> A modern day terrorist might enter a big supermarket and set off a microwave bomb
Not to invalidate your opinion in any way, but I seriously doubt Al-Qaida is getting off on the thought of temporarily disrupting the St. Louis WalMart's inventory control system. The effort to make a microwave bomb would be much better spent doing something else. Although, I would prefer they do that over sinking a cruise ship...
> DO YOU AGREE OR NOT with the premise of this last paragraph, to wit, "privacy demands the right to *easily* go about our business without having RFID tags accompany our person, our private vehicles, etc."?
I know you weren't asking me, but I do not agree with that statement. Privacy demands the right to go about our business, however we see fit, without having someone TRACKING any tags we might have on our person. Having a GPS device does not automatically make you less private. When a privacy invasion occurs, it's because someone else, without our permission, is tracking that device.
It's a subtle difference, but it is the intentions of another individual that invade privacy, not the fact that it's possible to do so. Of course, making that easier to do (regardless of initial intent) is still a problem, IMO, but the tags aren't the invaders.
> I wouldn't be surprised if [an RFID password] was plaintext.
For devices that small, I don't necessarily think that it would be a password, per se, but just a short string of bits. In addition, these things aren't exactly PCs, with the power to handle encryption, so I believe it wouldn't really be a viable option.
More likely, the RFIDs are premade with the n bit security key and if it 'hears' that key, it starts writing the next packet to its own memory, if it reads a respond request, it sends its own ID back.
> That extra "power" can be used for good and evil.
Excuse me, but put your tinfoil hat back on, buddy. That extra "power" is the ability to read basically the same info without having to physically touch the item. That's about it. Instead of putting the reader an inch away from a specific location printed on a box, you just prance around the warehouse, waving your "wand" to do inventory. Certainly more fun than barcodes.
Also, unless there are RFID readers every 10 feet on every street, there's not much chance of this becoming a threat to civil liberties in any way.
> Is it possible to loom over someone in a sneaky way?
It is possible, but quite difficult. The main problem is that they are noisy, making it quite difficult to do it sneakily -- especially when the target notices a giant weaving contraption floating above their head.
> Something like this should work with RFID tags, too
How close did it have to be to the tag? Would you first have to find out exactly where the tag was to kill it? (How hard is that, anyway?) I suppose you could just keep zapping different areas until the receiver stopped getting a signal, but that could be rather tedious.
> yet I've known at least 2 people who claim to have had MAC address collisions
Make that three. Unfortunately, that happens, although it is very rare. However, how many bits are there in a MAC address? How many bits will there be in the RFIDs? Using totally BS statistics, if the MACs had had one more bit on the right-hand side, you might have only met one person with a collision. If they had 3 more, you probably never would have met one.
> On the other hand, on my Linux machine, it was just a matter of typing: > apt-get install openoffice.org
Wait till you run into something with missing dependencies that can't be installed via apt-get. Then "just typing" turns into a nightmare.
Typing something is all well & good, but it is not as good as Windows' process until you can download one file, run it & have the software installed correctly and completely.
> there are still, for example, psychiatric industry people who have proposed that all rapists had fundamentalist Christian parents, without exception. Instead of being laughed out of their jobs, their theories are often still competing for funding, analysis, and public attention
Do you have solid evidence to the contrary? Just because YOU are offended by an idea, it isn't immediately wrong. By the way, many, many great inventions & theories came from "far-fetched" ideas, so unless there is completely irrefutable evidence denying it, what's the problem of looking into it? Then, the next time someone gets the same stupid idea, there will already be a study showing his crazy christian-bashing idea is wrong.
I can understand the logic of that statement, being that most "fundamentals" I have met are extremely socially (ie, sexually) repressed to the point of ignorance.
Not that I give a crap, but I'm bored & feel like posting something.
Pseudocode and language are sort of the same thing. It's just the presentation of the material that differs. A language just conveys an idea, and if the idea was conveyed correctly (which it was), who cares how it was done?
> How does that compare to the multitudes of Native Americans we murdered to live on this very land?
"We" didn't kill anyone. The people who did that left from Europe, so it would be more accurate to say that some Europeans killed the NAs. America didn't exist then. My ancestors hadn't even arrived in the "New World" by the time the natives were pushed back past the Mississippi River, so "we" is horribly inaccurate. Also take into account that even if my ancestors had been here, I do not take responsibility for the actions of those who came before me.
> can you please enlighten me on how these facts support his statement that tube and solid state amps "have almost no comparison"
Those facts are not supposed to support his initial statement, that's why he used the word "but" in there. They weren't supposed to support it.
His initial statement is made out of experience, it seems, which most people who have used both solid-state & tube amps for a considerable amount of time will agree with. They have a different sound quality and the construction is very different -- hence, "no comparison."
> and that he'd "take a tube [over a solid state amp] anyday"?
I won't necessarily say one is flat-out better than the other, but opinion doesn't necessarily have to be backed up with a torrent of facts. That's why it's an opinion; a feeling. Otherwise, it would not have been necessary for him to point it out -- it would be a given.
> > tubes have major downfalls: they have to warm up, they have to cool down before you move them around, they break easily, etc.
Stop flaming simply for the sake of flaming, cocksucker.
I don't know how you got an insightful mod, but those facts were in there, and are true. In fact, he puts forth pretty much the WHOLE difference between tubes & ICs, as far as the properties of the equipment go and what the enduser experiences.
> To install any new application in Mac OS X , the admin password must be input. Windows does not have this extra safeguard.
Umm... If you use Win2K+, it DOES have this safeguard. Unless you are already logged in as administrator, running a setup program brings up a prompt for the admin password.
> the solar wind will generate a replacement magnetic field as it interacts with the upper atmosphere. Why didn't the same happen on Mars?
Wild guess here. Perhaps it has to do with Mars being smaller than Earth, therefore a thinner atmosphere. The materials for the "replacement" have to come from somewhere, so if you have fewer materials to start with, you would incur a greater % loss.
> a Solar or Interstellar Wind is not really wind, but particles travelling through space at great speeds
Please excuse my ignorance, but isn't that exactly what "normal" wind is? It's particles (molocules, mostly) flying around through space? Except in this case they keep being pulled towards Earth so that they appear to be part of it.
> we could always move Venus out to Mars's orbit, and have Mars smash into it. Poof! Instant new Earth.
That's a very interesting use of the word "instant." I believe It would take hundreds of years for it to solidify again after becoming a ball of molten rock. Two planets colliding cause a little bit of friction...
However, I like the point of your comment, it would be pretty cool to start smashing planets together & see what happens. We might want to test it outside our own solar system first, though. Or at least not with the two nearest planets, one of which would have to cross Earth's orbit.
Slashdot Mirror
> A modern day terrorist might enter a big supermarket and set off a microwave bomb
Not to invalidate your opinion in any way, but I seriously doubt Al-Qaida is getting off on the thought of temporarily disrupting the St. Louis WalMart's inventory control system. The effort to make a microwave bomb would be much better spent doing something else. Although, I would prefer they do that over sinking a cruise ship...
> DO YOU AGREE OR NOT with the premise of this last paragraph, to wit, "privacy demands the right to *easily* go about our business without having RFID tags accompany our person, our private vehicles, etc."?
I know you weren't asking me, but I do not agree with that statement. Privacy demands the right to go about our business, however we see fit, without having someone TRACKING any tags we might have on our person. Having a GPS device does not automatically make you less private. When a privacy invasion occurs, it's because someone else, without our permission, is tracking that device.
It's a subtle difference, but it is the intentions of another individual that invade privacy, not the fact that it's possible to do so. Of course, making that easier to do (regardless of initial intent) is still a problem, IMO, but the tags aren't the invaders.
> From a distant B&W security camera, it should be invisible. Drive it around in a 24/7 walmart late at night, having it drag stuff off.
Yes, it may look invisible, but security may become suspicious seeing a stereo walk off by itself.
> I wouldn't be surprised if [an RFID password] was plaintext.
For devices that small, I don't necessarily think that it would be a password, per se, but just a short string of bits. In addition, these things aren't exactly PCs, with the power to handle encryption, so I believe it wouldn't really be a viable option.
More likely, the RFIDs are premade with the n bit security key and if it 'hears' that key, it starts writing the next packet to its own memory, if it reads a respond request, it sends its own ID back.
> That extra "power" can be used for good and evil.
Excuse me, but put your tinfoil hat back on, buddy. That extra "power" is the ability to read basically the same info without having to physically touch the item. That's about it. Instead of putting the reader an inch away from a specific location printed on a box, you just prance around the warehouse, waving your "wand" to do inventory. Certainly more fun than barcodes.
Also, unless there are RFID readers every 10 feet on every street, there's not much chance of this becoming a threat to civil liberties in any way.
> Is it possible to loom over someone in a sneaky way?
It is possible, but quite difficult. The main problem is that they are noisy, making it quite difficult to do it sneakily -- especially when the target notices a giant weaving contraption floating above their head.
> Something like this should work with RFID tags, too
How close did it have to be to the tag? Would you first have to find out exactly where the tag was to kill it? (How hard is that, anyway?) I suppose you could just keep zapping different areas until the receiver stopped getting a signal, but that could be rather tedious.
> yet I've known at least 2 people who claim to have had MAC address collisions
Make that three. Unfortunately, that happens, although it is very rare. However, how many bits are there in a MAC address? How many bits will there be in the RFIDs? Using totally BS statistics, if the MACs had had one more bit on the right-hand side, you might have only met one person with a collision. If they had 3 more, you probably never would have met one.
Is there a predetermined ID length for the RFIDs?
> On the other hand, on my Linux machine, it was just a matter of typing:
> apt-get install openoffice.org
Wait till you run into something with missing dependencies that can't be installed via apt-get. Then "just typing" turns into a nightmare.
Typing something is all well & good, but it is not as good as Windows' process until you can download one file, run it & have the software installed correctly and completely.
> there are still, for example, psychiatric industry people who have proposed that all rapists had fundamentalist Christian parents, without exception. Instead of being laughed out of their jobs, their theories are often still competing for funding, analysis, and public attention
Do you have solid evidence to the contrary? Just because YOU are offended by an idea, it isn't immediately wrong. By the way, many, many great inventions & theories came from "far-fetched" ideas, so unless there is completely irrefutable evidence denying it, what's the problem of looking into it? Then, the next time someone gets the same stupid idea, there will already be a study showing his crazy christian-bashing idea is wrong.
I can understand the logic of that statement, being that most "fundamentals" I have met are extremely socially (ie, sexually) repressed to the point of ignorance.
> Code is for computers, language is for humans.
Not that I give a crap, but I'm bored & feel like posting something.
Pseudocode and language are sort of the same thing. It's just the presentation of the material that differs. A language just conveys an idea, and if the idea was conveyed correctly (which it was), who cares how it was done?
> But it did not happen all the times the magnetic field already flipped on earth ... why should it happen next time?
Because we have been taught by the media to be paranoid & scream wildly about everything that could possibly happen.
> How does that compare to the multitudes of Native Americans we murdered to live on this very land?
"We" didn't kill anyone. The people who did that left from Europe, so it would be more accurate to say that some Europeans killed the NAs. America didn't exist then. My ancestors hadn't even arrived in the "New World" by the time the natives were pushed back past the Mississippi River, so "we" is horribly inaccurate. Also take into account that even if my ancestors had been here, I do not take responsibility for the actions of those who came before me.
> so it would be justifiable for the Japanese to drop a nuclear bomb on the state of virginia
No, it would have been. Right now we're not at war so, no, it would be a bad move.
> can you please enlighten me on how these facts support his statement that tube and solid state amps "have almost no comparison"
Those facts are not supposed to support his initial statement, that's why he used the word "but" in there. They weren't supposed to support it.
His initial statement is made out of experience, it seems, which most people who have used both solid-state & tube amps for a considerable amount of time will agree with. They have a different sound quality and the construction is very different -- hence, "no comparison."
> and that he'd "take a tube [over a solid state amp] anyday"?
I won't necessarily say one is flat-out better than the other, but opinion doesn't necessarily have to be backed up with a torrent of facts. That's why it's an opinion; a feeling. Otherwise, it would not have been necessary for him to point it out -- it would be a given.
> it contains exactly zero facts.
Facts, such as:
> > tubes have major downfalls: they have to warm up, they have to cool down before you move them around, they break easily, etc.
Stop flaming simply for the sake of flaming, cocksucker.
I don't know how you got an insightful mod, but those facts were in there, and are true. In fact, he puts forth pretty much the WHOLE difference between tubes & ICs, as far as the properties of the equipment go and what the enduser experiences.
> Umm, are you using the same Win2k I am?
Win2K SP4. I know it applies to at least SP3. Maybe it's a feature that I turned on somewhere, but if so, I have no idea what it was.
> To install any new application in Mac OS X , the admin password must be input. Windows does not have this extra safeguard.
Umm... If you use Win2K+, it DOES have this safeguard. Unless you are already logged in as administrator, running a setup program brings up a prompt for the admin password.
> Millions of years, more likely!
:)
f f. ..
I figured I was underestimating a lot, but didn't want to make wildly inaccurate statements. Guess I did anyway
> (I thought it was a more interesting use of the word "Poof".)
pooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...ooooo...ooooff
> the solar wind will generate a replacement magnetic field as it interacts with the upper atmosphere. Why didn't the same happen on Mars?
Wild guess here. Perhaps it has to do with Mars being smaller than Earth, therefore a thinner atmosphere. The materials for the "replacement" have to come from somewhere, so if you have fewer materials to start with, you would incur a greater % loss.
> a Solar or Interstellar Wind is not really wind, but particles travelling through space at great speeds
Please excuse my ignorance, but isn't that exactly what "normal" wind is? It's particles (molocules, mostly) flying around through space? Except in this case they keep being pulled towards Earth so that they appear to be part of it.
> clean nuclear energy!
Hey, that's nukular, pal! Only terrorists use the word "nuclear," especially when planning their next attack!
> And that person then collected it all up and that was the end of Mars as they knew it.
Chapter 2: "Hey, where'd all this water come from," says Earth
> we could always move Venus out to Mars's orbit, and have Mars smash into it. Poof! Instant new Earth.
That's a very interesting use of the word "instant." I believe It would take hundreds of years for it to solidify again after becoming a ball of molten rock. Two planets colliding cause a little bit of friction...
However, I like the point of your comment, it would be pretty cool to start smashing planets together & see what happens. We might want to test it outside our own solar system first, though. Or at least not with the two nearest planets, one of which would have to cross Earth's orbit.
> if Mars is cooled off and geologically dead
I'm just guessing here, but I think it is cooling off, and not quite geologically dead yet, but cool enough to start losing its gasses.