takes advantage of TPMs just like the linux system. If you're concerned about cross platform compatibility then use user space encryption rather than kernel space encryptiong. If you're that concerned about secure keys then don't dual boot! If you love dual booting and don't care about encryption at all, noone is going to beat you up and make you use encryptiong.
You may remove the tinfoil hat.
--David
So when does WOW II come out? Because that's when they're going to be able to fix all this from the ground up. Hopefully they can keep enough people happy with WOW I long enough to justify making a second one. If they piss too many subscribers off Blizzard might decide the whole venture just isn't profitable enough. Although I doubt it considering the success already acheived.
--David
When I graduated Georgia Tech in 1999 there was a lot of research towards how to manage storage capacity so users wouldn't lose all their data in a quagmire of bits (gigity). The prediction was that within 10 years it would be common to have 10TB of personal storage. It looks like the prediction was right on target. I guess if you're storing a bunch of high density videos (pr0n) then you could eat up and manage 10TB pretty easily. But I'm sure there's all kinds of useful files I've forgotten about. I seem to make a new "drivers/utilities" hierarchy every year or so. Google desktop has had some serious security issues to consider with some "features", but it seems that a fully indexed/searchable drive will be required with 10TB drives. Can the google algorithms even handle this feasibly? We're talking 100x or more over the typical 100G or so people are searching through now. Will new filesystems be required or will user level indexing work? Is anyone familiar with the current state of research in this area?
Not that slashdotters need to worry about this, but there should be a fairly large demand for this type of accessory. Especially since this nice scary study came out:
+ fertility/2100-1044_3-5485763.html= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1559108 7&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum/ 20/2/452
http://news.com.com/Study+Laptop+heat+a+threat+to
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full
The study showed laptop use can significantly increase scrotal temperature. Previous studies have shown regular increased temperature can reduce sperm count for weeks or months.
I'm switching back to a desktop.
--David
The open source groupware offerings for Linux are horrible. That's why I suggest MS Small Business Server to small business when consulting. If there is open source groupware out there that competes with Exchange on shared calendars, contacts, tasks, etc PLEASE let me know. Some requirements:
must be accessible from MS Outlook (via plugin or standard method).
must be relatively inexpensive (MS Small Business Server was only $300 or so and came with exchange server and 5 outlook licenses).
Again if there's a legitimate open source groupware system for linux that's come up in the last few years PLEASE let me know.
--David
> And then throw in the editorializing in the last paragraph?
Did you RTFA? This is a LETTER FROM THE EDITOR. What did you expect? That's where EDITORIAL gets its name.
> (along with fair time for the administration to rebut if they can)
IF they can... I think that's the point. They can't, and they're not going to publish half assed arguments. In the scientific world "fair and balanced" fortunately applies only to claims which are backed by evidence.
--David
The article on ZDNet is REALLY short and there's no excuse for anyone not reading it.
As it's already mentioned you don't have the right to use Windows Updater if you don't own Windows. It's just like you can't use Redhat Network unless you own Redhat. Only Redhat is even more restrictive with their update services than Windows Update, granted their services are more comprehensive.
Some interesting tidbits from the article...
White, CEO at CodeWeavers (acompany that utilizes Wine), said 'he was excited rather than worried to hear that the WGA validation tool was blocking Wine. "The reason we love this is because this shows that Microsoft is aware of Wine at very high levels," said White. "For us it's exciting -- it is an acknowledgement of us as a threat."
Also, the spokesperson for windows 'said users who are not running Windows XP or Windows 2000 natively can still download updates for Microsoft Office from the Office Update Web site.'
So you can still get the updates manually, which is something anyone running Wine over linux probably has the expertise to do.
The only reason we have Windows machines where I work is because of Microsoft Office file compatibility. Wine and consequently Codeweaver's CrossOver Office is a HUGE threat to Windows OS, and it's a good sign that Microsoft is forced to recognize this.
--David
Ahhh. Two good points. Valet operations are a place where this could be a problem. Lots of nice cars, and quick connections between cars and owners. Plus the cars that have this feature will be the ones more desirable to thIefs. I hadn't really considered either of those.
Valets operations would be smart to provide complimentary tin foil hats. For the keys. Maybe marked with a logo of the club so the owner could surreptitiously boast.
--David
Ok, so anytime encryption is cracked it lessens security and this is definitely bad publicity for TI. However, this will not have car theives coming out in droves to steal cars that utilize "smart" keys. Here is what's required to defeat these keys:
The theif must know who the owner of the car is.
The theif must get close to the owner to challenge the key and crack its code.
The theif must break into the car, and hotwire the car as he would to steal any other car (he still doesn't have the physical key).
We're talking about car theft here. Stealing cars isn't like the internet where you can "ping" a huge range of potential targets in seconds. Theives will still pass over the smart key cars and move to the ones they can steal without stalking the car's owner. I think TI can safely deny that there's a problem without being compared to Microsoft.
--David
Last time I saw a post about this on Slashdot Vision was boasting they would be able to win the World Cup in 2050... I felt the need to call bullshit on that boast, but for the wrong reason.
The reason I called bullshit originally is because I remember seeing an amazing achievement in robot dexterity in 1998. The Honda prototype, Asimo, slowly, precisely and precariously walk up a few steps without toppling. After seeing that robot hobble up some stairs, my response to a humanoid robot with soccer player dexterity within 45 years was a predictable... Bullshit.
If you were thinking the same thing... Take a look at these pics and vids. They are impressive. They just might have soccer player dexterity by 2050. Without having to worry about getting tired or even slowing down they could pose a major threat (in soccer, put your tinfoil hat back on).
However, I'm still going to call bullshit. Mainly because soccer, unlike chess, deals with full freedom of motion in a 3D field. Computers only recently were able to master chess on a world competition level with intense processing. Chess is played on an 8x8 field, with significant, but limited, branching. The 3D nature of soccer (or even the 2D nature of novice soccer) presents branching that could be arguably higher than that of Go. Combine that with the fact that soccer players aren't going to wait a turn for the computer to "think". This is my new reason for calling bullshit on a Robot 2050 World Cup Champion.
But, damn if those robot control systems aren't impressive. I wouldn't mind eating these words. Robots are cool.
--David
That would SUCK.
Unless of course you had a HUD screen that turns all the traffic around you into Covenant vehicles and incorporates them into the game!
THAT would ROCK!
The only tricky part would be implementing checkpoints that let you go back a few minutes rather than die a bloody death.
--David
Anyone interested in this concept I would highly recommend the Heechee Saga by Frederick Pohl. They're all incredible books. Here are the individual book titles in order:
Gateway
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
Heechee Rendevous
Annals of the Heechee
I just picked up Annals of the Heechee, and I'm hoping it's as good as the first three.
--David
I'm afraid we are heading down that road. What made up a "dangerous" typewriter was one that was not registered by the government (and thereby easily traceable). So... with the government trying to standardize and create backdoors to encryption methods. How long will it be before unregistered encryption is illegal? One of encryption's uses is the facilitation of anonymity. Which is exactly why typewriters were illegal.
I never even looked at linspire. It looks like they're doing a great job simplifying Linux use. The other distros could use a consolodated repository with an easy to use web interface. I wish they would have a "password for installing" and pop up a dialog box like in Fedora. Running XWindows as root is Bad (tm). It will certainly look bad when the "more stable, more secure, virus free" linux system they brag about succumbs to a Linspire inspired worm. I hope they're at least integrating SELinux.
Also regarding the live distros on CD. I'd have to say they're the pinnacle of easy to use. They have demo logins (more secure than linspire) and they have everything already installed. They're great for demonstrating how far linux has come in the last 10 years. It's true, they can't be compared to a real distro because you can't install software. However, they're excellent at detecting and using hardware and with less fuss than windows (when it works, which is most of the time).
Now excuse me while I go update the rpm/yum V3 DSA signatures that randomly changed on one of my 3 update repositories. Heh.
--David